#Searcher Fuzz

[talesfromthegraavim]

Fuzz, The First Searcher and Orig Gardener

[kemetic-dreams]

Go-go is a subgenre of funk music with an emphasis on specific rhythmic patterns, and live audience call and response.

Go-go was originated by African-American musicians in Washington, D.C., during the mid-60s to late-70s. Go-go has limited popularity in other areas, but maintains a devoted audience in the Washington metropolitan area as a uniquely regional music style and was named the official music of Washington, D.C., in February 2020.

Performers associated with the development of the style include Rare Essence, EU, Trouble Funk, and singer-guitarist Chuck Brown. Modern artists like Charles "Shorty Corleone" Garris continue the go-go tradition in D.C.

Origins

Although Chuck Brown is known as "the Godfather of Go-Go", go-go is a musical movement that cannot be traced back to one single person, as there were so many bands that flourished during the beginning of this era that they collectively created the sound that is recognized as go-go of today. Artists such as Marvin Gaye, Van McCoy, Billy Stewart, Peaches & Herb, Black Heat,Experience Unlimited (E.U.), Vernon Burch, Sir Joe Quarterman & the Free Soul, the Moments, Ray, Goodman & Brown, True Reflection, the Unifics, Terry Huff & Special Delivery, Act 1, the Dynamic Superiors, Skip Mahoney & the Casuals, the Choice Four, and the Fuzz that played soul music during pre-go-go era.

The term "gogo" (as it applies to a music venue) originated in France in the early 1960s, at the Whiskyagogo nightclub, named after the French title for the British comedy "Whisky Galore!".The club also featured go-go dancers. In January 1964, capitalizing on the emerging popularity of "go-go dancers", the name was licensed to a Los Angeles club, the Whisky a Go Go, and from there the term "go-go" spread nationwideThe Cafe Au Go Go in NYC was also in business during that time, gaining notoriety when Lenny Bruce was arrested there in April 1964. By 1965, "go-go" was a recognized word for a music club, as evidenced by the TV show Hollywood A Go-Go (march 1965-1966), or the song title of that year's hit Going to a Go-Go by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles (released November 1965). At a go-go club, dancers could expect to hear the latest top 40 hits, performed by local bands and DJ's. (The French Whiskyagogo had been one of the first venues in the world to replace live music with records selected by a disc jockey.)

In Washington D.C., minor group Wornell Jones and the Young Senators were formed in 1965, beginning a fierce competition with Chuck Brown and Black Heat on the local club circuit. The Young Senators later became known for their song "Jungle" released in 1970 by Innovation Records. Guitarist and bandleader Chuck Brown is widely regarded as "the Godfather of Go-Go".

Chuck Brown was a fixture on Washington and Maryland music scene with his band Los Lotinos as far back as 1966. By the mid-1970s, he had changed the group's name to The Soul Searchers, and developed a laid-back, rhythm-heavy style of funk performed with one song blending into the next (in order to keep people on the dance floor). The beat was based on Grover Washington Jr.'s song "Mr. Magic," though Brown has said in interviews that both he and Washington had adapted the beat from a gospel music beat found in African churches.

Washington, D.C., funk's early national chart action came when Black Heat (the first D.C. go-go band to be signed by a major record label) released their Billboard top 100 hit "No Time To Burn" from their second album on Atlantic Records in 1974. They then toured with such national acts as Earth Wind & Fire, Parliament Funkadelic, Ohio Players, The Commodores, and others. In 1976, James Funk, a young DJ who spun at clubs in between Soul Searchers sets, was inspired (and encouraged by Brown himself) to start a band—called Rare Essence (originally the Young Dynamos)—that played the same kind of music.

[bytes-and-blessings]

Smuggling Hope - Inklings Challenge 2023

So I signed up to do a little writing challenge this year called the @inklings-challenge! Which you can read more about here: https://inklings-challenge.tumblr.com/about Basically, I've had story ideas in my head for as long as I can remember. Now I finally found something to give me a kick in the pants to write. Maybe this is the first draft to the first chapter of my first novel ever. Maybe I never touch this story again. Who knows? not me.... But without further ado, welcome to the first installment of what I currently call "The Beacon Universe" (Actual name TBD) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Captain Nia Twig woke up at the wheel her ship to the sound of a proximity alarm.

BEEP EEP EEP!

There was message from an incoming ship.

“This is gate border checkpoint Theta-Sigma-Alpha-5, please prepare for boarding with your itinerary, ship registration, and passenger manifest. Failure to cooperate with border patrol will be reported to Zytharian authorities and may result in fines or arrest. Thank you, and Glory to the Emperor.”

Nia groaned and scrambled out of her pilots chair to prepare for the inspection. As she walked through the ship she stashed away a box of stuff from back home and placed it under her bed, with a menstrual garment and some pain pills on top to keep any searchers from touching it. Looking around the area, there was a torn piece of paper that she though she had drunkenly thrown in the incinerator months ago:

The oath and way of the Beacons are as THE LORD once declared: “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lamp stand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shin-”

Nia was interrupted in her distracted readings by the ship’s alarm system again:

~~~~~WARNING ~~~~ AIRLOCK ENGAGED ~~~~ INTRUDER ALERT~~~~~

“Computer! Stall’em!” She yelled out. The ship’s AI wasn’t anything fancy, but it could pretend to have just enough dysfunction to slow down anyone trying to board. (Or with any luck, kill anyone in a rush via asphyxiation so she could claim it was an accident. Technology sucks, right?)

She stuffed the paper in her pocked and climbed down to the hold. At the bottom, she reached behind the ladder and flipped a leaver.

A few of the crates started to lower into a hidden compartment beneath.

“Come on, come on, move you stupid thing” Nia slammed her foot against the floor.

Suddenly the mechanism squeaked to a halt.

She could hear the boarder ship’s airlock finish connecting to The Night’s Reverie. She’d have to greet the Inspector at any minute, or else the rest of his people’s fleet would show up and blow them both out of the sky.

She dove below the boxes, and started to hunt around. In the tangled mess of wires, there was a stray piece of jerky stuck between the gears. Nia couldn’t quite reach through the gap to catch it.

BANG BANG BANG

Someone was knocking on the other end of the airlock doors, trying to gain entry. If she didn’t let them it, it was going to be a firefight, but if the fuzz caught sight was what was in these crates, well, she’d have bigger problems.

The Captain pulled out a lighter with the symbol of a white bird in flight carved into it.

A small flame springs out with a flick of the flint, she barely has a moment to enjoy the feeling of the flames dancing in her control before she shoots it to knock the jerky out of place. She immediately threw the lighter up onto the main deck, then turned herself into a small flame and landed on the deck as the boxes almost crash into their compartment, crushing the area where she had just been an instant ago. The false floor slid over the contraband as the captain punched in the code to open the airlock for her unwanted guests.

“Still not going to be a Beacon, but Uncle’s old lighter trick is handy in a pinch.” She thought to herself as she punched the intercom button to speak to the visitor waiting in the airlock. “This is the Captain of the ship speaking, who is there?”

A posh voice responded, “Captain Glory Ashwell, are you in there? This is Inspector Zimri Klerk, of the His Greatness’s Most Noble and Important Hyperlane Border Inspections Agency. I am here to proceed with a random inspection of your ship. I assume you have your paperwork in order and are ready for inspection, Captain?” a

From the voice, Nia expected someone much taller on the other side of the airlock. Instead standing there was an short and fat man in a faded but finely pressed dress uniform. He stood proud before her not a piece of his balding silver hair was out of place. His mustache was curled perfectly at the ends, looking at it was almost like looking at a second pair of eyes. At his left side he held a bright red cane with the Empire dragon snarling at it’s head, like forgotten Celtic letterhead come to life. In his right hand he somehow managed to hold both a clipboard and a lit cigar.

Nia cleared her throat, and then addressed the man. “Ah yes Sir, as you can see here on my manifest, my ship, The Kobold is just on a routine courier run to the middle systems of the Empire. If we could make this quick, my clients are very important people with urgent business, Captain. They’ve waited long enough for these goods.”

“Very well Captain. Let’s keep this quick shall we.” He took a puff of the cigar and stormed past her onto the ship.

It may have been the longest inspection she had lived through in her entire life.

He poked in the flight room.

He tapped his cane all around her living quarters.

He crawled under the sink.

He licked the dust between the crates.

He even accidentally knocked out a fake wall Nia didn’t know the ship had.

By the end of it, he looked less like a man to her, and more like some cross between a relentless hound dog, and a relentless hound dog breathing tobacco smoke from his lungs. An evil, fire-breathing dog of war armed with a clipboard of wrath and health code violations.

Finally, it was almost over. Inspector Zimiri stood right next to the holds ladder and put away his pen.

“Well, everything looks fine here, as long as you don’t have any rebel contraband under here then I’ll be on my way.”

With a single motion, he flipped the hidden switch with his cane and stepped aside to reveal the contraband crates.

A moment pasted, then a second as the crates were slowly lifted by the traitorous mechanism. Neither person seamed to move or breath for a second. Finally Nia let out a long sigh, and pulled out a wad of bills from her inner coat pocket.

She faked a smile, and tried to approach the Inspector congenially,“Look here friend, there’s nothing harmful here. It’s just some luxury goods I need to keep extra protected for a client in Casino Monte. Some rich dude wants camping supplies to reenact some ancient survivalist U-tuber. Bear Gorillas or something? I don’t know man, can’t we just figure this out? It’s not like it’s weapons or anything, you know, right?” She said, holding out the bribe money.

The Inspector let out a deep sigh. He leaned his cane against the wall. Then he removed his glasses and began to methodically clean them. For a moment Nia could swear he tapped a button on his jacket. The little man straighten up to glare at her. The cigar smoke began to fog up his glasses once more and reflect the dim light of the ship. The Captain began to back away from the twin burning suns staring at her from his glasses.

“Do you take me for a fool?”

He walked over and opened the first crate to find a stack of water bottles, blankets, and food with single stuffed goose sat on top of the pile of goods.

“We both know that there’s no way a ship of this size has the fuel to get to the destination on your manifest.” He waved the faked papers in the air, “You’re more likely to drop out of the hyperlane somewhere above the Miser-Cordia system. Right where his Greatness’s Military has currently blockaded a group of those traitorous followers of the Beacon’s Path and the foolish civilians roped up in their little games. Do you think I didn’t realize from the moment your little star skipper left the hyperbridge that figured out that you were carrying the most dangerous weapon known to man inside?”

He dropped the cigar and waved the stuffed goose in the air, as if demonstrating his point.

“My good captain, it appears to me that you are smuggling hope.”

Nia whipped out her pistol and pointed it at him. “Listen, buddy, I don’t know who you are. And I don’t care. As I was saying, I’m not smuggling weapons, or drugs, or slaves, or any of the other fucked up shit that all of your friends turn a blind eye to every day for a couple of creds. So unless your sanctimonious pride and your thin wallet is more important than your life, maybe grow some brains out of that mustache. I’m not a Rebel. I just see a demand and I fill it. I don’t care about your stupid wars, buddy. This is just business. Just take your cut of creds like every other self serving sleaze bag in the galaxy, and let me go.” She insisted, probably too firmly. But Nia didn’t care, her pulse was in her throat and she could feel fire aching at her fingertips for the first time in years. This was about to go south, fast.

Still brandishing her pistol, Nia took in the sight of the little inspector. She had to keep her gun arm pointed down at an awkward angle to place the muzzle beneath his nose. When he wasn’t running around her ship, it was easier to see that this man only reached her shoulder. His mustache barely twitched at the sensation of cold metal. He dropped the goose back into it’s box. With it fell the clipboard. His fingers twitched for the cigar that had once been in his hand. Suddenly, the man before her wasn’t a robotic inspector of a dictator anymore. The cold glare in his eyes had softened into something still determined, but also seemingly defeated. Like the last blue flame of a dying fire. He reached down to pick up the cigar again.

“I have to say, I am quite disappointed in you, Miss Philomena Bryne.” He said, letting the smoke blow into Nia’s face. He grabbed onto a pin on his lapel, and broke it. Nia could see a few ripped wires leaving what she could now see had been a wiretap. “We both know you don’t need that toy to turn me to ash, so let’s drop the pretense, hm?”

“That’s not my name, that girl is dead. Who are you, and how do you know her?” She backed off, but kept the pistol high.

“Ah my mistake Captain,” He said, reaching up to scratch his lip. “Here I was, under the impression that I had caught up with a great Beacon of Old: A mythical group of people who could take flight in the stars without a ship, a Peace Keeper, a great Defender of the innocent, a living flame in the galaxy’s eternal night. I thought I was tracking a relic of a forgotten era of Crusades and Caped Heroes; one who was stuck in a universe that has progressed beyond, or perhaps, sunken below religion. And now l see that I have found a jaded business woman looking to profit off another’s misfortune, no? I had hoped that anyone with your flame, who could incurs such wrath of my employees and countrymen, could be nothing less than a saint. But if it’s business you want, then it’s business you’ll get I suppose. You can come out now, my dear.”

Zimiri Klerk tapped his cigar against the wall of the ship, and out of the embers emerged a young girl who could almost have been Philomena's cousin. But her hair soon changed from fire red to pale blonde. She was even shorter and thinner than the man next to her. Nia quickly realized that this was most likely the Inspector’s daughter. Her eyes were the same jet engine blue as his, and just as sharp.

“I will make a deal with you Captain. Get my daughter out of reach of the Empire's ashy dogs, and anyone else who would make her a living weapon. Then consider your bribe to be paid. Now I must go, my colleges will be looking for me. I’ll buy you what time I can. Good luck, my dear.” Then Zimiri Klerk walked to door of the Night’s Reverie.

“And remember Captain, even if you do not think of yourself a hero, to my daughter, and all of those people trapped on Miser-Cordia, you are the last light of hope.”

[aion-rsa]

HBO Max New Releases: May 2021

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Do not adjust your WiFi settings. No, you are not experiencing a severe case of Deja Streaming-vu. HBO Max’s list of new releases for May 2021 are indeed highlighted by two very recent WarnerMedia hits.

For starters, Tenet finally makes its long-awaited HBO Max this month. Mark your calendars as May 1 is the day that you can finally watch Christopher Nolan’s latest cerebral thriller. Of course, Tenet already had its theatrical release, but obviously that was not really an option for many of us. In addition to Tenet, Wonder Woman 1984 makes its triumphant return to HBO Max this month on May 13. The Wonder Woman sequel already premiered on HBO Max this past December, now it’s getting a second run on the streamer.

In terms of newer originals, May is relatively light for HBO Max. The Jean Smart-starring comedy Hacks premieres on May 13. The latest Adventure Time: Distant Lands special arrives on May 20. May also contains two prominent finales with The Nevers closing out part 1 of its first season on May 15 and Mare of Easttown wrapping up its case on May 30.

It’s also not a big month for Warner Bros. theatrical releases. The only one to speak of is Those Who Wish Me Dead on May 14. Thankfully that will be augmented by some library titles on May 1 including The Interview, Jackie Brown, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Here is everything else to expect in May 2021.

HBO Max New Releases – May 2021

TBA Gomorrah, Season 4 (Max Original) Oslo, (HBO Original Film)

May 1 17 Again, 2009 Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, 2012 (HBO) Anaconda, 1997 Anger Management, 2003 (HBO) Baby Boom, 1987 (HBO) Barry Lyndon, 1975 Black Hawk Down, 2001 The Cable Guy, 1996 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 2005 Cursed, 2005 (HBO) Daddy Day Care, 2003 Darkest Hour, 2017 (HBO) Darkness, 2004 (Extended Version) (HBO) The Dirty Dozen, 1967 Dumb & Dumber, 1994 Employee Of The Month, 2006 (HBO) Firehouse Dog, 2007 (HBO) Flight of the Intruder, 1991 (HBO) Free Willy, 1993 Frida, 2002 (HBO) Generation Por Que? (HBO) God’s Not Dead, 2014 (HBO) Good Morning, Vietnam, 1987 (HBO) Happy Feet Two, 2011 Happy Feet, 2006 Harley Davidson And The Marlboro Man, 1991 (HBO) Hercules, 1983 (HBO) Igby Goes Down, 2002 (HBO) Igor, 2008 (HBO) Insomnia, 2002 (HBO) The Interview, 2014 Jackie Brown, 1997 Kansas, 1988 (HBO) Magic Mike, 2012 Menace II Society, 1993 Michael, 1996 (HBO) Mortal Kombat, 1995 Movie 43, 2013 (HBO) Muriel’s Wedding, 1995 (HBO) My Baby’s Daddy, 2004 (HBO) Mystery Date, 1991 (HBO) Norbit, 2007 (HBO) Para Rosa (For Rosa) (HBO) Precious, 2009 (HBO) Rabid, 1977 (HBO) Romance & Cigarettes, 2007 (HBO) Rosewater, 2014 (HBO) Rudy, 1993 Rush Hour 2, 2001 Rush Hour 3, 2007 Rush Hour, 1998 Save The Last Dance, 2001 (HBO) Save The Last Dance 2, 2006 (HBO) Senseless, 1998 (HBO) Separate Tables, 1958 (HBO) Serpico, 1974 (HBO) Serving Sara, 2002 (HBO) Summer Rental, 1985 (HBO) Tenet, 2020 (HBO) The Debt, 2010 (HBO) The Immigrant, 2014 (HBO) The Kingdom, 2007 (HBO) The Last Of The Finest, 1990 (HBO) The Perfect Man, 2005 (HBO) The Tuxedo, 2002 (HBO) The Wings Of The Dove, 1997 (HBO) The Witches Of Eastwick, 1987 (HBO) Tomcats, 2001 (HBO) Trust Me, 2014 (HBO) Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection, 2012 Varsity Blues, 1999 (HBO) Welcome To Sarajevo, 1997 (HBO) When Harry Met Sally, 1989 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, 1971 Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, 2018 (HBO) Words And Pictures, 2014 (HBO)

May 2 Uri and Ella, Season 1

May 3 300: Rise of an Empire, 2014 Pray, Obey, Kill — HBO Docu-Series Finale

May 6 Hunger, 2008 Legendary: Season 2 (Max Original) Take Me Out To The Ball Game, 1949 That Damn Michael Che — Max Original Series Premiere West Side Story — TCM CFF Opening Night, 1961

May 7 La Boda De Rosa (Rosa’s Wedding) (HBO)

May 8 Greenland, 2020 (HBO) Re:ZERO — Starting Life in Another World: Season 2, (Subtitled, Episodes 14-25) (Crunchyroll Collection)

May 9 Axios (HBO)

May 10 Jujutsu Kaisen: Season 1, (Subtitled, Episodes 13-24) (Crunchyroll Collection) Race for the White House: Season 2 The Crime of the Century — Two-Part Documentary Premiere (HBO)

May 13 Hacks — Max Original Series Premiere Wonder Woman 1984 — 2020 (HBO)

May 14 Those Who Wish Me Dead — Warner Bros. Film Premiere, 2021

May 15 The Personal History Of David Copperfield, 2020 (HBO) The Nevers: Part 1 Finale (HBO)

May 19 Apple & Onion, Season 2A

May 20 Adventure Time: Distant Lands – Together Again — Max Original The Big Shot with Bethenny — Max Original Season Finale Ellen’s Next Great Designer — Max Original Season Finale Territorio (Close Quarters) (HBO) This Is Life with Lisa Ling: Season 7

May 23 In Treatment: Season 4 Premiere (HBO)

May 25 Cinderella Man, 2005 (HBO) Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel (HBO)

May 26 Curious George, 2006 (HBO)

May 28 A Black Lady Sketch Show: Season 2 Finale (HBO)

May 30 Mare of Easttown: Limited Series Finale (HBO)

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Leaving HBO Max – May 2021

May 11 Mud, 2013

May 13 Bullitt, 1968 The Searchers, 1956 Take Me Out To The Ball Game, 1949 West Side Story, 1961

May 16 Annabelle Comes Home, 2019 (HBO)

May 23 Mortal Kombat, 2021

May 28 The Operative, 2019 (HBO)

May 31 All About My Mother, 1999 All the President’s Men, 1976 Amistad, 1997 (HBO) The Avengers, 1998 The Beguiled, 2017 (HBO) The Bishop’s Wife, 1947 Black Christmas, 2019 (HBO) The Blind Side, 2009 (HBO) Blood Work, 2002 Blue Streak, 1999 Bombshell, 1933 The Book Of Henry, 2011 (HBO) Book Of Shadows: The Blair Witch 2, 2000 The Bridges Of Madison County, 1995 Butterfield 8, 1960 Captain Blood, 1935 Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, 1958 Cats, 2019 (HBO) The Cider House Rules, 1999 (HBO) Cinema Paradiso, 1990 (Director’s Cut) (HBO) Cradle 2 The Grave, 2003 Critical Care, 1997 (HBO) Cruel Intentions, 1999 (HBO) The Dancer Upstairs, 2003 (HBO) Dangerous Liaisons, 1988 The Dead Don’t Die, 2019 (HBO) The Dead Pool, 1988 Death Becomes Her, 1992 (HBO) Defending Your Life, 1991 Dirty Dancing, 1987 (HBO) Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, 2004 (HBO) Dolores Claiborne, 1995 Doubt, 2008 (HBO) Downhill, 2020 (HBO) Driving Miss Daisy, 1989 Drop Dead Gorgeous, 1999 East Of Eden, 1955 Emma, 1996 (HBO) Emma., 2020 (HBO) A Face In The Crowd, 1957 Father Of The Bride, 1950 Flipped, 2010 Giant, 1956 Heartbreak Ridge, 1986 Hot Fuzz, 2007 (HBO) Hunger, 2008 Jaws, 1975 (HBO) Jaws 2, 1978 (HBO) Jetsons: The Movie, 1990 (HBO) Justice League: Gods And Monsters, 2015 A Kiss Before Dying, 1991 (HBO) The Last King Of Scotland, 2006 (HBO) The Last Kiss, 2006 (HBO) Lego: Justice League: Attack Of The Legion Of Doom!, 2015 Life As We Know It, 2010 Life With Father, 1947 Little Women, 1949 Living Out Loud, 1998 The Long Kiss Goodnight, 1996 Magnum Force, 1973 March Of The Penguins, 2005 The Matrix Reloaded, 2003 The Matrix Revolutions, 2003 The Matrix, 1999 Maverick, 1994 Misery, 1990 (HBO) Mortal Kombat, 1995 Mortal Kombat Annihilation, 1997 Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge, 2020 Nell, 1994 (HBO) Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always, 2020 (HBO) Papillon, 1973 A Patch Of Blue, 1965 Phantom, 2013 (HBO) Phantom Thread, 2017 (HBO) Project X, 2012 (Extended Version) (HBO) Ray, 2004 (HBO) Richie Rich (Movie), 1994 A Room With A View, 1986 (HBO) Sanctum, 2011 (HBO) Scream, 1996 Scream 2, 1997 Scream 3, 2000 Se7En, 1995 Selena, 1997 Shaun Of The Dead, 2004 (HBO) Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows, 2011 (HBO) Skyline, 2010 (HBO) Snakes On A Plane, 2006 Snow White And The Huntsman, 2012 (Unrated Version) (HBO) Stuart Little, 1999 Stuart Little 2, 2002 The Thin Man, 1934 Tightrope, 1984 True Grit, 2010 (HBO) Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family, 2011 Unforgiven, 1992 Veronica Mars, 2014 Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, 2007 Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, 1966 X-Men: Dark Phoenix, 2019 (HBO) X-Men: First Class, 2011 (HBO) You Can’t Take It With You, 1938

The post HBO Max New Releases: May 2021 appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[mwolf0epsilon]

Howbout a story where everyone is out of the studio and they get to go back to their families?

Summary: Recovery is hard when you feel disconnected from the world around you.

---

[[MORE]]

In total, Henry had spent an entire 5 years stuck inside the seemingly never-ending loop that Joey had designated as the Cycle. It was absolutely surreal to the old cartoonist, reading his ex-childhood friend turned tormentor's notes and studies on the subject matter. The neat cursive detailing mad ramblings that could pass off as the musings of an overzealous researcher observing terrified mice in a booby-trapped maze. Studying their patterns, the subsequent changes of them upon additional stimuli being added to their environment, and other insane practices that completely threw morality out of the proverbial window.

Each beginning and ending of a year, another marked failure upon a calendar oversaturated by Joey Drew's overwhelming lack of satisfaction.

Even so, as much as it ached to think about lost time, 5 years wasn't much compared to what everyone else had to endure. 20 years of inky hell were nothing to shrug about, and Henry wasn't planning on just throwing everyone out into the streets to fend for themselves.

The house so close to the mountains, an inheritance he'd never really thought would come in handy, was the only reprive these shells of people had ever had in the span of two decades full of torment. His attention the only positive social interaction that they could recall with their broken minds.

Their recovery was not his responsibility, but he felt that he owed it to them regardless of the fact. Joey's descent was entirely on the man (his heinous crimes as well), but it didn't sit well with Henry to just not do anything to help fix some of the damages of the world.

And god if it didn't fill him with hope when he watched them slowly go into the road of recovery. People on the mend, shedding their old skins to become less the product of a cruel fiddler's ambitions, and more of their old selves, albeit newer in certain aspects.

The angels remained so, with little nubby horns and skin papery white. Tired eyes of sepia toned yellows, and scars from horrors he couldn't hope to understand. That he'd seen mere shadows of while briefly imprisoned himself.

Sammy fluctuated, stuck in a cycle of trying to find himself now that he felt like he was neither Samuel Lawrence Jr, nor the Prophet that worshipped the Ink Demon. Sometimes more close to human, other times coated in thick tarry skin that reflected oddly in the light. The closest he got to his old self was very close to the truth, but his once curly blond locks were now a messy tangle of raven curls that made him look so much paler than he should be. His teeth were sharp, his eyes far too yellow, and he refused to walk around barefoot even while indoors.

Tom and Buddy were still hound-like cartoon wolves, although now the feeling of fuzz was less a tactile illusion and more of a reality. Thick winter coats and soft summer furs. The shedding was absurd, but at least if they were spotted during the day they could pass off as very big dogs just frolicking in the woods. The same could not be said for the Searchers, Lost Ones and other cartoon characters that were slowly transitioning into less revolting forms. Jack had recently become a Lost One, consistent enough to wear clothing, but still having a hard time grasping speech.

Shawn too had passed onto the Lost One phase, but his tremendous size as the largest searcher with a mighty fine top hat, had followed him into his transition. He was over 9 feet tall and (albeit more wordy than most others of his kind) surprisingly bothered by his new height. Finding clothes that fit him would be a terrible pain.

Bertrum, Lacie and Norman were a difficult topic. Their mechanical parts had ensured their forms were stable and static. They couldn't become more human in appearence, and that in turn hindered their psychological recovery considerably. Still they were fighting that uphill battle, even if very slowly.

20 whole years of suffering, and still here they were, defying Joey Drew by getting to a point where they could begin to believe they were people again.

Henry Stein couldn't be prouder.

-

A lot of the crew had little to no remaining family. It was somewhat devastating to both him and Linda, as they poured their all into locating the studio employees's living relatives, only to find obituaries and tracks leading absolutely nowhere.

Buddy's case hurt the most, seeing the kid so heartbroken standing over his families's graves and his own empty one, had certainly put things into perspective. Illness had taken his mother just shy of a year of their escape... It wasn't fair.

Susie was much the same, crying thick tears as she left flowers on her poor mama's grave. She prayed her last years had been full of kindness despite her daughter having all but vanished into thin air.

Contacting the Pendles took a few days, and Tom refused to contact any of his own relatives, as he hadn't had that good of a relationship with his extended family to begin with. The only people that ever mattered were dead well before the machine had been built. Henry found that to be an overall theme for nearly everyone, really.

Joey Drew Studios had been built upon the hardships of social outcasts and dreamers. Joey's preferred prey had been those he deemed easily manipulated. People that wouldn't be missed too terribly.

The two largest exceptions being Sammy and Norman, and even then the both of them were not easy cases when it came to family reunions.

Henry had no idea where to look for Sammy's sister, as he couldn't find records of an Abigail Marie Lawrence after a certain amount of years (perhaps she'd married and taken on her husband's name?), and Norman... Well... The Projectionist didn't like strangers.

That alone made Norman exceedingly opposed to seeking anyone out. He was scared that he might have an "episode" and bring harm to whatever family member was out there missing him. A painful choice, as the want for home was clear in his gestures, his signed words, his dreams...

Henry would just have to focus on those that could be brought back home. For now at least.

-

The day Jack's face returned to him was the very same one where he saw his husband for the first time in two decades.

He'd been a complete jitterbug, fearful that his lovely hat and wedding ring wouldn't be enough for his beloved to recognize him. Lost Ones were people shaped but still very unnatural to look upon, even if Jack's form was considerably less emaciated and his words were slowly returning to him.

Nearly chickened out too, once an older gentleman was welcomed inside and briefly spoken to by Henry. Theo had come knowing Jack wasn't completely the same, but there was no revulsion, no regrets in getting his hopes up.

Just from body language alone, Theo had seen his husband in the round figure with sad glowing eyes and a battered bowler hat that still smelled mildly of sewage. Everyone had practically melted with delight as both held each other and cried happy tears at being reunited.

And then the ink of Jack's face began to melt off. Sepia skin and dark inky eyes, a round face framed by poofy locks. Peace of mind had let the biggest wounds heal. His voice was still not completely back, but both he and Theo had always held silent conversations. This wasn't an issue.

Saying goodbye was hard, but it gave everyone hope. If Jack who'd been something as mindless as a Searcher, could heal and move on, then nothing was stopping anyone else from living their best lives as well.

The will to live was further renewed.

-

Linda ends up being the one to ultimately find Sammy's younger sister. To their surprise, it brings a slice of the Polk family right to them as well.

Abigail Marie Lawrence was only such by blood. By name, she was now a Polk herself.

Married to Nelson, one of Norman's many nephews, and a childhood friend of hers.

Together they had a son. A tired looking young man with an uncanny resemblance to his uncle of all things. Mostly in the eyes. The hazel coloration that Sammy and Abby once shared had passed on to Lucian Polk.

Meeting them was... Awkward.

And very heated.

20 years of unexpected separation had brought up a lot of turmoils that neither knew how to deal with. In the end Linda and Henry had to separate the screaming pair, enough so that both hot-headed folk could cool down and then rush back to hug each other tightly and cry. Regretful and remorseful words spilling out with the tears and snot.

Overall, not something Henry ever wanted to get caught up in ever again. The Lawrence children were a little too intense for his taste.

When asked about Norman however... Well... Henry would have rather been stuck between a screaming match than be forced to explain about the Projectionist...

Avoidance brought him questioning looks, but a simple nod and a look that silenced any further questions. Nelson Polk was a gracious man that accepted when others needed time to themselves. He was only a brute by appearence after all.

He'd stated calmly that if Norman ever felt ready, he'd be welcomed with open arms regardless of whatever twisted form he may have taken on.

Layer that same day, Sammy told Henry that upon being told this, the Projectionist seemed happier in some way.

-

Recovery is hard when you feel disconnected from the world around you. For a long while, Henry feared that the gap between the years of their freedom, imprisonment, and subsequent rescue, would prove too much for everyone who'd become an inky abomination.

Was he ever so glad to be mistaken.

While there were many bumps on the proverbial road, and many a trial to face, everyone was thriving. Getting used to a world that was alien to them in some ways, but full of possibilities for them to explore.

Some were greatly limited by their conditions, but they too were managing.

Lacie had been steadily repaired and updated with her and Tom's combined efforts, and together they'd eventually figured out how to give Bertrum a better quality of life, through slowly converting his amusement ride body into something of a spider-like mobile unit. A little frightening at first, but progress towards constructing him an animatronic body perhaps? The world was their oyster. Their terrifying mechanical oyster.

Sammy's human form had eventually stabilized to where he only became his inky self when at his very limit, and Norman's mental faculties had return to a point where he finally felt safe reuniting with his family. They were initially quite horrified by the state of him, but didn't reject him. Merely fretted that he may be in pain.

His wife had long since remarried, but that wasn't much of an issue for him. Norman liked her new wife, she was everything the mother of his children deserved! And he'd thanked her as best he could for looking after his little ones when he couldn't.

Through a lot of home-schooling (bless Linda for being an excellent teacher), Buddy had finished the studies he'd abandoned to provide for his family. While he couldn't exactly get a job, it felt good to accomplish a goal he'd thought impossible.

He became a bit of an honorary Stein once Linda and the girls took a shine to him. It hurt that he couldn't live with them back in the city, but he liked the freedom the woodland location gave him. He was a wolf after all, even if at heart he was a young lad full of artistic ambition.

Susie and Allison were the easiest to rehabilitate in the end. They fought their demons and they came to terms with who they were. While Susie still had a few issues with her image and identity, she was doing formidably well in the writing industry.

Disguising her tale as a story of fiction as a means to vent, had sparked a talent she'd never thought she had.

Allison in turn took up the chore of making their home self-sustaining. Gardening, water filtration, the works. She processed her pain and grief through hard work and physical activities. Then when she was satisfied, she'd sit under the stars and reflect.

Many times she was joined by others who found the stars to be great listeners to their own plights. The company felt comfortable.

It felt good to trust again. Felt even better when a certain wolf sat besides her and admire the expanses of their freedom right beside her.

Yes, Henry Stein was truly proud of everyone's progress. He was glad he'd stuck around to witness it.

[rosewilsonworth]

I’ve seen quite a few times superhero films being compared to westerns of the 1950s and it’s something I think from time to time. It’s interesting how most film historians say that the greatest western of that era was either High Noon (1952) or Shane (1953). Two character based films that basically broke the mould, both of them were more than “good white americans kill bad native americans and/ or mexicans”.

What I’ve been thinking is, that if it’s the same with superhero films then mcu films are the mould, they are the cliche, they’re the repetitive, ordinary, cash grabs. So I wonder how they’ll be viewed in the future. Will they be viewed as an example of what a great x, y, z superhero film didn’t do? 

For example, if in 30 years from now Aquaman will be considered the best superhero film of the 2010s will they use the iron man or captain america films as a comparison to what Aquaman did better and/or different? Or they’ll be romaticed, despite their flaws, as disney animated films often are?

If the former is the case then I wonder if mcu films who did something different/ better such as black panther and thor ragnarok will be lost by being grouped with the rest. Not being given a second glance just because they’re mcu movies... Will bp be a case of “blah blah bp was the first mcu film with a black lead blah blah” or if it’s gonna stood out like “despite being a mcu film bp was great”. Same with thor ragnarok, will it be a “thor 3 did some things differently but...” or a “thor 3 stands out despite being an mcu film”? Despite is the key word here.

To return to western film from the 50s, while the two I mentioned at the beginning didn’t have to do anything with native americans and the such, many films of that era that are considered great and “classics” reekeed with racism. The Searchers (1956) for example [which btw I haven’t watched] is considered, alongside the aforementioned, as the best western and the plot was about John Wayne saving his niece from the Big Bad Evil Indians. But not many critics make a big fuzz about it, they may acknowledge the obvious racism but they shrug it off. “What did you expect? It was the 50s”. And they’re partially right, because the racism of these films did speak a lot about the politics of the era, which of course doesn’t mean that nowadays films aren’t racist towards native americans.

So again I wonder if mcu films will be viewed as flawed but good films that spoke volumes about the politics of our era. In ways that we can’t already see now. Will film historians say “Captain America films were good but dated” “What did you expect? Avengers were made in the 2010s”.

Last but not least, I’m very curious about bvs. Will it be seen as a film that did something different than mcu but not necessarily better? Will it be seen as the underapreciated masterpiece that was too ahead of it’s time? Or is it gonna be just a footnote to wonder woman’s cinematic history? 

Anyway, what I wanted to originally talk about in this post was how mcu are the mould that other superhero films will be recognized in the future for breaking. Somehow I ended up rambling so here’s this mess of a post god bless

[galacticbugman]

National Moth Week 2019 Part One

I do a lot of moth nights each year with some of my naturalist friends. This was my third year participating in the National Moth week activities. Mothing is really fun to do. All you do is put out a UV or some other light that has different wave lengths than regular household lights and a white sheet or a mesh netting and see what you can find. National Moth Week is not all about moths it is all about the nocturnal world when most of us are asleep in our beds. It is a celebration of the creatures of the night. Here are a few that I photographed during this years NMW. 

First up is the Sad Underwing Moth. I saw this species about four times. This one was found in broad daylight though. This one was at Elmer W. Oliver Nature Park on a tree. I was volunteering with a bunch of others during a kids science camp. The two in the back pointed it out and I just happened to have my camera on me. I took a few shots just to add it to my favorite app and site called iNaturalist which is a sight I use to keep track of all my nature observations. These guys are pretty hard to see sometimes. You can easily walk right past them. They sit on the side of a tree and it can take you several seconds to see it. If you know what to look for you can see them all over once your mind adjusts. For first time spotters it can be a little trickster. This species loves to suck down to the tree and say hidden leaving very little shadow so predators wont nab it for a snack. This moth species is about two to three inches in length and is one of my favorites in the Underwing family. 

I went to Twelve Hills Nature center in Dallas for one of our events and even though it was not a moth it was still a pretty cool observation. Here we have a Yellow and Black Garden Spider. These are one of the better known spiders that in most cases can be picked out of a line up. They are very large spiders and make very beautiful webs. The spiders you see on the webs are always females. The males are very tiny you can barely see them. That happens in a lot of the orbweavers and other spider species. This spider also makes an elaborate zigzag pattern called a stabilimentum. This is seen a little here in this photos. We are not too sure what this structure is used for. It is just something that a lot of spiders in the genus Argiope do. These are so cool to look at. I almost didn’t see the web until I was called to see it. 

One of the many insects we had come up to our light traps was this Eight-spotted Flea Beetles. I have been trying to get a good photograph of one of these for a long time. They have always seemed to escape me every time I see one. They are one of the many leaf beetles we have in Texas. This one is one of the larger ones. It is dark with some red and little white dots on the wing coverts. It will eat a lot in a garden and is considered an agricultural pest. 

One of the coolest beetles we found during one of the three moth nights for the week was this guy. This is known as the Fiery Searcher. Some of you may have seen it on one of my other posts around the City Nature Challenge time. These guys are one of my favorite beetles. They are swift and always hungry. They specialize in eating caterpillars. They are a pretty large beetle and when angered they will release a highly pungent odor that will throw you for a loop. They can also deliver a very painful bite if miss handled. Probably not enough to break the skin but it can hurt for a good while so I am told. I have been lucky not to have been bitten but as they say their is a first time for everything. It is just one of those occupational hazards we have to face from time to time. 

 Another cool beetle we saw during National Moth Week. This one is in the Genus Mallodon and is known as the Hardwood-stump Borer Beetle. This guy is almost as big as the Fiery Searcher and has a mighty set of jaws of its own. That yellow stuff you see is some kind of fuzz that it has. This is the first time I have observed this beetle. This monster gets pretty larger and it was kind of daunting to get it into a petri dish to better observe it closer. Petri Dishes come in handy when you do insect photography for science purposes. It holds them in and you can get closer shots in the clear plastic. It is just one of those things I picked up along the way during my time as a naturalist. This guy is one heck of a beetle I will tell you that. I think it may just be one of my new favorites all because of its cool Genus name. Mallodon sounds so much like something from a space adventure show. 

A cool flying beast we saw at the Parr Park National Moth Week night in Grapevine. This sucker is known as an Eastern Dobsonfly. This guy was one that was on the rocks near one of our more powerful set ups. This is a female for it has small stubbier jaws. The males have much larger ones that overlap when at rest. This thing can get up to four inches. It has two pairs of wings which overlap and in the good light they almost look plastic. The larva to this insect is called a Hellgramite. These flies are used often by fly fishers. The Fishfly is a close relative of these guys. This thing if not handled right will also bite and can break skin. This one was picked up out of harms way and almost bit one of my friends. It can swivel its head in many directions so it is constantly on the alert from predators. 

Another beetle that looks like the Fiery Searcher. It is very closely related and is in the same line. This guy is called the Black Caterpillar Hunter. It is almost the same size as the Fiery Searcher. This guy is one heck of a beetle. A few of my friends found this guy halfway up a tree when they spotted him. They called me over and I took this shot. This was taken at Parr Park in Grapevine Texas. This is one of my favorite shots. Just look at all the grooves in the wing coverts. This is a very cool predator. I really enjoy mothing and looking for the animals of the night. You see some of the wildest things at night. 

One of the deadlier observations on my list of highlights was this Southern Black-widow. This is the first one I have seen that has that infamous red hourglass on the underside of its body. We made it with out anyone getting bitten which was a good thing. We were all very careful to not disturb it. She was just minding her own waiting for something to walk into her web trap. She was an absolutely beautiful spider. I really enjoy photographing spiders and other arachnids. The funny thing is I used to hate arachnids but after a while of being a naturalist and hiking among them I started to see them in a new light. I saw that they were devoted parents and sophisticated web artists. They are very amazing and some are so beautiful. Strange some maybe but they are just doing what they have to, to survive in the wild. This little thing was really cool. I have now observed two Southern Black Widows. 

Here is one I found on my friend’s truck that he was using for the moth night at the Heard Museum. This right here is the Carolina Mantis. Some of you may have seen this species in an older post. This is a female. Males and females are sexually dimorphic. That means that one gender is one color and the other is another color. In this case the female is much browner and the males are much greener. This thing was hoping to snag a moth or something. Sometimes the mothing lights can be a great place to hunt. When a lot of insects gather it is fair game. Predators are just as attracted to the lights we moth-ers put out. You never quite know what might turn up during one of the events. It is a lot of fun to observe all the creatures that come up to the light traps. It is equally fun to photograph them and post them and share them to your friends. I have been sharing my stuff ever since I became an amateur photographer. I love doing these kinds of things as a volunteer for many nature parks. I really enjoy what I do. I am going to school for photography among other things. So next time we will visit some more creepy crawlies of the night. Until next time I am Zachary AKA Galactic_Bug_Man and I will see you on the trail. Live long and prosper.  

[justmenoworries]

Ho boy, that sure was....something. Look, I’ll be honest: Chapter 5 of Bendy and the Ink Machine kinda disappointed me. There were just...so many loose ends and things that flat-out didn’t make any sense?

Also, I know it’s been literal months since the release, but I really needed to get this off my chest.

(Just a heads-up: since I don’t own chapter 5 myself yet, I’m using screenshots from Jacksepticeye’s playthrough of it. You can watch the original video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5KnheYXreE)

1. Allison and Tom, a.k.a. “Can I have Wally!Boris back, please?”

Chapter 4 left us on a major cliffhanger with it’s final shot of another Alice (who’s name, dataminers found out, was Allison) and another Boris with a metal arm rescuing Henry from Susie!Alice. Seeing that there were good versions of the cartoon characters, like many theorists suspected, definitely hyped us up for more.

And then the Chapter 5 - trailer came up and solidified that hype by showing Henry seemingly fighting side by side with Allison!Alice. It very much looked like we were getting not one, but two new companions. The short scene  of Allison fighting the Lost Ones also followed a brief interaction between Allison and Henry that got fans to bring out the tinfoil-hats:

Allison: “Henry....why are you here?” Henry: “The Ink Demon has something we need. I’m going after him.

It sounded like we were in for an adventure of epic proportions in Chapter 5 with two new allies having our back. Definitely a welcome mix-up of the previous rather lonely chapters. What we got, however was....not that..

Chapter 5 begins with Henry being held prisoner by Allison and Tom. Since before the original release there were a bunch of tape-videos on the Meatley’s youtube-channel that implied as much, with Henry referring to Allison and Tom as his captors. So this wasn’t really a surprise. What was, however, was Allison’s and Tom’s actual roles in the overall story. Which is to say: Almost none.  Allison and Tom leave Henry to be killed by an approaching Ink Demon, only to miraculously show up out of nowhere at the end of the Sammy Mini-boss fight and the start of the Searcher/Lost Ones battle. These battles are another can of worms in and of themselves, but I’ll talk about each of them later.

Apart from the battle against the Ink Creatures and one minor obstacle later on, Allison and Tom have no real purpose in this chapter. Allison merely serves as an exposition dump for things a lot of fans had figured out already (Sammy being in charge of the Lost Ones, Ink creatures who die going back to the puddles, the writing on the walls coming from the Searchers) and Tom....Tom was kind of the worst.

For reasons that are neither implied nor explained later Tom greatly distrusts Henry at the start of the chapter. He threatens him physically whenever they so much as see each other,

denies him food behind Allison’s back

and even goes so far as to convince Allison to leave Henry to die.

This is sort of addressed by Allison’s small speech at the start in which she explains that down in the studio, strangers aren’t really “good things” and that Tom thinks that Henry is “dangerous”.

Henry: “Are you gunna let me out of here?” Allison: “Down here, strangers aren’t good things. How can we trust you?”

Henry: “Alice... please let me out of here.” Allison: “Tom thinks you’re dangerous.”

However upon further scrutiny that argument really doesn’t hold any water. When Allison and Tom first meet Henry, he has just narrowly escaped being murdered by Susie!Alice. He also makes no move to attack them or even defend himself. So what reason would they (or rather: Tom) have to think that he was dangerous? Henry isn’t an Ink creature and is obviously lucid. And furthermore, if they really distrust him that much, why save him from Susie!Alice in the first place? Why not just let her kill him and go on their way? They clearly don’t even care for him enough to at least give him a chance to escape his prison before they save their own sorry butts.

Yet for whatever reason their opinion of him does a sudden 180° right after the Sammy-fight. Tom is now somehow convinced that Henry won’t hurt them, enough to save him from Sammy

and hand him a weapon,

and Allison seems to have completely forgotten that she and Tom literally left this man for dead mere hours ago. She approaches him so nonchalantly, it’s honestly kind of insulting.

Say what you want about Wally!Boris, but even though he may have been a bit of a coward, he at least still stayed behind to help an injured Henry when the elevator collapsed - at the cost of his own life, might I add. And his presence in the story was of great importance. Thanks to him we found out a lot about how the Ink Machine works and the puddles and Ink-creatures themselves.

So companion-wise, Allison and Tom really were a bit of a downgrade.

And story-wise?

Like I said, Allison and Tom don’t actually add much to the overall story of Bendy and the Ink Machine beyond exposition. Their personalities are rather stale compared to the other characters we have met along the way. Which really is a pity, since the trailer hyped them up so much.

2. Sammy’s return a.k.a “What, that’s it?”

Sammy Lawrence has become a real fan-favorite since his debut in Chapter 2. A fact theMeatley was clearly aware of. Sammy, much like Allison and Tom, was hyped up a lot prior to chapter 5. There was whole special event involving him at the Hot Topic’s Twitter, where he answered questions while simultaneously leaving cryptic hints and implications about what was really going on. Chapter 3 had an easter-egg where you could hear his voice by playing a couple of instruments in just the right order. Due to all the fuzz made around the character, a lot of people had speculated that he might come back in a later chapter.

They would be proven right, but...well...

When Sammy did show up again he was....different. For once he had clearly undergone a voice actor-change and moved up a few nudges on the crazy scale, screeching about how the Ink Demon betrayed and abandoned him, even though he “gave him everything”.

And after a brief scuffle with Henry he just...dies again.

After all the foreshadowing, all the wink-wink-nudge-nudge done by the creators this was a really disappointing way to make Sammy come back. Much like our new “companions” Sammy doesn’t really contribute anything to the story. Not even additional lore. He shows up quite literally out of nowhere and into nowhere he also seems to vanish again. Neither Henry nor Allison refer to him or at least mention him after the fight. With as big of a role as he played in Chapter 2, you’d think Henry would make a bit more of a fuzz about the guy coming back. But he just...stays silent during the whole fight, saying nothing about Sammy’s miraculous revival or even trying to deny the accusations Sammy throws at him throughout the battle. The battle itself is incredibly confusing from a story standpoint. Sammy attacking Henry while simultaneously declaring his hatred of the Ink Demon who abandoned him comes off as more than a bit nonsensical.

If Sammy’s rage is directed at Inky!Bendy, why would he want to hurt Henry?

Does he think Henry is Bendy?

Why?

He didn’t seem to have any trouble recognizing Henry as an outsider the first time they met.

It’s even implied he remembers him to a certain extent.

Sammy: “Wait! You look familiar to me. That face...”

Perhaps the most frustrating part about this encounter, is a line of Allison’s that comes right before the group is attacked by the citizens of the Lost One’s village:

Allison: “The searchers and the Lost Ones built this place. Sammy must have been keeping them at bay. Now that he’s gone-”

This is genuinely interesting.

Not only does this confirm that Sammy was, indeed, the leader of the Lost Ones, but that their passive behavior was due to him. For whatever reason the Lost Ones and the Searchers trusted and obeyed him enough to follow his orders and under his guidance apparently even managed to built a small, safe haven for themselves.

Now that Henry and Tom killed off the person who was most likely the only slight glimmer of hope they had, they’re understandingly pretty pissed.

But just like so many other interesting plot points throughout the game, this idea just gets pushed aside.

After the team leaves the village, they never encounter either the Lost Ones or the Searchers ever again.

How much more engaging would it have been if we had actually delved into this a bit?

If we’d actually learned more about who Sammy was, how he came to be what he is by the time we find him first in chapter 2 and how and why the Lost Ones and the Searchers trusted him so much?

If we’d gotten a bit of backstory on the village and maybe the Lost Ones opinion of Sammy and what he did for them?

But alas, it was not meant to be.

Speaking of which...

3. The Lost Ones and the Searchers a.k.a ” We’ve had an axe-fight in every chapter so far and by Golly, we will have one in this chapter too!”

Yeaaah, I did not care for the battle against those guys...

I mean, the fact that Henry would end up fighting them (together with Allison) was already set in stone since the trailer showed a brief glimpse of the battle.

But the way in which it was executed....

A lot of theorists speculated that the reason the Lost Ones would attack would be because of either:

 Allison being another Alice Angel. Chapter four had already established that the Lost Ones feared and probably even despised Susie!Alice and for good reason. Susie!Alice was a homicidal maniac obsessed with beauty who had canonically murdered other Ink creatures in order to repair herself. Why wouldn’t the Lost Ones try to stay as far away from her as possible? And why wouldn’t they assume that this new Alice wouldn’t be any better in terms of personality?

The Lost Ones being part of the Bendy-cult. Also a pretty reasonable explanation, since their lair Henry finds in chapter four has the words “He will set us free” scrawled on the walls. The very same mantra Sammy Lawrence, the self proclaimed prophet of Bendy used quite frequently. As such, they’d obviously try and gain the attention of the creature they believed would save them by taking care of its enemies.

But the real reason was....a lot more tragic and disappointing.

Remember this line?

Allison: “Sammy must have been keeping them at bay. Now that he’s gone-”

This line being said right before you murder a bunch of Lost Ones and Searchers carries two incredibly problematic implications.

The first one being that Allison and Tom knew (or suspected anyway) that Sammy was the reason the Lost Ones weren’t hostile at first, yet Tom proceeded to kill him anyway instead of just knocking him out or holding him hostage.

Why would he do that if he knew him, Allison and Henry would be attacked the second Sammy dies? Is Tom just so bloodthirsty and violent that he doesn’t care about even Allison’s safety? Though considering what we’ve seen of him so far, that wouldn’t really be a surprise.

And secondly, that the Lost Ones are (or were) violent beasts that need Sammy to keep them in check and whom it’s totally okay to mercilessly slaughter. That’s... quite a bit of a contradiction to previous plot points and implications.

Let’s start with the Searchers, or rather one Searcher: Jack Fain. Jack Fain is the only non-aggressive Searcher you ever come across in the entire game. The most he ever does is steal a piece of machinery that Henry needs. And even that’s not out of malicious intent, but rather a childish way to get Henry’s attention. The way you deal with Jack is rather brutal: Since he’s too fast for Henry to catch, you lure him underneath a large crate and then crush him with it. Even Henry doesn’t feel comfortable doing this.

Henry: “Sorry I had to do that. Nice hat though.”

The tragic implication here, is that Searchers don’t necessarily have to be violent monsters. They can be self-aware enough to keep parts of their old personality. Jack only steals the gear because he wants Henry to sing with him. Why? Because Jack used to be a lyricist and singing was a thing he really loved. The most important part to remember here is that Jack did all of this himself. By the time you go after him, Sammy is nowhere in sight. And even if he was nearby, it’s highly unlikely he would order Jack to involve Henry in a pointless game of tag, since Henry is supposed to be a sacrifice to the Ink Demon. Then there’s the matter of the Lost Ones. It’s never really explained in-universe what they are and why they’re so different from the Searchers in that they have somewhat stable bodies, can talk and hide together instead of drifting aimlessly through the ink. However the game heavily implies that the Lost Ones are former workers who had the misfortune of being swept up in Joey Drew’s machinations and ending up as abominations as a result. Or put simply: they were bystanders who got transformed into monsters through no fault of their own.

When Henry encounters them in Chapter 4 they don’t....really do anything. They just stand and sit around in their hide-out, whimper and let him pass.

But come Chapter 5 they seem to have undergone a personality-change and are now just as violent as the more monstrous Searchers, even though the existence of the town and the haven clearly implies some form of intelligence beyond instinct.

The most plausible explanation for that would be rage and a desire for revenge due to Sammy’s murder but if they really cared so much for him, why didn’t they help him in his fight with Henry? Did he tell them not to? If so, why? Were they simply too scared to intervene? But they don’t seem to have any problems with fighting Allison, Tom!Boris and Henry. Wouldn’t it have made more sense if they’d ganged up on Henry when he was alone, but gotten more hesitant when Allison and Tom arrived to help him?

The point I’m trying to make is, the fight against the Searchers and the Lost Ones is incredibly out of sync with what we’ve been shown about them so far and opens up a ton of plot-holes and unfortunate implications and I really wish theMeatley had integrated it better.

4. The Ending a. k. a. “Ummm, what???”

Look, I get it: Ending a horror-game on an ambiguous, slightly ominous note is basically tradition by this point.

But come on!

Absolutely nothing about the ending in BatIm makes any sense whatsoever and it reeks of putting in a Gainax ending just for the sake of it. Apparently the whole adventure was a dream/hallucination/metaphor about how things slowly but surely went downhill in Joey Drew Studios after Henry left, but also not really, because the final scene before the credits is Henry re-entering the studio through a side door in Joey’s kitchen, seemingly having no memory of what happened before that point.

This ending was unsatisfying as hell (pun not intended).

It left the majority of the games’ mysteries unsolved, lazily slapped a Dorothy angle on the whole thing and then ended by implying the cliché of clichés: time travel. The face reveal with Joey also comes right out of nowhere. Joey is just...there.He goes on a bit about how Henry was always the one who kept him from doing stupid shit (like sacrificing people) and running the company into the ground, laments how unkind time has been to him and ends his tangent with an enigmatic remark about how Henry “should have pushed a little harder” and that he should “visit the old workshop”. Cue the above described time-travel implication.

And then there’s an after-credit scene where we learn that

1. Henrys’ last name is ‘Stein’ (haha, get it?)

2. Additionally to being a dream/hallucination/metaphor BatIm’s plot is also apparently a bedtime story that Joey’s telling a little girl who calls him “Uncle Joey”

3. There is a second Ink Machine in Joey’s real-life home for....whatever reason.

This all kinda looks like pure sequel hook. Which is incredibly fishy and disappointing.

Overall, I loved Bendy and the Ink Machine as a game. The story was engaging (at least in chapters 1-4) and the characters apart from maybe a few were entertaining.

But chapter 5 just...doesn’t sit well with me.

[xtruss]

Some astronomers believe an undiscovered planet, some six times the mass of Earth, is lurking in the outer reaches of the solar system. Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

Planet 9 May Be Closer and Easier to Find Than Thought—If it Exists

A new study's "treasure map" suggests that a planet several times more massive than Earth could be hiding in our solar system, camouflaged by the bright strip of stars that make up the Milky Way.

— By Nadia Drake | August 31, 2021

Among the solar system’s more intriguing mysteries is whether a large, icy planet lives in the outer regions of our cosmic neighborhood, well beyond the orbit of Neptune. This hypothetical world, nicknamed “Planet Nine” by some of the scientists searching for it, has stirred up controversy since it was first proposed.

The unseen planet is predicted to exist based on its apparent gravitational influence on a group of small objects with odd, clustered orbits. But so far, searches for it have come up empty, and critics contend that the hints of its presence are just ghosts in the data.

Now, a new analysis predicts that if it’s out there, that skulking planet could be closer, brighter, and easier to spot than previously estimated.

Instead of orbiting our home star once every 18,500 years, astronomers calculate that it loops around the sun in about 7,400 years. That tighter orbit brings it much closer to the sun than previously expected, which means that Planet Nine may appear brighter to Earth-based telescopes.

“I think it’s within a year or two from being found,” says Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology and an author of the new study, which has been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. But, he adds, “I’ve made that statement every year for the past five years. I am super-optimistic.”

Brown’s latest analyses of Planet Nine’s gravitational shenanigans, calculated with his Caltech colleague Konstantin Batygin, suggest that the world is roughly six times as massive as Earth—which would likely make it either a rocky super-Earth or a gaseous mini-Neptune. If discovered, the planet would be the first large world to join the solar system’s cast of characters since 1846, when astronomers announced the discovery of Neptune—an ice giant whose presence was forecast by its gravitational influence on Uranus.

But over the years, skeptics have suggested that the gravitational signatures betraying Planet Nine’s presence are nothing more than observational artifacts. The apparent clustering of distant objects’ orbits doesn’t reflect the influence of an unseen world, critics argue, and is instead the result of natural biases in sky surveys.

“Most of these objects are discovered with large telescopes that have limited time for surveys of the outer solar system, and they look in the places they can look, which depends on where they are located,” says Renu Malhotra of the University of Arizona, who is agnostic about the planet’s existence and is working on her own estimates of its position. Astronomers have so far discovered only a handful of these distant objects, and without a more complete census of the outer solar system, it’s tough to tell whether these small, icy objects are truly behaving strangely, or are randomly distributed.

To aid searchers in the meantime, Brown and Batygin used their revised calculations to make a “treasure map” that points to a swath of sky where Planet Nine is most likely to be found. That area crosses the densely populated, sparkling plane of the Milky Way, which could have helped the planet hide during past searches.

“Now we really know where to look, and where not to look,” Brown says. “This should do it—unless we did something wrong.”

Ghost Planets in the Far Solar System

Brown and Batygin originally announced their prediction of Planet Nine in 2016, but the pair is hardly the first to suggest that an undiscovered world is hiding in the solar system’s backcountry. For more than a century, astronomers have mused about such a planet, erroneously believing that something hefty was perturbing Neptune’s orbit. Astronomer Percival Lowell called the world Planet X and was so intent on finding it that he left a million dollars to fund the continuing search after his death in 1916. (In 1930, the Lowell Observatory’s Clyde Tombaugh found little Pluto instead.)

The Caltech team based their prediction of Planet Nine’s existence on how it apparently perturbs a group of Kuiper Belt Objects, or KBOs. These small, icy worlds beyond Neptune include a population of objects with extreme orbits that take them at least 150 times farther from the sun than Earth’s orbit.

In 2016, Batygin and Brown scrutinized six of those objects, whose oblong, tilted orbital paths have confounded scientists for years. The team concluded that an unseen planet about 10 times as massive as Earth must be gravitationally shepherding the objects onto their catawampus trajectories. The planet’s estimated mass sits between Earth and Neptune, making it a type of world that appears to be common throughout the galaxy, based on surveys of planets orbiting other stars, yet is conspicuously absent in our own solar system.

Soon after the announcement, though, astronomers began casting doubts on the Planet Nine hypothesis. Chief among their concerns was that the peculiar clustering of orbits might not be clustering at all. Instead, over the past five years, multiple teams using a variety of data sets have repeatedly concluded that the evidence pointing to Planet Nine is nothing more than an observational artifact.

Perhaps Planet Nine is an apparition, its supposed gravitational handiwork a false signature created by a small number of misleading data points. Astronomers are still working on resolving the controversy, and this latest analysis from Brown and Batygin is one attempt to do that.

“Good on them for making a detailed prediction and putting it out there,” says the University of Canterbury’s Michele Bannister, whose work challenged the Planet Nine hypothesis in 2017. “I will be very delighted if this thing turns out to exist—it’ll be a fun solar system to live in.”

Refining the search

Brown and Batygin based their newest predictions of Planet Nine’s size and orbit on a slightly different set of objects. Some of the original KBOs remain in their data set, but the team added new ones and threw out any objects whose orbits appeared to be influenced by Neptune’s gravity. In the end, they worked with 11 KBOs.

“If you include the Neptune ones you’ll fuzz out your signal and won’t know what’s going on,” Brown says.

The new study finds that there’s a 99.6 percent chance that the peculiar orbital alignments of these objects are the work of an unseen planet and not random chance. That sounds pretty good, Malhotra says, but it means that there’s a 1-in-250 chance the alignments are a fluke—which is much greater than the 1-in-10,000 chance Brown and Batygin published in 2016.

Still, Malhotra says the new analysis is an improvement on previous work, even if it is based on a small number of objects. “It’s intriguing enough that we should look, but it’s not convincing,” she says.

Batygin also ran a heap of simulations to predict the characteristics of whatever world might be sculpting those 11 orbits—chiefly, its location and mass. The end result is the “treasure map” pointing to Planet Nine’s orbit on the sky—although the team still has no idea where the planet could be along that path.

Although it’s now estimated to be smaller—roughly five or six times Earth’s mass rather than 10—the planet is also apparently closer. This means Planet Nine should be brighter in the sky, although Brown points out that the planet’s estimated brightness is based on assumptions about its composition, which could be wrong.

The new predictions bring the hypothetical world more in line with a similar claim made by astronomers Chad Trujillo and Scott Sheppard. In 2014, that team reported the discovery of an object called 2012 VP113, which they jokingly nicknamed “Biden” after then U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. They suggested that a faraway world five times as massive as Earth could be nudging Biden and several other distant objects into clustered trajectories.

But despite the converging hypotheses, experts in the field are nowhere close to reaching a consensus about Planet Nine’s existence.

“Overall, it’s held up surprisingly well for something that hasn’t been found,” says Greg Laughlin, an astronomer at Yale University. “I feel like there’s a strong and interesting case—but it’s like, why haven’t they found it? And where is it?”

Finding Planet Nine

The fact that scientists haven’t yet set eyes on Planet Nine could suggest that if it exists, the world is positioned near the farthest reaches of its orbit, making it a faint, slowly moving target that’s hiding in starlight. Brown and Batygin, plus Sheppard and Trujillo, are using the powerful Subaru telescope situated atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea to hunt for the elusive planet. But even with the sharpest tools in astronomers’ arsenal, the search is challenging.

At its surmised brightness and orbit, Planet Nine inconveniently blends into the glittering masses of background stars—a world adrift amid the milky streamer of our galaxy in the nighttime sky.

“It’s bright enough and close enough and prominent enough that that’s basically the only region where it could lurk undetected,” Laughlin says. “My sense is that if it’s there, it’s going to be pinned down pretty quickly.”

Sifting through starfields using Subaru isn’t the only way astronomers could pin the planet on the sky. NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which is busy searching for planets orbiting other stars, may catch sight of Planet Nine as it scans areas that include the planet’s supposed orbit.

In 2019, astronomers suggested that clever data processing could pull faraway solar system objects from TESS observations—a technique that Laughlin and Yale University’s Malena Rice are currently working on.

“I’m not putting super-high odds on this, but it’s by no means impossible that TESS frames could reveal an object if it’s there,” Laughlin says. “Every so often, something that’s so amazing that it normally doesn’t happen, does happen.”

Many astronomers agree that planet hunters’ most likely chance of finding Planet Nine is the Vera Rubin Observatory, currently under construction atop a Chilean mountaintop. This 8.4-meter telescope with an enormous field of view will photograph the entire visible sky every few nights. Starting in 2023, the observatory will let astronomers track the movements of millions of celestial objects, including space junk, asteroids, comets, spy telescopes, stars, and maybe even Planet Nine.

“Vera Rubin will cover about two-thirds of the sky, but it will cover that sky uniformly and repeatedly,” Malhotra says. “It will really help us make some big advances in this type of problem.”

Brown thinks the planet could turn up before fancy, next-generation telescopes come online—perhaps, he says, the stealthy world is lurking in data that astronomers already have in hand.

“I would be willing to bet—and I often lose bets—that images of it exist in surveys that we already have,” Brown says. “I don’t think anything has been discovered that was not later found in existing data, starting with Uranus, all the way to Pluto and Eris.” Brown discovered the dwarf planet Eris at the Palomar Observatory in 2005, and he later found that the earliest image of it was on a photographic plate made by the same telescope in 1955. “I just have this feeling that it’s going to happen again.”

— The National Geographic

[parkerbombshell]

Ice Cream Man Power Pop And More #357

Today Special time 1pm EST bombshellradio.com Monday's 10am-11am EST bombshellradio.com#IceCreamManPowerPopAndMore #PowerPop #Mod #NorthernSoul #Punk#60sClassics #Ska #60sGarage#Surf#Itunes#BombshellRadio #recordcollector #musiclover#powerpopgrunge #powerpopgirls #newmusic #rocknroll The Searchers - Crazy Dreams (Pye Anthology LP) The Speedways - This Ain't A Radio Sound (Radio Sounds LP) Matt Springfield - Haunted (Single) Pete Milo - Break In The Light (Demos) Jerry Lehane - Runaway With You (Jerry Lehane LP) Tiger Bomb - Here He Comes (Uproar LP) Teenage Bubblegums - Breakaway (Single) Palisades - Suicide Surf (Almost Night LP) Muck and The Mires - Take Me Back To Planet Earth (Single) The Byrds - My Back Pages (Younger Than Yesterday LP) Billy Summer - All Or Nothing (Royal Palm LP) Captain Storm - Rainy Days (Single) Supergrass - Caught By The Fuzz (Single) 1995 Nick Piunti and The Complicated Men - Upper Hand (Downtime LP) The Decibels - I'll Do Anything (The Decibels - Big Sounds Again LP) The Beatpunkers - Better Times (Single) Silver Sun - Dumb (Silver Sun LP) You're Among Friends - Just Keep Being Nice (Start Making Sense LP)  The Speedways - Empty Pages (Radio Sounds LP) Lisa Mychols and Super 8 - Trip & Ellie's Music Factory (Lisa Mychols and Super 8 LP) Fuzzy Vox - Great Balls Of Fire (Masters Technicolour LP) Read the full article

[evanvanness]

Annotated edition for latest Week in Ethereum News

So last week I mentioned the annotated editions and then...didn’t do one.  Just got too busy.  So we’ll see how this one goes.

One thing to note: Edcon and EthParis both got cancelled.

Original Week in Ethereum News issue.

Eth1

Geth v1.9.11. DNS peer discovery, EIP2464 implementation, faster Geth console

Latest core devs call. Notes. Lots of next fork planning. EVM subroutines likely happening pending Solidity benchmarks, ProgPoW back on the agenda, lots of eip1962 precompile talk

Draft spec for block witnesses

Stateless Eth1 update

draft EIP to add BLS12-381 precompiles to the EVM

Implementing account abstraction via new PAYGAS opcode

Rich transaction compile draft EIP. allow transactions from EOAs to bytcode directly

Literally nobody: 

A few people on core devs call: ProgPoW!

I don’t really get it.  The reason ProgPoW keeps being so controversial is that core devs don’t publicize it much, and then they suddenly announce that it’s going in a hard fork.  Add to that the fact that every time miners advocate for ProgPoW, they show themselves to be outside of the Ethereum community, and you can understand why it produces such strong reactions.

Add to this the fact that one ProgPoW proponent (though oddly he sometimes says he isn’t) has told me explicitly that he doesn’t think the community can evaluate ProgPoW so he doesn’t even try to convince the larger ecosystem.  

I go back to what I wrote a few weeks ago:

at some point there is going to be (another) fight over ProgPoW.  It’s an odd beast where both sides are convinced that they have already won - meaning that anger and disgruntled ragequits are almost guaranteed.  

It only gets worse when you just announce forks and don’t try to set a process and make sure people are heard.

I have more thoughts on governance, but that’s it for now.

Meanwhile, lots of very interesting work going on for stateless Eth1, which is currently necessary to turn off proof of work (though I don’t think it should be)

Eth2

Latest what’s new in Eth2

Update on fuzzing the beacon chain clients. Finding bugs, expanding capabilities

A short history and a way forward for phase 2

Automated detection of dynamic state access

Casey Detrio’s simple protocol for cross-shard transfers

Quick demo on getting an eth2 EE up and running using Quilt’s SEE tool

Lots of phase2 stuff this week.   An overview is that we’re still not particularly close to phase2 as there are plenty of research and design decisions to be made even before all the nitty gritty of engineering tradeoffs.

The flipside that I don’t think many people understand is that once we get data availability on phase1, then we have all the scalability we need for years and years.  64 shards which can each process 3000 rollup transactions per second, means we get to 200,000 transactions per second.  and 3000 is probably low, as we can further reduce the gas cost of opcodes used by rollup, and add a few more shards too if we need to.   [Caveat: we still don’t have a rollup chain live, but....soon™.  Check out Daniel Goldman’s state of optimistic rollup below]

Furthermore, when we have phase1, we can turn off PoW which will cut issuance way down and stop wasting so much electricity.

tldr: phase2 is hard and not near, but phase0 is imminent and phase1 has a spec for review. 

Required reading: Casey Detrio’s phase1 and done, which was the first writing of this.

Layer2

Daniel Goldman: the state of optimistic rollup

Celer working on optimistic rollup using its State Guardian Network as block producer

Replay protection in rollups by including networkID

Cheaper zkrollups by using generic snark circuits for state maintenance

Channelizing an Eth app using an API

Rollups are all the rage right now, as indicated above, but state channels are still happening.  They’re hard as we’ve found out over the years from attempts on Bitcoin and Ethereum - doing channels is easy but channel networks are hard.

Stuff for developers

dEth node: claims to be 60% faster than Ganache

Security considerations around flash loan patterns

Austin Griffith video on flash loans

Patterns for computing/accumulating interest

Samczsun and Mudit Gupta find Nexus Mutual bugs

Email notifications in dapps

Solidity unit testing using Remix tests, part 2

Loredana’s ChainLens contract searcher is available as a Remix plugin

A video intro to studio.ethereum.org IDE

Revert comments in Brownie

Embark v5.2 – proxy contract support and scripts execution

Math in Solidity series: Numbers and Overflow

Realtime websocket integrations via API, aimed at devs new to Eth

composable Airscript v0.7

Eth2 things you can hack on at hackathons

This week’s issue was pretty late.  One thing I often do is roughly group things by subtopic under a header.  This week that didn’t happen, things just got thrown into “stuff for devs” with no rhyme or reason to placement.

I’m very interested to see if people check out the eth2 list for ETHLondon.

That Sam Sun is a machine!

Ecosystem

Ethereum Foundation’s wishlist for ecosystem support

EthDenver finalists

Waku spec v0.4

Last week I mentioned annotated versions of Week in Ethereum News and then…got too busy to do one. It’ll happen this week.

Register a .kred DNS domain, get NFT that controls ENS and DNS records

Etherscan’s 2019 year in review charts

The DAObacle of EthDenver judging means the submissions got put together today, so they will be in next week’s issue, along with here.   I don’t think anyone was shocked that the DAO judging didn’t work, but if you never have a few failures, you aren’t taking enough risks.  Cheers to John Paller and all the EthDenver stewards for making the American Devcon a great event year after year.

Check out EF’s wishlist and see if EF wants to fund something you want to work on.

Enterprise

4 key things PegaSys Orchestrate fixes for enterprise blockchains

Using Eth mainnet, CargoX approved as bill of lading provider by shipping reinsurers

Utility Settlement Coin to work with Adhara on commercial bank money as alternative to central bank digital currencies

Enterprise on mainnet means that the line between enterprise and app layer is blurring.  I should probably move this section.

Governance, DAOs, and standards

Submit your startup to TheLAO for funding

MolochDAOs on Aragon (Dandelion orgs) are live on mainnet

ProgPoW returned as a debate topic this week, as core devs scheduled a separate hard fork for just ProgPoW. Meanwhile my Twitter feed is decidedly against ProgPoW, eg here

ERC2520: Multiple contenthash records for ENS

ERC2525: ENS login

It’s fairly well known that I was a skeptic of TheDAO in q2 2016, but I’m very interested to see how these reincarnations of TheDAO go.  

bZx hacks

bZx hack using flashloans was the topic of the week after two attacks, here is bZx’s post-mortem of the first attack. Meanwhile here is Peckshield’s analysis: within one transaction, get a 10k eth flash loan from dydx, use as collateral on Compound to borrow wBTC, shorts on bZx which uses Kyber’s liquidity and inflates the price, sell the wBTC at that inflated price, repay the 10k flashloan for ~1300 ETH profit

Here’s that analysis in graphic form from Kerman Kohli

Check out the transaction in Tenderly

Peckshield’s analysis of the second hack, netting ~2400 ETH

Palkeo’s analysis of both hacks, with a little more code. The first hack had a price check get bypassed, whereas in the second hack the price checks functioned

1inch says they found a bZx bug months ago and apparently did not get paid for it

Nexus Mutual pays out the first claims for smart contract cover for bZx

This section took a surprisingly long time to put together, but it’s definitely what people in the community were talking about all week.

I’d say it’s bullish for NexusMutual to pay out, especially because the mutual members first denied the claim but then paid out the claim when the facts of the matter became clear.  It’s also bullish for Opyn - NexusMutual and Opyn aren’t competitors exactly, they have different tradeoffs for people looking to hedge or protect themselves from risks.

Application layer

Decentraland’s Metaverse launches, build on your land in a GUI or by SDK, as well as a marketplace, and a DAO that governs it all

Enjin Platform to create and manage game assets is live on mainnet

Compound hits 200m in assets

Melon as asset management automator

Synthetix’s Achernar release is live, adding ETH as collateral

the tech stack for Status v1

1x.ag – an automated leverage aggregator

Uniflash: a decentralized flash loans protocol, live on Goerli testnet. Remco Bloemen, Austin Williams and Stephane Gosselin also have some flashmint contracts out there

Dharma now has fee-free debit card fiat<>Dai deposits and withdrawals

Maker changes: activates 24 hour time delay on any governance changes, DSR spread to 0, Dai ceiling to 150m

Meanwhile the flashloans made Maker’s holders decide to add the time delay to prevent any flashloan governance attack.

Compound hit a big number and now they’re decentralizing their governance, which means that the value accrual will probably be voted on by its token holders.  Fascinating stuff.

Cheers to Decentraland and Enjin for going live, and Synthetix adding ETH as collateral should be big for them.

Tokens/Business/Regulation

Enigma settles with SEC for unregistered securities offering

Personal gratitude tokens: social money (or “challenge coins”) issued on a bonding curve

Forking Gardens: conditional tokens can change gaming

Enigma wasn’t necessarily who I thought the SEC would go after next.  

Simon’s personal gratitude tokens are very interesting to me.  It’s like challenge coins but with intrinsic value.  

General

Break RSA assumptions: bounties for solving the adaptive root problem

More PLONK benchmarks: 5x faster than Groth16 on Pedersen Hashes

Trustless Groups of Unknown Order with Hyperelliptic Curve

Barry Whitehat zk ideas: private social network search and private order matching

WebAssembly/eWASM explainer

How Nym improves on traditional mixnets

Andreas’ Mastering Ethereum is looking for translations; uses Creative Commons license

The general section is becoming the cryptography section.

One odd thing about Mastering Ethereum is that Ethereum is still under construction.  Writing that book ensures lots of future work for it to be kept up to date.  Or a second volume.  But in the meantime, let’s get it translated!

[veloceinternational-blog]

New Post has been published on Veloce

New Post has been published on https://www.veloceinternational.com/online-marketing/repurpose-blog-content/

29 Killer Ways to Repurpose Blog Content

Wondering how you can repurpose blog content?

Back in the days, blogging used to be much easier than it is today.

Of course, if you just recently started out blogging, you’re quite fortunate, because you’ve never experienced the huge competitive contrast.

Now, I am generally no person who romanticise the past, but it is safe to say that it was a lot easier gaining traction and succeeding with blogging a few years ago.

But that doesn’t really come as a surprise, does it?

More people than ever are using the internet, and more websites and blogs exist on the web than ever.

In fact, in 2015, more than 2 million blog posts were shared every single day on the web. You can expect that number to be much higher today, and that it won’t be slowing down anytime soon, either.

As a result of the increase in content being shared on the web, the competition in standing out from the crowd, and ranking well on search engines is a true battle, where it comes down to surviving and staying afloat or sinking to the bottom.

Now, if it would stop there, gaining traction would be difficult, sure, but it would absolutely be possible to see great results.

The only catch is, it doesn’t stop there.

In fact, the number of posts being shared on the web isn’t the only thing that has increased.

The length of the posts has also increased over the years.

If you would Google ”ideal length of a blog post” let’s say 10 years ago, the answer would be that you should write a blog post that’s longer than 600 words since the attention span of humans is short, and that they only want to read short blog posts, but today, the blogging landscape looks a whole lot differently.

If you’re blogging and relying on Google traffic, very seldom will you be able to rank well for a 600-word blog post, especially if you’re trying to rank for a competitive keyword.

Today, the average first page results on Google average 1,890 words, according to Orbit.

What’s more, they have also found that blog post length has grown 19% in just one year, up from 1054 words.

I hate to say it, but it’s no surprise, really, when you ask yourself what Google’s goal is.

Google’s goal is to present the most specific, relevant, and thorough piece of content that is a cornerstone post about the topic that the person is searching for.

Do you think 600-word blog posts are just that?

Of course not.

Why would Google present a 600-word post at the top when there are hundreds or even thousands of posts that are far more detailed and specific that provide the searchers more value, which Google can choose from?

While bashing out a 300, 500, or 600-word blog post could be done in less than an hour when short blog posts were all the fuzz, writing a 3000, 8000, or even 17,000-word blog post like this one can take numerous days!

Today, the average blog post takes 3 hours 20 minutes to write. What’s more, while the variations are huge in the amount of time people spend on their posts, the percentage of people who spend 6+ hours on average has more than doubled in the last few years:

OrbitMedia

How will you possibly have that amount of time as a busy marketer and blogger, especially, if you’re going to be blogging consistently (which you should)?

Give me a break.

The good news is that while it might all of this might seem intimidating, I have a secret recipe to share with you today, that will allow you to bash out fresh and new pieces of content, not only for your blog but everywhere on the web.

Because it’s not only writing a blog post that takes time, it’s creating social media posts, recording your podcast, writing an ebook, and so on.

In other words,  creating content in general.

That secret is to repurpose blog content.

Repurposing content, and repurposing blog content specifically, is a huge time-saving tactic that will allow you to crank out more high-quality content by leveraging the content you’ve already created and drive more results by taking advantage of your prior efforts.

It’s safe to say that creating high-quality content is both difficult and time-consuming, but it’s not only the time that’s an issue with always cranking out content.

Have you ever sat yourself down to write a blog post and then 10 minutes find yourself in the very spot not having written a single word because you are out of ideas on what to write about?

Or have you ever gotten ready to create a social media post just to find yourself clueless on what to post?

By repurposing blog content, that won’t be an issue, because you never find yourself starting from scratch.

Instead, you use your existing blog posts as your starting point.

If you want to produce high-quality content, but with less effort and time, and cram out the very last drops from your previous efforts in creating blog posts, continue reading.

In this post, I am sharing 29 ways to Repurpose blog content

29 Kick-ass ways to Repurpose blog content

1. Share your posts (or part of your posts on Reddit)

Reddit is a tremendous platform to showcase your expertise and establish yourself as a go-to-leader in your industry. Maybe most importantly for you, Reddit is a great source of traffic, if you succeed in providing valuable answers that aren’t too promotive.

However, if you’re going to write high-quality answers, it will take a lot of time and effort, so why not just take parts of a blog post that you’ve written that answers the question someone asks, provides them with value, and at the same time allows you to promote yourself?

By doing this successfully, you’ll be able to repurpose blog content by using it to answer people’s question, and of course, get multiple benefits from it at the same time.

2.Repurpose blog content by syndicating your blog posts

You’ve spent all this time and energy into writing a blog post, so obviously, you want to cram as much as benefits and marketing juice as you possibly can from it.

One way to do this is by syndicating your blog posts.

What does this mean?

It means that you piggyback off other people’s website by paying money (often PPC) to have your blog post be suggested as a related post on another website or blog pointing back to yours.

The links you receive are normally no-follow, so they won’t grant you any SEO benefits, however, if done correctly, you can drive valuable traffic to your site.

3. Turn your blog posts into ebooks

This one of the most common ways to repurpose blog content since it allows monetization or can be leveraged in other ways, for example, to drive traffic.

Chances are, you’ve written a lot of blog posts that are focused on one specific topic, so why not take all of that content and turn it into an ebook, and then add the parts that are missing to make it complete?

As mentioned, there are a number of ways that you can leverage your ebook once it is done, but the two most common is either to sell it or give it away for free in an effort to collect email addresses.

Now, you might be thinking, ”why in the world would people pay for something that’s already for free?” and there are several answers to that question.

Firstly, there’s a convenience factor.

People love paying for comfort and to save time.

Just think about the fast track lane on airports.

What you do when you sell an ebook is gather all the information in one place, rather than them having to actively look for the next part, and even more, have to try and figure out what they need to learn next, rather than having an expert saying ”this is what you need to learn next”.

The best part is that when you create an ebook, you don’t have to rewrite everything in fear of having duplicate content on your site since you make your ebook into a PDF.

You’d be surprised at how many of the evokes out there started as blog posts.

Now, with ebooks, you don’t necessarily have to write a lot, but what you should do, however, is make your ebook visually appealing. Include photos, sketches, designs, etc, that allow you to better convey your point and let the reader know exactly what you mean.

The best parts that people value ebooks a whole lot more than blog posts because people expect blog posts to be free.

This is why ebooks are such a great value proposition whatever you wish to do.

4.Promote your content on Growth Hackers

If you want to generate some more marketing results from your old and existing blog posts, Growth Hackers is a great way to squeeze out some extra marketing benefits.

What it does is allow you to promote your content (related to marketing for startups). Just submit your URL and enjoy the increased exposure.

Note, however, that if you don’t have content related to startup marketing, this site isn’t for you.

5.Share blog posts on Twitter

The most common way that people promote their blog posts on Twitter is sharing the link to the post and that’s it.

But unfortunately, this isn’t the best way to drive for eyeballs to your old blog posts.

Instead, what you want to do is take a part of your blog post and use that as a caption, and then include your link.

Doing this will get your audience to start reading, and then become engaged and enticed to read the full story, and thus click through on your link.

The part you take form your post should obviously be the most engaging and interesting part, but it is also fine to take a quote from that article and use it as your Twitter caption.

6.Repurpose blog content by turning them into webinars

People love webinars.

What’s more, webinars are incredible marketing tools that have a tremendous marketing and conversion power.

Webinars can be used for a number of different reasons, but since using videos on landing pages can increase conversions by 86% (Source), the brands that have realized this often use them on their landing pages.

For example Neil Patel with Quicksprout:

When turning your blog posts into webinars, you can use the blog post as the foundation for your webinar. In fact, you can even use your blog post as your script for the webinar. You can present your webinar live with Google Hangouts, and then record it to make it possible for people to buy it over and over again.

Webinars open up a whole array of opportunities for you and your brand.

You can use it to collect emails, to showcase your expertise, and ultimately to get your audience to convert.

Now, webinars are quite similar to presentations, but not identical.

When you upload your presentations to the web, you upload multiple slides after each other that contain key information, but when you upload a webinar, you upload a video where you go through each slide in the presentation and talk about the key points.

With webinars, what’s normally recorded is the slides, so don’t worry if you’re camera shy.

The great thing about creating a webinar is that you can repurpose a whole lot from your previously created content.

You’ve already written blog posts, so there you have the foundation for your webinar. Then, if you’ve created a presentation where you have presented key points, facts, and statistics from a post, that’s even better. Now, all you have to do is use the blog post you used as the foundation for the presentation, as a script, and then record the presentation while you’re talking about each point.

7. Share your blog posts on Hacker News

If you aren’t familiar with Hacker news, it is, according to Wikipedia’s definition ”a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship. It is run by Paul Graham’s investment fund and startup incubator, Y Combinator. In general, content that can be submitted is defined as “anything that gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity”.

It works similar to Reddit, only that it is focused on computer science and entrepreneurship rather than topics about everything and anything, like Reddit.

So if your blog posts are focused on entrepreneurship or computer science, use parts of your blog posts similarly to Reddit, and use them to answer people’s questions to get more eyeballs on you and your brand, and to drive more traffic back to your blog posts and website.

8. Publish blog posts to Medium

If you aren’t using Medium, you’re missing out on an opportunity of immense exposure.

What medium does is it allows you to republish your existing blog posts in order to get them in front of a new and larger audience.

What’s so amazing about Medium is that you don’t have to write a single new word or a completely new blog post.

All you need to do is copy and paste your blog post to medium and then publish it.

Simple as that.

You can set up an account for free and start publishing content today.

Using Medium is a great idea if you’re investing all this time into writing a kick-ass blog post, just to find that only 5 or 105 people have read it. With Medium, you’ll be able to drive more marketing benefits from your already invested time and energy into writing the blog posts.

Awesome, right?

9.Repurpose blog content to Quora

Quora is a questions and answers platform where people are discussing, asking, and answering virtually any topic you can think of.

This is why chances are, there will be people who are interested in your industry and niche who are on the platform, and who are asking questions that you have the expertise of answering.

Just go to Quora.com and search for your industry, and you’ll (most likely) be able to find questions asked related to it.

The best part is that since answering from scratch takes time, at least if you want to give a thorough and helpful answer that ranks well and gets a lot of exposure, you can leverage your blog posts where you’ve already answered that question.

Simple copy and paste parts of a blog post that answers the question being asked.

Doing this will allow you to use your blog posts to bring people value, and, similar to Reddit and other sites, establish yourself as an industry expert, while at the same time increasing awareness and driving traffic back to your site.

When copying parts of your blog posts and pasting them into your Quora answers, be very careful, and make sure you’ve read Quora’s policies first.

If you don’t do it properly and don’t state the source from which you took the text (your own blog), they might delete your answer, or even eventually ban your account.

This is what Quora says:

10.Repurpose blog content by making them a LinkedIn post

LinkedIn is great because it allows you to share your blog posts with a larger audience without worrying about having your post deleted etc.

But when using LinkedIn, you shouldn’t just copy and paste your complete post, though. Instead, ideally, you should showcase a short sniper of the text in your blog post and then include the link to your post.

Doing this will make people start reading, and then, since they’ve already begun reading, they’ll be enticed in continuing to read the full post, and so they click through to it and visit your site to read it all.

Repurposing blog content for LinkedIn does not only give you something to share with your audience on LinkedIn, but it also helps you drive more traffic to your site.

11. Turn your blog posts into infographics

Infographics are tremendous marketing tools.

And that doesn’t come as a surprise when you think about the fact that humans are visual creatures.

Just look at these statistics about the human brand and visual content compared to text:

Source

As you can see, 40% of people respond better to visuals, but the truth is also that visual content alone isn’t enough.

What you need to do is mix text and visual content to best convey your message, and the best way to do that is by creating appealing and delicious infographics.

Simply take the information in a blog post, and insert that information into an infographic format.

There are plenty of free template tools you can use to create your infographics, but the one that I’ve found most smooth and easy to use is Canva.

Making infographics from your blog posts will give you completely new pieces of content that your audience likes, and that is far more shareable than pure text.

In fact, Infographics can increase web traffic by 12%.

What’s more, creating infographics will also give you powerful social media content as well, since Infographics are liked and shared on social media 3x more than other any other type of content.

Of course, infographics are best made from blog posts that are more data-driven, but you can also create infographics that are less data-driven by including key points.

12.Publish your blog post to Business 2 Community

Business to community, sometimes referred to as B2C, is a site focusing on the following topics:

Digital & Social

Sales & Marketing

Business & Finance

Life & Entertainment

Technology & Innovation

US & World News

BrandViews

By taking your posts and publishing there, you’ll be able to get more bang for your time, and so be able to drive more results from your efforts.

13.Repurpose blog content to Google+

Google+ has always struggled in the social media landscape and has never really established itself as a social media platform to count on, however, sharing content there and leveraging the platform in the right way can drive you tons of exposure.

Take your already shared blog posts and then share them to Google+

Doing so will allow you to attract more people back to your site as a result of your high-quality content.

14. Pinterest

Pinterest is a great place to repurpose your blog content if it has appealing visual content.

Pinterest is a visually driven social media platform, which means that you need to have powerful visual content to succeed on the platform.

And so, if you’re good at creating visuals, you can create a new piece of visual content that you can post to Pinterest in order to repurpose your blog post and drive it more traffic and exposure.

15. Repurpose blog content by sending your best pieces in an email newsletter

Now, the marketing landscape may have evolved immensely over the years, but email marketing still proves to be effective.

In fact, 59% of B2B marketers say email is their most effective channel in terms of revenue generation.

But how do you create an appealing email that people take the time to actually read?

Or even further, how do you find the time creating all the content that is supposed to go into your email newsletter?

Well, you’ve got all your blog posts, why not repurpose them and include them or parts of them into your email newsletter?

Think about it, chances are, you spend far more time writing a blog post than writing text in an email, so why not instead include your high.quality pieces of blog posts in your email instead?

16.Repurpose blog content into a presentation

Your blog posts probably have a lot of delicious statistics, quotes, advice, etc.

If you want to create new pieces of content, why not repurpose your blog posts into a presentation with slides that contain key information that has been extracted from your blog post?

Repurposing blog content into presentations means you don’t have to create any new content, but rather see what fits where, when taking the information that was in your blog post.

Creating the slides is made easy with free photo-editing programs like Canva. One helpful feature of Canva is the premade templates for things like social media images, blog graphics, and presentation slides.

Once the slides are created, you can create the presentation or slide deck using a tool like PowerPoint, Prezi, or Google Drive.

17.Create an expert roundup

Creating high-quality blog posts is hard. That’s no secret.

But what if you could create them, without having to write many words yourself, but instead, have other people write them for you?

And do this for free!

Count me in!

Expert roundups mean that you’re reaching out to ”experts” in your industry and ask them to answer with their views on a question, topic.

When doing this, you can take the topic and questions of one of your old articles,  and then ask the experts to give their view on it. When asking, just ask for a short snippet of text, though, because if you’re asking for a full-on blog post from them, many people will say no or not answer due to lack of time.

When the experts have answered your question, you can create a new blog post with all of the answers, and then link back to your old post from the new one.

People love expert roundups since it allows them to get the opinions and viewpoints from experts that they trust.

18.Repurpose blog content into a podcast

If you have blog posts and want to create new pieces of content for your audience, but just lack ideas, and don’t want to start researching completely new topics to create content about, podcasting is the answer.

With podcasting, you can use your existing blog posts as the script, and either just read directly from it, or, you can use the blog posts as an outline for the things you’re going to talk about in your podcast episode.

Podcasts are a great form of content because it welcomes a completely new audience of people who either don’t like to read, or don’t have the time to read.

What’s so good about podcasts is that they allow you to be passive, and do something at the same time as you’re listening. When you’re reading a blog post, you need to be fully immersed in it.

So by repurposing blog content into podcasts, you can attract a completely new audience, and thus grow your following since you’re now creating content that caters to a larger audience.

You’ve already created the script, now, it’s time to start recording yourself.

19.Update and improve your existing posts

Who says you have to start from scratch with content?

Chances are, you’ve written a bunch of posts that just didn’t get the traction you were hoping for, and since posting,  you’ve just let them sit there and collect dust.

While these didn’t gain traction the first time, they might gain more traction the second try. Or, they might just need some polishing in order to become better and more appealing.

Before you post it again and present it as a completely new piece of content, make sure you update it so it is up-to-date, and contains new, fresh information making your post even more valuable.

Often times, when you look back at old pieces of content, you notice that there are some factualities that are out of date, that you’ve not covered everything there is to cover about a certain topic, etc.

The thing is, it takes a lot more effort and time to create a new blog post from scratch rather than just updating and building on top of an already existing blog post.

Rather than creating a completely new blog post about a topic you’ve already written about, it is a lot better to continue building on one that already exists as you’ll save both time and energy, plus, risk duplicate content or being repetitive.

20. Turn your blog posts into videos

This point of repurposing blog content is quite similar to turning your blog posts into podcasts. The only difference is that you record a video instead of recording voice.

There are obviously a number of ways to do this, however, the format doesn’t have to be a lot different from the way you repurpose blog content into a podcast.

Simply set up a camera and start recording yourself talking, using existing blog posts as the script, or an outline of the video, 

It’s safe to say that far from everyone are people who have reading as their preferred way of consuming content.

What’s more, it’s not only that, but other types of content, with video, in particular, has proven that it is able to mediate the message a lot better than text, and therefore impact the people who are consuming it.

And the truth is, that’s not very strange if you consider the fact that humans are visual creatures.

After all, our brain processes visual content 60,000 faster than text. Plus, a picture says more than a thousand words, so how about a video that is recorded in 60 photos (frames) per second.

I think you get the point.

What’s more, video also includes sound, which means several senses are activated at once.

With the drastic increase in other types of content than text, many people are moving away from reading, for several reasons.

And that leaves me sitting here and writing with no-one reading….

Except for you, but that’s an incentive enough for me!

Just like podcasting, you’ll be able to cater to a larger audience with video, and since you’ve already written the foundation for many videos to come, now it’s just up to you to start recording.

21.Repurpose blog content into a physical book

Now, this is a more hardcore way of repurposing blog content, but hey, if you’ve already created tons of blog posts, why not make them, or parts of them into a book?

The principle is very similar, if not identical to repurpose blog content into an ebook.

Outline the book and then pick the best parts (or all parts) of your existing blog content, add text where needed, and voila!

Physical books are normally a lot longer and thorough than just blog posts or ebooks which means that they can have a greater macro impact, and drive your brand and yourself much greater exposure.

22.Repurpose a summary of individual posts

What does this mean?

Well, if you’ve created a numbered list post, you have a real gold mine for blog content repurposing.

People live numbered list posts, and they do this because they’re much more specific, clear, and digestible than other posts that aren’t as clearly structured.

Since list posts are so common, chances are, you’ve created some yourself.

The good news is that these are perfect for dissecting that post, and taking each individual point, and turning each of them into their very own post.

Now, doing this still means some work since you have to write, but the good news is that you’ve already scratched on the surface for that topic, so you probably know somewhat well how you’re going approach writing about that topic.

What’s more, a frustrating part of blogging is sitting at your computer ready to write, but not coming up with a single idea and topic to write about. With this tactic, that won’t be an issue.

23. Use your existing blog posts to write a guest post

Now, generally, aren’t allowed, to contribute with a guest post to another site by taking an existing post of yours and submitting it.

However, what you can do is take the key points of a previous article of yours and then use the same outlining and inspiration for the guest post, just write it in a different way, and include some new fresh statuses etc.

Some sites will allow you to submit posts that you’ve already written and posted to your site, and that’s obviously great for you because it means that you don’t have to spend time and energy writing, but can instead repurpose blog content that you’ve already created.

24.Publish to Social Media Today

Social media Today is a site that allows you to apply to become a writer through a form, and then, the editors of the site choose the best content to be featured on their site.

Now, this means that you need to create super thorough, kick-ass content, but I have no doubts that you already do, so what’s missing is that you submit your blog posts and hope for the best.

24. Blokube

Bloke is a great place to be active on if your content is dedicated to other bloggers.

Bloke describes itself as ”Designed to help you share and engage, Blokube is a site built by bloggers for bloggers.

We understand that regardless of niche and your market, the most important aspect of blogging lies in the power of community, and that’s why, here at Blokube, we’ve gone out of our way to make sharing, engaging and interacting online easier than ever before.”

If you want more exposure to your existing blog posts, and want to share content on the platform, take advantage of your existing posts, and leverage them, similarly to how you do it on Reddit, Quora, etc.

25. ZergNet

”ZergNet is the leading editorial recommendations platform on the Internet. We’re committed to protecting the integrity of the publishing ecosystem by delivering only the highest quality content recommendations and providing 100% pure editorial content.”

In other words, it is a site where you can promote your content.

The best part is that you’ve already written your blog content. Now, it’s time to start promoting it.

25.Repurpose blog content into a downloadable PDF

Now, this is almost identical to crafting an ebook., but the only difference is that you don’t even have to combine blog posts and add more text to it to make it more thorough.

Simply take your existing blog posts and turn them into downloadable PDFs.

Similar to changing formats of your blog posts, doing this will allow you to cater to a larger audience.

26. Repurpose blog content into Facebook posts

Facebook is a great place to promote your blog content.

What’s even better is that there are plenty of groups on Facebook dedicated to specific topics and niches, and you can be sure that there are groups related to your very own industry where you can share your content.

If you’re joining a group on Facebook, don’t just start promoting your content, though.

When inside a Facebook group, you also need to contribute to the community by responding to people’s questions, sharing your thoughts, and engaging with other people’s content.

But groups, where the members are engaged, is the perfect place to repurpose your blog posts and turn them into Facebook posts to drive more traffic back to your site.

27.Repurpose blog content by sharing snippets on social media

Now, I’ve talked about specific social media platforms when mentioning this approach of repurposing content, however, this is something that has proven to be effective for all social media platforms.

Simply copy and paste a snippet of the blog post you want to share with your audience on social media, and then include the link to that post.

Rather than having to write a caption for your social media post, you already have the post ready inside of your blog post, which means you’ll save time with this approach.

Moreover, since people have already started reading your blog post, they’ll be eager to continue reading and finding out more, and therefore click the link to the blog post.

28.Livestream

Live streaming has increased in popularity in just a few years, and an important reason for that is that live streaming allows for in-the-moment interactions between the person broadcasting, and the people watching.

With live streaming, people can interact with the broadcaster and get responses in real-time. And maybe most importantly, live streaming makes the conversation so much more authentic and genuine, and as a result, the people who are watching will be able to resonate with the person/brand broadcasting much better.

But what should you live stream about?

Live streaming can be a bit scary, because you’re broadcasting live, and you don’t want to forget what you’re going to say and just stand there.

But don’t worry.

Just like when you record a podcast or a video, your blog content is a great resource.

Simply use a blog post as an outline for your live stream presentation/chat, and make that particular live stream about that topic.

29.Create an online course

An online course is generally very similar to an ebook, which I talked about earlier, but when repurposing an online course, you want to also include further resources, such as templates, etc, and make the steps very clear to follow, from start to beginning, but most of this probably already exist in your blog posts, so you just got to compile them and create a seamless online course out of the content.

The process to repurpose blog content

The process to repurpose content is actually super simple.

Of course, the way you repurpose obviously differs depending on how you’re going to use your piece of content, but the foundation remains the same.

Step 1:

Firstly, you obviously need to create your piece of content. This is what takes the most time, and so, once you’ve already got your content sorted, that’s when you can start repurposing to still be able to push out fresh new content.

However, in order to be able to repurpose blog content, you obviously need to create it first, and thus, creating it is the fundamental step.

Have in mind though, that the content you produce needs to be evergreen. Evergreen content is the type of content that isn’t time-bound for example about a new update, or an event. The reason is that if you do, that content will quite quickly become irrelevant and outdated, and repurposing often happens several months or even years after the initial piece of content has been created, which means if you’re going to repurpose a blog post that is very time-bound, by the time you re going to repurpose it, it will be outdated and irrelevant.

Evergreen content is content that withstands time, and remains relevant year after year, and might only need a few changes and tweaks over time to still remain relevant.

Step 2:

Identify the most popular blog posts you’ve created.

Step 3:

Decide in which way you want to repurpose your blog post. You can choose from one of the 29 listed ways to repurpose blog content in this blog post, or if you can come up with another way that you think is better, go ahead and use that.

Step 4:

Start repurposing your content, tweaking it, updating it, or taking the parts you want to use.

Step 5:

Share your new repurposed piece of content with the world!

Conclusion

As you can see, there are a ton of ways you can repurpose blog content. Unfortunately though, the vast majority of people never repurpose any of their blog content They may spend countless of hours writing their blog posts, but simply publishing to the web means just taking advantage of a small portion of the blog contents’ potential, and definitely not getting the most out of the invested efforts.

By repurposing blog content, you make sure that you get the most out of your blog content and the time you’ve invested writing it.

[aion-rsa]

Last Night in Soho: The Haunting History of Anya Taylor-Joy’s “Downtown” Song

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

“Maybe you know some little places to go to where they never close,” Anya Taylor-Joy sings in the latest music video from director Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho. After all, both the film and the song, “Downtown,” which was made famous by Petula Clark, are about destinations.

From the moment the needle drops on the onscreen vintage Dansette record player, Last Night in Soho lands in the world of British pop. The surrealistic ghost story follows fashion designer Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) as she dreams her way into Swinging London, and the pleasant nightmares of the mod nightlife. Taylor-Joy plays Sandie, an aspiring singer on the cusp of discovery and who haunts Ellie’s dreams. Or is she dreaming?

Cliquey London youth in the mid-1960s divided themselves between mods, rockers, and, as Ringo Starr declared himself in A Hard Day’s Night, “mockers.” Edgar Wright would traditionally be in the latter category. He spoofed zombies in Shaun of the Dead, parodied cop movies in Hot Fuzz, and tweaked the nose of action films with Baby Driver. Wright approaches his films sonically, and for Last Night in Soho’s new music video, he subverts his usual satire by darkening a celebratory anthem to bright lights with a somber tone.

The music video shows Taylor-Joy recording “Downtown” in a studio, live with a full orchestra behind her while clips tease her character’s arc in the film. Taylor-Joy, who won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy for her role in The Queen’s Gambit, previously sang onscreen in the film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. (2020), and she once told Den of Geek she hopes to eventually devote herself to singing professionally. She was the breakout star of the film The Witch, and her downtempo rendition is spellbinding.

You can watch the video here:

“Downtown” was written by Tony Hatch, who produced Clark’s 1964 recording. The pair had been working together since Hatch helped producer Alan A. Freeman on Clark’s 1961 No. 1 hit “Sailor.” Hatch became Clark’s regular producer in 1963, but their first five collaborations didn’t light up the charts. That changed when he saw the neon signs which illuminated Broadway on his first trip to New York in the autumn of 1964.

Hatch wrote the core of the song upon hitting 48th Street in midtown Manhattan, the melody coming while he was waiting for the traffic lights to change. According to some sources, he originally envisioned “Downtown” as a doo wop R&B song, and intended to pitch it to the Drifters, whose song “Sweets for My Sweet” inspired Hatch to write “Sugar and Spice,” which became a hit for the Searchers. According to that narrative, it never occurred to Hatch that a white woman could even sing it.

The more accepted story is that Hatch pitched Clark four songs he’d gotten from New York music publishers for an Oct. 16, 1964, London recording session at Pye Studios. None of the songs turned Clark on, and she asked what he’d been writing. He played her the unfinished “Downtown,” scatting the vocal melody because the lyrics only consisted of a few lines and the title word. Clark told him to finish it; she didn’t care if it was a hit or not. He finalized the lyrics about a half hour before the session.

Hatch scored his arrangement to make the giant orchestra accompanying Clark sound like a rock band, and the backing was done live rather than tracked. The musicians included bass player Brian Brocklehurst and a pianist; drummers Ronnie Verrell and Bobby Graham keeping time with other percussion players; a string section consisting of eight violinists, two viola players, and two cellists; a horn section of four trumpet players and four trombonists; and a woodwind quintet on flutes and oboes. Vocal group the Breakaways sang backup.

And then there was the guitar section. The session players were veteran finger benders Vic Flick, Big Jim Sullivan, and Jimmy Page, who would go on to turn The New Yardbirds into Led Zeppelin.

The combo recorded three takes of the song. The second was picked for release. Joe Smith of Warner Brothers loved the song so much he ordered a rush release in the U.S. where it debuted at No. 87 and became the first No. 1 hit for the year 1965. This made history as Clark became the first British female artist to have a No. 1 hit in the rock and roll era in the U.S.  She was only the second female British singer to have a No. 1 hit in America since Vera Lynn’s 1952 song “Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart.” Clark would go on to have a run of 15 consecutive U.S. hits.

“Downtown” was released in the UK in November 1964, but was kept out of the top spot on the charts by the Beatles’ “I Feel Fine.” Clark was already a regular on BBC programming, and had also a wide following in France and Italy. Besides her string of hits, she also appeared in the 1968 Francis Ford Coppola movie, Finian’s Rainbow, and the film musical version of Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

“Downtown” has been covered by Frank Sinatra, The B-52s, Yo La Tengo, and Dolly Parton.  Winona Ryder’s character sang it in the 1999 film Girl, Interrupted. But it also has one much darker place in history: The Nashville bombing of Christmas 2020. Followed the broadcast warning: “If you can hear this message, evacuate now,” the song was broadcast from the RV to give residents time to get out of the area before the explosion, which caused tremendous damage to the neighborhood.

There are Soho sections in both London and New York, which makes it perfect for the film. Taylor-Joy brings out the loneliness and desperation which follows a night downtown. The title of Last Night In Soho, by the way, comes from a song of the same name by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich.

Last Night in Soho will be released in theaters on Oct. 29.

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The post Last Night in Soho: The Haunting History of Anya Taylor-Joy’s “Downtown” Song appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[mwolf0epsilon]

For Post Studio AU I got a question: I think I understand that the people who became toons just stabilized instead of turn back, and that searchers and lost ones can become human, but why did Lacie Bertrum and Norman not change?

Toons stabilize yes, but also gain a few features that set them apart from fellow clones:

Allison and Susie look more like their former selves than the actual Toon Alice, albeit still looking majorly like the pair of Alice Angels they were in the studio.

Buddy and Tom get actual fur rather than just the illusion of fuzz. Buddy also looks younger than Tom.

The few remaining Butcher Gang clones are less mutilated but carry the scars of their studio selves. Some need prosthetics even.

The Searchers and Lost Ones can reach human-like appearence but there's traits that are noticeably off from what they used to look like. Take Sammy as an example here, his eyes and hair changed color and his teeth are wrong. He's also sickly pale even when out in the sun for extended periods of time.

Lacie, Bertrum and Norman also can't physically change back because their ink bonded to the machinery in their bodies, thus making it less "fluid". You can't change something that's too solid to mold as you see fit... On the plus side they're much sturdier and stronger, but it does make their lives a little more difficult.

[goftor-blog]

memories of 1965

One moment that captures how much Britain has changed in the past 50 years was the death on Sunday, January 24, 1965, of perhaps the finest leader in our history.

‘Tonight, our nation mourns the loss of the greatest man any of us have ever known,’ the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, told the British people that evening.

He was referring, of course, to Sir Winston Churchill, the man who had led Britain through the darkest hour in our history and onwards to victory.

And in the days that followed, more than 300,000 people waited patiently in the cold to pay their respects to their fallen hero.

President, Lyndon Johnson, failed to attend Churchill’s funeral.

Johnson was widely criticized—here and abroad—for his failure to make the trip. Many in the British government saw it as a slight. And in some ways it represented a minor setback in American/Anglo relations at a crucial time in the Cold War.

For when you look back at Britain in 1965, it seems in so many ways an utterly different country, not just in its skylines, fashions and faces, but in its moral and cultural attitudes.

It was a country in which older men still wore hats and carried umbrellas; in which millions of children sat the 11-plus exam to decide whether they went to grammar school or to a secondary modern; in which pornography was almost unknown, most people did not even have a telephone, and thousands of working-class families still had outside toilets.

At the end of 1964, Wilson’s Labour government had come to power, promising to build a new Britain in the ‘white heat of the scientific revolution’.

But the technological gadgets so familiar today would have struck the vast majority as the stuff of fantasy. Most had never even been on an aeroplane.

Indeed, if you want a symbol of how much Britain has changed in the past five decades, then just think about the difference between today’s Premier League football stars – often foreign-born, living in gated communities and earning as much as £300,000 a week – and by far the most feted player of the day, who hung up his boots on February 6, 1965.

Almost incredibly, Stanley Matthews was still turning out for Stoke City at the age of 50. He played not for money or attention, but for sheer love of the game.

As one friend put it, he remained ‘for all his fame, as down-to-earth as the folk who once adorned the terraces in the hope of seeing him sparkle gold dust onto their harsh working lives’.

To Matthews, who interrupted his career to serve in the RAF during World War II, the antics of today’s spoiled Premier League superstars would have seemed inconceivable.

But he belonged to a generation that has vanished completely: reticent, dutiful and quietly conservative.

Like the death of Churchill, the retirement of Matthews – who was knighted in January 1965 as a reward for his extraordinary career – seemed to represent a threshold between old and new.

In sport, in culture, even in architecture, all the talk was of change.

Modernisation was all the rage, not least in the great cities of the North, where councils were competing to tear down the old Victorian streets and erect great high-rise monstrosities instead.

"On 19 April 1965, when Reggie Kray married Frances Elsie Shea… he had the event photographed by none other than the country’s most famous snapper, David Bailey, who arrived at the church in a blue velvet suit with matching blue Rolls-Royce, for all the world like Cecil Beaton recording the Queen’s Coronation of 12 years earlier."

It was indeed a year when class structures crumbled, a new aristocracy came to the fore with working class lads like Bailey, The Beatles and Michael Caine at the forefront.

But it was in the cultural sphere that change was really accelerating. The Beatles with the LSD-influenced Rubber Soul were swapping straightforward love songs for an imaginative introspection and existentialism, Dylan was stretching the boundaries of the pop song with his bile-splattered narrative "Like A Rolling Stone", Bridget Riley was conquering New York with her pre-psychedelia psychedelic paintings, John Fowles produced his astonishing The Magus, Dennis Potter and Ken Loach took television drama to a new level, Edward Bond’s Saved, in which a baby is stoned, shocked the censors and the theatre-going public.

Above all it was the first year that the words pop and culture could be used together without attracting ridicule – except perhaps from the self-appointed champion of the old order, Mary Whitehouse.

The Ford Transit is a range of light commercial vehicles produced by Ford since 1965. Sold primarily as a cargo van, the Transit is also built as a passenger van (marketed as the Tourneo since 1995), minibus, cutaway van chassis, and as a pickup truck. Over 8,000,000 Transit vans have been sold, making it the third best-selling van of all time and have been produced across four basic platform generations (debuting in 1965, 1986, 2000, and 2013 respectively), with various "facelift" versions of each.

1965 Timeline

17 January – The Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts’ book, Ode to a High Flying Bird, a tribute to jazz great Charlie Parker, is published.

www.amazon.com/Ode-Highflying-Bird-Charlie-WATTS/dp/B0026…

21 January – The Animals’ show at New York’s Apollo Theater is canceled after the U.S. Immigration Department forces the group to leave the theater.

The Rolling Stones and Roy Orbison travel to Sydney to begin their Australian tour.

23 January – "Downtown" hits #1 in the US singles chart, making Petula Clark the first British female vocalist to reach the coveted position since the arrival of The Beatles.

24 January – The Animals appear a second time on The Ed Sullivan Show.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygJoV4FaAfQ

27 January – Paul Simon broadcasts on BBC radio for the first time, on the Five to Ten show, discussing and playing thirteen songs, twelve of which would appear on his May-recorded and August-released UK-only solo album, The Paul Simon Song Book.

6 February – Donovan gets his widest audience so far when he makes the first of three appearances on "Ready, Steady, Go!".

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKqoKDsOuHE

12 February – NME reports that the Beatles will star in a film adaptation of Richard Condon’s novel A Talent for Loving. The story is about a 2,253-kilometer (1,400 mi) horse race that takes place in the old west. The film is never made.

24 February – The Beatles begin filming their second film, Help!

Richard Rodney Bennett’s opera The Mines of Sulphur is premièred at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London.

20 March – Kathy Kirby, singing the UK entry "I Belong", finishes second in the 10th Eurovision Song Contest in Naples, Italy, behind France Gall, representing Luxembourg.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3aD6MD6gew

23 March – Benjamin Britten is appointed to the Order of Merit (OM).

April – Michael Tippett is invited as guest composer to the music festival in Aspen, Colorado. The visit leads to major changes in his style.

11 April – The New Musical Express poll winners’ concert takes place featuring performances by The Beatles, The Animals, The Rolling Stones, Freddie and the Dreamers, the Kinks, the Searchers, Herman’s Hermits, The Moody Blues, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, Donovan, Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield and Tom Jones.

24 April – It took 30 years to organise a walk from one pub to another. But then the walk is The Pennine Way , and the distance between the pubs is 268 miles. The walk involves crossing more than 400 stiles, 200 bridges, and enough peat bogs and steep slopes to break an infrequent walker’s weary heart. And for those who negotiated the passage over many private properties it also involved tricky talks with a multitude of sometimes less than keen landowners.

The traditional starting point for The Pennine Way is the Nag’s Head in Derbyshire’s Edale , the end point The Border Hotel in Kirk Yetholm just over the border into Scotland. The trail, Britain’s first National Trail, was the brainchild of writer and long time Ramblers’ Association secretary Tom Stephenson, first mooted to the general public in an article in The Daily Herald in 1935.

After much parliamentary lobbying, innumerable negotiations, and great preparations of signage and information, the official opening of the Pennine Way came on April 24 1965, witnessed by an estimated 2,000 enthusiasts gathered at the beautiful Malham Moor in Yorkshire . Between 3,000 and 4,000 walkers now complete the trail every year, no easy task given the tough terrain and unpredictable weather conditions at some of the stages even in summer – the walk even defeated the great Wainwright. Those who tramp all 268 miles certainly deserve their celebratory drink in the well chosen finishing point.

5 May – Alan Price leaves The Animals, to be replaced temporarily by Mick Gallagher and permanently by Dave Rowberry.

6 May – Keith Richards and Mick Jagger begin work on "Satisfaction" in their Clearwater, Florida hotel room. Richards came up with the classic guitar riff while playing around with his brand new Gibson "Fuzz box".

8 May – The British Commonwealth comes closer than it ever had, or would, to a clean sweep of the US Hot 100’s top 10, lacking only the #2 slot.

30 May – The Animals appear for a third time on The Ed Sullivan Show.

12 June – The Beatles are appointed Members of the British Empire (MBE) by the Queen. With no tradition of awarding popular entertainers such honours, a number of previous recipients complain and protest.

July – John Cale, with his new collaborators Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison, makes a demo tape which he tries to pass on to Marianne Faithfull. These are the beginnings of the Velvet Underground.

5 July – Maria Callas gives her last operatic performance, in the title role of Tosca, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

8 July – A minor figure in the Great Train Robbery of 1963, Ronnie Biggs has nevertheless become the most famous name among those criminals who pulled off the most audacious robbery of the sixties .

There is a tendency to glamorize the Great Train Robbers, to turn them into Robin Hood figures. They carried out a robbery that cost the country £2.6 million, the equivalent of maybe £45 million today – most of the money was never recovered. The assistant train driver was thrown down a railway embankment, and the train driver coshed with an iron bar, never being fit to return to work before his premature death in 1970.

Biggs had been detailed to look after the train driver brought to move the hijacked engine and carriage to the place where the gang had left their vehicles. The driver could not work the train, so Biggs and he were sent to load money sacks. In spite of this Biggs received a 30-year sentence.

On July 8 1965 Biggs and three other men escaped from Wandsworth Prison in a carefully planned and well financed operation. A ladder was thrown over the prison wall at just after 3pm as the men exercised. A furniture van with a platform on top was outside the wall, to hold the ladder in place and make the descent from the top rapid and safe. Prison officers who tried to intervene as the men fled were held back by other prisoners in the yard.

Three cars were waiting for them (and as a shotgun was found afterwards in one of the cars it is reasonable to assume they were prepared to use violence).

Biggs along with his wife and sons managed to slip out of Britain to Paris, where he underwent plastic surgery to alter his appearance, and where he obtained false papers that allowed him in 1970 to move to Australia after spending some time in Spain.

In Australia, however, he was recognized, and forced to move before fleeing the country when the chase threatened him again.

Biggs spent more than three decades in Brazil, cocking a snook at the British authorities who were unable to extradite him. He was kidnapped in 1981 and taken out of Brazil, but had to be let go on a technicality.

Biggs returned to the UK in 2001, a sick man, partly to receive health treatment, partly because it seems he hoped to be allowed to go free. He was, however, arrested and returned to begin serving the remaining 28 years of his sentence.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEbQbHZURZ8

13 July – The Beatles receive a record five Ivor Novello Awards.

4 August – Iain Hamilton’s Cantos receives its world première at The Proms, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Norman Del Mar.

6 August – The Small Faces release "Whatcha Gonna Do About It", their first single.

The Beatles release the soundtrack to their second movie Help!

15 August – Just a couple of years earlier The Beatles were playing to audiences of a few dozen at some of their Cavern gigs in Liverpool ; on August 15 1965 55,600 fans crowded in to Shea Stadium, the home of baseball team the New York Mets, to hear the group play the first concert of their American tour. Or rather not hear them: with Beatlemania at its scariest (there were 2000 security personnel on hand, and the Fab Four arrived in an armoured truck), the band took the stage in the centre of the field to deafening screams; twelve songs later they left, the screams having drowned out what they had been playing. For the record the songs that night included: Act Naturally; She’s a Woman; and Twist and Shout. It mattered little to an army of women and girls determined to scream, cry, faint and worse.

With the band members unable to hear themselves in spite of using the massive stadium PA, the concert descended to the absurd, John Lennon at the end playing the keyboard with his elbows to demonstrate the futility of the exercise. Futile, but profitable: the concert grossed more than $300,000, and is seen as the genesis of Stadium Rock.

26 Aug – They were only four among a total of 189 receiving honours that day, but it was obvious who the photographers at the gates of Buckingham Palace wanted to capture arriving, and who the 4,000 or more screaming fans were there to see – The Beatles . They duly arrived in John Lennon’s Rolls in plenty of time for the 11am investiture, in spite of the fact that, according to John Lennon , they didn’t believe in the institution of the royal family. Even inside the Palace they couldn’t escape the fans, or parents of fans at any rate, having to sign autographs for others there on the day.

It was something of a shock in the sixties for pop stars to be so honoured, though now it is becoming commonplace – politicians love rubbing shoulders with their rock heroes, even if some of those shoulders must be decidedly arthritic by now. Harold Wilson knew a popular band wagon when he saw one, and jumped on, awarding The Fab Four MBEs – Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Years later John Lennon, who returned his MBE in 1969 as a protest against Britain’s stance on Biafra and Vietnam, claimed they had smoked cannabis in the toilet at the palace, though George denied it. But when Lord Cobbold, the Lord Chamberlain, called out their names they stepped forward as instructed, bowed politely in the right places, exchanged a few words, and walked away backwards so as not to turn their backs to the Queen .

27 August – The Beatles visit Elvis Presley at his home in Bel-Air. It is the only time the band and the singer meet.

11 September – The Last Night of The Proms is conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent, with Josephine Veasey as soloist for the traditional rendition of "Rule, Britannia.

30 September – Donovan appears on Shindig! in the U.S. and plays Buffy Sainte-Marie’s "Universal Soldier".

Much mimicked, but much loved too, Thunderbirds like Gerry Anderson’s other Supermarionation series (Stingray, Captain Scarlet et al) struck a chord with children as however brilliant the pupeteering it still seemed like toys saving the world. When you are eight you have little reason to think they can’t.

Filmed somewhat incongruously in Slough , the series featured the American Tracy family of all-action heroes, led by father Jeff, one of the first men on the moon (as the series was set in 2065 not the best prediction ever). Every boy wanted to be Scott or Virgil; and hoped for a Thunderbird 1 Dinky Toy at Christmas.

The very first episode, for the record, was Trapped in the Sky, written by Gerry Anderson and his then wife Sylvia, who also voiced Lady Penelope. In the show the Hood sabotages a new super-aircraft, forcing the International Rescue team to come to its aid so he can steal their secrets. It was only kids in the ATV Midlands region who got to enjoy that first September 30 broadcast; London only joined the jerky-armed party on Christmas Day that year.

Mock the occasionally-visible strings as we do, the production values on the series were very high, various techies later poached to work on Star Wars for example. And each of the early episodes ran to 50 minutes, effectively a mini-movie.

Do we still love them? Y-y-y-yes M-Mr Tracy.

17 October – The Animals appear for a fourth time on The Ed Sullivan Show.

5 November – The Who release their iconic single "My Generation" in the UK. This song contains the famous line: "I hope I die before I get old"

8 Nov – In the mid- Sixties Britain was becoming more racially diverse. New arrivals to Britain and immigrants long established in the country shamefully often faced discrimination: signs on lodgings stating: “no blacks”; people refused entry to certain pubs and shops because of their race; discourtesies and even assault in public places by those who resented the changing face of the nation. The 1965 Race Relations Act was an attempt by the Labour government, albeit a very weak attempt, to address this situation.

Discrimination, however, was made a civil not a criminal offence, partly because of arguments put forward by the Conservatives that race relations would be soured further were the legislation to be given teeth. And though discrimination “in places of public resort” was outlawed, inexplicably shops and private boarding houses were excluded; so was discrimination in employment, and even local authority policy on renting property. The act, then, was very superficial. There are times when British compromise can be laudable; this was not one of them. The legislation was given greater range in 1968 and 1976.

The 1965 act did, however, set up the Race Relations Board, which came into operation the following year. It initially had very limited scope and powers, its remit monitoring and persuasion; but a seed had been sown.

3 December – The Beatles release their album Rubber Soul, along with the double A-sided single "Day Tripper / We Can Work It Out". George Harrison’s performance on the sitar on the track "Norwegian Wood" leads to his becoming a pupil of Ravi Shankar.

The Who release their debut album My Generation.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN5zw04WxCc

Not bad for a debut album – presaging punk in songs like My Generation; heavy metal in The Ox; and blending blues and pop in I’m a Man and The Kids Are Alright to create a sound that would stir a million Mods. Throw in a wonderful version of James Brown’s classic Please, Please, Please and it was definitely worth a listen. Pop-rock quickly followed some enjoyably energetic detours thanks to The Who. You can almost forgive them for Tommy later in their career.

Originally recorded in mono My Generation has been remixed in Stereo several times, but probably loses more than it gains in the process which seems about as logical as redoing the famous artwork with pictures of the band in later years (though Moon didn’t have all that many).

Many critics would consider the album, at one time dismissed by the band as a bit of a rush job, as one of the most seminal in British rock history: Townshend ’s raw guitar; Keith Moon’s manic drumming; John Entwistle’s backseat driving bass; and Roger Daltrey ’s chameleon vocals all models for their generation and more besides – The Jam very indebted to their forerunners. After the LP was released every band probably still yearned for the success of the Beatles ; but most wanted to sound like the gods of Shepherd’s Bush , The Who.

13 Dec – The original format for Jackanory was elegant in its simplicity: an actor or occasionally a TV personality like Clement Freud or a figure from an entirely different world like Prince Charles reading a book out loud to children, with occasional illustrations shown on screen (often by Quentin Blake ). Magical.

It captivated children from toddlers through to their primary school years, becoming a fixed element of every weekday for millions of families, quarter of an hour of almost guaranteed peace for any adult looking after them: the insistent theme-tune – Jackanory Jackanory – acted like an off-switch for play, a signpost pointing towards bedtime.

Over the years – the original series came to an end in 1996 – some great names appeared as readers: Kenneth Williams perhaps the most frequent; Spike Milligan ; Bernard Cribbins; the genius that was Arthur Lowe ; Michael Hordern and Joyce Grenfell to list but a few of the finest.

The very first programme on December 13 1965 featured Lee Montague, an actor better known for his hard-man roles on TV and in films.

Naturally when the BBC revived the idea in 2006 it had to be tampered with – animation used, and multiple actors; and no fixed slot to give that blessed routine that makes life with children so much easier. Perhaps it takes imagination to believe in the power of imagination.

22 Dec – The day that must be etched on Jeremy Clarkson ’s heart.

Just before Christmas 1965 Transport Minister Tom Fraser (not Barbara Castle, as many seem to think) introduced a 70mph limit for drivers on motorways, following several pile-ups in the foggy autumn and winter of that year, though another cause is sometimes cited – the era’s super-cars being seen on motorways in legal-speak: “Travelling at speeds in excess of 150mph”.

Like Income Tax in 1799 this was to be a temporary measure. In the sixties many car drivers were the first in their family to own a vehicle, so with fewer points of reference as regards driving than is the case today. The engineering on some cars (especially in those days brakes) was not great, with many struggling to reach 70mph. At the time then few voices were raised against the measure.

Barbara Castle confirmed the limit as a permanent fixture when she was transport minister in 1967. The genie was out of the bottle to stay.

As driving experience has become ingrained, cars have radically improved, and road building likewise, voices are now starting to be heard about raising the limit, comparing things with France where the top speed is 130kph (80mph), for example. But the chances of this happening are roughly equivalent to those of proportional representation and free beer for all. Indeed it should be recalled that in a period of energy crisis in 1973 the limit was dropped to 50mph for a time, so the smart money would be on a decrease before any increase.

By way of interest, if you feel the need, the need for speed, try the Isle of Man , where rural roads are still de-restricted. Or Germany where much of the autobahn network has no limit. Or if you fancy going a bit further afield, Nepal is another option, though you might want to watch out for a few of those mountain bends.

The first Ford Transit produced by Ford Motor Company in 1965

BillBoard Hot 100 Number One Hits 1965

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwIOFjIwF8Y

Events

1 January – Introduction of new "Worboys Committee" road signs.

6 Jan – Geoff Boycott takes 3-47 against South Africa, his best Test bowling.

7 January – Identical twin brothers Ronnie and Reggie Kray, are arrested on suspicion of running a protection racket in London.

14 January – The Prime Ministers of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland meet for the first time in 43 years.

15 January – Sir Winston Churchill is reported to be seriously ill after suffering a stroke.

24 January – Sir Winston Churchill dies aged 90 at Chartwell, his Kent home of more than 40 years.

30 January – Thousands attend Winston Churchill’s state funeral in London. During the three days of lying-in-state, 321,000 people file past the catafalque, and the funeral procession travels from Westminster Hall to the service at St Paul’s Cathedral, attended by the Queen, Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and representatives of 112 countries.

31 January – National Health prescription charges end.

1 February – The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh arrive in Ethiopia on a state visit.

4 February – Confederation of British Industry founded.

6 February – Sir Stanley Matthews plays his final First Division game, at the record age of 50 years and 5 days.

16 February – The British Railways Board (chairman: Richard Beeching) publishes The Development of the Major Trunk Routes proposing which lines should receive investment (and, by implication, which should not).

18 February – The Gambia becomes independent from the United Kingdom.

3 March – The remains of Roger Casement, from Pentonville Prison, are reburied in Dublin.

10 March – Goldie, a London Zoo golden eagle, is recaptured after 13 days of freedom.

19 March – A record price of 760,000 guineas is paid at Christie’s for Rembrandt’s Titus

23 March – Dr Dorothy Hodgkin is awarded the Order of Merit.

1 April – The Greater London Council comes into its powers, replacing the London County Council and greatly expanding the metropolitan area of the city.

Finance Act introduces corporation tax, replacing income tax for corporate institutions.

6 April – Government publicly announces cancellation of the BAC TSR-2 nuclear bomber aircraft project.

23 April – Red velvet minidress.

26 April – Manchester United win the Football League First Division title.

1 May – Liverpool win the FA Cup for the first time in their history, beating Leeds United 2-1 at Wembley Stadium. Roger Hunt and Ian St John score for Liverpool, while Billy Bremner scores the consolation goal for Leeds.

7 May – The Rhodesian Front under Prime Minister Ian Smith win a landslide election victory in Rhodesia.

11 May – The National Trust officially launches its long-term Enterprise Neptune project to acquire or put under covenant a substantial part of the Welsh, English and Northern Irish coastline. Whiteford Burrows on the Gower Peninsula is considered the first property to be acquired under the campaign although its purchase was announced on 1 January.

13 May – The Conservatives make big gains in the UK local government elections.

17 May – An underground explosion at Cambrian Colliery in Clydach Vale kills 31.

18 May – The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh begin a 10-day state visit to the Federal German Republic.

19 May – West Ham United become the second British club to win a European trophy, defeating West German 1860 Munich 2-0 at Wembley Stadium.

3 June – The bank rate is reduced to 6 per cent.

18 June – The government announces plans for the introduction of a blood alcohol limit for drivers in its clampdown on drink-driving.

22 June – The 700th anniversary of Parliament is celebrated.

8 July – Great Train Robber Ronald Biggs escapes from Wandsworth Prison.

12 July – The Secretary of State for Education and Science, Tony Crosland, issues Circular 10/65 requesting local authorities to convert their schools to the Comprehensive system.

22 July – Sir Alec Douglas-Home suddenly resigns as a head of the British Conservative Party.

24 July – Freddie Mills, former British boxing champion, is found shot in his car in Soho.

27 July – Edward Heath becomes leader of the British Conservative Party following its first leadership election by secret ballot.

29 July – The Beatles film Help! debuts in London.

August – Elizabeth Lane appointed as the first female High Court judge, assigned to the Family Division.

1 August – Cigarette advertising is banned on British television.

Radio and television licence fees are increased.

3 August – Release of the film Darling starring Julie Christie. "The Queen’s Award to Industry" for export and technological advancements is created.

6 August – Peter Watkins’ The War Game, a television drama-documentary depicting the aftermath of a nuclear attack on the UK, is pulled from its planned transmission as BBC1’s The Wednesday Play for political reasons. It will go on to win the 1966 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

The first female High Court judge is appointed.

21 August – Charlton Athletic F.C. player Keith Peacock becomes the first substitute to appear in a Football League match.

2 September – Sir Harry Hylton-Foster, Speaker of the House of Commons, dies.

21 September – British Petroleum strikes oil in the North Sea.

24 September – The British governor of Aden cancels the Aden constitution and takes direct control of the protectorate, due to the bad security situation.

30 September – First episode of ATV ‘Supermarionation’ series Thunderbirds airs.

7 October – Ian Brady, a 27-year-old stock clerk from Hyde in Cheshire, is charged with the murder of 17-year-old apprentice electrician Edward Evans to death at a house on the Hattersley housing estate last night.

8 October – The Post Office Tower opens in London.

16 October – Police find a girl’s body on Saddleworth Moor near Oldham in Lancashire. The body is quickly identified as that of Lesley Ann Downey, who disappeared on Boxing Day last year from a fairground in the Ancoats area of Manchester, at the age of 10. Ian Brady, arrested last week for the murder of a 17-year-old man in nearby Hattersley, is suspected of murdering Lesley, as is his 23-year-old girlfriend Myra Hindley, who on 11 October was also charged with the murder of Edward Evans. Police suspect that other missing people from the Manchester area, including 12-year-old John Kilbride (who was last seen alive nearly three years ago) could be also be buried there; some reports state that as many as 11 murder victims may have been buried in the area.

20 October – It is reported that suspected mass murderer Ian Brady tortured his victims and tape-recorded the attacks on them. Detectives in Brady’s native Scotland are also reportedly investigating the disappearance of 12-year-old Moira Anderson in Lanarkshire eight years ago as a possible link to Brady.

21 October – Ian Brady and Myra Hindley are charged with the murder of Lesley Ann Downey and remanded in custody.

22 October – African countries demand that the United Kingdom use force to prevent Rhodesia from declaring unilateral independence.

24 October – Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Arthur Bottomley travel to Rhodesia for negotiations.

Police find the decomposed body of a boy on Saddleworth Moor. The body is identified as that of John Kilbride, a 12-year-old boy who disappeared from Ashton-Under-Lyne in November 1963.

29 October – Ian Brady and Myra Hindley appear in court, charged with the murders of Edward Evans (17), Lesley Ann Downey (10) and John Kilbride (12).

October – Corgi Toys introduce the all-time best selling model car, James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 from the film Goldfinger.

1 November – Three cooling towers at the uncompleted Ferrybridge C electricity generating station in West Yorkshire collapse in high winds.

5 November – Martial law is announced in Rhodesia. The UN General Assembly accepts British intent to use force against Rhodesia if necessary by a vote of 82-9.

8 November – The British Indian Ocean Territory is created, consisting of Chagos Archipelago, Aldabra, Farquhar and Des Roches islands (on 23 June 1976 Aldabra, Farquhar and Des Roches are returned to Seychelles).

The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act suspends capital punishment for murder in England, Scotland and Wales, for five years in the first instance, replacing it with a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment.

The Race Relations Act outlaws public racial discrimination.

11 November – In Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe), the white minority regime of Ian Smith unilaterally declares independence.

13 November – The word "fuck" is spoken for the first time on British television by the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan.

20 November – The UN Security Council recommends that all states stop trading with Rhodesia.

29 November – Mary Whitehouse founds the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association.

December – EMI release Jacqueline du Pré’s recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto with John Barbirolli and the London Symphony Orchestra.

National Coal Board closes the last deep coal mine in the Forest of Dean (Northern United at Cinderford).

3 December – The first British aid flight arrives in Lusaka; Zambia had asked for British help against Rhodesia.

12 December – The Beatles’ last live U.K. tour concludes with two performances at the Capitol, Cardiff.

15 December – Tanzania and Guinea sever diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom.

17 December – The British government begins an oil embargo against Rhodesia; the United States joins the effort.

22 December – A 70 mph speed limit is imposed on British roads.

A reorganisation of the cabinet sees Roy Jenkins appointed Home Secretary and Barbara Castle as Minister of Transport.

24 December – A meteorite shower falls on Barwell, Leicestershire.

27 December – The British oil platform Sea Gem collapses in the North Sea, killing 13 of the 32 men on it.

30 December – President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia announces that Zambia and the United Kingdom have agreed to a deadline before which the Rhodesian white government should be ousted.

U.S. Events

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and more than 2,600 others arrested in Selma, Ala., during demonstrations against voter-registration rules (Feb. 1). Background: Civil Rights.

Malcolm X, black-nationalist leader, shot to death at Harlem rally (Feb. 21).

Blacks riot for six days in Watts section of Los Angeles: 34 dead, over 1,000 injured, nearly 4,000 arrested (Aug. 11-16).

1965: US orders 50,000 troops to Vietnam

President Johnson has commited a further 50,000 US troops to the conflict in Vietnam.

Monthly draft calls will increase from 17,000 to 35,000 – the highest level since the Korean War, when between 50,000 and 80,000 men were called up each month.

It will take the US force in Vietnam up to 125,000 but officials say at this stage demands should be met by conscription, without calling upon the reserves.

Muhammad Ali defeated Sonny Liston.

During the Gemini 4 mission on June 3, 1965, Ed White became the first American to conduct a spacewalk.

1965 Swedish engineer Sten Gustav Thulin was issued U.S. patent No. 3,180,557 (assigned to Celloplast company) for the modern disposable plastic grocery bag.

1965 Astronaut John Young smuggled a corned beef sandwich aboard the first Gemini spacecraft flight.

1965 ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ premiered on CBS TV.

1965 Cool Whip, a whipped cream substitute, was introduced by General Foods. Within 3 months it is the top selling whipped topping product.

1965 Ellen Church died on Aug 22 (born Sept 22, 1904). The first airline stewardess.

1965 Canada adopted its new red & white flag with a red maple leaf in the center.

1965 The first Subway sandwich shop opens in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

1965 ‘Pepper’ Martin, baseball player died.

1965 Discovered that addition of vitamins C and E reduced levels of nitrosamines in fried bacon and nitrite-cured products; industry changed processing to minimize consumer exposure to cancer-causing nitrosamines.

1965 The entire cast of the comic strip ‘Peanuts’ was featured on the cover of TIME magazine.

1965 R. C. Duncan was granted a patent for ‘Pampers’ disposable diapers.

1965 Campbell Soup Company introduces Franco-American Spaghetti-O’s.

1965 Jimmy Chamberlain of the music group ‘The Smashing Pumpkins’ was born.

1965 The Rolling Stones recorded the frustrated diners lament, "(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction."

1965 Norwood Fisher of the music group ‘Fishbone’ was born.

1965 Green Acres TV show debuted.

1965 Paul Hermann Muller died. A Swiss chemist who discovered that DDT was a potent insecticide. It was the most widely used insecticide for more than 20 years, and helped to increase food production around the world. Due mainly to its accumulation in animals that eat insects, and its toxic effects on them and those further up the food chain, it has been banned in the U.S. since 1972. However its residue is still found in some foods grown in the U.S. in 2005.

1965 The Pillsbury Doughboy, ‘Poppin’ Fresh,’ was born. He made his debut in a commercial for crescent rolls.

1965 At 5:15 pm on November 9, a 13 hour blackout of the northeastern U.S. and parts of Canada began when the electric grid failed.

1965 British author, W. Somerset Maugham died. Among the titles of his novels and short stories are: ‘Cakes and Ale’, ‘The Alien Corn’ and ‘The Breadwinner.’

1965 ‘Taste Of Honey’ by Herb Alpert & Tijuana Brass hit #1 on the charts.

Almost 50 years ago, a small team at the Italian company Olivetti managed to do what no one had done before them; they created a computer small enough to fit on a desk, and could be used by regular people. It was the Programma 101, what many consider to be the world’s first personal computer.

To understand just how revolutionary the Programma 101 was when it was unveiled back in 1965, you first have to know what computers looked like at the time. Remember, this was almost 50 years ago. It was the era of huge mainframes, big as fridges, sometimes filling up entire rooms. Only a small elite had access to them.

1965 in British television

2 January – World of Sport premieres on ITV with Eamonn Andrews as its first presenter.

January – The BBC collaborates with Ireland’s RTÉ on an historic television broadcast as Irish Taoiseach Seán Lemass and Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Terence O’Neill meet for the first time in Belfast.

30 May – A televised tribute to the late British bandleader and impresario Jack Hylton called The Stars Shine for Jack is held in London at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

1 August – Cigarette adverts are banned from UK television. Pipe tobacco and cigar adverts continue until 1991.

6 August – The War Game, a drama-documentary by director Peter Watkins depicting the events of a fictional nuclear attack on the United Kingdom, is controversially pulled from its planned transmission in BBC1’s The Wednesday Play anthology strand. The BBC was pressured into this move by the British government, which did not want much of the play’s content to become public. It was eventually released to cinemas, and won the 1966 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The BBC finally screened the play in 1985.

4 October – United! premieres on BBC1.

4 October – The BBC announces plans to introduce a new service for Asian immigrants starting the following week.

13 November – The word "fuck" is spoken for the first time on British television by the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan.

BBC 1

9 January – Not Only… But Also (1965–1970) 31 March – Going for a Song (1965–1977) 13 April – The Bed-Sit Girl (1965–1966) 7 July – Tomorrow’s World (1965–2003) 22 July – Till Death Us Do Part (1965–1975) 2 October – BBC-3 (1965–1966) 4 October – United! (1965–1967) 18 October – The Magic Roundabout (1965–1977) 19 October – The Newcomers (1965–1969) 13 December – Jackanory (1965–1996, 2006–present)

BBC2

24 March – The Airbase (1965) 17 October – Call My Bluff (1965–1988, 1994, 1996–2005)

ITV

2 January – World of Sport (1965–1985) 23 January – Public Eye (1965–1975) 30 September – Thunderbirds (1965–1966)

Posted by brizzle born and bred on 2017-10-01 09:07:50

Tagged: , memories of 1965 , 1965 , van

The post memories of 1965 appeared first on Good Info.

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My list of films that I find perfect

Raiders of the Lost Ark Jaws City Lights King Kong Gojira The Thing Monty Python and the Holy Grail Life of Brian The Lord of the Rings trilogy Back to the Future The Apartment Casablanca Mad Max: Fury Road Shaun of the Dead Hot Fuzz The World's End Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Evil Dead II Alien Robocop Frankenstein Bride of Frankenstein Son of Frankenstein Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back Return of the Jedi Rear Window Vertigo Ed Wood Fargo Once Upon a Time In The West The Searchers Modern Times The Kid The Gold Rush The Great Dictator Young Frankenstein Blazing Saddles Ghostbusters This Is Spinal Tap Dr. Strangelove Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie Airplane! The Princess Bride 12 Angry Men Logan Guardians of the Galaxy The Avengers Captain America: The Winter Soldier Iron Man Scott Pilgrim Vs The World Pan's Labyrinth A Hard Day's Night The Incredibles Singin' In The Rain Lawrence of Arabia Kiss Kiss Bang Bang The Nice Guys Taxi Driver Predator The Terminator Casino Royale