#birth decade - 1980s

[psych-is-the-name]

ok so the other age-range poll was poorly set up by having every year in the 90's be its own individual option, and then grouping together all the decades around it

sorry if you were born before 1960 but im only allowed 12 options. feel free to comment your birth year in the replies or notes.

[fabledenigma]

In the Source Link, you will find a gif pack of Leah Renee in the short lived series - The Playboy Club. Leah plays the role of Bunny Alice.

Alice was a closeted lesbian in a marriage with a closeted gay male called Sean Beasley. Both were members of the Mattachine Society. *Leah Renee is also known as Leah Renee Cudmore or Leah Cudmore, both will be in the tags.

Trigger Warning: Underwear, playboy bunny outfits, alcohol, cigarettes, NFSW

Source - FabledEnigma

[muzaktomyears]

In 1980 Peter Brown, a former assistant to Brian Epstein who later ran Apple Corps, managed the Beatles and was best man at John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s wedding, started work on the definitive account of the Beatles. With the American author Steven Gaines, he spoke to the three surviving band members alongside wives, girlfriends, managers, friends, hangers-on and everyone else in the Fabs’ universe. The book promised to be the last word in Beatles history. Then in 1983 The Love You Make was published, and all hell broke loose.

“They were furious,” recalls Gaines, 78, still sounding pained at the memory. “Paul and Linda tore the book apart and burned it in the fireplace, page by page. There was an omerta, a code of silence around the Beatles, and they didn’t think anyone would come forward to tell the truth. But Queenie, Brian Epstein’s mother, told us above all else to be honest.”

“Even she didn’t think we would be quite so honest,” adds Brown, 87, his upper-crust English tones still in place after five decades in New York.

Why did The Love You Make, retitled by Beatles fans as The Muck You Rake, incite such strong feelings? The suggestion of an affair between Lennon and Epstein on a holiday to Barcelona in April 1963, only three weeks after the birth of Lennon’s son Julian, had something to do with it, but more significantly it was taken as a betrayal by a trusted insider. Brown and Gaines locked the recordings in a bank vault and never looked at them again — until now.

“Very good question,” Brown says, when I ask why he and Gaines have decided to publish All You Need Is Love, an oral history made up of the interview transcripts from which The Love You Make was drawn. He is speaking from the Manhattan apartment on Central Park West where he has lived since 1971. “When [Peter Jackson’s documentary] Get Back came out, a journalist from The New York Times wanted me to talk. I told him I hadn’t talked about the Beatles since the book was published and suggested he go to someone else. He said, ‘There isn’t anyone else. Paul, Ringo and you are the only ones left.’ And I thought, do I have a responsibility to clear it all up, once and for all?”

After the death of Epstein in 1967, Brown assumed the day-to-day responsibilities of managing the Beatles and Apple Corps. He had on his desk a red telephone whose number was known only to the four Beatles. Unsurprisingly, given his insider status, the interviews make for fascinating reading. Paul McCartney, yet to be asked the same questions about the Beatles thousands of times over, is remarkably unguarded. Asked by Gaines if the other Beatles were anti-Linda, he replies: “I should think so. Like we were anti-Yoko.” On the image the Fabs had for being good boys on tour, he says, “You are kidding,” before going on to reference a notorious incident involving members of Led Zeppelin, a groupie and a mud shark, concluding: “No, not in the least bit celibate. We just didn’t do it with fish.”

Ono, speaking in the spring of 1981, not long after Lennon was killed in December 1980, reveals that she didn’t sleep with Lennon for the first two years of their relationship — “John didn’t know how to make a move” — and claims that she was blamed by the Beatles camp, George Harrison in particular, for getting Lennon onto heroin in 1969. “Everything we did in those days, anything that was wrong, was my responsibility,” she tells Gaines. But everyone, from the Beatles’ notorious late-period manager Allen Klein to the Greek electronics wizard/hustler “Magic” Alex Mardas — “the Mordred of the Beatles’ Camelot” according to Brown — has their own version of events.

Going through the transcripts reminded Gaines of the long shadow cast by Lennon. “I didn’t realise how sensitive the other Beatles were to John’s opinion,” he says, speaking from his home in the Hamptons, Long Island. “Paul worried about what John would say [in the event Lennon died before being interviewed] and was still longing for his friendship. George said that John didn’t read his autobiography because it was called I, Me, Mine. Those interviews were done before John’s death and Paul’s heart was broken, even then. It wasn’t just the break-up of the Beatles. It was more personal than that.”

From around 1968, the transcripts reveal how the key Beatles duo started to come apart. McCartney’s enthusiasm was only getting stronger. But Lennon grew increasingly bored and disillusioned. “You have to remember that John wasn’t in love with his wife Cynthia,” Gaines says by way of explanation. “He wanted to get away from the life he was leading and that’s why he started to experiment with drugs, all the way up to heroin.”

Brown says Ono was, and probably still is, a distant, mysterious character, exactly the kind of person Lennon was looking for, having done the right thing and married the sensible, quiet Cynthia after she discovered she was pregnant with Julian in 1963. “John told me about meeting this woman, and how frustrated he was that he couldn’t get to know her better; he couldn’t take her to lunch because it would cause gossip. I gave him the key to my apartment so he and Yoko could be together in private and thought, naturally, they were going there to f***. When I went home that evening, the apartment was untouched. They did nothing more than sit on the sofa and talk. That’s what they wanted: to know each other.”

Regarding the long-held, unfair suggestion that Ono broke up the Beatles, Gaines says: “Yoko came along at the right moment to light the fuse, but the dynamite was already packed. They resented her, she was difficult to understand and had a deep effect on John, but they were getting more and more unhappy with each other and needed to have their own lives. As people in the interviews say again and again, [the split] was bound to happen.”

It was Brown who in May 1968 introduced McCartney to Linda Eastman, an ambitious young American photographer whom he knew from his business trips to New York, when she came to London on an assignment to shoot the Rolling Stones. “I was having dinner with Paul at the Bag O’ Nails [a club in Soho] when she turned up, so I introduced them and he was obviously taken with her,” Brown recalls. “The following Friday, May 19, we were holding a party for 12 top photographers at Brian Epstein’s house in London when she walked in. Paul says I didn’t introduce him to his wife … but I did.”

If the book has a villain it is Klein, the New York accountant who took over management of the Beatles and sacked everyone around them, much to McCartney’s horror. As Brown puts it: “He was a hideous person. He even looked like a crook: sloppy and fat, always wearing sneakers and sweatshirts. Everything he didn’t like was ‘for shit’.”

You wonder why Lennon fell for him. “The interviews suggest it is because Allen Klein offered Yoko a million dollars for her movie project,” Gaines says. “She was enticed and John would do anything Yoko said.”

“I asked Mick Jagger to come over and explain to the four Beatles who this Allen Klein was,” Brown remembers. “And John, in his wonderful way, had Klein turn up to the same meeting, which was deeply embarrassing. It made Mick very uncomfortable too.”

Epstein, the man who saw the Beatles’ potential in the first place, is a central figure in All You Need Is Love. It includes a transcript of a recording of him from 1966, not used for the original book. It was in the possession of Epstein’s attorney Nat Weiss, and seemingly made by Epstein to mark the end of the Beatles’ final tour. He claims not only that Lennon felt remorse for the infamous comment on the Beatles being bigger than Jesus — “What upset John more than anything else was that hundreds of people were hurt by that” — but that the Beatles would tour once more. “There’s no reason why they shouldn’t appear in public again,” Epstein claims. They never did, unless you count that rooftop performance on January 30, 1969.

“Brian was driving them around the north of England in his car for a year,” Brown remembers of the early days. “This Jewish guy from Liverpool, who was gay, was with these guys who had been hanging around in Hamburg, so both had interesting backgrounds. They understood each other.”

For Gaines, a self-described “gay Jewish boy from Brooklyn”, Epstein is at the heart of the story. “Brian never felt the love of a real relationship. Then he found the Beatles. Everyone thought it would be just another of his phases, but he had tremendous feelings for John, both sexual and intellectual, and that’s what really pushed him. If there was one thing that started the whole thing off, it was Brian’s love for John Lennon.”

That love affair was the contentious issue of the original book. In his interview, McCartney says of Lennon going to Spain with Epstein: “What was John doing, manipulating this manager of ours? Sucking up to him, going on holiday, becoming his special friend.” It wasn’t the suggestion of a homosexual relationship that was troubling McCartney, but the balance of power tilting in Lennon’s direction.

“Paul wanted to be in charge, and he deserved to be because he was the motor, the driving force,” Gaines says. “Paul felt that John would steal away the power. He felt threatened by John’s relationship with Brian.”

“Paul always wanted to be active,” Brown adds. “After Brian’s death the world had to be carried on. Who was going to do that? It wasn’t going to be John, George or Ringo. Brian was my best friend and I was very upset [at his death]. I had to go to the court to convince the magistrate that it wasn’t a suicide, and the following day Paul set up a meeting so we could discuss what we would do next. I said we’d do it next week, and he said, ‘No, it has to be now.’ He was right.”

How did Brown and Gaines feel about the horrified reaction to the book, not just from fans but the Beatles themselves? “The world has changed,” Gaines says, by way of answer. “Now, after all these years, hopefully people can see it as a truthful, loving and gentle book.” It has been decades since Brown spoke to the surviving Beatles and he has not contacted them about this new publication.

What the interviews really capture in eye-opening detail is the story of four young men who became a phenomenon, then had to deal with the fallout as the dream ended. On December 31, 1970, the day McCartney sued the other three to dissolve the partnership, Brown handed in his resignation as the Beatles’ day-to-day manager and officer of Apple Corps. Ringo Starr said to him: “You didn’t want to be a nursemaid any more, and half the time the babies wouldn’t listen to you anyway.” Brown moved to New York and became chief executive officer of the Robert Stigwood Organisation. But the Beatles never fully left him, and in the wake of Get Back — and the news that Sam Mendes is to direct four biopics, one on each Beatle — he decided he had one last job.

“We have finished our responsibilities,” Brown says with quiet authority. “It is the end of the story.”

EXTRACTS

‘It’s like bloody Julius Caesar, and I’m being stabbed in the back!’

Paul McCartney on the Beatles signing Allen Klein as manager against his wishes

[John Lennon] said, “I’m going with [Allen] Klein, what do you want to do about it?” and I kind of said, “I don’t think I will, that’s my roll.” Then George and Ringo said, “Yeah, we’ll go with John.” Which was their roll. But that was pretty much how it always ended up, the three of them wanted to do stuff, and I was always the fly in the ointment, I was always the one dragging his heels. John used to accuse me of stalling. In fact, there was one classic little meeting when we were recording Abbey Road. It was a Friday evening session, and I was sitting there, and I’d heard a rumour from Neil [Aspinall, road manager] or someone that there was something funny going around. So we got to the session, and Klein came in. To me, he was like a sort of demon that would always haunt my dreams. He got to me. Really, it was like I’d been dreaming of him as a dentist. Anyway, so at this meeting, everyone said, “You’re going to stall for ever now, we know you, you don’t even want to do it on Monday.” And I said, “Well, so what? It’s not a big deal, it’s our prerogative and it could wait a few more days.” They said, “Oh no, typical of you, all that stalling and what. Got to do it now.” I said, “Well, I’m not going to. I demand at least the weekend. I’ll look at it, and on Monday. This is supposed to be a recording session, after all.” I dug me heels in, and they said, “Right, well, we’re going to vote it.” I said, “No, you’ll never get Ringo to.” I looked at Ringo, and he kind of gave me this sick look like, yeah, I’m going with them. Then I said, “Well, this is like bloody Julius Caesar, and I’m being stabbed in the back!”

‘You don’t like to see a chick in the middle of the team’

Paul McCartney on Yoko Ono

Give Yoko a lot . . . that was basically what John and Yoko wanted, recognition for Yoko. We found her sitting on our amps, and like a football team, an all-male thing, you really don’t like to see a chick in the middle of the team. It’s a disturbing thing, they think it throws them off the game or whatever it was, and these were the reasons that I thought, well, this is crazy, we’re gonna have Yoko in the group next. Looking at it now, I feel a bit sorry for her because, if only I had been able to understand what the situation was and think, wait a minute, here’s a girl who’s not had enough attention. I can now not make this into a major crisis and just sort of say, “Sure, what harm is she doing on the amps?” I know they would have really loved me. You know, we didn’t like Yoko at first, and people did call her ugly and stuff, and that must be hard for someone who loves someone and is so passionately in love with them, but I still can’t — I’m still trying to see his point of view. What was the point of all that? They’re very suspicious people [Lennon and Ono], and one of the things that hurt me out of the whole affair, was that we’d come all that way together, and out of either a fault in my character, or out of lack of understanding in their character, I’d still never managed to impress upon them that I wasn’t trying to screw them. I don’t think that I have to this day.

How Cynthia Lennon was driven to drink — at an ashram

Alexis ‘Magic Alex’ Mardas on Ono’s love letters to Lennon

Alexis Mardas was also known as Magic Alex, a name John bestowed on him because he was so taken with Alex’s inventions. Alex was handsome, charming, and a charlatan. (He sued The [New York] Times in Britain for calling him a charlatan and settled out of court. He’s dead now.)

[The Maharishi] was fooling around with several American girls. The Maharishi was making all of us eat vegetarian food, very poorly cooked, but he was eating chicken. No alcohol was allowed in the camp. I had to smuggle alcohol in because Cynthia wanted to drink. Cynthia was very depressed. John was receiving letters from Yoko Ono. Yoko was planning to win John. She was writing very poetic and very romantic letters. I remember those letters because John was coming to me with the letters, and Yoko was saying to John that “I’m a cloud in the sky, and, when you read this letter, turn your head and look in the sky, and if you see a small cloud, this is Yoko. Away from you but watching you.” Poor Cynthia was prepared to do absolutely everything to win John. She was not even allowed to visit the house where John was staying. She was longing for a drink. Now, drinks, they were strictly prohibited in the ashram, but when it was discovered that Maharishi had a drink, I said, “Just a second, at least equal.”

‘He’s become so nasty’

George Harrison on reaching out to John Lennon

What’s wrong with John, he’s become so nasty. It sounds like he hasn’t moved an inch from where he was five or six years ago. I sent Ringo, John, and Paul all a copy of my book. I got a call from Paul. He called me up just to say how much he liked it. I shouldn’t have called it I Me Mine, because that title was a bit much. I sent a copy to John. I’m wondering if he’s actually received it, if he’s received it, he probably doesn’t like it or something offends him about it.

‘I told John that ... it was just a nice feeling’

Yoko Ono advising John Lennon how to take heroin

George said I put John on H, and it wasn’t true at all. I mean, John wouldn’t take anything unless he wanted to do it. When I went to Paris [before I met John], I just had a sniff of it and it was a beautiful feeling. Because the amount was small, I didn’t even get sick. It was just a nice feeling. So I told John that. When you take it properly — properly is not the right word — but when you really snort it, then you get sick right away if you’re not used to it. So I think maybe because I said it wasn’t a bad experience, maybe that had something to do with it, I don’t know. But I mean so, he kept saying, “Tell me how it was?” Why was he asking? That was sort of a preliminary because he wanted to take it, that’s why he was asking. And that’s how we did it. We never injected. Never.

‘It was time’

Ringo Starr on the end of the Beatles

Ringo Starr: Well, I’m pleased it happened because in so many ways, I’m glad it’s not going now. It was time. Things last only so long. Steven Gaines: The Rolling Stones are [still] going. Ringo Starr: Yeah, but they’re old men.

(source)

[socialjusticeinamerica]

They don’t even know of a time when life was better in America. Actually Gen X was the first generation in America not to do better than their parents. The same being true for the last few years of the Boomer generation. Y also is struggling.

The lady Boomers and X’ers remember what it was like before Reagan took over and busted unions in 1980. Wages dropped, factory owners took their shops to the Deep South where unions had long since been busted or never allowed to set up in the first place. Then the oligarchs outsourced their work and shuttered factories nationwide.

Before Reagan one parent working 40 hrs a week at a union job could afford a mortgage, a new car, medical insurance, and college for their 2.5 kids. That also applied to “minorities” or marginalized people who benefitted from union protections and negotiated standard pay scales.

With Reagan a home went from two years salary to 10+ years salary. Tuition did the same. Cars that cost a month’s salary soared to a year’s salary. Wages have remained stagnant for about 40 years. The wealthy paid high taxes and we had everything. Now the remnants of the middle class pay the bulk of taxes while multimillionaires and billionaires pay little or even nothing. Credit card interest soared to over 20% in some cases while Republikkkans passed laws making it easier for those card companies to sue you whilst making it nearly impossible for you to sue them. Mentally disabled people were literally dumped into the streets causing widespread homeless which is criminalized in affluent areas and red states. Guns and drugs flooded the streets. Bigoted white nationalists became radicalized when Reagan granted Australian Rupert Murdoch citizenship so he could open Fox News and then shut down the Fairness Doctrine so propaganda could be spread under the guise of news.

All the societal problems we suffer today began with the birth of the modern RepubliKKKan party led by their racist Dotard Ronald Reagan in 1980. The GOP became an organized crime syndicate and the government became a tool for the rich. The middle class shrunk from a sizeable percentage of the population to a handful of areas in the north and along the west coast. Many foolish people believe themselves to be in the middle class but in fact they are just perpetual debtors.

If you’re young your first reaction might be to blame the Boomers because that’s incorrectly become a marketed belief. The Boomer generation fought against the GOP and its wars, racism, pollution, big oil, corporate welfare, and black hole military industrial complex. They were the hippies and political activists that marched on Washington and other places. They booted the racist Dixiecrats (southern conservative racist Dems) from the Democratic Party while shifting educated liberals left. Sadly the GOP under Nixon and his colleagues welcomed the racists and conservative nut jobs. Don’t fight a generational war when you should be fighting a class/culture/political war.

The younger generation needs to educate itself about the political parties and how life was better just a few decades back and begin to vote. Vote, then organize in the workplace through unions and in the streets to attract more young voters and to counter protest the Republikkkan right-wing oligarch take-over of America. Complaining and taking refuge in the internet won’t turn things around. Become politically active, become stoke, bring back lower tuition, affordable health care, labor unions, workers rights, voters rights, etc.

[scopophilic1997]

scopOphilic_micromessaging_881 - scopOphilic1997 presents a new micro-messaging series: small, subtle, and often unintentional messages we send and receive verbally and non-verbally.

Two years ago today, we embarked on a journey to showcase decades worth of MicroMessaging imagery from New York City and beyond. The original inspiration for the series was the wheat-pasting in NYC; whether it was the Guerrilla Girls, ACT UP, Barbara Kruger, concerts, ads, etc. They were wheat-pasted on every blank wall in the city by the "Wheat-paste Mafia."

In 1986, I started drawing a twisted, dog-like character called: CityDog. The first image here was the original sketch. The others became stickers that were put up around Chelsea/West Village between 1987 and 1993-ish. The second set is more of those early sketches from the late 1980s. That gave birth to a decades long curiosity/interest to photographically document the MicroMessaging, as I entitled it back then.

[hollowed-theory-hall]

Dumbledore is a Manipulative Piece of Shit: Part 1/?

Since I read the books for the first time at the age of 12, I knew I didn't trust Dumbledore. Back then, I couldn't put my finger on why. But now, a bit over a decade later, I can.

Not only can I explain why I thought something's fishy, but I can prove it is.

This is going to be a long series... but let's start at the beginning:

Halloween 1981

I'm going to go about this in chronological order of events according to book quotes I could track down.

Before the Prophecy

Circa October 24, 1979 - Lily gets pregnant with Harry. According to reverse calculating due date.

Sometime between March 1980 and October 1980 Peter Pettigrew starts spying for the Order.

"(Dumbledore) was sure that somebody close to the Potters had been keeping You-Know-Who informed of their movements...Indeed, he had suspected for some time that someone on our side had turned traitor and was passing a lot of information to You-Know-Who."

(Prisoner of Azkaban, page 205)

We know that there was a spy in the Order that fed Voldemort information before James and Lily went into hiding. Sirius mentions Peter being a spy for a long time again later in Prisoner of Azkaban:

“Sirius, Sirius, what could I have done? The Dark Lord . . . you have no idea . . . he has weapons you can’t imagine. . . . I was scared, Sirius, I was never brave like you and Remus and James. I never meant it to happen. . . . He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named forced me —” “DON’T LIE!” bellowed Black. “YOU’D BEEN PASSING INFORMATION TO HIM FOR A YEAR BEFORE LILY AND JAMES DIED! YOU WERE HIS SPY!”

(Prisoner of Azkaban, page 374)

So we know Pettigrew spied for Voldemort for about a year, if not more, before October 1981. The reason I'm saying he might have spied for longer is that the Order noticed there was a spy during that year, there might've been months he spied but the Order was none the wiser.

The months leading up to the attack on the Potter

So, we know when Peter started feeding Voldemort information, but we need to know when exactly the prophecy was given and when James and Lily went into hiding under the Fideliulous Charm. Most fans I see, seem to think they were hiding for only a week, then Peter betrayed them and then they died that same night. I think it went a little different. I think they were hiding for much longer.

So, let's determine this from the Evidence we are given.

The picture of the Order of the Phoenix Moody shows Harry in book 5 is the final picture of the Order togather before the Potters went into hiding. Most fans date this photo to the summer of 1980. I think it has to be earlier than that for two simple reasons:

Lily isn't pregnant and Harry wasn't born

Alice isn't pregnant and Neville wasn't born

“...That’s Frank and Alice Longbottom —” Harry’s stomach, already uncomfortable, clenched as he looked at Alice Longbottom; he knew her round, friendly face very well, even though he had never met her, because she was the image of her son, Neville....

...His mother and father were beaming up at him, sitting on either side of a small, watery-eyed man Harry recognized at once as Wormtail: He was the one who had betrayed their whereabouts to Voldemort and so helped bring about their deaths.

(Order of the Pheonix, page 174)

Remember, Harry and Neville were born at the end of July 1980, and pictures taken during that summer would show the pregnancy or taken after their births. So I think that picture was taken in 1979, although I'm uncertain exactly when. because, as I'll prove later in this post, the Potters went into hiding before Harry was born.

Next up to help us put a date to when they went into hiding is the Fidelious Charm itself, or more correctly, how it works.

The Fidelious Charm hides a piece of information within a person. It hides the phrasing of a secret, not a location.

an immensely complex spell ... involving the magical concealment of a secret inside a living soul. The information is hidden inside the chosen person, or Secret-Keeper, and is henceforth impossible to find -- unless, of course, the Secret-Keeper chooses to divulge it.

(Prisoner of Azkaban, 205)

It can be used to hide a location like we see the Order of the Phoenix do:

Dumbledore's Secret-Keeper for the Order, you know -- nobody can find Headquarters unless he tells them personally where it is

(Order if the Pheonix, 115)

With the phrase that Dumbledore hides being:

The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London.

(Order of the Phoenix, page 58)

They use a specific phrasing to hide the Order's headquarters. The moment the Order stops existing, the house will stop being a secret. I'd argue the moment Grimmauld Place stopped being the Headquarters it stopped being a secret because this phrase applied no longer.

This is what we see with the Potter residence. Once James and Lily die, the Charm breaks and muggles make their way to the house:

“No, sir — house was almost destroyed, but I got him out all right before the Muggles started swarmin’ around. He fell asleep as we was flyin’ over Bristol."

(Philosopher's Stone, page 13)

The fact muggles and Hagrid could arrive at the house and see it means the Charm broke.

We also see it in Deathly Hollows when Harry and Hemione visit the Potter's cottage:

He could see it; the Fidelius Charm must have died with James and Lily. 

(Deathly Hallows, page 286)

"So what?" You may ask, "we know this already,"

True, but the reason it's important is because it hints at the phrasing used when the charm was cast. It means the phrasing of the secret Peter kept being along the lines of:

"James and Lily Potter are hiding in the Potter Cottage in Godric's Hollow"

Now, this makes sense to be the secret, right, but notice, Harry isn't mentioned. If Harry was part of the secret, the charm would not have broken with James and Lily's deaths, since the secret would still protect Harry. Now, why not protect Harry as well? The whole point of the Fidelious Charm was to protect Harry, was it not?

This means the Potters went into hiding and the charm was cast before Harry was born.

More that suggests they were hiding for quite a while is Lily's letter to Sirius:

Dear Padfoot, Thank you, thank you, for Harry’s birthday present! It was his favorite by far. One year old and already zooming along on a toy broomstick

(Deathly Hollows, page 158)

Meaning Harry's first birthday (July, 1981) happened when they were already under the protection of the charm. As this letter was sent a short time after it (early August 1981).

James is getting a bit frustrated shut up here, he tries not to show it but I can tell

(Deathly Hollows, page 158)

Also from Lily's letter to Sirius. James' restlessness definitely suggests they were hiding under the charm for a good few months before Harry's first birthday.

This dates the Prophecy and Trawlany's job interview around the first half of 1980 (January to May). This means the Potters were in hiding between a year and 4 months to a year and 9 months before their deaths.

All of this leaves us with two main oddities. Questions that just got me scratching my head:

If Peter was a spy since March 1980 at the earliest and October 1980 at the latest (but probably earlier), and the Potters went into hiding with him as the secret keeper in Earley in July 1980 at the latest, why not tell Voldemort immediately? And if he did, why did Voldemort wait a full year+ to go and kill the Potters?

It means that when Severus Snape came begging for Dumbledore to save Lily about a week before their deaths, Dumbledore already had the Potters in hiding. It means Dumbledore made Snape take an oath for him to do something he already did. So we see Dumbledore's first manipulations coming into play by fucking Severus over and taking him as a spy without actually giving anything in turn.

The first question is one I have somewhat of an answer for in my Voldemort character analysis, but this isn't this post. This is about Dumbledore's crimes.

The Night Everything Happened

Now we arrive at the night that changed the Wizarding World and the life of one Harry Potter. October 31st, 1981.

I time Voldemort’s arrival at Godric's Hollow at the late evening (around 8 PM). This is due to children being allowed outside still:

The night wet and windy, two children dressed as pumpkins waddling across the square, and the shop window covered in paper spiders, all the tawdry Muggle trapping of a world in which they did not believe

(Deathly Hollows, page 295)

And Harry (a year and four months old infent) still being awake, but clearly preparing for bed:

the tall black haired man in his glasses, making puffs of colored smoke erupt from his wand for the amusement of the small black-haired boy in his blue pajamas

(Deathly Hollows, page 295)

So, Voldemort arrives at Godric's Hollow around 8:00 PM, let's say, 15 to 20 minutes later, James and Lily are dead, Voldemort’s body is destroyed and he runs off to Albania. Baby Harry is crying and the Fidelious is broken.

Now, things get interesting. Well, more interesting.

We know the first on the scene is Peter Pettigrew, arriving around 8:30 PM, and retrieving Voldemort’s wand. We don't actually know when or if this happened beyond a quote from JKR, but as muggles and aurors searched the house, it's unlikely Voldemort’s wand was there and undiscovered.

Then Pettigrew ran away to the muggle street where he would meet Sirius.

The second on the scene is Reberus Hagrid.

Hagrid arrives sometime later when muggled started looking into what happened now that the Fidelious Charm is broken:

“No, sir — house was almost destroyed, but I got him out all right before the Muggles started swarmin’ around. He fell asleep as we was flyin’ over Bristol."

(Philosopher's Stone, page 13)

Around the same time Pettigrew arrived at Godric's Hollow, Sirius probably saw Peter wasn't home and realized the Fidelious was broken. So he heads to Godric's Hollow.

The night they died, I’d arranged to check on Peter, make sure he was still safe, but when I arrived at his hiding place, he’d gone. Yet there was no sign of a struggle. It didn’t feel right. I was scared. I set out for your parents’ house straight away. And when I saw their house, destroyed, and their bodies . . . I realized what Peter must’ve done . . . what I’d done. . . .

(Prisoner of Azkaban, page 365)

Sirius reaches the Potters and meets Hagrid there, outside the house, Harry already in Hagrid's arms:

“I met him!” growled Hagrid. “I musta bin the last ter see him before he killed all them people! It was me what rescued Harry from Lily an’ James’s house after they was killed! Jus’ got him outta the ruins, poor little thing, with a great slash across his forehead, an’ his parents dead . . . an’ Sirius Black turns up, on that flyin’ motorbike he used ter ride. Never occurred ter me what he was doin’ there. I didn’ know he’d bin Lily an’ James’s Secret-Keeper. Thought he’d jus’ heard the news o’ You-Know-Who’s attack an’ come ter see what he could do. White an’ shakin’, he was. An’ yeh know what I did? I COMFORTED THE MURDERIN’ TRAITOR!” Hagrid roared.

(Prisoner of Azkaban, page 206)

Sirius then goes after Pettigrew, after failing to take Harry from Hagrid and figuring he'd rather chase the rat down before he disappears. We all know how that ends, as Hagrid takes Harry according to Dumbledore's orders.

‘Give Harry ter me, Hagrid, I’m his godfather, I’ll look after him —’ Ha! But I’d had me orders from Dumbledore, an’ I told Black no, Dumbledore said Harry was ter go ter his aunt an’ uncle’s. Black argued, but in the end he gave in. Told me ter take his motorbike ter get Harry there. ‘I won’t need it anymore,’ he says. “I shoulda known there was somethin’ fishy goin’ on then. He loved that motorbike, what was he givin’ it ter me for? Why wouldn’ he need it anymore? Fact was, it was too easy ter trace.

(Prisoner of Azkaban, page 206)

This quote has quite a few interesting things about Dumbledore, Hagrid and Sirius.

First, Hagrid says Dumbledore gave him orders to take Harry to the Dursleys. This order was given before Sirius went after Peter, before he was arrested and sent to Azkaban.

This is illegal. At this point in time Sirius was Harry's legal godfather and guardian, and yet Dumbledore gave Hagrid this order. And yes, you could argue it was because he knew Sirius was the Secret Keeper and was wary of him, but:

“Hagrid,” said Dumbledore, sounding relieved. “At last. And where did you get that motorcycle?” “Borrowed it, Professor Dumbledore, sir,” said the giant, climbing carefully off the motorcycle as he spoke. “Young Sirius Black lent it to me. I’ve got him, sir.” “No problems, were there?”

(Philosopher's Stone, page 13)

Dumbledore hears Hagrid met Sirius when retrieving Harry and shows no concern. Like he doesn't consider Sirius a threat to Hagrid and Harry. But then, why take Harry away? Why support Sirius' arrest? (More on that in a later post)

Not only is all this highly illegal but how did Dumbledore know when the Potters died?

JK explained he had some magical alarms in place, but that means at the earliest he would've known the moment Voldemort entered the premises. But he knew before. He knew James and Lily would die that day before they died.

How do I know that?

Simple, Hagrid can't apparate and didn't arrive via broom or floo.

Hogwarts, where Hagrid is during October as Grounds keeper, is in the Scottish Highlands (Higher up as they travel for about 9-10 hours by train from Kings Cross to reach Hogwarts as they leave at eleven and arrive for dinner). Godric's Hollow is in West Country, England. This distance is a 9-10 hour drive (672.03 km, 417.58 miles).

It means that for Hagrid to arrive by 9 PM at Godric's Hollow, Dumbledore told him to go fetch Harry, the order was given to Hagrid between 11-12 noon on October 31st.

This already paints Dumbledore in a bad light, it means he planned this. I'd argue he even planned for Voldemort to hear of the Prophecy (but that's a different post). But it means Dumbledore planned for the Potters to be killed that night.

Second, Hagrid is right about Sirius giving his bike being odd (But that's a different post about the Fidelious Charm). But, in short, something was up and Sirius knew, at least somewhat, that he was doomed.

The Boy Who Lived

Finally, we arrive at the first chapter of Philosopher's Stone. We follow Vernon Dursely throughout his day on November 1st. We know that because we see the Wizarding World celebrating the death of Voldemort:

He’d (Mr. Dursley) forgotten all about the people in cloaks until he passed a group of them next to the baker’s. He eyed them angrily as he passed. He didn’t know why, but they made him uneasy. This bunch were whispering excitedly, too, and he couldn’t see a single collecting tin. It was on his way back past them, clutching a large doughnut in a bag, that he caught a few words of what they were saying. “The Potters, that’s right, that’s what I heard —” “ — yes, their son, Harry —” Mr. Dursley stopped dead. Fear flooded him. He looked back at the whisperers as if he wanted to say something to them, but thought better of it.

(Philosopher's Stone, page 6)

So, McGonagall is watching over the Dursleys throughout November 1st. It means Harry arrived at the Dursleys around midnight between November 1st and November 2nd.

Hagrid and Harry left Godric's Hollow on Sirius' flying motorbike around 10 PM at the latest on October 31st. So what was Hagrid doing with Harry in these 26 hours?

The only information we have is that Harry: "fell asleep over Bristol,"

Thing is, if we go back to the map of the UK.

Bristol is not really on the way from Godric's Hollow to Surry.

But it is closer to the flight path between Godric's Hollow and Hogwarts.

(The locations are estimated for fictional locations but are based on what I know. Regardless, West Country to Surry won't pass over Bristol, while West Country to the Scottish Highlands is likely to, so the point stands)

In conclusion, Dumbledore manipulated Harry's life, his parents' deaths, Snape, Sirius, and Hagrid, and fucked them all over for the sake of his grand plan of defeating Voldemort.

What else went into his plan and who else he fucked over, will be covered in the next installments.

[swarm-of-polls-in-a-trench-coat]

Please don't go in the comments and be like "I'm 13, I was born in November of 2010!" This is a poll where your vote is anonymous. Don't share your date of birth with strangers please

[usmsgutterson]

Okay, five hours ago I was like "tim gutterson timeline where?? me make one" and now. we have this. a timeline is in the post but it's rough, and this is more of a post that has a lot of information and headcanons in a rambled out format because whenever something gets stuck in my head, I write how I talk and I don't feel like editing this to make it shorter, so. yeah.

OKAY SO!! Going off of the assumption that's part canon and part headcanon that Tim would've joined the military at least within the year he graduated, you can't just join the army ranger snipers on a whim. You usually start in a differing unit (typically something like infantry, as far as what google said) and then you join the rangers and then you have to either volunteer or be recommended for sniper school, and it is a whole fuckin process that I have so much in my little head about. this is 20 gallons of information in a 10 gallon head and I feel like I'm going to explode.

OKAY, SO!! I have this little thing in my brain that's telling me Tim would've worked for at least three or four years in infantry before completing the ranger assessment and selection program, then he'd spend at least another three or four years working in the rangers before getting himself into the army ranger sniper school in one way or the next. As for length of schooling I've seen anywhere from 4-8 weeks.

for deployments I've seen varying lengths, but commonly I've seen around 3-6 months with the max being twelve. Leave is also pretty short for army ranger snipers (2-4 weeks) for I'm assuming mental reasons--they're trained to keep sharp all the time and short amounts of time for leave before they're back in combat keep their minds as sharp as possible.

Doing the math on that so far, if Tim joined the military at 18-19 years old, he would've been working in infantry until he was 21-23, then went from infantry to working in the rangers and worked with them until he was 25-27 before going through the sniper training and becoming a sniper around the same age as he was when he would've been recommended for sniper school.

Say he leaves the military entirely after his three total tours as a sniper, he would've been discharged when he was around 26-29 and in the military for around a decade. My math might be wrong (I have a brain that likes to go weeeeeee every time something kicks my interest up so. often times my head moves faster than my fingers can type and math has never really been my strongest suit) but even then, even if it's wrong, I feel like the latest he would've left the military would've been around 30 years old.

Okay, so to put years and dates and shit to this timeline, here we have the roughened out timeline of Tim Gutterson:

1980: we'll say around 1980 for a birth year bc Jacob Pitts was born in late 1979 so 1980 isn't that far off. I feel in my chest that Tim was born somewhere between September and December because I know people born in between September and December (with the only exception being october, I do not know anyone with an october birthdate) and the ones born in September, particularly, are the same breed of sarcastic Tim turns into after he leaves the military, a.k.a the one we see in the show.

1998: tim graduates high school yay!! He takes the ASVAB and goes about the whole of the military recruitment process, joins infantry to start.

2002: okay so going with the four year thing, Tim would work in infantry until around 2002-ish, at which point he takes the RASP and joins the rangers.

2006: after working in the rangers for four years, he gets recommended to join the snipers yay!! yay for timothy!! he's around 26 at this point and after sniper school he joins the 75th ranger regiment.

also 2006: let's say his first deployment occurs in the same year as when he becomes a sniper. It lasts six months and he gets about a months worth of leave in the aftermath. for ease of purpose and also ease of math, let's say that this deployment begins in June of 2006, ends in December, and the leave takes him from december to january.

2007: he gets deployed again in late january, and the deployment lasts until around the middle to late middle of July. It's his second and final deployment to Afghanistan, and after two weeks of leave, he's deployed again in August.

2008: after being on deployment through his 27th birthday, he comes home in february of 2008.

The timeline for military stuff ends right there if you're following the loose canon that exists (I say loose because the wikipedia states that Art only indicated a t l e a s t three tours total as an army ranger sniper. At least is not an exact number but instead the absolute minimum number of tours he did as a sniper.) but for me?? personally, I don't. I feel like he'd have at least another tour or two under his belt because he seems the stubbornly dedicated type and he knows that leaving means going back home when there's not really a home to go back to I feel like he'd prolong it at least a little bit.

If you follow the shows canon, Tim kind of just fucks around a little bit until he goes to Glynco when he's around 33-34 years old. It's said in the show in the first season that Tim is the office newbie who's been there less than a year when Raylan comes in, but I subscribe to the headcanon that Tim would've worked for six or so months, if not a full year, in an office down in georgia before he was transfered to Kentucky.

OKAY, TIMELINE ASIDE, tim would've seen a lot of shit in the like, decade or so he worked in the military. I've been reading on reddit a little bit and the bond we see in season four during Tims scenes with Mark makes a lot of sense--it was a common theme in what I did read that the army ranger snipers had a lot of cameraderie with each other and from what the reading I did told me, a lot of them went on to miss it after they left.

I need to stop rambling now so I can focus on the fic i'm trying to write but like,, if anyone wants to blab at me about this, blabbing is encouraged because tim gutterson is not leaving my head until I go to sleep, and I'm not going to go to sleep for at least a little while yet.

[anqelsweep]

                     CAN I DREAM A FEW MONTHS MORE? 

The members of the Song family have always held an air of sadness around them;  not having a sense of belonging or being able to feel love towards others. All members carry the weight of the others.

warnings. death, death via shooting, neglect, bullying, isolation, alludes to poor mental health & divorce. if i missed anything please let me know!!

                                          DANIEL SONG.

Given Name. Daniel Melnik-Song 

Birth Name. Song Sungsoo 송성수

Date of Birth. April 21, 1959

Zodiac Signs. Taurus & Pig

Date of Death. September 8, 1992 ( 33 )

Place of Birth. Seoul, South Korea

Home Town. Flushing, Queens, New York, New York

Ethnicity. South Korean

Nationality. Korean-American 

Height. 180cm ( 5’11” )

Face Claim. none

Birthed and abandoned in Seoul, South Korea, Daniel was born Song Sangsoo to an unknown couple on April 21, 1959. He was adopted in October 1961 and became the youngest and only boy to Aleksie Melnik and Diana Melnik-Martins. Daniel had three older sisters, Sonya, Aaliyah and Josie. 

 He grew up in Flushing, New York, and had a relatively good life. He graduated from Flushing High School in 1977 and immediately joined the US Marine Corps, and was stationed at Camp Henry, located in Daegu, South Korea in 1978. While at Camp Henry, he met and married Yoon Shinae, a newly graduated college student. The couple married in January 1980. The newly married couple moved from Seoul to California in June of 1980. After the birth of their second daughter, Daniel and Shinae moved them back to South Korea; taking up residence in Dobong-gu.

 In 1992, Daniel was fatally shot outside a bar in Seoul, South Korea. The suspect fled and was later arrested for the shooting. 

                                          YOON SHINAE.

Given Name. Yoon Shinae 윤신애

Date of Birth. October 3, 1960

Zodiac Signs. Libra & Rat

Place of Birth. Daegu, South Korea

Home Town. Daegu, South Korea

Ethnicity. South Korean

Nationality. South Korean

Height. 168 cm ( 5’6” )

Face Claim. bae doona 

Yoon Shinae was born and raised to Farmers in Daegu, South Korea, as their second child and only daughter. Shinae has one older brother named Si-hyuk.  Growing up, and into early adulthood, Shinae was put aside in favor of her brother; Si-hyuk being labeled a chess and janggi prodigy. While Shinae in her own right had prodigy-like talents in the art of painting, her talent was not as impressive to her parents. 

Despite the lack of support from her parents and older brother, Shinae went on to thrive academically, graduating at the top of her class and being accepted into one of Korea’s top universities, Korea University; however, she would attend Ewha Women’s University. She graduated from said college with a Bachelor's in Literature. In 1979, she met US Marine Daniel Melnik-Song. They only dated for about a year when they married. 

  In 1992, Daniel was fatally shot outside a bar in Seoul, South Korea. After his death, Shinae was left alone to take care of an eleven-year-old girl and a barely one-year-old baby. The woman would be forced to take up several jobs to keep them afloat; having both her education job and working part-time at a restaurant. In the Winter of ‘94, Shinae married again, this time to a therapist named Lee Gi-ung. The couple welcomed a baby boy in March of 1995, naming him Lee Namil. Sadly, they would file for divorce before the child’s baegil.

Two decades after receiving her degree, Shinae finally began working as a full-time teacher at a high school in Suwon, thirty minutes outside Seoul.

                                         SONG EUNJOO.

Given Name. Natalia Song

Korean Name. Song Eunjoo 송은주

Date of Birth. August 28, 1981

Zodiac Signs. Virgo & Rooster

Place of Birth. Sacramento, California 

Home Town. Seoul, South Korea 

Ethnicity. South Korean

Nationality. Korean-American

Height. 161cm ( 5’3” )

Face Claim. Song Hye Kyo

Song Eunjoo, born Natalia Eunjoo Song, came into the world on August 29, 1981, becoming the oldest child of Shinae and Daniel. She was born in Sacramento, California in Mercy General Hospital.

Eunjoo spent much of her childhood either playing in the streets of her hometown or at after-school clubs and cram schools, taking a special interest in science in her elementary school years.

Along with her family - which now included her baby sister Judith, Eunjoo moved from Sacramento to Seoul, South Korea when she was 10. The move was hard on Eunjoo, moving so far away from her friends took a toll on her. In addition, she barely knew Korean and had trouble assimilating into her new school. She’d barely talk to anyone in school — out of school too, she focused on her science research. 

According to Eunjoo, she was bullied up until high school;

 “I had things spilled on me, I would buy kids snacks so they wouldn’t hit me. Sometimes, I’d spend my day in the nurse's office. I wasn't good at Korean and my family problems were well-known around our neighborhood. I don’t know what changed but in high school, it all stopped.”

 Her struggles with adjusting to her new environment were made even more difficult after the sudden death of her father in 1992. She isolated herself even more from her teachers and classmates; which she admitted made the bullying worse. After her dad’s death, Eunjoo was forced to take a parental role to her sister, she spent her time taking care of Judy or studying.

Eunjoo graduated early from high school in her Sophomore year. Despite having scholarships from several universities she rejected them all in favor of helping her mother support the family; which now had one more member (her half-brother Namil). However, she didn’t have to worry about her little brother, his father having primary custody of him.

At 25, Eunjoo began her college career. She attended the University of Kragujevac in Serbia, graduating in 2011, at the age of 30. Eunjoo worked at an undisclosed law firm in Serbia from 2012 to 2016 before moving back to Seoul in 2017 and becoming a professor at Dongguk University.

                                          LEE NAMIL.

Given Name. Lee Namil 이남일

Date of Birth. March 28, 1995

Zodiac Signs. Aries & Pig

Place of Birth. Seoul, South Korea

Home Town. Busan, South Korea

Ethnicity. South Korean

Nationality. South Korean

Height. 182 cm ( 6’0″ )

Face Claim. yang sejong

Lee Namil was born the only son and youngest child to Yoon Shinae and the third son to Lee Gi-ung. Outside of his sister, Namil has three older siblings; two brothers one sister, and two younger siblings; a set of twin girls. In contrast to Eunjoo and Namjoo, he had a fairly peaceful life. He grew up in Busan. From a young age, he had a keen interest in sports, influenced by his oldest brother’s passion for track and field. His interest was in Tennis.

Much of Namil’s early years were spent playing tennis or working part-time at his step-mother’s restaurant. Academically, Namil did the bare minimum; only doing so much so he could stay a part of his high school’s tennis team. At graduation, he nearly flunked.

After high school, Namil spent a year working for his stepmother before enlisting and completing his mandatory military service. 

After his military service ended, Namil began to focus on his professional tennis career; competing in any tournament he could. He made his official debut at the French Open in 2019, losing in the 3rd round. He later competed in the Wimbledon Championships, making it to the quarterfinals before withdrawing out. Namil has had an extremely successful tennis career. He nearly qualified to represent South Korea in the 2024 Olympics. 

[urbanrelics]

TRAINWORKS

The history of the Liège steel industry goes back further than the birth of Belgium in 1830. In 1817, the Englishman John Cockerill founded his first steelworks in Seraing to produce the steel for his looms. In the following decades, the steel industry develops to its peak, until it takes its first hits in the early 1980s. The majority of the steel activity in Liège and Charleroi is then brought together in Cockerill Sambre. Several blast furnaces, coking plants, coal mines, hot and cold rolling mills, factories for processing blast furnace slag,... dominated the Walloon economy for almost 200 years.

Various mergers and acquisitions attempted to revive the declining steel industry. When the Indian steel giant Mittal came on the scene in 2006 and took over Arcelor to form ArcelorMittal, the end was near. Numerous layoffs and austerity measures followed, much to the dismay of workers and unions. In 2013, after years of social unrest and negotiations, the curtain finally fell on the Liège steel industry. Some companies are still being placed "under cocoon", with the prospect of a potential restart, which unfortunately never comes...

This site contains the administrative buildings, where the main administration of the steel company was located. The main building still contains a number of beautifully dilapidated offices and archives.

Apart from the administrative wing, there is also a large part of the site where there is a workshop where the company's trains were maintained and repaired. This part was mostly emptied.

[jingledbells]

rant about billford to me. i love gravity falls and am horrified at the idea that anyone could romanticize their relationship and i want to hear more of your thoughts

hi Lucien!!!! 

as you might’ve known the book of bill just released (a week ago?? maybe more jeez) and uhm. a large amount of people have been drawn to bill and fords relationship as it’s been highlighted in the book. this isn’t a bad thing and I will admit their relationship is very interesting but what sucks is. how poorly people interpret them. In simple words, bill straight up abused ford. ford was an easy target for bill to manipulate. he was labeled a freak from birth and growing up he was constantly bullied, harassed and ostracized for his six fingers. because of this he wanted to prove to the world that he was more than a freak. he studied hard in school and excelled in academics in hopes to one day become a great renowned scientist and finally get the validation he never had. in senior year however there was a wrench in his plans. fords brother Stanley didn’t want him to go off to west coast tech and leave him behind so he ruined his chances into getting into west coast tech and it resulted  into him getting kicked out of the house and not reuniting with his brother until more than a decade later. anyways flash forward to the 1980s during his researcher era when ford discovers bill. ford instantly trusts him and bill feeds him that sweet validation that he never got(this is a major reason why ford was as vulnerable to bill and was such an easy victim). along with this bill manipulates ford and pushes away the only other human ford was close too, that being fiddleford, and said things to ford that made him lose trust in his only real friend at the time. my god and don’t get me started on the page in tbob where bill makes ford drink against his will. and like. bill didn’t care about ford as a person once. he only cared about him to the extent that he was a tool for him to use to get his way and when ford found him out, that angered him. he continued to harass him and called him his ‘property’ and ford lived in fear of him that his fucking eye bled and he went days, even weeks without sleeping to avoid him. Bill probably continued to harass him while he was dimension hopping until ford got the metal plate installed in his head to keep him out. and when ford was finally reunited with his family bill continued to harass him till the fucking end. he threatened to kill his family. he tortured him for hours in weirdmaggedon. i hate how people describe especially this era of them as ‘divorced toxic yaoi’ bill is straight up torturing and assaulting him.ford quite literally could not escape and this motherfucking dorito ruined his life. honestly it pains me anytime someone describes any era as ‘funny cute toxic yaoi’ because like. did you read the same book as me and did you watch the same show as me. are you that media illiterate that you can’t realize that it was abuse or are you do choose to ignore that just to label them as a ‘funny divorced toxic yaoi’ just for shipping purposes that you ignore everything that fucking happened between them. the majority of this fandom disgusts me that people will take the abuse ford suffered from bill just to call the ship between them ‘canon’ and use it as an excuse to ship them. sorry this is just me rambling this whole thing makes me so fucking mad that I can barely get out any words right lol

[plumbob-pudding]

The opulence of the 1950s gave way to the structured, office wear inspired clothing of the 1960s with structured pinafores and tailored trousers for both boys and girls. It wasn't all serious, however; the 1960s birthed an explosion of colour with vibrant magentas, vivid teals and sunny yellows gaining popularity in children's clothing.

By the 1970s, this colour explosion began to die out in favour of more muted browns, oranges and greens. Flared trousers were in vogue for boys and girls as clothing began to become more unisex, though pinafores and dresses remained popular for little girls.

Children's clothing in the 1980s can only be described using one word: zany. Bold colours and even bolder patterns gained popularity: they featured in everything from matching sweatsuits to fanny packs. Acid washed jeans along with converse high-tops became staples for girls and boys.

The 1990s took the casual style of the '80s further. Boys' clothing was baggy in fit, ranging from comfortable tracksuits to relaxed cargos. For girls, this was largely similar although there was an emergence of "preppy" fashion in the mid 90s. Pleated plaid skirts and button up shirts rose in popularity accessorised with knee high socks.

Y2K saw the emergence of a celebrity culture that remains today. Children, particularly girls, wanted to dress like their favourite tv characters so the bright and often excessive outfits feature on tv channels like disney and nickelodeon were emulated. For boys, skater culture was on the rise so baggy cargos, t-shirts and polos were staples.

By 2010, the extravagance of y2k petered out replaced with preppy, "business casual" inspired outfits. Kidswear began to emerge as a legitimate field in fashion and designers did their best to combine comfort with style sometimes leading to disastrous combinations such as hoodies paired with blazers.

The widespread usage of social media in the 2020s has led to what some call "the disappearance of the awkward phase". Children's wear is often times indistinguishable from adults just like in the 19th century, however, now comfort is very much prioritised. This decade has seen the resurgence of many styles of previous decades: oversized sweatshirts and hoodies paired with flared or baggy jeans are popular along with shoes like uggs and crocs.

[fabledenigma]

In the Source Link, you will find a gif pack of Naturi Naughton in the short lived series - The Playboy Club. Naturi played the role of Bunny Brenda.

Brenda sought to be the first African-American Playmate before the series ended abruptly. Naturi has played the role of a playboy bunny twice - TPC and in an episode of Mad Men. She researched the role thoroughly before filming.

Trigger Warning: Underwear, playboy bunny outfits, alcohol, cigarettes, NFSW

Source - FabledEnigma

[dailyanarchistposts]

J.5.15 What attitude do anarchists take to the welfare state?

The period of neo-liberalism since the 1980s has seen a rollback of the state within society by the right-wing in the name of “freedom,” “individual responsibility” and “efficiency.” The position of anarchists to this process is mixed. On the one hand, we are all in favour of reducing the size of the state and increasing individual responsibility and freedom but, on the other, we are well aware that this rollback is part of an attack on the working class and tends to increase the power of the capitalists over us as the state’s (direct) influence is reduced. Thus anarchists appear to be on the horns of a dilemma — or, at least, apparently.

So what attitude do anarchists take to the welfare state and attacks on it?

First we must note that this attack on “welfare” is somewhat selective. While using the rhetoric of “self-reliance” and “individualism,” the practitioners of these “tough love” programmes have made sure that the major corporations continue to get state hand-outs and aid while attacking social welfare. In other words, the current attack on the welfare state is an attempt to impose market discipline on the working class while increasing state protection for the ruling class. Therefore, most anarchists have no problem defending social welfare programmes as these can be considered as only fair considering the aid the capitalist class has always received from the state (both direct subsidies and protection and indirect support via laws that protect property and so on). And, for all their talk of increasing individual choice, the right-wing remain silent about the lack of choice and individual freedom during working hours within capitalism.

Secondly, most of the right-wing inspired attacks on the welfare state are inaccurate. For example, Noam Chomsky notes that the “correlation between welfare payments and family life is real, though it is the reverse of what is claimed [by the right]. As support for the poor has declined, unwed birth-rates, which had risen steadily from the 1940s through the mid-1970s, markedly increased. ‘Over the last three decades, the rate of poverty among children almost perfectly correlates with the birth-rates among teenage mothers a decade later,’ Mike Males points out: ‘That is, child poverty seems to lead to teenage childbearing, not the other way around.’” [“Rollback III”, Z Magazine, April, 1995] The same charge of inaccurate scare-mongering can be laid at the claims about the evil effects of welfare which the rich and large corporations wish to save others (but not themselves) from. Such altruism is truly heart warming. For those in the United States or familiar with it, the same can be said of the hysterical attacks on “socialised medicine” and health-care reform funded by insurance companies and parroted by right-wing ideologues and politicians.

Thirdly, anarchists are just as opposed to capitalism as they are the state. This means that privatising state functions is no more libertarian than nationalising them. In fact, less so as such a process reduces the limited public say state control implies in favour of more private tyranny and wage-labour. As such, attempts to erode the welfare state without other, pro-working class, social reforms violates the anti-capitalist part of anarchism. Similarly, the introduction of a state supported welfare system rather than a for-profit capitalist run system (as in America) would hardly be considered any more a violation of libertarian principles as the reverse happening. In terms of reducing human suffering, though, most anarchists would oppose the latter and be in favour of the former while aiming to create a third (self-managed) alternative.

Fourthly, we must note that while most anarchists are in favour of collective self-help and welfare, we are opposed to the state. Part of the alternatives anarchists try and create are self-managed and community welfare projects (see next section). Moreover, in the past, anarchists and syndicalists were at the forefront in opposing state welfare schemes. This was because they were introduced not by socialists but by liberals and other supporters of capitalism to undercut support for radical alternatives and to aid long term economic development by creating the educated and healthy population required to use advanced technology and fight wars. Thus we find that:

“Liberal social welfare legislation … were seen by many [British syndicalists] not as genuine welfare reforms, but as mechanisms of social control. Syndicalists took a leading part in resisting such legislation on the grounds that it would increase capitalist discipline over labour, thereby undermining working class independence and self-reliance.” [Bob Holton, British Syndicalism: 1900–1914, p. 137]

Anarchists view the welfare state much as some feminists do. While they note, to quote Carole Pateman, the “patriarchal structure of the welfare state” they are also aware that it has “also brought challenges to patriarchal power and helped provide a basis for women’s autonomous citizenship.” She goes on to note that “for women to look at the welfare state is merely to exchange dependence on individual men for dependence on the state. The power and capriciousness of husbands is replaced by the arbitrariness, bureaucracy and power of the state, the very state that has upheld patriarchal power.” This “will not in itself do anything to challenge patriarchal power relations.” [The Disorder of Women, p. 195 and p. 200]

Thus while the welfare state does give working people more options than having to take any job or put up with any conditions, this relative independence from the market and individual capitalists has came at the price of dependence on the state — the very institution that protects and supports capitalism in the first place. And has we have became painfully aware in recent years, it is the ruling class who has most influence in the state — and so, when it comes to deciding what state budgets to cut, social welfare ones are first in line. Given that such programmes are controlled by the state, not working class people, such an outcome is hardly surprising. Not only this, we also find that state control reproduces the same hierarchical structures that the capitalist firm creates.

Unsurprisingly, anarchists have no great love of such state welfare schemes and desire their replacement by self-managed alternatives. For example, taking municipal housing, Colin Ward writes:

“The municipal tenant is trapped in a syndrome of dependence and resentment, which is an accurate reflection of his housing situation. People care about what is theirs, what they can modify, alter, adapt to changing needs and improve themselves. They must have a direct responsibility for it … The tenant take-over of the municipal estate is one of those obviously sensible ideas which is dormant because our approach to municipal affairs is still stuck in the groves of nineteenth-century paternalism.” [Anarchy in Action, p. 73]

Looking at state supported education, Ward argues that the “universal education system turns out to be yet another way in which the poor subsidise the rich.” Which is the least of its problems, for “it is in the nature of public authorities to run coercive and hierarchical institutions whose ultimate function is to perpetuate social inequality and to brainwash the young into the acceptance of their particular slot in the organised system.” [Op. Cit., p. 83 and p. 81] The role of state education as a means of systematically indoctrinating the working class is reflected in William Lazonick words:

“The Education Act of 1870 … [gave the] state … the facilities … to make education compulsory for all children from the age of five to the age of ten. It had also erected a powerful system of ideological control over the next generation of workers … [It] was to function as a prime ideological mechanism in the attempt by the capitalist class through the medium of the state, to continually reproduce a labour force which would passively accept [the] subjection [of labour to the domination of capital]. At the same time it had set up a public institution which could potentially be used by the working class for just the contrary purpose.” [“The Subjection of Labour to Capital: The rise of the Capitalist System”, Radical Political Economy Vol. 2, p. 363]

Lazonick, as did Pateman, indicates the contradictory nature of welfare provisions within capitalism. On the one hand, they are introduced to help control the working class (and to improve long term economic development). On the other hand, these provisions can be used by working class people as weapons against capitalism and give themselves more options than “work or starve” (the fact that the attacks on welfare in the UK during the 1990s — called, ironically enough, welfare to work — involves losing benefits if you refuse a job is not a surprising development). Thus we find that welfare acts as a kind of floor under wages. In the US, the two have followed a common trajectory (rising together and falling together). And it is this, the potential benefits welfare can have for working people, that is the real cause for the current capitalist attacks upon it. As Noam Chomsky summarises:

“State authority is now under severe attack in the more democratic societies, but not because it conflicts with the libertarian vision. Rather the opposite: because it offers (weak) protection to some aspects of that vision. Governments have a fatal flaw: unlike the private tyrannies, the institutions of state power and authority offer to the public an opportunity to play some role, however limited, in managing their own affairs.” [Chomsky on Anarchism, p. 193]

Because of this contradictory nature of welfare, we find anarchists like Noam Chomsky arguing that (using an expression popularised by South American rural workers unions) “we should ‘expand the floor of the cage.’ We know we’re in a cage. We know we’re trapped. We’re going to expand the floor, meaning we will extend to the limits what the cage will allow. And we intend to destroy the cage. But not by attacking the cage when we’re vulnerable, so they’ll murder us … You have to protect the cage when it’s under attack from even worse predators from outside, like private power. And you have to expand the floor of the cage, recognising that it’s a cage. These are all preliminaries to dismantling it. Unless people are willing to tolerate that level of complexity, they’re going to be of no use to people who are suffering and who need help, or, for that matter, to themselves.” [Expanding the Floor of the Cage]

Thus, even though we know the welfare state is a cage and part of an instrument of class power, we have to defend it from a worse possibility — namely, the state as “pure” defender of capitalism with working people with few or no rights. At least the welfare state does have a contradictory nature, the tensions of which can be used to increase our options. And one of these options is its abolition from below!

For example, with regards to municipal housing, anarchists will be the first to agree that it is paternalistic, bureaucratic and hardly a wonderful living experience. However, in stark contrast with the right who desire to privatise such estates, anarchists think that “tenants control” is the best solution as it gives us the benefits of individual ownership along with community (and so without the negative points of property, such as social atomisation). The demand for “tenant control” must come from below, by the “collective resistance” of the tenants themselves, perhaps as a result of struggles against “continuous rent increases” leading to “the demand … for a change in the status of the tenant.” Such a “tenant take-over of the municipal estate is one of those sensible ideas which is dormant because our approach to municipal affairs is still stuck in the grooves of nineteenth century paternalism.” [Ward, Op. Cit., p. 73]

And it is here that we find the ultimate irony of the right-wing, “free market” attempts to abolish the welfare state — neo-liberalism wants to end welfare from above, by means of the state (which is the instigator of this individualistic “reform”). It does not seek the end of dependency by self-liberation, but the shifting of dependency from state to charity and the market. In contrast, anarchists desire to abolish welfare from below. This the libertarian attitude to those government policies which actually do help people. While anarchists would “hesitate to condemn those measures taken by governments which obviously benefited the people, unless we saw the immediate possibility of people carrying them out for themselves. This would not inhibit us from declaring at the same time that what initiatives governments take would be more successfully taken by the people themselves if they put their minds to the same problems … to build up a hospital service or a transport system, for instance, from local needs into a national organisation, by agreement and consent at all levels is surely more economical as well as efficient than one which is conceived at top level [by the state] … where Treasury, political and other pressures, not necessarily connected with what we would describe as needs, influence the shaping of policies.” So “as long as we have capitalism and government the job of anarchists is to fight both, and at the same time encourage people to take what steps they can to run their own lives.” [“Anarchists and Voting”, pp. 176–87, The Raven, No. 14, p. 179]

Ultimately, unlike the state socialist/liberal left, anarchists reject the idea that the cause of socialism, of a free society, can be helped by using the state. Like the right, the left see political action in terms of the state. All its favourite policies have been statist — state intervention in the economy, nationalisation, state welfare, state education and so on. Whatever the problem, the left see the solution as lying in the extension of the power of the state. They continually push people in relying on others to solve their problems for them. Moreover, such state-based “aid” does not get to the core of the problem. All it does is fight the symptoms of capitalism and statism without attacking their root causes — the system itself.

Invariably, this support for the state is a move away from working class people, from trusting and empowering them to sort out their own problems. Indeed, the left seem to forget that the state exists to defend the collective interests of the ruling class and so could hardly be considered a neutral body. And, worst of all, they have presented the right with the opportunity of stating that freedom from the state means the same thing as the freedom of the market (so ignoring the awkward fact that capitalism is based upon domination — wage labour — and needs many repressive measures in order to exist and survive). Anarchists are of the opinion that changing the boss for the state (or vice versa) is only a step sideways, not forward! After all, it is not working people who control how the welfare state is run, it is politicians, “experts”, bureaucrats and managers who do so (“Welfare is administered by a top-heavy governmental machine which ensures that when economies in public expenditure are imposed by its political masters, they are made in reducing the service to the public, not by reducing the cost of administration.” [Ward, Op. Cit. p. 10]). Little wonder we have seen elements of the welfare state used as a weapon in the class war against those in struggle (for example, in Britain during the miners strike in 1980s the Conservative Government made it illegal to claim benefits while on strike, so reducing the funds available to workers in struggle and helping bosses force strikers back to work faster).

Anarchists consider it far better to encourage those who suffer injustice to organise themselves and in that way they can change what they think is actually wrong, as opposed to what politicians and “experts” claim is wrong. If sometimes part of this struggle involves protecting aspects of the welfare state (“expanding the floor of the cage”) so be it — but we will never stop there and will use such struggles as a stepping stone in abolishing the welfare state from below by creating self-managed, working class, alternatives. As part of this process anarchists also seek to transform those aspects of the welfare state they may be trying to “protect”. They do not defend an institution which is paternalistic, bureaucratic and unresponsive. For example, if we are involved in trying to stop a local state-run hospital or school from closing, anarchists would try to raise the issue of self-management and local community control into the struggle in the hope of going beyond the status quo.

In this, we follow the suggestion made by Proudhon that rather than “fatten certain contractors,” libertarians should be aiming to create “a new kind of property” by “granting the privilege of running” public utilities, industries and services, “under fixed conditions, to responsible companies, not of capitalists, but of workmen.” Municipalities would take the initiative in setting up public works but actual control would rest with workers’ co-operatives for “it becomes necessary for the workers to form themselves into democratic societies, with equal conditions for all members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism.” [General Idea of the Revolution, p. 151 and p. 276–7] Thus, for example, rather than nationalise or privatise railways, they should be handed over workers’ co-operatives to run. The same with welfare services and such like: “the abolition of the State is the last term of a series, which consists of an incessant diminution, by political and administrative simplification the number of public functionaries and to put into the care of responsible workers societies the works and services confided to the state.” [Proudhon, Carnets, vol. 3, p. 293]

Not only does this mean that we can get accustomed to managing our own affairs collectively, it also means that we can ensure that whatever “safety-nets” we have do what we want and not what capital wants. In the end, what we create and run by ourselves will be more responsive to our needs, and the needs of the class struggle, than reformist aspects of the capitalist state. This much, we think, is obvious. And it is ironic to see elements of the “radical” and “revolutionary” left argue against this working class self-help (and so ignore the long tradition of such activity in working class movements) and instead select for the agent of their protection a state run by and for capitalists!

There are two traditions of welfare within society, one of “fraternal and autonomous associations springing from below, the other that of authoritarian institutions directed from above.” [Ward, Op. Cit., p. 123] While sometimes anarchists are forced to defend the latter against the greater evil of “free market” capitalism, we never forget the importance of creating and strengthening the former. As Chomsky suggests, libertarians have to “defend some state institutions from the attack against them [by private power], while trying at the same time to pry them open to meaningful public participation — and ultimately, to dismantle them in a much more free society, if the appropriate circumstances can be achieved.” [Chomsky on Anarchism, p. 194] A point we will discuss more in the next section when we highlight the historical examples of self-managed communal welfare and self-help organisations.

[superlinguo]

Thinking With Your Hands, Susan Goldin-Meadow (Review)

In Thinking With Your Hands, Susan Goldin-Meadow meets the challenge of summarising a lifetime of research for a non-specialist audience. Since the early 1970s Goldin-Meadow has been researching the role of gesture in thinking, communicating and learning. This book captures her passion for this work, and the enthusiasm for collaboration that has resulted in the Goldin-Meadow lab being a powerhouse of Gesture Studies scholarship over the last three decades. There are some black line images throughout the book that illustrate some key gestural moments. I was delighted to read a physical review copy from the publisher. 

Goldin-Meadow’s work spans a range of topics in child language acquisition, the emergence of homesign and signed languages, and the use of gesture in educational contexts. The book is divided into three sections. The first section, “Thinking with our hands”, introduces the ways that gesture provides a more expansive understanding of language and what we communicate. In this book, as in her research, Goldin-Meadow focuses on the gestures we use alongside speech. These gestures can provide visual information alongside the structured linguistic content of spoken or signed languages. Sometimes that information is not found in the linguistic content and instead offers a different perspective on the thought processes of the person using gesture, other times, gesturing appears to not only show, but help, the thinking process. 

The second section, “Speaking with our hands”, is built around Goldin-Meadow’s expertise in children’s communication, particularly in contexts without spoken language. This includes discussion of homesign, where a deaf child is raised in a hearing household without signed language and develops a way of communicating with their family. These homesign systems are more than gesture, but less structured than a language, although as Goldin-Meadow’s work has shown, it’s the child driving the structure, not their caregivers. Goldin-Meadow is exceedingly diplomatic about the choices made by parents in these contexts, but at least makes it clear how the oralism approach does not benefit children. We also get to read about the birth of signed languages in contexts like Nicuagua, where the first school for deaf children was set up in the 1980s. In a context of support and input, children are able to collaboratively build a full language, often drawing on local gestures as one of their resources.  

The third section, “Why you should care about hands”, draws on insights from the research introduced in earlier chapters to make a case for gesture being relevant to parents, clinicians and teachers. The final chapter “what if gesture were considered as important as language?” is an opportunity that Goldin-Meadow uses for a vision for the use of the many remarkable insight from her work and that of collaborators and colleagues. 

Although this book draws mostly on research conducted by her own lab, or by people from her lab who have gone on to become leaders in the field in their own right, the book still draws on research from others across the field as well. It’s clear that Goldin-Meadow is demonstrating the ways she’s honed the message about her work, and its wider relevance, for a general audience. For someone with a passing familiarity with work from the Goldin-Meadow lab, there’s a great deal of charm in learning the stories behind some iconic pieces of research. Goldin-Meadow is very happy to let us know that had shown students some classic gesture mismatch footage in her classes for years before Brecky Church coded the data and noted that the mismatches preceded a developmental advance. Goldin-Meadow is exceedingly charming in her enthusiasm for name-checking her junior collaborators and students, as well as their students (who she gleefully points out are her academic grandchildren). 

In Thinking with your Hands Goldin-Meadow’s expertise and depths of enthusiasm are exceedingly evident, but so is her commitment to finding ways to share her work with people beyond psychology and Gesture Studies. This has become one of my go-to recommendations for Gesture Studies scicomm.  

Susan Goldin-Meadow, Thinking With Your Hands (Basic Books, 2023)

Related posts:

Blind people gesture (and why that’s kind of a big deal)

The relationship between gesture and thinking/speaking

[kemetic-dreams]

Mainstream breakthrough

Flavor Flav of Public Enemy performing in 1991

In 1990, Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet was a significant success with music critics and consumers. The album played a key role in hip hop's mainstream emergence in 1990, dubbed by Billboard editor Paul Grein as "the year that rap exploded". In a 1990 article on its commercial breakthrough, Janice C. Thompson of Time wrote that hip hop "has grown into the most exciting development in American pop music in more than a decade." Thompson noted the impact of Public Enemy's 1989 single "Fight the Power", rapper Tone Lōc's single Wild Thing being the best-selling single of 1989, and that at the time of her article, nearly a third of the songs on the Billboard Hot 100 were hip hop songs. In a similar 1990 article, Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times put hip hop music's commercial emergence into perspective:

It was 10 years ago that the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" became the first rap single to enter the national Top 20. Who ever figured then that the music would even be around in 1990, much less produce attractions that would command as much pop attention as Public Enemy and N.W.A? "Rapper's Delight" was a novelty record that was considered by much of the pop community simply as a lightweight offshoot of disco—and that image stuck for years. Occasional records—including Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" in 1982 and Run-DMC's "It's Like That" in 1984—won critical approval, but rap, mostly, was dismissed as a passing fancy—too repetitious, too one dimensional. Yet rap didn't go away, and an explosion of energy and imagination in the late 1980s leaves rap today as arguably the most vital new street-oriented sound in pop since the birth of rock in the 1950s.