#and the podcast i was listening to was like 'this is way cooler than the house parties i went to'

[buildarocketboys]

Wait...are USAmericans under the impression that house parties are something only cool people do? Did y'all not have friends? A house party can literally just be you, 5-15 friends and some alcohol and everyone being goody?? Like to me house parties aren't just the "everyone descends on someone's house with red solo cups" like in 10 things I hate about you, it can just be you and a bunch of other weirdos hanging out and talking and listening to music and also there is alcohol.

Like, am I way off base here? What did y'all do with your friends at weekends?? And like, this was very much before we were of legal drinking age as well - most parties I attended were at the ages of 16/17. Is it the alcohol part? Is it just harder to get hold of? Were your parents just not letting you drink?? Or is my baseline for "being cool" way off from some of y'all's?

[ms-demeanor]

I'm certain that if pressed my father, who owns 2k+ laserdiscs, 8 laserdisc players, 5k+ DVDs, who runs a blog where he makes near daily posts about movies and hosts a movie podcast, and who saw Spectre in theaters 27 times because Regal Cinemas offered an unlimited viewing card for fifty dollars, would insist that he is a Fully Normal Adult Man with no divergence, neuro or otherwise. After all what is not normal about doing a job where you have the same daily routine, down to recording the second half of your favorite morning talk show every day so you can listen to it on your commute home and drinking 4 liters daily of the only beverage that tastes good to you that you bring in a cooler that you carry to every one of your classrooms every day, except for in the summer, when you teach summer school and wear a different hawaiian shirt every day because you like them better than every other kind of shirt and have collected enough not to repeat for an entire eight weeks but feel that they break dress code for the rest of the year.

We went on a month-long road trip once and he got thirty tapes and recorded a month's worth of the talk show without listening to the second half so he'd have something to listen to when he was driving each morning on the trip.

He has absolutely no idea why his kids (one of whom was diagnosed as autistic in the 80s and the other was diagnosed with ADHD in their thirties) are so weird or how they got that way.

C'mon, Pops. I learned it from watching you.

[will80sbyers]

I think the thing people forget is that Mike and El didn't know each other for long before they got their little crush for each other

they met, got a crush because the other one was a good person to be around and they were curious about each other and kissed and all in one week

then El has to stay away for one year and can only spy on him for that time so she gets to see him and his thoughts a lot and get to know him better and her crush grows to obsession

but listening to someone like they're on a podcast is not the same thing as interaction with them face to face, they don't really know each other by the end of season 2

and especially Mike doesn't know El, he just idealized her

also El herself hadn't even had time to know herself well during s1 because of how she grew up, she didn't know what she liked/disliked, what friends were, what some type of food was...

she was already a good, kind and brave kid but she had to "form" her character traits in a more personal way

when they get back together at the end of season 2 they like each other like you can like someone that you find pretty and also that you think are a cool person because they've been good to you / helped you

then in season 3 they start actually dating and we find out the majority of the time they just love to make out with each other so much to the point that Hopper gets upset about it because he sees that that's not looking like a healthy relationship for their age, kids in actual working long lasting relationships would be more outside having fun than closed in the house kissing, only the ones that have more physical chemistry than anything else want to only do that the majority of the time

then the writers also showed us little moments where we can see that:

They don't like the same songs, don't have explicit common interests except wanting to kiss and... Make fun of Hopper? 😂

Mike doesn't feel safe telling her about Hopper/still feels awkward with her about his own feelings

El was relying on Mike so much that she didn't even took the chance to really be friends with the only other girl in the group until he flaked on her

El and Max had much more fun than Mike and El and also the writers focused on making it clear that El needed to detach from Mike's influence and Hopper's too and get her own ideas about stuff and all and El's character started to shine more

Then season 3 ends with her regressing because she loses Hopper, she needed to be around someone "familiar" after that and getting back with Mike was what provided that for her

Then she starts being part of the Byers family so she got more support around her but she's also being bullied and I suspect she knows Mike idealized her so she started to feel too insecure about herself to actually open up to Mike about it and risk that him seeing her be weak is what made him not love her

In her mind Mike's presence in her life as a boyfriend but even as just a friend (which is what she really wants imo) becomes conditional to him thinking she's cool and not a monster and she starts lying

Meanwhile Mike is going more or less through the same thing because he thinks he's a freak nerd and a nobody compared to El and she will dump him soon so he starts closing off (he never really opened up to her because of his insecurities and also because they are not truly in love)

Then Lenora happens and all of this comes to the surface... In Lenora the writers do the same thing they started to do in season 3 showing us that:

El and Mike don't like the same food (milkshake, pineapple on pizza, burrito for breakfast)

El and Mike dress up to look cooler than they are and present a facade to the other instead of trusting that they will be accepted as they are

El doesn't seek comfort in Mike often, Mike is not good in providing comfort

Mike doesn't inherently feel the need to reassure her about his feelings for her because his fear/insecurity is stronger than his love for her

El and Mike are okay with lying to each other as long as this helps them keep the other in their lives or makes the other think they are cooler than they are

El is okay with leaving Mike behind and not involving him as her partner

Like it's pretty clear this relationship is not gonna last... I think they do love each other SO SO SO MUCH but not in a way that you can call "true love" in the romantic sense

They want the other in their lives forever and I'm sure of that, they do have love for the other, they think the other is a great person with a good heart and they did have a crush/like each other physically in my opinion (and that's why they stayed together this long) but they just are not in love, the writers have not showed me they are in love they have just made the characters say it (I think they do even think they're saying the truth when they aren't) without backing it up by the narrative they presented around them

[utilitycaster]

I saw you reply to an ask saying Tiberius player sucks, but I never saw anything about conflict between the cast. Granted I didn’t join until campaign 2, so did something happen to make them kick him out?

I'm going to link the iconic r/hobbydrama post because I think it's genuinely excellently written and a thorough rundown, and please note that I also started with Campaign 2 so this is mostly secondhand for me. The tl;dr is that the actor for Tiberius immediately began hogging the spotlight inappropriately, avoiding things that might put Tiberius at risk thus screwing over everyone else, cheating on dice to make his character seem cooler, and ultimately in the course of one episode dominated the conversation and tried to bypass a core aspect of Percy's arc and said something sexually inappropriate in-character regarding Vex, Laura's character. He left not long after. If you watch the early C1 episodes it's very much stated as him needing to leave for personal reasons (he was also I believe legitimately dealing with some health issues), but it became clear later he'd been asked to leave.

It later came out that the actor had been hostile a few times while on the show towards fans in inappropriate ways, was frequently hostile and abusive towards many people afterwards, and stole and scammed from his own crowdfunding and employees regarding a spinoff of Tiberius's adventures.

For a bit of background, the vibe when I started Campaign 2, at least while avoiding most of social media, was pretty neutral even though Matt had definitely said some stuff that indicated this had gone badly, and TVTropes (look, I was trying to avoid spoilers and at the time it had episode-by-episode updates) honestly seemed to have been written by fans of Tiberius and was pretty sympathetic towards him. If you're not experienced with D&D or are listening by podcast it is hard to tell how bad things were until episode 27 (his final one and the one where the conflict is really apparent), especially if you have no other baseline for the cast. Tiberius's heroic death that comes out in 1x64 was, I believe, arranged by Matt to be fairly respectful, and coupled with the cast's requests to respect everyone's privacy I think it just wasn't much of a point of discussion during C1, though I could be wrong. The crowdfunding scam news came out right when C2 was in its early episodes, and I think that's when the fandom started to become more aware.

Anyway if you watch early C1, I think it is worth it despite him (and honestly while the actor sucks the character was a good concept and would have had immense potential in the hands of someone who was an honest and generous D&D player, particularly if the fall of Draconia was pre-planned even before his departure), but as many other people have said, if you haven't seen episode 1x27 you do not know what the cast looks like when they're actually fucking angry at someone. Like even when they've been upset with each other it's been a "talk it out" situation, rather than that.

[putschki1969]

2024/10/10 Blog post by Wakana おしゃべりガーデン第14回目‼️〜みんなの健康法がスゴイ！寒暖差についていけていない今日この頃〜

❗This is Fan Club EXCLUSIVE content❗ ❗PERSONAL USE ONLY❗ ❗Do NOT SHARE on other sites❗ ❗Join her FAN CLUB! Check out my detailed TUTORIAL ❗

Talk Garden Vol.14‼️~Everyone's Health Regimens Are Amazing! I Can't Handle The Recent Temperature Changes~

The temperatures in Tokyo suddenly dropped below 20℃ so I thought it was finally going to get cooler…but it was only for a moment. It seems to be going back up to warm temperatures around 25℃ 😅A temperature difference of about 10℃ between different days is rough in many ways😵‍💫I'm not sure what to wear *laughs*🧥

Hello, this is Wakana (0￣▽￣0)／

How is autumn approaching where you live? I feel that the plants in my house are growing a little slower, maybe because they've been freed from the heat of just a few weeks ago. It's a little sad, but some of them seem to be preparing for hibernation so I need to be more careful when watching over them🤔Watering them will become quite tricky from now on 😇I'll do my best!

Well! Today, I Vol.14 of my podcast "Wakana's Talk Garden" has been uploaded! ＼＼\٩( 'ω' )و //／／ I received many submission about "Everyone's Rules of Healthy Living"! It made me realise how well you all take care of your health😳You didn't only talk about different diets, you also mentioned exercising, regular health checks, trying new things to deal with daily physical problems…I was really impressed by everyone's dedication to a healthy lifestyle!! 😭✨I got the impression that a lot of people ride bikes😊🚴In terms of food, many people try to prioritise vegetables🍅🍆🥒🥕🥦Basic health rules seem to be ingrained in all of you🤔That's amazing…✨

I'm trying my best too, but the fatigue of summer and the dryness of the sudden cold have made my voice a little nasal😓It may be hard to listen to but if you have some spare time, feel free to check out the latest episode. I forgot to mention it in the podcast but I wanted to introduce my recent favourite foam roller. I am using it every morning and evening for stretching 😉It's a small foam roller for myofascial release. Look at the cute colour and size. It's tiny compared to a regular-sized foam roller. It's light and easy to carry! It's small, but it can release myofascia just as well as a regular-sized one!

I've always loved this stretch ball, too. It's a great product that can be used on trigger points. (Trigger points are "hyperalgesic areas, which are where the pain-sensing sensors in the body have malfunctioned, causing constant pain.") Personally, I use it in areas that don't usually hurt but are prone to stiffness. The shoulder blades, collarbones, and especially glutes! My glutes are surprisingly stiff! (By the way, if you want to work on large muscles like your glutes or thighs, I recommend using a foam roller with a large surface area rather than a small ball 😊 The ball is best for small focus areas) I keep these items near my bed so I can use them before bedtime at night, I also keep them in my stretch corner or on the sofa *laughs* I use them whenever I notice stiffness. It's quite painful though… 😇

Thank you to everyone who sent in submissions this month! ! As for the little present for those whose message was read, please expect it to arrive in about a month. I'm sorry to keep you waiting but please be patient😅💦

So! For next month's talk theme I chose: "Everyone's Ideal Autumn Trip". I talked a little bit about it in the episode but last month I went on a trip to Nikko with my mother 🧳I was very excited to be able to visit the nostalgic Nikko Toshogu Shrine 😍It was my first trip in a while and I felt very refreshed. That's why I picked this travel topic for the next episode ♪

Please tell me about the places you want to go or have been to, and the kind of trips you want to take! ! ＼(^o^)／I will of course share photos and a travel diary of my trip to Nikko on my blog soon✏️

And last but not least! I also wanted to talk about the happy news that were announced last week! Next year, on January 15, 2025, we will hold a Kalafina live concert. After seven years, we have decided to sing together again as a trio. 17 years after our debut! We have been encouraged by the feelings of everyone who has always supported us throughout the years. For this reason, we want to stand with gratitude and pride on stage to convey our feelings to you that day. The concert is titled "Kalafina Anniversary LIVE 2025".

We look forward to seeing you at Tokyo Garden Theater next year. Please come and see us!!! ＼＼\٩( 'ω' )و //／／[Note: Unfortunately, Wakana doesn't really share anything specific about the upcoming live. She's bubbly as always when she makes the announcement but no further infos or thoughts are revealed]

All right, that's all for today! Until next time~☆( '▽')/

＊＊＊Wakana＊＊＊

Wakana’s Talk Garden #14

❗This is Fan Club EXCLUSIVE content❗ ❗PERSONAL USE ONLY❗ ❗Do NOT SHARE on other sites❗ ❗Join her FAN CLUB! Check out my detailed TUTORIAL ❗

Episode #14 »»—— CLICK ME 🎁 CLICK ME ——«« ・Everyone’s Rules of Healthy Living ・Anything you’d like to ask Wakana/Anything you’d like Wakana to talk about

For next month’s episode which is scheduled to air on November 10th, the following two topics have been chosen: ・Everyone's Ideal Autumn Trip ・Anything you’d like to ask Wakana/Anything you’d like Wakana to talk about

The submission deadline is 10/31.

[junkdyke]

it makes my heart sooo happy seeing how my art being on someone just makes them so happy and confident, especially my clients who come to me for their first large tattoo or their first tattoo at all. One of my clients was so cute, she had asked me for this REALLY fucking cool custom but i sadly couldn't finish it in time, so instead she wanted to get 2 of my predrawn monster girl designs. She was sooooo fucking shy and nervous the whole 2 days and teased her a bit about it. I asked her "do you like horror stuff" and she said yes, so i made her listen to some episodes of the No Sleep podcast with me LMAO. I also had to be like "Sorry, i have zoom class if that's fine" and while i had my phone propped against her i was like "is this interesting for you to listen to" and she was like "...not really...." LMAOOOOO I asked her "do you want me to keep talking or do you want me to shut the fuck up?" and she was quietly like "uhhh....either way" then i asked "do you wanna hear about my dyke drama" and she said sure, so i told her my stupid girl drama and she seemed entertained LOL it was just very silly and fun

anyway, she dressed really cool and alt, this tiny ass, young tgirl and when we finished the second day, she just looked SO fucking stoked. So goddamn happy even though she was so so shy, she couldn't stop looking at the tattoos on her arm and giggling and thanking me, she looked ecstatic, i was like "genuinely so honored that my designs got to go to someone so fucking cute and cool looking, they suit you so damn perfect, thank you so much for letting me tattoo you" like they looked meant for her 😭 i was like "how does it feel to be yattedddd now, walking out of here like 20% cooler than when you walked in" and she just kept giggling and thanking me ugh, shit like this just makes the job so much more fun. I fucking love that my art style is finding the right people that just goes SO well with them, she literally checked out my page just on a whim thinking "eh whatever" but then said "oh nvm, its all over" LMAOOO

i love my job and i love my clients, it's just the best and i feel so much more inspired to keep sticking with my gut with the type of art i make! I know it's not for everyone, but knowing the bullshit my friends deal with when having tattoos that appeal to 'everyone', i think i'm fine with having my small niche of people that appreciate and enjoy my style. It curates it for myself and it's just really great, love it here

[scott-tibbs-is-dead]

ೃ⁀➷ ❜ Hi hi hi! I saw you’ve had a BUNCH of interactions with Jigsaw himself AND his apprentices!! Can I ask you a couple million questions about that? ❛

The podcaster starts clicking her pen rather quickly. It’s annoying.

ೃ⁀➷ ❜ Liiike… How’d you meet them? Have you started the job yet? Has anything changed in your life since all of this began? What are your opinions? Do you have any friends already? Are they nice? How about talking to them? Do you think they’d be alright with answering questions? My podcast listeners would LOVE to hear about you guys!! ❛

…So many questions. Do you even want to answer…? Plus it looks like she has even more.

~ @screamingqueenxoxo

(Ooc: really hoping the tagging will work, it sucks on mobile :[)

Scott stares at her with a bored look on his face. He JUST got off his shift and he’s not exactly up to social interaction right now. But, fuck it, he’s been in her position (granted he was going through a mental breakdown because he thought his best friend was dead) before, why not entertain this?

“Podcast? If you pay me, I’ll show up on your podcast. Until then, I ain’t answering shit.”

might as well try to get something for his time. He looks at her, a smug smirk crossing his face, as he crosses his arms.

“I’m assuming you’ve seen my doc, then? Honestly my band is way cooler than all that shit.”

He pauses, and gets a flyer out of his backpack, practically shoving it in her hands.

“We have a show this weekend, you should definitely come, tickets are fifteen at the door.”

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I've given John Robins credit before on this blog for how I enjoy the way he hangs out fairly near the edge of acceptable morning radio broadcasting. I mean, being almost too edgy for morning radio is not actually all that edgy and it was nice to put on his stand-up show last weekend and get to him just say the word "fuck" a few times (listening to people try to operate under anti-swearing restrictions is funny, but it's nice to hear them taken off once in a while), and also the idea of edginess on the radio is a bit of a charade because if he were really going too far they'd just get rid of him. But still, I do find finny the bits where John will tell a slightly edgy story and then Elis will gleefully tell us how much it annoys the producers when he gets like that, or if he vaguely threatens to swear and you'll hear a vaguely anxious "Careful, John" from a producer even though obviously is not actually going to swear on commercial radio.

However, this post, for once, was not meant to be about John Robins (though it turned out to be anyway, sorry). This post was meant to say that while I've enjoyed John Robins being too much of a rebel for the suits at Radio X, I've just heard them allude to the fact that those same suits had to tell Elis James in a formal meeting to stop with his constant discussion and veneration of obscure historical communists and trade unionists during the show. Which doesn't surprise me, because Elis James does spend a lot of time doing that, often getting cut off by the audibly annoyed producer (and those are just the instances that get left in the podcast edit). And that's pretty good. Credit to Elis James, that's a cooler thing to be told off for than a drinking story that gets slightly too dark. Elis James is pretty cool.

[mariacallous]

I was grabbing a drink with an old friend when it happened. I told her I was excited about an upcoming reporting trip to Vancouver, to interview Naomi Klein. My friend wrinkled her nose, as if the bartender had just farted. Then she asked why I’d give my time to someone who thought the Covid-19 pandemic was a conspiracy.

I sighed. Turns out, she’d been thinking of Naomi Wolf.

You know Naomi Klein, right? Rabble-rousing leftist journalist and climate activist? Author of Gen X touchstone No Logo and the mega-influential The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism? Decidedly not the former liberal feminist writer turned far-out Covid truther Naomi Wolf? But just because they share a first name—and, I suppose, are both telegenic Jewish public intellectuals who found fame through polemical writing—people confuse the two Naomis constantly. Klein gets mixed up with Wolf so much, in fact, a Twitter mnemonic was born: “If the Naomi be Klein you’re doing just fine / If the Naomi be Wolf, oh, buddy. Ooooof.”

Thus the basis of Klein’s new book, Doppelganger. Writing hundreds of pages based on the Twitter discourse surrounding your evil twin is, of course, a deeply questionable choice. Klein openly admits that her family and friends questioned her sanity. As she is quick to point out, though, Doppelganger is not really about Wolf. Instead, the book uses the experience as an entry point to dissect the “intellectual and ideological mayhem” of the Covid era. How wellness entrepreneurs demonize medicine. How the far right appropriates and warps leftist talking points. How parents insist on seeing their children as reflections of themselves. In all this, Klein writes, there’s a new doubling going on—weird fun house distortions of what used to be more straightforward realities. It’s a lively, slightly unwieldy, wholly vital work. It could only be hers.

Klein moved to the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia during the pandemic, a riotously beautiful nook of that vast province, where towns are nestled into fjords. It’s a place far more likely to be visited by orcas than members of the US media, and in the interest of saving me a journey on a ferry—you can only get to her home by boat or floatplane—Klein met me at her office at the University of British Columbia, where she codirects the Centre for Climate Justice. We’d intended to stroll around the sprawling, sunny campus, but the conversation kept such an intense clip, we ended up simply sitting for hours.

Kate Knibbs: Doppelganger is much more personal than your previous work. Why?

Naomi Klein: I thought it was really important not to be on the outside of this story, but to be inside, to fess up to my own disorientation. Having a doppelganger who a lot of people confuse me with is a type of losing oneself, and it provided a toehold into this larger and more interesting set of feelings, of being lost in a world we might not recognize.

You listened to conspiratorial podcasts for research, including Steve Bannon’s. Were you ever worried you’d get lost in those worlds?

I felt that way the first time I went to a climate change denial conference. I was a tiny bit worried I would start to doubt my own understanding of the science by listening to them. But the exact opposite happened, because it was so completely incoherent. One guy says it’s getting cooler. Another says it’s getting hotter—but the sunspots! Another guy says everyone should just get air-conditioning. That’s what it’s like listening to Bannon or any of those “intellectual dark web” types. You can see it right now with RFK Jr. He’s saying Covid was a bioweapon. This is also the guy who told people not to wear masks, not to lock down, not to get vaccinated. So which is it? Occasionally Bannon would have someone on who would claim that people were just dropping dead from the vaccine.

Like the whole #DiedSuddenly thing?

Exactly. What you start to realize is that these people are acting as if we were immortal before Covid. As if no one died from anything. What worries me more isn’t that I’m going to start thinking that the vaccines are killing us or anything like that. It’s that I understand why the things he’s doing are so resonant.

Why are they so resonant?

This is Bannon’s gift, sorry to say, and it’s how Trump won in 2016: by identifying a bloc of Democratic voters who had been screwed over by the party because they lost jobs to corporate free trade deals. So the offer was a counterfeit version of the left, which is what right-wing populism does. They were not rewriting trade deals in any significant way that would help workers. They were offering huge gifts to the already wealthy through tax cuts. But when people are desperate enough, they’ll go for a counterfeit.

I have someone close to me who has definitely bought into that counterfeit populism. It’s been hard to watch the change take place.

I’ve had so many conversations with people describing that feeling. It’s like watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

But I suppose we all have many competing, constantly mutating versions of ourselves. How do you think about your public persona now?

When we think about performing ourselves, we think about social media. For me, that’s Twitter [since renamed X]. And right now I don’t think any of us feel in control of whatever the fuck is happening on Twitter. But we’re still there, hoping to recapture something. I hope my relationship to my public persona is like my relationship with Twitter. I’m not really trying anymore.

Do you think there’s a way for you to have a conversation like this that’s truly authentic, or are you in some sense creating a doppelganger version of yourself to promote the book?

There’s always going to be some contradictions involved in hawking a book when you’re an anti-capitalist author. I’ve been living with that contradiction for a long time. I find talking to people exciting. I have ideas that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I had the idea to write No Logo while I was doing an interview with a student journalist.

Are your students influential in other ways?

One of the really nice things about being on campuses right now is that, if I was just getting my sense of youth culture through media, I’d think that all young people are constantly posing and performing themselves on Instagram. But it’s definitely a minority. A lot of young people feel alienated from it.

I get a lot of youth culture tidbits from my babysitter, which is how I know that super polished and posed Instagram photos are seen as a geriatric millennial thing.

They want it to look really authentic, to be messy.

I reread No Logo recently. It holds up.

Maybe not the Blockbuster references!

Honestly, we need to bring back your concept of selling out. I got in a lot of trouble on Twitter a few months ago for saying the Barbie movie looked bad. I love Greta Gerwig, but I don’t want to like Barbie! I hate the idea of a Mattel Cinematic Universe.

The thing that’s so clever is that it’s shiny and pretty enough to get the normie Barbie fans, but it also has so-called subversive content for the people who don’t want to like Barbie. It’s genius marketing. But the world is fraying. It’s an odd time for us to get excited about pink plastic.

Probably an odd time for me to be really annoyed about it, too.

No, I think it’s time to have some standards again.

Do you ever think about returning to that mode of criticism?

Just to keep you company?

To keep me company, and because efforts to turn cinema and television into capital-B Brands—the Marvel Cinematic Universe, most infamously—are so much more flagrant than before.

And also to keep us in our childhoods in a strange way. This is not kid content, it’s adult content, but it’s feeding on nostalgia for being 8 years old.

What’s a recent movie you liked?

Despite the critics hating it, I thought Don’t Look Up was brilliant. It was taking aim at the culture of narcissism and distraction at this most critical moment. It was broad, like all of Adam McKay’s comedies. But that was not the problem. The problem was that it was right.

Doesn’t everyone die at the end?

That’s the best part. He fucked with the Judeo-Christian trope that the righteous will be saved.

I do think it was broad.

Well, Anchorman is broad!

True. But I don’t necessarily want my comedy to be didactic. I just really don’t want it to be branded content from Mattel. There’s this amazing Canadian filmmaker, Sarah Polley, and she’s doing a live-action Bambi.

My grandpa worked on the original Bambi. He was an animator.

I read about this. Didn’t he get fired for trying to unionize?

He did. And they had the first strike at Disney during the production of Dumbo.

Have you been paying attention to the strike wave happening?

It’s exciting. I’m really glad that there’s the focus on AI.

What else interests you politically, right now?

I think it’s important to think about where the Covid denialism energy is going now that there aren’t vaccine mandates. It’s morphing, going in new directions, and it’s important to try and follow that.

Which new directions?

There are two main wellsprings the Covid denialism movement drew from. One was the anti-vax people. The other group was climate deniers. Now, when you post anything about climate change, you’ll get hit with “Davos elites, Great Reset.”

When we were talking earlier about how people take leftist ideas and make counterfeit versions of them, I was thinking about how that happened to the shock doctrine—your idea that global elites use disasters to push brutal policies to benefit themselves at the expense of the masses. People co-opted the concept to talk about the Great Reset, saying there was a global conspiracy to use Covid to strip away personal freedoms. Has this changed your relationship to your own ideas? Do you feel less ownership over them?

I’ve never felt I had that much control over my ideas in the culture. I remember Arundhati Roy saying to me many years ago, we can’t control what our words do once we release them. I have tried to correct the record and do my own writing about what I think the shock doctrine is and isn’t, but I think I’ve always felt a bit of detachment around it.

Jane Fonda started her Fire Drill Fridays because of you.

That was just getting somebody at the right moment of receptivity. That’s what Jane did. I take no credit.

Do you believe in the horseshoe theory? Are the people on the far left swinging far right because they’re attracted to conspiratorial thinking about Covid?

There are some people who have decided that Tucker Carlson is a great guy and Trump’s better than Biden. But most of those people I wouldn’t consider very left-wing. Someone like Glenn Greenwald. For a while, he seemed to be a left-wing person because he was against the Patriot Act and the Iraq War. But he was a libertarian upset about Bush-era government overreach. So it makes sense, when a government has to robustly respond to a pandemic, that a lot of those people got upset. I know some of these people—Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald—I know that they are not deep left thinkers. We have to make the distinction.

Do you think there’s an incentive to shift rightward now to bolster one’s personal brand online?

Yes.

Could there be a positive incentive the other way? Is it possible to build up an ecosystem of independent leftist outlets?

Remember that idea? We need to invest in media, and not be reliant on quixotic billionaires to find one another. I think we need to get serious about independent alternative media and local media.

Meaning, like, a new Twitter?

The problem with something like Mastodon or the smaller Twitter competitors is that they’re not able to offer what Twitter did at its best, which was this feeling of we’re all having one conversation together.

I don’t know if there will ever be one main conversation again.

I wish Twitter could’ve been turned into a co-op. This is labor we’ve put into this thing. We all wrote for free!

A lot.

There was always something self-exploiting about that. Sure, we were able to share our articles and do self-promotion, but I always knew they were going to try to charge us. It’s too valuable.

There’s a co-op movement for media startups, where the writers own their outlets, but I haven’t seen the same thing happen for social media.

And the thing happening now with AI—it was one thing for all of us to be writing for free for Zuckerberg and Musk, but now it turns out that all of that content is being used to create doppelgangers of us by AI companies. Now that’s going to be used to put people out of work, or cheapen their labor.

It’s accelerating so rapidly. Big outlets are already putting out AI-generated articles.

This relates back to conspiracies and why they’re spreading as quickly as they are. It’s a dangerous time to give people more reasons not to believe what’s in front of them. Anything you’re shown now can be dismissed as fake news. “It’s not even Biden, it’s AI.” We’re barely glimpsing the ramifications.

In Doppelganger, you wrote about a South Korean politician who used AI to look younger.

The thing about the Korean example is, it was not hidden. Everyone knew. And it worked for him. So who knows? As our candidates get older, they may rely on AI doppelgangers. It’s being packaged as a way to reach younger voters, because they prefer synthetic reality.

Have you had discussions with your students about AI? Do they actually prefer synthetic reality? 

Last semester, ChatGPT was really everywhere, and we were discussing how they were not using it to write their essays. I think we’ve overfocused on the plagiarism piece of things. It’s just one element within a completely unstable and frightening future. Maybe it’s helpful writing essays, but they also know it’s replacing entire sectors they may have been preparing for—between not being able to afford living in the city to the acceleration of the climate crisis to AI changing the job market.

I’m aware of at least one podcasting company hoping to use AI to translate podcasts into a bunch of different languages. It sounds cool, but then you think: What about translators?

The thing I find disingenuous is when you hear, oh, we’re going to have so much leisure time, the AI will do the grunt work. What world are you living in? That’s not what happens. Fewer people will get hired. And I don’t think this is a fight between humans and machines; that’s bad framing. It’s a fight between conglomerates that have been poisoning our information ecology and mining our data. We thought it was just about tracking us to sell us things, to better train their algorithms to recommend music. It turns out we’re creating a whole doppelganger world.

We’ve provided just enough raw material.

When Shoshana Zuboff wrote The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, it was more about convincing people who’d never had a sense that they had a right to privacy—because they’d grown up with the all-seeing eye of social media—that they did have a right to privacy. Now it’s not just that, even though privacy is important. It’s about whether anything we create is going to be weaponized against us and used to replace us—a phrase that unfortunately has different connotations right now.

Take it back! The right stole “shock doctrine,” you can nab “replace us” for the AI age.

These companies knew that our data was valuable, but I don’t even think they knew exactly what they were going to do with it beyond sell it to advertisers or other third parties. We’re through the first phase now, though. Our data is being used to train the machines.

Fodder for a Doppelganger sequel.

And about what it means for our ability to think new thoughts. The idea that everything is a remix, a mimicry—it relates to what you were talking about, the various Marvel and Mattel universes. The extent to which our culture is already formulaic and mechanistic is the extent to which it’s replaceable by AI. The more predictable we are, the easier it is to mimic. I find something unbearably sad about the idea that culture is becoming a hall of mirrors, where all we see is our own reflections back.

You reached out to Naomi Wolf and she didn’t respond. If she had responded, would you want to debate her?

I think it’s important to engage with what’s being said and marshal counterfacts. But the idea of just sneering at people is dangerous. I think we do need to debate, but whether that means creating some kind of theatrical Naomi vs. Naomi spectacle—I don’t know about that.

You could be second billing to Musk vs. Zuckerberg.

Anyway, as you know from reading the book, it’s not really about her. She’s just a case study. I follow her down the rabbit hole. But I’m more interested in the rabbit hole.

[mifhortunach]

2023 'overview'

The standard end of year post of course!

This year has both breezed by and felt absolutely endless, personally at least, and i feel like i accomplished nothing(!), but still, here's a round up of some stuff i enjoyed!?

MOVIES: as ever as always! I'm writing this a bit in advance, but i've deffo seen less movies this year than i did last year, tho i believe that i did manage to get out to the cinema way more than usual (tho, tbh, most often on my lonesome i think). I think i've felt the most divided on them this year; i liked a lot of stuff very VERY much! i also have felt so SO bored with a lot more things. i think i talked about having like. a matrix moment last year, nothing like that this year, tho a lot more of being like, 'well yeah, of course', or finally being able to recognise what a shot is, lol. Regardless, here are the movies i probably loved the most this year:

aftersun: all i talked about jan thru feb, need to watch it again. it looks great, its both fun & heartbreaking, and you KNOW i love the found footage side of it all - especially when it addresses that even when you have footage of 'objective reality' you just really cant know it all operation avalanche: as w aftersun, this shit gets at like ALL my interests! OpAv isn't a perfect movie, and i think the more u know about the production/etc the more obvious that becomes [i genuinely WOULD love to see/know more about the version that really did have the mole/romance plotline integrated, but lbr, that doesnt really exist]. ANYWAY!! i do think this is such an exciting film to watch, especially the movie making sequences, and i think the feeling of it all comes across so truly iygm. also, obvs, bc i love conspiracies unfortch the dirties: im sorry there's so much MJ on this list, short tho it is! but hey, these really took over my life for a month there lol. i still havent listened to the commentary w the real film critic, but i truly find this to be an airtight movie, the found footage stuff is so well integrated, justifying everything while also calling all intent/'reality' into question.. i do think someone could spend forever with it - its also funny & miserable! what more could u want (watch my fancam please) my house walkthrough: i genuinely just really like this!! ive said it before, but i genuinely just find it such an exciting watch, the bts just makes it so much cooler - what's sicker than repetition Hon Noms: la confidential: heat walked so this could run ! thirst: so much fun, i love vampire lovers who hate each other beau is afraid: too long, but i really liked most of this, v funny black tower: great example of doing smth so cool w very little

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

books:

francis spufford, new sun series, chandler, mauretania

PODCASTS:

sfultra!!!: sean L@TDF finally returns to talk about sci-fi books! sean is one of the few critics i'll always keep up with even when i dont agree w him, & this show has been a real treat all this year - the patreon stuff is great as well - its introduced me to a lot of new stuff & crit, and its been good to hear from him again. if u listen to any of these, listen to this shelved by genre: really good, tho often we have different interests - got me to read a fair few more books this year! im not a games guy, and im mad behind on fatt, so its super nice to get to hear some austin biweekly anyway, lol. twioat (as ever): i was a bit trepidatious about this season starting off, but it's been so much fun, the fellas really knocked it out of the park. i loved hearing from some guests that we havent heard from in ages. this season on AJLT was also fuckin amazing, truly & really adored their coverage; possibly highlight of my summer?? toxic podcast: i almost certainly shouted this out last year, but it was nice to have this around again in the top half of the year!! ale has a letterboxd now & its fun to get to see just how many truly atrocious horror movies he does watch all the time. a true connoisseur

------------------------

pick’n’mix:

ntbts: its a such good show!! i've watched more tv than usual this year, but i love how this is done on almost every level. i apologised before for having so much MJ on this list & i stand by that!, but i do think that one of the best (practical) traits in his work is making difficult stuff look not only easy, but genuinely both fun & achievable. whens the movie going to drop??? (lol) getting into shirts: this genuinely was more of an accidental year long thing, starting w the ones i printed for lizzie back in jan/feb, but its been fun! finally got back some screenprinting experience, and i think u can really see some amping up of ambition & basic skill/practice. i do wanna do more in the new year, but am trying to engage with actual intended outcomes (and lbr, the storage issue lol), so we'll see

the sopranos!!: sometimes they really were right about good tv being good, who knew! so much funnier, weirder & depressing than i wouldve expected- honestly undersung at this point. also, it introduced me to a tonne of music lol

the blackberry soundtrack: unfortch i continue to be kinda mixed on the film, as much as i think on a technical level it's so super cool & well-made. i do really like the soundtrack tho!! i'm kinda iffy on some of its application in the actual film, but im a hater, so what can u do lol. the actual thing DOES rip tho

==========

this whole thing makes it look like i got a lot more done this year than i feel like i did lol. i feel like i had plans up the top but they really all came out in the wash//

i read an okay amount of books, but failed to get thru any piles

i watched more tv than usual this year, and saw id say, a midtier amount of movies, but way more new movies than usual

i moved for a bit! then moved back & got a worse job lol

there was a lot of work i didnt get finished.. i have stuff ive been meaning to edition since this time last year that i still havent gone back to.. that said, i think i did get some stuff done, finally actually did some stone litho(!!!!) & had some stuff up in a show or two

who knows,,, maybe ill finally get my shit together & 2024 could be my year - people say good things about being 26 right??? 😭😭😭

[backagainpodcast]

I love to use BABA to unwind from having a rough day. Also this is once of the best concepts I have come across though out the media that I consume. The outro gives a glimpse of hope when this bard needs it the most. I hope that everyone sees the positive impact of this podcast. Thank you. Also do you have any advice for world building.

hello dear one! Thank you so much for your kind words :)

One of my favorite things about art is that it is always in conversation with others :) I'm so glad that you love BABA, but it wouldn't be what it is without every other story I've ever read and have fallen in love with first!!

And thank YOU for listening all the way through the outro -- I always mean it, every time. I hope that you have a wonderful day, I hope that you know all the ways you are loved.

I fear I do not have much advice in the way of worldbuilding, as I'm notorious for just... adding things in when I feel it and praying for continuity. There are definitely better people out there to ask than me, but what I always come back around to are the... little human things, I guess? If you ask me where water comes from or crop rotations or if there are sheep I will be making that answer up in the moment or giving a big 'ol shrug of my shoulders. If you look too closely, you'll realize Rhysea isn't even turtles all the way down. It's more a house of cards in a hailstorm.

However, what's important to me, always, is trying to find ways to make your characters care about the world around them and for the world to care about your characters in turn.

Ilyaas is a forgiving narrator for this --- she falls in love with everything she sees and she tries to cling to it, and she's a big part of me, and the things that I care about are stories and food and traditions and words and fancy engraved swords, so that is what Rhysea has a lot of. Perhaps my world-building advice is to talk at length about the things that make you happy? And to build those into your world?

As much as I wish I could, I derive no joy from sitting down and listing out Rhysea's top exports and the name of every Laerd and their children. It would make Rhysea so much cooler, I'm sure, but it would drive me crazy in the building it. However, when Ilyaas starts to talk about the lottery system or the way cycles work things become intersting to me and I like to spend the time with them. Perhaps my world-building advice is to write a scene and fill in the world, rather than creating a world for the sake of a scene?

I think my only real piece of advice is to add in what feels interesting to you, the writer, rather than what you feel like maybeee you should have in order to have a Real Serious World. Love makes everything feel real. Write in what you love :)

[feralghxuls]

heyyy hiii here is a bunch of swiss being a Huge Sap. and also somno. which was the main premise until i tapped into swiss's internal monologue.

Consummated Bliss

Rating: Explicit

Pairings/Characters: Swiss/Rain, Swiss/Ifrit, Swiss/Omega

Tags: consensual somnopholia, smut with feelings

Words: 4,340

Summary: Swiss is restless and feeling needy, and he doesn't dare disturb Rain's sleep. But after he strikes out twice with his attempts at finding another warm body...

He'll just have to be careful not to wake Rain.

By human standards, many of the ghouls have strange sleep schedules, and some are lucky enough to share a similar pattern with their mates. Swiss isn’t one of them; Rain sleeps from 9pm until 4am, every day; the only time this varies is when they’re on tour, when he has no choice but to shift his sleep schedule and is quite grumpy about it. Swiss, on the other hand, tends to sleep in handfuls of three to four hours at a time twice a day on a rotating schedule with a mind of its own, and he’s somehow almost always awake when Rain is asleep. 

Usually, this isn’t a problem. Usually, he’s content to lay with Rain’s sleeping form, basking in the quiet and scrolling through his phone or listening to podcasts or just curled up against him, listening to him breathe. 

Swiss is restless tonight. There’s a relentless heat sitting in his veins, and sometimes quietly getting himself off beside Rain is enough to quell it until morning, to allow him to get back to his chosen quiet activity of the night while Rain slumbers beside him. He gets barely ten minutes of peace, in which he curls around Rain and laments other mate pairs lucky enough to have matching sleep schedules, before that buzz returns to him, filling out his cock and sending desire rolling through him, his nerves prickling with it and there’s no way he can ignore it. He rolls his head towards Rain for a moment, debating. He’s explicitly said he doesn’t mind what Swiss gets up to while he’s asleep, as long as he remains that way, and it had only taken the first time Swiss had accidentally woken Rain to cement in his mind how much he needs his rock-steady sleep schedule. 

So Swiss eases out of bed and drops a kiss to Rain’s forehead, watches the way the corner of his mouth turns up even in his sleep, a soft smile on his own face to match. He lingers for a moment longer, lost in the moment before his cock twitches of its own accord, reminding him of why he got out of bed in the first place. He roots around in the dark room for a pair of sweats, not bothering with a shirt. The clergy frowns upon the ghouls wandering around the abbey underdressed, but the clergy is asleep, so Swiss doesn’t care. Especially not when the the brush of sweats against his legs is already nearly unbearable and the idea of more fabric on his overheated skin sounds like it might just be the death of him.

To his relief, the air is a little cooler in the halls as he pads on bare feet through to Ifrit’s room. His best friend and co-conspirator is usually awake at this hour, shares the same off-kilter sleep schedule with a mind of its own, and he’s always more than happy to see him, but there’s no answer when he knocks at the door. Swiss pushes it open and frowns when he’s greeted with a dark, silent room. Ruthless, he flicks the light on and pouts at Ifrit’s sleeping form, sprawled out across the bed with the sheets tangled around his legs, facedown in the pillows. He stares shamelessly for a moment at Ifrit’s bare ass, and if the sight alone has him drooling a little, well, no one else is there to see. Which is a shame, really.

Read the rest on Ao3!

[pebblysand]

Something I love about your writing...

Where to start, really? I love ALL things about your writing.

But okay okay, the thing I like the best is a thing that covers all of it, and it speaks to you as a writer in a way that connects very deeply to me as a writer: it is one of many reasons that you are among my gods and heroes.

I remember listening to the podcast where you spoke of your aphantasia--how your brain just doesn't make pictures for you. And, as I told you in a message once, it made me think about the amazing little hotspot moments you have created that will forever live in my head, and to realize…hey, it is true, most of those aren’t exactly compelling VISUALS. They are something so much cooler and more effective— they are full-on gut-lurches created with words, where we don’t ‘see’ the character: we FEEL the character, and understand the character with incredible depth and richness.

You do those moments with more power than pretty much any writer I can think of, regardless of platform (fan fic, poetry, original fic, whatever). And now that I know why you may not do the OTHER, more visual thing as much as some writers…I admire YOU more and have more faith in MYSELF. Because you have, by definition, recognized a thing that is hard for you to do, and said, okay, I will do a thing slightly differently, and it will be AMAZING.

Every single time my own dyspraxia makes it difficult for me to write a description of movement or bodily sensation, and I find myself questioning whether I'm cut out to make the efforts, why I keep trying to write when so many things that a person would write about are so utterly near-impossible for me to put into words...I remind myself of you, how you take a thing that could make other people decide they had limits and excuses, and instead spin it into an incredible GIFT.

i don't even know what to say. this is just 🥹❤️. thank you. and, please, do believe in yourself and your writing - you will do great things!

[virgoanmaenad]

Some more things Tumblr has taught me:

A quick wipe down with a baby wipe can make you feel a bit better than not showering at all

You don’t ‘need’ anything in a skincare routine except sunscreen (cancer is a bitch)

Speaking of, if you’re on psychiatric meds use sunscreen, the meds make you more prone to burning

You don’t need a medical-approved shower chair that can cost hundreds of dollars. If it’s safe for you to do so, just get an all-plastic tall stool for like $30 on Amazon. It’s what I did and now showers are way more manageable.

If it worth doing well it’s worth half-assing, too. Don’t over-work yourself for something you can pass off as decent if you don’t have the energy.

It’s okay to listen to podcasts/youtube videos/music/whatever in the shower. I can’t be alone with my thoughts, either.

Putting a cold rag or towel on the back of your neck can keep you cooler in the summer.

If you struggle with keeping track of time, set alarms for when you have to do certain things (I have alarms for wake up, showering, getting dressed, and leaving because I like to take breaks between having to do things)

Assume ignorance when you can also assume malice. Most of the time people aren’t thinking and are just on autopilot. They’re way more likely to be in their own world rather than trying to be intentionally mean or obtrusive.

collection of useful things tumblr has taught me:

even if you can't fall asleep, laying down with your eyes closed will still rest your body

you don't have to brush your teeth standing up

you don't have to do any chore standing up, from dishes to showering

you don't have to shower with the lights on

if you can't brush your teeth, flossing and a tongue scraper gets rid of plaque and bad breath

if you can't do that, mouthwash kills a lot of bacteria

eating "unhealthy" food is better than eating no food

you can make the same meal everyday for however long you still want it

some pills come in syrups or chewables if you can't swallow them

kids nutritional shakes can be a quick way to get fuel if you can't eat/don't have time

if walking hurts/exhausts you on a regular basis, canes and rollers are for you, no matter how young you are

we have free will—if doing something "out of the ordinary" makes life easier for you, do it

[ridmymind]

Hey there

Deleted my ig platform for good

I accidentally viewed my ecs gf and I was crushed by the cringeness

I do no want to partake in such foolish behavior like DO REMEBER TO SHINE✨

Not my cup of tea

One time he said he didn’t like girls if they have an unnatural hair color. LIES✨✨✨

Also she is nothing special and that’s the most shocking thing

Thinkin if she knows bout his cousin and all the cult things. Thinking if anything was true at all.

I was suspecting she was in the CIA or something. No way, she s just a girl with a giant nose -he said he like ugly nose on girl I dunno its a thing-

I guess another person would have contact her to send screens and whatever BUT IM NOT LIKE THE OTHER GIRLS IM PROTECTING MY PEACE. Jk i don’t want to. Its a matter of time she s going to discover how shallow he is. And if that s not going to happen, well. Good luck, babe. I was wrong the first time I talked to him and he said was on ketogenic diet, I guess. I studied medicine. Fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on you. They studied like political science. Pls. I was so embarrassed for him I swear. Shame on you and that’s the end. Shes like his therapist, nutritionist and all the other figures he had to follow in order to being good with himself, having a person that tell him what to do. I am legit furious cause he knows everything bout my situation and he did not tell me the truth. And he was acting like he was mr right all the time. I even edited part of his thesis. Of course i’m mad. Now i can tell a garbage narcissist way sooner. Maybe i have to activate my account only to haunt him. But at what cost?

I have lost my voice.

My spirit is broken.

Life on social media is fake af.

Nevertheless, I’ll post. Not to mock anyone. Just to take space.

I need to take space

He didn’t know me at all. I am a poet and a person in stem. A painter and a doctor. An artist and a mad scientist. A kind person that want to make others happy and well. And i have a strong moral compass. I’m a reader and a writer. I play piano, guitar and uke. I can do my own hair. I have good taste in fashion choice. I listen to english podcast at 2x. I loved alternative stuff all my life. And I was the best in everything I ve done so far. If I was the man, I’ll be THE man.

He Was just a boy who play pretend to be an adult

Was just a boy that’s smell like my grandpa used to. And that’s telling about me.

I thought she was a ballerina. An actress. A beautiful girl. Or an accomplished ones. I thought she hasn’t social media. That she was cooler than me. Poor thing.

If I ll get past these health problems the next page I wanna do is an uku learn with me

Im speechless. Logically speaking they have nothing to do with me. I m educated, have studied a lot, has so many interests. We haven’t the same culture at all. The same moral values. He s just a follower. She will have his babies. And he ll continue to do what is in his nature. BEING A BAD BAD BAD HUMAN BEING. But i m very emotional disregulated so I can’t do a logic argument. I just want to talk sit about them with my bff. Like any other girl.

A fellow student I can’t. I thought she was a neurologist. That was helping his sister. I thought she was his teacher. I have over estimated this guy so much. It costed me years of my life. Maybe she s p3ggin him rn. I don’t think so but.

However i m slowly transitioning in the man I d like to date. Maybe i like myself too much, and we shared similar facial features. I know what she is at least.

And thats me, rockin my hair cut and i’m cute as hell🥲

[ear-worthy]

The Art Career Podcast: Painting To Help With PTSD & Domestic Violence

When The Burning Bed movie with Farah Fawcett was shown on TV in 1984, American culture had finally awakened to the sad realization that domestic violence was a well-established and pervasive secret of a male-dominated society. 

Nearly 40 years later, things are better. Domestic violence shelters, support programs and greater awareness has made some inroads into this centuries-long issue. 

But it still occurs more than we like to think. Witness the latest episode of The Art Career podcast with Emily McElwreath. 

This latest episode is actually a rerun from last season, but with an interesting twist. In the beginning, we hear from the guest / victim, Meg Lionel Murphy, about how she's coping today, as she informs listeners that she has a storefront art studio in rural Wisconsin and has a burgeoning art career. 

 Meg Lionel Murphy received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota—Twin Cities, with three majors: Art, Art History, and English Literature. Additionally, Meg studied classical oil painting in Florence, Italy. After graduation, she worked as a children’s illustrator, co-founded the literary and art magazine, Paper Darts, and co-directed the arts and social justice non-profit, Pollen Midwest.

All that disintegrated because of her mentally and physically abusive husband.

Before we hear the Redux interview, Ms. Murphy tells listeners that she's coping by "living in her work."

��That's why I like The Art Career podcast with Emily McElwreath so much. The podcast celebrates the arts, the people involved, and the value the arts add to the vibrancy of our culture. Most importantly to me, the podcast illustrates that the arts can be a solution, a coping mechanism, and a way forward when dealing with chronic societal problems like domestic violence.

The host, Emily McElwreath, asserts, "With each episode, our mission is to empower you, expanding your journey through the arts." 

To be clear, McElwreath doesn't just have guests who are artists in the sense of painting. To her, "artist" is an expansive term, so she has writers, fashion experts, poets, educators, and even a critic.

The Art Career podcast is in the middle of its fourth season, which began in mid-October with an episode named, Matthew Tully Dugan: Caviar, Vampires, and Warhol.

In the interview, Ms. Murphy narrates her gradual descent from marriage partner to assault victim, and being controlled by her husband.

After finally getting free and pursuing divorce, her abuser husband tells her that he has just bought a gun, insinuating that if she signed the divorce papers, he would use it -- on her.

Listen to this episode that plunges us into Murphy's hellscape, and then transfixes us as we learn about her strength and courage as she rebuilds her life through the lens of pain.

A diagnosis of severe PTSD from domestic violence led Murphy to leave her career in publishing to focus on painting and healing. She moved back to her childhood home in rural Wisconsin, where she started painting in her father’s junkyard, in a studio shack that was converted from an industrial cooler. As her art took off, she moved her studio to an old storefront—that was built as a church in the 1880s.

Recent solo shows include “Traumatica Dramatica'' at The Untitled Space Gallery (New York), “Interior Violence” at CoExhibitions Gallery (Minneapolis), and solo booths with SPRING/BREAK Art Show (New York and Los Angeles). Recent group shows include “10 @ 10” at The Wisconsin Museum of Art, “Pleasure Garden'' at Laurie Shapiro Gallery (Los Angeles), and “In Her World” at Voltz Clarke (New York). 

Check out this episode, how one woman suffered from domestic violence and the resulting PTSD, but refused to be a passive victim. Listen how she has rebuilt her life, even with the vestige of pain, trauma, and damage.