#bbc outlook

[fluffypotatey]

Skill issue maybe. But kindness certainly didn't help the prosecuted for the rest of the show.

Maybe a balance is needed between me being proactive and merlin being kind, bc merlin sure needed a bit of the former (this is really more of a complaint for the showrunners rather than merlin. I read so many fics of merlin being proactive and helping magic that canon is slap in the face with his passivity and class traitorness)

yeah Merlin’s approach to certain issues definitely show the writers’/showrunners’ hands than his actual character (where he is pretty outspoken in these topics) but there’s also the nuance of keeping his magic secret and yada yada

but also, one of the reasons we like Merlin is because of his goodness and open-mind. there is a reason he is a foil to Morgana, who was proactive in magic users rights, had an identity crisis of her own, and descended into villain-hood. there is a reason why his struggle between his duty as Emrys and Destiny is so compelling and how it slowly become his struggle between Destiny and Arthur

are there moments where i wish Merlin did certain actions differently? 100% yes i do (2x08 for example and his relationship with Morgana) and i know a lot of the time these narrative choices were made in order to keep Merlin in his 5 season struggle of ideologies by the showrunners themselves which just hurt his character in the long run (similar to how they revert Arthur’s character back to his s1 caricature sometimes 🙄) bc if he progressed too “quickly” then it could lead to a different outcome than they wanted at the end of the show

but i digress

[retrocgads]

UK 1987

[taylorswiftsongs4mypookies]

🚨🚨🗣🗣🗣🗣 Alright it’s Merlin’s turn: THIS LOVE BY TAYLOR SWIFT AS MERLIN 🗣🗣🗣🗣🚨🚨🚨🚨

y’all YALL

“Clear blue water

High tide came and brought you in

And I could go on and on, on and on, and I will

Skies grew darker

Currents swept you out again

And you were just gone and gone, gone and gone”

(🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲)

“This love is good

This love is bad

This love is alive back from the dead, oh, oh, oh

These hands had to let it go free, and

This love came back to me, oh, oh, oh

This love left a permanent mark

This love is glowing in the dark, oh, oh, oh

These hands had to let it go free, and

This love came back to me, oh, oh, oh”

(THE FINALE OF IT ALL!???? 🤠)

“Your smile, my ghost

I fell to my knees

When you're young, you just run

But you come back to what you need”

(Speaking of falling to knees 🧎🏻‍♀️🧎🏻‍♀️🧎🏻‍♀️)

[livvyofthelake]

i’m such a girl who stopped wearing their retainer and is very unlikely to ever start again. like why would i put that thing back on. to feel excruciating pain and then have straighter teeth for a day before having to put it back on overnight. every night. forever. my teeth are not that bad sorry to my parents who apparently wasted their money on braces. well you got rid of the front tooth gap nobody liked so no one can take that away from you i guess. that’s it tho

[keystonewarrior]

Lenny the Barber

Listening to the story of Lenny who cuts hair for elderly men in a care home. Many are suffering Alzheimers. Great story.

I remember when my grandmother had Alzheimers. My first child was only a few months old then, it was 1994. My mom wanted to take the baby to see grandmom, but in the end it was just mom and me. Vera didn't know I was her grandson, but something must have reminded her I was a soldier medic. Grandmom was a nurse in WWII. So we had a pretty cool conversation because I knew enough history, especially Army history, to at least keep the conversation going for her on that last visit.

When I had become a medic in 1990, grandmom still had all her marbles. She got me my first stethoscope and sphygmomanometer. I still have them.

[a-man-for-hire-and-his-archives]

‘I’ve starred in The Archers for 20 years but could never afford my own farm’

Fame & Fortune: The BBC actor on money mistakes, theatre hecklers, and his 20-year radio stint

Andrew Wincott, who plays Adam Macy on BBC Radio 4’s The Archers, joined the cast in 2003 (Credit: Gary Moyes/The Archers)

Andrew Wincott is an actor, best known for playing Adam in the BBC Radio 4 drama The Archers, which he joined 20 years ago. After studying English and then doing teacher training at Oxford, the 61-year-old taught for two years before going to Webber Douglas drama school, where fellow actors Hugh Bonneville and Rebecca Front were contemporaries.

He then worked on the regional theatre circuit, and later became a member of the BBC Radio Drama Company, before joining the cast of The Archers in 2003. The father of one lives in Clapham, south London.

How did your start in life affect your outlook on money?

My two brothers and I grew up in Oxfordshire where my parents ran a catering business.

But the 1970s were a difficult time for a lot of businesses, so after 10 years enjoying an idyllic life in the countryside, we moved into the flat above the restaurant and cake shop the family owned, Wincott’s, in Banbury.

Work always came first for my parents, so for a number of years we didn’t go away in the summer.

Did you receive pocket money?

Yes, and I spent it on Marvel comics, and later on albums like Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here, which I played endlessly in the mid-70s.

What was your first job?

After leaving school in 1978, before going to university, I worked at the Dragon Prep School in Oxford doing a variety of jobs, one of which involved keeping the headmaster’s drinks cupboard well-stocked, and serving gin and tonics at garden parties.

The G&Ts I poured were notoriously generous. Occasionally I even got to ‘sample’ the headmaster’s gin myself.

But my first proper acting job, which also secured my Equity card [a trade union for the performing arts], came after I gatecrashed an audition in 1987 and landed the part of Alec in Tess of the D’ Urbervilles at the Orchard Theatre Company in Barnstaple, which toured the West Country.

Wincott says starring in The Archers is like having ‘a second family’. Pictured here with Stephen Kennedy and Mairead McKinley (Credit: The Archers/David Burges)

How long did you work in regional theatre for? Was it lucrative?

The best part of a decade, appearing everywhere from Colchester to Perth, and Harrogate to Theatr Clwyd in Wales, doing both Shakespeare and modern plays, often playing leading roles.

Money was minimal – I was paid about £160-£170 a week on my first acting job – but the Equity Touring allowance helped.

Regional theatre allowed me to hone my skills as an actor. Once, I was heckled by an inebriated audience member who loudly greeted every entrance I made in Tess with a cry of “Asshole!”.

However, you just have to stay focused. He was gone by the interval – probably back to the bar. This was in Falmouth, now affectionately rebranded among friends as “Foulmouth”!

Have you experienced any lean times as an actor?

It took me nine months to land my first proper acting job, and until then I was working on the fringe – just earning expenses, or profit sharing if I was lucky.

Most actors have good years and bad years. So you have to set aside money to see you through the lean spells, as well as save enough to pay your tax bill at the end of the year.

How did you land the part of Adam in The Archers?

I actually played a Danish agricultural student for a few months in the 1990s – but then, a decade or so later, I was invited to audition with a dozen other actors for the role of Adam at Pebble Mill in 2003.

I heard nothing for 10 days, but was then asked to come back for a recall [second audition] and was offered the role.

Now, it's like having a second family. This month I’ve been a cast regular for almost exactly 20 years. Providing you aren’t written out (or killed off), there’s a certain security.

Coincidentally, my mother grew up on a Home Farm [a key location in the radio drama] and went to the same school, although not at the same time, as Godfrey Baseley, who created The Archers.

Does The Archers pay enough for you to buy a farm of your own?

The cast only works on The Archers for about one week in the month – we record blocks of episodes several weeks ahead of transmission – and radio pays somewhere between theatre and television.

So I doubt it would pay for a farm in the UK, though it might eventually just pay for a small farmhouse in rural Andalucia, where I enjoy spending time.

So who knows? I might become a Spanish granjero and grow olives one day.

You also find time to record audiobooks and video games?

I’ve recorded hundreds of audiobooks and video games over the last 15 years or so. An audiobook takes days, if not weeks, to prepare and then record in studio.

I’ve voiced everything from The Wind in the Willows to Nineteen Eighty-Four and the classics of Flaubert.

But it's hard work for often little reward. It can be fun creating bizarre voices for elves, orks or extraterrestrials in fantasy books, but the concentration required when the red light is on is second to none.

It's just you, the words on the page and the voices in your imagination.

In addition to his role on the BBC’s longest-running drama, Wincott has recorded hundreds of audiobooks and video games. Pictured with Stephen Kennedy (Credit: BBC/PA)

Have you got a pension?

Yes, I took out an Equity pension through my union years ago and still pay into it. I also have a SIPP.

What’s been your best investment?

The investment I made in going to drama school in the mid-1980s. Doing that gave me classical training as an actor. I probably wouldn’t be in The Archers today without that.

Do you own a property?

Yes, a second floor, two-bedroom flat in a property in Clapham, south London, dating back to the 1900s. I bought it for £60,000 in 1991, though it’s now worth a considerable six-figure sum, I imagine.

It’s an excellent location for getting in and out of town.

Are you a spender or a saver?

Instinctively a saver. As an actor you never know what’s around the corner, and we know if we're working there will be tax to pay. Not to mention investing for the future.

What’s your greatest financial indulgence?

Every now and then, I'll spend a few days in southern Spain, specifically Las Alpujarras – the foothills of the Sierra Nevada – where I can recharge my batteries, or prepare a book for audio in tranquility. I'm learning Spanish now, too.

What has been your worst financial decision?

Buying into the Woodford Equity Investment Fund, as part of my SIPP.

Although Neil Woodford was considered a star fund manager, the fund collapsed and the administrator is now embroiled in collective litigation to recoup losses. Never a dull moment.

Do you donate to charity?

Yes, Art Fund, which facilitates the acquisition of artworks for the nation. Doing so also entitles you to half-price admission to special exhibitions, such as those at the Tate, the Courtauld or the National Gallery.

Do you plan to do a June Spencer (Peggy Archer) and still be in The Archers when you’re 100?

Who knows? The Archers is an extraordinary institution, part of our cultural fabric as a farming nation – it boasts such longevity, too.

Maybe my character will outlive me? I'd like to think he will… before the next generation takes over.

The Archers, Radio 4, weekdays at 7pm; Omnibus edition, Sundays at 10am

Source: The Telegraph

[oswincoleman]

Here is the amazing new Radio Times interview with Jenna Coleman about The Jetty, about finding her voice, and some of her past roles

Some interesting part of the interview that she hasn't already said previously are:

About the Jetty:

"Everything seems to be reverse-engineered: Ember’s mum is like the teenager, Ember the adult having a teenage awakening and her daughter Hannah having to become the grown up. Those dynamics felt very real. I have a couple of friends who had daughters very young. They’re more like siblings and then sometimes you have to pull the Mum card. They’re constantly keeping each other in check."

"I’ve been asked if this project could have been made 10 years ago, and maybe yes, but through a different lens," she says. "We’re not saying women good, men bad, it’s more nuanced. One teenage girl character is sexually liberated, another much less so – so how can you apply the same rules to both? 10 years ago, their stories would have been painted with much broader brushstrokes."

About what she was like as a kid, and what inspired her to go for an acting career:

What Coleman had instead were hugely helpful parents – "I was the kind of kid who studied for my exams without being told so they were able to be supportive but hands-off" – and a curiosity for her craft piqued, she shares, by the work of Anthony Minghella.

And finally, some outlook to the future:

Now, with two decades of work under her belt, a role in Netflix juggernaut The Sandman, more development projects on the horizon as well as a baby on the way, Coleman is a far cry from the ingenue worried her voice wouldn’t be heard. 

[taminodaily]

in a 2019 interview with bbc outlook, tamino shared an intriguing story about how his grandfather, muharram fouad, almost moved to brazil in his youth in search of a better life

[midnightactual]

Bleach is Cyberpunk II

I've said before that Bleach's general setup is cyberpunk, but the truth is that its general structure is cyberpunk too. It's more or less the direct antithesis of a prototypical shōnen like One Piece, and its closest relative is actually Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. I'll come back to that later.

Ichigo (and Rukia and Kaien, and to some extent Yoruichi and Kisuke) are fundamentally un-Japanese in their nature as characters in outlook, mindset, and attitude, whatever their aesthetics and presentation. You need to understand that Karakura is a symbol of Japanese stagnation as it actually exists, while Soul Society is a kind of Platonic ideal of it. There's an interesting BBC article from a Tokyo correspondent of ten years who asserts:

Japan still feels like Japan, and not a reproduction of America. It's why the world is so thrilled by all things Japanese, from the powder snow to the fashion. Tokyo is home to superlative restaurants; Studio Ghibli makes the world's most enchanting animation (sorry, Disney); sure, J-pop is awful, but Japan is undoubtedly a soft-power superpower. The geeks and oddballs love it for its wonderful weirdness. But it also has alt-right admirers for refusing immigration and maintaining the patriarchy. It is often described as a country that has successfully become modern without abandoning the ancient. There is some truth to this, but I'd argue the modern is more a veneer. When Covid struck, Japan closed its borders. Even permanent foreign residents were excluded from returning. I called up the foreign ministry to ask why foreigners who'd spent decades in Japan, had homes and businesses here, were being treated like tourists. The response was blunt: "they are all foreigners." A hundred and fifty years after it was forced to open its doors, Japan is still sceptical, even fearful of the outside world.

Karakura is metaphorically the modern veneer of the Seireitei (a place whose name literally means "Stagnant Pool of Souls"). The Seireitei, the heart of the secret world of Bleach, is the ancient, and Karakura is the veneer of modernity that exists on its "surface".

Karakura is by proxy also a symbol of stagnancy. As usual, this is directly called out by the manga. Karakura literally represents the death of Ichigo's dreams. (Have you ever wondered why he was working so many jobs while he was depowered and getting as much money as he could? He was planning to leave after graduating high school because he hates Karakura.)

Ichigo shows his defiance of this stagnation by abandoning Japanese cultural norms: he's anti-authority, pseudo-delinquent, defiant, disrespectful, and generally just kind of a punk, but he has a heart of gold. His greatest hope is to effect change.

When Rukia appears and offers the possibility of changing things, Ichigo jumps at the opportunity.

But the major theme of the manga is that everyone (not just Ichigo) is ultimately ground down by the system and submits to leading quiet lives instead of keeping up resistance to the bitter end. They're defeated. Ichigo stays in Karakura.

You're directly told that grand sweeping gestures and plans don't work. This is the point of Aizen's whole saga. This tells you something about Kubo's politics and more generally reflects the Japanese shōganai (しょうがない) attitude, but that isn't really the point here. What's underlined (but absolutely not highlighted) is that successful resistance is subtle and gradual, corruption of the status quo rather than a revolution against it, whether it be along political (Shunsui, Nayura), informational (Kisuke, Shūhei), or scientific (Kisuke, Mayuri) lines. This is actually a primary focus of CFYOW as a text if you read between the lines.

I've said before that Bleach is basically an antishōnen because it subverts the whole nakama premise, and I've doubled down on that, but it's also one thematically, because it's also about world-weary cynicism and the gradual disaffection of youth: "growing up" to set aside "childish ideas" like changing the world.

It's initially set up like a typical shōnen only to bait-and-switch you. You wanted a raucous punk adventure? Well fuck you, you get a depressingly realistic death of dreams, just veiled in goofy supernatural metaphor.

This is why I say its closest relative is Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, something from Studio Trigger which you initially think is going to end in a triumphant defeat of Arasaka by David and company, much like their previous Kill La Kill did, only to end in tragedy. Ichigo, like David, is "built different" only for it to ultimately not make a difference in the end. Rukia, like Lucy, comes into his life and completely changes it. Orihime, like Rebecca, really wants nothing more than to be noticed by him as a woman.

Unlike their counterparts in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Ichigo and Orihime don't actually die. But their hopes and dreams do. Ichigo doesn't want to be in Karakura, but he is. Everyone has chosen to knuckle down because:

And when does Yhwach appear? When Ichigo and Orihime get married? No. When Kazui is born? No. Only when Rukia shows up again. Huh. It's almost like they chose to be miserable just to survive rather than go out in a blaze of personal defiance but couldn't quite extinguish that last spark, and that's what Yhwach keyed in on.

It's a bad ending where the system wins, because the system is too big for any one person to overcome. Even when Yhwach is defeated, Soul Society and the reincarnation cycle and all its inequities continue to trundle on, just like Arasaka and really the megacorps in general of which Arasaka is merely one. (And even in Cyberpunk—the setting not the genre—in actuality behind the megacorps still stand the national governments. There is always a bigger fish.)

Everyone just has to make their peace with the nature of the world or die as they're crushed by it.

If fate is a millstone then we are the grist. There is nothing we can do.

And then you get No Breathes From Hell, where everyone is smiling again! But...

... They learn they're all destined to go to Hell, among other things. I told you about the bigger fish. So not only did nothing actually change, but really everything only got that much worse. Which again is pretty much a hallmark of cyberpunk settings.

[firespirited]

I think it's a slightly amusing coincidence that the guy with a Nazi fetish was collaborating with a man named Herr Gott.

At this point I'm not ruling out Herrgott being a pseudonym or him writing all the 'vibes-based' junk since James was the one doing 'research' (to his credit he was somewhat good at collecting smart people's work).

But I'm hijacking your ask to clear up two misconceptions that have been bothering me:

(big mess of sources and further reading under the readmore)

1- The nazis and fitness essay (one I actually watched and disagreed with) cites multiple sources and is an attempt to retrofit current "masc for masc" grindr culture onto AIDS era fitness "healthy" gay culture (see Gaston as a stereotype) onto multiple a-historical "gay nazis" revisionisms including The Pink Swastika book and a columnist

I think they got the nazi and fitness nonsense from a scholarly sounding source who's just an oxbridge columnist who's into reclaiming nazis. They're famously good at making nonsense sound like a thesis - see Boris Johnson's upcoming book about Shakespeare and his time as a columnist, see the entire Telegraph and various Terf Observer columns: fully trash but written in academic lingo, even queer academic lingo!

and... here's the source: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20150324-hitlers-idea-of-the-perfect-body it's the BBC oh look, what's this "Alastair Sooke is art critic of The Daily Telegraph". 🤔🤔🤔

There's a case that the "no fat no fems no chocolate no rice" gay dating culture could possibly be tied to the healthy vs unhealthy infighting during the beginning of the AIDS era but that's a nuanced take that gets smashed to smithereens by lumping it in with gay nazi myths. It also needs to be examined with the attitude to dating apps in general and dating by physical preferences instead of letting chemistry happen by finding people whose goals and outlook match your own.

Terrible essay, terrible premise, some pull quotes from interesting places. Here's an essay about desirability in men, googling "masc 4 masc culture" will get you plenty of articles, you definitely want to look for asian and black writers here because woof they face a lot of racist nastiness under the guise of 'just preferences'.

and here's

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_of_Finland (he's a very important gay artist, he also did some gay erotica with nazi uniforms whether you think that's an act of defiance, reclamation, tasteless or evil is up to you. art is not always as straightforward as it might look, we'd have to ask him what his intent was.)

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

2- The second is "the exciting gays died of aids" concept, good vs naughty gays concept. Again, we're dealing with a mishmash of both modern rewritings, quotes by survivors taken out of context, and gay infighting at the time, which included some spicy takes about dangerous sex by gay men fighting to save gay men.

The lack of research and public education led to chaos, the grief led to anger. Beautiful people said some vicious things. There are several older gay men alive right now who don't have sex not because they're asexual but because there's trauma. It's worth unpacking quote by quote because expanding on it without original context was terrible reading comprehension and reckless rewriting of history, and to be honest, a little defamatory. I can't find a bibliography of the video(s) yet so not sure what to debunk).

There are plenty of tumblr posts railing against out of context quotes which is taking James + Nick's bad reading at face value instead of seeking out the source. Outrage at a thing James and Nick made up which was never a real take.

to paraphrase "My well-known exciting boundary-breaking gay friends are dead and the art world hasn't bothered to seek out more undiscovered talent to replace them, choosing the safe classic establishment folks who may also be gay given the field. I'm pissed you didn't care about saving them, I'm pissed you didn't care about finding a new crop of people who push the envelope." that was the sentiment behind this sort of quote even if folks became more conservative (or got into legal messes later)

I'm going to track down the various quotes and give you the full context because this matters. Again: beautiful minds saying horrible things, fighting between gay activists on how to survive or how to live under the gun. This is something that cannot be flattened to "boring gays survived" and it's an insult to the people who said things in grief and fear. I have not watched this essay (or maybe it's two that use this boring vs danger gays concept) but I have a good idea of what out of context quotes might have led to it, this is my wheelhouse. but TL;DR would be my faves are problematic because activists are passionate messy people. They outed people, they said outrageous things for the press, they screamed murderer and got restraining orders against them, they made taboo art, they mingled with nasty people.

OKAY, incoming link dump:

here's a 6 minute short on act up

here's a full doc: United in Anger:

Larry Kramer, Shulman, Fran Leibowitz and many others deserve to have their views examined with full context, not turned into crappy tweet sized quotes.

basic sources from wikipedia:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/nyregion/larry-kramer-and-the-birth-of-aids-activism.html

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/05/13/public-nuisance

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/fran-lebowitz

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/13/arts/the-impact-of-aids-on-the-artistic-community.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wojnarowicz?useskin=vector

https://archive.org/details/losswithinlossar0000unse

https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781849352857

http://didierlestrade.blogspot.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Tatchell

https://archive.org/details/womenaidsactivis00banz

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

Thankyou to

DHLawrence_sGhost's thread https://www.reddit.com/r/hbomberguy/comments/18biiof/comment/kc9qa6p/

and TerraJRiley's transcript archive https://github.com/TerraJRiley/James_Somerton_Transcripts

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

I'm going to allow reblogs on this again with the disclaimer that I don't have the full works stolen for these particular essays but the perfect body in gay culture and the good vs bad gays concepts have precedent that got flattened in those video essays and deserve quite a bit more exploration and that includes controversial sources. You will have to do some dialectical reading (agreeing and disagreeing with an author and figuring out how to weigh up the pros and cons of their individual arguments even though they get some things horribly wrong, deciding what was 'of a time' or reading the work of people who became reactionaries later in life).

[mr-areyoustupid]

BBC Ghosts vs CBS Ghosts

So I just saw a post mentioning the fact that there was an American version of the BBC’s Ghosts (thank you @m1auu for mentioning it in your tags under one post) and as someone looking for any good reason to procrastinate sleeping and school work I decided I’d watch it (at least the first season). I have always loved comparing remakes of show, especially in the case of British shows being turned into American television, especially due to the poor track record. As for why I decided to post about this in the first place, one part me loving the original Ghosts, second part me looking to goof around, third part my love for history (and I genuinely enjoyed how they played with it in the BBC Ghosts so I hope the CBS’s version will try to make similar efforts).

(Also, I’m not sure if this will be at all important for my analysis, but I am a yankee doodle doo)

Before Watching:

I think before even start watching, I have a few a issues I think I can predict before I actually start digging into the show. Firstly, I want to start off with my biggest worry which I hope won’t, but probably will exist, which is that the problem, that almost every American remake I have I watched has seems to have, which is the translation of thematic ideas. I think this problem happens almost every time, where an American remake takes a British IP and makes it either to optimistic or high energy, for example; the inbetweeners or the office (uk) to the office (us). This especially bothers me because a lot of British humor focuses on satire, especially on class issues, which American comedies avoid (despite it being an extremely prominent issue in the States) and a lot American comedies will also often lack subtlety as well (something I really valued form Ghosts (BBC)). Now this could all turn out to be nothing, but even before seeing anything I don’t have to positive of an outlook.

My second issue is something that’ll probably be apparent to anyone who knows about the US history and British history. The cast, while Britain has centuries of distinct historical periods that the average person could make the distinctions between, I believe that’ll be much harder in an American version due to America’s much shorter history (mostly disregarding the indigenous history as it is unlikely there will be more than one indigenous character), as well as the fact the a lot history is hard to have in one condensed area of the states, like a cowboy would not be caught dead in the same place as an 90s metro- politician. Also, when it comes to characters having equivalents, I think there will be an attempt, but I doubt there will be more than Pat, Julian, Kitty, Fanny and maybe Mary, if the setting happens to be placed in a Northeastern state. My other, thought based on a glance at the thumbnail image that comes up when you first look up the show, is that instead of the Captain being a WWII soldier, his equivalent will most likely be an American Revolutionary soldier (which I could see maybe working ….ehhh).

That’s it, now for a kinda of live reporting of the first few episodes

[fall-of-achilles]

Banned Book Talk: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

*Spoilers under cut*

Of Mice and Men is one of the most challenged and banned books since 2001. Usually being banned or challenged in school districts across America due to racial slurs, stereotypes, and violence. Source

Synopsis: "Of Mice and Men is centred around two itinerant workers, George and Lennie, in California in the 1930s as they start work on a ranch in a place called Soledad (a Spanish word meaning ‘solitude’). The whole story takes place over a period of four days, starting on Thursday evening and ending on Sunday. While at the ranch, George and Lennie meet other characters, who emphasise the loneliness and difficulty of life for the people living and working in these places." Source

My Take: While this book is not for those under 6th grade. It is an absolutely valuable narrative of life, loss, disability management, and

life in rural areas. Casting a light on the ignorance of said rural areas and general hatred of the human species. This is one of those books that everyone needs to read at some point in their lives.

This book truly changed my outlook on people when I read it in 8th grade. I remember my 8th grade English teacher, Mr.Pauff, make each and every one of us in the class read the last chapter at the same time. Later stating that he did that to see our reactions to Lennie being forced to shoot his disabled brother.

From the same article by the BBC that the synopsis is from, there is a standout quote I want to share," Reflecting a period of economic devastation in the United States, Of Mice and Men demonstrates the damaging effects of the Great Depression upon ordinary working men." Source

Overall, it is one of my favourite books of all time (right behind To Kill a Mockingbird).

And remember kids, in the wise words of Stephen King,"... if they ban a book in your school, haul your ass to the nearest bookstore or library ASAP and find out what they don't want you to read."

Free access: Zlibrary

[sexybritishllama]

i work in admin for a university which means i spend a lot of time processing late submission requests and what not from students. it's a pretty standard process, fill out the relevant form, explain why you can't meet the deadline, provide some evidence of your circumstances (like a doctor's note if you're ill)

i'm not entirely a fan of this system because there's a million reasons why you might not be able to provide evidence, but that being said, i have been sent some wild things from students trying to prove their circumstances including:

a screenshot of their grandfather's funeral on zoom (as they were literally carrying the coffin down the aisle)

a screenshot of their outlook calendar to show they've been really busy recently

a ukrainian student who just sent the front page of the bbc news website (totally fair)

a photo of their mother's back showing a horrific case of psoriasis

just a photo of a laptop with the screen turned off and no further context

but i think my favourite form i've ever received though was someone who told me they couldn't submit because they had to take their son to hospital. i was like oh god hope he's okay, yeah just fill in the form, add detail if possible, blah blah blah, then when the form came back he had filled it in with just one sentence that said "I had to take my son to hospital due to him sticking crayons up his nose"

[beardedmrbean]

ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, breaches rules on data protection, an Italian watchdog says.

An inquiry by Italy's Data Protection Authority (DPA) found data privacy violations, which the BBC understands are related to collecting personal data and age protections.

The chatbot relies on being fed large amounts of data from the internet.

ChatGPT's maker OpenAI has 30 days to respond with its defence. The BBC has contacted OpenAI for comment.

Italy has taken a firm stance on data protection when it comes to ChatGPT.

It was the first Western country to block the product in March 2023, citing privacy concerns.

ChatGPT was reinstated around four weeks later, after stating it had successfully "addressed or clarified" the issues raised by the DPA.

Italy's DPA launched a "fact-finding activity" at the time, which it says has now found data privacy violations.

In a statement, the DPA said it "concluded that the available evidence pointed to the existence of breaches of the provisions contained in the EU GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation]".

They are related to mass collection of users' data which is then used to train the algorithm.

The regulator is also concerned that younger users may be exposed to inappropriate content generated by the chatbot.

Under the EU's GDPR law, firms which break the rules can be fined up to 4% of the company's global turnover.

Italy's DPA works alongside the European Union's European Data Protection Board - which set up a special task force to monitor ChatGPT in April 2023.

At the time of ChatGPT's reinstatement in Italy in April 2023, the Italian regulator told the BBC that it "welcomed the measures OpenAI implemented" but called for even more compliance.

In particular, a spokesperson said, it wanted more action around "implementing an age verification system and planning and conducting an information campaign to inform Italians of what happened as well as of their right to opt-out from the processing of their personal data for training algorithms".

An OpenAI spokesperson said at the time that it would continue talks with the regulator.

OpenAI has close links with tech giant Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars into the company.

Microsoft has integrated AI into its Bing search engine, as well as its Office 365 apps such as Word, Teams and Outlook.

[grapecaseschoices]

Hi! I was wondering if the dark urge route is worth playing. I enjoy the customisable tav route, but I've tried to play dark urge origin route and it just feel Yandere simulator Disney channel cartoon villain vibes at last through the first half of act 1. I trust your recs, so I was wondering since one of ur mcs is dark urge if its worth continuing to play this route. 😅

LMAO. What specifically made you feel that way? No judgment, I just love a good lol /and can be a petty troll.

I don't hate it. I feel like I've gotten some really good moments so far playing a redeeming Durge romancing Wyll [when from what I gather the meaty stuff is an evil durge or a redeeming one romancing Astarion]. I'm still early in act three, and from what I gather end of two and three is where we really get into Durge's history. I do admit it can drag on -- not the learning but the getting there.

I feel to have avoided that they should have 1. done better with the memories 2. introduced a certain character in MCs backstory earlier 3. connect mc better to ALL the potential romance routes not just Astarions 4. the pacing -- or maybe pacing isn't the right word, it's sorta disjointed some of the things Durge can do/has done or said and how the characters react.

In retrospect, thinking about your comments actually, maybe it's because I play a non-dragonborn [I hear they are more expressive] but it is SO weird how my Tav is constantly smirking when the narrator speaks about their EhVuhl. It makes me feel like I'm playing BBC Morgana.

I would say I would give the route a 3/5. Maybe a 3.5 but I'm also still asleep and will probably have more thoughts as I wake up but also as I go on. I think a lot of the appeal for me is the RP perspective. The figuring out her motivation and her connections and what it means to her. I mean I do that with all my Tavs. But I sorta like calculating WHY Kaeliana makes the 'wrong' choice and why she doesn't when she does, what drives her, what is her outlook. So I think if you go into it like that, you will find it very enjoyable. But yeah the smirks are annoying.

[denimbex1986]

'Regeneration is key to Doctor Who's longevity as an immortal being, but also when it comes to the show itself.

By introducing a different version of the Doctor every few years, new actors can be brought in to keep Doctor Who alive. It makes sense logistically and it also reinvigorates the series each time with a new face and outlook.

But 60 years in, the process of regeneration became somewhat predictable. It's still exciting, of course, yet with the reveal of each new actor taking place months ahead of their actual debut, these pivotal swaps haven't held quite as much gravitas as they should.

That all changed when Jodie Whittaker's Doctor surprised us by transforming into David Tennant, a face fans never expected to see return again in the role. Then that unprecedented shift came with an even bigger twist during Tennant's final returning episode, titled 'The Giggle', which introduced a whole new kind of regeneration entirely.

Bi-regeneration, perhaps the queerest thing to happen yet across these three already queer specials, split our Doctor into two separate Doctors, one with Tennant's face and the other with Ncuti Gatwa's. According to the Doctor, bi-regeneration is an ancient Time Lord myth, and that's why he's taken by surprise when it does actually happen.

Although the Toymaker and his big pointy laser are responsible for this in part, it seems likely that this was actually caused by the Doctor himself when he used salt at the edge of the universe just one week before, bending reality at a crucial point. If superstitions can now become real, why not myths like bi-regeneration?

It's a game-changing moment in more ways than one, but the most surprising ramification of all this hasn't even been addressed in the actual story yet. Instead, it's on the BBC iPlayer in-vision commentary for 'The Giggle', where showrunner Russell T Davies reveals bi-generation is even bigger than we thought.

When David Tennant and Ncuti Gatwa split apart, it turns out "a whole timeline bi-generated". Wibbly-wobbly terms aside, this essentially means that every previous regeneration has been impacted too, so every 'old' Doctor is now alive somewhere in a splintered timeline.

"I think all of the Doctors came back to life with their individual TARDISes, the gift of the Toymaker, and they're all out there travelling round in what I'm calling a Doctor-verse," said Davies. For example, "Sylvester McCoy woke up in a drawer, in a morgue, in San Francisco… and Jon Pertwee woke up on the floor of the laboratory."

This actually tracks with a previous reveal in the spin-off series Tales of the TARDIS where Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor told Ace that his old face returned because: "Time streams are funny things. In some, I regenerate. In others, I don't. It's all a matter of perspective."

In short, there's an entire Whoniverse out there now populated with all the Doctors we've met before. That's always been true to some degree if you take into account that multiple Doctors exist across the timeline at any given point. However, with Davies suggesting this could "lead to all sorts of things," it's pretty much a given that more old faces will pop up shortly.

Like bi-generation, that's extremely exciting on the face(s) of it. Doctor Who crossovers of this magnitude are few and far between across the franchise's sixty-year history. Opening this possibility up means that David Tennant's return might just be the beginning of way more nostalgic comebacks like this, which could work well when it comes to characters like Paul McGann's underused Eighth Doctor.

Just putting that out there to anyone at the BBC who might be reading this...

However, opening the show up to all these potential returns could nevertheless end up being a dangerous game to play, even by the Toymaker's standards. With Doctor Who recently joining the Disney stable, there were already rumours that the franchise could be "Marvelised", with way more spinoffs extending the Time Lord universe.

Doctor Who is no stranger to spinoff shows, and done right, they can be extremely successful. Think Class, Torchwood or The Sarah Jane Adventures. But we're now living in a world where it's become obvious that we can have too much of a good thing, even with the franchises we love most. Don't forget how the advent of Disney+ brought more Marvel and Star Wars shows than ever, but with diminishing returns.

What starts with rumours of a UNIT series, or even a new show starring Tennant on Earth, could soon become an unwieldy mess that no sonic screwdriver could ever hope to untangle.

That Tennant rumour in particular is one to be wary of. The emotional heft of 'The Giggle' concentrated in large part on the Doctor's trauma, how he's never been able to rest and take stock of all the terrible things he's endured. That's why Tennant's face came back in the first place.

So the idea of undoing his perfect, happy ending by pushing him back out into the stars – or even making him do timey-wimey stuff on Earth – is concerning to say the least.

Just because Tennant's Doctor is so beloved, and just because this return paid off, doesn't mean an entire new side-quel would. But even if that isn't the plan, there's nothing to stop Davies or another future showrunner from bringing Tennant back again in some capacity. At least, as long as Tennant himself is on board.

And that's now true of any past Doctor, which is kind of a problem, dramatically speaking.

Just like how superheroes never truly die, almost any past incarnation of the Doctor is now just a phone call away, which diminishes the impact of death or regeneration and the new start it's supposed to bring.

As mentioned earlier, time travel did always make this a possibility, but by centring the "Whoniverse" as a key concept now moving forward, it blurs the lines even more so that "death" is now less important than ever.

Without a TARDIS of our own, it's impossible to know quite how successful or unsuccessful this soft reboot will be. But if nothing else, the sheer ballsiness of bi-regeneration and everything that's to come of it is exactly why we were so excited for Davies to return in the first place.

Change has always defined Doctor Who, so let's just hope these changes don't end up becoming too much of a good thing.'