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ye-bloodeh-liar · 4 years ago

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I just finished AC Valhalla – A résumé.

I finished the "main story" of Assassin's Creed Valhalla. These are some thoughts of mine. (This was saved in my drafts for two weeks or so. But my stance hasn't altered. Actually, I'm even angrier now.)

Disclaimer: This obviously contains some spoilers here and there. You've been warned, but tbh, who even cares about the story at this point. Also, I know I don't have many followers, and I suspect none of the few that will come across this post will actually be interested in it. That said, if you like reading people's rants about things, regardless of your interest in video games, this might be something for you. I just needed to get this out of my system somewhere. This is a rant (well, vent? I'm venting, I guess) written as it came to my mind. There's no real structure, I think. Sorry for that in advance.

After Origins, which I thoroughly enjoyed and actually played again between Odyssey and Valhalla, and Odyssey, which's name was perfectly fitting since it felt like a fucking odyssey to grind through, I hoped, actually, I was convinced, Valhalla would right Odyssey's wrongs. You see, Odyssey had one big problem for me: It did none of the things that made and still make me love Origins. In short: The world was massive, but felt copied and pasted, uninteresting to explore and lifeless. Basically, it was a lot of green sprinkled with some olive branches. A lot of the times the only way to know roughly where I am was pulling up the map because based on my surroundings, I could've been anywhere. Compared to the intriguing world of Origins, where you always knew in which area of the map you currently were, this was a shitshow. I mean, just walking through the desert in Origins had more atmosphere than the whole city of Athens (the main fucking city) could ever muster up. (Oh, remember the times of AC Brotherhood, where Rome actually felt like a city even though it wasn't actually humongous like the new games are? Or how atmospheric the whole of AC II was? I mean, Venice? Hello? M a s t e r p i e c e) But I can overlook that. The combat didn't feel heavy, or to put it better, "impactful" like it did in Origins, but more like poking the enemies to their deaths with something that made sword-y sounds. But I can overlook that. The loot system improved a bit, in the sense of giving the option to modify your loot and being able to combine different armor pieces, however, Origins outfit-system was more up my alley. But I can overlook that. Funnily enough, compared to its predecessor, Odyssey looked worse. In Origins the fabric of your outfit look like actual fabric and, I can't stress this enough, waved in the wind. In Odyssey everything felt more static and somehow "fake". But I can overlook that. To me, Origins' story was masterfully done. Personally, I'd say, that this is the closest we've ever gotten to the Ezio-Trilogy. The voice acting was top notch. Bayek was a great character, and the side characters like Aya/Amunet were equally intriguing. I still remember the first time I saw the first confession cutscene after killing Medunamun. It gave me shivers and goosebumps and got me excited for what was about to come. What I want to say with this, is that Origins made me care; care about its characters, care about their backstory and motives, care about the world, etc. After I had finished the DLC The Hidden Ones I felt like I had actually witnessed the igniting spark of something epic, namely the Assassin Brotherhood, in such a chilling way, even though they basically were just chillin' in a cave. Because that's what character building gives you: payoffs. Well, Odyssey did none of that. All it did made me care about was to get all the loot, because that's what my mind always goes for in any game (I'm that kind of stupid ape). I didn't care about what would happen in the end – I just wanted to get there. I wanted to know how the story would end, but in whichever way it would, I knew I wouldn't care for it in the sense of being disappointed or yearning for a different outcome for the character I was so invested in, because, as I said, nothing got me invested in the character(s) in the first place. That's what bugged me the most about Odyssey. Not the flimsy feeling combat, not the husk of a world I found myself in, not the downgrade in design and animation, etc., but the lack of care it invoked.

Now, when Valhalla was originally announced, I was excited as I could be for a video game. Ubisoft was clearly aware of their mistakes with Odyssey and tried to show that they're willing to listen to their fanbase. A world where every area has its own identity? Sounds great. Heavy combat? Hell yeah. Gear and loot that actually matters and is special (unlike in Odyssey where after a few hours of playing you find yourself carrying the same fucking bow 25 times)? Oh my. Choices not for the sake of choices, but story? Yes please. I mean, if you have to implement choices. Even though choices don't really make sense in Assassin's Creed, but that's another topic.

Well, did it deliver (for me)? No. And to be completely honest, I prefer Odyssey, even as the grindfest that it is, over Valhalla, and me replaying Odyssey seems a lot more likely to me, than going through all of Valhalla again. I'm not going to list all of the points mentioned above again in full detail: The world is a bit more intriguing than Greece, but a shadow of what Egypt was. The combat feels heavy, yet every weapon looks too big (????) and it still feels a bit off. My biggest grudge of the minor points is actually the look/the graphics: How on earth does Valhalla manage to look less real than Origins? The fur and pelts on the armor, every piece of cloth, i mean just e v e r y t h i n g looks somewhat plasticy (at loss for a better word here; just compare Origins' outfits in motion to Valhalla's) Anyway, let's get to the real problem here, because all boils down to the point I've mentioned before: Invoking care.

This became very apparent to me after forging the fourth (?; was it the fourth? They all blur together. That's how e n t i c i n g they are. Great.) alliance or so. I didn't give a single fuck about the characters in those arcs. It was very clear that they'd be soon replaced by other characters in the next alliance's arc, which I probably wouldn't care for either, especially, since they all felt somewhat the same: empty. Alliances felt like checklists to do. Even Wincestre, which had an interesting beginning, somehow managed to loose all of its "darkness" after the first two quests. But I could overlook the dreary sidequest-like alliance arcs, if they served the main storyline in some way or form. Now you might ask, what main storyline? E x a c t l y. Looking back, there is none. At least not really. And there where a lot of times playing the game where I found myself wondering, if this alliance-arc-thing I was currently dragging myself through was in fact meant to be the actual story. But it shouldn't be. Was it? I have no fucking clue. My conclusion on what Valhalla's main overarching story is, is what follows:

Eivor's parents got killed when he was a child (never seen before lol), got adopted, and is now part of the Raven clan with his "brother" Sigurd//Sigurd comes home from some raid with the Assassins Basim and Hytham//(Eivor gets the Hidden Blade; I mean, this is an Assassin's Creed game. Big moment. Done in 2 seconds.)//Sigurd and Eivor aren't happy with the new King of Norway.//Sigurd and Eivor fuck off to England (with Basim and Hytham) to set camp there.//Eivor starts to forge alliances throughout England to make his clan's hold on England stronger.// Sigurd and Basim do their own thing.//Eivor meets Sigurd and Basim two or three times throughout his alliance forging.//Basim seems a bit off.//Sigurd says that he was told (by Basim?) that he is a descendant of the gods.// Sigurd wants to "pursue his destiny"// (sidenote: the last few things are all within one (!) short cutscene in a small house. d e v e l o p m e n t.)//Sigurd gets captured and tortured and loses his hand.//Eivor rescues Sigurd.// Sigurd is back in the settlement.//Sigurd distrusts Eivor because Eivor doesn't believe Sigurd and Sigurd thinks Eivor wants to take his title as the jarl (jarls are the bosses of settlements).// And then the end sequence hits. This is where I want to go into somewhat detail again. We go from Sigurd distrusts Eivor to "Eivor, I don't wanna be the boss of the town, so I don't hold a grudge anymore, let's go back to Norway and I'll show you I was right all along" like it's nothing. It's literally just that: You walk up to Sigurd, he says this (more or less) and you sail away. Again: development is taken very seriously in this game. Honestly, at this point I didn't even know that this was going to trigger the ending. My genuine thoughts were "Oh my, finally, after all this grinding, the story is going to start." when in reality of course, ironically, it was going to end. Absolute belter. So you sail to Norway with Sigurd, which takes fucking forever, because OF COURSE you have to sail (for everyone who didn't play the game, yes, sail, that means looking at a viking longship while occasionally moving the stick slightly to change its directions slightly) to your original settlement in Norway, for what feels like far too long, only to say Hi to your dad. Fucking lost it. I thought we were going to assassinate the King? Nah bruv let's just have some quick family talk instead. Some action? Nah. Just get back to the longship. A N D S T A R T S A I L I N G A G A I N. Where? Just around the curve of our settlement in Norway. Yes, they pulled the old trick of the ending is literally just right around the corner of your starting position hehe. Absolute belter. Is this to make it seem like something is about to happen? The calm before the storm? It doesn't work like that. Well, then you actually sail through a storm (lol), which doesn't matter, because Sigurd just says "Let's keep going" and, well, you keep going. Also, to this point the weather conditions have never affected neither Eivors health, nor the ship in any way whatsoever, so why should I be impacted by a storm now? Like, it's a nice thing for atmosphere, but at least make the ship harder to steer or something. Then you walk up a mountain. Funnily enough Sigurd walks in manner that shows that the walk against the storm isn't easy, whereas you, hah, you can just yeet yourself up that mountain like nothing. I could sprint up there. Fucking sprint. Anyway, Eivor and Sigurd enter the Isu temple, because of course, we had to throw an Isu temple in there, I mean, i t ' s A s s a s s i n ' s C r e e d. Was it hinted at before in the story? Not really. Were we chasing or searchig for it? Nah, better get that next alliance going. It just suddenly was. Again: development. So we walk to the main platform of the temple and activate the machine and bam we're in Valhalla (because at some point Ubisoft realised that maybe they should include what is literally in the name of the game). Again, were we looking for Valhalla? Like not in the sense that every viking was, but more in the sense

of was it the main objective of the game? Did Eivor look for a way to Valhalla? Was there anything that led us here other than Sigurd having had a few dreams (that only got mentioned, like, twice?) and being influenced into thinking he was a demigod or something? Nope, Eivor was looking for that next alliance to forge. So, Eivor realises that his experience of Valhalla is fake and he wants to get out. But fake-Odin doesn't want to let him go. In a really weird cutscene (jump to 6:30), Eivor eventually escapes Odin and enters a door with his settlement-family (look, I'm all here for metaphors, but this, this is just utter rubbish. It just doesn't make sense, and there is no payoff whatsoever). Odin actually had a build-up of some sort. In every assassination sequence he's there and talks with Eivor. I actually thought there would be some cool payoff/ending/reveal here. But nah, this ain't it chief. Yet somehow, until here, I had hope. I thought maybe now, building on all this confusion, there's gonna be a relatively good ending. Something enticing. Something that made everything somewhat worthwile. And Ubisoft went: Lol nah. So, you're out of the Isu machine again (for all the non-AC-peoples here: basically like the matrix. Eivor gets hooked up to the machine and experiences alternate reality: Valhalla), and Basim is there. What a twist. The guy that showed up like three times and went from friendly in the first time to super suspicious (like glaring-in-your-face-suspicious) in the two-or-so other major cutscenes he was in, has now been revealed as the enemy. Congrats to that. What a twist. The thing is, and this bothers me a lot actually, it could have been anyone there. It didn't need to be Basim. It wouldn't have felt out of place if it wasn't him. Why? Because Ubisoft failed terribly at making you connect to any character and at building any actual story (or character). It could have been Gunnar, the friendly black-smith in our settlement, and it would have been as fitting as Basim. Then Basim says that this is "for his son". Ah yes, the lost son of Basim, which was mentioned once. Right. Eivor defeats Basim by hooking him up on the Isu machine and gets back to the settlement with Sigurd (in my ending at least. There seems to be a possible ending in which Sigurd doesn't come back.) Cut to the modern day, where Layla now knows the coordinates of the Isu temple, goes there, hooks herself up to the machine, becomes the overseer of time with the other overseer of time which already was hanging out there (I mean yeah, great idea, terrible execution. Build it up, then you can have a payoff. This was just straight outta nowhere, and who cared about Layla anyway.) Anyway, meanwhile Basim, who was still hanging on that machine a fuck ton of years later, pops off, and is now living in the modern day. The idea here is, that we lost the hero (Layla) which caused the (just established) vilain (Basim) to do his fuckery in the modern day. But why should I care? Basim was basically nonexistent in the basically nonexistent story and suddendly I should feel sad or shocked, because he's in the modern day? Is this supposed to be intriguing? And yeah, Layla is "gone". Layla, who had no character building over three fucking games. Why should i be bothered? Why should I care about anything that just happened? Remember when a side character (Lucy) died in AC Brotherhood? That was intriguing. Why? Because they built her as a character we (Desmond) trusted, even though it was in the modern day (which no one really cares about in AC). And this is why Valhalla broke me and Odyssey didn't. Valhalla failed to make me care on a much deeper level. It's just a lot of nothingness. Empty characters in a nonexistent story. And by nonexistent, I mean non-built at all. When I play the game now, I have no actual reason, and throughout the game never actually had any actual reason, to continue. It was a chore. I didn't bother if after three hours of grind I would eventually get a mini-snippet of a husk of a story, and neither do I care now. Everything in

this game is so devoid of sparking curiosity and screams of lacklusterness to the point where I don't even know what I have actually expierenced. For fuck's sake Ubisoft, make me care again. At least once in 40 hours.

May I sum up Valhalla's "story" and content in the glorious words of Catherine Tate: Am I bovvered? The answer, sadly, is a holistic no.

#assassins creed #ac valhalla #sorry for the rant #this is my longest post yet #am i bovvered #sidenote: this is actually the first time that i'm genuinely pissed at ubisoft #i wasn't even this mad with odyssey #and that thing got a lot of hate #maybe i'm gonna delete this again

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terramythos · 4 years ago

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TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 5 of 26

Title: Ninth House (Alex Stern #1) (2019)

Author: Leigh Bardugo

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Mystery, Horror, Third-Person, Unreliable Narrator, Female Protagonist, LGBT Protagonist (?).

Rating: 9/10

Date Began: 1/31/2021

Date Finished: 2/06/2021

Alex Stern's had the ability to see ghosts for as long as she can remember-- and it's led her life in a terrible direction. At twenty, she is the sole survivor of a gruesome multiple murder case in Los Angeles. In the hospital, she's given a chance to turn her life around. She receives a full ride scholarship to Yale, but in return has to serve as an apprentice to Lethe House, an organization tasked with monitoring the shady magical dealings of the university's secret societies. Determined to leave her past behind, Alex accepts the offer.

But things start to go wrong partway into the school year. Her mentor Darlington disappears under mysterious circumstances. Months later, a young woman named Tara Hutchins turns up dead on a ritual night. Alex suspects the secret societies of Yale are involved in the murder, but no one seems willing to believe her. Going off a hunch, Alex decides to investigate on her own. But the past she's running from threatens to return and change everything.

“All you children playing with fire, looking surprised when the house burns down.”

Full review, minor spoilers, and content warnings under the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Graphic violence, gore, murder, death, etc. R*pe, p*dophilia, grooming, abuse, and associated trauma depicted/discussed. Drug use, including recreational drug use, underage drug use, addiction, overdoses, and drugging without consent. Mind control/altered mental states. Body horror. Depictions of racism, antisemitism, and misogyny.

Ninth House is not the book I expected it to be. It has a generic-sounding concept; urban fantasy murder mystery! Protag with mysterious powers! Secret societies! I really liked Bardugo's YA Six of Crows duology, so I went in knowing she's a good writer and hoping for the best. Ninth House exceeded expectations for sure. This is one of those stories that has a lot going on beneath the surface, full of interesting twists, turns, and all-too-real social issues.

While this might seem like a “dark academia” kind of story, Ninth House is actually critical of the whole concept. The story takes place around Yale, stars college students, and focuses on the real-but-fictionalized secret societies of the university. But these details often feel incidental. Alex’s (and to some extent, Darlington’s) past, the murder investigation, and her ability to see ghosts is more important to the story. The societies are groups of privileged rich kids using magic for stupid and selfish ends. For example, one society kidnaps a dude, performs involuntary surgery on him, and reads his intestines to predict stock futures. Magic is apparently dying, and the societies have built themselves on top of the few nexuses of magical power in New Haven. The fact that a bunch of asshole college kids have near-exclusive access to a limited and powerful resource sure is a big problem. They’re also ultra pretentious, using certain languages or appropriating certain mythologies just because they seem more magical.

That’s not to say true mythological symbolism is totally absent. Water is a notable part of Ninth House, along with its associated meanings -- change, death, rebirth, cleansing the past, and so on. Lethe, the titular ninth house, gets its name from the river in Greek mythology. Anyone who knows its role there will have a fun time with certain story developments. There’s also a lot of tarot imagery not directly addressed in the story. So history/mythology is significant, but it’s not spoon-fed to the reader.

There’s a lot of social commentary in the story told through a fantasy lens. Probably the most obvious one is r*pe culture and its horrific effects. Considering the numerous scandals centered around sexual violence, especially in colleges, it all feels very timely. There’s also a more general discussion of privilege and how it affects one’s access to a school like Yale. Alex is notably a victim of racism, misogyny, and poverty to some extent. Bardugo clearly did a lot of research about Yale and the social issues in the novel, and this comes through while reading. She even cites her many sources in the acknowledgements.

While Ninth House is written in third-person, I still consider it an unreliable narrative. At the beginning, we know two major things about the past. (1) Darlington (the deuteragonist) disappeared under mysterious circumstances a few months ago and might be dead. (2) Alex, the main protagonist, was the sole survivor of a multiple murder case, but was cleared as a suspect For Reasons. Other than that, the narrative reveals few specifics about either event until much later in the story. When this finally happens, it changes a lot of things. There is also an interesting, character-driven reason why this information is obscured for so long-- but it's a big spoiler.

Bardugo also takes advantage of perspective limitations when switching between the Alex and Darlington chapters. One character might assume something, only for another character to introduce new context about it much later. This might be a simple concept, but it’s great when executed well. In particular I remember Alex doing something in an early chapter that seems in character at the time. Then a much later Darlington chapter throws it into question with a one-off line. I really like this kind of stuff in stories! It's an interesting way to characterize and worldbuild that's just plain fun to read.

My LGBT Protagonist tag is a little vague because, while I'm reasonably sure Alex is bisexual, there's no direct confirmation in the story. Her relationship with Hellie does NOT come off as platonic, though. And while I'm pretty sure Darlington is meant to be the romantic interest character, Alex’s interactions with Dawes certainly give me Vibes. I have some suspicions where this might be going. Future volumes will probably address this more.

While I really liked the book, it's not quite a 10 because it's really dark, even for me. There are several (intentionally) disturbing and disgusting scenes that made me uncomfortable. Sexual violence is repugnant, and I appreciate that Bardugo depicts it in such a negative, traumatic light. But unlike Six of Crows (which explores this as well), Ninth House is pretty graphic, and I had a hard time getting through several scenes. It's a personal thing but did affect my overall enjoyment of the book. I can easily see other people having problems, too: it depends on your sensitivity to such content.

In addition, Ninth House’s pacing drags after the big mid-story reveals. There's two exciting twists in a row, then a good quarter of the book to go after that. It's nice to view the story with new context in mind, but it feels slower and less interesting than the reveals themselves. The story also takes on a predictable "we SOLVED the mystery! ... or did we?" story loop, which I feel I've seen a million times. Alex does some real dumb/out-of-character stuff near the end in order to keep this going. That being said, while I predicted some of the final ending, I think it all comes together in a satisfying way. There's lots of little hints that are fun to go back to; Ninth House is one of those books where looking stuff up as you go REALLY helps.

Ninth House lays the groundwork for an interesting series, and the ending is obvious sequel bait. I'm interested to see where the story could go based on some of the reveals and conclusions of the ending. There's also the impossible-to-ignore social commentary of the book; I have to wonder if that will continue in future plots, and what form that will take if so. Either way, whenever the next book comes out I’ll probably read it!

#9/10 #2021 reading challenge #taylor reads

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artielu · 4 years ago

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"September 9, 2020 (Wednesday)

Back in April, when America had reached the unthinkable level of 50,000 dead from Covid-19, news broke that Trump had been briefed way back in January on how deadly the coronavirus was but had not acted on that information. Trump defended his lack of action by saying he had been misled by the CIA briefer, who had, he tweeted, “only spoke of the Virus in a very non-threatening, or matter of fact, manner….”

Trump lied. He knew.

On January 28, at a top secret intelligence briefing, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien told Trump that the coronavirus would be the “biggest national security threat” of his presidency. It registered. Trump’s head popped up as O’Brien’s deputy, Matt Pottinger, told Trump it could be as bad as the 1918 pandemic, and that it was spread fast by people who showed no symptoms.

On February 7, just two days after his acquittal in the Senate on the charges of impeachment, Trump picked up the phone and called journalist Bob Woodward, who was surprised to hear the president talk not about the acquittal, but about the new virus. Trump told Woodward: “This is deadly stuff.” He explained that the virus is transmitted by air, and that it was five times more dangerous than “even your strenuous flus.”

And yet, on February 2, Trump had said in a Fox News Channel interview before the Super Bowl that “we pretty much shut it down coming in from China.” Trump continued to hold large indoor rallies where he insisted the coronavirus was similar to the flu and that it would soon disappear. Twenty days after his call to Woodward, he was still telling Americans not to worry and he refused to prepare for the coming crisis. Trump told Woodward that he was not telling Americans the truth because he didn’t want “to create a panic.”

By March 19, Trump told Woodward that Covid-19 was killing young people as well as older folks, although throughout the summer he continued to insist that children should go back to school because they were “almost immune” from the virus. On April 3, Trump said at a briefing: “I said it was going away and it is going away.” On April 5, he told Woodward “It’s a horrible thing. It’s unbelievable.” On April 13, as he dismissed the need for masks, the president told Woodward “It’s so easily transmissible, you wouldn’t even believe it.”

Over the course of 18 interviews, Trump spoke for nine hours to journalist Bob Woodward. He had apparently been angry at his aides for shielding him from Woodward before the journalist published his book Fury in 2018, thinking he could charm Woodward into presenting him in a better light, as he had shaped coverage of himself in the tabloids in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s. Trump also urged senior staff and officials to talk to Woodward, who ended up getting interviews with senior adviser Jared Kushner, national security adviser Robert O’Brien, deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, and former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, among others.

Apparently, White House aides warned Trump against talking to Woodward, but not only did he do so, he permitted Woodward to record the conversations. So when White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany today tried to say that Trump had never tried to downplay the virus, a reporter retorted: “It’s on tape, Kayleigh.”

When this story broke, Trump immediately tried to reassure his base by releasing yet more names of people he would consider for any new Supreme Court seats (the list is now more than 40 people long), and told reporters that perhaps he had misled Americans because he is “a cheerleader for this country.” Trump defenders were left trying to find someone to blame for the recorded interviews. Apparently, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham helped to persuade Trump to talk to the famous journalist and tonight, Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson blamed Graham for the debacle, implying he had deliberately undercut the president.

In his final interview with Woodward on July 21, Trump told him, “The virus has nothing to do with me…. It's not my fault. It's — China let the damn virus out."

The book has other stunning information as well. Among other things:

Trump’s former top national security officials do not support him. Former Defense Secretary James Mattis told Woodward that Trump is “dangerous” and “unfit” to be commander in chief. Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence, former Indiana Senator Dan Coates, who is a conservative Republican, told Woodward that he suspected Putin had something on Trump. According to Woodward, Coats “continued to harbor the secret belief, one that had grown rather than lessened, although unsupported by intelligence proof, that Putin had something on Trump.” Woodward wrote: “How else to explain the president’s behavior? Coats could see no other explanation.”

Trump allegedly said “my f***ing generals are a bunch of p*****s” because they prioritized alliances over trade deals.

Trump dropped the information that his administration has developed a “nuclear… weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before. There’s nobody—what we have is incredible.” Other sources confirmed to Woodward that the American military has developed a new weapons system. They would not talk about it, and were surprised that Trump had told Woodward about it.

On CNN, Carl Bernstein said that Woodward’s Trump tapes were worse than the Nixon tapes. The last line of Woodward's book reads: “Trump is the wrong man for the job.”

Stunningly, there was a second story today at least as big as the information in the Woodward book. Trump told Woodward that he was not telling Americans the truth because he didn’t want “to create a panic.” But he has, of course, spent the last several months explicitly trying to do just that: create a panic by claiming that dangerous anarchists are attacking our cities. It turns out he and his staff are trying to manipulate our national intelligence assessments to justify his argument.

Representative Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, today released a whistleblower complaint alleging that senior Trump officials politicized, manipulated, and censored intelligence to benefit Trump. Brian Murphy was the Acting Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis in the Department of Homeland Security. He claims that between March 2018 and August 2020, he repeatedly complained that security leaders were undercutting intelligence that showed Russia was working to undermine the United States.

That attempt to hide Russian attacks on America escalated this May. At the time, Chad Wolf was serving as the acting Secretary of Homeland Security, although the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s nonpartisan watchdog, says he was appointed to that office illegally. The complaint says that Wolf “instructed Mr. Murphy to cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States, and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran. Mr. Wolf stated that these instructions specifically originated from White House National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien. Mr. Murphy informed Mr. Wolf he would not comply with these instructions, as doing so would put the country in substantial and specific danger.”

The complaint also concerns the DHS Threat Assessment leaked yesterday to Politico. Wolf and his deputy Ken Cuccinelli—also appointed illegally, according to the GAO—prohibited the release of the threat assessment because it discussed both the threat of white supremacists and of Russian influence in the United States. This, they said, would reflect badly on the president. “Mr. Cuccinelli stated that Mr. Murphy needed to specifically modify the section on White Supremacy in a manner that made the threat appear less severe, as well as include information on the prominence of violent ‘left-wing’ groups.” Wolf wanted to add information about the ongoing unrest in Portland, Oregon.

Murphy refused to sign off on their alteration of the intelligence report, warning that it was “an abuse of authority and improper administration of an intelligence program. Wolf ordered it revised anyway. Murphy warned that the final version of the threat assessment would “more closely resemble a policy document with references to ANTIFA and ‘anarchist’ groups than an intelligence document.” This is the document leaked in draft form to Politico yesterday.

That document was representative of a systemic effort to change intelligence reports, swinging them away from information on white supremacists and toward the language of the president. Murphy claims that Wolf and Cuccinelli repeatedly told him “to modify intelligence assessments to ensure they matched up with the public comments by President Trump on the subject of ANTIFA and ‘anarchist’ groups.”

Murphy also charges that administration officials, including then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, lied to Congress, when she knowingly provided “inaccurate and highly inflated claims of known or suspected terrorists entering the United States through the southwest border.”

Schiff has asked Murphy to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Monday, September 21, at 10:00 am.

Former Director of National Security Daniel Coats, who continues to insist that Russia is attacking the 2020 election process, also spoke up today to demand that the intelligence community resume its in-person briefings to Congress about election security. “[Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin ought to be very happy with the way this is turning out,” Coats said. “He can only view his efforts as successful.”

There is a third major story today. Wildfires driven by winds are burning across California, Oregon, and Washington. California alone has lost more than 2.5 million acres this year, and Washington has lost almost a half a million this week alone. Oregon has lost 300,000. At least 7 people have died. The region is blanketed with smoke and an eerie orange haze, and in places, ash falls like rain."

#read the whole thing #fuck trump #covid 19 #it's on tape ffs #vote blue

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9worldstales · 4 years ago

Link

INTERESTING POINTS TO PONDER FROM INTERVIEWS 7

Interviews might not remain forever available or not be easy to find so I’ve decided to link them and transcribe the points I find of some interest so as to preserve them should the interview had to end up removed.

It’s not complete transcriptions, just the bits I think can be relevant but I wholeheartedly recommend reading the whole thing.

And of course I also comment all this because God forbid I’ll keep silent… :P

Title: EXCLUSIVE: Screenwriter Don Payne Talks Thor!

Author: Elisabeth Rappe

Published: Feb 23, 2011

BEST BITS FROM THE INTERVIEW

ABOUT THE SCRIPT FOR “THOR”

Thor has seen a lot of screenwriters come and go, and I imagine that led to some very drastic changes to the character and story. Can you talk at all about that process, and what changes were made over the course of project? (For example, I know rumors swirled very early that the Thor movie would be an origin story with his alter ego, Dr. Donald Blake!) How did the script come together? At what point in the process did you come on board, and what was your contribution?

Don Payne: First off, for the record, the final, official WGA writing credits for the film are “Story by J. Michael Straczynski and Mark Protosevich, Screenplay by Ashley Edward Miller & Zack Stentz and Don Payne.” Any other writing credits you might have seen elsewhere are either outdated or incorrect.

As far as how the script came together, J. Michael Straczynski and Mark Protosevich worked on the project before Kenneth Branagh came on board to direct. At that point, Ken and Marvel sat down and decided exactly what kind of story they wanted to tell. They took everything that had been written so far and figured out a game plan. Marvel then hired Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz, and, as I understand it, those guys worked pretty intensely on the screenplay over the course of four or five months. After they left the project, Marvel hired me, and I stayed on all the way through the end — about a year and a half total. For the first eight months, I continued to develop, rewrite, and restructure the screenplay, bringing in new characters and new scenes. I worked closely with Ken and Marvel throughout the process, and, as the cast came together, I worked with Ken and the actors during rehearsals here and in London.

Then, once production started in January 2010, I was on set writing every day, both at the studio in Manhattan Beach and on location in New Mexico, and continued to work through post-production.

I’d like to say more about how the script has evolved since the very beginning of the development process, but I don’t want to spoil anything. I hate spoilers. (Mostly because I’m weak, and I can’t resist them myself!) But I’ll be happy to talk about it all after the film comes out. What I can say is that this really has been the greatest writing experience of my life. I’ve never worked harder or been as closely involved day-to-day on a project as I have on Thor.

And as far as Thor’s alter-ego goes, as Kevin Feige has said, people looking for a Donald Blake reference might just find one.

ABOUT THOR’S JOURNEY AND FAMILY

I know you’ve worked with iconic superheroes before, was Thor more or less daunting to deal with? He’s a real anachronistic, medieval character. How do you bring that into the modern world? Is it ultimately the same as trying to make any superhero realistic and relatable?

Don Payne: Well, I think the challenges are pretty apparent. As you say, Thor’s a unique character, and it’s an unusual story we’re telling. When you’ve got something like Captain America, the premise is easier to get right away — he’s a superhero fighting Nazis in World War II. Whereas we’ve got an extra-dimensional being once worshipped as a god by the ancient Norse who’s banished to earth and stripped of his powers to learn humility, all set amidst the Shakespearean intrigue of a dysfunctional royal family. It’s not as simple to grasp.

You just have to find the things that make Thor timeless and relatable as a character. It certainly helps that he’s charismatic and likeable, albeit flawed. He’s banished for good reason, but I think people will want to go on the journey with him and root for him to find redemption — particularly with Chris Hemsworth’s performance.

I think what really makes Thor relatable are the family relationships. There’s a lot of dysfunction in the House of Odin. Thor’s got a hard-ass father and a jealous brother. But for all of Thor’s hardheaded rebelliousness, he, like Loki, is really just trying to live up to his father’s expectations and make him proud. I think people can relate to that father and son dynamic.

ABOUT SIF, THE WARRIORS THREE AND HEIMDALL

What can you tell me about the parts popular Asgardians such as Heimdall, the Warriors Three, and Sif play in the overall plot? Will we see more of them in other Marvel movies? Is there potential for a Sif spinoff, as she has enjoyed in the comics?

Don Payne: The Warriors Three and Sif are very much like they are in the comics. They’re fierce warriors who are fiercely dedicated to their friend Thor. They’ll follow him anywhere — which might not always be the wisest thing. Also, as in the comics, Heimdall is bound by duty and honor to guard his post on the Rainbow Bridge, and he’s got serious issues with anyone who tries to cross it who would endanger Asgard.

As far as seeing these characters in other movies or their own spin-off films, I think Marvel already has a full slate of projects in development, so I imagine we’ll only see them as part of the Thor franchise. But you never know. I’d ask Kevin Feige if I were you!

ON THE HUMOUR OF THE MOVIE

One element that jumped out at me in the trailer was the comedy – it felt very light and natural, not corny. (Jane reacting to Thor’s name, for example, or the coffee cup scene.) How did you strike the balance between the comedy and drama of the piece? Were there moments where you thought “Ok, this goes too far with the fish-out-of-water joke”?

Don Payne: Well, my hope is we’ve included just enough humor in the script, but no more than that. This isn’t a comedy, and that’s not what I was hired to do. It’s an action film, and, as in all action films, you need those fun moments. But you have to do it sparingly. You don’t want things to get silly.

One thing we all agreed about early on was to make sure we were careful about how we approached the fish-out-of-water moments. We didn’t want Thor to come to earth and suddenly become an idiot for comic relief. Even without his powers, he’s the same person on earth as he was in Asgard — a smart, headstrong warrior. He’s a being from an advanced race who’s used to travelling to other worlds and thinking on his feet. We didn’t want him looking at a television set and going, “What is yon magic box, with phantoms that move and speak inside it?”

Still, he’s on unfamiliar turf, and there’s some fun in that. You just have to find the right balance. You also want to have fun moments and dialogue during the action sequences, so you put those into the script. Of course, those bits are the easiest to cut in editing if you find the jokes are too much or too distracting. You can pick and choose.

ON JANE AND DARCY

I particularly liked how Jane and Darcy react to Thor’s arrival. They aren’t immediately throwing themselves at him. They think he’s hot, but likely to be crazy. I know you’re a staunch feminist, so I imagine their portrayal was important to you. Can you talk about how you approached them? It seems rare to have two girls in a single Marvel film, possibly competing for Thor’s attention. How did that play into the romance, and how did you approach the relationship between Thor and Jane? Did Natalie Portman and Kat Dennings have any input into their characters?

Don Payne: Kat did an amazing job taking the words on the page as written and making them fly. She really embodied the character of Darcy.

After the second trailer came out, I read some people mistakenly speculate that her character was created as a marketing decision to appeal to the youth audience or some such thing — as if the producers sat down and said, “Hmm… this script is good, but we need a character to appeal to the tweens! With current pop cultural references!” I promise you, that wasn’t the case at all. I came up with Darcy because we needed someone to work with Jane Foster, and the character had to have a vastly different background, personality, and world-view from Jane in order to make that relationship interesting. I decided to make her a woman, frankly, because other than Sif and Frigga, we had a very male-heavy cast of characters. I thought it might also be interesting to have someone working for Jane who both frustrated her and who Jane saw as protégé whose potential she could help fully realize.

But I also wanted Darcy to be the voice of the common man. We’ve got Asgardians and astrophysicists, so I wanted someone to say what the average moviegoer might be thinking. If someone in the audience is thinking, “What the hell is that weird, glowing thing?!” Darcy should be asking “What the hell is that weird, glowing thing?!” (That line isn’t actually in the movie, but you get the idea…)

Natalie actually helped out tremendously with the character of Jane Foster. Let’s be honest, Jane Foster in the comics has traditionally been one of the most boring characters in the Marvel Universe. In the film, she’s an astrophysicist, so that makes her more interesting right off the bat. And it doesn’t hurt that she’s played by Natalie, who brings loads of personality and charm to any character she portrays.

Originally in the script, however, Jane was more of a traditional scientist — a hardcore skeptic. But Natalie came to the first rehearsal with the idea of turning that on its end. She suggested making Jane the believer. She thought Jane could be more of a kind of “scientist as poet” — someone who thinks outside of the box, someone whose theories are considered outlandish and are frowned upon by the scientific community. But it’s the kind of thinking that leads to great discoveries. When Thor arrives, she’s willing to take a leap of faith — and she has to pay the consequences for it. Natalie’s input made the character more interesting, improved her relationship with Thor, and, in general, made the story better. And she helped make sure Jane Foster isn’t boring. So I’m grateful to her for that.

During my story meetings with Ken and Marvel, we put a lot of work into the Thor/Jane relationship, and there was much discussion about exactly how and how quickly things should progress between them. I think we succeeded in developing their romance realistically, so it doesn’t feel forced.

ABOUT HEIMDALL AND THE MCU TAKE

There has also been a lot of ugly and foolish controversy about Idris Elba being cast as Heimdall. I don’t like to justify bigotry with attention, but has the reaction surprised you and the rest of the team?

Don Payne: You’d think as a society we’d be beyond this now. The funny thing is, this film was never meant to be a straight representation of traditional Norse mythology. It’s the cinematic take on the Marvel comics take on Norse mythology. In fact, in the reality of our movie, the Norse myths are actually based on our version of the Asgardians, after they visited ancient Norway. The Norse just got some things wrong, based on their primitive understanding of their encounters. (Like, for example, worshiping the Asgardians as gods.)

The bottom line is Idris is great in the movie. I think almost all of the people who are skeptical or have issues with the casting will be convinced when they see the movie — except for all the actual racists out there. But who needs them?

MY TWO CENTS

This interview is so goddamn awesome because it’s so informative. Don Payne talked about a lot of topics and didn’t give just two lines answers but well rounded explanations. There’s so much more than the bits I’ve selected but I couldn’t really copypaste it all, though I wholeheartedly recommend you to read it.

I’d kill to get a peck at the old scripts but definitely there was a lot of work ongoing to produce the definitive one.

Anyway I love how almost all Marvel seems to know Odin is a bad father yet Odin doesn’te ven get a slap on his wrists. Really guys...

I like how he admits Thor’s journey is one of redemption... but really that’s not how you made a redemption arc...

I also find interesting how again we get a confirmation that Sif and the Warriors Three are ‘fiercely dedicated to THEIR FRIEND THOR’.

In the movie Thor says:

Thor: Why don't you tell her how you sent the Destroyer to kill our friends, to kill me?

But the truth is that those were his friends, not both’s. For the Warriors Three and Sif there was never a choice between Thor and Loki. They were Thor’s friends and to him their loyalty went.

I also like how he says he hopes they included enough humor, but no more than that as this is an action film, and, while fun moments are needed they need to have them sparingly of things get silly. How they didn’t want Thor to come to earth and suddenly become an idiot for comic relief. How they didn’t want for the jokes to end up being too distracting. I think this speaks of care for the story.

They even put care in creating Jane and Darcy. I still think they could do Jane better, but still they tried.

#thor odinson #lady sif #fandral #volstagg #hogun #loki odinson #odin borson #heimdall #jane foster #darcy lewis #interview #don payne #mcu thor #9 worlds interview study

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 years ago

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* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Trump lied. He knew.

In his final interview with Woodward on July 21, Trump told him, “The virus has nothing to do with me…. It's not my fault. It's — China let the damn virus out."

The book has other stunning information as well. Among other things:

Trump allegedly said “my f***ing generals are a bunch of p*****s” because they prioritized alliances over trade deals.

On CNN, Carl Bernstein said that Woodward’s Trump tapes were worse than the Nixon tapes. The last line of Woodward's book reads: “Trump is the wrong man for the job.”

Schiff has asked Murphy to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Monday, September 21, at 10:00 am.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Heather Cox Richardson

#politics #political #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #Woodward #criminal GOP #corrupt GOP #corrupt republicans

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theliberaltony · 4 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Our presidential forecast, which launched today, is not the first election forecast that FiveThirtyEight has published since 2016. There was our midterms forecast in 2018, which was pretty accurate in predicting the makeup of the House and the Senate. And there was our presidential primaries model earlier this year, which was a bit of an adventure but mostly notable for being bullish (correctly) on Joe Biden and (incorrectly) on Bernie Sanders. But we’re aware that the publication of our first presidential forecast since 2016 is liable to be fraught.

We’d like to address one thing upfront, though: We think our model did a good job in 2016. Although it had Hillary Clinton favored, it gave Donald Trump around a 30 percent chance of winning on Election Day,1 which was considerably higher than other models, prediction markets, or the conventional wisdom about the race. Moreover, the reasons the model was more bullish on Trump than other forecasts — such as detecting a potential overperformance for Trump in the Electoral College – proved to be important to the outcome.

Also, we’ve found that FiveThirtyEight’s models — including our election forecasts since they were first published in 2008 — have been well calibrated over time. Candidates whom our models claim have a 30 percent chance of winning really do win their races about 30 percent of the time, for example.

So if this were an ordinary election, we’d probably just say screw it, take the 2016 version of our model, make some modest improvements, and press “go.” We’d certainly devote more attention to how the model was presented, but the underlying math behind it would be about the same.

We are not so sure that this is an ordinary election, though. Rather, it is being contested amidst the most serious pandemic to hit the United States since 1918. So we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how COVID-19 and other news developments could affect various aspects of the race, ranging from its impact on the economy to how it could alter the actual process of voting.

Put another way, while we think “ZOMG 2016!!!” is not a good reason to rethink a model that tended to be pretty cautious in the first place, we think COVID-19 might be.

What’s different from 2016

In the end, our model still isn’t that different from 2016’s, but let’s run through the list of changes. After that, we’ll provide a front-to-back description of how our model works.

First, a number of changes in the model are related to COVID-19:

In forecasting how much the polls could change, we now account for more components related to uncertainty. Two of these components include estimating i) economic uncertainty and ii) the overall volume of important news, both of which are very high under COVID-19. These offset other trends — such as greater polarization — that would lead to less uncertainty.

We’ve put a lot more work into our economic index: i) extending it back to 1880 to capture a fuller range of economic conditions, ii) adjusting it for increased partisanship and iii) developing an economic forecasting component to reflect potential changes in the economy between now and November. This is important because most projections forecast substantial improvement in the economy before November.

We attempt to account for additional uncertainty in Election Day results because turnout will potentially be less predictable given the pandemic.

We allow COVID-19 to be a factor in determining covariance. That is to say, states that have had high rates of COVID deaths and cases (such as Arizona and New York, which otherwise don’t have that much in common politically) could have correlated outcomes. Likewise, we also consider covariance based on a state’s anticipated rate of mail voting.

With the party conventions being substantially scaled down and largely held virtually, we’re applying only half of the usual “convention bounce adjustment” (see below for more on the convention bounce adjustment).

Other changes fall more into the category of continual improvements we’re making to our models that aren’t directly related to COVID-19:

Since 2016, we’ve made various changes to how our polling averages are calculated, as described here.

We now account for changes in how easy it is to vote in each state, as empirically, this yields higher turnout and a higher share of Democratic votes.

The model is now more careful around major events such as presidential debates that can have an outsize impact on candidates’ polling averages. If a candidate gains ground in the polls following one of these events, he will have to sustain that movement for a week or two to get full credit for it.

We’re running only one version of the presidential model this year. Things are complicated enough in an election held during a pandemic without getting into “polls-only” and “polls-plus” forecasts. Nor is there a “now-cast.” Our polling averages are the best way to reflect the current snapshot of the race, but the snapshot is not the same as the projected Election Day outcome.

The rest of how our model works involves three major steps. What follows is a pretty detailed walk-through, but I’ll be more circumspect when discussing steps described at more length elsewhere, such as in our 2016 methodology guide.

Step 1: Collect, analyze and adjust polls

Our national and state polling averages, which we began publishing in June, are the first steps we take in building our election forecast. We detailed our process for constructing those polling averages when we released them, so I’ll just review the highlights here.

Our polling averages are intended to be as inclusive as possible. We don’t want to have to make a lot of arbitrary decisions on which polls to include. But please review our polls policy for some exceptions on when we can’t use a poll in our forecast. Sometimes there are also delays in adding a poll until we can get more information about it.

Polls are weighted based on their sample size and their pollster rating, so higher-quality polls have more influence on the forecast. And if there are a large number of polls from one polling firm, the weight applied to each individual poll is discounted so no one pollster dominates the average.

Our polling averages reflect a blend of two methods. The first is a relatively simple weighted average, and the second is a more complicated method based on calculating a trend line. Of the two, the trend line method tends to be more aggressive. So early on in the campaign, we rely mostly on the more conservative weighted average method, while in the final few weeks, we mostly use the trend line method — that means our polling averages become more aggressive as Election Day nears.

The polling averages are subject to three types of adjustments:

The likely voter adjustment, which reflects that polls of likely voters and registered voters differ in predictable ways, adjusts polls of registered voters2 to make them more comparable to likely voter polls. Generally speaking, this means that Republicans (such as Trump) gain ground relative to Democrats when applying a likely voter screen, although this effect is mitigated when the Republican is an incumbent. Indeed, polls this year that have both a registered voter and likely voter version usually show Trump doing slightly better in the likely voter version. However, he does only modestly better, gaining around 1 percentage point on average.

The house effects adjustment, which detects polls that consistently lean toward one party or that consistently have more (or fewer) undecided voters than other polls of the same states, and adjusts them to correct for this. For example, Rasmussen Reports polls typically have very Republican-leaning results. So this adjustment would account for that. However, polls are allowed to retain at least some of their house effect, since an apparent house effect over a small number of polls could reflect statistical noise. In calculating house effects, the model mostly uses polls from the same state, so a polling firm could theoretically have a Trump-leaning house effect in one state and a Biden-leaning house effect in another.

Finally, we apply a timeline adjustment, which is based on a poll’s recency, and adjusts “old” polls for shifts in the overall race since it was conducted. For instance, say a poll of Arizona last month showed Biden up 3 points there, but there’s been a strong shift toward Trump since then in national polls and polls of similar states such as Nevada. This adjustment would shift that older Arizona poll toward Trump.

As we noted, the calculation of the polling averages is the first step in calculating our forecast. But they are not the same thing.

One time when this distinction is particularly relevant is following major events such as the debates and party conventions. These events sometimes produce big swings in the polls, and our polling averages are designed to be aggressive following these events and reflect the changed state of the race. However, these shifts are not necessarily long-lasting, and after a couple of weeks, the polls sometimes revert to where they were before.

Therefore, the model relies only partly on the polling average of the race after one of these events happens. For instance, say there is a debate on Oct. 1 and you’re looking at the model on, for example, Oct. 5. It will use a blend of the post-debate polling average from Oct. 5 and the pre-debate polling average from Oct. 1. After a week or two (depending on the event) though, the model will fully use the post-event polling average because it no longer necessarily expects a reversion to the mean.

In addition, our presidential model has traditionally applied a convention bounce adjustment that reflects the predictable boost in the polls that a party tends to get following its convention. Clinton surged to some of her biggest leads of the cycle following the Democratic Convention in 2016, for example. However, three factors could mitigate the convention bounce this year.

First, convention bounces have become smaller over time, likely reflecting a reduced number of swing voters because of greater partisanship. Based on current levels of polarization, for instance, we would expect a party to poll about 5 percentage points better at the peak of its convention bounce on the day just after the conclusion of its convention, with the effects fading fairly quickly thereafter. This is down from past convention bounces that could sometimes be measured in the double digits.

Second, as mentioned before, we are applying only half of the usual convention bounce adjustment this year because due to COVID-19, the conventions are being scaled back.

Third, because this year’s Republican National Convention occurs the week immediately following the Demoratic National Convention, the effects could largely cancel each other out — Biden’s bounce could be derailed by Trump’s bounce, in other words. Because Trump’s convention occurs second, the effects of it might linger for slightly longer, but the model expects the net effect to be small given that the Democratic convention will also be fairly fresh in voters’ minds.

Thus, the convention bounce adjustments will be small this year. Polls conducted in the period between the Democratic convention and the Republican convention will be adjusted toward Trump by around 2 or 2.5 percentage points, depending on the precise dates of the polls. And polls in the two to three weeks after the Republican convention will be adjusted toward Biden but only very slightly so (by less than 1 full percentage point).

Step 2: Combine polls with “fundamentals,” such as demographic and economic data

As compared with other models, FiveThirtyEight’s forecast relies heavily on polls. We do, however, incorporate other data in two main ways:

First, the polling average in each state is combined with a modeled estimate of the vote based on demographics and past voting patterns to create what we call an “enhanced snapshot” of current conditions. This is especially important in states where there is little or no polling.

Second, that snapshot is then combined with our priors, based on incumbency and economic conditions, to create a forecast of the Election Day outcome.

Enhancing our polling averages

At the core of the modeled estimate is FiveThirtyEight’s partisan lean index, which reflects how the state voted in the past two presidential elections as compared with the national average. In our partisan lean index, 75 percent of the weight is assigned to 2016 and 25 percent to 2012. So note, for example, that Ohio (which turned much redder between 2012 and 2016) is not necessarily expected to continue to become redder. Instead, it might revert somewhat to the mean and become more purple again.

The partisan lean index also contains a number of other adjustments:

We adjust for the home states of the presidential and vice presidential candidates. The size of the home-state adjustment is much larger for presidential candidates than for their running mates. The size of the state is also a factor: Home-state advantages are larger in states with smaller populations. We also allow candidates to be associated with more than one state, in which case the home-state bonus is divided. For Biden, for instance, his primary home state is Delaware (where he lives now), and his secondary state is Pennsylvania (where he was born). And for Trump, his primary home state is New York (where he was born), and his secondary state is Florida (where he officially claims residence).3

We also adjust for what we call a state’s elasticity. Some states such as New Hampshire “swing” more than others in response to national trends because they have a higher proportion of swing voters, which can cause wider fluctuations from cycle to cycle. The elasticity scores we’re using for 2020 are based on a blend of each state’s elasticity in 2008, 2012 and 2016.

And finally, we account for changes in how easy it is to vote in each state based on the Cost of Voting Index, as researchers have found that states with higher barriers to voting tend to produce better results for Republican candidates and states with lower barriers tend to lean more Democratic.4

We then apply the partisan lean index in three slightly different ways to create a modeled estimate of the vote in each state.

First is what we call the “rigid method” because it rigidly follows the partisan lean index. In this technique, we first impute where the race stands nationally based on a blend of state and national polls. (Most of the weight in this calculation actually goes to state polls, though. National polls play relatively little role in the FiveThirtyEight forecast, other than to calculate the trend line adjustment in Step 1.) Then we add a state’s partisan lean index to it. For instance, if we estimate that Biden is ahead by 5 points nationally, and that a state’s partisan lean index is D+10 — meaning it votes 10 points more Democratic than the country as a whole — the rigid method would project that Biden is currently ahead by 15 points there.5

Second is the demographic regression method. Basically, the goal of this technique is to infer what the polls would say in a state based on the polls of other states that have more polling. In this method, adopted from a similar process we applied in our primary model, we use a state’s partisan lean index plus some combination of other variables in a series of regression analyses to try to fit to the current polling in each state. The variables considered include race (specified in several different ways), income, education, urbanization, religiosity6 and an index indicating the severity of the COVID-19 situation in each state, based on the number of cases and deaths per capita as recorded by the COVID Tracking Project. (Technically speaking, the model runs as many as 180 different regressions based on various combinations of these variables, but there are limits on which variables may appear in the regressions together in order to avoid collinearity, as well as how many variables can be included.) We then take a weighted average of all the regressions, where regression specifications with a higher adjusted R2 receive more weight but all regressions receive at least some weight.

Third is the regional regression method. This is much simpler: It consists of a single regression analysis where the dependent variables are a state’s partisan lean index, plus dummy variables indicating which of the four major regions (Northeast, Midwest, South, West) the state is in.7

We then combine these three estimates to create an ensemble forecast for each state. The rigid method, which is the most accurate historically, receives the majority of the weight, followed by the demographic regression and then the regional regression.

Then, we combine the ensemble forecast with a state’s polling average to create an enhanced snapshot of the current conditions in each state. The weight given to the polling average depends on the volume of polling in each state and how recently the last poll of the state was conducted. As of the forecast launch (Aug. 12), around 55 percent of the weight goes to the polling average rather than to the ensemble in the average state. However, in well-polled states toward the end of the campaign, as much as 97 or 98 percent of the weight could go toward the polling average. Conversely, states that have few polls rely mostly on the ensemble technique (and states that have no polls use the ensemble in lieu of a polling average).

Next, we combine the enhanced snapshots in each state to create a national snapshot, which is essentially our prediction of the national popular vote margin in an election held today. The national snapshot accounts for projected voter turnout in each state based on population growth since 2016, changes in how easy it is to vote since 2016, and how close the race is in that state currently — closer-polling states tend to have higher turnout. National polls are not used in the national snapshot; it’s simply a summation of the snapshots in the 50 states and Washington, D.C.

We know this is starting to get pretty involved — we’re really in the guts of the model now — but there is another important step. Our national snapshot is not the same thing as our prediction of the Election Day outcome. Instead, our prediction blends the polling-driven snapshot with a “fundamentals forecast” based on economic conditions and whether an incumbent is seeking reelection.

Polls vs. Fundamentals

I’m on the record as saying that I think presidential forecasting models based strictly on “fundamental” factors like economic conditions are overrated. Without getting too deep into the weeds, it’s easy to “p-hack” your way to glory with these models because there are so many ways to measure “the economy” but only a small sample size of elections for which we have reliable economic data. The telltale sign of these problems is that models claiming to predict past elections extremely well often produce inaccurate — or even ridiculous — answers when applied to elections in which the result is unknown ahead of time. One popular model based on second-quarter GDP, for example, implies that Biden is currently on track to win nearly 1,000 electoral votes — a bit of a problem since the maximum number theoretically achievable is 538.8

At the same time, that doesn’t mean the fundamentals are of no use at all. They can provide value and gently nudge your forecast in the right direction — if you use them carefully (although they’re hard to use carefully amidst something like the pandemic).

So, since 2012, we have used an index of economic conditions in our presidential forecast. In its current incarnation, it includes six variables:

Jobs, as indicated by nonfarm payrolls.

Spending, as indicated by real personal consumption expenditures.

Income, as measured by real disposable personal income.

Manufacturing, as measured by industrial production.

Inflation, based on the consumer price index.9

And the stock market, based on the S&P 500.

All variables are standardized so that they have roughly the same mean and standard deviation — and, therefore, have roughly equal influence on the index — for economic data since 1946. The index is then based on readings of these variables in the two years leading up to the election (e.g., from November 2018 through November 2020 for this election) but with a considerably heavier weight placed on the more recent data, in particular, the data roughly six months preceding the election. Where possible, the index is calibrated based on “vintage” economic data — that is, data as it was published in real time — rather than on data as later revised.

Although the quality of economic data is more questionable prior to the 1948 election, we have also attempted to create an approximate version of the index for elections going back to 1880 based on the data that we could find. (It’s extremely important, in our view, to expand the sample size for this sort of analysis, even if we have to rely on slightly less reliable data to do so.) Our economic index for elections dating to 1880 (see below) is expressed as a Z-score, where a score of zero reflects an average economy. And, as you can see, extremely negative economic conditions tend to predict doom for the incumbent party (as in 1932, 1980 and 2008).

The economy is a noisy predictor of presidential success

FiveThirtyEight’s economic index as of Election Day, since 1880,* where a score of zero reflects an average economy, a positive score a strong economy and a negative score a weak one

Year Economic Index Year Economic Index 1880 +1.37 1948 -0.29 1884 -0.18 1952 +0.21 1888 -0.25 1956 +0.07 1892 +0.71 1960 -0.01 1896 -0.15 1964 +0.70 1900 +0.56 1968 +0.23 1904 -0.23 1972 +0.46 1908 -1.03 1976 +0.26 1912 +0.13 1980 -1.71 1916 +0.75 1984 +0.86 1920 -1.52 1988 +0.09 1924 +0.44 1992 -0.29 1928 +0.15 1996 +0.36 1932 -2.34 2000 +0.36 1936 +1.55 2004 +0.01 1940 +0.77 2008 -1.34 1944 +1.01 2012 -0.10 2016 +0.08

*Values prior to the 1948 election are based on more limited data and should be considered rough estimates.

But, overall, the relationship between economic conditions and the incumbent party’s performance is fairly noisy. In fact, we found that the economy explains only around 30 percent of the variation in the incumbent party’s performance, meaning that other factors explain the other 70 percent.

We do try to account for some of those “other” factors, although we’ve found they make only a modest difference. For instance, we also account for whether the president is an elected incumbent (like Trump this year or Barack Obama in 2012), an incumbent who followed the line of succession into office (like Gerald Ford in 1976) or if there is no incumbent at all (as in 2008 or 2016). We also account for polarization based on how far apart the parties are in roll call votes cast in the U.S. House. Periods of greater polarization (such as today in the U.S.) are associated with closer electoral margins and also smaller impacts of economic conditions and incumbency.

One additional complication is that the condition of the economy at any given moment prior to the election may not resemble what it eventually looks like in November, which is what our model tries to predict. Thus, the model makes a simple forecast for each of the six economic variables, which accounts for some mean-reversion, but is also based on the recent performance of the stock market (yes, it has some predictive power) and surveys of professional economists.10

Although we’ll discuss this at more length in the feature that accompanies our forecast launch, the fundamentals forecast is not necessarily as bad as you might think for Trump, despite awful numbers in categories such as GDP. One of the economic components that the model considers (income) has been strong thanks to government subsidies in the form of the CARES Act, for instance, and two others (inflation and the stock market) have been reasonably favorable, too.

In addition, Trump is an elected incumbent, the economy is expected to improve between the forecast launch (August 12) and November, and the polarized nature of the electorate limits the damage to him to some degree. Thus, one shouldn’t conclude that Trump is a huge underdog on the basis of the economy alone, although he’s also not a favorite to win reelection as elected incumbents typically are.

The closer to Election Day, the more our model relies on polls

Share of the weight assigned to polls and the “fundamentals,” by number of days until the election

Days until election Polls Fundamentals 0 100% 0% 5 97 3 10 94 6 25 89 11 50 84 16 75 79 21 100 74 26 150 65 35 200 57 43 250 47 53

However, our model assigns relatively little weight to the fundamentals forecast, and the weight will eventually decline to zero by Election Day. (Although the fundamentals forecast does do a good job of forecasting most recent elections, there are a lot more misses once you extend the analysis before 1948. So keep that in mind in the table, as the assigned weight is based on the entire data set.) Nonetheless, here is how much the model weights the fundamentals up until the election.

As of forecast launch in mid-August, for instance, the model assigns 77 percent of the weight to the polling-based snapshot and 23 percent of the weight to the fundamentals. In fact, the fundamentals actually help Trump at the margin (they aren’t good for him, but they’re better than his polls), so the model shifts the snapshot in each state slightly toward Trump in the forecast of the Election Day outcome. States with higher elasticity scores are shifted slightly more in this process.

Step 3: Account for uncertainty and simulate the election thousands of times

As complicated though it may seem, everything I’ve described up until this point is, in some sense, the easy part of developing our model. There’s no doubt that Biden is comfortably ahead as of the forecast launch in mid-August, for example, and the choices one makes in using different methods to average polls or combine them with other data isn’t likely to change that conclusion.

What’s trickier is figuring out how that translates into a probability of Biden or Trump winning the election. That’s what this section is about.

Before we proceed further, one disclaimer about the scope of the model: It seeks to reflect the vote as cast on Election Day, assuming that there are reasonable efforts to allow eligible citizens to vote and to count all legal ballots, and that electors are awarded to the popular-vote winner in each state. It does not account for the possibility of extraconstitutional shenanigans by Trump or by anyone else, such as trying to prevent mail ballots from being counted.

That does not mean it’s safe to assume these rules and norms will be respected. (If we were sure they would be respected, there wouldn’t be any need for this disclaimer!) But it’s just not in the purview of the sort of statistical analysis we conduct in our model to determine the likelihood they will or won’t be respected.

We do think, however, that well-constructed polls and models can provide a useful benchmark if any attempts to manipulate the election do occur. For instance, a candidate (in a state with incomplete results because mail ballots have yet to be counted) declaring themselves the winner in a state where the model had given them an 0.4 percent chance of winning would need to be regarded with more suspicion than one where they’d had a 40 percent chance going in (although a 40 percent chance of winning is by no means a sure thing either, obviously).

With that disclaimer out of the way, here are the four types of uncertainty that the model tries to account for:

National drift, or how much the overall national forecast could change between now and Election Day.

National Election Day error, or how much our final forecast of the national popular vote could be off on Election Day itself.

Correlated state error, which reflects errors that could occur across multiple states along geographic or regional lines — for instance, as was relevant in 2016, a systematic underperformance relative to polls for the Democratic candidate in the Midwest.

State-specific error, an error relative to our forecast that affects only one state.

The first type of error, national drift, is probably the most important one as of the launch — that is, the biggest reason Biden might not win despite currently enjoying a fairly wide lead in the polls is that the race could change between now and November.

National drift is calculated as follows:

Constant x (Days Until Election)^⅓ x Uncertainty Index

That is, it is a function of the cube root of the number of days until the election11 times the FiveThirtyEight Uncertainty Index, which I’ll describe in a moment. (Note that the use of the cube root implies that polls do not become more accurate at a linear rate, but rather that there is a sharp increase in accuracy toward the end of an election. Put another way, August is still early as far as polling goes.)

The uncertainty index is a new feature this year, although it reflects a number of things we did previously, such as accounting for the number of undecided voters. In the spirit of our economic index, it also contains a number of measures that are historically correlated with greater (or lesser) uncertainty but are also correlated with one another in complicated ways. And under circumstances like these (not to mention the small sample size of presidential elections), we think it is better to use an equally-weighted blend of all reasonable metrics rather than picking and choosing just one or two metrics.

The components of our uncertainty index are as follows:

The number of undecided voters in national polls. More undecided voters means more uncertainty.

The number of undecided plus third-party voters in national polls. More third-party voters means more uncertainty.

Polarization, as measured elsewhere in the model, is based on how far apart the parties are in roll call votes cast in the U.S. House. More polarization means less uncertainty since there are fewer swing voters.

The volatility of the national polling average. Volatility tends to predict itself, so a stable polling average tends to remain stable.

The overall volume of national polling. More polling means less uncertainty.

The magnitude of the difference between the polling-based national snapshot and the fundamentals forecast. A wider gap means more uncertainty.

The standard deviation of the component variables used in the FiveThirtyEight economic index. More economic volatility means more overall uncertainty in the forecast.

The volume of major news, as measured by the number of full-width New York Times headlines in the past 500 days, with more recent days weighted more heavily. More news means more uncertainty.

In 2020, measures No. 1 through 5 all imply below-average uncertainty. There aren’t many undecided voters, there are no major third-party candidates, polarization has been high and polls have been stable. Measure No. 6 suggests average uncertainty. But metrics No. 7 and 8 imply extremely high uncertainty; there has been a ton of news related to COVID-19 and other major stories, like the protests advocating for police reform in response to the death of George Floyd — not to mention the impeachment trial of Trump earlier this year. Likewise, there has been as much volatility in economic data as at any time since the Great Depression.

On the one hand, the sheer number of uncertainties unique to 2020 indicate the possibility of a volatile election, but on the other hand, there are also a number of measures that signal lower uncertainty, like a very stable polling average. So when we calculate the overall degree of uncertainty for 2020, our model’s best guess is that it is about average relative to elections since 1972. That average, of course, includes a number of volatile elections such as 1980, 1988 and 1992, where there were huge swings in the polls over the final few months of the campaign, along with elections such as 2004 and 2012 where polls were pretty stable. As voters consume even more economic- and pandemic-related news — and then experience events like the conventions and the debates — it’s not yet clear whether the polls will remain stable or begin to swing around more.

It’s also not entirely clear how this might all translate into the national Election Day error — that is, how far off the mark our final polling averages are — either. In calculating Election Day error, we use a different version of the uncertainty index that de-emphasizes components No. 6, 7 and 8, since those components pertain mostly to how much we expect the polls to change between now and the election, rather than the possibility of an Election Day misfire.

Still, our approach to calculating Election Day error is fairly conservative. In order to have a larger sample size, the calculation is based on the error in final polls in elections since 1936, rather than solely on more recent elections. While polls weren’t as far off the mark in 2016 as is generally reputed (national polls were fairly accurate, in fact), it’s also not clear that the extremely precise polls in the final weeks of 2004, 2008 and 2012 will be easy to replicate given the challenges in polling today. Given the small sample sizes, we also use a fat-tailed distribution for many of the error components, including the national Election Day error, to reflect the small — but not zero — possibility of a larger error than what we’ve seen historically.

There could also be some challenges related to polling during COVID-19. In primary elections conducted during the pandemic, for instance, turnout was hard to predict. In some ways, the pandemic makes voting easier (expanded options to vote by mail in many states), but it also makes it harder in other ways (it’s difficult to socially distance if you must vote in person).

This is a rough estimate because there are a lot of confounding variables — including the end of the competitive portion of the Democratic presidential primary — but we estimate that the variability in turnout was about 50 percent higher in primary elections conducted after the pandemic began in the U.S. than those conducted beforehand. Empirically, we know that states that experience a sharp change in turnout from one cycle to the next are harder to forecast, too. So we estimate that a 50 percent increase in error when predicting turnout will result in a 20 percent increase in error when predicting the share of the vote each party receives.

Therefore, we increase national Election Day error, correlated state error and state-specific error by 20 percent relative to their usual values because of how the coronavirus could affect turnout and the process of voting. Note that this still won’t be enough to cover extraordinary developments such as mail ballots being impounded. But it should help to reflect some of the additional challenges in polling and holding an election amidst a pandemic.

When it comes to simulating the election — we’re running 40,000 simulations each time the model is updated — the model first picks two random numbers to reflect national drift (how much the national forecast could change) and national Election Day error (how off our final forecast of the national popular vote could be) that are applied more or less uniformly12 to all states. However, even if you somehow magically knew what the final national popular vote would be, there would still be additional error at the state level. A uniform national swing would not have been enough to cost Clinton the Electoral College in 2016, for example. But underperformance relative to the polls concentrated in the Midwestern swing states did.

In fact, we estimate that at the end of the campaign, most of the error associated with state polling is likely to be correlated with errors in other states. That is to say, it is improbable that there would be a major polling error in Michigan that wouldn’t also be reflected in similar states such as Wisconsin and Ohio.

Therefore, to calculate correlated polling error, the model creates random permutations based on different demographic and geographic characteristics. In one simulation, for instance, Trump would do surprisingly well with Hispanic voters and thus overperform in states with large numbers of Hispanics. In another simulation, Biden would overperform his polls in states with large numbers of Catholics. The variables used in the simulations are as follows:

Race (white, Black, Hispanic, Asian)

Religion (evangelical Christians, mainline protestants, Catholic, Mormon, other religions, atheist/nonreligious)

A state’s partisan lean index in 2016 and in 2012

Latitude and longitude

Region (North, South, Midwest, West)

Urbanization

Median household income

Median age

Gender

Education (the share of the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher)

Immigration (the share of a state that is part of its voting-eligible population)

The COVID-19 severity index (see Step 2)

The share of a state’s vote that is expected to be cast by mail

One mathematical property of correlated polling errors is that states with demographics that resemble those of the country as a whole tend to have less polling error than those that don’t. Underestimating Biden’s standing among Mormons wouldn’t cause too many problems in a national poll, or in a poll of Florida, for example. But it could lead to a huge polling error in Utah. Put another way, states that are outliers based on some combination of the variables listed above tend to be harder to predict.

Finally, the model randomly applies some residual, state-specific error in each state. This tends to be relatively small, and is primarily a function of the volume of polling in each state, especially in states that have had no polling at all. If you’re wondering why Trump’s chances are higher than you might expect in Oregon, for example, it’s partly because there have been no polls there as of forecast launch.

Odds and ends

Whew — that’s pretty much it! But a few random bullet points that don’t fit neatly into the categories above.

The model accounts for the fact that Maine and Nebraska award one electoral vote each to the winner of each congressional district. In fact, these congressional districts have their own forecast pages, just as the states do. For the most part, though, the statewide forecasts in Maine and Nebraska just reflect the sum of the district forecasts. However, because not all polls provide district-level breakdowns in these states, the model also makes inferences from statewide polls of Maine and Nebraska, too. In total, the model calculates a forecast in 54 jurisdictions: the two congressional districts in Maine, the three in Nebraska, the other 48 states and Washington, D.C.

In 2016, as well as in backtesting the model in certain past years (i.e., 1980, 1992) we designated “major” third-party candidates such as Gary Johnson and Ross Perot. We defined major as (i) a candidate who is on the ballot almost everywhere, (ii) who is included in most polls and (iii) who usually polls in at least the mid-to-high single digits. There is no such candidate in 2020.

However, we do predict votes for “other” candidates in each state. The predictions are based on how many third-party candidates appear on the ballot in the state,13 whether write-in votes are permitted, how much of the vote a state has historically given to third-party candidates, and how competitive the state is (third-party candidates historically receive fewer votes in swing states).

Electoral College ties (269-269) are listed as such in the model output. This is a change from past years, where we used various methods to break the ties. We do not account for the possibility of faithless electors or candidates other than Trump and Biden winning electoral votes.

Got any other questions or see anything that looks wrong? Please drop us a line.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Nate Silver

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asphaltapostle · 6 years ago

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What I have long predicted is now coming to pass: Google believes it should assume control.

Out of all the technology companies that have made my knees knock and my voice hoarse and my [Tweets manic](https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q="google" %40ficklecrux&src=typd) as a technoheretic in the past several years, Jumbo Google would easily take home the winning trophy for Dystopian of the Millennium. I have been rehearsing an especially dear pet prophecy of mine, unsolicited, to family, friends, and podcast guests since 2011 in which I end up arguing quite convincingly that Google is a dead ringer for the 16th-century Vatican: an inherently self-isolating organization with an absolute monopoly yielding gargantuan levels of essentially passive income from a service which nearly everybody transacts with, but only Google understands (and is therefore assumed to be its only possible provider,) which inevitably develops such a distance from the rest of the populace and their way of life (in tandem with total notoriety and celebrity among them all) not intentionally out of malice, but from the delusion of mythically-bestowed philanthropic duty that is borned of and compounded by this economic and cultural isolation in a perpetual accumulation of power and wealth that radicalizes the monopolizers — the majority already highly predisposed to zeal as they would’ve needed to be in order to find themselves in this singular, universally powerful position over every other class — and leaves their egocentric minds to wander exempt from all criticism save for that of fellow radicalized monopolizers, who together begin to feel more and more comfortable wondering aloud about themselves in increasingly fantastic presumptions: what if all of this was bestowed upon us because we are superior to them? What if it is our divine responsibility as superior beings to take charge and shepherd the common people as our sheep — for they cannot possibly know as well as we what is truly best for them?

You see it, right? And you can feel a very specific flavor of terror that is both awed by the scale of the circumstances created by so few human minds and sincerely amused by the absoluteness of your own inability to alter them in any way. Perhaps you even recognize this taste as one perfected by Christianity’s ancient advertising business, but Google knows so much about you that it’s rumored to’ve been selling user data to the Judeochristian God for some time now at a 10% discount, and so we extrapolate and anticipate, yes?

Of course, it’s admittedly satisfying for me to deliver you to this godfearing place in the most perverse look what I saw first that you didn’t see because you’re just not as bright but lucky for you, I’m so fucking generous with my wisdom sort of thinking around which the entire personas and livelihoods of fringe movement fanatics are built upon, but this is my one thing, okay? I’ve been waiting years for the right time to formally argue this theory in depth, and — thanks to this year’s public spotlight finally pivoting on the giants who’ve been silently swallowing their competition and relentlessly forcing their already ridiculous margins higher and higher in relative obscurity for decades, the time has come, indeed. The common people’s trust in Google had a godawful week.

Don’t Be Evil

On Monday, Gizmodo reported that twelve frustrated Google employees were quitting the company in protest of their work assisting the Department of Defense to “implement machine learning to classify images gathered by drones” for the detail fleeting Project Maven, despite some 4000 employee signatures on a letter addressed to CEO Sundar Pichai requesting (in full) that he “cancel this project immediately,” and “draft, publicize, and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology,” citing the infamous “Don’t Be Evil” motto, which Google then proceeded to remove from its code of conduct for the first time in 18 years the day after the New York Times article went to press, on April 5th.

On initial approach to the abstract of this story, from the ass to our thoughts arrives an easy narrative of a Silicon Valley mutiny comprised of twelve brave, conscientious souls who’ve been eaten up inside by their complicity in the filthy deals made by their power-obsessed CEO over scotch and cigars in a dark D.C. study — kept awake for months by the sound of his puffing cackles at satellite images of dead toddlers in a bombed-out street.

Ah ha, we say. That man is no good, and he just wouldn’t listen! They knew they didn’t have a choice… They only did what they had to do…

The reality of internal disagreements at Google, though, manages to be even more theatrical. The sheer volume of correspondence must surely be beyond anything capable of the enduser’s imagination, so let’s phone a friend: my favorite peek into the day-to-days of inter-Google existence is an old blog post by Benjamin Tilly on his first month at the company in which he was compelled almost immediately to describe in great detail how best to “deal with a lot of email in gmail” at peak efficiency using shortcuts and labels. “As you get email, you need to be aggressive about deciding what you need to see, versus what is context specific.”

Now we have a bit better idea of the aggressive emailing that was a sure constant on a normal workday at Google in 2010, so it must’ve been deafening after 8 years of Gmail development as 4000 employees no doubt vented, debated, and decided to organize last month, though without making much headway because the leadership’s response was apparently “complicated by the fact that Google claims it is only providing open-source software to Project Maven,” this new knowledge having significant effect on our mind’s image of Sundar Pichai’s activities in Washington: he is now swapping seats with a frustrated Colin Powell in order to install OpenOffice onto his desktop from a flash drive, and we recall that Google’s Googleplex headquarters resembles nowhere in modern life more than a brand new playground built in a design language borrowing heavily from Spy Kids. And though these Twelve disciples are unnamed for the moment, a few of them could immediately land book deals by going public, and every single one would always have by default not only the badge of “I landed a job at Google,” (which is really to say I have hit Life’s maximum level cap,) but “I worked at Google for a while, but ended up quitting to do something else,” which is guaranteed to make you the most interesting, intellectually superior person present in whatever crowd for the rest of your life. The ultra-cool Sarah Cooper quit Google to become a comedian and even got to talk to Kara Swisher! I won’t pretend to understand big tech’s diminutive bastardization of prestige, but “more than 90 academics” jumping to publish an open letter (adjacent to a huge DONATE: Support the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots button) in which they “write in solidarity with the 3100+ Google employees” who’s terrible boss decided to help some lackeys in the Pentagon set up their email and didn’t text back for a whole hour doesn’t sound 100% sincere. Notably, I don’t know how or why the fuck 90 people would go about collaborating on a single document, but if it really was managed, they definitely used Google Docs… At one point, it was fun to think about the history of the friendly side-scroller-playing garage ghouls and dorm dorks who gave cooky, wacko names to their dot com startups in parody and defiance of the lame-ass surname anagrams on the buildings of their established competitors, but those who’ve stuck around have only done so by becoming expert at SUCKING UP EVERYTHING around them, and it pisses me off every day how worried I am that my species will finally be done in by a company with a name like Yahoo! and be known only to a bunch of adolescent interdimensional silicon blobs 30 million years in the future as that bipedal race who remained dignified until the last 0.01% of their reign on Earth, when in way less than a single generation, they all just went FUCKING INSANE and blew themselves up because they suddenly hated all sense.

“Google” is perhaps the worst of these to have to shout in fear and/or anger in your last moments as it sounds in American English like you’ve startled your subject with a ticklish pinch followed so immediately by an esophagus-busting chokehold that the two events appear simultaneous, and in real English English, it almost always sounds like a parent speaking of a character on a pre-K children’s television programme whom they find quite foul and upsetting, but will manage to refrain from expressing so otherwise because they know that Teletubbies shit is the most quickly forgotten stage of television viewership. It’s fascinating how exclusive the word “Google” is to American English because in everything else it really is complete nonsense, but lets halt all etymological discussions right now because we’ve only now just finished with Monday.

The Soul Ledger

On Thursday, all of my Google experiences, suppositions, and soul-detaching screenshots were usurped when a thoroughly alarming internal company video called The Selfish Ledger was leaked to The Verge, which I watched once then and do not want to watch again for the sake of this piece, but I will. Though the big V has been disappointingly timid for years about editorializing — when tech journalism desperately needs some confident, informed opinion more than ever — Vlad Savov’s accompanying article should be read in its entirety, to which I can add my own terror where he perhaps could not. The production style is technically identical to that of the very popular thinkpiece-esque, motion-graphics-paired-with-obligatory-sharpie illustrated videos which you find playing at max volume on your mom’s iPad from where she’s fallen asleep on the couch at 9PM, but the repeating stock string soundtrack multiplies one’s discomfort as such that we would all end up in the fetal position without remembering the transition were it not for the appearance of trusty old Dank Jenkins, who’s face I thankfully associate heavily enough with his infamous down-and-out Tweet to be a welcome respite in attention before the very scary hypothesis for which it’s been buttering me up, as best summed by Vlad:

> The system would be able to “plug gaps in its knowledge and refine its model of human behavior” — not just your particular behavior or mine, but that of the entire human species. “By thinking of user data as multigenerational,” explains Foster, “it becomes possible for emerging users to benefit from the preceding generation’s behaviors and decisions.” Foster imagines mining the database of human behavior for patterns, “sequencing” it like the human genome, and making “increasingly accurate predictions about decisions and future behaviors.”

The next time the what if they do something scary question comes up in a casual conversation about Google, you’ll have something a lot more substantial than just speculation. Or will you? The Verge reached out for comment and got an awfully convenient response.

> This is a thought-experiment by the Design team from years ago that uses a technique known as ‘speculative design’ to explore uncomfortable ideas and concepts in order to provoke discussion and debate.

Wow! Leave it up to grand ole Googe to reveal the ultimate excuse for just about any suggestion or behavior, though it does seem almost deliberately uncomfortable, doesn’t it? No matter — whether or not this video was ever about a project or tangible product development, or simply to explore uncomfortable ideas because it is proof that the company has reached that critical Vatican stage — if you’ll remember — where they now feel comfortable exploring Very Bad, but Very easily made Real Ideas amongst themselves about what would happen if they allowed their system to nudge its users around a different, slightly less optimal route to the bar, let’s say — without their knowledge — in order for the system to collect traffic data for the sake of its own interests? Which would be, technically, in the interest of all Ledger users now and in the future, so why not?

> The ledger could be given a focus, shifting it from a system which not only tracks our behavior, but offers direction towards a desired result.”

This, my dear privacy-obsessed friends, is the real issue with data collection — its power over huge groups by way of their behavior and it is never going to be remedied in any significant way by ad-blockers or VPNs because the EndUser shall always out number you 50 to 1, even decades from now. EndUser does not understand — or, crucially, have any desire to understand anything technical about what leads to the PewDiePie videos playing on his filthy screen. Here’s a great opportunity to escape Silicon Valley’s technolibertarianism and resign your Darwinian empathy in favor of meaningful and truly-effective action: if you want to avoid a future Google Church (or Google Government, more worryingly,) you should invest your time, effort, and knowledge into electing officials more capable of understanding and regulating Big Tech.

Google Government

The internet as it stands is made possible by Google as the goto resource for online advertising. In 2016, “Google held 75.8 percent of the search ad market, bringing in $24.6 billion in revenue from search ads,” according to Recode. By 2019, “that’s expected to grow to $36.62 billion in revenue, or 80.2 percent of the market.” Google’s edge in user behavior and targeted advertising combined with their extensive resources available developers to integrate independent platforms with Google’s software services at various levels makes it very difficult for any advertising-funded individual or organization to compete online without dipping in to the Google universe. YouTube — a Google property since 2006 — has actively invested in and supported a new career path entirely within their own platform that is rapidly becoming popularly aspired-to by young children, while the reality of existence as a full-time YouTuber is far less glamorous than the immediately-visible surface would indicate, and the effort already expended by my generation in its pursuit has already made us insane.

So, what would the internet look like if Google didn’t exist? We know they’ve been working with the government now on various projects, but what if some terrible exposed transgression of theirs suddenly warranted an immediate shutdown and seizure of all Google properties? Well, we know from a post on Quora by Googler Ashish Kedia that even 5 years ago, the sudden absence of Google for “2–3 mins” set the internet into a bit of a panic, reducing overall traffic by 40%. In the time since, we’ve all grown exponentially more dependent on Google properties: billions of people rely on Google Maps for directions and, thousands of companies (including the Pentagon and other government institutions) rely on Gmail and GSuites for intercommunication, file sharing, task management, etc., and more and more academic institutions rely on Chromebook devices running connection-dependent operating systems. It’s not much of a stretch to argue that Google’s sudden disappearance would constitute a Civil Emergency in the United States, which will only become a stronger and more serious incentive for regulatory bodies to look the other way.

Though the tangible results of advertising have been quantified significantly in the past 20 years, one can’t help but wonder after watching YouTube ads for the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class on toy unboxing videos if the companies who spend big bucks on Google advertising understand where their money is going, but they know that if they don’t advertise there, their competitors will. This, of course, is a fundamental practice of a monopoly, and it’s yielded Google so much fucking money that they cannot possibly spend it fast enough, as evidenced by their investments in life extension — so that, perhaps, they will have more time on Earth to figure it out.

When you build a collection of the world’s smartest people in a self-sufficient environment that discourages exploration of other lifestyles and ideas, and you sustain the society with a gargantuan, relatively low-maintenance revenue stream, you create a culture which is not only well-primed for isolationism, but is also extremely inefficient. In fact, with its vast collection of abandoned products and properties, Google must surely be one of the most inefficient companies in history. Thinking back on recent software releases along with its recent entries into the hardware space, Google is also one of the worst competing tech companies. Very little aside from Gmail, Google Photos, Google Maps, and Chrome have found their place or garnered significant usership. Google Play Music is unintuitive and impossible, Google Allo and Google+ are all but forgotten addendums to other services, and Google Search — its core, original function — has been out of control for years, and all of them are designed blandly and excruciatingly tiring to look at.

Google Shun

If this all has stirred nothing more in you than a desire to eliminate Google from your own online life as much as possible, there are alternatives in almost every one of the sphere’s they dominate. As of late, DuckDuckGo has accumulated a fair amount of buzz and coverage as a private, more relevant alternative to Google’s plain old search engine. Though it is clever enough to list us as the first result for “extratone,” I’ve found it simply insufficient as a replacement in my own life because, essentially, it rarely delivers what I’m looking for. By contrast, Dropbox Paper is such an elegant cloud notetaking and word processing software that it makes Google Docs look simply idiotic (and warrants its own review very shortly.) For getting around, know that MapQuest is not only still around — it’s now a very competitive mobile navigation app.

I, myself, have allowed Google as complete of access to my information and behavior as possible because I believe “privacy” is a completely futile endeavor if one wishes to be a part of society, though I do often use alternatives to Google services simply because I fucking hate the way they look. If you want a more complete list of services and software that allow one to shun the Google God entirely, you’ll be forced to seek out less dignified sources like Lifehacker and Reddit and decide if the additional time you’ll spend using most of them to accomplish the same tasks is really worth your digital angst.

If Google were to be more explicit with its users and staff about its aspirations to take over control of our lives, there will be little to do but accept the future they intend to create because they’ve long been too powerful to control. In the meantime, I’d suggest you continue to use whatever software works best for you and refrain from wasting your time fretting on conspiratorial suppositions of what the tech industry may be doing to “invade your privacy,” because there is no longer any such thing, nor will there be ever again. However, I would also urge to you worship your own Gods, whomever they may be, for Google will never be worthy. I, for one, shall only pray to our Mother Sun.

#social #google #future #web #privacy

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orbemnews · 4 years ago

Link

Brexit Is Lastly Completed, however It Already Appears Out of Date LONDON — It took 11 grueling months for negotiators from Britain and the European Union to hammer out the phrases of a post-Brexit commerce deal. However in lots of respects, the deal is already 4 and a half years outdated. The world has modified radically since June 2016, when a slim majority of individuals in Britain voted to depart the European Union, tempted by an argument that the nation would prosper by throwing off the bureaucratic shackles of Brussels. In these days, the imaginative and prescient of an agile, impartial Britain — free to develop worthwhile, next-generation industries like synthetic intelligence and reduce its personal commerce offers with america, China and others — was an alluring gross sales pitch. The buccaneers of Brexit promised to create a “World Britain.” That was earlier than the anti-immigrant and anti-globalist-fueled rise of President Trump and different populist leaders who erected boundaries to commerce and immigration and international locations turned inward. It was earlier than the coronavirus pandemic uncovered the vulnerabilities of far-flung provide chains, fueling calls to carry strategic industries again dwelling and throwing globalism into retreat. Within the anxious daybreak of 2021, buccaneers are out of vogue. The world is now dominated by three gargantuan financial blocs — america, China and the European Union. Britain has finalized its divorce from one in all them, leaving it remoted at a time when the trail ahead appears extra perilous than it as soon as did. “The entire ‘World Britain’ mannequin doesn’t replicate the extra protectionist, nationalistic world we’re dwelling in,” mentioned Thomas Wright, the director of the Middle on america and Europe on the Brookings Establishment. “Turning into a worldwide free dealer in 2016 is a bit like turning right into a communist in 1989. It’s unhealthy timing.” As Prime Minister Boris Johnson leads Britain right into a post-Brexit future, he additionally dangers being out of step politically. The Brexit settlement with the European Union comes on the very second that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is changing Mr. Trump’s “America First” credo with a message of mending alliances and collaborating to deal with points like world well being and local weather change. Whereas the deal averts tariffs and quotas on items crossing the English Channel, it’s at coronary heart about disentangling neighbors who had turn out to be deeply built-in over 4 a long time. That estrangement, analysts say, is certain to weaken ties between the 2 sides in different areas, like safety and diplomacy. “Biden desires to see alliances and multilateralism and cooperation, and Brexit runs fully in opposition to that,” mentioned Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst on the Eurasia Group, a political danger consultancy. “Brexit is graduating right into a harder political context the place it’s working in opposition to the grain.” Mr. Trump cheered Britain’s drive to sever itself from the European Union. As a reward, he promised to barter a commerce settlement with Mr. Johnson, whom he cultivated personally. However Mr. Biden opposed Brexit and has dominated out negotiating new commerce agreements till america improves its personal aggressive place. That nullifies one of many prime promoting factors of Brexit. Mr. Johnson has pivoted by highlighting different ways in which Britain can work with america. It’s growing navy spending to strengthen NATO and taking part in host at a United Nations local weather summit subsequent yr, which is able to give Mr. Biden a platform to re-engage america within the local weather problem. Britain has additionally promoted itself as a champion of democratic values in locations like Hong Kong, standing alongside america. However in a much less hospitable world, it could not discover many allies for that sort of work. “Who’re the apparent companions for them?” Mr. Wright mentioned. “4 years in the past, they might have mentioned Brazil, however Brazil is now run by Bolsonaro,” he added, referring to the populist president, Jair Bolsonaro. There are additionally limits to how muscular a accomplice Britain could be within the confrontation with autocratic states like China and Russia. Its altering relationship with China illustrates its diminished stature. Britain as soon as hoped its free-agent standing would permit it to develop a thriving business relationship with Beijing, unencumbered by the bags of the European Union or america. However underneath stress from Mr. Trump on the position of the Chinese language telecommunications large Huawei in 5G networks, Britain has largely deserted its cultivation of China, falling in keeping with america’ extra antagonistic place. The European Union, against this, has continued to barter a landmark funding treaty with China, a aim of the Germans, who need higher management over the Chinese language operations of their firms. Final-minute objections raised by aides to Mr. Biden are giving the Europeans second ideas, however Germany’s drive to complete the deal earlier than the tip of the yr attests to its extra assured place. In 2016, Brexit was embraced by three distinct factions in British politics, mentioned Matthias Matthijs, a professor of worldwide political economic system at Johns Hopkins College: right-wing anti-immigration figures like Nigel Farage; orthodox free merchants within the Conservative Occasion; and a few on the left, who hoped the transfer would release cash to subsidize manufacturing unit jobs within the nation’s industrial north and, in any occasion, regarded the European Union as a bankers’ membership that Britain was effectively out of. “It’s not clear that signing this E.U. commerce deal will give them extra freedom to do this,” Mr. Matthijs mentioned of the subsidies, noting that Britain had agreed to abide by constraints on how a lot state support it may well dole out to business. The paradox, he mentioned, is that Britain is putting off from the European Union at a time when its two largest economies, Germany and France, are embracing a few of the tenets of business coverage that impressed Brexit. The pandemic has pressured Brussels to rethink insurance policies it as soon as shunned — initially within the type of a $913 billion coronavirus rescue bundle — that carry it nearer to the concepts pushed by Brexiteers, like Mr. Johnson’s former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings. He was an architect of a plan to make use of public cash to “stage up” Britain’s economically deprived north with its extra affluent south. Liberating itself from the constraints of Brussels had been one of many largest points of interest of Brexit. As a substitute, Britain faces a a lot bigger competitor that appears bent, like Britain itself, on remodeling its economies with digital and “inexperienced” expertise — and extra open to utilizing state support to take action. One other irony of Brexit is that Europe, alienated by the unilateral insurance policies of Mr. Trump, has begun echoing a few of the language utilized by Brexiteers in 2016. President Emmanuel Macron of France and others have spoken of the necessity for “European sovereignty” within the face of a much less dependable United States. Mr. Johnson made reclaiming British sovereignty the leitmotif of his negotiations with Brussels. Britain nonetheless has indeniable benefits because it charts a brand new course. Regardless of being devastated by the pandemic, its economic system is versatile and resilient, at the least relative to these on the European continent. It was the primary Western nation to approve a virus vaccine, whereas the European Union has been slowed down by the necessity for its members to maneuver collectively. Mr. Matthijs predicted that Britain’s economic system would snap again sooner after the pandemic than these of Germany or France, which he mentioned the Brexiteers would attribute to the liberty gained by shaking free of Brussels. Britain’s independence additionally affords it the prospect to be experimental in its relations with different international locations. Mr. Wright, for instance, mentioned the Biden administration could be thinking about negotiating a distinct sort of financial understanding with Britain than an old style free commerce settlement. “They’re effectively positioned to be the guinea pig for this,” he mentioned. Britain, in any case, simply negotiated a deal distinctive within the annals of commerce diplomacy — one which separates, slightly than brings collectively, companions. Its capacity to get that achieved, analysts mentioned, is a hopeful signal for its capacity to reshape itself but once more. However, “the world of June 2016 is just not the world of right this moment,” Mr. Wright mentioned. “They know that as effectively, deep down.” Supply hyperlink #Brexit #date #FINALLY

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jaygraphicarts3 · 6 years ago

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Techniques of Typography—Case Study

The History of Typography

The earliest examples of Type being printed come from around 220 AC, in China, where woodblock printing was a prominent method to print imagery, patterns and text onto cloth. Until around 1040 AD, when the first moveable type was invented by Bi Sheng, this was the only popular method for printing type. The invention of moveable type allowed for a more efficient and faster way to access typography. Moveable type uses individual letter forms as parts which can be manipulated and used to make a print of each letter. As opposed to the old method of using a more time-consuming process and more expensive hand-crafted materials, moveable type essentially made printing type more accessible.

At around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg introduced the first moveable-type printing press which meant multiple letters could be printed at once. He also made adjustments to the woodblock printing technique by using casting to produce stronger and more sustainable characters for his typefaces. It is here, where he also invented the first typeface: Blackletter. From this, many typefaces followed with a similar aesthetic, turning the typefaces of Blackletter into a style of font. The main popular typefaces to be made in the Blackletter style were:

Textur

Rotunda

Schwabacher

Fraktur

The problem with Blackletter was its readability in large blocks of type. This caused the softer, more readable variations of blackletter to grow in popularity in print. Specifically, Schwabacher became the standard in Germany, before being replaced by Fraktur.

This was until the implementation of Roman type, another style of type which quickly became used for larger blocks of text due to its better readability. In 1470, Nicolas Jenson is credited for creating one of the first Roman typefaces. This sparked a new way to create prints with display type and read type being considered individually. The Roman typeface was easier to read in paragraphs, so it was widely considered to be the best option for printing in books and similar instances of large type.

Decades later in 1501, the introduction of italic type created by Aldus Manutius meant that printing text became more cost-efficient. This was because the slant in the characters allowed for more of them to fit on each line. Initially, italics were used to improve cost-efficiency. However, as type became more flexible with how many typefaces were being produced and what you could use them for, Roman and Italic typefaces started to be used alongside each other, with italics being used to signify emphasis.

Types of Type

As typography began to evolve, so did the technology used to make type, further pushing the development of the field. There are currently many styles of type, each with multiple variations based on their line weight contrast, serif styles and letterforms. Following is all of the different styles of typefaces we have access to today, and what separates them from each other.

Serif

Old Style—Medium thick/thin contrast, serifs are commonly set at an angle to the left. This was the first style of type to revolutionise how large bodies of text were printed.

Neoclassical—High thick/thin contrast, vertical stressing, thin serifs. Most neoclassical typefaces are

Transitional—Called transitional as it signifies the transition between Old Style type and Neoclassical by using some elements from both. With more thick/thin contrast than Old Style type, serifs are still very similar and head serifs remain rotated to the left commonly. But transitional typefaces feature vertical stress.

Slab—Minuscule thick/thin contrast, with thick ‘slabs’ as serifs. Slab serif typefaces are commonly perceived to be one consistent weight from the characters to the serifs. There is rarely ever any bracketing between the strokes and the slab serifs.

Clarendon—Originally designed to be used more as display type, Clarendon type has a low thick/thin contrast, thick but short serifs and vertical stressing. Head serifs remain like the Old Style by being slanted to the left.

Glyphic—Low thick/thin contrast, vertical stressing, but unique serifs which stop at a point rather than a line. This makes them sharper, or have a triangular look.

Sans Serif

Grotesque—Thick/thin contrast is relatively apparent for a sans serif typeface. Old grotesque typefaces have slightly square letterforms, meaning the curves aren’t completely spherical but more so resemble a rounded rectangle. As this style evolved, the line weight contrast decreased and the squared curves of each letter became rounder, which distinguishes traditional grotesque typefaces from the modern renditions.

Square—Very similar to how grotesque type is formed, but the main distinction of a square sans serif typeface is how the curves feature a more ‘squared off’ look.

Humanistic—Medium thick/thin contrast, but relatively high for a sans serif typeface. Humanistic type is the closest visually to serif type, just without the serifs at the end of the strokes.

Geometric—Simply, type constructed with geometry. For the most part monoline (all one consistent line weight), the letterforms are less organic and more structured as simple geometric shapes are what the type is made out of. Because of this, however, geometric typefaces may sacrifice legibility and consistency depending on how strict the geometry is used to make the characters.

Script

Formal—Formal script typefaces resemble the formal writing style of the 17th century. A cursive handwriting style with many of the letters joining, including the capital letters.

Casual—Casual script has a roughness to it which means it is perceived more as hand-written instead of professionally made. The point of casual script is so the viewer can relate more to how the type is made, meaning there is a lot more room to alter the typeface.

Calligraphic—Typefaces that resemble calligraphy. Calligraphy includes a wide range of styles, but calligraphic script typefaces commonly feature cursive type with a hand-written look and joining letters.

Blackletter—The earliest style of type and deriving from the first ever type face ‘Blackletter’, these typefaces communicate an old, vintage look as the type has been in use for so long.

Decorative

The last style of type is the most open, as decorative type just means type with a sole purpose to portray a feeling rather than being readable. Some common type of decorative type include:

‘Funky’ Type—Characters with expressions such as curled serifs or extreme thick/thin contrast, but usually relating back to ordinary type.

Grunge—This is usually another typeface with an added texture to create an accessible way to create a rough piece of text.

Graffiti—This is an example of how decorative type may relate to certain cultures. Graffiti has a distinct look in its characters, so some typefaces look to capture this.

Horror—Decorative type can relate to a genre by using certain characteristics to portray this genre. For instance, horror type typically uses rough, fragile letters with sharp line endings to reflect scratch marks, claws or blood.

Western—Another example of a genre being portrayed within a typeface. Western type will usually feature more unique serifs and character forms. It isn’t uncommon for certain western typefaces to also have textured variants as well.

Anatomy of Characters

Characters in a typeface are made up of several different parts. Each of these individual elements can each be altered to affect how the letter is perceived. When done across a whole typeface, just one small change applied across each letter can drastically change the perception of the typeface as a whole. The simplest example of this is the line weight. A thinner line can be perceived as fragile or in some cases elegant. Thicker lines tend to be used for display type as they are striking and make the type easier to understand in short forms. The construction of a typeface can be split into the measurements in which the typeface follows in order to stay consistent and the separate parts of each individual character. Here is how a conventional typeface remains as consistent as possible:

Baseline: The level in which most characters ‘sit’

Capline: The level where capital letters extend to

Meanline: The level where lowercase letters extend to (excluding lower case letters which extend upwards: b, d, f, h, k, l, t)

Cap height: The height from the baseline to the capline, or the height of the capital letters

X height: The height from the baseline to the meanline, or the height of most lowercase letters

Kerning: The horizontal spacing between two or more letters

Leading: The vertical spacing between two or more lines of text

Individual characters are made up of many elements. These include:

Stem: The largest vertical part of a character

Stroke: ‘Stroke’ can either describe the largest diagonal part of a character, or a collective term for each main straight part

Hairline: The thinnest part of a typeface

Beardline: The very bottom point in which any character of a typeface reaches

Arm: A horizontal part of the character which connects to the stem. This could either be from one stem, like seen in the letter ‘E’, or either side of the stem, like the letter ‘T’

Crossbar: A line (usually horizontal) which connects two stems, strokes or hairlines or any mixture of them

Terminal: The abrupt end of a line with no serif

Serif: When the end of a line is given an outwards expansion to stylise the ends of a character

Bracket: Small curvatures which join the end of a line with a serif. Serif typefaces have varying sized bracketing, with slab serifs having none

Ascender: the part of the stem of a lowercase letter (’b’, ‘d’, ‘f’, ‘h’, ‘k, ‘l’, ‘t’) which surpasses the meanline upwards

Descender: the part of a lowercase letter (’g’, ‘j’, ‘p’, ‘q’. ‘y’) which surpasses the bassline downwards

Apex: The upper point where two strokes meet.

Bowl: The curved section of a letter. These can either be round, closed or open

Axis: The ‘tilt’ or ‘stress’ in which the thickness of bowls in a typeface are set. This can be seen with a line between the two thinnest/thickest parts of a bowl

Loop: The loop present in the lower section of a double-story ‘g’. This can also be open or closed

Neck: The stroke that connects the top bowl of a lowercase g to the bottom loop

Ear: A small extension from the top bowl of a lowercase

Counter: The negative space of a character, whether this be fully or partially enclosed

Shoulder: The curved part of a character which projects from a stem. Present in the letters ‘h’, ‘m’, ‘n’ and ‘r’.

Spine: The main section of an ‘s’.

Spur: A small projection from the main part of the character. Typically seen in an uppercase ‘G’.

Tail: The part of a letter (’Q’, ‘K’, ‘R’, ‘g’, ‘j’, ‘p’, ‘q’, ‘y’) which extends downwards

Swash: A decorative curve replacing a serif/terminal.

Overshooting

Considering the above guidelines of how to make a typeface consistent, in some cases these rules can be altered in order to make a character seem visually similar to the rest of the characters. As a consequence of negative space, or the ‘counter’ in a character, some appear to be visually smaller, although they are the same height. This can be seen simply using geometry to showcase how negative space affects our perception of size.

Because of this, where round letters will appear to be smaller than other, straighter letters due to there being more negative space surrounding them, the round sections are extended slightly above the X height (or cap height for uppercase letters) and below the baseline. Although this means they have slightly different restrictions to the other letters, when used as a typeface this slight correction means they are perceived to be more equal in size and therefore consistent.

Ligatures

Ligatures are connections between two letters, combining them into one shape. This is usually used for when letters will otherwise be uncomfortably close, so instead of trying to separate the letters from each other and disrupting the consistency of the type, ligatures are made to combine the two letters together avoiding the look of them being cramped. They can also be used stylistically, to add flourishes, although this is mainly seen in cursive type.

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vegas-glitz · 5 years ago

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The False Economic system of the Hospitality Field in Oaxaca, Mexico

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Tourism is suffering in the southern Mexico colonial metropolis of Oaxaca, and has been considering the fact that the civil unrest of 2006. By 2008 it experienced begun to pick up, until eventually the swine flue scare, the US economic crisis, and the damaging push heaped on by journalists reporting the drug wars, by and massive restricted to a few of port towns and metropolitan areas near the American border, virtually 1,000 miles away. With tourism the principal business in Oaxaca, why in 2011 are new automobile dealerships executing a brisk business enterprise, is higher stop dwelling development booming, and is the upper middle course continuing to or else invest like mad?

Lodge and guest dwelling proprietors complain that revenues are the worst they've been considering that 2007, still conspicuous usage carries on. Certainly, occupancy in resorts, mattress & breakfasts and other lodgings is down, and most dining places which have typically catered to a predominantly vacationer adhering to are in a important financial slump - but of course all those with a healthier Oaxacan clientele continue on to crank out very good income.

1 tenable concept is that outdated revenue is driving the economy in the hospitality sector - a phony financial system. Extra typically than not the proprietors of hotels and places to eat very own the authentic estate upon which their corporations are situated, outright without encumbrances (ie home finance loan cost-free). The other prevalent state of affairs is for these small business homeowners to be leasing from their family members and in tricky economic occasions hire is deferred or outright forgiven.

It's the exception instead than the rule to face a business enterprise in the hospitality market in Oaxaca making mortgage payments, or spending current market rent to a non - relative 3rd bash. Revenues are merely not coming in to services either variety of credit card debt payment.

So with non - existent, forgiven, or deferred credit card debt hooked up to authentic estate, all that remains to be paid out by these in the hospitality market are labor expenditures which stay stagnant, and cost of elements for resale (crafts, outfits and widgets in shops, and perishables and dry goods in dining places).

A several illustrations support the thesis:

• At the finish of 2010, a downtown visitor residence with a number of lodging units closed its doorway soon after eight several years of operation. The operator experienced been paying out industry current market. Her other business enterprise interests experienced been holding it afloat. All the other proprietors in her accommodations affiliation have remained open for small business. But not a single other establishment is shelling out a house loan or fair market rent to a non - relative third get together.

• A mom and son every single owned a restaurant in Oaxaca. The mother's was in a large vacationer zone, the son's fewer so but with a solid regional clientele. The mom's was rented from a non - relevant third celebration, and the son's was owned outright, inherited from his father. The mom experienced to close up shop after 15 several years because of rent improves, with inadequate profits to include charges and choose property a bit for herself. The son's restaurant stays open up. He carries on to appreciate his toys.

• A Oaxacan operated a resort and a crafts shop. The former was owned outright, by the loved ones, and the latter was rented in a high targeted visitors downtown location. As a consequence of the 2006 civil conflict he shut the craft retail store. The hotel stays open up.

• An aged Oaxacan lady of Spanish stock owns a few huge, effectively - regarded Oaxaca hotels, every run by 1 of her children. She complains about soft tourism, but the family members is undertaking additional than just great, by any sensible evaluation.

• A downtown Oaxaca cafe never did just take off, even with numerous decades of making an attempt, together with at least one particular wholesale menu alter. It catered to visitors. It kept open up, nonetheless. Finally it changed to an Italian restaurant. ...Oaxacans appears to gravitate towards fantastic Italian food items, far more so than worldwide visitors. The assets is owned by the proprietor's mother and father. Experienced it not been for the character of the possession of the serious estate, by all reasonable estimations and dependent on simple economics, the restaurant would have closed a yr right after opening.

Of study course there are exceptions, but just about every is primarily based on precise, one of a kind situation. As soon as their person states of affairs are examined, it gets to be apparent that functions are not inconsistent with the wide premise. For case in point, there are a several massive hotels on leased areas, which continue to fork out current market rent and other charges. It is suggested that there are two most important motives:

1. They are owned by chains with significant financial backing these types of that they can conveniently include a several gentle decades. They're in it for the extended haul if revenue don't materialize as expected, it can be taken in stride inside of the context of the broader photo, tax incentives, and many others.

2. Their use of intense rate level marketing appeals to European charter teams and other unique fascination trips (ie Elder Hostel). They can pay for to provide attractively priced offers since of quantity and 3-star accouterments. At the other close, there seems to be much a lot less negative press outside of Canada and the US, and in any event overseas tour operators do not look to have the exact same legal responsibility issues. Alternatively, gain motive keeps them actively offering.

There are other similarly valid explanations for the phenomenon of conspicuous intake in this phony economy, which without a doubt is evidenced in other sectors of Oaxacan company and entrepreneurialism (ie jewellers, quickly food chains, accounting and regulation offices in the private sector, and owners or franchisees of department and specialty suppliers these kinds of as Sears, Sam's, Fbricas de Francia and Workplace Depot):

• Politicians and increased degree civil servants surface to get paid fairly very well.

• Income is staying brought into Oaxaca from elsewhere in the state, and a lot more substantially from Canada, the US and further more overseas, to purchase and maintain organizations so that traditional borrowing and credit card debt refinancing is not demanded.

• There are enterprises which have resources of product and major product sales outside the house of Oaxaca, but income however flows into the pockets of their Oaxaca resident house owners (ie plantsations of coffee, cacao and other crops and their derivatives, produced in other Mexican states and in nations in the course of Central & South The us).

In downtown Oaxaca there is a important total of key, unoccupied serious estate, giving more evidence of the bogus economic system, or in this circumstance an inert financial development phenomenon. Residence entrepreneurs of significant financial indicates (ie the outdated money people), somewhat than hire for what the current market will bear, either allow for their buildings to continue being empty and deteriorate, or, squeeze best greenback out of renters, only to acquire again the destinations when these retail visionaries eventually recognize that they cannot provider the financial debt involved with their leases. They are unable to contend with these in distinctly different monetary situations - these kinds of as individuals in the hospitality business who have succeeded, for good reasons illustrated higher than, in which other people have failed.

Notwithstanding government data, most believe that that inflation proceeds at about 8 - 10 % for every annum. The value of items needed to support the hospitality field will proceed to climb, and finally wages will have to creep up in order for Oaxacan people to endure. This will set a strain on small business homeowners, and start out depleting their means - unless tourism improves. If it doesn't, and resort and cafe homeowners get started boosting their selling prices in an exertion to continue on to keep their life, travellers will quit visiting Oaxaca completely. There are far too quite a few other spots in the earth which offer you culturally wealthy holidays at acceptable, aggressive rates - and without the media to make vacationers feel two times.

Supply by Alvin Starkman

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eduardoinvestinggmkn604-blog · 7 years ago

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Fresh Investing Website

Recent economic data, but have been modestly stronger, and traders really are,

once again, interesting visions of tax cuts. Granted, the financial impact of

short-term tax cuts will be significantly more a sugar than structural renewal, nevertheless, you take

what you're able to find. Now, even a modest boost in near-term growth

expectancy is arguably enough to alter buyer tastes.

This makes the prospect for price. In a environment in which investors

are somewhat more sanguine about economical development, they are more likely to notice that

price stocks aren't merely cheap but also offer far better leverage to some financial acceleration. Value isn't dead nonetheless.

**Solution to play it with ETFs:** the moment it regards picking a worth ETF, the

inquiry is the way bargain basement you would like togo. The Vanguard price ETF (VTV)

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could be your most popular but has only a little tilt supporting value. The iShares Edge

MSCI USA value-weighted Index Fund (VLUE) is far more exposed to appreciate stocks. For hardcore significance hunters, the ValueShares US Quantitative Value ETF

(QVAL) goes incredibly deep to-buy stocks everyone else hates because its boss puts

it.

**Performance of past quartes ETF performs:** Balchunas pointed into this iShares

U.S. chosen inventory ETF (PFF) like ways to play Koesterics preference for

chosen inventory in last quartes writeup. It absolutely was down 0.8 percentage for the

quarter.

### Search Yields With Protection

You will find times to stretch and take much a lot more risk, and there are occasions when

discretion is the better part of valor. Adhering to a bull economy that turned

eight yrs old in March and countless trillions of bucks of fundamental bank

asset buys, several asset types are obviously cheap. Still, in a world where interest rates have been hardly inch percent, traders may be forgiven for not even needing to stick their spare dollars beneath the mattress.

This means to me personally a compromise: locating belongings having a commendable yield that

will offer downside protection if niches turn submerged.

U.S. preferred inventory is currently yielding about 5.50 percentage. This compares

favorably with most of the additional alternate options, including high-yield,

investment-grade and emerging-market financial personal debt, as well as a basket of U.S. widespread dividend-paying shares. [Preferred stocks are sort of the stock and bond hybrid;

they generally pay a fixed dividend and set you in advance common stock holders

at cashing in shares in the event the business 's assets are liquidated.]

More to the point, following a disastrous period during the financial catastrophe,

favourite inventory has become a much less volatile asset class, currently

offering the most attractive ratio of return to volatility of the return -

oriented plays. Assessing the return to the three-month trailing volatility of

the asset category, you receive yourself a ratio of more than 1.3. Quite simply, traders are getting 1.3 percentage details of earnings to each and every percentage point of

annualized volatility. This is much higher compared to any one of the

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Some may remember that stocks that are preferred did not meet their standing to get low volatility during the economic catastrophe. Then, an indicator of U.S.

preferred, controlled by fiscal issuers, fell around 70 per cent,

even worse compared to broader market.

I see not as much downside risk today. It is perhaps not apparent that U.S. financials will

be at the epicenter of the following catastrophe, as was forex the instance at 2007 09. The industry is quite a bit superior capitalized and run longer conservatively than it was 10 years

back.

While stocks that are preferred aren't likely to ship anyons core racing, a yield of

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and uncomfortably low **** volatility is now well worth a good look.

**Solution to play with it with ETFs:** The iShares U.S. Preferred inventory ETF (PFF)

now returns 5.6 percent and has great liquidity. Its own 0.47 percentage fee is

really high for an ETF but below average for an ETF focusing on favourite shares.

**Performance of last quartes ETF performs:** to follow along with Koesterics strategy

of emphasizing Asian equities, Balchunas pointed to the iShares MSCI Japan

ETF (EWJ), that obtained 5.2 percent, and also the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets

Asia ETF (EEMA), which returned 8.5 per cent.

### Appear to Japan

We see that the best opportunities inside just Asian stocks, with a focus on

Japan.

Wre now from the eighth year of this bull market at U.S. stocks, also it's

more and more tough to locate deals. U.S. shares have done exceptionally

well, but traders are pushing valuations to somewhat extreme ranges.

Large-cap U.S. stocks are investing at approximately 22 times trailing

earnings, the greatest multiple as 2010 and also at more than thirty days the CAPE

ratio, a level last seen near the peak of their tech bubble. Making things worse, U.S. Treasury bond deals seem extremely affluent after several years of

shopping for by central banks.

Within this natural setting, Asian stocks be noticeable being a relative bargain. In recent

decades, Japanese stocks have traded in a reduction to the U.S., and that

reduction isn't very large now. The Topix index is currently trading at

about 1.3 times book worth, averaging a lot more than three times to get the S&P five hundred.

Japanese profitability has been advancing since 2012, thanks to improved business governance and share buy backs. In addition, Japanese equities offer

accounting criteria which can be strict relative to the U.S., low leverage along with the continuing tailwind of lodging. Ultimately, to the scope the

global economy is probably going to modestly accelerate in 20 17, Japanese exporters

are properly positioned to gain from advancing worldwide increase and a firmer

economy.

In addition, we see decide on chances in other components of Asia, including rising markets. Specifically, Indian businesses offer an interesting spin on emerging

markets. India can be actually just a sizable, domestically oriented market that is fairly insulated

from several of the additional macro risks which frequently violate some all other sections of this emerging-market world class.

**Ways to perform with it with ETFs:** Traders may use the iShares MSCI Japan ETF

(EWJ) for Japan Publicity. It is undoubtedly the very popular Japan ETF and prices 0.48 percentage, approximately average to get a single-country ETF. EEMA charges a cost of 0.48 percentage.

#investment #online #website #stocks

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jessekg · 7 years ago

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9 key moments in the Black Panther's 50-year evolution

The Black Panther hits theatres this week, and the hysteria and hype surrounding the movie is very, very real.

Starring Chadwick Boseman as the Black Panther and directed by Ryan Coogler (Creed), it's the first film in the Marvel Universe to feature majority Black actors, be helmed by a Black director and be set in a (fictional) African country. Not since Wesley Snipes' Blade has a Black superhero been given such a red-carpet treatment.

In fact, Snipes recently revealed that he tried, unsuccessfully, to get a Black Panther picture off the ground in the '90s.

"I think Black Panther spoke to me because he was noble, and he was the antithesis of the stereotypes presented and portrayed about Africans, African history and the great kingdoms of Africa," he told the Hollywood Reporter. "It had cultural significance, social significance. It was something that the Black community and the white community hadn't seen before."

WhileBlade, released in 1998, ended up being the first hit film based on a Marvel character. Black Panther is on track to be another runaway success, both financially and in its cultural significance. Just take a look at the hashtag #whatdoesblackpanthermeantome, which shows zealous fans remarking on the significance of seeing positive Blackrepresentation on the big screen (everybody owes it to themselves to watch this particularly joyous reaction).

But it was a long road to get here. Below, we trace the key moments in the history of the Black Panther.

The Coal Tiger

Marvel founder Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby are credited with first coming up with the idea for Black Panther in the mid-'60s, although Kirby's original design and what we see today are drastically different. In fact, even the name was different during the conceptual stage, with Kirby originally calling the hero Coal Tiger.

The Coal Tiger was a regal, albeit old fashioned-looking hero with no mask, complete with a bright yellow jumper and matching boots overtop black tights. Thankfully, this version never made it to print and only exists as a conceptual sketch, seen here.

The original concept for the Black Panther by Jack Kirby. (Marvel)

"I came up with the Black Panther because I realized I had no Blacks in my strip," Kirby said in an interview, highlighting the fact that even during the civil rights era — a time when Black musicians saw unprecedented crossover success — Black representation was still a huge blind spot in comics. "It suddenly dawned on me — believe me, it was for human reasons — I suddenly discovered nobody was doing Blacks. And here I am a leading cartoonist and I wasn't doing a Black."

The Black Panther vs. the Black Panther party

The Black Panther made his official comic book debut in the Fantastic Four, Vol. 1 No. 52 in July 1966, which is the same year the Black Panther party was founded (though some months later). While the comic book and party were not affiliated, they both tapped into the social consciousness of the day, especially in light of recent events such as Malcolm X's assassination and the Watts riots in California. Despite being across the country from each other — Marvel in New York's garment district, the Black Panther founding members in Oakland, Calif. — the comic and the party became intertwined. They both served the need to represent Black Americans, with Marvel choosing to do so by introducing the character of T'Challa, the leader of a fictional country called Wakanda.

"At that point I felt we really needed a Black superhero," Lee told the Huffington Post in 2016. "And I wanted to get away from a common perception. So what I did, I made him almost like [Fantastic Four's] Reed Richards. He's a brilliant scientist and he lives in an area that, under the ground, is very modern and scientific and nobody suspects it because on the surface it's just thatched huts with ordinary 'natives.' And he's not letting the world know what's really going on or how brilliant they really are."

An African utopia

To Lee's point, Wakanda is an African country that was never colonized, due in part to its advanced technology that allowed Wakandans to hide their country from the rest of the world. This idea of an African utopia remained throughout the comic book's history, echoed in the rallying cry "Wakanda forever" from the 2018 film, one that has since been embraced by the film's stars.

From his first appearance, readers were introduced to the Black Panther as both a superhero and the leader of a nation that was technologically superior to the U.S. due to its wealth of vibranium, the fictional metal that is used to construct both Black Panther's suit and Captain America's shield. These are all important factors to the Black Panther's backstory that have remained consistent to this day, even as the Black Panther storylines, over the decades, became more American-focused.

"T'Challa — the Black Panther and mythical ruler of Wakanda — has always struck as the product of the Black nationalist dream, a walking revocation of white supremacist myth," Ta-Nehisi Coates, the Atlantic journalist and author who helmed the 2015 Black Panther comic, wrote at the time.

The first Black superhero

The Black Panther was originally drawn with a cape and open cowl, similar to Batman, which also showed his skin colour. However, Kirby ultimately redesigned his costume, darkening his suit and introducing a full face mask, a look that has remained more or less consistent throughout the character's history. You can see both versions of the cover below.

Even though it was apparent to readers that the character was Black — the Black Panther removes his mask within the pages of his first appearance in Fantastic Four — it wasn't until 1968 that you would see the colour of T'Challa's skin on the cover of a comic book: when the Black Panther appeared in issue No. 52 of The Avengers in a cowl (a partial mask that showed his jaw). This was important because the Black Panther was, in fact, the first Black superhero to appear in a mainstream comic book, predating other mainstream Black heroes, such as the Falcon (1969), Luke Cage (1972) and John Stewart as the Green Lantern (1971). The cowl was short lived, however, and the Black Panther soon returned to his more traditional full-coverage costume.

The Black Leopard

Over time, Marvel got weary about being so closely associated by name with the Black Panther Party, so they changed their superhero's name. It didn't go over well.

Beginning in Fantastic Four No. 119 (February 1972), the Black Panther briefly tried using the name Black Leopard, explaining it with an awkward bit of dialogue within that same issue. While commenting on the name's "political connotations" in the U.S., T'Challa is careful to say, "I neither condemn nor condone those who have taken up the name — but T'Challa is a law unto himself." It's a speech that sounds like it was taken straight from a Marvel press release, written with such hair-splitting caution as to not offend either side while still distancing the character from the political group.

Readers were not fans of the change, and the renaming didn't last long. Neither "the readers nor the creators cared for the new name," Lee told Alter Ego magazine in 2011.

And while Marvel shied away from the politicization of the Black Panther name, many of the superhero's more popular storylines were in fact very political. In the same issue where the Black Leopard name is introduced, T'Challa travels to the fictional country of Rudyarda, a thinly veiled stand in for apartheid-era South Africa. Even the country's name is based on famous British colonial writer Rudyard Kipling, author of, among other things, "the White Man's Burden." In one of the final scenes from this issue, the Thing even smashes through segregated doors before leaving the country in a heavy-handed metaphor for the politics of the day. The Black Panther name may have been too political for Marvel, but the issues of the day certainly weren't.

'Wakandans stop being refugees from a Tarzan movie'

Fast forward one year to 1973, and the Black Panther officially stars in his own run of solo books as part of the uncomfortably named Jungle Action series.

The Black Panther's run in Jungle Action ran from September 1973 to November 1976 and was critically acclaimed, even pioneering a format that's the norm today: a self-contained, multi-issue story, a.k.a. the graphic novel. Called Panther's Rage and penned by Don McGregor, it was conceived as a complete novel told over 13 issues and introduced the antagonist Killmonger, a key character played by Michael B. Jordan in the film.

McGregor was encouraged by Marvel to include more white characters, so in January 1976, he did just that — though perhaps not in the way his editors had in mind — by facing the Black Panther off against the Ku Klux Klan. Captain America may have famously punched Adolph Hitler, but he never drop kicked a member of the Klan in the face quite like the Black Panther (see image at top)

Over 20-odd years, McGregor would introduce other extended Panther storylines (Panther's Prey; Panther's Quest) that helped develop the backstory of Wakanda and T'Challa's character in much more depth. Readers learned more about T'Challa's strength as a leader of an advanced nation, and how he deals with the constant threat from both imperialist and interior forces.

"These stories are where Wakandans stop being refugees from a Tarzan movie," writer Evan Narcisse so aptly points out.

The Black Panther becomes cool, with some help from Chandler Bing

Following an unsuccessful solo run penned by Kirby, sales and interest in the Black Panther character waned during the '80s. Storylines became more cliché, adding very little to make the character stand out from other Marvel superheroes. Then, in the '90s, Christopher Priest took up the mantle and reinvigorated the character completely.

"[Priest] had the classic run on Black Panther, period, and that's gonna be true for a long time," Coates told New York magazine for a profile on Priest titled, "The Man who Made Black Panther Cool."

As such, Priest's run also introduced some fairly major changes to T'Challa's costume, with gold accents around his neck, wrists and waist, plus the return of his cape, giving the character his most regal look yet. Priest, more than anyone before him, focused on T'Challa as a king, so the superhero was going to look the part.

It's important to note that Priest was the first Black editor/writer to be hired by either of the big two comic brands, Marvel and DC. After some ups and downs, including leaving Marvel for DC, Priest was offered Black Panther in 1998. This was the beginning of a trend that saw many prominent Black artists take the lead on the Black Panther.

"I was a little horrified when the words 'Black' and 'Panther' came out of Joe's mouth," Priest later wrote. "I mean, Black Panther? Who reads Black Panther?"

Needless to say, Black Panther's history did not inspire Priest — "His supporting cast was a bunch of soul brothers in diapers with bones through their noses," Priest wrote — but he was eventually convinced to take the job, provided one detail: he wanted to create a white protagonist. In Priest's own words: "go to the wells of snarkdom, for the snarkiest snark I was capable of. Social politics as interpreted by Richard Belzer, Dennis Leary or Dennis Miller."

Inspired by an episode of Friends (yes, that Friends), Priest created a character based on Chandler Bing. Everett K. Ross was a paranoid, incompetent government employee tasked as a diplomatic escort for T'Challa, who was portrayed as a superlative statesman by day and merciless vigilante by night. The Black Panther series morphed into a mix of political thriller, satire and traditional superhero story, told through the sarcastic point of view of Ross, with an emphasis on T'Challa's cunning wit, strength and sense of justice.

"This was how the book achieved its small cult following," Priest writes.

To Priest, T'Challa wasn't simply a superhero, and the Black Panther was more than just a superhero title.

"People had not put as much thought into who and what Black Panther was before Christopher started writing the book," Coates says in that same New York magazine interview. "He thought that Black Panther was a king."

The formula worked, and Priest's run lasted for 62 issues, becoming the defining interpretation of the character.

Introducing women warriors

In line with his expansion of the Wakandan universe, Priest also introduced another major cast of characters to the Black Panther universe — the Dora Milaje, T'Challa's fierce and all-female personal bodyguards. They are some of the deadliest women in the Marvel universe, but in Priest's initial run, they were also depicted as ceremonial "wives in training," an idea that has not aged well.

Based on Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell, the Dora Milaje were, at least in the early days, often depicted as femme fatales in short skirts and high heels. Thankfully the movie jettisons that aspect of the Dora Milaje background, focusing instead on the women's efficiency as warriors and, even more so, as key characters to the development of the story.

"I think the presentation of women is both fierce and very much feminine," Danai Gurira, who plays the head of the Dora Milaje, Okoye, in the film, tellsq. "I loved the way the women were shown being people that reach their fullest potential and live in it with a fearlessness and don't lose any part of being women. The myth is that's what happens, or women have to disguise their strength and I love that this is a world where that is just not the case."

In the 2000s, Reginald Hudlin, a writer, director and producer (his breakout film was 1990's House Party with rappers Kid 'n Play), focused on Black Panther's "street cred," drawing inspiration from Batman, Spike Lee and P Diddy. One key development from Hudlin was the creation of Shuri, T'Challa's younger sister and a tech genius who is played by Letitia Wright in the film. In the comics, she even replaces T'Challa for a time as the Black Panther and ruler of Wakanda.

This era emphasized, above all, the power and agency of the women in the Panther universe, a theme expanded on even more in the books to follow and film. Hudlin's run was also used as the basis for an excellent animated series, which ran on BET.

The extended Black Panther universe

When Coates picked up the mantle in 2016, he expanded on what Priest and Hudlin had built, but also subverted readers' expectations of the character to that point. In an interview, Coates describes fans needing T'Challa to be like Denzel Washington— "He's supposed to be smooth and effortlessly do x, y, and z." — but for Coates, it was also important to show T'Challa as flawed. "You got Denzel ... [but in] that movie where he's a drunken pilot."

Coates also focused the action back on Wakanda, questioning the very systems that held the otherwise utopian country together. Under Coates, women were made more and more crucial to the overall story, focusing more on their actual lives rather than how their characters relate to T'Challa.

Coates even ventured to develop the Panther universe in more depth with a spin-off, World of Wakanda, written with Roxane Gay (author of Bad Feminist, Hunger) and Yona Harvey, the first two Black women to write a series for Marvel. One storyline focused on the romance between Ayo and Anneka, two women who are also the driving forces to a Dora Milaje-led resistance that results in a civil war.

World of Wakanda, however, was cancelled after six issues. Even with a best-selling author and National Book Award winner, perhaps even that was too much for the traditional comic book-buying public. The series was cancelled due to poor sales, with Marvel Studios' vice president even commenting at one point that "people didn't want any more diversity."

Although with 2018's Black Panther already breaking box-office records, this theory has been proven wrong. For a character that was, at its core, created in order to the reflect the times and to combat discrimination, it's a fitting next chapter for the Black Panther.

#Black Panther #History #Christopher Priest

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