#adopting that commercial as canon without all the commercial elements

[josephinekhawaja]

If it does turn out Jenna Ortega is playing the daughter of Winona Ryder (Winona was 31 when Jenna was born...how did I think the age difference between them was greater than this plausible mother-daughter one), a thought even I did not have as I would have thought it too obvious a role --

I am going to have it in my head that Beetlejuice is the baby daddy regardless of anything canon ever says. (That is Charles Deetz's funeral they are at, and I choose to doubt the guy next to Lydia Deetz was the sperm donor.) Like technically the identity is not essential; and if absolutely necessary I would prefer it to be open-ended over any alternatives. But the absolute chaos that would unleash if that were the case is too great to resist for me. Though that I have shipped them my whole life is probably testimony to my having grown up first with the animated series as a nineties child. Before later in life watching the film realising Beetlejuice tried to pull a Count Olaf to Lydia's Violet Baudelaire in engineering their own 'marvellous marriage'. I still stand by it though wherein they are both adults.

(Also while the name "Astrid" has a different etymology, it reminds me of the Greek word for "star", which of course Betelgeuse is in the constellation of Orion. Seems significant in a franchise that puts even repeated emphasis on names. But I tend to think a lot on character names.)

[highpriestess-pinkypunjabi]

HOODOO MAGIC

What is Hoodoo?

Hoodoo is the practice of spirituality which is carried to the United States by West Africans as the result of the transatlantic slave trade. It is a combination of practices from the people of the Congo, Togo, Nigeria and others. The practice of hoodoo varies by region and the temperament of the slave owners. Thus Hoodoo is a form of African American folk magic, brought into Hollywood in 2005. Also known as ‘conjure’, Hoodoo has emerged from a combination of traditions and practices.

Hoodoo more closely resembles African folk magic and is unique to the United States. A Hoodoo revival in the mid-1990s renewed and revived the practices for modern hoodoo practitioners. Improved access to the internet to improve their knowledge on hoodoo, and journals such as the Hoodoo and Conjure Quarterly, have brought back Hoodoo out of the shadows. Hoodoo didn’t see much a centuries-long break in practice and this continuity helps make conjure into a living practice.

How it Works?

Hoodoo is a authentic magical practice based in African folk magic. Not a religion itself, Hoodoo embraces a set of practices based on other systems of spirituality and magic. There are no priests, no canonical beliefs, and no authority structure but a rootwork is seen on conjure. Many practitioners use Hoodoo alongside their own spiritual beliefs. It allows people to use nature's energy in the form of herbs and oils and make their everyday life better and thus is more botanical magic. Hoodoo does work with elements. It works with candles, incense, oils, powders, and saints. Some even work with spirits.

Hoodoo holds similarities to other magical systems as well, such as modern witchcraft. One common fact is the belief in energy specific to roots, herbs, crystals, and animals. Hoodoo uses concerned magic to tap in those energies that match the intention. Cat Yronwode finds one reason for the similarities between Hoodoo and modern witchcraft. Due to the Wiccan ‘revival’ in the mid of 1950s, the early practitioners of Wicca had no magical traditions to draw from and thus they took a set of these magical practices to adopt from Hoodoo.

In abroad, they practice Hoodoo openly but not so in India. Hoodoo involves praying to deities, saints and also specifies that chanting Psalms. Every Hoodoo person works with Psalms. Psalms, when combined with Hoodoo, makes extremely powerful spells. Some people combine 6th and 7th book of Moses with Hoodoo spells. It's not that one is supposed to be a Christian to chant Psalms. There are no specific rules in Hoodoo however it is always stated that what you do is what will come back to you. So always use these powers for the highest good. Hoodoo doesn't need any initiation. It's more of a rootwork that involves elements of nature.

The tradition of herbal healing is used more in Hoodoo. Thus using hex-breaking oils and candles to ward off bad vibes, according to a new book by scholar Katrina Hazzard-Donald. Hoodoo beliefs are purely naturalistic and practices used naturally obtained supplies like herbs, minerals, candles, oils, a different type of lamps and mojo bags made with your personal energy - like nail or hair and as well powders. Hoodoo practitioners do not use the European system of Divination like Gemmology, Numerology.

The altars will have pictures of saints, candles, oils, incense powders, Psalm chants, cauldron, chalice, and Athame. If you are a Wiccan, you can club Wicca and Hoodoo together. People who know Odisha may club it with Hoodoo. There is nothing wrong in clubbing. Gris-Gris bag is a combination of magical things and some people even add crystals and stone in that. Hoodoo traditional practitioners do not use Gemology but some people just add it for additional energy. It's important that Gris-Gris bag is fed at regular intervals to keep adding energy just like mojo bags.

There’s no set of instructions behind Hoodoo so ethics is purely a personal matter for the practitioner. Hoodoo magic can heal or bless as much as it can jinx or ‘cross’ depending on how we use it. Practitioners need to justify their actions since their practice is between them and their God.

Types of magic

Candle magic is a popular form of magic used more in Hoodoo. The colour and size of the candle is chosen based on the intention. Oils or powders are dress the candle, which is prayed over and charged with intent.

The practitioner combines herbs, roots, and other materials in bottles and containers for a specific purpose in Hoodoo. These personalised spells can be simple or elaborate. Some practitioners use bottle spells alongside candle magic, or they may bury the spell to allow it to continue working.

Mojo bags, usually made of cloth or leather, are personalised bags that contain roots, herbs, spells, and prayers. There is a belief that this mojo bag houses a special spirit-helper, which carries out the prayers.

Hoodoo practices began to be commercially marketed, modified and fabricated these days. The objective of hoodoo was to let people access to supernatural forces to enhance their living thus letting people attain power or success in areas of life that include money, love, health, and employment. Due to hoodoo's great emphasis on an individual's spiritual power to effect desired change, hoodoo's principles are handy for use by any individual of faith.

Cultural influences on Hoodoo

The recitation of 6th and 7th psalms from the Bible is also considered spiritually influential in hoodoo. The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses is a grimoire made popular by Europeans that is purportedly based on Jewish Kabbalah is being recited by most of the hoodoo practitioners. Though its authorship is attributed to Moses, the oldest manuscript dates to the mid-19th century and contains numerous signs, seals, and passages in Hebrew that are related to Moses' ability to work wonders.

The African-American community also finds Christian symbolism and prayers, resembles more in hoodoo. Reflecting the hoodoo concept of the Bible-as-talisman, it quotes “Whoever carries this book with him is safe from all his enemies, visible or invisible; and whoever has this book with him cannot die without the holy corpse of Jesus Christ, nor drown in any water, nor burn up in any fire, nor can any unjust sentence be passed upon him.”  

Pinky Punjabi is conducting a course about Hoodoo. This course discusses what traditional Hoodoo practitioners follow and how we are currently combining Hoodoo with the rest of the practices. Interested can reach Pinky Punjabi over phone personally on this phone number -  +91 91762 31990 for details and charges. Pinky Punjabi can also be reached through her email address magickofhealing@gmail.com and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pinky.punjabi apart from reaching her through Linkedin (https://in.linkedin.com/in/pinky-punjabi-34385a103)  and twitter.

[dweemeister]

Pom Poko (1994, Japan)

As one of the co-founders of Studio Ghibli, the late Isao Takahata famously did not know how to animate. Whether because or in spite of that, he became the studio’s philosopher-poet – posing mature questions of ethics and humanity to audiences that no one else working in animated film could accomplish. Takahata’s third film for Ghibli, Pom Poko, breaks the fantasy-reality polarity he shared with Hayao Miyazaki (who just finished 1992′s Porco Rosso and was underway with 1997′s Princess Mononoke).

Yet this is a fantasy striking for its allegorical richness, even if the quasi-documentary, voiceover narration-heavy approach to the story makes this one of Takahata’s weaker films – a weaker film judged within lofty standards, however. The film revolves around a group of tanuki (Japanese raccoon dogs), some of whom can shapeshift, as they combat the ever-encroaching urban and suburban sprawl to their forests. Their tactics are initially successful, but – as consistent with Japanese mythology – their indiscipline, prideful factionalism, and inability to effectively communicate among those growing factions doom the lifestyle they hold dear. Which other director of animated film, past or present, could express those aspects through tanuki, letting them become reflections of the vast tapestry of human behavior? I can think of no one else but Takahata.

It is the late 1960s in the Tama Hills in Kanagawa Prefecture, just southwest of Tokyo. Japan’s post-War economic boom has precipitated into a skyrocketing demand for housing, and the Tama Hills have been designated for significant residential and commercial development. By the early 1990s, New Tama is threatening the tanuki’s forest and resources not provided by human litter and trash are declining. Led by matriarch Oroku, the militaristic Gonta (Takahata’s loving parody of Miyazaki’s dictatorial attitude to work at Ghibli), the wise and wizened elder Seizaemon, and a young up-and-comer named Shoukichi, the tanuki resist the humans by committing sabotage at the construction sites. Some of the leaders advocate for simply scaring or intimidating humans (recall that some tanuki can shapeshift); others are more interested in killing or maiming as many humans as possible. No matter which tactic is adopted, the developers send new and more employees – forcing the tanuki to send a few their own to seek out the advice of master shapeshifters from across Japan.

For older viewers who are creeped out or will not see this film because of its depiction of tanuki testicles, if pure disgust is the only reason why you are discounting Pom Poko from your movie-watching options, you need to be more open-minded in what makes quality cinema. In Japanese art, tanuki have always been shown with their testicles, and often using them in creative ways (as a drum, a backpack, etc.). This is always handled with a wink by Takahata, with no self-seriousness whenever tanuki testicles are being used in transformations.

Pom Poko has been described as an ecological fable within the canon of Ghibli’s pro-environmentalist films like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Only Yesterday (1991), and Princess Mononoke. Consumerism and unrestrained capitalism are fundamental to the environmental destruction that occurs, disallowing humans and tanuki from living in harmony as they used to before Japan’s reintroduction to the international theater. But these themes are not fundamental to Pom Poko. The film’s human characters are caricatures, somewhat removed from ever being fully understood by the tanuki. What the tanuki partake in – the ideological divisions that corrode their culture despite a clearly-defined common goal – is the true focus of the film, not the supposed sweeping declarations of how humanity should learn how to coexist with nature. With a story by Miyazaki and the screenplay by Takahata, there are also references to Japanese folklore and culture that will escape almost all Western viewers (including this one), but these never detract from the feelings of cooperation and selflessness, betrayal and disillusionment that define the tanuki struggle against the human developers. Just be prepared to research certain cultural elements that made no sense afterwards.

The tanuki are riven by internal differences that leads to an unorganized response to the human developers’ progress. Central to the quandary is the balance between intimidation, scaring the humans, and violence. Tanuki elders hold mass meetings with the entire populace – due to their species’ tendency to party hard after even the most inconsequential success, their audience seem too distracted to take successive debates and wisdom-laced speeches seriously. There is too little effort to listen to the tanuki leaders and, eventually, master shapeshifters and learn about their disagreements. Such disagreements are embodied in the belligerent Gonta and the peaceful Seizaemon and Oroku. Gonta believes only spectacular violence can alter their apparent fates. He launches unauthorized offensives with the most disgruntled tanuki to obliterate infrastructure and send construction workers to their ghastly ends. Later, Gonta even attempts a failed coup against Seizaemon and Oroku, believing their methodical approach to the situation is leading to their imminent destruction. The violence accomplishes little, as the humans do not understand the root of this ecoterrorism.

Seizaemon and Oroku are more interested in understanding human culture than Gonta, urging transformation-capable tanuki to integrate themselves into among humanity to learn as much as possible. But the transforming tanuki scouts largely observe humanity from a distance, rarely inquiring to humans about the nature of their culture – its history, its contemporary demands, and why its envisioned future is what it is. The first meaningful conversation with a human is initiated by Shoukichi at a moment far too late to salvage the tanuki’s society. When everything else has failed, a fantastical display without words of what was the symbiotic relationship between humans and tanuki will save the latter from extinction. As Seizaemon and Oroku become obsessed in understanding humanity without communicating with humans, they lose sight of the transformations within their own ranks. These two are blindsided by too many things. They fail to anticipate Gonta’s treachery despite obvious signs of his combustible impatience, fail to intuit the widespread inattentiveness of their mass meetings, or – in the most underdeveloped subplot of the film that Takahata should have paid more attention to – fail to detect the fatalism of the non-transforming tanuki that sees them join a suicidal Buddhist dancing cult that results in a massive waste of life.

Pom Poko is a film defined by poor leadership. Their internal discord is preventable and surmountable as the tanuki leaders decide to ignore the welfare of those who cannot transform or those who do not adhere to their adopted strategies. Poor communication is rampant. The rigidity of their beliefs hastens their downfall. Contrary to the expectations of the leadership, the introduction of the shapeshifting masters only exacerbates their dilemma – the masters are basing their approach on ancient anecdotes and an assumption that talking with humans need not be considered. Like in Grave of the Fireflies, pride might be the tragic flaw of the protagonists. But where pride in Grave of the Fireflies leads to the deaths of a pair of siblings, pride is projected onto saving a collective in Pom Poko. When pride presides over a group through its leaders, disaster is destiny.

This is not to say Pom Poko is only a dour piece examining effective leadership. The film is also a broad comedy not above fart jokes, slapstick, and situational humor. One of the funniest, enrapturing moments is thanks to animation directors Megumi Kagawa and Shinji Ôtsuka (both of whom have served in various roles on almost all of Ghibli’s films). Tragicomedy is complicated to execute, and Takahata just about manages the balance here – Pom Poko’s tragedy never interferes with its comedy and its comedy usually does not cheapen the tragedy. Vacillating between the two tones will be jarring for those without grounding in live-action classic Japanese cinema – a bittersweet celebration in the film’s final moments is followed by a closing, ascending shot reminiscent to the final moments of Grave of the Fireflies. There, the tanuki have been forced to assimilate to human culture. Displacement, not just by physical means, abounds. If it is not obvious yet, Pom Poko (the highest-grossing domestic film at the Japanese box office in 1994) should not be considered a gateway Studio Ghibli film and plays better in tandem with live-action Japanese movies.

Behind the scenes, a special relationship that helped Studio Ghibli further cement its place in Japanese popular culture was just beginning. Nippon TV (NTV; a major broadcast network in Japan) chairman Seiichirô Ujiie began to help produce Studio Ghibli films beginning with the studio’s 1993 television special Ocean Waves (a testing ground for Ghibli’s younger staffers; it was released elsewhere as a theatrical film). Pom Poko was the first feature film he co-produced (alongside Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki and Ritsuo Isobe) for the studio, beginning NTV’s long-running association with Studio Ghibli – in Japan, NTV is the exclusive broadcaster of all Ghibli films and is usually the first network to provide breaking news of Studio Ghibli activities. Ujiie was involved in the production and financing of almost every Ghibli film released after Pom Poko – his passing in 2011 made producing new Ghibli feature films much more difficult. Ujiie professed that he was a Takahata fan, once proclaiming that he would fund any of the director’s projects, even if they lost money (such as 2013′s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, in which Ujiie received posthumous credit).

Task any other animation director with Pom Poko, and they would probably deliver a more juvenile, less considered film. Of all Takahata’s films, Pom Poko may be the one work that could only have existed through animation. It is his least intimate Ghibli movie as it adapts an epic war story within a faux documentary structure. On the surface, it seems like Takahata is taking fewer risks than usual because of animation’s necessity here. Look closer and, in the same tradition of Watership Down (1978... though not nearly as serious as this movie), Takahata is sharing ideas seldom depicted in animated or live-action cinema. Pom Poko is not his finest outing nor is he at his most visually inventive. But to compare this with his other films is to compare artworks operating at a mesmerically high standard.

My rating: 8/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[doomonfilm]

Thoughts : Watchmen [HBO, Episodes 4-6] (2019)

After the initial three episodes, HBO’s immaculate continuation of Watchmen had me hooked.  Now that we’re two-thirds through the run of season one, I’m willing to say with near certainty that Watchmen is top tier original content from HBO.  With each question that is answered, we are presented with information that raises even more intriguing questions.  Full disclosure, I’ve started this blog entry prior to episode six because episodes four and five had such a strong impact on me, requiring multiple viewings and deep dives into both before I ever put eyes on what looked to be an amazing episode centered around Sister Night’s family connections.

THE STORY CONTINUED

Episode 04 : If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own Sister Night breaks into the Greenwood Cultural Center moments before her van is dropped out of the sky right in front of Special Agent Laurie Blake.  In an effort to cover up her involvement with Will, Sister Night cleans her shop and chops the wheelchair into enough pieces to fit into a gym bag, but during her disposal of the bag, a mysterious masked man witnesses the drop.  Sister Night gives chase, but the mysterious man escapes into the sewer.    A quick investigation reveals that the van was likely lifted into the air by one of Lady Trieu’s (Hong Chau) flying vehicles, and the pair pay her a visit at the Millenium Clock, where the mysterious trillionaire provides the pair with requested information.  Sister Night inquires about Will’s whereabouts to Lady Trieu, who is later revealed to be in league with Will in hopes of exacting an as of yet unknown plan.  After a night of killing all of his helpers, Ozymandias begins the process of trying to escape his imprisonment after fishing new helpers out of the nearby lake and growing them.   

Episode 06 : Little Fear of Lightning Looking Glass is revealed to have been in Hoboken, New Jersey on 11/2/1985, the day that the giant squid landed on Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, killing hundreds instantly (including world famous band Pale Horse) and hundreds more in the ensuing psychic wave emitted before the squid’s death.  As a direct survivor of such a profound event, Glass leads an isolated existence, with much of his life anchored to a fascination with the squid and a fear of similar psychic waves.  This very fascination and fear leaves him vulnerable to both Special Agent Laurie Blake’s influence and the plans of the Seventh Kalvary, which in turn impacts Sister Night.  Ozymandias is revealed to be on Jupiter as he manages to get a message out to an unidentified satellite.

Episode 07 : This Extraordinary Being Shortly after discovering that Will’s pills were long-outlawed Nostalgia before admitting to covering up Will’s possible involvement in Police Chief Crawford’s death, Sister Night is arrested by Special Agent Laurie Blake.  Just before being accosted, Sister Night manages to swallow the entire contents of the bottle of Nostalgia.  Through a series of immersive memories that Angela is implanted into, we learn about young Will Reeves (Jovan Adepo), his time as a New York City cop in 1938, his connections to Captain Metropolis (Jake McDorman) and the original Minutemen, and the mysterious KKK-connected origins of a secret society known as the Cyclops.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

The Peteypedia : A weekly collection of documents relevant to the world of Watchmen, similar to the opening and closing inclusions in the original comic issues and graphic novel.

The Official Watchmen Podcast : Host Craig Mazin and showrunner Damon Lindelof discuss the HBO Watchmen series.  A new podcast episode will be released after episodes six and nine.

THOUGHTS ON THE SHOW

This show continues to be brilliant, giving us a handful of questions with each answer that is revealed, and at the end of episode 6, dropping a canon-altering bomb that re-contextualizes all that we’ve thought we previously understood about the origin of heroes in the Watchmen world.  Parallel to this, we are shown (for the first time) events in the Watchmen world that were previously only presented to us in comic form, drawing an exact and direct line between the source material and the character of Looking Glass.  The levels of easter eggs are starting to hit like the Inception storyline as new elements and old elements are folded together with ever continuing juxtaposition of an uncanny valley-esque 2019 that contains very futuristic materials sprinkled few and far between, all meant to hearken back to the latest trauma exacted upon the citizens of the Watchmen world.

Lady Trieu clearly holds extreme power in this world, and is key to the narrative, but her cards thus far have been played close to the chest.  Her connections to Will Reeves seem to be deep, but if the key information to this connection has already been presented, it was done so in secrecy.  Her logo permeates the entire series, appearing to the level of common commercial logos that we have become desensitized to in our personal experiences.  The origins of her daughter seem mysterious, and the promise she presents of a master plan has me intrigued.

We know that Adrian Veidt is stuck on Europa by someone who has yet to be revealed, and we know that his master plan is an SOS message in the form of the many versions of Mr. Phillips and Ms. Crookshanks that he has catapulted outside the barrier he is captured within.  The origins of these helpers is revealed in a way that does nothing to comfort our thirst for answers, and the nature of his captivity (as well as the identity of his jailer) is still one of the biggest unanswered questions in the series.

Tim Blake Nelson continues to put on a clinic with his performance as Looking Glass (though, to be fair, many members of the main cast are running on all cylinders in terms of performance).  His direct connection to the culminating events of the original Watchmen comic are revealed, which in turn unveils a well of information about the manner in which he lives his post-traumatic life.  For a character so deeply rooted in truth, the way that his entire worldview is shattered without one lie being told to him is as heartbreaking as it is masterful.

What is Joe Keane’s endgame in regards to his connections to the Seventh Kalvary and the intrinsic field generator that they possess?  It is hard to ignore the parallels between the Seventh Kalvary adopting the visage of Rorschach’s masked vigilantism and Keane’s legislation to turn the cops into masked vigilantes (eventually on a nationwide level), and it makes me wonder how many of them are playing both sides, if any.

After the Watchmen film chose to alter the ending, I wondered if we’d ever get to see the Giant Squid event in a visual medium.  Not only did we get to see what has now been dubbed as 11/2 in a stunning opening scene, but the way that it has been contextualized into the idea of a multi-generational trauma works very well.  I really enjoyed the allusion to Schindler’s List that was used to describe the in-world film Pale Horse, and I would love to see even just the clip mentioned in episode 5.

If episode 1 ruffled some feathers, then the internet is going to have a field day with the direct origin story given to the previously origin story-less Hooded Justice.  There has been speculation since episode 1 that Will Reeves was the true identity of the first hero in the Watchmen canon, the man who inspired the Minutemen, but going full fledged with this is a brave move.  The episode in which this information was revealed is a subtle visual effects masterpiece, and hopefully it will get recognition come seasonal awards time.

THE QUESTIONS

- Where did Cal disappear to during the White Night?  How in league is he with Special Agent Blake, who continuously brings him up to taunt Angela, and even uses him in hopes to bring Angela back from her Nostalgia overdose?  Why does he, at times, seem so cold and detached for a character that professes he doesn’t like to lie?

- Who was the man in all silver?  Is that Agent Petey?  Is this how he gathers his intelligence, does Special Agent Blake know about these exploits if so, and has he been in the background of other events in this world?

- How mad is Alan Moore going to be at the alteration of the Hooded Justice legacy and lineage?  How mad will the fandom be at the idea that the Tulsa Riots were a heavy source of inspiration to the character, as well as systematic racism within the NYPD?  Will the idea of the Cyclops and mesmerism being used as a direct cause of black on black violence nationwide be shunned as a narrative device, and will the obvious allusions to Birth of a Nation be overlooked?

- How deep is Lady Trieu involved in all of the events we have seen thus far?  How connected is she to Dr. Manhattan, if at all?

- How is time moving for Adrian Veidt in relation to time on Earth, and when/how will all of these threads connect?

[semirahrose]

In the past few days I've read posts claiming that Sam is a psychopath who turns his empathy on and off so easily that it's disturbing, that Sam never cries (lol what?), that Dean is more emotionally mature than Sam, that Sam is egotistical and only cares/thinks about himself, and that Sam demonstrates more toxic masculinity than any other character on the show... I've been in hell basically and I was hoping you could cheer me up by disputing these "claims" with cold hard canon facts.

I’m so sorry you’ve experienced that, Anon!  I fear… you ventured into a truly dark corner of fandom. I have a fair few items on my blacklist to keep me away from that sort of “meta”, because honestly… it’s emotionally exhausting and endlessly frustrating running into such patent drivel.

I don’t know what these people were using to support their claims, so I can’t really refute them. Heck, I don’t know if they brought up solid points or were just angry and baseless. For many of the things you mentioned, I don’t even know where to start, because I can’t imagine what could have given anyone such an impression, but I’ll try to share some thoughts.

Sam is a psychopath without empathy? If anything, Sam’s empathy is always on. It’s always at max, and what these people might be seeing as “turning on and off” is likely Sam trying to redirect his attention elsewhere or deal with/compartmentalize his feelings. It could also just be a gross misinterpretation of introverted emotional expression. But also, let’s be real: the Winchester boys are soldiers. They’re fighting to keep people safe. They have to make choices that we can’t even fathom. A lot of times, these choices are not clear-cut and smelling of roses. Either way, someone will die. People will hurt. And these two, without the benefit of a hierarchy or large support group or court of law–in the heat of the moment–have to make decisions. People who find Sam “cold” or—God forbid, psychopathic? What the ever-living heck?—may simply not understand the magnitude of the decisions these boys must make.

Sam never cries? WHAT EVEN. What the hell even. First of all, crying is not the be-all-end-all of emotional expression. Some people cry regularly. Some people don’t cry for years at a time. And you know what? The former don’t feel things more strongly than the latter. People express grief and sadness and frustration differently. Some people feel numb. Some people get angry. Some people feel miserable but can’t cry. Some people drown it in drink. Some people blame themselves. Some people simply haven’t been taught that it’s okay to give vent to negative emotions, or grew up in an environment where expressing them was weakness and subject to mockery (*raises hand*) And… for the people who said that, may I kindly direct them to my crying Sam tag, because I have like seven pages of misty-eyed canon Sam for them to feast their eyes on. (Um. Geez. I swear there’s an explanation for the fact that I–that I have a tag for that. Uh.) ANYWAY. *clears throat* What even. 

Sam is not as emotionally mature as Dean? I can’t even dignify that one with an answer. Well. Actually. I believe Sam is, in many ways, more emotionally mature than Dean. Where Dean resorts to blame-shifting, violence, anger, and denial when it comes to things he doesn’t like, Sam acknowledges his mistakes and is aware of his unhealthy coping mechanisms (…while still  using them). THAT SAID, I don’t think I can state that Sam is more mature in general, because, well… Dean vents. He gets angry, he finds ways to release it, and he generally finds ways to settle into a sort of balance and keep going. On the other hand, Sam represses to the extent that it drives him to his breaking point. See Mystery Spot. See s4, where he was literally suicidal after Dean’s death. See any number of other times. At any point, I think Sam is a hairsbreadth away from breaking, and while there are a ton of things I love and respect about Sam, a lot of them are rooted in some really unhealthy habits. So… in many ways, Sam deals with things more maturely, understanding all angles. But he also truly just needs decades of hugs and therapy because wow.

Sam is an egotistical bastard? I would advise people who think Sam only cares about himself to watch Swan Song, then The Man Who Knew Too Much, and then Sacrifice, and then Nightmare, and then… the whole freaking show, actually. How Sam regularly puts the safety of others above his own welfare. How, even while grieving Jessica, in the beginning of the very first season, he threw himself bodily between two strangers and a Wendigo. How he was broken to pieces by his visions of death but unable to save the victims. How, later, Ruby’s perfectly calculated way to make him start drinking demon blood again was to imply that he might, by inaction, cause the deaths of innocents if he didn’t suck it up, drink the blood, and save the world. And Ruby knew Sam, played him masterfully. If anyone in the world knew how to get to Sam, she did. And she did so not by appealing to a desire for personal gain, but by implying that Sam’s desire to stop drinking blood might be selfish. And if that’s not enough, I’d like them to take a look at Soulless!Sam, who could have done anything but chose to continue hunting. Soulless!Sam, the single most stable and consistent soulless person in the entire show, whose admitted motivation for remaining soulless despite knowing he was “wrong” was that things didn’t hurt as much. Seriously. Come at me. Anyone who thinks Sam is egotistical has not seen the show or is picking events out of context and trying to apply some isolated events to the entire show.

Sam displays more toxic masculinity than any other character? What the…what even? What the heck? I would love to see the support for this argument, I really would. While both brothers display some unhealthy habits undoubtedly adopted thanks to their impossibly tough life and their upbringing… claiming that Sam is the poster child for toxic masculinity is just laughable. I could talk about why, but first let’s just look at a quick definition: 

Toxic masculinity is a narrow and repressive description of manhood, designating manhood as defined by violence, sex, status and aggression. [… S]upposedly “feminine” traits – which can range from emotional vulnerability to simply not being hypersexual – are the means by which your status as “man” can be taken away. Sex, in particular, is an important part of “being a man”. […] The need to “get” sex is all-encompassing because the more of it you have, the higher “status” you have as a man.You’ll notice how often sex and sexlessness comes up as an insult when a man wants to insult another man. (x)

Let’s just take a moment and ask ourselves. For which of our leads are sexual conquests important? Which character looked at cheerleaders and leered that he could tell which ones were legal? Which one finds peace in violence and resorts to violent ways of expressing himself before any other? Which one calls the other “bitch” and uses feminine terms as a way to demean someone? Which one pushes the other to have sex or act aggressive/sexual? Which one regularly calls women opponents “bitch” without any real evidence or reason? Spoiler: it’s not Sam.

And here’s the thing: toxic masculinity isn’t something where we can point out someone who displays the traits of it and call that person awful. It’s not quite as simple as that. Toxic masculinity isn’t a person. It’s an unhealthy, pervasive set of expectations. Heck, yeah, it’s terrifying and harmful to women and anyone who doesn’t conform or accept it. But it’s not the people we need to fight, but the overwhelming pressure and the media portrayals and the way it’s freaking exalted as the “right” way to “be a man.” On some level, there is an element of choice in adopting these beliefs and a certain amount of personal responsibility to… I dunno, not be an asshole, but in a lot of ways, it’s like showing commercials about grapes and making movies about grapes and rewriting history to feature grapes and then expecting no one to eat grapes. The hunting community in Supernatural, I’m afraid, is full of said grape-glorification. There’s no excuse for what some of them do, but they have ample reasoning for acting that way. (And if we’re talking levels of grape-hood on SPN, then I’m gonna have to say that Dean displays the highest levels of grapeliness, objectively.)

Haha, I hope this helped, Anon! I hope you’re able to blacklist the types of people who are saying those things. Personally, I’ve found it’s just unpleasant and ultimately fruitless (pun not intended) to engage cruel and baseless claims like that. I hope you’re able to make your Tumblr experience a more enjoyable one. Sending hugs and hopes that this made even a bit of sense.

[fuzzypurplestuff]

The architects of teen idoldom have always known that more than music, though perhaps less than good orthodontic work, the clothes make the boy. The shirt of a heartthrob needs to be soft and ever so slightly rumpled, offering visual evidence that if it were removed and tossed onto a floor (say, in a dressing room as its owner heads into a post-show shower), it could be grabbed and held like a treasured lovey blanket, emitting a scent just on the verge of sour, yet intoxicating: a blend of tree fort and licorice and ropy muscles, of girls' letters written in felt pen. The perfume of a young man's pleasure at merely being alive.

What made the boy was a polo shirt in the 1950s, a turtleneck in the 1960s, something polyester during the disco era. Gloria Stavers put Jim Morrison in her own fur jacket when she posed him for the cover of the magazine she edited, 16; the designer Bill Whitten put Michael Jackson in sequined jumpsuits that made him seem like light itself. As the teen male physical ideal was reshaped by gym rat practices and creatine, the fashions became simpler, to better show off honed physiques. By the mid-2000s the perfect teen idol outfit was more an ideal than a fashion statement: a white t-shirt, somehow never sullied — the ultimate sign of easeful male privilege. The one Harry Styles most frequently wore as the shaggy-haired main libidinal force in the boy band One Direction was a little loose but definitely clingy, sleeves rolled up so his fresh tattoos peeked through, possibly pulled out of a heap but somehow never wrinkled.

Styles has worn a variation of this shirt since trying out for the X Factor in 2010, when he covered it up with a scarf and a cardigan. (Maybe Simon Cowell, his mentor and white t-shirt devotee himself, convinced Styles of its magical powers.) His short-lived romance with the equally precocious and popwise Taylor Swift was defined by it when she immortalized the shirt in her song "Style". On his self-titled solo debut, out last week, he answers her with his own t-shirt-centric "Two Ghosts."

Styles also wore a t-shirt on the cover of Rolling Stone, for a feature that officially signaled his coming of age. That one, however, had an orange collar and was a little dingy, not shiningly bleached. It was an indie rock t-shirt, the kind Kurt Cobain wore when he was demolishing the value of manufactured teen pop back in the 1990s. It placed Styles in time, within the same lineage that the magazine featuring him had helped canonize: the illustrated history of rock.

In 1972, David Cassidy also grew up on the cover of Rolling Stone. The cherubic star of the rock and roll sitcom The Partridge Family was a huge star that year, riding a couple of Billboard Top 40 singles, selling out sports arenas, and fighting off groupies in the lobbies of the hotels that served as his home. At 22, he was ready to make a leap into something more meaningful — he wanted to act in movies and TV shows "with meaning," and in his off hours, he strummed his guitar and studied the music of Crosby, Stills and Nash. To signal this maturation, Cassidy gave a frank interview to journalist Robin Green, revealing his aspirations, his struggles with anxiety, and his mixed feelings about the rock world, which he felt excluded him because of his ardent young female fan base.

Cassidy spoke up for the girls who bought buttons and posters plastered with his face: "They're not that stupid. You can only hype them to a certain degree. There has to be something there.... They can't just manufacture someone and expect him to be big and successful." He talked about being raised in a Hollywood family, taking acid in the L.A. canyons as a teenager, then making his own way in New York, where he got serious about his craft. Green portrayed him as a loner who survived on canned peaches in his house in Encino, meeting groupies on the road who had sex with him but thought his Vegas-style act was uncool. Though his defense of his fans still resonates, his scorn for the industry that made them love him is palpable. Teen idoldom, in 1972, was a prison; rock and roll was on the other side of the wall.

Green's excellent probe into Cassidy's world is mostly forgotten today, but the photographs that accompanied the feature are immortal. To say what he did in their interviews and have his words taken seriously, Cassidy had to challenge his own image as a musical toy whose moving parts were pulled from a backlot costume rack. He did this in the most drastic and logical way. The portraits Annie Leibovitz shot show Cassidy recumbent, arms overstretched or grasping his own chest. He is nude. In one, bushy pubic hair skims the bottom of the frame. At first glance, with his long shag and lean torso, Cassidy could be Iggy Pop or Patti Smith. In the 1970s, getting naked was a common way to show one's daring — heavy metal bands did it on album covers, loving couples did it in the illustrations for sex manuals, streakers did it across athletic fields. But Cassidy's nudity accomplished something else: It pulled him out of the milieu that had defined him and made him seem innocent as a fawn, with his whole life ahead of him instead of stuck within a showbiz tradition that he had no interest in trying to redeem.

In 2017, Harry Styles is doing things differently. One Direction, the Cowell-constructed boy band that brought him superstardom, always salted its music with rock reference points, borrowing hooks and riffs from beloved bands like Big Star. Emerging as the band's front man, Styles led the charge in this reclamation of a history teen idols have always been denied. His Rolling Stone fashion spread takes the claim further. Shot by magazine founder and baby-boomer icon Jann Wenner's son Theo, Styles dresses in the finery of rock's legacies: not just that t-shirt borrowed from grunge, but a Carnaby Street style black suit designed by the late post-punk fashion maverick Alexander McQueen and a punkish ripped-jeans-and-bandana look that makes him look like a youthful Mick Jones of the Clash. He also appears in a high-necked lace top that places him within the queer continuum of current trendsetters like Perfume Genius.

As Cassidy did, Styles also stands up for his female fans. But he goes much farther than his more petulant forebear, who clearly felt exiled from rock by his teen associations. "Young girls like The Beatles," he told his interviewer, the filmmaker and journalist Cameron Crowe. "You gonna tell me they're not serious? How can you say young girls don't get it? They're our future. Our future doctors, lawyers, mothers, presidents, they kind of keep the world going."

Crowe's lengthy feature on Styles is a key element in the rollout of the self-titled solo album that's getting him crowned the genre-saving king of popified rock. That's the circle of life in the land of teen idoldom, a space that's changed a lot since Cassidy's day. Rolling Stone has played a role in teen pop's slow legitimation. Myriad idols have sought the coveted cover spot as part of proving their bona fides. Michael Jackson, ever precocious, claimed it in 1971; the headline read, "Why Does This 11-year-old Stay Up Past His Bedtime?" George Michael, still trying to transcend Wham! In 1988, brooded gorgeously over line, "No More Kid Stuff." Christina Aguilera posed naked, but with a legitimizing guitar, in 2002 (women's nudity, unfortunately, often reads more like the sexist status quo on these covers than an act of self-determination.) And the list goes on: The Spice Girls, Usher, Warped Tour type bands like Panic! At the Disco, all lengthily considered not simply as commercial juggernauts but as artists within pop's changing cultural milieu.

Cassidy never had a chance in the 1970s. Rock was still the dominant force in American pop, and even as they packed sports arenas, its denizens prided themselves on not pandering to the corporate music industry. For all of the sartorial glam androgyny that Styles has now adopted, rock and roll in its classic phase was a masculine form that relegated women to support roles. Pop never stopped belonging to girls, but as rock stars became more self-consciously artistic, they (and their packagers in media and the industry) started to downplay the influence of teen culture. The Sgt. Pepper Beatles became the paradigm, the Hard Day's Night moptops forgotten. To prove he wasn't "brain dead," George Michael told his Rolling Stone interviewer Steve Pond, he actually grew stubble. It was a "simplistic, very obvious way" to prove he was no longer a kid, nor for the kids.

Harry Styles's rapid ascent to the status of widely accepted genuine musical contender — his crowning by eager reviewers as everything from the new Frank Sinatra to "a true rock star," reflecting almost universal positive reviews — is something new, though not revolutionary. It locates rock as a social and stylistic force within pop, not superior or opposed to it. Styles, born the year rock's last acknowledged savior Kurt Cobain killed himself, was raised to think of rock sounds and styles as ingredients enhancing pop's appeal instead of either purifying or banishing it; he grew up loving Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac, he tells interviewers, and sees no contradiction in that. Like Swift, whose polymath abilities he clearly envies, Styles has no problem projecting rock's unusual mix of earnestness and cool without surrendering his pop-bred affability and graciousness. And having grown up within a teen-culture system that brands its human agents as intelligent and self-aware, Styles doesn't have to reject what he built with his idol band and his teen fans. Instead, he can embrace it as something enduring — in fact, as the ground of rock history itself.

Teen spirit started rock and roll, after all, with high school-produced doo wop sweeping the nation even before Elvis came along. The Beatles themselves certainly knew what they were on about, wittily making art of the mania surrounding them.Dion DiMucci, whose fine lost transitional album Kickin' Child just received its first release this week, is just one of several 1960s teen idols who held onto pop's charms while exploring new musical approaches. Yet for all its power as a seedbed, teen pop remained an environment artists sought to grow beyond until the late 1990s, when the place most wanted to go — the rock counterculture — finally started sputtering out.

An important caveat: This was true predominantly for white artists. In R&B and, later, hip-hop, the dividing line between teen and adult music has never been as strong. Girl groups spoke of youthful dramas, but the institutions that produced them — the Brill Building and Motown chief among them — always aimed for several demographics at once. Michael Jackson struggled personally with his own maturity, yet when he died in 2009, his childhood hits with the Jackson 5 echoed from mourning fans' stereo systems alongside his epochal adult work on Thriller and Bad. And despite the personal problems that have made him seem at times like the most immature of pop's "bad boys," Justin Bieber, who was mentored by Usher — one of the most successful African-American teen pop stars of the past thirty years — has made a smooth musical transition into adult pop by consistently showing mastery as an R&B vocalist and songwriter. The more seamless relationship between youthful and "grown" music within African American music is one reason that the adventurous 2016 solo debut by former One Direction member Zayn Malik wasn't greeted with the rapturousness his ex-bandmate is enjoying. No one was surprised that a heartthrob like Zayn, who is half-Pakistani and has always been styled as the One Direction member with the closest affinity to hip-hop, could make cutting-edge R&B music.

In the rock-adjacent world, it was the Spice Girls — the 1990s version of One Direction, and in many ways a self-conscious Beatles tribute act, though the vocal quartet's many detractors would have never accepted that — that engaged with postmodern pastiche to cast teen music in a light that made it not an enemy of sophistication, but its conduit. Influenced by Asian pop at its most wackily self-reflexive and in tandem with Britpop bands like Oasis and Blur, the first bands to approach rock's archive the way hip-hop producer claimed the sounds they sampled, the once-derided Spice Girls now seem highly prescient. Styles's music doesn't sound anything like the Spice Girls, but his personal style recalls the group's theatrical parade through pop's sartorial heritage; in costume, he doesn't signal outrageousness the way rock stars like early Bowie or Mick Jagger did, but comfort with fashion's way of telling stories through artful accessories.

Musically, Harry Styles fits in with Britpop, rock's most pastiche-driven subgenre. Thought the album has earned endless comparisons to classic rockers like Rod Stewart and glam pioneers like Bowie, it doesn't sound anything like those artists' key albums, which were not produced digitally and ride on a live energy very different from this one's clean, subtle mix of elements. Songs like "Sign of the Times" much more closely mirror Britpop anthems like Blur's "Tender" or the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" than anything Bowie released in his prime. And there's no bottom on this album, none of the whomping beat that lent glam its irresistible rudeness. Rolling Stone critic Rob Sheffield's invocation of soft rock is more apt, especially when it comes to ballads like "Meet Me in the Hallway"; he's following the path of Ed Sheeran on tracks like that one, updating the troubadour confessions of James Taylor with subtle hip-hop production elements.

When Styles does throw back to something resembling classic rock, as he does on the mid-album designated party cuts "Only Angel" and "Kiwi," he lands in the one spot where rock happily opened up to teenpop influences before Britpop: 1980s hair metal. Those two songs almost do have a bottom, and are aptly reminiscent of Def Leppard, the British band that, in partnership with the old school genre-busting producer Mutt Lange, made what Rolling Stone itself has called the greatest hair metal album of all time: 1987's Hysteria, a shockingly successful attempt to stuff Michael Jackson's ambition and versatility into a tight pair of Spandex pants. The only negative aspect of Styles's embrace of the fun and flash of Def Leppard is that along with their sound, he's grabbed a handful of their vintage sexist attitudes about women. Styles's growls about "dirty girls" who threaten him with unwanted pregnancies are one element of his colorful costuming he'd do best to leave behind.

Yet though they strut their way into rock's clichés, even those songs emanate a seamless approach to genre. This quashing of categories is not only the common moveof the Top 40 in the streaming era, but also the essence of teen pop, which, in its attempts to serve young listeners not yet locked into their own musical loyalties, has always been fluid, gravitating toward whatever sounds tickle the ear and excite the feet.

Though directed at an audience supposedly preoccupied with dividing into tribes, teen pop — like hip-hop, which has often merged with it, from Kriss Kross to Rae Sremmurd — is an open form, more engaged with whatever seems novel than with any particular lineage. Styles presents himself as a savant of such novelty. So did the best Britpop artists, whether they would ever admit their connections to teen pop or not: Damon Albarn continues this pursuit of inexhaustible eclecticism in Gorillaz today. Britpop's appropriation a hip-hop sensibility, in particular changed rock, and represents the mood that in 2017 propels hits by artists across categories, from bands like Young the Giant and OneRepublic to R&B remodelers like Bruno Mars to country mold-breakers like Keith Urban. It's no accident that Jeff Bhasker, the producer who bottled the magic that makes Harry Styles a universal crowd-pleaser, has worked with all of those artists.

This is why Harry Styles really might be rock's savior: He's not a rock artist. Instead, he's a pop polymath, like Adele, whose warm, emotionally resonant vocal tone he can nearly match; or like Rihanna, whose bulletproof nonchalance he emulates in his seamless encounters with the media. He's also an emblematic millennial, projecting entitlement but not grandiosity, simply claiming space wherever his laptop and hair products fit on the counter. Forming the persona that best suits his roving psyche, he's collecting himself in bits and pieces. "I always said, at the very beginning, all I wanted was to be the granddad with the best stories ... and the best shelf of artifacts and bits and trinkets," he told Crowe during his Rolling Stone victory lap. Bits and trinkets, electrified: That's the naked truth of rock and roll.

[sillyanimegamingroad]

Why Android OS on PC not successful

In early 2016 installing Android on the PC suddenly made sense. Not thanks to Google, but to a small company called Jide Technology that announced Remix OS. That operating system, based on Android 5.1.1, turned Google’s mobile platform into one that could also make sense on the desktop. Why Android OS on PC not successful.

That project died, but today we have some alternatives that try to show that this convergence between mobile and desktop is possible. Samsung DeX and the desktop mode of Huawei phones have become striking options. There was even rumored a possible official desktop mode on Android, but everything has remained in borage water and many do not (we just) understand why .

Around with the convergence

The idea of ​​convergence is not new. Several companies have tried this in the past and failed . Canonical did it with Ubuntu Touch, Microsoft did it with Windows 10 for their mobiles (or those of HP, with its Elite X3 ) and universal applications and others like Samsung and Huawei have remained in a curious proposal but that does not just grow. Those proposals seemed to pale before Remix OS , an operating system derived from Android that mixed the options of this mobile platform with elements typical of a desktop operating system. The window manager and the behavior of the interface itself invited us to think that we were facing a system that could rival Windows 10, macOS or Linux. It did not. At least not at all. Why”desktop mode” and raising an Android for PC seems a lost opportunity for Google

Android on Windows

In early 2016 installing Android on the PC suddenly made sense . Not thanks to Google, but to a small company called Jide Technology that announced Remix OS. That operating system, based on Android 5.1.1, turned Google’s mobile platform into one that could also make sense on the desktop.

That project died, but today we have some alternatives that try to show that this convergence between mobile and desktop is possible. Samsung DeX and the desktop mode of Huawei phones have become striking options. There was even rumored a possible official desktop mode on Android, but everything has remained in borage water and many do not (we just) understand why .

Around with the convergence

The idea of ​​convergence is not new. Several companies have tried this in the past and failed . Canonical did it with Ubuntu Touch, Microsoft did it with Windows 10 for their mobiles (or those of HP, with its Elite X3 ) and universal applications and others like Samsung and Huawei have remained in a curious proposal but that does not just grow .

Those proposals seemed to pale before Remix OS , an operating system derived from Android that mixed the options of this mobile platform with elements typical of a desktop operating system. The window manager and the behavior of the interface itself invited us to think that we were facing a system that could rival Windows 10, macOS or Linux. It did not. At least not at all.

For starters, not all applications were prepared to take advantage of these benefits: some opened in non-resizable windows that weighed down the experience and confused users, while other powerful options on desktop systems lagged behind. Remix OS had somewhat limited performance , and its native applications and multitasking options were also worse than those of current desktop systems.

At Jide Technologies they tried to go further and even created teams based on this proposal. Even Acer and AOC launched into the adventure, but that proposal did not work and the company ended up abandoning Remix OS as such to focus on companies . Since then we have heard little or nothing about a project that has been disappearing from the map.

Samsung and Huawei try, but timidly

The Remix OS approach fell by the wayside, but it applied a curious concept contrary to that adopted by Microsoft and Canonical. They tried to adapt a desktop operating system (Windows, Ubuntu) to one that would work well on mobiles. That didn’t work, but the opposite idea of ​​Remix OS – bringing Android, a mobile platform, to the desktop – did seem to make more sense. We have seen how it is in fact what both Samsung and Huawei have applied with their technologies to be able to have a “PC mode” : when we connect the mobile to an external monitor, a mouse and a keyboard, the device detects it and allows us to change to that desktop mode and work as if we were doing it more or less with a desktop PC. The features are still not those provided by conventional desktop operating systems, but for light work sessions these systems can be surprisingly valid and also allow us to enjoy the applications of our smartphone with keyboard and mouse – which is sometimes very convenient – instead of with the touch interface.

Samsung even went a step further and came to offer Linux on DeX , turning their mobiles into small computers in which to work with a basically 100% functional Ubuntu . The idea was great, but it suddenly ceased to exist: Samsung announced two years later that it no longer supported such capacity, in part because of somewhat more limited performance than expected.

Since then there have been updates to support for these features, but none particularly notable. Samsung is the one that is investing the most in it and since the last version allows Windows 10 and macOS to coexist with the Android applications of their mobiles, in addition to supporting a wireless DeX that no longer needs cables.

That DeX mode actually makes special sense in Samsung tablets, which thanks to this option become alternatives to the laptop by connecting a keyboard with touchpad, an accessory that makes them compete with Apple’s iPad or Microsoft’s Surface , but with its own software proposal. Huawei and its desktop mode is also striking, although the company does not promote it as much as Samsung.

Apple is mixing iOS with macOS slowly but inexorably

While all this is happening, Apple, which seemed not to want to move a tab and has always defended the validity of its dual model (on the one hand iOS and its mobile devices, on the other macOS and its Macs) has been bringing both extremes closer and closer.

The “iosification” of macOS and the “macosification” of iOS (or rather, of iPadOS) have been evident for years: features such as the Dock or the iPadOS file explorer (not to mention the mouse support) and the new macOS BigSur widgets and interface demonstrate those mixed transitions. Those processes could go further, especially now that Apple abandons the Intel chips in its Macs to move to its own chips based on the ARM architecture. Those future machines are going to be based on macOS, but there will be several tools (such as Catalyst, virtualization or Rosetta 2) that will allow that hardware transition to be smooth.

Android OS on PC

The question is whether all of this is leading us into a future where an iPhone can become a Mac. The concept is partly a reality with iPads, which were born with the sanmbenito of being a “big iPod” and have ended up wanting to be much more with the iPad Pro and its new approach to productivity. The iPadOS operating system is perhaps the best indication of that possible future, but at the moment it seems difficult that Apple is going to take such a radical step.

Why is Google not moving tab?

And while I come across a Google where desktop mode seems like an idea that comes and goes . There was a lot of talk about how it was going to be implemented in Android 10 , and we even saw terminals like the LG V50 that implemented that option.

That option ended up being hidden from users, and the subject has not been discussed again by Google, which has other news in Android 11 prepared . This platform will officially reach some terminals in the fall, but again without seeming to have references to a hypothetical desktop mode.

What is the reason that there is no support for that option? It is true that Google has an alternative to Windows 10 or macOS in Chrome OS , but it is so in a very limited way, not very accessible outside of the manufacturers that offer it. It’s true that anyone can actually install it via Chromium OS or commercial offerings like CloudReady , but again it’s not a particularly widespread option.

windows 10

What is widespread is the use of Android: its global market share is overwhelming, so why doesn’t Google take advantage of that inertia to have a “desktop Android”?

The thing makes even more sense if we consider that with Apple’s movement, other proposals based on ARM microphones may end up trying to propose alternatives to the “Wintel” world. It does not seem difficult to think of an alternative world “ARMdroid” that takes advantage of all the wealth of the Android catalog at the touch of a mouse and keyboard, so the question remains:

What are you waiting for, Google?

The post Why Android OS on PC not successful appeared first on Technoeager.

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[trendingfact]

Digital Imaging Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast

Digital imaging is a process of creating digital images such as printed texts, photographs or networks through the use of image machine, manuscripts, artwork or digital camera. In other words, digital imaging is a method by which the content of a file or document is digitized and converted into a readable digital format from an analog format. Digital imaging systems is a complete digitization solution suitable for unique and valuable cultural heritage objects. The digital imaging is used by digital humanities researchers and institutions for digitization of treasures or valuable objects.  The digital image is sampled and mapped as a network of picture elements or dots.

Digital imaging system conducts all operations from input to output in digital form. It allows the electronic transmission of images to recipients such as referring dentists, third-party providers, consultants, and insurance carriers through a modem. Digital imaging also includes digital videography and motion pictures. The digital imaging system includes various components such as image acquisition, image storage, image manipulation, image display, image networking and image recognition.

Digital imaging market is increasingly adopted by government and business agencies to enhance productivity and provide greater access to certain types of information. The digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLR) and digital cameras use digital imaging technology for encoding digital  videos and images digitally. However, on comparing both traditional DSLRs and digital camera, consumers are responding intensely to compact mirror less cameras that provides high performance in a package and are lighter and smaller than traditional DSLRs.

Digital imaging market is experiencing growth due to various factors such as improved reliability, error free image recovery without loss, reduces requirement for physical storage space and elimination of environmental problems caused by film based imaging. The adoption rate of digital imaging systems increases, due to more number of videos, images or pictures taken every day. Apart from this, the demand for medical imaging system in healthcare is also a major factor that experiencing growth in digital imaging market because it has the capability to improve the patient safety and privacy, specifically in the perspective of  globalization of healthcare and efforts by many countries to build a sustainable health system.  Smartphone high quality camera is the major factor that shrink the growth of digital imaging market.

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The major trend for digital imaging market includes Wi-Fi and photo sharing integration into cameras using digital imaging technology. The internet is itself promoting the growth of digital imaging in coming years.  On the other hand, drones are introduced to the world to provide unique and different pictures or images. Also, the camera equipped drones have the capability to provide 360 degree spherical images.

The digital imaging system market can be segmented on the basis of end-use which includes commercial photography, television broadcasting, multimedia, radiology diagnostics and computer vision.

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The major participants in the digital imaging market include companies such as Canon Inc., Microsoft, Sony Corporation, RICOH IMAGING COMPANY, LTD., Samsung Electronic As Co., Nikon Corporation, Panasonic Corporation, Kodak, IBM Corporation, FUJIFILM Corporation and Mitsubishi Imaging (MPM), Inc.

[juliandmouton30]

"Architects are not just relaxed about cultural appropriation, we're experts"

A movement is growing against cultural appropriation, but could it spell the end for historical references in architecture? asks Phineas Harper.

Compared to other art forms, architecture gets an easy ride in the court of public opinion. Filmmakers, pop musicians and fashion designers know, one ill-judged move and they'll be hung out to dry by a swarm of social media warriors. Their reputation will be demolished in a tornado of online outrage. Condemnatory articles will follow in national newspapers. Managers and agents will hastily assemble apologetic press statements. Careers can falter, even derail. Public sensitivity, and the price of a miscalculation are high.

This form of vitriolic online criticism can be brutal, but it is a way of keeping contemporary culture aligned with rapidly evolving modern values. When a movie director's use of female nudity tips into gratuitous misogyny, for example, or a when a play's casting amounts to racial bias, are important lines to establish and regularly revise.

There are, of course, times when some condemnation seems purposefully overstated to generate a readership-boosting social-media furore. Outrage means clicks after all. Generally, however, the amateur commentariat are right to insist that artists become ever-more conscientious in making work.

Architects, however, have little to fear from the Twitterati. Some high-profile news stories drag designers into the melee of public scorn, but generally we can sleep easy knowing that our work will never be exposed to the same forensic cross-examination that each frame of Taylor Swift's next music video will be. Yet this could be about to change.

Google searches for the term cultural appropriation have risen approximately 10,000 per cent since 2010

James Anaya, dean of law at the University of Colorado is leading a coalition lobbying the UN to expand international intellectual property regulations. His proposals would restrict the use of cultural items, including designs, dances and words associated with certain ethnic groups.

Anaya's work is part of a growing movement against cultural appropriation – the adoption of elements from another culture. Google searches for the term have risen approximately 10,000 per cent since 2010, as incidents that might have seemed trivial a few years ago are now taken very seriously.

Fashion designer Tory Burch angered thousands in June when she marketed a newly launched coat as African-inspired, when its design was actually derived from Romanian garments. The Navajo nation sued retailed Urban Outfitters in 2012, after the company launched a line of products using the tribe's name. Author Anthony Horowitz was told by his editor it would be inappropriate for him as a white writer to include a black lead character in a forthcoming novel. Beyonce has been criticised for wearing a sari, Bieber for wearing dreadlocks.

Debates around cultural appropriation tend to focus on everyday items such as fashion and food, which everyone can relate to. Less discussed are technical or specialist instances of appropriation. But if Anaya's campaign is successful, it could have far-reaching consequences for designers, with new controls on the use of cultural material from music to architecture.

Critics of cultural appropriation rightly condemn tasteless fancy-dress costumes that promote disrespectful, even racist stereotypes. However the awkward reality is that great architecture not only features but relies on cultural appropriation. While most art practices are tightening the boundaries of who is entitled to create what, the best architects remain committed to skilfully mixing motifs, materials and typologies across cultural thresholds. We're not just relaxed about cultural appropriation, we're experts.

The awkward reality is that great architecture not only features but relies on cultural appropriation

Cowan Court, a new halls of residence for Churchill College in Cambridge by 6a Architects, is surely one of the most exquisite buildings of the last year. It also embodies an architectural tradition of cultural appropriation stretching back thousands of years.

The building is a three-storey timber courtyard block incorporating 68 bedrooms arranged around a quad. All the private spaces face outwards, so the continuous internal corridor becomes a communal cloister wrapping around the square garden.

Cloisters are a common feature of Cambridge associated with Medieval monastic architecture, but the early Christian design in fact derives from even older typologies. Cloisters are adaptations of Ancient Roman peristyles – private gardens surrounded by colonnades. The Roman Empire in turn imported much of its culture, including building types, from Ancient Greece.

Lucas Livingston of the University of Notre Dame has even argued that the Ionic Greek peristyle was influenced by older still Ancient Egyptian temple design. 6a's Cowan Court is, therefore, the most recent chapter in a several millennia-old story of cultural appropriation of North African design – and is brilliant for it.

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From architecture school into professional life, we study and adapt precedents to infuse our own work with a sense of history, build upon good ideas of the past and create civic legibility. The worst contemporary architecture lands with blundering indifference to its context while the best enters into correspondence with its surroundings and wider cultural landscape.

Italian starchitect Renzo Piano fused cues from the indigenous Melanesian Kanak vernacular with European High-tech to create the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center in New Caledonia – one of his finest projects. Even banal commercial developments are bursting with references appropriated from a broad architectural canon, as Pablo Bronstein's new book, Pseudo-Georgian London humorously illustrates.

We may start to see a growing movement calling out historical references in architecture

The old theory that idealised buildings could be stripped of contextual cultural symbolism and mass produced for any climate or society, which underpinned the 1930s International Style and Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House, is now thoroughly discredited. Architects who build without adopting some concessions to local urban character are cast as anti-civic, disrespectful and even neocolonial.

Weirdly our architectural consensus is now the polar opposite of what is making headlines in other artistic disciplines. Where filmmakers, painters and writers are increasingly expected to avoid creating work which takes material from outside their own heritage, in architecture we celebrate designers who reach far beyond their cultural bubble.

It is generally said that architecture lags years behind wider trends. If this is true, we may start to see a growing movement calling out historical references in architecture, as the public become aware of the sheer volume of cultural appropriation that encrusts every street. Will the 6as of tomorrow be attacked with accusations of cultural appropriation? Or could architecture, for once, have something to teach wider society?

Phineas Harper is chief curator of the Oslo Triennale, with Interrobang, and deputy director of the Architecture Foundation. He is author of the Architecture Sketchbook (2015) and People's History of Woodcraft Folk (2016). In 2015 he co-created Turncoats, a design-based debating society, which now has chapters in four continents.

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