#This is not the way to start my Wiley feels for 2013.

[annakie]

A Post about Patchy

Hey would you like to read a lot of words about and see some pics of this cat?  Because I’m going to do that below this cut.

Don’t worry, longtime followers, this is a happy post.

Those of you who have been following me since 2014 or before may remember Patchy.  I don’t talk about her much on the blog, but I think it’s time. 

If you were worried this may be a post-mortem post, don’t be.  She’s happy and healthy.

The pic above was taken in October 2010.  It’s the earliest picture I have of Patchy.  By this point I had already known her for about a year.

Back in like 2009, around the time I got Cebu, when I started actually looking out in my backyard, I realized that there were several cats who hung out back there at night.  I just have a chain link fence in my yard so it’s not surprising they could easily jump it from the alley or side yards, and I have a pretty large patio with some comfy patio chairs, so I guess it seemed like a good spot for them to hang, since I wasn’t out there much. 

I wouldn’t know that TNR was a thing for awhile, and since I have a soft spot for cats, I’d leave them out some kibble, I’d just buy a bag of the cheapest stuff at the grocery store and throw a cup out a night to keep them from starving to death back then.  There were often 5 or so cats back there, and if I’d have known then what I know now, I would have started TNR way earlier. 

The cats would come and go, and there were so many that I just called them by identifying characteristics.  “Brown-nosed tabby” and “Tuxedo” and “Orangie” or whatever.  So this Calico just became “Patchy” since she has patches of color.  For awhile, she was just one of that gang.

Cats would disappear, new ones would show up.  Patchy and Moustachio, a shorthaired B&W cat with a mustache, were around the longest.  I’m not sure what happened to most of the other cats, I’m sure they got hit by cars and picked up by the pound and other unpleasantness.  I had to dispose of a few myself.

Patchy, somehow, kept surviving.  Although there were a few times when she’d disappear for weeks at a time and I guessed that was the end of her, but she’d show up later all skin and bones, and then I’d switch her to my cats’ expensive, grain-free food and even give her wet food to get her back on her feet.  Once she even showed up bloody with a very scary gash on her head.  Not being able to touch her to put like, neosporin or something on that was killing me and I did what I could to help her recover, which was mostly just making sure she had plenty of good food and water.  She made it.

And in these first few years, several times, kitten litters showed up in my backyard.

Cebu... get out of the way.  (He was always real good about knowing exactly where to be for being in the way.  I miss him so much.)  (Pics taken in May, 2013.)

Ah, yeah, there’s Patchy with two litters of kittens, one of which was hers and the others were her own grandchildren.  I rescued two out of those eleven and still kick myself for not doing more.

After having to clean up a few of her messes and over a few years saving over a half dozen of her kittens, and not saving many more, I decided it was time to do something about this.  I started by getting her to trust going into my house.

My master bedroom has a sliding glass door to the patio.  (The door you see there goes into the garage, sliding glass door is to the right.)  So I started trailing food into the house and into the master bathroom to get her to explore there, and under the bed so she saw a safe place to hide.  I’d then hanging out in the bedroom reading and letting her come in to explore the inside.  I got her to understand there was food and clean water, and shelter there.  

I thought I wasn’t far enough along with trusting me when she was pregnant once again in spring, 2014.  But one night she did run right inside the house when I opened the sliding glass door to let Cebu out, climbed into the lining that had been ripped out a bit under my bed, and set up camp.  For the next few months, she lived there.  I contacted a feral rescue group in my area who agreed to let me foster the kitties and they’d get them adopted, then loan me a trap to get Patchy TNR’d.  So that was a relief.

Also?  Patchy picked the spot where she wanted to “go”, and after I cleaned up that first mess I put a litter box there and she took right to it, have NEVER had a litter issue since.

The long, and complete story about the next few months can be found on my Rescue Kitties tag, with many many pictures and updates.  But I’ll still post a few, and a summary.

She never came out from beneath the bed if I was in the room, but I would go hang out with her when I got home from work every day, lay on the floor and sing to her and talk to her, give her yummy wet food, and sometimes, if she felt frisky, she’d play laser pointer with me when I would lay in bed before sleeping at night, always on the floor, never daring to get on the bed.  That’s fine.

In April 2014 one morning I awoke to kitten noises.

She was such a good momma to those kittens.  After the first day & night in the birthing box I set up for her, and she did even let me change out the towel (but got real mad when I tried to move the food bowl slightly away), she brought the babies back under the bed and I’d have to peek and use my camera to even see them.

Eventually, they got old enough to get curious, they came out to play, and she let me play with them and socialize them. 

And after a few more weeks, the babies went to the rescue group, and found their forever homes. 

It took TWO MORE WEEKS of making Patchy very unhappily live inside before I could get her into a trap, so she could be TNR’d.  Although she was OK with me touching the babies, touching was strictly off-limits for HER.

But hey!  We did it!  She went and got TNR’d, got a clean bill of health... and went back outside.

I didn’t see her for like two weeks, and when she came back she was skin and bones, and decided that maybe it was OK to be back here and let me give her food again, after all.

And then for the next year or so, well, if it were really hot or cold or storming outside, when I’d let Cebu out before bed, maybe she’d decide to spend the night under the bed, after all.  But she wanted to go back outside during the day.  That’s fine.  The other cats hated being locked out of the bedroom sometimes, but they got used to it.

Slowly, throughout 2014 and 2015 her inside stays got a little longer and a little longer.  It was too hot or too cold out for days at a time, then weeks at a time.

The worst part about this time is that she’d get fleas.  And then Cebu would get fleas, and then Jim, Leela, Fry and Pemily would have fleas.  And then I’d have to do an expensive round of flea meds on all 5 of the inside pets, and not being able to touch Patchy to give HER meds was a problem until I found some like, garlic pills online that I’d mash into her wet food and give to her.  Luckily, between that and flea-powdering (the vacuuming) the carpets, the fleas would be taken care of.  I think I went through this three times.  Eventually I just started giving her a flea pill once a month.  I didn’t love doing it because apparently some cats have bad reactions, but it was that or... stop letting her into the house because I couldn’t keep exposing the rest of the pets to fleas.  Luckily, it worked.

Of course when Cebu died at the end of 2016 I had a lot less reason to ever go to the backyard, so, she had a lot fewer chances to try and go outside, anyway.  But it’d been awhile before that since she’d go out.  I used to leave the door open enough for Cebu to go out and come back in during nice days, and she wouldn’t bother most of the time.  And usually, even when she did, she’d be back inside for bed.

She did get out for like two minutes once last year, but she made it to the end of the backyard, saw I was going back inside, and ran back to me and inside all on her own after that.

She’s at least ten years old now, I think she’s happy to be settled.

I feel bad that she lives her entire life in one room.  I’ve tried a few things to see if she wants to integrate.  Pemily is my most social and outgoing and friendly cat, and also she is literally Patchy’s granddaughter, and several times Pemily has managed to sneak her way into the bedroom, she’s very wiley.  Patchy DOES NOT LIKE IT.  Usually within 10 minutes there are growls, spits and hisses.  Once or twice Pemily has made it into the bedroom without me noticing, and I’ll find her sitting by the door VERY READY to leave when I go back in.  Patchy and Fry would never get along, and she’d probably bully Leela, so... she’s a bedroom cat.

We still play laser pointer, I made sure we has a few hunting-type toys, which are the only thing she responds to.  I’ve tried several “enrichment” toys that the other cats like, stimulation toys, hiding toys, a mini-cat tower that she only uses the brush on, special places to lay down... whatever.  I also bought her a life-sized stuff cat for companionship and NOPE, she hissed at it.  I left in in the room just in case she gets used to it and she ignores it. She doesn’t really care. She likes to hunt fake mice and the laser pointer, everything else is “Meh.”  

She used to dump her water out all the time and I realized she likes to drink moving water, so I put Cebu’s water fountain in there and she loves it.  She has the view of the backyard from the sliding glass doors she spends a lot of time looking out at.  She has crunchy food always and gets some wet food when I get home from work, I spend a few minutes with her when I come home from work every day and at least an hour hanging out in bed watching shows and playing laser pointer... and she seemed happy.

In January, 2016 I woke up one night and found a warm lump next to my feet.  

It may have been a little earlier than that, but not much.  Patchy figured out that it’s more comfy ON the bed (well, she had been sleeping up there when I wasn’t in the room before then, but never while I was there) and hey, humans are warm!  Actually now that I look at it, I think this pic was taken in the afternoon, so maybe this was one of the first times she came onto the bed when she knew I was awake.  (Hey, I’m big on weekend afternoon naps.)

Further strides.. were slow, but measured.  The first time she’d come up on the bed while I was sitting up.  The first time she walked on me when I was laying on my side.  The first time she walked on my stomach and smelled my face.  Figuring out that sleeping higher up on the legs is even warmer.  Figuring out that purring and making biscuits on the human’s leg was really nice.  Oh man, I cried the first time she made biscuits and I heard her purring.  That was probably early 2017.

I had a few aborted attempts at trying to touch / pet her, including thinking she was Pemily while I was still half alseep.  These always lead to setbacks that took awhile to get that trust back.

After awhile, she’d sometimes even do stuff like... this.

This was a huge deal because it was the first time I had even thought to record her and she just came right up and said hi, and she laid there for like 20 seconds while I talked to her.

And then I asked her if she wanted pets, and she immediately backed off.

But hey, she backed off to go do this...

So it wasn’t so terrible.  A little biscuit making before settling down to hang out.

I decided about a year ago, that to move forward, what I needed was to get her used to my hands. So I began Operations: Hands are OK!  For literally the last year, every day I just try to spend a few minutes with my hands somewhere near her when she settles in.  And I started trying TINY PETS on her paws when she was relaxed.  This was a gamble because most cats hate having their paws touched.  But she could see my fingers touching her paws, and tiny gentle paw strokes that did not hurt were something she could control, and remove her paws from.  Which usually she did, and at first she’d get up and move, but eventually, she’d just tuck her paws under.

Sometimes... even something like this would happen...

See?  You can touch MY hands, too!  It’s OK!

I also let her sniff my hand any time she was close enough, and she got used to that, I started using it as a greeting.  She was totes OK with touching any part of me that was covered up with a blanket at this point.  So I’d also put my hand under the blanket sometimes and then under her paws or side.  She didn’t like this much, either, but would tolerate it in small bursts. 

I was patient with her and tried to not push her boundaries too much.

The thing is, though, she has not been to the vet since getting TNR’d in 2014, and she’s now at least 10 years old.  I don’t want to take her if it’s going to set her back, and I don’t want to someday have her be sick and still terrified of my hands, of touch, so... I pushed forward.

The last few months... I started feeling like she knew she wanted something else, but she didn’t know what she wanted or how to ask for it.   So I went for pets with the back of my hand a few times, slowly, letting her know where my hand was at all times and she’d... run away after a short brush.

She’d hang out... close, like this, though.  Looking at me like... “I need something.  What is it that I need?���

Less than two weeks ago, on June 12, I had to wake up at 4am for a work thing, made it back to bed at 6:15ish, then woke up, oops, an hour later than I meant to around 9am.  I really needed to get up and get to work, but woke up to Patchy laying with me, then when she saw I was awake she climbed up to my stomach, purring.

“Okay, we’re gonna try pets again,” I said to her, and showed her the back of my hand.  She sniffed it, then I lightly brushed it against her side.  She didn’t move.

“Okay, we’re gonna do that again,” I said, and for 4 or 5 strokes, she let me.  So I got bold, and went for the regular front-hand full body pet down the spine.

She let me.  I held my breath and looked at her and she didn’t move.  I tried again and she let me.  And after a few seconds... I was just... petting her.  Like you would any other cat.  I literally got teary eyed as I told her what a good girl and brave girl she is.  She... leaned into it.

After about a minute, I got really bold and tried a neck scratch.

SHE.  LOVED.  IT.

This was after about five minutes of neck-scratch / body pets switching.  I grabbed my phone off the nightstand to capture the moment, and she was totally cool with staying still while I shifted a bit to take the pictures with my left hand.

I probably hung out with her for ten or fifteen minutes and actually had to push her away to get up and run into work and not miss a meeting I was supposed to run at 10.  I’ve been so. damn. happy. about this.

It took ten years you guys.  Or damn close to it.  A decade of knowing this cat, of getting her to trust me bit by bit.  

And now, when I hop in bed at night, whenever she’s ready she’ll jump up and hang out.  A few nights ago she even let me pet her while she was standing up and I was sitting up for a moment, and once while I was sitting up and sitting cross-legged, she laid down on the pillow in front of my legs and just let me pet her that way.  

She even woke me up in the middle of the night last night going “Uh, hey, that thing you do now?  Do that some.”  She lays there and purrs and lets me pet her for a long time.

She still mostly runs under the bed if I’m in the room and not on the bed, but the last year or so she’s been lazy about it, instead of jumping up terrified and running under the bed it’s more like “Oh... you’re here.  Ok.”  More like a routine than a necessity.  The last few days she may even be outside of the bed under the nightstand or just... NEAR the bed if I’m walking around, but I haven’t pushed that boundary yet.

My goal is now, by the end of the year, have her tolerate me picking her up, or at least pushing her around.  Get it so I can get her into a carrier and... if I’m real lucky, get her to the vet before 2019 is over.  We’ll see.

Maybe, but not likely, someday I can open the bedroom door again, sleep with the other cats (I do occasionally sleep in the guest room so they can hang out with me, but that bed is nooot as comfortable.)  For the last few years I was doubtful we’d ever get this far.  So who knows.

Thanks for reading this far!  I have been wanting to just record this story for awhile and made myself sit down and do it tonight.  I’ll post further updates if warranted. :)

[orbemnews]

Zwirner May Disrupt Art Gallery Model With Click-to-Buy Business The art world is only just beginning to address the questions raised by the pandemic, such as: Are in-person art fairs a thing of the past and virtual viewing rooms the future? Will museums maintain no-touch ticketing and auction houses continue global online salesrooms? One mega-gallerist, David Zwirner, has decided to double down on what he took away from the last year: the need for a click-to-buy marketplace to sell original works of art. As a result, Zwirner has created Platform, a website that debuts Thursday and which each month will offer 100 works presented by about 12 independent galleries around the world with prices ranging from $2,500 to $50,000. “We learned there is a real place in the art world for e-commerce,” Zwirner said in a recent telephone interview. “There is an audience out there we did not know existed. They don’t go to galleries necessarily and they don’t really go to art fairs. They look at things online.” He noted that the audience was “almost all millennials,” who discover art through Instagram and word of mouth. “The art world has never catered to them,” Zwirner added. “They can graduate into a much broader participant.” Zwirner presented an earlier pilot of Platform last year, and several of the participating galleries are returning for the new iteration, including Bridget Donahue and Night Gallery. Among the new partners are Bortolami, Charles Moffett, and Jessica Silverman. The artists that Platform is presenting initially include Kenny Rivero, Jane Dickson and Jibade-Khalil Huffman. To be sure, websites like Artsy and Artnet have been selling art online for some time. And last year, Sotheby’s started Gallery Network, an online, buy-now marketplace for works valued up to $150,000. But for a blue-chip behemoth like Zwirner, the Platform venture represents a significant departure from the traditional in-person gallery model. The additional information provided about the works of art is more extensive, and in many cases artists are making work for the site. “Everybody is trying to figure out this new landscape, which relies so much on digital content and selling material without actually seeing it in person,” Moffett said. “We’ve tried a number of different platforms and have been less than satisfied with the results. Obviously the David Zwirner brand is one that is very well respected and my artists liked the idea that they would be presenting on the Zwirner platform, so we figured, why not give this a shot?” Skeptics will say that Zwirner is just trying to garner publicity and generate good will with a paternalistic, Robin Hood move that ultimately gives his own gallery 20 percent of every sale on Platform. And some in the art world worry that Platform is merely a farm team for Zwirner — a way to develop emerging artists, woo them from smaller galleries, and harvest information about those galleries’ clientele. “I wouldn’t be interested in doing something like that — it’s a little bit of a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said the dealer Larry Gagosian. “My advice to smaller galleries would be preserve your own identity and brand — even if you can’t do it at the level of a large gallery, work within your means and don’t hand over your artists and client lists to somebody who might take advantage of it at some point.” Zwirner said he is looking to collaborate with smaller galleries, not supplant or exploit them, pointing, for example to the gallery’s recent addition of the Romanian-born sculptor Andra Ursuta, who will continue to show with Ramiken Crucible, and to Harold Ancart, who continues to work with a smaller gallery, Clearing. Lucas Zwirner, the son of the dealer, who led the creation of Platform, pointed out that the mega-gallery is investing in material on the site that gives the artists greater visibility, including interviews and videos. “We’re not just taking art and selling it,” he said. “We’re helping grow careers and promote artists.” Moffett said the click-to-buy aspect was a little unsettling, replacing the “inquire” button, which initiates a conversation with the gallery. “I take a lot of pride in placing all of my artists’ work carefully, and the idea that we’re putting these artists’ work out there in the world for anybody to buy is a little bit stressful,” he said. “If I had a preference, it would be the ‘inquire’ button, but I think taking a leap of faith is worth it.” Indeed, where dealers typically take great pains to place works of art with prominent museums or reputable collectors, Platform allows anyone but felons to purchase. But that democratization, David Zwirner said — as well as the transparency of posted prices, compared to the usual gallery opacity around what things cost — is integral to the new business. “We’re not sitting there and saying, ‘You get to buy it and you don’t,’” Zwirner said. “It’s first come, first served.” David Kusin, an economist in Dallas who tracks the art market, commended Platform’s “use of 21st-century technology” for buying and selling art, and suggested Zwirner could use the venture to collect valuable art price data. Mike Steib, the chief executive of Artsy, said he welcomed Platform into the arena: “Anything we can do that makes buying art as accessible as buying cars, jewelry or luxury goods is great.” Platform is staffed by a team of 10 young gallerists — in addition to his son, it includes Zwirner’s daughter, Marlene — who bring different backgrounds to the venture. Bettina Huang, for example, Platform’s general manager, has held leadership roles at e-commerce companies like Fab.com and the Amazon subsidiary Quidsi. Silverman, who just opened a new space in San Francisco, said the two artists she will feature are Clare Rojas and Catherine Wagner. “I’m interested in experiments,” the dealer said of Platform — “who might come to the work who we don’t know.” James Fuentes, a Manhattan gallerist who participated in a pilot of Platform during the pandemic, said that the experience proved to be “a huge boost for us in a very difficult time,” and that the online space is “less hierarchical.” Several artists on Platform said they were excited about the possibility of greater exposure. “Even a year ago it would have been unimaginable for a dealer like Zwirner to invite an artist like me to participate in this,” said Lily Stockman, who shows with Moffett. Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, who shows with the Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, said Platform enabled someone like himself, recently out of art school, to have access to Zwirner’s network “without having to meet any of the rigorous intense expectations of a gallery of that caliber.” While 72 percent of Platform’s first round of artworks are $10,000 and under, Zwirner said he expected the price point to increase. His gallery last June sold Jeff Koons’s “Balloon Venus Lespugue (Red) (2013-19)” for $8 million, and in the last 12 months has sold over $100 million worth of art online. What particularly fueled the dealer’s interest in the venture, he said, was his experience with the gallery’s fund-raiser, “Artists for Biden,” in which more than $2.5 million worth of art by Koons, Kehinde Wiley and Carmen Herrera, among others, sold through a “buy now” option. He added that 40 Koons prints of an inflatable American flag, priced at $10,000 each, sold out in seven minutes. “Those are new kinds of numbers for a gallery,” said Lucas Zwirner, who added that “over 90 percent of buyers were new to the gallery.” The venture is meant to cultivate a new breed of art buyer, one who may feel more comfortable making a decision for themselves, with less interest in the hand holding that dealers often provide. “I don’t have time to go to every young emerging gallery,” said Dorian Grinspan, a New York City collector. “It’s exciting to have a place where you have a more curated showing of what’s around the market.” (While the smaller galleries propose the artworks for Platform, the Zwirner specialists may weigh in.) The mechanics of the site have been their own challenge. Zwirner Gallery is partnering with the fine-art shipping company Dietl International, using a custom-built system that provides shipping quotes at checkout. The customer covers shipping costs and galleries get paid when the work ships, avoiding the invoices, packing and transport bills that can be a burden. David Zwirner said he has spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” making sure the website is high quality, efficacious and handsome. His commitment to the new online venture inevitably raises questions about his plan for a new $50 million gallery in Chelsea, which has been delayed by the pandemic. “It creates a golden opportunity for me to think about what I really want,” he said. “I’m no longer as sure as I was four years ago.” Zwirner said he also likes the idea of a business like Platform saving his gallery — and the smaller ones collaborating with him — the steep costs of multiple art fairs every year. “We will never go back to the old way of working,” the dealer said. “We’ve encountered a much larger art world than we thought existed. If it proves to be a robust primary market, the sky’s the limit.” Source link Orbem News #Art #Business #ClicktoBuy #Disrupt #gallery #Model #Zwirner

[dipulb3]

Yes, Andrew Yang could be New York City's next mayor

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/yes-andrew-yang-could-be-new-york-citys-next-mayor/

Yes, Andrew Yang could be New York City's next mayor

The answer, to the astonishment of many, is yes. And with each passing day, time is running out for Yang’s rivals — a diverse field loaded with governmental, civic and business leaders — to chase him down.

In a year of death, drudgery and economic destruction, Yang, a tech entrepreneur whose moonshot 2020 presidential primary bid amassed more goodwill than votes, has distinguished himself from the pack with an uncomplicated message: He wants to make New York fun again. The defining clarity of his campaign has, for now, largely obscured the most powerful argument against it — that even for those who admire Yang’s ambition and joyful candidacy, the 46-year-old is still a political newcomer and ill-suited to lead the city out of its worst crisis since bankruptcy beckoned in the 1970s.

His time in the private sector, launching start-ups and then running a presidential campaign, he argued, made him New York’s best bet to juice the kind of recovery that delivers for both workers and their corporate bosses.

“There are a number of people who’ve been in government for years in this field, but many of us have felt let down by city agencies over the past number of months,” Yang said. “So you have to ask yourself, do you really think that someone who’s been embedded in these bureaucracies is going to be the best person to lead us out of this crisis?”

The stakes are stark — and Yang has sought to become a better-rounded candidate in his second campaign. His advocacy for a universal basic income and warnings that automation could decimate the American workforce, the pillars of the presidential run, have largely taken a backseat to talk about creating more affordable housing, attracting investments from business titans, who have threatened to flee if their tax burden rises, reviving the arts and restoring public safety.

Here and around the country, the pandemic has laid bare old inequities and exacerbated others. More than 30,000 New Yorkers, a heavily disproportionate number of them from working poor, minority communities, are dead. Many multiples more are grieving. Even as the candidates spell out their post-Covid plans, the virus continues to spread, with new cases hovering at a dangerously high plateau. The city has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs, countless small businesses, and even with the shot of financial adrenaline provided by the recent federal aid package passed by Democrats in Washington, the city’s robust public sector — bus drivers, sanitation workers, subway operators — could still, in the absence of astute leadership, face devastating cuts. Yang’s campaign likely hinges on undecided New York City Democrats, the largest bloc in every poll of the race to date, embracing a fundamental trade-off — by choosing an exuberant cheerleader over candidates with deeper understandings of the city’s infinitely complicated levers of power.

His rivals remain publicly confident that they won’t. There are debates to come and millions of dollars of television ads to roll out. At about the same stage in 2013, the last open mayoral primary, Anthony Weiner was the favorite and future Mayor Bill de Blasio looked like an afterthought.

Candidate Maya Wiley, a civil rights lawyer and former counsel to de Blasio, suggested in a recent interview with Bloomberg News that Yang’s advantage in name recognition would fade alongside his lead in the polls.

“My daughter had a Howard Dean Beanie Baby and that didn’t help him,” Wiley quipped. “T-shirts don’t win elections.”

‘A happy warrior’

The challenge for Wiley and others, in what could charitably be called an eight-deep field of candidates, is to figure out a path up or around him.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a former police captain who advocated for reforms during his time on the force before serving as a state lawmaker, is widely regarded as best-positioned to overtake Yang, something even his top advisers acknowledged in a recent press briefing. Wiley and New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, along with former nonprofit executive Dianne Morales, are the liberal favorites, though only Wiley and Stringer appear to be in touching distance. Kathryn Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner with a deep knowledge of city government, has lagged behind.

So too have Ray McGuire, the former Citigroup executive, and Shaun Donovan, who served as commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development under Mayor Michael Bloomberg before going to work for the Obama administration. Both have independent expenditure groups ready to boost them as election day nears.

“Right now, there are so many candidates and so little attention being paid to the campaign because of other things that are going on — the pandemic, everything in Washington and (with the scandals surrounding Gov. Andrew Cuomo) — it’s impossible for any candidate to communicate positions on issues to a large number of voters,” said Kenneth Sherrill, a professor emeritus of political science at Hunter College.

The draw of Yang, he added, was easy to name.

“This guy’s a happy warrior,” Sherrill said. “People may well just be craving happiness. And I’m not talking about a comedian. I’m not talking about a clown. I’m not talking about a demagogue — just somebody who likes people and likes life.”

Yang has mostly worn his frontrunner status lightly, pivoting — like the more seasoned politician he is now — from questions about the prospect of taking on such a heavy responsibility. But the historic implications of his campaign, which could end with Yang becoming the city’s first Asian-American mayor, have been heightened by a citywide surge in anti-Asian violence.

“It’s something that’s affected everyone. But it certainly hits home for Asian Americans, who feel like our race is putting us in a position to worry more about being able to go on the subway or walk down certain streets at night,” Yang said. “So I feel these issues very personally, but I think a lot of Americans do. It’s just a really devastating time for the Asian American community.”

On the boardwalk at Coney Island on Friday afternoon, as some of those other candidates came and went to mark the landmark’s formal re-opening, Yang took questions from a smattering of reporters and few inquisitive cameramen.

He said he was “thrilled” by the freshly approved New York State budget, which includes new aid to schools, a tax hike on the wealthy and financial aid to undocumented workers who had been excluded from federal legislation. The legalization of marijuana, which passed separately but almost concurrent to the budget, also got his stamp of approval. On the issue of his Nathan’s hot dog order, he confessed to keeping it simple — ketchup and mustard, self-applied, declaring himself “a little sauerkraut dubious.”

He then paid tribute to the rapper and actor DMX, a beloved New York native, whose death had been announced earlier in the day. When the would-be gotcha question came — what was his favorite DMX song? — Yang named “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem” and talked affectionately of the “bad action movies” he starred in.

“Like, good bad action movies,” Yang clarified after being accused by a photographer of suggesting “Belly” was not, in fact, good. “Like action movies that were in the target and I was very much the target during that era.”

That brand of gleeful, accessible campaigning was the trademark of Yang’s unexpectedly strong presidential campaign, transforming him from a no-name gadfly to a regular on the debate stage. But the issues facing New Yorkers, in this race, are much different. Yang leads in the polls — and his every utterance is coming under harsh scrutiny from the other candidates, the press and skeptical voters.

Lis Smith, the veteran New York political operative who helped lead Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, said the “biggest hurdle” Yang has to overcome is proving — again and again — that he could take a punch and stay on his feet.

“Could he withstand the scrutiny of being a frontrunner?,” Smith said. “The simple answer, so far, is yes.”

The backlash intensifies

Yang’s flirtations with a bid to become New York’s 110th mayor began almost immediately after he exited last year’s Democratic presidential primary. He seemed to be shying away from the prospect, though, when he signed on for a brief stint as a Appradab political commentator and founded a nonprofit.

By mid-December, though, the chatter picked up. Private conversations became public knowledge. Yang spoke to local leaders, like Rep. Grace Meng of Queens and the Rev. Al Sharpton, and eventually enlisted some of the city’s top political operatives to chart his path.

Then, on January 13, he made it official.

“Seeing my city the way it is now breaks my heart,” Yang said in a video directed by filmmaker Darren Aronofsky. In it, he introduced a signal endorsement, from newly elected Rep. Ritchie Torres, chatted with his wife, Evelyn, about his favorite sports teams (Mets over Yankees; the Knicks, in spite of himself) and school funding, ticked through his signature policy proposals and greeted passersby who, months later, still clamor for selfies and snips of conversation.

But Yang’s appeal on the street and its evidence in the polls also set off a backlash.

On Twitter, he is under constant scrutiny from critics who question his knowledge of the city and commitment to its civic life. He was mocked for taking pictures in a “bodega” that looked more like a supermarket. And piled-on again after posting a snap from a subway line that didn’t run to his stated destination. (His campaign subsequently told reporters that he transferred lines en route.)

More substantially, Yang struck a nerve early on when he revealed that, at the height of the pandemic last year, he and his family left the city for their second home — a couple hours away, upstate.

And his recent suggestion on Twitter that the city more strictly enforce rules against unlicensed street vending angered advocates who worry a new crackdown would target immigrant workers. Yang has also said he wanted to increase the number of licensed vendors, which could put him at odds with brick-and-mortar shops. (On Monday, he backed off “the sentiment as it was described on that thread” and said he didn’t view the issue as a “zero-sum game” between vendors and retailers.)

Under sometimes harsh examination from local media and activists, Yang’s big ideas — guaranteeing a basic income for the half-million New Yorkers in greatest need, establishing a public bank, appointing a police commissioner “whose career is not primarily in law enforcement” — can sound less inspired than half-baked. His plans to fuel an economic revival with public-private partnerships and skepticism over tax hikes on big businesses and the wealthy, coupled with distrust of his idiosyncratic ideological bearings, have made Yang an enemy of the city’s ascendant progressive and leftist political organizations.

The speed and sharpness of the attacks from his rivals has also accelerated as the election nears.

Stringer recently accused Yang of peddling “municipal Reaganomics.” Adams, in perhaps the most heated back-and-forth to date, slammed his business record and falsely claimed Yang had “never held a job in his entire life.” A spokeswoman for Wiley, responding to his call for de Blasio to slow the spending of federal stimulus funds, labeled Yang a “mini-Trump.”

Asked on Friday about that particular turn of phrase, Yang half-laughed.

“I genuinely don’t know how to respond to that,” he told Appradab. “I just find that very confusing. Genuinely.”

Yang’s campaign has also aggressively pushed back on the assertion that handing him the city’s top political job during a period of historic uncertainty could imperil its recovery.

“What is a risk,” top Yang strategist Chris Coffey said, “is doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same results.”

The wild cards

Whether Yang can maintain his lead — and bring in new voters — as the other candidates crack open their war chests could boil down to a few key strategic decisions by the remaining, undecided political movers in a city where the old machers, like the county parties, have mostly been relegated to the sidelines.

The big labor unions have largely split their support among Adams, Stringer, Wiley and Garcia. Progressive groups seem to be hesitating, though, stuck between Wiley, Stringer and their affection for Morales. A number of increasingly influential, young, liberal city-based state lawmakers backed Stringer early on, but it is unclear if their support will help fuel a consolidation on the left.

That uncertainty has been heightened by the introduction of ranked-choice voting, a system that typically rewards candidates who, even when they are not a voters’ top pick, can maintain some level of popularity — and acceptability — across various constituencies. But there is no indication, at this point, that the candidates trailing in the polls are prepared to alter course and consider strategic cross-endorsements.

If they do, the shift could happen in the coming weeks, after three of the handful of remaining outside influencers pick their horse. At the top of the list is The New York Times editorial board; the United Federation of Teachers, which has a losing record in recent elections but has seen its membership unified by the backlash over school re-openings; and the Working Families Party.

Emboldened by its staying power despite Cuomo’s best attempts to unravel it, the WFP is one of the few progressive organizations with the name brand and grassroots power to drive support to one (or more) of the leading liberal candidates.

“During a pandemic year, where candidates aren’t campaigning traditionally, we need to have a real path to victory,” WFP state director Sochie Nnaemeka told Appradab. “We cannot solely make our endorsement about value signaling. It has to be about who is the best vehicle for the progressive movement, for working people in the city to have representation at City Hall.”

Yang’s campaign, meanwhile, is projecting optimism while digging in for a dogfight.

“No one here is going to say there is no way for us to lose this race. There absolutely is,” Coffey, his strategist, said during a recent briefing. “But I’d rather be us than anyone else.”

[architectuul]

FOMA 8: Built Projects That Inspired

Many music genres have been associated with a place, either a city or a region, like trip-hop with Bristol, techno with Detroit, fado with Lisbon, hippie with San Francisco Bay, but fewer have to specific built projects. Our eighth FOMA edition curated by Fani Kostourou, looks at five urban housing cases, which despite being architecturally overlooked, they are worth being celebrated for the development and enhancement of a musical heritage. 

A housing estate of mind; iconic graffiti of Park Hill estate in Sheffield (2001).

They are not necessarily remarkable in their architecture or everyday reality; nevertheless, each of them has inspired and nurtured the emergence of a music genre. I argue that their architectural and urban design influenced the relationship of the musicians with the neighborhood, the city and the society, pushing them to discover new ways to react, challenge the norms and express themselves. My objective is to demonstrate a tacit connection between the tangible and intangible aspects of our built heritage.

Third show of Aborto Elétrico in Brasilia. | Source via Enrockada

Such connection can be found between Colina Velha Building and Brazilian punk rock music. Colina is a housing complex at the University of Brasilia designed by João de Gama Filguéiras Lima in 1962. It is a massive concrete building characterized by the sophisticated use of prefabricated elements [1]. Between the 1970s and 1980s, its spacious apartments accommodated meetings of Turma da Colina, a movement of young Brazilian bands like Aborto Elétrico, which revolutionized Brazilian punk rock. 

The social and spatial aspects of the life in Brasilia – the utopic, elegant, but monumental and monotonous city where the band members hailed from – and the state of Brazil after the end of the military dictatorship, strongly influenced the movement and the themes of the songs. These ranged from melancholic, political, and socially polemic subjects about drugs, war, nuclear plants, the state, military, and police, to topics of love, family and soul.

Excerpt of lyrics from Perfeição – Legião Urbana (1993)

The story was that Aborto Elétrico stopped rehearsing at Colina soon after their first show, marking the beginning of the end for the Turma da Colina movement. Nevertheless, their legacy lived on through the subsequently formed and very successful bands, Legião Urbana and Capital Inicial. Colina building first provided shelter for a youth that was struggling to express itself within the cold vast urban setting of the federal capital. The disentanglement and alienation constituted a common theme in both the music and the architecture.

Excerpt of lyrics from Anuncio de Refrigerante – Capital Inicial (2005); Recent recording | Translation by the author

At the same time punk rock was being born in Brasilia, hip-hop culture was incubated under the roof of the 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in South Bronx, New York. The building has been officially recognized as the birthplace of hip-hop. Jamaican American resident Clive Campbell–aka DJ Kool Herc was the first to introduce hip-hop music. In the early 1970s, Herc and his sister started hosting house parties in Sedgwick’s recreation room. At the time, Bronx was struggling with street gangs, disco’s popularity was fading, and the radio was searching for a new audience [2]. This is why block parties quickly turned into popular gigs, and moved out to public spaces. For the local young minorities, hip-hop was an alternative to the violent gang culture, a way to be heard expend their pent-up energy and a chance to generate income. 

DJ Kool Herc sets up for the legendary block party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Bronx, NY. 11th August 1973 | Source via Urban Ubiquity

In the book How to Rap Immortal Technique explains the role of parties in old school hip-hop: "Hip-hop was born in an era of social turmoil and real economically miserable conditions for the black and Latino people [..] in the same way that slaves used to sing songs on a plantation". While at the beginning songs were about party related subjects, slowly the lyrical focus shifted on social issues, like life difficulties in decayed housing projects, so that hip-hop became, in the words of T.I. rapper: “a reflection of the environment that the artist had to endure before he made it to where he was. [..] if you want to change the content of the music, change the environment of the artist”.

Excerpt from the lyrics The Message – Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five (1982)

After a lengthy period of neglect and shady dealings, the building was finally saved from the real estate market, the new owners sought to work with the tenants to renovate it and safeguard its importance. This was the result of a collective effort by locals including Herc, groups like the Tenants and Neighbors Association, and politicians like Senator Schumer. So that the 1520 Sedgwick, "an otherwise unremarkable high-rise just north of the Cross Bronx Expressway and hard along the Major Deegan Expressway” was not only “the Bethlehem of Hip-Hop culture”, but also “the emblem of New York’s affordable housing crisis”.

Scene from La Haine film by Mathieu Kassovitz in the Cité de La Noé in Chanteloup-les-Vignes, France (1995) | Source via Film Grab

Nearly ten years after the birth of hip-hop in Bronx, rap arrived in France, demonstrating a different lyrical content concerned with issues of racism, integration, diaspora and ethnic diversity. The social and political situation of the early 1980s nurtured the establishment of a music culture that got enthusiastically embraced by the marginalized young minorities of a disturbed postcolonial French society. Key moment for its rise in popularity was the film La Haine by Mathieu Kassovitz in the mid 1990s where rap associated itself with the identity of young immigrants in the Parisian banlieues [3], further linking hip-hop to spatial concepts like ghetto and mass housing.

One of these post-war mass housing projects was the cité du Val-Fourré, an ideal neighborhood for workers of the automobile industry in Mantes-la-Jolie. In the west periphery of Paris this neighborhood offered nothing but housing, leading to a mono functional and segregated area, devoid of any real urban stimuli, that soon became a notorious ghetto of marginalization, poverty, violence, drug dealing, and street gang rivalry. 

Excerpt of lyrics from 78 – Expression Direkt ft. Big Red (1998) | Translation by the author

The situation motivated young immigrants to become involved in rap music as a way to express their anger and attract attention; a desire to be heard and taken seriously. French rapper Mokobe asserted: "We were rebels. We made music to speak about our daily lives, about people like us, and to defend their cause." At the same time, songs reflected a strong sense of belonging to the working class cités and their brotherhood. 

Excerpt of lyrics from Mon esprit part en couilles – Expression Direkt (1995) | Translation by the author

The media attention Val-Fourré attracted had it included in a mega redevelopment programme��in 2003 run by the Agence Nationale de Renovation Urbaine (Anru), which enhanced local activities and services. Land use diversity, however, may not ensure social mixing and integration, as the IAM band sang in 1997, “the elected officials carry out refurbishment to reassure, but it's always the same shit, behind the last layer of painting”.

Same applies to the Crossways estate, another post war marginalized residential project in East London, now rebranded as Bow Cross area. Thirty years after Herc’s parties, East London gave birth to a different music genre. What was South Bronx to hip-hop, was East London to grime, particularly the Crossways estate in the Bow area of Tower Hamlets borough. Wiley “the godfather of grime” affirms, the music genre comes all from Bow.

British rappers Dizzee Rascal and Wiley relax by the Crossways estate in Bethnal Green, London (2002) | Photo David Tonge/Getty Images

Grime is a hybrid of garage, drum and bass, hip-hop, and dance music characterized by machine-like, media and city sounds [4]. Dan Hancox argues there is a certain brutalist quality to grime as a genre: “Like the architecture, it’s very stripped down”. Urban at its very core, grime’s commentary is preoccupied with two subjects: the contemporary grim lives of the young, black, male MCs in the impoverished London council estates, and the sound of the future city that they always dreamed of– when looking at the nearby Canary Wharf. Their lyrics are playful, hedonistic, at times affectionate and aggressive, nostalgic and rebellious, yet dark and violent. For they describe what young sought to reclaim, their right to a city that was ignoring them. "Coming from where I come from, you didn't feel a part of London," Dizzee told to the BBC London. 

Excerpt of lyrics from Love this town – Dizzee Rascal ft. Teddy Sky (2013)

Grime also emerged at a time that governmental policies initiated the demolition/refurbishment of council estates to regenerate some of UK’s most vulnerable areas like Bow. Crossways was in poor condition, half-abandoned, occupied by homeless people, unpopular with residents and vulnerable to antisocial behaviors. Recent refurbishment, though, forced out the former “working-class Londoners who might listen to, or indeed make grime”. 

This may not be the future of the 3000 Viviendas project, an area built between 1976-77 in the southern periphery of Seville, to rehouse low-income people from post-disaster areas, precarious settlements, other urban quarters and the countryside [5], the majority of which were gypsies. The project is centrally located in Poligono Sur, which gets geographically and socially isolated due to surrounding motorways and railway lines that act as physical boundaries. The spatial segregation combined with the social uniformity and a lack of public services and other infrastructure led the project into decay and extensive informalization. Issues of drugs, illiteracy, unemployment, delinquency, and functional and physical deterioration of the built environment came along, giving it the name of vertical shantytown.

It was this area that got associated with the origins of new flamenco in the 1970s ought to young and talented gitanos expelled from Triana in the late 1960s; notably the Amador brothers and their group Pata Negra. The group revived the traditional flamenco [6] by fusing it with elements of rock and blues, creating the art of blueslería. Similar to the traditional one, new flamenco was influenced by the hybrid identity and culture of Romani people [7]. For the residents of 3000 Viviendas, the music was not only a means to express their everyday life and feelings, but also a mechanism to reverse the downhill of degradation, give visibility to and breathe new life into the neighborhood. The songs’ lyrics often revolved around topics of diaspora, displacement and marginalization as well as passion and affection for the neighborhood.

Excerpt of lyrics from El Rock del Cayetano – Pata Negra (1988) | Translation by the author

Excerpt of lyrics from Yo Me Quedo en Sevilla – Pata Negra (1987) | Translation by the author

This affection is best depicted through the example of Alala documentary. The movie shows how flamenco is used to educate and inspire young locals, allowing them to envision a better future for their neighborhood. Here, music empowers the community to stay and feel for the area, generate opportunities and transform itself and its space through a bottom-up process. 

___

[1] Czajkowski, J. in Emanuel (ed) (2016) “Contemporary Architects” p. 250 [2] Toop, D. (2000) “Rap Attack 3: African Rap to Global Hip Hop”. London: Serpent’s Tail. [3] Higbee, W. (2007) “Mathieu Kassovitz”. Manchester University Press. [4] De Jong, A. Schuilenburg, M.(2006) Mediapolis: Popular Culture and the City. [5] Torres Gutiérrez, F. J. (2011) “El territorio de los desheredados. Asentamientos chabolistas y experiencias recientes de erradicación en Sevilla”. Hábitat y Sociedad (3), pp. 67- 90. [6] On November 16, 2010, UNESCO declared flamenco one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. [7] Hayes, M. H. (2009) “Flamenco: Conflicting Histories of the Dance”. McFarland Books. pp. 31–37.

#FOMA 8: by Fani Kostourou

Fani Kostourou is an architect and urban designer. She studied architecture at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), and holds a MAS in Urban Design from ETH Zürich and an MRes in Spatial Design: Architecture and Cities from The Bartlett, UCL London. Fani’s design work has featured in publications such as Minha Casa, Nossa Cidade: Innovating Mass Housing for Social Change in Brazil (Ruby Press, 2014) and group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2014-15), Columbia GSAPP’s Studio-X in Rio (2013), Museu de Arte do Rio (2014), X São Paulo Biennale (2013) and 15th Venice Architecture Biennale (2016) among others. Fani is currently an EPSRC-funded doctoral student at The Bartlett School of Architecture, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK), and Postgraduate Teaching Assistant at The Bartlett School of Architecture, and Development Planning Unit, UCL. Recently and as part of her studio teaching, she has co-edited two publications on Emerging Design Research (The Bartlett 2015, 2017). Her activities also include project consultancy, graphic design, writing and editing. In April 2017, Fani joined the MIT Department of Architecture and Computation as a visiting PhD researcher.

[thehandmaidstalehulu]

Samira Wiley is modernity defined. While Elisabeth Moss, her co-star in The Handmaid’s Tale, rose to prominence in prestige television dramas such as Mad Men and The West Wing, Wiley has built a reputation almost entirely in shows made by streaming sites.

“It wasn’t a conscious decision,” says the 30-year-old over the phone, “the shows that are being written on streaming sites have surpassed anything seen on television traditionally.” After four seasons playing Poussey in Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, she now plays Moira, an activist and lesbian – in a world in which homosexuality is punishable by torture and death – in The Handmaid’s Tale, made by US streaming site Hulu.

Both shows were game-changers. Orange Is the New Black broke new ground for myriad reasons, dealing with drug abuse, mental illness, and the experiences of bisexual, lesbian, queer and transgender women in an infinitely more complex and sophisticated way than had been seen in mainstream entertainment before. It also featured a large cast of relatively unknown actors, most of whom did not conform to the Hollywood stereotype.

“In the past, on television, the ‘ideal woman’ was thin, white and always looked perfect, the farthest thing from any woman on Orange,” says Wiley. “Now we know that audiences don’t want to see some ‘ideal woman’, they want to see women who look like themselves, or look like their friends, their aunts, their mothers, their children.” The Handmaid’s Tale, meanwhile, would likely have always found an audience, thanks to Margaret Atwood’s seminal novel on which it is based. But, given the political context in which it has aired, the dystopian programme has thrust itself into popular discourse in a way that few series have managed in recent memory. “For something to resonate in this way is just overwhelming,” Wiley agrees. “And to have it happen twice in row … that’s just unheard-of.”

Wiley grew up in Washington DC, studied drama at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York, and spent the first few years post-college working in theatre in the city (she played Maria in Love’s Labour’s Lost for the city’s Public Theater company). Her career was never something carefully planned or strategised, she says, recalling an early meeting with her agent. “I remember going to his office and frantically telling him: ‘I just want you to know that I can do anything. I will do anything,’” she laughs. “Now, I think it is important to have some discernment.”

Her close friend from Juilliard, Danielle Brooks, had already been cast as fellow inmate Taystee in OITNB when Wiley auditioned for the show’s debut season. “Orange gave me my life,” she says, emphatically. “Not just in terms of my career, but it’s also where I met my wife.” When she married Lauren Morelli, a writer on the show, earlier this year, her parents officiated (they are both pastors).

The show also dealt Wiley an unprecedented level of recognition overnight. When it launched in 2013, it was one of the first Netflix Originals. All 13 episodes were released at once, enabling audiences across the globe to binge the entire first season and connect with Poussey. “I didn’t know how to handle the success at first,” she admits. “I was scared. I had people following me home. I spent a few days not leaving the house because I couldn’t deal with it. It was a huge shock.”

Wiley’s warm, funny, empathetic portrayal of her character soon became a fan favourite. “Poussey’s the definition of a lover not a fighter, and that is what people connect to,” says Wiley. “She’s a genuinely good person and she’s looking for love in prison, in such a pure way. When we look at her, we see potential, we see hope. We feel like, when she gets out, she is going to immerse herself back in society and have some success.” Consequently, the dramatic climax of the show’s fourth season – (spoiler alert!) Poussey’s death at the hands of a prison officer exerting undue force during a peaceful protest – was one of the most shocking and pivotal plotlines thus far.

“Everyone in the prison is affected by it,” says Wiley. Indeed, season five is all about the turbulent three-day aftermath of her death. Even though Poussey’s final storyline was inspired by the recent deaths of black men – including Eric Garner and Michael Brown – at the hands of US law-enforcement officers, Wiley says that at the denouement of the episode, race “suddenly goes away”. “The other prisoners finally see Poussey as a person. Not as a member of the ghetto dorm or the black girl in that clique that they don’t talk to,” she says. “They think: ‘Oh my God, if this happened to her, then this could happen to me, too.’”

For the actors playing the scene – Wiley motionless on the floor, Brooks sobbing beside the body of her best friend – it was no less highly charged. “Danielle and I were wiping each other’s tears,” she told the Hollywood Reporter.

Her metaphorical prison in The Handmaid’s Tale is no less bleak, brutal or dehumanising: the fictitious Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, where environmental factors have reduced the global birthrate to almost zero. The country is under military rule and fertile women have been rounded up, forced to become handmaids for the ruling elite and their barren wives. Homosexuals meanwhile are branded “gender traitors”. Her character, Moira, is, she says, “So many minorities, and she is all of the minorities that I am: she is a black, gay, woman. And the experience of walking through the world being a black, gay woman is such a specific experience. Sometimes, you can’t even talk about all of the things you go through, with that as your reality.”

In the original text by Atwood, Moira’s colour is never divulged, but the Republic of Gilead is one of white supremacy: Jewish people were given the choice of converting or leaving for Israel, and ethnic minorities have been removed and “resettled”. Bruce Miller, who adapted the story for television, tweaked that detail. “If the TV show itself is an all-white world, then you are making a racist TV show,” he reasons. “It was more interesting to me to have a world where fertility trumps everything, including race.” Moira’s colour does not prevent her from being used a sexual slave by the Commanders of the Faith, albeit in a somewhat different way to Moss’s character, Offred.

Where Poussey was a lover, Moira is most definitely a fighter. “Moira has such strength, she is such a spitball of fire, and Offred (Elisabeth Moss) is boosted just by the idea of her,” says Wiley. “She has lines like: ‘Moira wouldn’t take this shit,’ and, ‘Moira wouldn’t be like this.’ When Offred says: ‘I intend to survive,’ I think she gets that Moira is always going to survive.”

Wiley adds that she “really identified” with that. “Growing up,” she reflects, “I have been that person who pushes the envelope and is doing things that other people are not as ready to. I even think about my journey as being an out member of the LGBT community. I felt very connected to Moira in that way.”

When the show went into production in the summer of 2016, no one could have predicted that by the time it was on telly, the US would be be under an administration where the rights of women, immigrants and the LGBT community would be suddenly and dramatically, under threat.

“We started filming before the election,” notes Wiley, “and after it had happened, we realised how much more prescient it all was. I suddenly thought: ‘We’re doing something very important here, we’re doing something that needs to be done.’ “At the end of the day,” she continues, “it is just television. But if we treat television in the right way, if we treat it as art, it can elicit real conversations and real change. I have seen it happen with Orange, and now I see it happening with The Handmaid’s Tale.”

A second season of the show has already been commissioned, and since the first season ends faithful to the book, no one knows where the new material will go. But fans of the original text should take comfort that Atwood, a creative consultant on the show, will remain closely involved with its direction. Wiley admits that she was so nervous about meeting the esteemed 77-year-old author at their first team dinner that she switched places with Moss, to avoid having to speak to her. Now, however, the pair are firm friends. “If you go to my Instagram,” she says, “Margaret Atwood likes all of my pictures. She usually comments on them. It’s not like she writes in Atwood prose; they’re usually just emojis.”

She still sounds somewhat disbelieving: “I put up a picture of me kissing my wife, and she just responded with a tongue emoji.”

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 22nd September 2019

Our episode of REVIEWING THE CHARTS today seems to be particularly focused on British hip hop as we have the fall-out from a busy week amongst five new arrivals, a good majority of them being from UK trap artists... as well as Ariana Grande, clearly my favourite grime MC. Without further ado, let’s review the charts.

Top 10

For a fourth week, “Take Me Back to London” by Ed Sheeran featuring Stormzy, and remixed by Sir Spyro, Jaykae and Aitch, has a stronghold on the charts and honestly I haven’t bothered to listen to the song or its remix since it debuted; if it weren’t for the team-up of Ed and Stormzy this would be pretty unremarkable.

At our runner-up spot is the massive collaborative single, “Don’t Call Me Angel”, from three of 2019’s most interesting pop girls, Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus and Lana Del Rey (All of which have released albums of varying quality this past year), for the soundtrack of the blockbuster reboot for Charlie’s Angels, debuting at number-two, just shy of Sheeran. Bear with me as there are a lot of arbitrary figures here: This is Grande’s 23rd UK Top 40 hit and her 15th Top 10, Cyrus’ 17th UK Top 40 hit and her fifth Top 10 as well as Lana Del Rey’s tenth UK Top 40 hit and fourth UK Top 10 hit – in fact, it’s Lana’s highest-peaking song ever, and first song to hit the Top 10 here in the UK since the remix of “Summertime Sadness” peaked at number-four in 2013. The UK loves these three, it’s a movie soundtrack single with a video, I’m not surprised it’s reached these heights of success – I’m just shocked it couldn’t hit the top spot, if I’m honest.

Now we can run through the rest of the top 10 pretty quickly: First of all, we have three consecutive songs with identical falls on this week’s chart. Down one space to number-three is “Taste (Make it Shake)” by Aitch.

Also down a single position at number-four is “Higher Love” by Kygo and Whitney Houston.

At number-five, similarly down one spot this week, is “Ladbroke Grave” by AJ Tracey.

Standing still since last week is the non-mover of “Sorry” by Joel Corry, featuring uncredited vocals from Hayley May, which at this point has probably surpassed initial Love Island fame at number-six.

Also not moving this week is “3 Nights” by Dominic Fike at number-seven.

At number-eight, down three spots thanks to alleviating hype for the Hollywood’s Bleeding album with impacted last week, is “Circles” by Post Malone, although this definitely won’t be the last we see of him this week.

At number-nine, down a spot from last week yet not down soon enough, is “RAN$OM” by Lil Tecca.

Also down one position, finally, we round off the top 10 with “Strike a Pose” by Young T & Bugsey and Aitch.

Climbers

There is one notable climber this week, and that is “Dance Monkey” by Tones and I up five positions to #14, very quickly gaining from its debut three weeks ago. “Outnumbered” by Dermot Kennedy is only up three spaces so wouldn’t be all that notable if it weren’t Kennedy’s first ever entry into the Top 20 of the UK Singles Chart. Otherwise, there’s nothing to speak of here.

Fallers

This category is a lot more plentiful. In reverse order of where they stand on the chart, we have “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus making its way out down six spots to #38, “Ritual” by Tiesto, Jonas Blue and Rita Ora perhaps prematurely making an exit down eight to #36, “Buss Down” by Aitch featuring ZieZie dropping down 14 spaces off of the debut to #35, “Sounds of the Skeng” by Stormzy also taking a hit immediately after debuting high up as it’s down 11 spots to #31, “Senorita” by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello slowly winding down five spots to #19, and finally, also down five spaces to #15, we have “Goodbyes” by Post Malone featuring Young Thug, taking less of a hit than I expected off of the album impact last week.

Dropouts & Returning Entries

First of all, we have quite a few drop-outs considering there are five new songs debuting, the highest being “Hollywood’s Bleeding” by Post Malone off of the debut at #11. This is due to an arbitrary UK chart rule that only allows three songs by one artist on the chart at one time, and these have to be the highest-performing singles, hence, since the title track got trumped by another single in terms of popularity, it’s gone and probably won’t ever for another week as the debut from Post this week is already showing more longevity. Our drop-outs here are actually mostly massive smash hits that have been losing steam for a while and have just now dropped out after weeks on weeks of high performance. The first anomaly to this rule is “Lover” by Taylor Swift, after only five weeks on the chart, dropping out from #31 but it’ll probably be back soon enough. Otherwise, we have “So High” by MIST and Fredo out from #35, “You Need to Calm Down” by Taylor Swift out from #36, “bad guy” by Billie Eilish out from #37 and “Hold Me While You Wait” by Lewis Capaldi out from #39... as well as “Slide Away” by Miley Cyrus off of the debut last week, not picking up any steam at all which has me worried.

Uncommon for the UK Top 40, we have two returning entries. The first is “Lalala” by Y2K and bbno$ as I predicted, back to #40 after a particularly busy week pushed it out off of the debut. The second is “Panini” by Lil Nas X, propelled by both a futuristic, wonderfully cheesy video set in space as well as a remix with a feature from DaBaby, which honestly adds so much to the song and with the benefit of hindsight, his verse should have been there from the beginning. There’s also an “Official” music video for the remix featuring characters from Chowder which may or may not be legal but it’s hilarious.

Oh, and I feel I should add that Hypersonic Missiles by Sam Fender, the #1 album on the UK Albums Chart this week, has three songs outside of the Top 40 similarly to Lana’s last week, with “Will We Talk” up 15 spaces to #43, the title track re-entering the chart at #48, and a debut for “The Borders” at #59. Anyways, onwards with the show.

NEW ARRIVALS

#37 – “Wiley Flow” – Stormzy

Produced by EY, AdotSkitz and Illmind

Stormzy is releasing a fourth single from the still unnamed and unannounced album, the week after “Sounds of the Skeng”, with a second throwback-type single, which has me worried for the album in all honesty as it’s looking somewhat rushed so far and I loved Gang Signs & Prayer but it did suffer some filler, which “Wiley Flow” may just be an example of. Regardless, it’s his 18th UK Top 40 hit, and don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad at all, but it does feel like a re-tread of “Vossi Bop”. It starts with a menacing synth loop that may be a sample, but it has a pitch stretch at the end of the loop which seems like a cop-out as it does not add to the beat really, it doesn’t work as hypnotic as Stormzy’s stilted flow here isn’t exactly catchy, relaxed or even smooth, relying on more typical Western trap flows while the loop cuts out for more bass-rattling trap but... the ”hook” of sorts is boring and repetitive, doesn’t end properly but sounds really off rather than effective. The second verse is slightly better, I mean—

If you ain’t got more than five top tens, then I don’t want to hear no chat about charting

Uh... Well, then. I think I’ll skip this one, I mean, this isn’t a great song but Stormzy’s still pretty intimidating, I mean, damn, I better shut up. Please don’t kill me Stor—

We here at Sudnay Salad have received a statement from cactus’ estate announcing her untimely murder at age withheld. Rumours say she was the victim of a secret hitman order placed by famous British rapper Michael Owuo Jr., more well known as Stormzy.

#24 – “Professor X” – Dave

Produced by Dave

Now, there was an album bomb of sorts this week that wasn’t Sam Fender, yet neither Fender or this bomb had any impact on the Top 40. That album bomb was for the soundtrack to gritty street drama Top Boy, rebooted and continued by Netflix... and soundtracked by Drake leeching off of British hip hop as he’s been doing for the past few years, with his only contribution being a freestyle from 2018 on Link Up TV, with a tad more reverb. It’s a lazy compilation on Drake’s part, but he didn’t choose awful rappers at all, I mean, there are songs with Fredo and Little Simz, who had an amazing album you should check out that was released this year, GREY AREA, as well as AJ Tracey, Headie One, Nafe Smallz and two songs by Dave. The Drake freestyle, “Behind Barz”, debuted second-highest at #51, Fredo’s “Freddy” debuted at #53 and since technically this isn’t a singular artist’s album, it’s not affected by the chart rule restricting the songs debuting to the three biggest, meaning “Elastic” by AJ Tracey also debuted at #63. One of two singles by Dave from the soundtrack, the other being “God’s Eye”, landed at the Top 40 despite being the seventh song on the album and having no single push whatsoever. Anyway, it’s Dave’s 13th UK Top 40, and it sure is... okay? The strummed guitar is actually pretty intimidating but the lyrics aren’t at all so that doesn’t work. The trap percussion with the intense sub-bass kicking in during the first verse as well as the sweet vocal samples and strings makes for a pretty cool beat, actually, but Dave doesn’t say much of interest or include some cool wordplay... and all of this seems more like a demo for “Streatham” from Psychodrama – the flow is exactly the same for most of it, although this is the typical “Dave flow”... but then at the end of the first verse, he has the exact same flow switch that worked so well into the bass launching in the middle of the second verse on that song, but here it just leads to a half-chorus and a brief interlude from what I’m assuming is Top Boy. It kind of cheapens “Streatham”, which is still a fantastic song, although the second verse is better and I’m not going to lie and say the hook isn’t pretty catchy. Otherwise, this is one of the worst songs I’ve heard from Dave in a while, and is relatively uninteresting in all factors.

#22 – “Take What You Want” – Post Malone featuring Travis Scott and Ozzy Osbourne

Produced by watt and Louis Bell – Peaked at #6 in Hungary and #8 in the US

Yeah, I did a double-take the first time I saw that listed on Spotify too. Since “Hollywood’s Bleeding” debuted last week, it has faltered in popularity, meaning arbitrary UK chart rules let this song chart, and oh, my God, I wish it charted sooner because this is easily one of the best songs on that Hollywood’s Bleeding album, right next to “Sunflower”, my personal favourite “Goodbyes” and what I think is the best deep cut, “Allergic” (Although that seems to be one of the least popular efforts from Post here). I’m not even sure what to say about it, to be honest, everything just meshes perfectly into place. This is Post Malone’s 13th UK Top 40 hit and Travis Scott’s eighth, as well as being Ozzy Osbourne’s ninth (Not counting Black Sabbath), and first UK hit since “Changes” with his daughter Kelly Osbourne hit #1 in 2001, more than 18 years ago – although in the US, Ozzy had a 20+ year lack of charting singles until “Take What You Want”. I feel I’m going to ramble on about this song but, God, it is near-perfect. It starts with a slick, processed, slightly downtuned acoustic guitar amidst creepy harmonised ad-libs from Post and Ozzy, before the sub-bass kicks in and Ozzy Osbourne sounds fantastic over looming 808s with his ominous, trembling voice, which sounds quite delicate and melodic here, a sharp contrast from the early metal sound of Black Sabbath but not unfound territory for the singer. The poetic lyrics are brutal and are a knee-jerk reaction to a break-up, where Ozzy and Post feel lost and clueless, like they’ve been sucked dry, and Post comes in with a pretty subdued flow initially, but then starts belting against a peaking mix, distorted bass and some low electric guitar (That’ll come back again, much more forward in the mix however...). Post’s warbling in the chorus arguably sounds better than Ozzy, especially when that crash of the kick drum comes in and the intensity is amped up to 100%... only for it to collapse, to make space for Travis Scott. Now, remember when I said this song was near-perfect? Well, I initially really didn’t like Travis’ verse here but it has grown on me immensely. Even if his content is nonexistent, Travis’ sour bitterness is lethal, talking about using the power given to him by his ex’s insults to make chains as well as almost threatening her at the end of the verse, saying that no matter where he goes, he’ll never be alone, but this woman is just completely isolated without him. It’s almost like he lives in some sort of primitive patriarchal society within his mind, and that’s completely fair, as not only would someone suffering from a brutal break-up be this self-indulgent but also he sounds fantastic saying it, with the distorted Auto-Tune drenched in reverb hitting in a similar way to Kanye on 808s & Heartbreak. The pre-chorus, also delivered by Travis, is just a bunch of manic thoughts vaguely resembling “rapper activities” collected into somewhat of a rhythmic pattern, and that’s how Travis feels - he is a bunch of words compiled with no rhyme or reason as he’s left fragmented and sour about the relationship. The final chorus is an awesome harmony from Ozzy and Post – they sound surprisingly great together, but slowly and slowly you hear those guitar riffs in the midst of trap percussion... which cuts out for an excellent guitar solo, with surprisingly technical skill and it works astonishingly well on the trap beat, especially when it elevates with repetitive ad-libs from both singers amplifying the chaos, just to slow down and end abruptly... much like the relationship. Funny how that works out. This is a fantastic song, everyone kills it from Post to Ozzy to Travis to uncredited producer-guitar man (that’s Andrew Watt, by the way), and that’s all I can say really.

#16 – “Nookie” – D-Block Europe featuring Lil Baby

Produced by Nathaniel London

So, funny story, I saw this song blow up in real time because for some reason “#LilBaby” was trending on Twitter in the UK and I was so confused because Lil Baby isn’t that big here. Turns out he had a feature on a D-Block Europe song... but so did Offset, and that track completely flopped so I didn’t expect this to go anywhere. Now I see the chart and it’s D-Block Europe’s fourth UK Top 40 hit and their third Top 20 hit, tied for their highest peaking song ever with “Kitchen Kings” from a couple months ago and Lil Baby’s highest-peaking song and first ever Top 20 here in the UK (“Drip Too Hard” with Gunna did chart at like #26 last year, however). I guess that’s just how awful I am at speculating. Most of the Tweets I saw with that hashtag were about how Lil Baby bodied the song and outshone Young Adz, the breakout star of the group, who ends up sharing a verse with the other member, Dirtbike LB. Dirtbike doesn’t handle the chorus or even most of his verse, so essentially this is a song by Young Adz and Lil Baby from the upcoming D-Block album PTSD and... it’s not as bad as it usually is from these guys, but that’s mostly because Lil Baby kills it here. I never liked the guy and I still don’t think I’ll like him in the future, but I have seen improvements. He tried to hold his own on “Baby” with DaBaby, had a pretty good verse on Young Thug’s “Bad Bad Bad” from So Much Fun and his verse here is not the first set of bars that I’ve heard from him I’d consider actually pretty good, although I’ll always personally prefer Gunna. Does he have interesting content in all his gunplay and shallow flexing? Not exactly, but he has some relatively funny punchlines here and there, referencing Lil Keed and mostly sticking out for how odd they are, we’ll get to funny lyrics in a second (We always do with these dudes). His flow is outstanding, especially for Lil Baby standards and picks up the pace and momentum of the song immensely, which had only been a Young Adz hook at this point, to the point where when he’s not on the song, it’s a pretty empty song, because it’s just a vaguely rural flute and guitar-lead trap beat with some ugly snares, 808s and farting synths behind a cheap trap skitter, as well as the awful Auto-Tune added to Young Adz that sounds awful as always, but Lil Baby actually has some energy for once, and the cheap, ear-ringing hi-hats being so monotonous when they rapidly skitter during his verse is pretty clever, and his climax of the verse as he slowly gets angrier would work if this was a competent beat. As for lyrics, well, sorry for expanding this song review for more it’s worth, but as with all D-Block Europe songs... we have a showcase for you.

Treat the p***y right, that’s good nookie (That’s good nookie) / Keep killers ‘round me, that’s how it should be (That’s how it should be, yea)

I think I’ve said this before but Young Adz is not very convincing when he’s talking about sex and violence because his delivery is so naive and childish... and sometimes his lyrics are too.

Should-a, would-a, could-a, [gnarly dude] just could be (Just could be)

Or they’re complete word salad. It’s always one of the two.

Yeah, you know the vibe

Not at all.

Yeah, just spoke to my Imam and he said I can get five wives

Okay, if you don’t know, an Imam is basically fulfilling the job of a Christian reverend in a mosque, and apparently the Quran accepts monogamy and polygamy. The more you know, but 1.) that could be wildly disrespectful, I wouldn’t know how to feel as a Muslim in response to that for obvious reasons and 2.) this is also wildly irrelevant.

Onto Lil Baby’s verse and honestly, his punchlines are a lot better because he just has a bunch of non-sequiturs and they seem intentionally funny rather than just missing the mark, like these lines:

Rolls Royce truck come through, that’s anus / Audemars Piguet, Rolex, both stainless

It’s almost like a comedy skit as he says something random or nonsensical then just completely switches topic to something more straightforward and this happens bar after bar.

Steering ‘round the way, I forgot that I’m famous

How? There’s one line here that is actually really clever, where he interpolates “No Guidance” by Chris Brown as if he’s going to start serenading or flowing more melodically, but then cancels himself out completely, interrupting himself so it almost sounds off-beat even, and it was pretty funny on first listen thanks to his delivery.

You got it, girl—I ain’t givin’ her my last name

Lamborghini truck, it got me speeding ‘round the fast lane / Thinking ‘bout the time I hid my bottle in the trash can

...I can’t find a single explanation for what that second line means and I love that.

I’m from South London... Hit a [gnarly dude] up, night-night, now it’s Church somethin’

You’re praying for him after you kill him, right? So you can just have a harsh rhyme with “now I’m prayin’ for him” instead of “Church somethin’”... but surely, Young Adz cares dearly about how his rhymes connect, I mean, he has an internal rhyme in the chorus rhyming “blending” with “blender”.

I’ll eat that p***y in Mayfair

To be fair, saying you’ll desecrate the most expensive property square on London Monopoly is a pretty big flex. Sigh, after re-listening to pick up these lines, the beat is just really incompetent and everything sounds so disjointed. Even Lil Baby’s verse, which I quite liked, suffers from the same issues and Lord forbid these guys have chemistry. Good Lil Baby verse, but this really isn’t worth yourtime.

#2 – “Don’t Call Me Angel” – Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus and Lana Del Rey

Produced by Max Martin and Ilya – Peaked at #1 in Greece, Hungary and Scotland, and #13 in the US

Now the song that probably deserves more of my attention, the new blockbuster soundtrack single, blah-blah-blah. We went through this already in the Top 10/pre-amble, so there are no reasons to cobble on here as well, let’s get to the song and yeah, put everything else about it aside, this is a pretty decent song. The tribal yet almost melody-box sing-songy melody not having a build-up at all and instead just dropping immediately into the hard bass-heavy trap beat is a pretty good idea and I enjoy the concept of having Ariana, Miley and Lana, three powerful women in the music industry, rejecting purity and asking for men not to call them “angels”, as these are Charlie’s angels, violent, athletic spies in pretty casual clothing, baring weapons at all times; it’s actually pretty impressive how all three singers here emulate the characters from the soundtrack as you’d figure with enough starpower this would be pretty disconnected from the film. All three stick in their little niche realms as well, with Ariana cooing on the chorus with some background belting and pretty Heavenly backing (Pun very intended), as well as subdued Auto-Tuned ad-libs during her verse. You’ve got Miley rapping in a country twang and I’m not going to lie, her verse is really disjointed and could have just not been there, but I do appreciate what it adds to the aggressiveness to the song. The way the beat just drops out entirely and switches to a more atmospheric synth soundscape with a ticking EQ’d out of existence drum beat for Lana Del Rey’s passive-aggressive bridge is great, although I’d like Lana to be a bit more involved, although her sole verse and involvement is probably for the best as her lines are the most powerful and striking here, with the line “I fell from Heaven, now I’m living like a devil” particularly standing out. In conclusion, this is a pretty genuinely great collaboration from the three girls, although Miley’s contributions I’m still unsure on and I feel there’s some empty space in the verses overall, but that chorus is killer, so it’s a pretty cool song and I’m not complaining it’s this high (Even though it’s probably not for long).

Conclusion

The Best of the Week is easily going to Post Malone, Travis Scott, Ozzy Osbourne and watt for “Take What You Want” and it’s not even close, but I’ll give Honourable Mention to Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus and Lana Del Rey’s “Don’t Call Me Angel”. There’s nothing that is exactly all that bad here other than the trainwreck that is D-Block Europe and Lil Baby’s “Nookie”, which makes them the recipients of Worst of the Week. I regret saying this because I do like Dave but he’s getting the Dishonourable Mention for “Professor X” and that’s all for now. Follow me on Twitter @cactusinthebank for more musical ramblings and I’ll see you next week!

[rachelannc]

ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK: The Final Season. Netflix. (Credit: Screenrant)

My oh my. What a journey these past seven years have been with Orange Is The New Black. And if you’re anything like me, you’ve been watching this show for the past seven years, and looking back at everything you’ve seen this show do, it just overwhelms you with all kinds of feelings.

I don’t tend to watch a lot of TV as committing to shows and the time and getting hooked onto something isn’t really in me, but Orange was the first show I ever watched on Netflix before Netflix really became what it was (as one of the first-ever Netflix original series made during a time people didn’t really know what Netflix was, giving roles to women, showcasing women’s stories and providing an intriguing setting at a women’s prison released during my slow college summer days, yeah, OITNB really stuck).

If you’ve managed to finish watching the final season, read on ahead if you don’t care for any potential spoilers.

OITNB was truly revolutionary. When it introduced us to Piper Chapman in its first season — an upper-middle-class white blonde entering prison — little did we know that she was just a “Trojan horse” to tell the stories of women who rarely get told: women of color, immigrant women, queer women, poverty-stricken women, women with addictions, mental illnesses, disabilities, etc. OITNB was a true pioneer in the way it told these very important, very under shadowed stories, and left us with some of its best episodes to date in its final season.

The main thing that has been OITNB‘s driving force is its ability to humanize characters

… characters we may have grown to hate or dislike simply because of their behaviors and actions with the characters we loved in the prison world. The flashbacks helped give us context as to why people are the way they are (it made early characters like Pornstache seem even lovable), which is something that is important and something we all should realize.

These women are women just like us. They have become a product of the system we are all placed into, and perhaps they lost their way. They found themselves at the wrong place at the wrong time, or got caught up in something seedy just for the sake of trying to survive.

In season seven, Tamika (Susan Hayward), an old friend of Taystee’s (Danielle Brooks) who became a prison guard at the same prison Taystee was incarcerated at, loses her job as warden at Litchfield — a job she got to become a “scapegoat” for black women and diversity for the uppers in the system, but a job she ended up proving to be terrific at, as she implemented programs to try and help make the prison a better place for the women. Taystee even started tutoring other inmates to pass their GED test.

When Tamika gets fired, she says she’s relieved, because no matter what good she or others may continue to do, “The system will always be what it is, and there’s not a damn thing I can do.” (That is one hell of a line.)

OITNB did a great job of highlighting and revealing the problems in our system — and how undeniably unfair they can be.

No matter what you do or how good you can try to be, the system always feels against you, and you feel helpless. In the case of Taystee, the systems of oppression became too much and almost impossible to fight or dismantle (even Mr. Caputo and the villainous Fig have tried their best to bring justice to the prison). A life sentence in prison for Taystee can make you question why you should even continue to try or fight, as you reason that ending your life is the only way out.

One of the most heartbreaking moments came in the form of Pennsatucky. She’s been there since season one and become one of the most lovable rednecks the shows ever had. She’s got a good heart, is widely misunderstood, and only wants the best for others and for herself. Her learning disability may hit home to so many people, and the fact that she did pass her GED, all thanks to Taystee, only to find that out after Pennsatucky lost her life… That was an immediate tearjerker. And a real loss that doesn’t sugarcoat anything. (Ugh.)

One of the storylines I really loved this season was the relationship Nicky (Natasha Lyonne) found with Shani Abboud (Marie Lou Nahhas) in the immigration detention center. For such a brief character in the whole of the series, Shani’s story was so telling, riveting and important. Her story of deportation, but also of female genital mutilation within the Muslim culture, was so revealing. I’m glad shows like OITNB exist to shine a light on these issues and cultural differences that do in fact exist, but never see the light of day. Her presence was refreshing, and we got to see so many layers come to light of Nicky as well, for how broken she is but how much of a heart she has for everyone around her. (And I have to add, I’ve got such a girl crush on Shani, as straight as I am, ha!)

There are so many layers to this series, but as Piper has always been the one that tied the whole series together, we can’t help but feel and relate to her. (After all, most of this shows viewers might relate to the white liberal that is Piper?) As she gets released from Litchfield and transitions into everyday life, the struggles of that life out of prison become so real. Paying rent, finding a job, keeping up with your probation, and trying to stay out of trouble? Taystee made that very clear (and so did many of the other inmates) as they found their way back into prison, after being released, and it all just becomes one huge circle and cycle that repeats itself (for Aleida, “I’ve got people in there, and I’ve got nobody out here,” is so telling).

Piper’s moment with Larry when he laid it all out on her — for who he thinks she is, and read her and her actions like a book (as someone who has had her whole life laid out in front of her, this perfect, beautiful life, but one day maybe meant nothing to her, as she craved something different, which she found through Alex, and that drama continues to fuel her, even when she’s got this perfect woman in the form of Zelda in front of her) — was just so incredibly telling. (I fearfully might be able to relate to Piper in this case, quite frankly…)

We begin to know ourselves and our relationships better through these characters, and as these characters get tested, we see what drives characters to do what they do, which makes this series so damn compelling. It’s a series that has always been about everyone else but Piper, and we can all relate to it.

This series has opened up so many conversations over the years, and when it started in 2013, it began to highlight pressing topics during its run. The Black Lives Matter movement was at an all-time high when we saw the death of Poussey (Samira Wiley), due to an untrained guard trying to stop a fight he thought she was engaging in, only to accidentally suffocate her to her death. Then came the prison riots and the unjust f**ked up system that goes into saving the upperhands’ lives and and reputations at the sake of the inmates.

Although season seven as a whole seemed to be its most focused yet, with each episode and every scene serving up some hell of moments, powerful scenes, damn funny moments and the humor you find in these women who find happiness while even in the sh*ttiest of circumstances… I think that’s what this show’s all about.

Life will always throw you curveballs and tough moments, and it’ll never get any easier, as the system will always work against you and out of your favor, but, you can find happiness. You can find joy in the little everyday moments and find your life’s purpose and make someone’s day that much better.

All of the exits in this show were so beautifully raw, painful, unfair and real. The deportation of poor Maritza (Diane Guerrero), who had grown up in the U.S. her entire life, just felt so unfair! And while I had wished to see more of the other inmates’ stories whom we had fallen in love with over the years, such as Soso, Big Boo, Yoga Jones, and all the others in the Columbus, OH prison, this show seemed to do its part (I’d hope someday they’ll continue these stories of the other women). The last 20 minutes of the last episode felt a little rushed to get all the cameos of the other women in, but, understandably so, it was still a lovely send-off.

There’s not much else I can say at the moment, but I think for anyone who’s watched this show knows the great impact its had. Thank you, Orange, for what you’ve done and given us, and all the conversations you’ve sparked and platforms given for so many viewers and women over the years.

Orange, forever. 🧡

Have you watched the final season? Do you watch OITNB? If so, I’d love to know your thoughts on the season or series as a whole!

My Thoughts After 7 Years of ‘Orange is the New Black’ My oh my. What a journey these past seven years have been with Orange Is The New Black…

[a1mcusmanointrotobuscomms]

Week 3: Teamwork

Teamwork is a process that involves how a team comes together and interacts, rather than the actual success of the project (Hughes & Jones 2011). This was at the core of what I wanted us to achieve as a group for our presentation. To work effectively and harness positive interactions with each other.

As we formed our group, there was an unfamiliarity in the air, as out of the other four members, I had only previously worked with Nathan.  As the most experienced in the group, I assumed the role of group leader, a position I’ve had to learn to feel comfortable in from previous university/professional experiences. 

This TED Talks video helped me shape my views as a leader, to not just be rigid and do things my way, but express myself in ways that different personalities within the group will respond positively to, and help foster a positive work environment.

Using this teamwork survey (Skinner et al 2005), I was able to critically analyse if our group was effective in functioning and delivering a killer presentation. I believe I was able to utilise my skill set, with the group consistently asking for my opinion and advice on how to structure their parts, something I greatly enjoyed. Overall, I was very satisfied with the progress of the group. We were able to develop a good working relationship and help each other out when required.

However, there were elements in which we could have improved upon, namely the communication of what each members roles were. At times the roles shifted slightly and this created confusion. I also believe certain members of the team could have contributed more. As the leader, this is something I should have driven, rather than just take on more of the workload. This survey is a wonderful way for me to track what the positives and negatives were, so for next time the drawbacks can be spotted quicker and a fix can be implemented quickly and efficiently.

References

Hughes, R & Jones, S 2011, ‘Developing and assessing college student teamwork skills’,  Wiley periodicals, vol. 2011, no. 49, viewed 4 April 2019, https://academics.boisestate.edu/fsp/files/2013/04/developing-and-assessing-teamwork.pdf. 

Skinner, N,  Roche, A, O’Connor, J, Pollard, Y & Todd C 2005, ‘Developing effective teams:  Workforce development ‘TIPS’ theory into practice strategies’, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.   

Teams Start with Human Connections, Matt Eng, TEDxSanAntonio, online video, post 7 Feb 2018, created by TedxTalks, viewed 2 April 2019, https://youtu.be/XVi-0a90XNA. 

[bandcloud]

Bandcloud - DDR - 20-08-2017

Eric Holm – Andøya (Subtext)

The closing track from this magnificent album was the perfect start to this show. Scratching noise and hints of dank squawk, it makes for a great intro.

Handpicked Tyrant – Into the Clouds (Unreleased) This is a track I made. An old track that's very dear to me features blissful moments of ambience yet is essentially a shuffling hip-hop groove. So, I took those elements and fashioned this strange beast from them.

Beast Nest – Tired AF // Pluto (Ratskin Records)   This is wonderfully expansive and life-affirming, a section of true wonder in the middle of an excellently strange release. Also, I'm always tired af.

Leama – Melodica (Ambient Version) (Platipus) My major entry point to ambient or chillout music was a series of compilations under the Euphoria banner. The series was also my entry point to club and DJ culture but that's another matter. Their Chilled editions, mixed by Red Jerry, utterly confused and fascinated me. My expectations of what I would find on that first compilation were so far away from what they featured I was dumbfounded. This track featured on Deep & Chilled Euphoria, as well as appearing on the Beginner's Guide To Platipus. It's airy and blissful, yet these elements are undermined by a repeated arpeggiated melody and the reverbed vocals stating "a journey".

Ideoforms – Bjorklund Drones (SoundCloud)   This is a track from Daniel Jones, who made those amazing slowed-down edits of the various Windows startup sounds. This is an old algorithmic drone composition. It's strange in that the description makes it sound so clinical, yet the music itself is beautiful, I would almost say heartfelt. But I guess I can't.

Nadia Khan – Milky Sweat (Where To Now?) This tape on Where To Now? has some of my favourite pieces of music of recent years. Nadia has been quiet since, unfortunately. Hoping for more music from her soon!

Perc & Passarella – Fast Forward (Passarella)   A lengthy piece that featured on a brilliant album of Lynchian horror. After allowing the next song float alongside it I slowed it down to bring in the thick noise of BFTT.

Jasmina Olsson – Jasmina's Song (Short Mix by Second Break) (Stray Recordings)   This is a very short version of a beautiful track, a solitary melody that seems to fit perfectly with the track above.

BFTT – iOSMIDI4_Orbit (Unreleased) Out to BFTT, who's about to appear on a Cong Burn tape.

Lancashire Folklore Tapes Vol.IV – Memories of Hurstwood (Lancashire Folklore Tapes)   This short excerpt has haunted me for more than two years. I believe this section is from a side by t/e/u/ that's called 'to​ ​rescue​ ​things​ ​beyond​ ​recall​-​soon​-​when​ ​the​ ​reaper​-​time​-​has​ ​garnered​ ​all​-​the​ ​ears​ ​that​ ​hear​ ​now​-​and​ ​the​ ​feet​ ​that​ ​stand​-​yet​ ​in​ ​​the fields​ ​where​ ​once​ ​in​ ​fold​ ​and​ ​hall​-​echoed​ ​the​ ​voices​ ​of​ ​our​ ​fathers'​ ​band’.

Circuit Rider – What Others Are Saying (J&C Tapes)   This is from one of the first tapes I ever bought, back in 2013 I believe. Just before I started Bandcloud and really got into ambient tape life. Soaring beauty undermined by a sinister bed.

Wiley – From The Outside (Actress's Generation 4 Constellation Mix) Perhaps this was a step too far. This strange remix takes Wiley's introspection and tears it apart.

Declan Synott – Soft Container (Bandcamp)  A palate cleanser of strange noise that paves over the abrasive harshness provided by Actress. A delicate release of sounds from Irish producer Declan Synott.

Endless Melancholy – Still (Bandcamp)   A fitting title and artist name, this is a slow piece of scorched ambience, elegant in its execution.

Black Thread – Pyre (Amplified Gravel) This artist's music often appears on Cascading Fragments, but somehow this release has disappeared from the web. It's frayed and distorted, heartbreaking in its evocation of imagined nostalgia.

In Media Res – Aurum Vitae (Exo Tapes Inc.) Beautiful choral work reverbed to bits.

Moving Still – Placid Saturn (SoundCloud)   More scorched sounds over a blissful bed of ambient wash, this is a great piece from a brilliant Irish artist.

M Geddes Gengras – Passage (Leaving Records)  This album is incredible, I remember the first time I listened was when I was hungover and it seemed to go on forever. I was lost and confused, wondering how to escape the music.

Sam Mullany – Smell The New World Coming (Blue Tapes & X-Ray Records)  Really dark stuff, this feels like stretched noise and what could be a trumpet announcing coming dread – the new world of the title.

Percival Pembroke – Darklands IV (Herhalen)  This is very Boards of Canada, almost like ‘Kid For Today’ stretched to pieces and cast out to sea.

Shaahin Saba Dipole – Remembrance (Flaming Pines)  The compilation this comes from is an excellent collection of experimental noise and ambient from Iran. This track felt quiet and strange at home but you could really feel the pulse of the beat in the studio.

Minced Oath – Ferric Appetite (Countersunk)   Another Irish artist, this is an ambient project from Sunken Foal. A minced oath is when you say something like "fudge it" or "sugar" instead of.... well you know. The album is excellent, it really was hard to pick which track to play.

Sealadder – Interlaken (Power Moves Library)  I love the conflation of soft, drifting tones and harsh buzz electricity here. It's from a limited-run tape by Toronto's Cheryl Fraser.

Moopish – Death Throes (SoundCloud)   A wonderful SoundCloud find, it reminds me of something between Silent Hill and Wagon Christ's ‘Glass World’. Shout out to Al Shadow Dancer and his incredible ambient mixes, which were truly inspirational for me. 

Nothing Natural – Skin2Skin (Bandcamp) Ilana from Wisconsin released this supremely dark and unnerving track recently. It could be sweet but there's something quite sinister about it. She's a wonderful voice on everything from politics to the history of clubland, and her music is excellent.

Park and Tamirisa – Untitled (A) (Private Chronology)   I came across this almost by accident. The pair have some incredible work together, including a brilliant live recording, but this tape is a gorgeous piece of work.

李松 - Nib (Zoomin' Night) Taken from a compilation bringing together experimental non-music disproving the album's title, this is an amazing track that's almost nauseating in its construction. I'm not sure if it's the panning or the frequencies but it's just loopy. See here for more on the artist.

Pan American – The Terrace (Geographic North)  There's something so beautifully open-ended about the title of this track. The terrace. I imagine it to extend from a balcony in a kind of Hollywood home (see Mulholland Drive), looking out over the hills at icy climes. I know that doesn't make sense.

Christine Webster - A Bird Meme (Hylé Tapes)  This one comes from the excellent self​-​identified non​-​male artists making experimental electronic music on Hylé Tapes. It's quiet and beautiful and it's got meme in the title.

Calico Jak – I Felt A Funeral (Bandcamp)  A sparse and haunting track, this comes from a collection of soundtrack pieces by Irish artist Eoin Mac Ionmhain, aka Calico jack.

Emily Berregaard – Yucca (enmossed)   Up there as one of the tracks of the year, this slow burner is a thing of beauty.

Jake Muir – Indian Pipe (Bandcamp) A kind of outtake from when he was making his album for Further, this is a nice wistful number. Check out his superb Acclimation if you get the chance.

Elodie Lauten – Relate (Wilde Calm) I played another track from this retrospective work a few months ago, I'll probably play all the rest too eventually. It's a gorgeous modular jaunt.

John Atkinson – Falls (Bandcamp)   This was inspired by a trip to Snoqualmie Falls outside Seattle, Washington, site of the iconic "Great Northern Hotel" on Twin Peaks.

Beauty Parlour – Cylch (Unreleased) This is part of the soundtrack to a documentary about extreme Welsh nationalism.

Baltra – Where Do We Go From Here (RVNG Intl) This lengthy piece comes from a release for RVNG called Peaceful Protest. It came about when Moogfest asked artists to soundtrack a meditation space, and was further inspired by the opposition to the House Bill 2, which hoped to prevent transgender people from using the bathrooms of their choice. The release featured six sides of music, including some long, freeform pieces of ambient movement, opening with this amazing lilting piece. All proceeds from the release go to the LGBTQ Center of Durham. This piece in particular is such a delight, a change from the lofi house associated with its creator.

rkss – Watched (Seagrave) This is a short piece that shimmers beautifully as we reach the end of the show.

Boards of Canada – Corsair (Warp) The grandmasters of not-quite-ambient-but-not-dance-music-either here, from their scariest album, Geogaddi. Tomorrow's Harvest is chilling in a scorched earth/nuclear winter kinda way, but this one is darker, creepier, hotter, weirder. ‘Corsair’ is the moment of light that follows the utterly terrifying 'You Could Feel The Sky', but it's just ambivalent enough that it's hard to tell whether it's a reprieve or an elegy.

Matt Nida – The Same Way That Bricks Don’t (Unreleased) A slow burner that wouldn’t be out of place in a Nolan film, it’s got a dark edge.

Jonathan Scherk – Quench (ft Broshuda) (Videogamemusic) This artist also features on Peaceful Protest! Here he collaborates with the ever-frivolous yet eminently talented Broshuda for a playful gem of a track that's coming soon on videogamemusic, on what will be one of their last tapes.

[juhaku-inspired]

3, 11, 24, and 26 for the ask meme!

Thank you, Noah~

3- How long have you been aware of your sexuality/identity?

Ahhh… I started hanging out with my current friend group in like 2013~ish. I started thinking I was demisexual first, probably in 2014 or so. Then I was like, nah, I’m ace af. It’s only in the last two years I’ve started questioning my gender I think cause I got my first shorter haircut in 2015 and also my first binder. Holy shit it’s been almost 2 years already. what.

11- Tell us about your first crush?

ugh god I don’t know who my first crush was but I had 4 in my time in public school and they were all in 6th grade (a wild year). There was a fucking pattern too, they were all guys that were on the town’s football team??? The last one I had lasted far far longer than all the others, though. one I stopped liking after he got a haircut HA. The longest one was a guy I’d been friends with since like 4th grade and we were decently close I guess??? We even “dated” for a month but it was so fucking awkward for us 13 year olds we talked less while “dating” than we did while friends. I haven’t talked to him in a few years now since I’m not in public school but I hear he might be bisexual so that’s l i t

24- How do you feel about the term “queer” ?

I like it a lot~ I’m queer as fuck boiii~~ 

I can understand if people don’t like it cause it is a slur but I wanna try explaining it a way a trans youtuber I love said it. He was like, the term queer is different than the t-word and similar cause those words were created in order to be harmful and derogatory and didn’t have a meaning before that, while the word queer had meaning beforehand (”weird” “strange” ??) and wasn’t a bad word until douchebags made it a bad word, so you can like…reclaim it easier??? I think that’s kinda what he said?? 

I’m not an expert on history or anything but I do like the term a lot myself, for short.

26- Favorite lgbtqa actor/actress?

Oh boy here comes my lack of viewing lgbt+ content to bite me in the ass once again. I barely have favorite actors in general, really. How about Samira Wiley, she’s pretty cool.

[fuckinnproblems]

Feel like doing all the vaguely nsfw asks? If not, how about number 43 for now.

Sure I need a distraction 1. Are looks important in a relationship?-Nah2. Are relationships ever worth it?-definitely 3. Are you a virgin?-nope4. Are you in a relationship?-complicated 5. Are you in love?-what is love 6. Are you single this year?-wut 7. Can you commit to one person?-yes lol omg8. Describe your crush9. Describe your perfect mate-I can be flexible so I don’t have a “perfect mate” but good personalities are a must10. Do you believe in love at first sight?-sure11. Do you ever want to get married?-yes12. Do you forgive betrayal?-probably 13. Do you get jealous easily?-nah14. Do you have a crush on anyone?-yep 15. Do you have any piercings?-my ears #lame16. Do you have any tattoos?-no sadly17. Do you like kissing in public?-I don’t mind but not like making out 20. Do you shower every day?-yesssss21. Do you think someone has feelings for you?-yeah22. Do you think someone is thinking about you right now?-perhaps23. Do you think you can last in a relationship for 6 months and not cheat?-dear god yeah24. Do you think you’ll be married in 5 years?-I doubt it but maybe 25. Do you want to be in a relationship this year?-ok why do I get asked these questions right after my life gets confusing 26. Has anyone told you they don’t want to ever lose you?-yeah27. Has someone ever written a song or poem for you?-yes a poem 28. Have you ever been cheated on?-not that I’m aware of29. Have you ever cheated on someone?-no30. Have you ever considered plastic surgery? If so, what would you change about your body?-not really 31. Have you ever cried over a guy/girl?-yes32. Have you ever experienced unrequited love?-yes33. Have you ever had sex with a man?-no34. Have you ever had sex with a woman?-yes35. Have you ever kissed someone older than you?-yes36. Have you ever liked one of your best friends?-yes37. Have you ever liked someone who your friends hated?-yes lmao38. Have you ever liked someone you didn’t expect to?-yes39. Have you ever wanted someone you couldn’t have?-yep40. Have you ever written a song or poem for someone?-no42. How long can you just kiss until your hands start to wander?-depends. if it’s intense, not long. 43. How long was your longest relationship?-Almost 2.5 years44. How many boyfriends/girlfriends have you had?-3 bf, 2 gf45. How many people did you kiss in 2012/2013?-good lord those were the dark times uhhh prob 1.46. How many times did you have sex last year?-idk 4 times maybe47. How old are you?-1848. If the person you like says they like someone else, what would you say?-I’d be sad.49. If you have a boyfriend/girlfriend, what is your favorite thing about him/her?-eyes50. If your first true love knocked on your door with apology and presents, would you accept?-well I thought my first true love was a guy and now I’m gay sooooo 51. Is there a boy/girl who you would do absolutely everything for?-yes52. Is there anyone you’ve given up on? Why?-I wish but no. I give too many chances 53. Is there someone mad because you’re dating/talking to the person you are?-not that I know of 54. Is there someone you will never forget?-I mean yeah 55. Share a relationship story.-56. State 8 facts about your body-I’m 5'1"-I have freckles -I have quite a few scars, my fav being on my wrist -I lost about 15 pounds at the end of my freshmen year and my boobs shrunk a lot :(-my arms are really toned but my legs not so much -my eyes go from blue to green to blue green to gray -I wear contacts / glasses -for you foot fetish people, ;)))), my fourth toes fold under my third. I literally don’t know what else to say so sincerest apologies for me being boring. 57. Things you want to say to an ex-I’m so glad you realized you were gay :’)58. What are five ways to win your heart?-be you-kindness -good personality -humor -patience 59. What do you look like? (Post a picture!)-check my tags with #selfie or #me 60. What is the biggest age difference between you and any of your partners?-like 1 year61. What is the first thing you notice in someone?-their smile 62. What is the sexiest thing someone could ever do for/to you?-uhh literally teasing gets me every time 63. What is your definition of “having sex”?-uhh… the normal definition for sex for anyone?64. What is your definition of cheating?-fucking someone while dating someone else 65. What is your favourite foreplay routine?-ummm grinding probs66. What is your favourite roleplay?-???????67. What is your idea of the perfect date?-a night drive after dinner or something 68. What is your sexual orientation?-big ol lesbian 69. What turns you off?-bad kissing, bad breath 70. What turns you on?-biting, grabby hands, hickeys, etc 71. What was your kinkiest wet dream?-I have no clue 72. What words do you like to hear during sex?-my name lmao73. What’s something sweet you’d like someone to do for you?-I’m not picky 74. What’s the most superficial characteristic you look for?-idk75. What’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for you?-idk I like when people write me things 76. What’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever done for someone?-idk ask them I try to do lots of sweet stuff 77. What’s your opinion on age differences in relationships?-age is stupid unless it’s like a ridiculous age difference 78. What’s your dirtiest secret?-I don’t think I have one 79. When was the last time you felt jealous? Why?-I’m not a jealous person 80. When was the last time you told someone you loved them?-romantically? it’s been a while81. Who are five people you find attractive?-Jennifer Anniston -Katy perry -Samira Wiley-Sara Ramirez -etc82. Who is the last person you hugged?-my brother lmao83. Who was your first kiss with?-this guy named trevor 84. Why did your last relationship fail?-me 85. Would you ever date someone off of the Internet?-sure

[petarkutsovski-blog]

Reflective report

Looking at what have been learned and achieved so far from the beginning of the unit, I would say that a long way have been past. At the beginning of the unit my view for design in products and surroundings it was that it have been made just because the creator have chosen to do it that way because that’s how he like it. With going further within the unit slowly the design started to uncover that is a more complex then it appears initially. It became clear that it’s a complex mixture of factors and influences that are driving the design to success or failure and the design involves a lot of knowledge in order to be executed properly and become appealing to people.

Since then what have been learned is quiet significant and it would be difficult to mention all the important aspects of it. But some significant aspects I would say are few. Starting from gaining the knowledge to define and understand design I have learned that the design is way to solve problems that uses technology, science deep analyses of the human needs and incorporate them towards the creation of something nice that would appeal to the consumer (Beyer, Holtzblatt). From this I could observe that the design is not just how the object or product is made, but how many other things are involved prior even getting to the point that a product is presented to the public.

Another important segment it was that I was able to observe that there are many variances of design styles, those styles can vary a lot depending of what their implication would be. I learned for instance that the way how a shopping center is designed for instance to stimulate the people to go around shop further would differentiate a lot from how a tourist booking shop or a restaurant menus are designed to inflict more sales as well discussed by (Christine M. Piotrowski et Al.) . The design in those aspects is quiet important because based on the design it would depend what would be the consumer behavior. But following this it’s possible to observe that despite the design to be aimed towards achieving further spending and customer satisfaction it varies greatly between one types of place to another. This have been caused because of the human perception and expectation (Irving B. Weiner), something that everyone develops from early age. This perception is that the customer expect something specific from one place that he goes to shop, for example the white Pepsi (Tristan Donovan) released a while back, despite being Pepsi and have the same taste people wouldn’t buy it because there perception was that Pepsi is dark colour. Going from this we come to what I find to be the most important learned from this unit and this is the services and experience design. I find this to be the most important as it’s implementing and using the complete process of designing and providing a product to the end consumer from a point of the service sector, including the hospitality industry. As the service design involves the complete process from the vision, people, location plans, journey of the product till blue printing it (Marc Stickdorn, Jakob Schneider). I find this to be significant because from this it’s possible to gain deeper understanding towards how the different aspects of product service are created and designed prior arriving to the final consumer. The service design process have significant importance in the service sector because using it we implement knowledge learned in time towards the products we design in order for them to be appealing to our customers. Because if the service design haven’t created a good design the customer experience would be significantly affected and the product or service would not be successful.

From what is learned so far during the year and how it can be implemented in future career is visible that as the design is constantly evolving and changing is important to always be updated on the trends that come along as those trends tend to change constantly as the consumer evolves. From a perspective to how this experience and learning can be applied to the hospitality we can use the knowledge to understand what the consumer need and use it to design product or space that represent this needs in order for the consumer to feel that his desires have been met , witch lead to his satisfaction and from there earning him as a client that can advocate for you among other consumers promoting your products , as this is the most powerful influence the influence of consumers to other consumers.

References:

Beyer H., Holtzblatt K. – 1998 - Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems – Morgan Kaufman

Donovan T – 2013 - Fizz: How Soda Shook Up the World - Chicago Review Press

Stickdorn M, Schneider J– 2012 - This is Service Design Thinking: Basics, Tools, Cases - BIS Publ.

Piotrowski C, Rogers E, IIDA – 2010 - Designing Commercial Interiors - John Wiley and Sons

Weiner I – 2003 - Handbook of Psychology, Experimental Psychology - John Wiley and Sons

[zipgrowth]

Companies Are Bought, Not Sold: M&A Advice From 3 Edtech CEOs Who Survived the Process

At the start of this decade, the education industry saw hundreds of flowers bloom. Launched from garages and tech accelerators, startup after startup burst onto the scene with technology tools for the education market.

The industry has since consolidated, due in part to an uptick in mergers and acquisitions by education companies and private equity firms. Data from investment bank, Berkery Noyes suggest these deals have grown at a steady clip since 2013.

Source: Berkery Notes data from 2015, 2017 and 2018.

So what is it like—and what does it take—to sell a company?

“You don’t just one day say, ‘I’m going to sell,’ meet someone and they buy you,” says Kim Taylor, CEO of Cluster and former co-founder and CEO of Ranku. “Someone who buys you is going to know who you are already. That’s the thing people often forget.” She started Ranku, which helped colleges and universities market their online programs, in 2013 and sold the company to academic publisher, Wiley in 2016.

At the EdSurge SF Edtech Meetup last week, Taylor was joined by a pair of fellow education technology entrepreneurs who also built and sold their startups—and survived to tell their tales: Jacob Klein, former CEO of Motion Math and now director of learning games at Curriculum Associates, and SchoolMint/Hero K12 CEO, Jinal Jhaveri. They were joined by Larry Kane, a partner with Orrick who’s advised and facilitated hundreds of education business transactions.

“Turning equity into cash is the hardest thing you will ever do,” Kim adds. She and her fellow panelists all also agreed on another thing: Companies are bought, not sold.

Too Early to Think Exit?

The quick answer: No. But that doesn’t mean founders should be oblivious to these opportunities. At the same time, no one builds a great a company if they’re pursuing a sale from day one.

“Being in love with your product is a really important part for most CEOs,” says Klein. “But to really build a business, you have to also be fascinated—or hire someone who is—with customer acquisition strategies, and the nuts and bolts of growing a sustainable business.”

That’s one of his biggest takeaways from Motion Math, which won early acclaim in 2010 for its math game apps for the iPad. In its early years, the startup’s revenue came largely from selling apps—a model that ultimately proved unsustainable. The company raised an early seed round but could not raise a Series A.

In 2013 Motion Math began to develop a subscription business, and Klein began conversations with possible partners. In 2013, he met executives from Curriculum Associates, who told him it “wasn’t the right fit” at the time. Two years later they told him that a partnership could be “interesting.” Finally, in 2017, Curriculum Associates made Motion Math an offer and acquired the learning games company.

Turning equity into cash is the hardest thing you will ever do.

Kim Taylor, CEO and founder of Cluster

That process went for longer than Klein had planned. But for buyers, timing is everything. Even when it’s not the right time, maintaining relationships with business partners is key. “Keep these conversations as concise as possible,” Klein advises. “Unless you’re really a key part of a company’s strategic plan and a top priority, it’s not going to be worth the hassle to pursue and court an acquisition.”

For Taylor, who sold Ranku, “it’s never too early” in a startup’s journey to explore exit opportunities. That doesn’t mean that a founder should be constantly running a sales process, however. More important, she says, is to understand where you sit in the market and ask: “What do you do that other people can’t do? Who else is playing in your space? Who doesn’t care about what you do?”

Being a student of the industry, she adds, will help entrepreneurs better grasp which opportunities are worth pursuing—and which would be a waste of time.

In some cases companies are founded with the express purpose of getting acquired in six months, according to Orrick’s Kane. Yet that’s a misguided approach. “It is a mistake,” he says, “to build a product just for a sale, no matter how well entrepreneurs think they know a potential buyer.” After all, he added, buyers always have other options.

Just Another Number in Excel?

For education entrepreneurs driven by a mission to improve education, this can be sobering advice: “When you start a company, especially if you’re venture-backed or have outside funding, you need to remind yourself that you are an investment for someone, and they’re looking for some sort of outcome at some point,” say Jhaveri.

“To look at it in a more depressing way,” he adds, “you are part of someone’s spreadsheet.”

Jhaveri co-founded Schoolmint, an online K-12 enrollment platform, in 2013 before selling it last year to Hero K12, a company backed by BV Investment Partners, a private equity firm. (Hero K12 is rebranding itself as Schoolmint, which Jhaveri will run as CEO.)

A lot of times there are tough decisions to be made, and you want to detach yourself and have someone else be the bad cop for you.

Jinal Jhaveri, CEO of SchoolMint

Investors can sway the sale process, says Kane. “If you’re taking venture capital, you have to understand that investors may have different exit criteria.” Among the questions an entrepreneur should ask: What’s the time period in which investors want to see returns? What are the liquidation preferences (the order in which shareholders get paid after a sale)? There are sales, Kane notes, where investors get their money back but leave founders with nothing.

The ideal investor is aligned with the company’s mission, says Klein: “If you come to them with two deals—one with slightly better economics, but the other one is from a company with an aligned mission that’s actually going to help kids, the investor will understand why [the latter offer] is the better deal.”

Are Bankers Worth It?

Deals involve much more than just a sale price. So to negotiate the best overall transaction, many companies turn to investment bankers. Klein, who hired several bankers over the life of Motion Math, found them helpful in doing a “market test” to see which potential buyers may be interested, and what they would be willing to offer.

Key to negotiating the best possible terms is having multiple offers, and bankers can help drum up interest. Buyers “will lowball you unless they think there’s competition,” says Kane, and “a good banker can sometimes help get entrepreneurs to a higher offer quicker.”

Yet not all of them add value to the sale process. Entrepreneurs who have done their homework may find that they know more than bankers. Taylor advises vetting bankers closely; too frequently she felt “underwhelmed” with the ones she interviewed, who seemed to be learning more about the industry from her than she was learning from them. Ultimately, Ranku’s sale to Wiley came as the result of a relationship she had developed and maintained over time.

And Jhaveri did not use a banker at all in Schoolmint’s sale to Hero K12. “I had connections,” he says. “How can a banker know more about my business and my space more than I do?”

These days, Jhaveri is on the other side of the table, seeking out potential acquisitions. Now he recommends that entrepreneurs seek professional help. There are many terms that require negotiations, and the process can be “emotionally draining,” he says. “A lot of times there are tough decisions to be made, and you want to detach yourself and have someone else be the bad cop for you.” (His wife was also the co-founder of Schoolmint, which likely added to the emotional toll. Jhaveri says they’re still together.)

The Term Sheet

Just because you sign the term sheet doesn’t mean you’re going to close the deal.

Larry Kane, Partner at Orrick

There’s more to a sale than just the acquisition price. Most term sheets include details that outline the conditions that have to be fulfilled. Certain performance targets may need to be met and entrepreneurs may be required to stay with the parent company before earning their full cut of the sale. Sometimes there are even non-compete clauses that bar them from joining a rival company afterward.

Sometimes, what seems like a small detail could derail a sale, like drawing up employment contracts and confidentiality agreements. For early startups focused on growth and execution, says Klein, keeping on top of personnel paperwork can seem like a nuisance—but do it anyway, he recommends. (Or find a law firm that can do it for you.)

“Just because you sign the term sheet doesn’t mean you’re going to close the deal,” reminds Kane. Entrepreneurs need to keep their business running during the due diligence process, during which the buyer may uncover details that could change the offer terms, or rescind it altogether. Problems often take the form of pending lawsuits or contested intellectual property rights.

Perhaps most importantly, says Taylor, is that the buyer and seller “feel like everyone’s aligned and incentivized for good things to happen.”

Recommended Reading

Throughout the conversation, the panelists referenced several blog posts they found to be helpful in navigating the mergers and acquisitions process.

Jeevan Kalanithi: “How to Sell Your Startup When Your Company (Almost But Not Quite) Nailed It.”

Justin Kan: “The Founder’s Guide to Selling Your Company.”

Companies Are Bought, Not Sold: M&A Advice From 3 Edtech CEOs Who Survived the Process published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

[netunleashed-blog]

Nine amazing British acts that America never understood

http://www.internetunleashed.co.uk/?p=20671 Nine amazing British acts that America never understood - http://www.internetunleashed.co.uk/?p=20671 Make way for a hot new beat combo all the way from England! You're gonna love 'em! As a great man once sang: “Oh oh oh – oh! There’s trouble in America.” Well, there was for these artists, given that they enjoyed great success in their native Britain, but bottomed out when it came to cracking the prestigious (and lucrative) American market. What went wrong? For whom, and why? Readers, you’ve come to the right place: here are nine amazing British acts that America never understood. Dizzee Rascal Dizzee’s terse, paranoid, brilliantly abrasive 2003 debut ‘Boy In Da Corner’ was clearly not made with the American mainstream in mind, but the Bow rapper’s later records almost certainly were: 2013 album ‘The Fifth’, for instance, was a brazen attempt to court American audiences with bash electro-house beats and super-producers from across the pond. Biggest UK successes: Five number one singles, five albums that broke the top 10. Biggest US successes: One appearance on the Billboard Hot 100 – a feature spot on Shakira’s ‘Loca’, which reached number 32 in 2010. What went wrong: Grime has never really found much of an audience in America, despite Drake’s attempts to break the genre stateside. Yes, Dizzee moved into mass-market pop, but, side-by-side with fellow Bow native Wiley, he also helped create grime – and his roots in the musical movement run deep, as last-year’s return to form ‘Raskit’ proved. The Kinks The quintessential ’60 example, perhaps, of a massive British band that just never caught on with the Americans. British invasion? Pah! Not for the Davies brothers. Biggest UK successes: Three UK number one singles, five UK top 10 albums. Biggest US successes: ‘You Really Got Me’ reached number seven in 1964, and ‘Lola’ climbed to number nine in 1970. What went wrong: When Ray Davies was inducted into the American Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 2014, he remarked that it was “a big deal because it means that America has finally accepted the Kinks”. The Kinks were banned from touring America from 1965 to 1969 – in many ways, their heyday – because of their fearsome reputation for fighting at shows. Talking to the Irish radio station NewsTalk, Davies summed the situation up pretty well when he put the controversial ban down to “bad luck, bad management, bad behaviour”. Blur Damon and the lads embarked on an infamously disastrous American tour in 1992, a ill-fated trip characterised by infighting and empty venues. It was so relentless and grim that the band took to punching each other for fun to relieve the monotony. Biggest UK successes: Two number one singles, six UK number one albums. Biggest US successes: Two tracks broke the Billboard Hot 100 – ‘There’s No Other Way’ and ‘Girls & Boys’, which scraped in at number 59 and 82 respectively. What went wrong: That experience in 1992 may have put them off the land of opportunity, as they never seemed to make any major attempt to crack the US afterwards. However, Gorillaz, Albarn’s band of cartoon misfits, who returned this year will stellar album ‘The Now Now’, have been more popular in America, sneaking into the Billboard Hot 100 top 20 with 2005 single ‘Feel Good Inc.’ The moral? Life is long and strange, and sometimes you succeed the most when you become a cartoon. Girls Aloud A band brazenly manufactured – on bloody television – for success! A prototype for One Direction! What could possible go wrong? Biggest UK successes: Four UK number one singles, two UK number one albums. Biggest US successes: Zip! What went wrong: Why did Girl Aloud, one of the UK’s most fondly remembered pop groups, never make it Stateside? Perhaps they were too real – theirs was an early incarnation of reality pop, where the stars looked and, crucially, sounded like everyday Brits, with little showbiz razzle-dazzle. In fact, the band’s record label, Polydor, didn’t even release their albums in America until 2015. Girls Aloud split up in 2013. Robbie Williams Ah, the Pope of Stoke, the King of swing, the buccaneer from the end of the pier. Robbie always was, and remains, a peculiarly British phenomenon: part cabaret act (inspired by his dad, Pete), part Norman Wisdom (Google him, or ask your granny), part Freddie Mercury (yes! really!). Is anyone surprised that America, home of actual pop stars, wondered what the fuck we’d sent them? Biggest UK successes: Seven number one singles, 12 number albums (that’s almost literally every album he’s ever released, including two greatest hits compilations; it’s only 2009’s ‘Reality Killed The Video Star’ that missed the top spot, coming in a number two). Biggest US successes: Two tracks on the Billboard Hot 100: ‘Angels (number 53) and ‘Millennium’ (72), and both of those were re-releases. What went wrong: His heart wasn’t in it, really. Pretty much the entirety of journalist Chris Heath’s 2004 biography Feel is concerned with Robbie’s conflicting feelings about America – should he try and crack the country, or enjoy his anonymity over there, given that his life in the UK had become a tabloid circus? In the end, he opted for the latter, refusing to commit to the kind of sprawling, gruelling extended tours that are required to become a household name in the US. Last year, Robbie told NME: “I made a decision in 2000 to not promote there, not work there, not do anything there and go and just live there. So I haven’t done anything to jeopardise that.” The Stone Roses The band headlined Coachella in 2013, which could be read as an indication that they’re massive in America – but, in fact, the show was surprisingly sparsely attended, with reports relaying the fact that “one could easily walk to the front of the nearly empty field”. Biggest UK successes: Four albums in the UK top (including a greatest hits compilation and their debut, which charted no less than three times between 1989 and 2009). Biggest US successes: Two albums that charted in low positions on the Billboard 200 – debut ‘The Stone Roses’ and follow-up ‘The Second Coming’ staggered in at number 86 and 47 respectively. What went wrong: Self-sabotage, intentional or otherwise. Frontman Ian Brown insisted that “America doesn’t deserve us yet.” The band stipulated that they didn’t want to tour in America until they could fill the enormous Shea Stadium in New York, so didn’t tour the first album. Simon Spence, author of the book The Stone Roses: War and Peace, told vanyaland.com: “When ‘Second Coming’ came out, it had been five years; they went to L.A. and did promotion and it went badly. They liked to be loved in America but it was, ‘Fuck you if you don’t like us.’” That’s right: they wanted to be adored. Elastica Initially, Justine Frischmann’s band achieved greater fame their her then-boyfriend Damon Albarn’s group, Blur. She told The Sunday Times last year: “I think it was hard for Damon when Elastica started getting some success in America, It’s funny because we both thought we were too evolved for classic gender roles, but looking back he thought his band more important because he was the guy. And on some level I did, too.” As we’ve seen, though, Damon finally wooed the Americans with his cartoon bands of misfits (and Gorillaz!). Biggest UK successes: The band’s self-titled debut album went straight in at number one in 1995 and became one of the defining records of the Britpop era. Biggest US successes: Two 1995 singles in the Billboard Hot 100. ‘Connection’ and ‘Stutter’ crawled to numbers 53 and 67 respectively. What went wrong: Sort of like The Stone Roses, Elastica’s hearts weren’t really in it. There was was a five-year gap between their debut and 2000 follow-up ‘The Menace’, and the band split in 2001. Frischman has spoken of her apathy towards the music industry – she is now a visual artist based in New York – and last year told The Guardian: “I got to go all over the world and have a real snapshot of the planet in ’95, ’96, and I got to meet a lot of my heroes. One of the most valuable lessons was to realize that success isn’t necessarily enriching or enlivening. We live in a culture where there’s so much emphasis on celebrity and we all grow up feeling like being famous must be really great.” The Libertines Oi oi guvnor! Let’s stick on our nanny goats, head up the apple and pears, give the dog a bone and – look the point is that The Libertines are a bit mockney, okay? Biggest UK successes: Two top 10 singles, one number one album – 2002’s ‘The Libertines’, the band’s second, sweat-slicked LP. Biggest US successes: That same album was their biggest hit in America, too, though, in contrast, it limped in at 111 on the Billboard 200. What went wrong? In certain circles, the received wisdom is that Pete had too much of a taste for crack to actually – ahem – crack America. The reality is probably a little more complex, given that much of The Libertines’ self-mythology is concerned with sailing ‘The Good Ship Albion’ – a poetic term for Britain – to ‘Arcadia’, a concept Pete has described as “the realm of the infinity … It’s not a cult or a religion – it’s an awareness of your surroundings; you’re not going to force yourself on anyone and, equally, no one’s going to force themselves on you.” Given that The Libertines were so steeped in British culture, it’s perhaps not so surprisingly that their music meant less to American music fans. Cliff Richard The quintessential British artists that made America go, ‘What’s this guy all about?’, Cliff was our version of Elvis Presley. So no wonder they weren’t arsed – they literally had Elvis Presley. Case closed! No, please, keep reading – we’re nearly done. Biggest UK successes: Deep breath. In the red corner, weighing in at a fairly unremarkable 155 pounds according to an extremely dubious website I just checked, it’s the Peter Pan of pop, with a whopping 14 UK number one singles, 68 top 10 singles, seven number one albums and 44 that stormed straight into the top 10. No wonder he’s always on a summer holiday. Biggest US successes: 19 tracks that entered the Billboard Hot 100; three that shimmied and shook their way into the top 10. Not bad by a mere mortal’s standard, but chicken feed in comparison to Cliff’s five-decade success in his own country. What went wrong? Cliff had a minor American hit with ‘Living Doll’ in 1959 (it reached number 30 in the singles chart) and made a few dents in the top 40 between the 1950s and 1980s, but failed to truly set the US alight. When he first launched his career over there, Cliff adopted a rebellious, surly persona, but this softened over time; soon he was middle-of-the-road as a well-placed traffic cone. Source link

[dyspla]

Introducing the DIMIF Panel Members

Deborah Williams - Panel Chair

“This festival is a vital next step in the growth of DYSPLA. I am looking forward to facilitating the panel discussion, getting to see the films and hearing from the artists.”

Deborah Williams is CEO of the Creative Diversity Network (CDN) - the body funded by the UK’s major broadcasters, which brings together organisations across the UK television industry to promote, celebrate and share good practice around the diversity agenda. As CEO, Deborah is responsible for the strategic direction of CDN, delivering all aspects of the organisation’s activities; including the ground-breaking Diamond diversity monitoring scheme, diversity talent databases, online resources and the CDN awards.

Prior to joining CDN, Deborah was Diversity Manager at the British Film Institute (BFI), where she opened and managed a £1m lottery fund for diversity, designed the BFI diversity standards for film, and contributed to the BFI business plan and strategy. Before joining the BFI, Deborah was the Senior Officer for Equality and Diversity at Arts Council England.

Deborah is also an award winning actress, as well as being a writer and theatre maker with 20 years’ experience in creating and presenting distinctive, high quality work that challenges ideas of difference and diversity.

D-Fuse

“I think that events like this are important because by facing the stigma of dyslexia and neurodivergence in our society head on, we almost supersede it and turn it into something positive.”

Our commissioned artist D-Fuse will be creating a live 3D installation on the opening night of DIMIF, as well as being part of our panel on the Panel Discussion night on the 15th of March.

D-Fuse are a London-based artist collective who work across a range of media. Founded in the mid-1990s by Michael Faulkner, D-Fuse’s output encompasses installations, film, experimental documentary, photography, live cinema performances and architectural projects.

Beginning in graphic and web design and VJing, D-Fuse’s work has evolved to address social and environmental themes and explore collaborative processes. Besides work with groundbreaking musicians from a wide range of genres including Steve Reich, Beck, Hauschka, Scanner and Swayzak, much of D-Fuse’s output since 2004 includes sound and music by audio director Matthias Kispert.

Their work has been shown internationally, including SFMOMA, WRO Festival [Wroclaw], Prix Ars Electronica [Linz], Sonar [Barcelona], onedotzero Festivals, Eyebeam and TriBeCa Film Festival [NYC], MU and STRPFestival [Eindhoven], Lisbon and Valencia Bienniale, Moscow Architectural Biennale, and many others. The D-Fuse-edited book VJ: Audiovisual Art and VJ Culture was published by Laurence King in 2007.

Chris Arnold

“I think it is great that we can both celebrate dyslexia and inspire others. For me dyslexia has been a gift and an opportunity to see things in ways others cannot imagine.”

Chris is a Creative Director and founder of the brand marketing and creative ad agency Creative Orchestra.

He is also the founder of The Garage, a specialist disruptive innovation consultancy that helps companies think differently and deliberately uses dyslexics. He was a board director and a Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi before setting up FEEL – the UK’s first ethical marketing & advertising agency.

He is one of the UK’s leading experts in ethical marketing and author of Ethical Marketing & The New Consumer (published by Wiley). Being a dyslexic himself, he is a champion of dyslexia – believing that “every board room should hire a dyslexic.” Despite being dyslexic, he has written a weekly blog on ethical marketing on Brand Republic for almost 10 years, as well as pieces for many other publications.

He has also written the mini-insights reports Why Women Shop on Venus & Men Shop on Mars and co-written insighst reports The Truth About Students and The Content insight Guide to Millennials and Students. He’s currently writing THUNK (a different way to think) which is based on his creative thinking workshops.

A former board member of the DMA (Europe’s largest marketing trade body) he’s been the Chairman of both the Agency Council and the Creative Council. He is passionate about community and founded the UK’s largest community arts festival – The Crouch End Arts Festival. He also runs The Intimate Space, “London’s smallest and coolest venue”, as it’s been described, based in a 500 year old church tower in Hornsey. The venture is designed to support young people’s creative talents.

Chris has written for many publications, including the FT, Creative Review, Campaign, Marketing, Impact, The Times, Third Sector, Brand Strategy and Brand Republic – Europe’s largest marketing online site.

He’s also appeared as a marketing expert on BBC’s Working Lunch, Watchdog (3 times) and in a number of documentaries on marketing. On Channel 4 (Food Unwrapped, Superfoods and Despatches) and the BBC. On radio – BBC and LBC. Plus online TV channels.

He lectures around the world on creativity, marketing, brand, innovation & futurology, ethical marketing, Proximity Mobile Marketing and Disruptive Innovation.

Sara Putt

“I think the festival is going to talk about some key issues, and I'm excited about taking part in the festival's discussion on improving the diversity in the business.”

Sara runs Sara Putt Associates. Based at Shepperton Studios, her company is the leading independent UK agency for film and television heads of department - providing personal management and representation within feature films, TV drama, documentaries and entertainment for over 20 years. Alongside the Agency, the Diary Service provides diary management and production knowledge for crew.

Keen on nurturing new talent, in 2011 Sara Putt Associates launched the 'Trainee & Assistants Scheme' providing opportunities to those at the start of their careers. They collaborate with film and television agents in the US and work alongside literary agency ‘Sayle Screen’.

Sara also sits on the BAFTA Board and TV Committee Chairs, BAFTA’s Learning and New Talent Committee, and is Deputy Chair of WFTV.

Mike Forshaw

“I am very honoured and excited to reveal that SATURDAY has been selected for the DYSPLA International Moving Image Festival. During the festival I will be taking part in a panel discussion about dyslexia, and I could not be prouder. As someone who was only diagnosed with dyslexia whilst at university, I strongly believe that open conversation is vitally important to raise public awareness and understanding for a condition that many people still do not fully understand. This event will hopefully provide an excellent opportunity to discuss how my dyslexia has shaped me as a director and why my diagnosis was so liberating.”

Born and raised in Liverpool, Mike studied film at Northumbria University before moving to London to study Fiction Direction at the National Film & Television School. His graduation film premiered at the BFI London Film Festival, and his shorts have screened at numerous UK and international film festivals.

In 2013, Saturday was awarded a top prize during Nisi Masa’s European Short Pitch, and the film premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2015. In 2014 Mike was selected for TorinoFilmLab’s AdaptLab workshop, and is currently developing his first feature, King of Grain, with Agile Films.

Jim Rokos

“After everything we have said about the creative gifts that the neurodiverse mind can bring to creativity, a festival of alternative thinking brings an enormous pressure to deliver the truly exceptional. With the red tape fallen away, I am very excited to see what will be achieved.”

Originally training as a model-maker in the film and TV industry (working on The Muppet Treasure Island, Band of Brothers, Tomb Raider, Victoria and Albert), Jim went on to teach at a school in London before completing a Master’s degree in Industrial Design at Central Saint Martins College.

In close collaboration with Ab Rogers, in 2016 Jim curated the very first ‘Dyslexic Design’ exhibition, which was hosted by designjunction, also at King’s Cross on Granary Square. The show challenged perceptions of dyslexia by accentuating its positive effects and its close association with design. ‘Dyslexic Design’ is a ‘Silver Winner’ in the London Design Awards; category: Pop-Ups, Display, Exhibit & Set Design. It was also nominated for the ‘iF Social Impact Prize 2017′ for Health & Demographic Change. Many now consider Jim's work to be a symbol of the gifts that dyslexia can bring.

Jim also runs 'Rokos'- his brand of playful and sculptural glassware that behave in unexpected ways... Exceptional products express their character - they come to life when they are used! They can take on the mood of the users (13° 60° 104° Decanter) or they can express the behaviour of the object contained (Gauge flower vase).

Rokos won the prestigious 2012 ‘Reddot Design Award’ for the 13° 60° 104° Wine Decanter and the Enterprise Europe Network Award 2014 for the Gauge vase. The vase also won the ‘German Design Award 2017′ for Excellent Product Design and the Smoke colour Gauge has won the ‘LUX Designer Awards 2018′ for 'Most Original Glassware Design'. In addition to this, Jim has been awarded the 'Best Glassware Designer 2018 - United Kingdom' by the LUX Designer Awards.

Jim's innovative cat-food bowl won BBC1’s Tomorrow’s World's Best Inventions pilot in 2001. His Blindspot series is Design Parade selected (2007). In 2008, he won an ‘RSA Design Directions’ award and in 2012, the ‘Faces of Design’ award.

Helen Taylor

“I am very honoured to be part of the Panel Discussion on the Dyslexic Aesthetic at the DYSPLA festival. The broader information processing style of dyslexics really lends itself to greater recombination and translation that underlies novelty and originality. It will be fascinating to see the films and hear my dyslexic panel members describe how their dyslexic cognition shapes their work.”

Dr. Helen Taylor studied initially at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, she was diagnosed with dyslexia herself after nearly being thrown out of her undergraduate degree. She went on to achieve a 1st class honours for her degree as well as several prizes and won a scholarship to study her Masters. On completion she was awarded the highest mark in the history of the department along with several research awards including the Petrie Prize and Seton Lloyd Memorial Prize. After completing a Sackler Fellowship at The British Museum she won a full AHRC scholarship to study her doctorate at the University of Cambridge where she investigated the emergence of social complexity.

Alongside this she started mentoring undergraduate and Ph.D students with dyslexia, ADHD, dyspraxia and autism. Frustrated by the lack of appreciation of these kinds of cogition she became determined during her time at Cambridge to understand what these differences were. By combining insights from her Ph.D, and research into the cognitive differences and strengths found in dyslexia, she developed a new theory of human evolution named The Evolution of ComplementaryCognition. This shows that different kinds of cogntion were not only fundamental to the adaptive success of our species, but are critical to organisational effectiveness in the modern world. Helen is currently working to publish the results of her research. To learn more follow Helen on Twitter.

Tickets

DYSPLA is extremely excited to welcome our esteemed panel members for an academic discussion on the DYSLEXIC AESTHETIC. It will take place on the second night of the festival, 15th of March 2018 at 7:00 PM, so save the date if you’re up for a debate! There are only 30 tickets available so book your tickets today.

Buy your Panel Discussion tickets here for £10

Listing Information*

Awards Ceremony, Gala & Gin Reception: 14th March, 7:30 PM - 10:00 PM, £30.00

Industry Panel Discussion: 15th March, 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM, £10.00

Daily festival screenings: 15th March, 1-7 PM; 16th-18th March, 1-8:30 PM, £5.00

(All films will be screened continuously throughout the festival) *All tickets will include £1 booking fee. Tickets are an extra £5.00 on the door.

The Crypt Gallery, Euston Rd, King’s Cross, London, NW1 2BA Closest national rail and underground stations: King’s Cross & Euston

[hutcho33-blog]

Kendrick V Everybody: A Beginner’s Guide To Kendrick Lamar’s Beefs

Kendrick Lamar has been the centre of the Hip Hop scene over the last few months. The dropping of singles ‘The Heart Part IV’ and Humble as preludes to the acclaimed ‘DAMN.’ have made him the source of intrigue and controversy. One of the undeniable things about K Dot is that he is a relentless competitor.

August 13th, 2013. The fabled ‘Control’ verse where Kung Fu Kenny takes swings at literally all of his competition has been the starting point for a majority of his beefs now. This unapologetically aggressive style has rubbed some the very wrong way, and it’s clear Kendrick doesn’t really give a Damn.

With that in mind, the following is a beginners guide to all of the beefs involving Kendrick Lamar right now.

Big Sean

Whenever you talk about beefs and Kendrick, one should start with Sean, not the man reppin OVO. It was in fact Big Sean’s song ‘Control’ that caused much of the tension with other rappers. Kendrick’s verse went at everyone including Sean himself. Although Sean said that this didn’t really bother him, this is the only discernable starting point of a frustration Sean could have with Kendrick. It should also be noted that ‘Control’ itself wasn’t featured on Seans album Hall of Fame, despite being the most noteworthy track at the time.

He started dropping subs directed at Kendrick in a freestyle titled ‘Me, Myself and I’ in 2015

Rappers who was killin shit, lately I can’t feel that shit

Y’all used to didn’t feel my shit and now y’all like, “You hear this shit?”

He had even more subs for Kung Fu Kenny on ‘No More Interviews’ in 2016.

And I can’t lie like I like this shit like I usually do

And I’m just not impressed by you niggas rapping fast

Who sound like one big asthma attack but trash when I’m rapping it back

Who you put in your top five and claim they the savior of rap

This all leads to the current day, with Kendrick firing more direct shots at Big Sean. On ‘The Heart Part IV’ Kendrick is rumoured to have taken a whole verse to address Sean directly.

My fans can’t wait for me to son your punk ass and crush your whole lil shit

I’ll Big Pun your punk ass you a scared lil bitch

Tip-toeing around my name nigga you lame

And when I get at you homie don’t you just tell me you was just playin

‘I was just playing K-Dot, c’mon you know a nigga rock with you, bro’

Shut the fuck up you sound like the last nigga I know

Might end up like the last nigga I know

Oh you don’t want to clash? Yeah nigga I know

On ‘Humble’, he constantly uses hooks notably used by Sean (‘lil bitch’ and ‘hol up’), as well as the direct shot that central idea of the track being in direct conflict with Sean saying his ‘humble attitudes’ in ‘No Favours’. Kendrick is directly telling Sean to sit down and be humble.

We likely haven’t seen even close to the end of this rivalry.

Drake

This is the modern day Cold War of Hip Hop. Both men have cautiously stepped around each other, taking some subs but not engaging in direct nuclear warfare. This begins in 2013 with Drake saying on ‘The Language’

I don’t know why they been lyin’

But your shit is not that inspirin

Enter Kendrick, with a small but not insignificant barb at Drizzy on ‘TDE Cypher’.

Yeah, and nothing’s been the same since they dropped “Control”

And tucked a sensitive rapper back in his pajama clothes

Kendrick would deny that this is a shot at Drake, however the next two are shots at Drake, first on the universally acclaimed ‘King Kunta’ taking aim at ghost writer rappers.

I can dig rappin’

But a rapper with a ghost writer? What the fuck happened?

Then he goes in twice on Dr Dre’s album ‘Compton’. First on ‘Darkside/Gone’, where he steals one of Drake’s most famous hooks in the diss itself.

But still I got enemies giving me energy, I don’t wanna fight now

Subliminally sent to me all of this hate, I thought I was holding the mic down

Then again in ‘Deep Water’

They liable to bury him, they nominated six to carry him

They worry him to death, but he’s no vegetarian

The beef is on his breath, inheriting the drama better than

A great white, nigga this is life in my aquarium

Now from here the tension becomes a little bit more unfounded. Watch the video below where Marcellus Wiley of ESPN talks about a destroyed interview on his program ‘SportsNation’

WHAT! If this is referring to Kendrick and Drake (which is the heavy favourite in terms of who he is talking about), one could only imagine the residual tension between the two most popular artists in the game. There are a number of things that can be seen as subs at Drake from Kenny on ‘Damn.’, but nothing that provides a significant insight into the real animosity between the two.

This is the cold war that has the potential to get very very hot in the next couple of years as the two artists battle at the top of the charts for supremacy.

Billboard.com and Being Outside of the Top 5 Rappers of All Time

Kendrick has an obsession with being the greatest rapper of all time. It’s consistently seen throughout his music. However when Billboard ranked their top ten rappers of all time, they rated him ninth (It should be noted that this atrocity of a list left off Tupac Shakur, which is at least puzzling and at most criminal).

It’s been two years since the list was released and it’s fair to say he hasn’t back off his opinion that he is the GOAT. From his tweet reading simply ‘Mr 1-5’, to this lyric on ‘ELEMENT’.

Mr. One through Five, that’s the only logic

Fake my death, go to Cuba, that’s the only option

Kendrick is incredibly open about his greatness and he’s actively suggesting that he is not just the greatest rapper alive, but in fact good enough that he could occupy all the spots from 1 to 5 on any list of the greatest rappers ever.

Donald Trump and Fox News

It would be an understatement to say that Kendrick Lamar dislikes Fox News and Donald Trump. Mr Duckworth has been one of the most socially conscious and influential artists in the last half decade. He’s made provocative comments on all kinds of issues like alcohol abuse on ‘Swimming Pools (Drank)’, police brutality on ‘Alright’ and on Black America in a insightful acapella verse on ‘i’.

However in more recent times, Kendrick has been taking more direct shots at individual’s he feel are doing wrong by his community. First at the new President of the United States Donald Trump in ‘The Heart Part IV’.

Donald Trump is a chump

Know how we feel, punk? Tell ’em that God comin’

And Russia need a replay button, y’all up to somethin’

Electoral votes look like memorial votes

But America’s truth ain’t ignorin’ the votes

The level of criticism that Kendrick has had of the police and of certain aspects of American society put him in the crosshairs of notorious conservative American media outlet Fox News. One of the most blatant shots that Kendrick takes is at Fox News, even using part of this segment on the network at the end of the track ‘BLOOD’.

He also takes a more direct shot at analyst Geraldo Rivera (who said that hip hop does more damage to young African Americans than racism in the above video) in the track ‘YAH’.

Fox News wanna use my name for percentage

Somebody tell Geraldo this nigga got ambition.”

Geraldo has since doubled down on his comments that Kendrick is destructive for the culture, which suggests that Kendrick may have more ammunition to use in future disses directed at the Fox News personality.

***

After ‘DAMN.’, it’s hard to make an argument that Kendrick Lamar isn’t one of the greatest hip hop acts in the history of the game. His lyricism and flow is unquestionable, with the hard hitting messages behind every song setting him apart from other rappers.

However it is also his attitude that sets him apart. In a time where everyone is perceived to be too friendly in their competition both in relation to hip hop and sports, Kung Fu Kenny isn’t trying to make any friends.

Kendrick is out take the throne and make everyone else a mere distant memory.