#fewer girls to massacre Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[llycaons]

I got so happy when I saw jyl...I don't list her as one of my favorite characters often but she honestly probably is, I adore her

[markrosewater]

For the person who asked about a commander for -1/-1 counters, we have 3 different options across red/black green/black and mono black.

Scorpion god, hapatra Vizier of poisons, and the newest massacre girl from mkm.

While I would appreciate a jund commander to allow all 3 to exist in a single deck, I think it's important for wizards to realize that creating commanders in 3+ colors tends to result in homogeneous deck building instead of the creative deck building that comes with the restrictions of fewer colors which is starting to become a bigger and bigger complaint from the commander community where wizards is printing too many "staple" cards that's restricting the creativity of deck building in the format.

FYI

[de-spawnhellspawn]

Okay, so I’m assuming that you would be wanting translated baihe. I gotta say that there just aren’t many xianxia baihe in the first place, even fewer that are translated at all (to say nothing of being complete).

I’m sorry but this got long, so TLDR:

100% recommend: The Dragon (见龙)

Thought was entertaining: Mistress I Was Wrong; What’s wrong with a snake that just wants to cultivate and transform; After the Full-Level Boss is Reborn

I love this but I can’t recommend it when it only has like 3 chapters TL tier: The Art of Taming the Dragon (降龙诀［穿书])

More detail beneath this cut:

The only (good) one I can think of at the top of my head is The Dragon (见龙). It’s pretty slow burn but well-paced with a happy ending that felt truly complete and not merely forced in. The second act is somewhat weaker and meanders a little but quite a few offhanded lines turn into great pay-offs here. It’s a tight read with a fairly compelling romance between a cold love interest that is learning how to express herself past her own self-imposed boundaries, and the MC who is a free-spirited ball of sunshine filled with the vibrancy of life. And you know what? ITS BEEN COMPLETELY TRANSLATED (NOT A MTL EDIT EITHER)

Link to the translation here: https://dragontl.net/story/the-dragon/

The same TL group is also going to be translating ‘What’s wrong with a snake that just wants to cultivate and transform’. I’ve read that one in chinese and it was a rather enjoyable read too. Soft and fluffy, though lacking in high stakes and suffering from weaker plot and character writing. (It is a transmigration story, just in case that’s a deal breaker). It never truly engaged me but it was a fine enough change of pace after reading a few tragic baihe so… keep an eye out if a more slice of life style beat is what you want.

—-

The other stuff I’ve read with English TL is… middling. Though if you just have a specific itch you want to scratch and a good few hours to waste, then why not.

‘Mistress I was wrong’ is one of those generic “Oh no I’ve transmigrated into a cannon fodder character who’s the nearest person I can seduce to save me” —sorta stories. It is exactly what it says on the tin and does what it advertises decently enough. Paced a bit slowly for my taste but a half-decent time waster. I did drop it about two/three hundred chapters in but I don’t really remember why.

‘After the Full-Level Boss is Reborn’ has a half-way original premise that was executed quite well actually. The author of the novel themselves transmigrate into the book they wrote and have to deal with the tragic fates they wrought for these characters. Characters that they increasingly care about too. It had jokes that landed solidly in the first quarter. A plot twist that—though somewhat predictable—changes a reader’s understanding of the whole plot in the middle. I haven’t read the english MTL though, so I have nothing to say on its quality. Maybe give it a few chapters if you’re interested.

—-

The Wildcard: The Art of Taming the Dragon

See I love this novel to bits and it’s genuinely one of the most well-structured and engaging baihe novels I’ve read. But at the same time, its translation barely started before it’s sputtered out.

Though it starts out as a generic (if well-executed and really funny) rendition of the ‘ah fuck I transmigrated into the MC’s sworn enemy’ trope, it becomes an unravelling mystery of both the circumstances of the Dragon Clan’s massacre AND the hidden details in the original novel. There are so many plot twists that pull the rug out from under you and shatters your heart. It’s the slow realisation of the full-scale of the tragedy originally written in the book. That it is and has already become unchangeable.

The unfolding romance between Luo Qingci and her disciple, when there’s a blood debt running deep as the seas underpinning the circumstances of their meeting. How would that be reconciled?

Its funny. Its sad. It is tragic at many turns.

It is something well-worth reading.

(Which is why I’m starting to translate it myself. Though as an amateur, that is going to take a while.)

There’s probably few more on NovelUpdates, but I haven’t read any of them personally and (in light of the general poor standards on the site) am hesitant to recommend.

(Though if MTL or it being untranslated is not a barrier then I have quite a few more that might be interesting.

Also, are there any good baihe xianxia series?? I love the gay boys but where are the gay girls?

[originalrebelavenue]

5 major atrocities in US military history

A US soldier allegedly left his base in Afghanistan Sunday and went door-to-door shooting Afghan civilians, killing 16 and leaving both Afghanistan and America reeling. While the incident has sparked outrage at home and abroad, this is hardly the first time that members of the US armed forces have been accused of committing atrocities on the ground.

Here, we look back at five other shocking incidents that left their mark on America's military history. What incidents are we missing? Leave your comments below.

1. No Gun Ri, Korea

In 1950, the United States intervened in the Korean War in defense of the South, but its forces were undertrained and underprepared, according to the BBC. The North's attacks created a severe refugee crisis, and as thousands of Koreans clogged the battlefield as they fled war-torn areas, the US forces panicked.

On the same day that the US Army delivered a stop refugee order in July 1950, around 400 South Korean civilians were killed in the town of No Gun Ri by US forces from the 7th Cavalry Regiment. The soldiers argued they thought the refugees could include disguised North Korean soldiers.

Many refugees were shot while on or under a stone bridge that ran through the town; others were attacked with bombs and machine-gun fire from US planes, the BBC reported. The ordeal lasted for three days, according to local survivors and members of the Cavalry.

"There was a lieutenant screaming like a madman, fire on everything, kill 'em all," veteran Joe Jackman recalled, according to the BBC. "I didn't know if they were soldiers or what. Kids, there was kids out there, it didn't matter what it was, 8 to 80, blind, crippled or crazy, they shot 'em all."

The Associated Press broke the news of the massacre in September 1999. It has come to be known as one of the largest single killings of civilians by American forces in the 20th century.

2. My Lai, Vietnam

On March 16, 1968, the Charlie Company, 11th Brigade entered the village of My Lai, in an area of Vietnam where many members of the American brigade had been maimed or killed by Viet Cong forces, PBS reported. The troops ended up killing over 300 civilians under orders from their Lieutenant, William Calley, who told his men to enter the village firing, though there had been no report of opposing fire, PBS reported.

According to eyewitness reports, several old men were bayoneted, praying women and children were shot in the back of the head, and at least one girl was raped and then killed.

The story did not reach the American public until journalist Seymour Hersh published a story detailing his conversations with a Vietnam veteran, Ron Ridenhour, in November 1969. The massacre raised significant questions about the conduct of American soldiers and their leaders in the field.

3. Abu Ghraib, Iraq

In 2004, the world was shocked when photos were released of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, a sprawling prison west of Baghdad which was notorious for its frequent torturing sessions and executions under Saddam Hussein, the New York Times reported.

The photos, which showed Iraqi detainees being beaten, abused and sexually assaulted, fueled Arab and Muslim rage against the United States, and were used as a powerful tool to recruit insurgents in Iraq and elsewhere, according to the Times.

Nine US soldiers were found guilty in the abuse case, which also fuelled multiple other military and Congressional investigations. Former President Bush proposed to destroy the complex after the crimes were uncovered, but an American military judge ordered that it be preserved as a crime scene, the Times reported. In March 2006, the military announced that it would clear out all remaining prisoners from Abu Ghraib.

In February 2009, the prison was reopened under a new name, Baghdad’s Central Prison, and promises of humanitarian conduct.

4. Haditha, Iraq

On November 19, 2005, a group of US marines killed 24 unarmed men, women and children in the city of Haditha in Western Iraq. Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich admitted to telling his men to “shoot first and ask questions later," and the massacre is believed to have been an act of revenge for an attack on an American convoy that killed a marine, according to the New York Times.

Sgt. Wuterich and eight of his marines were charged in connection with the incident on December 21, 2006, but six had their charges dropped and one was found not guilty. Sgt. Wuterich was also eventually found not guilty of voluntary manslaughter, CBS News reported.

Upon his release, Wuterich addressed the family members of the Iraqi victims.

"I wish to assure you that on that day, it was never my intention to harm you or your families. I know that you are the real victims of Nov. 19, 2005," he said, according to CBS.

More from GlobalPost: Frank Wuterich, Marine tried in Haditha case, gets demotion and pay cut, but no jail time

Residents of Haditha were angered by the fact that not one of the eight Marines was convicted.  

"I was expecting that the American judiciary would sentence this person to life in prison and that he would appear and confess in front of the whole world that he committed this crime, so that America could show itself as democratic and fair," a survivor of the killings, Awis Fahmi Hussein, told CBS.

The incident was compared by many in the media to My Lai.

5. Azizabad airstrike, Afghanistan

On August 22, 2008, Afghan civilians who had gathered in a small village for the memorial ceremony of a militia leader were killed by airstrike by US and Afghan soldiers, who were on an operation in the area to pursue Taliban commander Mullah Siddiq, according to the New York Times.

The airstrike's estimated casualties varied widely between 30 and 90, according to conflicting accounts from American troops, aid workers, local villagers, and a report made by the Afghanistan government.

The Pentagon described the attack as "a legitimate strike against the Taliban" and questioned the casualty estimates given by the government of Afghanistan and reported by the media. The US military originally denied that any civilian casualties had occurred, but later acknowledged after the release of a cell phone video that some civilians may have been killed, and announced it would investigate the incident, the Associated Press reported.

In 2009, Mohammad Nader, a villager from Azizabad, was sentenced to death for giving incorrect information to soldiers about Siddiq's location, the Daily Telegraph reported.

"You, Mohammad Nader, are sentenced to capital punishment for spying for foreign forces and giving wrong information that caused the death of civilians," said judge Qazi Mukaram, according to the Telegraph.

"The US still needs to change its policies and practices on airstrikes to end the string of attacks that have caused so much loss of civilian life," said Brian Adams, head of Human Rights' Watch's Asia division, which launched its own inquiry into the attacks. "Otherwise the planned arrival of 20-30,000 more troops in Afghanistan may lead to greater, not fewer, civilian deaths."

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[neilmobile]

Also since it is almost 2020 and I don’t think I’m gonna watch many more movies before the new year, here is what I watched in 2019. Fewer than previous years, but this year I also tried to read more, engage in more hobbies, do more home reno shit, etc etc. Italics were garbage, bolded were good:

1. The Little Stranger 2. Hotel Artemis 3. Mary Poppins Returns 4. Bruce Springsteen on Broadway 5. Auquaman 6. First Man 7. Fantastic Beasts 2 8. Win it All 9. Upgrade 10. Dheepan 11. Rust and Bone 12. Blood of Heroes 13. Message from the King 14. Fahrenheit 451 (remake) 15. Vice 16. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 17. Fandango 18. Slice 19. Beverly Hills Cop 3 20. Happytime Murders 21. Someone's Watching Me 22. Super Troopers 2 23. Suspiria (2018) 24. Unsane 25. Roman J. Israel 26. Bumblebee 27. Bohemian Rhapsody 28. Woman Walks Ahead 29. Shirkers 30. Den of Thieves 31. Deceptive Practice 32. First Reformed 33. Hotel Transylvania 3 34. Lego Ninjago Movie 35. Early Man 36. American Assassin 37. Deep Blue Sea 2 38. Pierrot le Fou 39. Jackie Chan's First Strike 40. Polar 41. Mandy 42. Bad Times at the El Royale 43. Ralph Breaks the Internet 44. Bees Make Honey 45. Robin Hood (2018, yoinks) 46. At Eternity's Gate 47. Thunder Road 48. The Night Stalker 49. Burning 50. Destroyer 51. White Boy Rick 52. Starred Up 53. Heartworn Highways 54. Brigsby Bear 55. Without a Clue 56. Captain Marvel 57. A Star Is Born 58. Green Book 59. Us 60. Destination Wedding 61. A Prophet 62. Overlord 63. Shazam 64. Gringo 65. If Beale Street Could Talk 66. Space Jam 67. Triple Frontier 68. Ali 69. Black Angel 70. Wonder Boys 71. The Highwaymen 72. Avengers: Endgame 73. Lego Movie 2 74. How to Train your Dragon 3 (why) 75. The Nun 76. Happy Death Day 77. Girl's Trip 78. The Kid Who Would Be King 79. BlackKklansmen 80. Conan the Destroyer 81. Detective Pikachu 82. Wine Country 83. John Wick 3 84. Slenderman 85. Always Be My Maybe 86. Deadwood Movie 87. Professor and the Madman 88. Spider-Man: Far From Home 89. Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 90. Hellboy (2019) 91. Little Budha 92. You Were Never Really Here 93. Alita Battle Angel 94. Pet Semetary 95. An American In Paris 96. Edge 97. Lion King (2019) 98. Lion King (1995) 99. Missing Link 100. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood 101. Hobbes and Shaw 102. The Wrecking Crew 103. A Walk in the Clouds 104. Dangerous Liaisons 105. Creed 2 106. Baskin 107. Mortal Engines 108. Men In Black International 109. Into the Inferno 110. High Life 111. The Net 112. Deep Rising 113. Aladdin (2019) 114. Under the Silver Lake 115. Little Women (1994) 116. Blinded by the Light 117. It Chapter 2 118. Ready or Not 119. Framing John Delorean 120. Child's Play (2019) 121. Anna 122. Cold Pursuit (2019) 123. What We Left Behind 124. Ad Astra 125. Deerskin 126. Boyz in the Wood 127. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Part 2 128. The Lighthouse 129. The Death of Dick Long 130. Yesterday 131. I Love You to Death 132. Onibaba 133. Anna and the Apocalypse 134. Nightbreed 135. Clue 136. Rocky Horror Picture Show 137. Scream 2 138. Jojo Rabbit 139. Terminator: Dark Fate 140. Goofy Movie 141. Apple Dumpling Gang 142. The King 143. A Knight Before Christmas 144. Dolemite is My Name 145. Good Boys 146. House of Bamboo 147. Christmas Prince 3: Royal Baby (MAYBE IT WAS GREAT?) 148. Christmas with the Kranks 149. The Irishman 150. The Black Hole 151. Star Wars Episode 9 152. Marriage Story

[bountyofbeads]

Turkish offensive sparks yet another Syrian exodus

https://apnews.com/78ebb25ccdbe4126ac02d315a2985d88

Turkish offensive sparks yet another Syrian exodus #TrumpGenocide #KurdsBetrayedByTrump

By ZEINA KARAM and JOSEPH Krauss |

Published October 10, 2019 12:45 PM ET |

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrians are fleeing by the tens of thousands yet again, a recurring nightmare of hastily packed bags, traffic-clogged highways and an uncertain fate.

Families who just a few years ago fled from an Islamic State onslaught are now running from a Turkish offensive against the same Kurdish fighters who defeated the extremist group. The United States, which worked hand-in-hand with the Syrian Kurds, has stepped aside and abandoned its allies .

Now, civilians are on the run again, but this time there are even fewer places to go. The northern border with Turkey is sealed, displacement camps are already overwhelmed and hostile forces, including unbowed IS militants, are poised to move in and exploit the chaos.

Here's a look at the refugee crisis in northeastern Syria amid fears it will dramatically worsen.

FROM ONE WAR TO ANOTHER

Syrian government forces largely withdrew from the northeast after the civil war erupted in 2011 to focus on other parts of the country. That allowed the Kurdish minority to carve out an autonomous region that welcomed refugees from the fighting in other parts of the country, including Christians and other religious minorities.

But the Islamic State group swept in starting in 2013 and eventually conquered most of the area, establishing the capital of its self-styled caliphate in the northeastern city of Raqqa. Tens of thousands of people fled the fighting and the group's brutal rule, which was marked by massacres, public beheadings and other atrocities.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces launched a counteroffensive after nearly being wiped out in the northeastern border town of Kobane. With close U.S. military support, they gradually retook nearly all of northeastern Syria from the extremists, including Raqqa. But victory came at a staggering cost, with tens of thousands killed and entire neighborhoods and towns left in ruins. Much of Raqqa was destroyed, and the city is still littered with undetonated explosive devices.

Now the Kurdish fighters are racing to the front lines once again, this time to fight Turkey, which considers them terrorists because of their links to the Kurdish insurgency inside its borders.

Turkey has vowed to carve out a "safe zone" along the border extending 30 kilometers (20 miles) into Syria, where it plans to resettle some of the more than 3.5 million Syrian refugees it is hosting. But the offensive itself could generate a whole new wave of displacement.

"Hundreds of thousands of civilians in northern Syria are now in harm's way," said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. "Civilians and civilian infrastructure must not be a target."

FEW PLACES LEFT TO GO

As Turkey began launching airstrikes and artillery barrages along the border, lines of cars, trucks and motorized rickshaws could be seen racing down the main roads, loaded with families who had hastily packed their belongings into duffel bags and plastic sacks. The Norwegian Refugee Council estimates that some 450,000 people live within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the border, including 90,000 who have already fled the civil war at least once.

The International Rescue Committee, another aid group that works in the region, says the fighting could displace up to 300,000 people, and that even a limited military operation could drive 60,000 from the border area. "Many of these people have already been displaced multiple times and suffered horribly under the brutal rule of (IS), only to be facing yet another crisis," it said.

There are few places left to run.

To the north, Turkey has largely sealed its border in recent years and no longer accepts refugees. To the east is Iraq, which is already hosting 250,000 Syrian refugees, 90,000 of them in camps that rely on international aid, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council. To the west is territory held by Syrian government forces and their Russian and Iranian allies. Refugees who have fled from government-held areas have been slow to return, fearing arrest or violent reprisal.

That leaves the south, which is dotted with devastated towns and cities, and camps that are already home to more than 108,000 displaced people.

"People living in displacement camps in northeast Syria are extremely vulnerable," said Karl Schembri of the Norwegian Refugee Council. "They live in overcrowded camps that are wholly reliant on assistance provided by aid agencies who are struggling to meet the needs."

The region has also seen a wave of attacks by IS remnants. Syrian Kurdish forces are holding thousands of IS fighters, including many foreigners, but say they may not be able to maintain their detention centers in the face of the Turkish onslaught. The escape of even a small number of those fighters could hasten another resurrection of the extremist group, which in different forms has survived past setbacks dating back to the U.S. war in Iraq.

A PROLONGED CONFLICT

Turkey has been threatening a massive operation for months but had been restrained in part by U.S. opposition to any assault on Washington's Kurdish allies. Those concerns appear to have evaporated over the weekend, when President Donald Trump, saying he wanted out of America's "stupid endless wars," gave a green light to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and began pulling back from border posts some of the more than 1,000 U.S. troops based in northeastern Syria as part of the fight against IS.

That decision has been widely condemned by Democrats and many Republicans, including some close Trump allies. The mercurial Trump has reversed himself on Syria before and may intervene to try and stop the operation if the violence escalates. But it's also possible that Turkey will try to eliminate the SDF once and for all, bringing the fighting deep inside Syria.

Waiting in the wings are forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has repeatedly vowed to bring the entire country back under his control.

___

Krauss reported from Ramallah, West Bank.

Turkey presses Syrian assault as thousands flee the fighting

By LEFTERIS PITARAKIS and MEHMET GUZEL | Published October 10, 2019 12:40 PM ET | AP | Posted October 10, 2019 1:35 PM ET |

AKCAKALE, Turkey (AP) — Turkey pressed its assault against U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northern Syria on Thursday for a second day, pounding the region with airstrikes and an artillery bombardment that raised columns of black smoke in a border town and sent panicked civilians scrambling to get out.

Residents fled with their belongings loaded into cars, pickup trucks and motorcycle rickshaws, while others escaped on foot. The U.N. refugee agency said tens of thousands were on the move, and aid agencies warned that nearly a half-million people near the border were at risk.

It was a wrenchingly familiar scene for many who had fled the militants of the Islamic State group only a few years ago.

The Turkish air and ground assault was launched three days after U.S. President Donald Trump opened the way by pulling American troops from their positions near the border alongside their Kurdish allies.

At a time when Trump faces an impeachment inquiry, the move drew swift criticism from Republicans and Democrats in Congress, along with many national defense experts, who say it has endangered not only the Kurds and regional stability but U.S. credibility as well. The Syrian Kurdish militia was the only U.S. ally in the campaign that brought down the Islamic State group in Syria.

Trump warned Turkey for moderation during its assault and safeguard civilians. But the opening barrage showed little sign of holding back: The Turkish Defense Military said its jets and artillery had struck 181 targets so far.

More than a dozen columns of thick smoke rose in and around the town of Tel Abyad, one of the offensive's first main targets. Turkish officials said the Kurdish militia has fired dozens of mortars into Turkish border towns the past two days, including Akcakale.

Turkish officials in two border provinces said mortar fire from Syria killed at least six civilians, including a 9-month-old boy and three girls under 15. On the Syrian side, seven civilians and eight Kurdish fighters have been killed since the operation began, according to activists in Syria.

A Kurdish-led group and Syrian activists said that despite the bombardment, Turkish troops had not made much progress on several fronts they had opened. But their claims could not be independently verified.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said 109 "terrorists" were killed in the offensive, a reference to the Syrian Kurdish fighters. He did not elaborate, and reports from the area did not indicate anything remotely close to such a large number of casualties.

Erdogan also warned the European Union not to call Ankara's incursion into Syria an "invasion." He threatened, as he has in the past, to "open the gates" and let Syrian refugees flood into Europe.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the military intends to move 30 kilometers (19 miles) into northern Syria and that its operation will last until all "terrorists are neutralized."

Meanwhile, the Kurdish forces halted all operations against IS in order to focus on fighting Turkish troops, Kurdish and U.S. officials said.

The Syrian Kurdish fighters, along with U.S. troops, have been involved in mopping-up operations against IS fighters still holed up in the desert after their territorial hold was toppled earlier this year.

Ankara considers members of the Kurdish militia to be "terrorists" because of their links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which has led an insurgency against Turkey for 35 years. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people. The U.S. and other Western countries also consider the PKK a terrorist group.

Turkey, a NATO member, considers its operations against the Kurdish militia in Syria a matter of its own survival, and it also insists it won't tolerate the virtual self-rule that the Kurds succeeded in carving out in northern Syria along the border.

The Turkish assault aims to carve out a corridor of control along the length of the border — a so-called "safe zone" — clearing out the Kurdish militia. Such a zone would end the Kurds' autonomy in the area and put much of their population under Turkish control.

Ankara has said it aims to settle 2 million Syrian refugees, who are mainly Arabs, in the zone.

Turkey began its offensive in northern Syria on Wednesday with airstrikes and artillery shelling, and then ground troops crossed the border later in the day.

Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said their fighters have repelled Turkish forces ground attacks.

"No advance as of now," he tweeted Thursday.

But Maj. Youssef Hammoud, a spokesman for Turkish-backed opposition fighters participating in the operation, said they captured the village of Yabisa, near Tal Abyad, a spokesman for the fighters said. In a tweet, he called it "the first village to win freedom."

Turkey's state-run news agency said the allied Syrian fighters had cleared and entered a second village, Tel Fander, but provided no details. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Turkish commandos entered the village of Beir Asheq.

The Observatory said more than 60,000 people have fled their homes since Wednesday, while the UNHCR estimated it at tens of thousands. It called on parties to adhere to International Humanitarian Law, including providing access for aid agencies.

International aid agencies warned of an escalating humanitarian crisis, saying that civilians were at risk "as violence escalates."

The statement was co-signed by 14 organizations, including Doctors of the World and Oxfam, saying an estimated 450,000 people live within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the border with Turkey "and are at risk if all sides do not exercise maximum restraint and prioritize the protection of civilians."

There already are more than 90,000 internally displaced people in the region, it said, with camps and detention centers holding tens of thousands of fighters with families.

Trump's decision marked a stark change in his rhetoric. Last year, he vowed to stand by the Kurds, saying they "fought with us" and "died with us," and insisted America would never forget.

On Wednesday, Trump called Turkey's operation "a bad idea," but also said he didn't want the U.S. to be involved in "endless, senseless wars."

The U.N. Security Council scheduled closed consultations Thursday at the request of the five European council nations — the U.K., France, Germany, Belgium and Poland.

The campaign drew criticism and calls for restraint.

Australia expressed concerns it could lead to a resurgence of the Islamic State group. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he had contacted the Turkish and U.S. governments overnight and said he was worried about the situation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned Turkey's actions and warned of an "ethnic cleansing" against the Kurds. He said Israel is prepared to extend humanitarian assistance to the "gallant Kurdish people."

Two British militants believed to be part of an Islamic State cell that beheaded hostages have been moved out of a detention center in Syria and were in U.S. custody, and they will be handed over to Iraqi authorities.

The two are part of nearly 50 IS members to be handed over by Friday, according to two Iraqi intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

The two, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Amon Kotey, along with other British jihadis allegedly made up the IS cell that was nicknamed "The Beatles" by surviving captives because of their English accents. In 2014 and 2015, the militants held more than 20 Western hostages in Syria and tortured many of them.

The group beheaded seven American, British and Japanese journalists and aid workers and a group of Syrian soldiers, boasting of the butchery in videos posted online.

Kurdish forces are holding more than 10,000 IS members. Those include some 2,000 foreigners, including about 800 Europeans.

____

Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, Zeynep Bilginsoy in Istanbul, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed.

[deltaengineering]

Winter Anime 2019 Part 4: That’s all, folks.

Over already? This is a pretty thin season with not a lot of shows, so it’s not that surprising that there’s not many good ones either. Still, a weak showing. Oh well, let’s get it over with. There were a few decent ones in the last batch.

Circlet Princess

What: Dimwitted schoolgirl is good at some vaguely defined virtual fighting sport, changes school based on it, finds out relevant club has been abolished. Forecast says: 5 member plot incoming.

❌ I think it’s already clear this show isn’t very ambitious, and not very well written either. A game adaptation at its laziest.

❌❌ Man, this girl is STUPID. What the hell.

❌ The rest of the cast are less stupid (which isn’t hard), but that just means they’re so forgettable they might as well not exist.

❌❌ It looks cheap, and by that I mean really really cheap. The character design is ISO standard anime and it’s mostly on model, but that’s as good as it gets. The animation just sucks. That’s a death sentence for an action/sports show with terrible characters.

Bermuda Triangle - Colorful Pastrale

What: Japanese Spongebob, as in cute mermaids. Doing things optional.

❌ To make this quick, this is almost exactly Pastel Memories, only every problem is just a little less extreme. It has fewer characters, it’s looking slightly better, there’s a tiny bit more going on, the setting is mildly more interesting. That still means it is:

❌❌ 1. A boring mess in which a handful of samey girls do nothing of much interest in a location that should be unique, but isn’t.

❌❌ 2. Conspicuously cheap. It even has the same sightline problems.

❌❌ 3. Featuring a character model sheet that is “off” even under the best circumstances. This time due to the very offputting decision to give everyone blobby triangular irises.

❌❌ Unlike Pastel Memories (which was an ad for a mobile game) this is an anime original, so it really has no excuse being this lame.

♎ I find it amusing that Pastel Palettes are providing the OP for an anime, and it’s not the one currently airing that they’re actually characters in.

Endro~!

What: Kiraralike comedy thing in a generic JRPG setting.

♎ Namori character designs, so it’s like Spyce in that it just seems like the Yuru Yuri cast cosplaying a genre. But hey, Namori character designs do look good.

❌ I’m not as done with generic JRPG settings as with generic isekai settings, but it’s still a real problem since the former is now a subset of the latter. Mildly making fun of it does not improve things much either.

✅ The tone is cutesy and pleasant. I find this much preferable to something like Mahoujin Guru Guru, which is pretty much the same thing but with abrasive, high-intensity slapstick instead.

✅ It’s backing that up with generally high-quality, agreeable pastel looks.

❌ Not being annoying is a start, but beyond that this seems very middle of the road and predictable. I don’t get much out of the genre “parody” and simply being cute is still not an unique selling point in anime.

Grimms Notes The Animation

What: Did someone say JRPG? This is a mobile one, vaguely based on fairy tales as the title implies.

✅ This universe runs on the idea that every NPC’s fate is controlled by a preset story they’re aware of. You could make a good story about that if you took it seriously. It even does that somewhat, but only to the degree that you’d expect from a throwaway sidequest in a moderately well-written JRPG.

❌ And the reason for that is that it has to make room for being a JRPG, of course. Read: It’s irritatingly mechanics- and combat-focused. Stuff like the characters changing form when in fights just seems overly complicated and adds nothing.

❌ Said combat looks competent, but not good enough to make up for detracting from what could have been an interesting setting. Merc Storia did this aspect far better (by usually not doing it at all).

❌ So it ends up being better than expected, but then that only amounts to a disappointment.

Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai / Kaguya-sama: Love Is War

What: Kaguya and Miyuki are in the student council of a prestigious school and HATE HATE HATE each other. Specifically, they hate the part where the other one won’t just finally admit their love.

✅ The joke here is that it’s operating on full intensity at all times, over the most simple matters. It’s pretty much Kaiji, only about dating - complete with hammy narrator. This is another one of those shows where I can’t say with certainty that it’s solid, but I had a blast during the first episode.

✅ Regarding Quintuplets, I made it clear that I love me some sparks in my romantic comedies. It doesn’t get much more explosive than this.

✅ The characters are comparable to Quints too: Smart scheming upstart vs. rich scheming ojou, with a simpleminded girl in the middle that ends up winning more often than not simply by not overdoing it.

✅ The visuals are just as over the top as the proceedings depicted. Occasionally a filter massacre, but mostly cool.

♎ The long-term viability of this show depend entirely on whether they can consistently come up with scenarios that work, which isn’t a given. Also, this is so intense it might become tiresome - I already felt some fatigue towards the end of the first episode. We’ll see, I guess.

Kakegurui ××

What: Some weirdos think they can crash the party at Hyakkaou with an intent to scare the daylights out of Yumeko and Midari, of all people. Let’s just say they were not as prepared as they thought.

✅ As you might have guessed by me watching the sequel, I liked Kakegurui. It has its problems, but if you’re down for some crazypants madness, this show delivers.

✅ This is one of the better episodes of it too, because it gets right into it and the game they play is dead simple. Kakegurui was never about smart moves or strong characters, so not having anything detract from our girls deriving the entirely wrong sort of pleasure from danger is a plus.

♎ Sadly, the OP is a step down (though still great) and the ED is simply an inferior, overcomplicated version of the magnificent original one. They seem to know this too, because they play the OP cut of Deal with the Devil in its entirety for a montage. The rest of the production is on par with the original though, so it’s fiiiine. Oh well.

❌ It got Netflix’d again and the subs situation is dire. Since this is one I actually like, I might have to wait for the official release.

Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai / The Magnificent Kotobuki

What: Piston-engined fighter plane pornography.

✅ This delivers where Girly Air Force failed: Close to zero exposition, the majority of the episode is just planes dogfighting with barely any talking either. And that part is executed really well. I think the plane startup sequence alone is as long as the total of Girly’s airtime.

✅ Guess what, it’s Tsutomu Mizushima, previously known for unbridled panzer (und girls) pornography, and boy can you tell. However, this cuts out a lot of GuP’s bullshit: A plane doesn’t have the cast of K-ON in it, it’s not over-the-top zany, and whatever this universe is, it can’t be as insipid as GuP’s. The classy milwank exists you guys, we found it.

✅✅ The music really helps here, sky pirates vs zeppelins just wouldn’t work without some classic swashbuckling orchestra background. Fat sound mixing on the dakka too. It’s great.

♎ Can’t really say much about the narrative because we kinda skipped that in this episode aside from the obvious, but Mizushima’s Shirobako collaborator Michiko Yokote is writing it, and that’s a good sign.

❌ Now we’re getting to the elephant in the room though: There’s no way the planes wouldn’t be CG in 2019, but the characters are CG too, and their animation is mediocre. Also, they did the KADO thing where they 2D-animated the side characters that aren’t important enough to model. This has the funny side effect that you can tell who’s going to die real soon by them looking better. It’s far from great, but probably a worthy tradeoff if the mechanical side is this extensive and also delivers.

✅ This is definitely not for everyone, since you have to have more than a casual appreciation for those magnificent girls in their flying machines. I do, though.

revisions

What: A chunk of Shibuya gets teleported to the dystopian future, local doomsday prepper gets handed a large robot because he’s special.

❌ A Goro Taniguchi joint being a poorly conceived scifi mess? Say it ain’t so! I especially dig the tryhard English jargon (mecha: “String Puppet”, monsters faction: “Revisions”, particular monster, I think?: “Civilian”, tacticool operetah: “Balancer”).

❌ Works very hard to characterize the main character, to the detriment of everyone else. A for effort, but you made an unlikeable asshole though.

❌ This is another full CG show, with the quality of the animation being curiously variable. Sometimes it’s well above average and sometimes it’s painful. There doesn’t seem to be much method to it.

✅ Tries to establish stakes by being mondo edgy and graphically murderizing some poor bystanders. It’s adorable.

❌ If you’re really jonesing for some mecha, you can watch all of this on Netflix right now. It’s not like you have any alte- wait, Egao no Daika has mecha too. Well there you go then. That’s a better show.

[brownada311]

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Jul 18, 2018  Well, many Mac users have discovered that Telnet has been removed from modern versions of system software, including macOS Mojave and macOS High Sierra. Presumably this is to encourage using the ssh client instead, but there are many. I simply use the built in terminal app. It might be that the mgmt timeout on the switch is set to a low rate. Check your switch's running config for loginsession timeout. Download Telnet for macOS 10.9 or later and enjoy it on your Mac. ‎Mocha Telnet provides access to a Linux/UNIX Telnet Server. You can connect to a Telnet Server and run applications in a. If you need additional options, please use telnet --help to get a list of the available parameters the command can receive. Working on MAC to manage your online presence should be a no-brainer if you partner with the right host. Telnet app for mac.

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[orbemnews]

How a Chinese website for pirated TV shows became a cultural touchstone for millennials But the site — one of China’s largest, longest-running and last-remaining destinations for pirated, subtitled foreign content — was shuttered on February 3 as part of a sweeping police clampdown on piracy. While the website is still live, none of its services work anymore. “I was heartbroken when I found out,” Liang told CNN Business. “I feel like there is one place fewer in China through which we can expand our horizons.” Police in Shanghai arrested 14 people they claim ran the website and app after a three-month investigation into suspected intellectual property infringement. At the time of its closure, Renren Yingshi had amassed over eight million registered users and was home to more than 20,000 pirated TV shows and movies. The site’s operators made some 16 million yuan ($2.5 million) in the past couple of years from ads, subscription fees, and selling hard drives loaded with pirated content, according to police. Renren Yingshi did not respond to a request for comment from CNN Business. The crackdown was lauded by state media and intellectual property experts as a sign of China’s resolve to enforce copyright protection — criticism over which has dogged Beijing for years. But it also drew a wave of backlash from fans who, like Liang, had long relied on the site for uncensored foreign content. An outpouring of support for Renren Yingshi dominated China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform in the days after the crackdown. Some thanked the site for “opening a door for us to the world.” The public outcry came, at least in part, because of how tightly the Chinese government restricts access to foreign content. It is one of only four countries or regions, alongside North Korea, Syria and Crimea, that doesn’t allow access to Netflix, the world’s most-popular streaming platform, for example. China also strictly limits how many foreign films can be screened in cinemas each year. And of the content that is allowed to air in the country, much is heavily censored. For Chinese millennials, watching foreign shows and movies is not only a favorite pastime — it’s an opportunity to learn about the world. And many of them say the roadblocks imposed by the Chinese government leave them with little choice but to turn to pirated websites, even though they are willing to pay for legitimate access to uncensored, foreign content. While the demise of Renren Yingshi and the country’s censorship crackdown suggests the status quo might not change, the reaction to its closure and the popularity of uncensored work shows that there remains a huge appetite for such content within China. Strict censorship rules Founded in 2003 by a group of Chinese students in Canada, Renren Yingshi — a phrase that means “everyone’s film and TV” — was born out of a desire to spread foreign TV shows and movies more widely within China. Young, internet-savvy Chinese were drawn to foreign content as China reformed its economy and opened up to the world. They found that such films and shows offered an edgier, more diverse alternative to the heavily censored content produced at home — as well as a way to learn about other cultures and societies. Getting access to that kind of content through legitimate means, though, is difficult in China. Since the early 1990s, authorities have allowed just a few dozen foreign films to be screened in the country each year — only nine of the 26 Oscar best picture winners were screened publicly in China from 1994 to 2019, for example. International streaming services, including Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, have also been unable to crack the market. Netflix, for example, told shareholders in 2016 that the “regulatory environment for foreign digital content services” was “challenging” in China. A subsequent attempt to partner with a local company to distribute content failed. The content that is allowed to air in China, meanwhile, needs to meet strict guidelines. Movies or shows with controversial themes — such as those that depict China in a bad light, portray taboo subjects like the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, or feature LGBTQ storylines — are kept out entirely. And since China lacks a film rating system, any content approved by Chinese regulators is heavily edited to remove certain scenes, such as graphic sex or violence. When the Oscar-winning Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” was released in China in 2019, for example, any mention of the Queen singer’s sexuality — as well as his AIDS diagnosis — was edited out. And the American blockbuster fantasy drama “Game of Thrones,” which built its popularity on graphic sex and violence, was censored so heavily on Chinese streaming giant Tencent Video that some viewers complained that it was turned into a staid “medieval European castle documentary.” “There were too many ‘sensitive’ scenes deleted that I could hardly understand the plot anymore — it was so confusing,” said a fan of the show who watched on Tencent Video. The fan asked to remain anonymous because she once helped translate shows for a website that featured pirated content, and she also spoke to CNN Business about that experience. There’s little indication that these rules may change. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, tolerance for foreign ideas and values has declined drastically. Popular Western culture is seen by Beijing as a key risk for foreign infiltration that targets Chinese youth — making such content important for the government to control. A long history of legal issues The sweeping restrictions have motivated fans of shows and movies that run afoul of censorship rules to subtitle them in Chinese and upload unauthorized copies online. They operate in loose networks of volunteer translators known as fansub groups. Renren Yingshi was among the largest of these networks, exploding in popularity as American series like “Prison Break,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “Gossip Girl” became smash hits in China. Long before the latest crackdown, Renren Yingshi was running into trouble with authorities. In 2009, it was one of more than 100 Chinese websites shut down for “rectification” after the government issued rules that banned the dissemination of unapproved movies and TV shows on the Chinese internet. At the time, Renren Yingshi vowed to give up its video downloading service, and in 2010 pivoted to translating open online courses offered by American universities. The strategy won the blessing of Chinese state media, which heralded the website as “a knowledge evangelist in the internet age.” That love-in didn’t last. The website eventually resumed offering pirated shows, and its servers were shut down by Chinese regulators in 2014, not long after the Motion Picture Association of America included Renren Yingshi on a list of pirate sites. It eventually popped back up, and at one point even moved its servers to South Korea for a time as it continued to look for ways to stay operational. Ultimately, Renren Yingshi’s interest in making money might have led to its downfall. While it began as a volunteer endeavor, Renren Yingshi eventually started accepting advertisements on videos, and charged members to view its content. “According to Chinese law, if copyright infringement was conducted for the purpose of making a profit, it is very easy to constitute a crime,” said Xu Xinming, an intellectual property lawyer at Beijing Mingtai Law Firm. Xu noted that in China, a business needs to make just a few thousand dollars in order to run afoul of copyright crime laws — well short of the millions police claim Renren Yingshi raked in. It’s not surprising, Xu says, that Beijing would want to go so hard against a platform with such a high profile. The government has worked harder over the last decade to address infringement, especially given Western accusations that copyright abuse runs rampant in the country. In 2020 alone, Chinese authorities shut down more than 2,800 websites and apps offering pirated content and deleted 3.2 million links, according to the most recent data available from the National Copyright Administration of China. ‘Using my love to generate power’ It’s not clear when the case may be resolved, though copyright infringement results in a punishment of up to seven years in prison, depending on the severity of the violation. Police in Shanghai did not respond to a request from CNN Business for more information on the case. No matter what happens to Renren Yingshi, though, it leaves behind a vast legacy of cultural exchange. “Many friends around me have grown up watching American series. They gave us a lot of extra parameters in our way of thinking,” said Lin, the Game of Thrones fan. She said she volunteered for a fansub group in high school called “Garden of Eden.” “If you’ve had so much exposure to different cultures, races and people from different backgrounds since a young age … it is easier for you to be able to see things from another perspective.” She said she was “using my love to generate power” — a phrase commonly cited by volunteers who want to emphasize that they are motivated by their passion for the shows, and not money. The translation work wasn’t easy, Lin said. “Every Friday, when the latest episode came out, the timer was on,” said Lin, who translated episodes of the American supernatural teen drama “The Vampire Diaries,” as well as sitcoms “The Big Bang Theory” and “Two Broke Girls.” Someone in the United States or Canada would record the show and send it along with English subtitles. Teams would then divide the episode into 10-minute segments and assign them to translators. “There was a lot of stuff I needed to look up,” said Lin, adding that it took her about two hours to translate 10 minutes of video. “Sometimes the characters would tell a joke that I couldn’t get, and I had to search for it online.” “It was difficult because I had to use [Chinese search engine] Baidu within the Great Firewall,” she said, referring to the government’s sprawling internet censorship apparatus. The work of fansub volunteers has effectively acted as a fourth wave of “translation activity that has had a huge impact on Chinese culture,” wrote Yan Feng, a professor of Chinese language and literature at Fudan University in Shanghai, in a widely shared Weibo post on February 3. By comparison, Yan said the other three major waves included the translation of Buddhist texts in ancient China, the translation of Western literature and social science works during the late Qing dynasty, and the translation of modern works on humanities and social sciences after the Cultural Revolution. For many Chinese millennials, fansub work is also a way to learn about the world. Many groups don’t just do translation work — they also add footnotes explaining background and context for certain dialogue to help Chinese audiences better understand historic, political or cultural references. “I think it’s a good thing for a child to be exposed to different cultures and different ways of thinking growing up,” said Joy Tian, a 23-year-old English teacher in Beijing. She said she was struck by the individualistic values at the center of many Western series and films, having grown up in a culture that emphasizes collectivism. “It helps promote diversity of thought,” she added. Xu, the Beijing-based lawyer, said it is up to the public to “do some self-reflection” following the crackdown on Renren Yingshi. “There’s no free lunch in this world, and they shouldn’t download or stream pirate films and TV shows anymore,” he said. But Tian stressed that she’d be willing to pay for the shows if they were uncensored. After all, she has paid for licensed American shows on legitimate Chinese streaming sites before — but she couldn’t get past all of the editing. Even Xu said that Chinese fans will likely continue to be tempted to watch pirated shows. People who watch such content and don’t profit off of it have not, traditionally, been punished in China. And if the government doesn’t ease up on its rules on content, the demand won’t go away. “This is indeed a problem. And as the government steps up its crackdown on copyright infringement, this problem will only become more acute,” Xu said. “With pirated access cut off, [the government and companies] should compensate by broadening legal access.” Source link Orbem News #Chinese #Cultural #Millennials #pirated #Shows #touchstone #website

[ecsundance]

A very Long (yet very awesome) Week of Sundance

Organisers of Sundance say in Tryon’s discussion that “If a filmmaker wants to create his or her own idiosyncratic vision, it’s often not worth looking around for a big budget, waiting for others to say it’s okay to make it.  You have to stand up and make the film yourself…” (pg.164) and Kevin MacDonald in Tryon’s discussion talks about how basically all you need to make a movie is a laptop and a video camera, and how amazing it is that we live in a time which we can do this (pg.156)

This is similar to the idea that you can complain about not having enough time or experience to do something, but if you get over yourself and do it either you fail and learn, or you succeed and gain confidence.  If you have a great idea then nothing should hold you back from making it a reality.  Movies with billions of dollars behind them have fallen flat.  So it stands to reason that a movie made on weekends with only a couple bucks could be amazing.

According to Chuck Tryon’s discussion of “Reinvented Festivals” (pg. 160), because there are a lot more independent bloggers/critics now due to newspapers not hiring many, there is a consistent stream of new reviews being released even minutes after a film finishes premiering.  

Taking part in this class and festival and constantly thinking about what I thought about a film plays into this as I (along with my classmates) were some of the first to review some of these films.  It’s such a fun experience to think and talk about film as everyone will have various ways of perceiving and connecting to each film.

Favourite Film From the Festival

It feels hard to choose a favourite because there were so many incredible films which affected me in different ways like Coda, How it Ends, Flee, and honestly most of the films I saw in this year's festival . However, I fell in love with The World to Come when it wasn’t even a movie I initially planned on seeing.

The world to come felt like a poem. It made my heart ache deeply, marinating in feelings of melancholic love, and unexpected loss. Maybe it hit me especially hard because I lost one of the most amazing people I’ve ever had in my life along with family and pets (since they are family too) since the start of Covid: I have regrets and things I never got to say.  Maybe it’s because I’m fiercely fighting with my own identities right now.�� Either way, it was hard to watch.  Parts of it still haunt me and still leave me breathless on the brink of tears.  It struck a chord in me which I have a hard time fully putting to words.  I didn’t originally even want to watch this film, it somehow ended up on my list of on demand films, and my mom convinced me to watch it (and I’m so glad she did).

It is a story which about two women which takes place in the 1800s, together in their loneliness who fall for each other behind their husbands’ backs.  They secretly rendezvous in the forest and tucked away corners of their homes when their husband’s are working.  It is beautiful in story and dialogue; it doesn’t get stale.  It feels modern somehow, though it is set in the 19th century, and I’m still processing it all to figure out why exactly.

Least Favorite Film from the Festival...

Eight for Silver by Sean Ellis wasn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but it was certainly not the best;  I would not actively choose to watch this again.  It had interesting concepts such as only natural lighting being used throughout the film and those turned into the werewolf emerging, negatively changed, from the dead animal.  The movie would have gotten 4 stars rather than 3 from me simply by not having a CGI werewolf (unless it was so brilliantly terrifying and amazing it had to be shown) and by keeping the original plot of the Roma’s spells/curses (fueled from the massacre which the targeted village caused).  The scarecrow and buried teeth, and the strange dreams which followed were such a great piece, but they just fell away more and more.  The addition of the religious text (which mentions 30 pieces of silver is unnecessary, and just recycles old vampire movies/myth ) took this film from a great timepiece and cheapened it in combination with the subpar CGI creature, while also making it feel far too Hollywood in a bad way.  Again, some of the ideas, like the person within the wolf were great, but they could have kept it that way and not shown the monster otherwise.  

A list of All Feature Films I Saw:

During the 2021 Sundance film festival I have seen and rated the following:

Coda ***** Sian Heder

The story of a teenage hearing girl who wants to be a singer living with her otherwise deaf family who run a fishing boat.

Cryptozoo **** Dash Shaw

A woman’s attempt to protect mythical creatures in a world where everyone wants to harm them or use them as weapons.

Misha and the wolves ***** Sam Hobkinson

A chilling documentary about holocaust tale with a twist.

Users **** Natalia Amada

A mother’s view of the world, global warming, technology, her children and the relationship between all of this. 

Prisoners of Ghostland **** Sion Sono

Samurai meets the gunslinger Western World in this colourful action-horror (featuring Nicholas Cage). 

Censor **** Prano Bailey-Bond

The story of a woman whose sister disappeared as a child and how her job as a horror film censor helps her uncover the truth.

How it ends ***** Daryl Wein, Zoe Lister-Jones

A walk through the last day on Earth with a woman and her younger self as they make peace with their lives, relationships with others, and their own inner selves.

Strawberry Mansion ***** Dan Deacon

A dreamy/nightmarish surreal tale of a dream tax collector as he falls in love with the younger version of his client.

Cusp ***** Isabel Bethencourt, Parker Hill

A documentary on the lives of teen girls in Texas which delves into rape culture, poverty, and what it’s like to be a young woman.  

Eight for Silver *** Sean Ellis

Werewolf lore set in the 19th century. 

John and the Hole **** Pascual Sisto

A young teenage boy puts his family in a hole in the woods as he tries to deal with the stressors of being a kid and what adulthood holds, entwined with fable. 

R#J ***** Carey Williams 

A modern retelling of Shakespear’s Romeo and Juliet through the age of social media, with a twist or two.

Coming Home in the Dark ***** James Ashcroft

A horror story of  a family who are abducted by two strangers who they later learn they share a deeper, darker history with. 

We’re All Going to The World’s Fair **** Jane Schoenbrun

A showing of loneliness and desperation through an online roleplaying game and it’s after effects.

First Date **** Manuel Crosby, Darren Knapp

A story of a first date gone VERY wrong.

The World to Come ***** Mona Fastvold

A 19th century story of the growing connection between two farmhouse wives.

Violation ***** Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli

A film about a woman’s trauma and how she… Deals with it.

Marvelous and the Black Hole ***** Kate Tsang

A story about how a young teen girl gets through the loss of her mother through forming a connection with a local magician.

The Blazing World ***** Carlson Young 

A traumatised young woman tries to bring her sister back from “the other side” but must really fight her own inner demons.

Mayday ***** Karen Cinorre

A story of a young woman overcoming trauma and fighting back against the man in a dreamlike state.

Night of the Kings **** Philippe Lacote 

A new storyteller is anointed in a prison run by its inmates and he must keep telling these stories until the moon sets to stay alive. (It helps to understand the specific culture more with this one, otherwise it sort of goes over your head.)

Life in a Day 2021 ***** Kavin Macdonald

A grounding compilation of scenes from across the world on the same day, July 25th, with scenes one after the other which either connect or contrasted in an impactful way.

Flee ***** Jonas Poher Rasmussen

A biography told through animation of a young gay immigrant. 

Short Films

Bj’s Mobile Gift Shop- Jason Park

A story of a young guy in Chicago who makes money to support himself and his grandparents by running a mobile gift shop out of a large suitcase.

Flex - Josefin Malmen, David Strindberg

A visual telling of a bodybuilder rubber-banding between insecurity and self obsession through surreal imagery and dialogue. 

The Affected- Rikke Gregersen

A retelling of a college student preventing the deportation of a man back to Afghanistan through the interactions of the bystanders.  

You Wouldn’t Understand- Trish Harnetiaux

A time-warp involving a picnic, a strange character looking for “horsey sauce” and a grocery store clerk armed with a food scanner.

Animations

Ghost Dogs- Joe Cappa 

A family's new dog is “haunted” by the family’s many deceased dogs in squishy colourful 90s/early 2000s style animated short. 

GNT- Sara Hirner, Rosemary Vasquez-Brown 

A woman obsessed with social media tries to make yeast infections popular.

Trepanation- Nick Flaherty

A showing of depression through a disturbing hole ridden entity emerging from a hole and taking the place of the house's owner. 

Little Miss Fate- Joder Von Rotz

A cleaning bird interrupts the fate of a couple going out on a date, leading to disastrous consequences.

Indie Series

I had really wanted to see Seeds of Deceit by Miriam Guttman and Would you Rather by Lise Akoka, (I tried viewing 4 Feet High by María Belén Poncio and Rosario Perazolo Masjoan but there was an issue which Sundance staff never got back to me about, sadly) but I ran out of time.  

However, I did see These Days by Adam Brookes which takes place in New York City during Covid, showing a young woman living alone and how she survives living alone and being unable to work as a dancer.  

New Frontier Experiences

Sadly, I kept thinking I’d have endless time.  I did not engage in the New Frontier experience except for in class on one occasion.  I think it was a great idea and fantastic opportunity and I regret not planning my time better for this specifically.

Talks or Events 

Ignite x Adobe featured shorts films from artists aged 18 to 25 and was very inspiring since I’m in the age range of these artists. 

A few I especially enjoyed were Vigincita, Personals, and Joychild (Although I honestly enjoyed the whole compilation).

Virgincita - A sexual coming of age/ look at mother daughter relationship mixed with religion.

Personals - A sexual encounter between two insecure individuals who find comfort with one another by the end.

Joychild - A documentary piece showing a child discovering and opening up about their gender identity. 

Q&As

I attended a few Q&As, but my favourite I believe was CODA’s.

They spoke about how they worked around language barriers and learned sign language before and throughout production.  Everyone just seemed at ease and like they had a great time in production of the film.

- - -

Overall, I’m quite pleased with how this festival went virtually.  It was a truly amazing experience which I am so glad I was able to take part in.  It was as Immersive an experience as I think could be created virtually and seemed to go relatively smoothly for the most part for having it be the first time this has happened.  

I’m also extremely grateful for the inclusivity which allowed for those who may not be able to travel as easily due to disability, financial reasons, or anything else.  I don’t know if I’d have been able to go otherwise.  

This experience was more amazing than I even hoped it would be.  I feel so inspired that I plan to find out how to submit to Sundance so that I can possibly try to get a short film idea I have done for the short film/18-25 year old category.  I feel like I can actually do this now and I have so many new ideas. 

Thank you!

Tryon, Chuck,

On-Demand Culture: Digital Delivery and the Future of Movies

,  Rutgers University Press, Copyright © 2013.

Mae McCloskey

[the-record-newspaper]

Wilkes woman a Holocaust survivor: Part II

       Dr. Zohara Boyd

By HEATHER DEAN

Record Reporter

For seven decades, "never forget" has been a rallying cry of the Holocaust remembrance movement. Worldwide, the estimated number of living Holocaust survivors has fallen to 400,000 many of them in their 80s and 90s.  

A survey released last Thursday on Holocaust Remembrance Day, found that many adults in the United States lack basic knowledge of what happened. In part they found:

*31 percent of Americans believe that two million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust; the actual number is around six million.

*41 percent of Americans cannot say what Auschwitz was.

*52 percent of Americans wrongly think Hitler came to power through force

During a recent visit to Dr. Rick Laws’GPS Program at the Ashe County Campus of Wilkes Community College, Dr. Zohara Boyd spoke about her Jewish family’s escape from the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII. Also speaking was Dr. Peter Petschauer, whose father was a journalist in the German SS.

"This is one of the things that people don't talk about, because we all want to believe in Happy Endings." Boyd says. "Especially in the United States every movie has to have a happy ending. In fact, many movies that are released in the U.S. have a completely different ending for those in the European market, that is perhaps, more realistic. Same with the war. People want to believe that if you have survived the war, you come out the other side as a saint the likes of Anne Frank or Elie Wiesel. But life goes on.  Crooks continue to pick pockets, memories are not very wonderful ones, and stuff stays with you. You wonder who your parents really were. I wonder what my parents really had to do to survive, and I will never have an answer to any of that. The whole issue of 'What Becomes of thesurvivors?", those surviving survival, especially those of us who flee and move to a completely different country, getting immersed in a completely different culture. Especially a place where, throughout all my childhood years, everyone looked at me and asked why I didn't smile more, because if you were a girl, they expected you to have that Miss America grin with bright sparkly teeth. You cannot say to anybody what is really going on inside, that by daylight you are one person, but at night it's like the proverbial vampire coming out."

          She said when the tornado came tearing through Wilkes in October, it turned over trees and crushed she and her husband's cars. They, along with their dog, hid in the closet. "Our house was shaking, and things were striking against it. And at the time, I'm not sure quite how to describe it, but I was too scared to be scared at the moment. But   since then, the bombs from Warsaw have come back. Those are the souvenirs that people like us carry. No matter how good things are."

         After the war her father became a judge again. She showed his diploma from where he had graduated law school. It had his real name, Moses, on it. Turns out, he carried that document throughout the war, and if that have been found on his person the gig would have been up for the entire family, and they would have all been executed on the spot. "There are things that you cherish so much, that are the core of your identity, that my father was willing to take that risk. To survive the war he had to change his identity several times. Your core can become a big hole as well. I don't know how exactly to describe that either, there is always a sense of being... an imposter in your own skin." Boyd said.

         "Scars are not always on the outside" she continued. "I ended up in a good place, but there will also always be those 3 a.m. holes in my body and soul. Take from that what you will, but the one thing I hope you do take is that you always have the choice, between trusting, and hating. I hope none of you in this classroom are filled with hate, or extremism and I hope that if you see it happening you will be on the trust side. Do not just walk away, or turn your head, especially that we are now living in times that have a huge Shadow over them."

         She specifically mentioned Charlottesville, Virginia, and the protests where white supremacists were giving Nazi salutes and carrying around Nazi swastikas. "I lived through a time where a nation's leader, to make himself look good, started shutting down the free press and..."

         At this point she got silent and was visibly became overwhelmed by the memories. Dr. Peter Petschauer stepped in. "Authoritarian personalities always have the same pattern. The pattern is so systematic and so specific that it is frightening."

         “In Germany the Judiciary System was first. Then they went after the press. In Russia right now, as well as in Turkey, journalists who don't report the approved propaganda, making the leaders look good, are being put in prison. Authoritarians go after a certain group. In Germany it was the Jews, in Turkey it's the Kurds, and in America right now it's the Spanish speaking people. In Russia it's people from the south."

         "The two of us, we are immigrants, but you can't tell by looking at us. What’s going on in America is not the first time that immigrants were rounded up in the country put on buses and shipped away."

         “Then there is a nationalistic aspect of it: The flag. In pictures of Hitler's Germany, you see the flags everywhere. There are so many flags that you almost can't see past them. Much like now in Turkey, in North Korea.”

         “There are also the military characteristics, as no authoritarian

goes without showing off the military force behind them, like having military parades. When you see these things creeping up, that's the point to start paying attention." Dr. Petschauer said.

         After the war Dr. Boyd’s family had to remain Catholic, because Poland was still a very anti-Semitic country. Even after the war there were massacres of Jewish death camp and war survivors in neighboring cities. Boyd said "I remember, we had to leave home in the middle of the night with only two suitcases, because my father was anti-communist and wrote a letter about it. And then someone else was brave enough to publish it. We headed for Paris, and spent two months there, before going to Canada."  

         She was 7 years old when they reached Canada, and she was put straight into a school where she did not even speak the language. It was called The Jewish people's School. "And what the hell is little Catholic Sophia doing in a Jewish school learning to read Hebrew, and changing her name to Zohara?" She mused. After all, being Catholic was all she had ever known to be.

         Even though Dr. Boyd's father was a judge, once they got to Canada he had to take whatever job was available, working two sometimes three jobs at once. She said one time he worked as a spot welder, even though he'd never held a welding torch in his life; He worked at a factory implanting hair into baby dolls heads; He had a job as a short order cook, even though his wife wouldn't let him in her kitchen at home. "He got quite good at cooking" Boyd recalled with a smile.  

         Finally when his English got better, he became a translator. He could speak several languages- German, Polish, Russian, even some Japanese, and he became head of translation Department for a magazine.

         Boyd said a reason that many Jewish immigrants are doctors is because the human anatomy is the same all over the world. "So if you've got to go on the run it's a perfect job. That and diamond cutting- because you can carry your workshop in your pocket. These have become considered very "Jewish" professions. So if you've ever wondered why it's Fiddler on the Roof, and not “Piano player on the roof”, there's your answer," she said.

         Eventually Dr. Boyd's aunt and uncle, who had been living in America since before the war broke out, were able to sponsor her family and move them into the U.S.             Dr. Petschauer also had family in the stateside, so he was able to immigrate to attend school. They both made the point that though sponsorship of immigrants through family members is something that the current administration is wanting to ban, immigration is vital to keep the American dream alive, and in cases like Boyd’s, who was a war refugee, save lives.

         As far as what pushed them forward, to over come the nightmares the difficulty, and to become as educated as possible, Dr. Petschauer smiled and borrowing a line from the Broadway musical Hamilton said   "Immigrants, we can do it.", to a room full of applause.

           Petschauer went on to say that people who are born in this country don't have to prove themselves to become successful. He said that as an immigrant you can't afford to be ‘just anybody on the job.’ That an American could go to a job and be lackadaisical about getting things done, but immigrants on the other hand, would be on the street without a second chance. “We as immigrants are forced to succeed,” he said.

         Boyd also said she would love to see everyone in America take a DNA test, because there is no such thing anymore as a pure race. Especially like the extremist flag waving men in Charlottesville.

         As far as keeping heritage alive, Petschauer said "It would be so nice to have a genuine discussion, and not an argument about what to do with our heritage. Do we leave statues up, or take them down? Do we erase names from inscriptions or leave them up?”

         In Germany every graveyard has lists of people who died, even from the war of 1877 against France. There are more monuments to remember the Holocaust in Germany, than anywhere else, even though there were no death camps in Germany. So what do we do with these war artifacts? There is a place for them; we just have to figure out where. This is not just a German or American lesson. These people died, so that we might not do this again. So we can turn this into a positive, not just a wrong or right," he said.

          If you have ever watched a documentary or done history on WWII, the majority of Holocaust videos and pictures are in black and white, so the extreme horror almost doesn't compute in our heads, as it is not in living color. But there have been artists going back and colorizing them to show the full brutality, and the outcome has been quite moving. Petschauer pointed out that we should learn from history that war is terrible, and not want to do this to our fellow man. But on the other hand, as Tevia would say, some people learn, especially those with authoritarian tendencies, that war is great, and want to use this against the human race.  For instance, Senator John McCain was tortured as a PoW serving in Vietnam, and has said he would stop any efforts to reintroduce torture or other harsh interrogation tactics. However, authoritarians are fine with torture because they will never personally be affected by it.

         On how we can be better humans, make a difference, and make a change toward trust not hate Dr. Petschauer said "Don't look away when you see something happening. You may see abuses on a smaller daily scale. Have the guts to say something, even though it's not so easy. Maybe it's a teacher who's done something wrong, a pastor who is stealing from the church, something unfair at your place of business. You may loose friends or your job, but you won't loose the most important thing: your humanity. One thing that bothers me the most is that we live in a Christian Nation, and people are behaving as if they've never heard of Christ, or things that Christ stood for.”                        Speaking of Christ, Dr. Boyd cut in "Her I am a Jewish lady quoting the New Testament like a good Baptist. On immigration laws, Jesus said "I was a stranger and you fed me" With healthcare, Jesus miracles took away sickness and pain and helped those with affliction. And welfare? Jesus fed the masses as he spoke."

         Boyd continued: "Elie Weisel said you don't have to do big global things to make a difference. There are people in nursing homes that never get a visitor. There are children in orphanages that never get to go out and play in a park or go out for ice cream. Go to the animal shelter and play with the shelter animals, so they can be sociable and adoptable. The next time a stranger comes up to you and asks you to spare a couple dollars, even if you know it's probably for alcohol or drugs, give it to them, because that is their need. Don't look away from them, look them in the eye, and acknowledge their humanity."

         "These may seem like small things in Greater scale of the universe, but Judaism doesn't believe in giant acts of faith for salvation. What we believe is in the day by day mending of the universe. It is everyone's job to mend the fabric between us and God that was torn during the first act of disobedience. Even though you think your stitches may be tiny, they help the fabric not to rip any further."

[nothingman]

From the start of his presidency, Donald Trump’s “war on terror” has entailed the seemingly indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people in the name of killing terrorists. In other words, Trump has escalated the 16-year-old core premise of America’s foreign policy — that it has the right to bomb any country in the world where people it regards as terrorists are found — and in doing so, has fulfilled the warped campaign pledges he repeatedly expressed.

The most recent atrocity was the killing of as many as 200 Iraqi civilians from U.S. airstrikes this week in Mosul. That was preceded a few days earlier by the killing of dozens of Syrian civilians in Raqqa province when the U.S. targeted a school where people had taken refuge, which itself was preceded a week earlier by the U.S. destruction of a mosque near Aleppo that also killed dozens. And one of Trump’s first military actions was what can only be described as a massacre carried out by Navy SEALs, in which 30 Yemenis were killed; among the children killed was an 8-year-old American girl (whose 16-year-old American brother was killed by a drone under Obama).

In sum: Although precise numbers are difficult to obtain, there seems little question that the number of civilians being killed by the U.S. in Iraq and Syria — already quite high under Obama — has increased precipitously during the first two months of the Trump administration. Data compiled by the site Airwars tells the story: The number of civilians killed in Syria and Iraq began increasing in October under Obama but has now skyrocketed in March under Trump.

What’s particularly notable is that the number of airstrikes actually decreased in March (with a week left), even as civilian deaths rose — strongly suggesting that the U.S. military has become even more reckless about civilian deaths under Trump than it was under Obama:

This escalation of bombing and civilian deaths, combined with the deployment by Trump of 500 ground troops into Syria beyond the troops Obama already deployed there, has received remarkably little media attention. This is in part due to the standard indifference in U.S. discourse to U.S. killing of civilians compared to the language used when its enemies kill people (compare the very muted and euphemistic tones used to report on Trump’s escalations in Iraq and Syria to the frequent invocation of genocide and war crimes to denounce Russian killing of Syrian civilians). And part of this lack of media attention is due to the Democrats’ ongoing hunt for Russian infiltration of Washington, which leaves little room for other matters.

But what is becoming clear is that Trump is attempting to liberate the U.S. military from the minimal constraints it observed in order to avoid massive civilian casualties. And this should surprise nobody: Trump explicitly and repeatedly vowed to do exactly this during the campaign.

He constantly criticized Obama — who bombed seven predominantly Muslim countries — for being “weak” in battling ISIS and al Qaeda. Trump regularly boasted that he would free the U.S. military from rules of engagement that he regarded as unduly hobbling them. He vowed to bring back torture and even to murder the family members of suspected terrorists — prompting patriotic commentators to naïvely insist that the U.S. military would refuse to follow his orders. Trump’s war frenzy reached its rhetorical peak of derangement in December 2015, when he roared at a campaign rally that he would “bomb the shit out of ISIS” and then let its oil fields be taken by Exxon, whose CEO is now his secretary of state.

Trump can be criticized for many things, but lack of clarity about his intended war on terror approach is not one of them. All along, Trump’s “solution” to terrorism was as clear as it was simple; as I described it in September 2016:

Trump's anti-terror platform is explicitly 1) more bombing; 2) Israel-style police profiling; 3) say "radical Islam" https://t.co/NyivdkUanp

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 19, 2016

  The clarity of Trump’s intentions regarding the war on terror was often obfuscated by anti-Trump pundits due to a combination of confusion about and distortions of foreign policy doctrine. Trump explicitly ran as a “non-interventionist” — denouncing, for instance, U.S. regime change wars in Iraq, Libya, and Syria (even though he at some points expressed support for the first two). Many commentators confused “non-interventionism” with “pacifism,” leading many of them — to this very day — to ignorantly claim that Trump’s escalated war on terror bombing is in conflict with his advocacy of non-interventionism. It is not.

To the extent that Trump is guided by any sort of coherent ideological framework, he is rooted in the traditions of Charles Lindbergh (whose “America First” motto he took) and the free trade-hating, anti-immigration, über-nationalist Pat Buchanan. Both Lindbergh and Buchanan were non-interventionists: Lindbergh was one of the earliest and loudest opponents of U.S. involvement in World War II, while Buchanan was scathing throughout all of 2002 about the neocon plan to invade Iraq.

Despite being vehement non-interventionists, neither Lindbergh nor Buchanan were pacifists. Quite the contrary: Both believed that when the U.S. was genuinely threatened with attack or attacked, it should use full and unrestrained force against its enemies. What they opposed was not military force in general but rather interventions geared toward a goal other than self-defense, such as changing other countries’ governments, protecting foreigners from tyranny or violence, or “humanitarian” wars.

What the Lindbergh/Buchanan non-interventionism opposes is not war per se, but a specific type of war: namely, those fought for reasons other than self-defense or direct U.S. interests (as was true of regime change efforts in Iraq, Libya, and Syria). Lindbergh opposed U.S. involvement in World War II on the ground that it was designed to help only the British and the Jews, while Buchanan, on the eve of the Iraq invasion, attacked neocons who “seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interests” and who “have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic and Western world through their arrogance, hubris, and bellicosity.”

The anti-Semitism and white nationalistic tradition of Lindbergh, the ideological precursor to Buchanan and then Trump, does not oppose war. It opposes military interventions in the affairs of other countries for reasons other than self-defense — i.e., the risking of American lives and resources for the benefits of “others.”

Each time Trump drops another bomb, various pundits and other assorted Trump opponents smugly posit that his doing so is inconsistent with his touted non-interventionism. This is just ignorance of what these terms mean. By escalating violence against civilians, Trump is, in fact, doing exactly what he promised to do, and exactly what those who described his foreign policy as non-interventionist predicted he would do: namely, limitlessly unleash the U.S. military when the claimed objective was the destruction of “terrorists,” while refusing to use the military for other ends such as regime change or humanitarianism. If one were to reduce this mentality to a motto, it could be: Fight fewer wars and for narrower reasons, but be more barbaric and criminal in prosecuting the ones that are fought.

Trump’s campaign pledges regarding Syria, and now his actions there, illustrate this point very clearly. Trump never advocated a cessation of military force in Syria. As the above video demonstrates, he advocated the opposite: an escalation of military force in Syria and Iraq in the name of fighting ISIS and al Qaeda. Indeed, Trump’s desire to cooperate with Russia in Syria was based on a desire to maximize the potency of bombing there (just as was true of Obama’s attempt to forge a bombing partnership with Putin in Syria).

What Trump opposed was the CIA’s yearslong policy of spending billions of dollars to arm anti-Assad rebels (a policy Hillary Clinton and her key advisers wanted to escalate), on the ground that the U.S. has no interest in removing Assad. That is the fundamental difference between non-interventionism and pacifism that many pundits are either unaware of or are deliberately conflating in order to prove their own vindication about Trump’s foreign policy. Nothing Trump has thus far done is remotely inconsistent with the non-interventionism he embraced during the campaign, unless one confuses “non-interventionism” with “opposition to the use of military force.”

Trump’s reckless killing of civilians in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen is many things: barbaric, amoral, and criminal. It is also, ironically, likely to strengthen support for the very groups — ISIS and al Qaeda — that he claims he wants to defeat, given that nothing drives support for those groups like U.S. slaughter of civilians (perhaps the only competitor in helping these groups is another Trump specialty: driving a wedge between Muslims and the West).

But what Trump’s actions are not is a departure from what he said he would do, nor are they inconsistent with the predictions of those who described his foreign policy approach as non-interventionist. To the contrary, the dark savagery guiding U.S. military conduct in that region is precisely what Trump expressly promised his supporters he would usher in.

The post Trump’s War on Terror Has Quickly Become as Barbaric and Savage as He Promised appeared first on The Intercept.

via The Intercept

[housebeleren]

Arena Deck Tech - Dimir Control Eldraine Standard

Today I thought I’d try something new. I play a fair amount of MTG Arena, and I wanted to take a look at one of the decks I’ve been enjoying playing and evaluate the card choices & its win rate. I tend to play somewhat offbeat decks, and am not one to just go for Bant Ramp or 4c Fires just because they’re the “best” decks. 

So the deck I’ve been playing the most in Arena Best-of-One Standard is Dimir Control. This deck is ill-suited for “Traditional” Best-of-Three play, largely because of Veil of Summer in the sideboard it simply too good of a hoser for it. It’s funny, historically when these color hoser cycles come around, Green always gets one that’s so embarrassingly worse than the other 4 that it’s completely unplayable (see: Display of Dominance). Guess this time they tried a little too hard to make it playable that it completely invalidates most control strategies. Hurray! But Best-of-One is a different beast, and it’s definitely possible to tailor a control deck to work in Standard and combat a variety of strategies.

So, now that I’ve played 100 games with the deck in Eldraine Standard, let’s take a look:

Art: Anna Steinbauer

Card Choices

For a control deck, the majority of card choices will be dictated by the metagame, but there are a few foundational pieces that form the backbone of the deck, and there are some clear choices for win conditions. Bear in mind that most of these card choices were made back when Golos Field of the Dead decks were still legal, and will probably need further tweaking in a post-Field Standard.

The Backbone

4x Thought Erasure

4x Narset, Parter of Veils

3x Discovery / Dispersal

2x Drawn from Dreams

This group is pretty straightforward. The biggest single reason to run Blue & Black together is that Thought Erasure is just so effective. That said, thanks to Gilded Goose, it’s losing some of its potency on the draw, so it’s possible dropping one for another Negate is correct. That said, it’s your single best way to preemtively deal with their biggest threats. Narset, Discovery, and Drawn from Dreams are your main card draw package, and both Narset and Drawn from Dreams get around any opposing Narsets you may encounter. Of course, Narset completely shuts off some strategies, particularly the Red/Blue Draw Two deck that some people have been toying with.

It’s also critical to remember that Discovery has a second half, even if you’re mostly just playing the first mode. In the late game, bouncing the highest CMC permanent of your opponent’s can be exactly what you need to pull ahead. If they’re hellbent, it’ll force them to discard it. Being a split card makes it a much better late game draw than a normal cantrip would be. Also, it combos nicely with God-Eternal Kefnet, since if you draw into it with him he makes it a Recoil, which is super good.

Aggro Hosers

3x Cry of the Carnarium

2x Legion’s End

2x Ritual of Soot

1x Disfigure

1x Ob Nixilis’s Cruelty

1x Enter the God-Eternals

1x Massacre Girl

Just because Oko is the big bad, doesn’t mean you can’t have a plan for Aggro. In fact, having a wide range of good removal for aggro strategies is critical. In the current Best-of-One Meta, I’ve moved up to three copies of Cry of the Carnarium in the main deck. It may seem excessive, but it’s basically always the card I want to see against an aggressive start. It cleans up basically anything that mono-Red or Red/Black are running, and the exile clause efficiently deals with Footlight Fiend, Judith triggers, and Afterlife creatures. It is also literally the only card that can deal with an early Cauldron Familiar/Witch’s Oven combo, since Cry exiles any cards that already went to grave, so it’s normal ability to dodge removal doesn’t work here.

Legion’s End and Ritual of Soot are other great ways to clean up the board after aggressive openings, and it’s critical to remember that both of them also take care of Oko’s Elks and Nissa’s animated lands, plus they both also hit a resolved Hydroid Krassis. Legion’s End is particularly good for this, since it will also eat any copies they may have drawn into from the first one, preventing them from easily chaining them together. I’ve gone down one copy since Field of the Dead was banned, and replaced it with the aforementioned Cry of the Carnarium.

Finally, I like one Enter the God-Eternals as a midgame way to stabilize, and the lifegain it gets you is super relevant against a fast start. Massacre Girl isn’t always what you need, but she eats up aggro decks, and also kills any Afterlife creatures plus their tokens, which is handy. Against control, she is a threat with evasion, and sometimes they’ll have used up all their removal by the time you land her, so she’ll end up sticking around.

Ramp/Oko/Fires Hosers

3x Negate

2x Murderous Rider / Swift End

2x Sinister Sabotage

Negate is your best tool against both Oko & Teferi, and it’s possible playing 4 is actually the correct answer in the current meta (possibly cutting one Thought Erasure for it). Once they’re resolved, Murderous Rider is your best, most versatile removal, and it also works well against aggro, since it blocks most small things and the Lifelink offsets their early attacks. Usually when played this way, it’ll just eat a removal spell, but I’d rather it take a Skewer than me.

Sinister Sabotage is in there as additional counter power against cards you can’t survive if they resolve, but it’s possible that the right answer is to consider one Sabotage and one Disdainful Stroke, given how big Fires decks have been recently. Having a Sinister Sabotage stuck in your hand on the draw because your third land came into play tapped while your opponent resolves Fires of Invention feels really bad. Sure, it doesn’t happen much, but it is possible.

Win Conditions

2x God-Eternal Kefnet

1x Liliana, Dreadhorde General

1x Ugin, the Ineffable

1x Lochmere Serpent

Every control deck needs win conditions. God-Eternal Kefnet comes down the earliest and provides consistent advantage on every draw. He’s gotten a little worse since Eldraine, since he doesn’t play as well with Murderous Rider, but he’s still a powerhouse and an important inclusion in any control build. The fact that he comes down on 4 makes him a reasonable stabilizer against aggro decks. He won’t be fast enough to stop an explosive start on his own, but curving Cry of the Carnarium into Kefnet will usually do the trick.

The absolute most powerful win condition is Liliana, Dreadhorde General. She dominates the board and provides you with a steady stream of bodies and card draw. Given the popularity of Questing Beast and Red burn, it’s critical to determine whether using her minus right away is actually the best plan of action. Sometimes, even if they only have 2 creatures out, it’s best to make the Zombie first, because that puts her out of reach so you can untap with her plus additional removal and counterspells. Ugin does a passable Liliana impression and is better in some cases, like against a resolved Fires of Invention.

I like having the one Lochmere Serpent in the build as well, mainly as a surprise factor. Most people aren’t expecting him, and it’s really satisfying to have him eat an opposing Questing Beast out of nowhere. He’s more of a pet card than anything else, but I like having it.

The Wishboard

1x Fae of Wishes (Mainboard)

2x The Elderspell

2x Unmoored Ego

1x Ashiok, Dream Render

1x Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage

1x Command the Dreadhorde

1x Mass Manipulation

I’ve included one Fae of Wishes in the deck as a way to pull some silver bullets out of the sideboard. It’s possible 2 are correct, but the wish is just costly enough that most of the time you’re better off just going with the main gameplan. That said, pulling The Elderspell or Unmoored Ego out can be brutal against certain decks. Command the Dreadhorde is a great win condition against opposing control builds, and Mass Manipulation is incredible against big Green builds. In fact, it’s so good I’ve considered cutting Lochmere Serpent and adding one Mass Manipulation mainboard.

I don’t have a fully built sideboard because I only play this deck Best-of-One, but if I ever played it in Traditional Standard, I’d fill it out a bit more.

Deck Performance

The deck has been a solid performer, but it doesn’t put up amazing numbers. My overall win percentage with it in Gold tiers is 52.5%, which is perfectly decent. I will also note that the deck was at its best when Golos/Field of the Dead decks were dominant, with a nearly 60% win rate at that time. This isn’t because it has a particularly great Golos matchup (I was evenly 50/50 against it), but that Golos meant there were fewer Green-based ramp strategies and Oko decks in the format, which are harder for Control to deal with. To be clear, a turn 2 Oko with you on the draw is basically unbeatable unless the rest of their hand & subsequent draws are garbage.

But overall, the deck has still been working okay despite the drop since Oko became the big bad of the format. Here are some win rates against the main decks I’ve played against (at least 4 or more games):

Golos Field - 12 games - 50%

Mono Red Aggro (no Cavalcade) - 11 games - 36.36%

Mono Red Cavalcade - 8 games - 50%

Simic/Bant Ramp - 7 games - 42.86%

Gruul Aggro - 6 games - 50%

Mono Green - 6 games - 50%

3/4c Fires - 6 games - 33.33%

Cat Food - 5 games - 60%

Mono Black - 5 games - 80%

Golgari Adventures - 4 games - 50%

Based on this, it looks like the deck is awful, but the nice thing is that it preys on offbeat decks really well. I have yet to lose to any Orzhov or traditional Esper Control decks (other than Esper Doom), and it eats Izzet decks for lunch. So even though it’s not great against the big bogeymen of the format, it is really well positioned against most of the random decks you’ll face, which brings the win percentage up.

Next Steps

The framework of the deck was built when Golos was the big bad, but I’ve made some tweaks since then. The most notable updates have been increasing the number of Murderous Riders and Negates in the mainboard, and slightly reducing the number of Legion’s End and Ob Nixilis’s Cruelty.

If Oko stays the dominant deck of the format, maindecking Noxious Grasp may be the best gameplan to improve the matchup, instead of just having the 2 copies in the sideboard. Not sure what to cut for it exactly, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

Cards I’m exploring are the aforementioned Noxious Grasp, as well as Brazen Borrower. Normally I don’t love bounce effects for true control, as they are typically better suited for tempo builds. But in this world, just having a 3 drop flier to challenge opposing Planeswalkers could be exactly what the deck needs. I’m also considering Disdainful Stroke to combat Fires of Invention decks, but that doesn’t deal with either Teferi or Oko, and those are honestly the biggest issues this deck faces. If I were playing Best-of-Three, I’d definitely run a couple in the sideboard.

Anyway, that’s it for this deck. I love playing Blue/Black based control, so I’m going to keep trying to find ways for this deck to shine, through every shift in the meta. Have fun on Arena!

[comicsbeat]

Diamond just released their top sellers for November, and nothing was amiss, as much ballyhooed launches for Uncanny X-men, Green Lantern and Venom led the way. Venom got a surprising movie bump with the first collection of Donny Cates’ run topping the graphic novel charts in units.

Marvel led DC comfortably – no one has really been talking about it after the disasters of 2017, but Marvel seems to have stabilized quite a bit, bringing back strong #1s of characters people like reading. Look for Ironheart #1 to do well for December sales, as well. Getting some juice from the Venom movie is a nice bonus. Heck, a Black Panther Little Golden Book was the #2 book for the month. Those movies are selling books.

DC had a good launch with The Green Lantern, but there’s only one Grant Morrison, and if the rumors I’m hearing are true, 2019 should be the year everyone starts worrying more about DC. But more about that later.

Still, it was a blah month overall, and 2018 will be a blah year. John Jackson Miller points out that it was a puny month, with 121 fewer titles shipping in November than in October. He also notes:

It was Marvel’s smallest new comics slate since October 2015. DC shipped 67 comics, down from 95 last November. Fully 22% fewer new comics out. The bright side is that even with so much less material out, Marvel was still up slightly year-over-year versus last November.    The graphic novel category was worse off — there, the dynamic also looks supply-side, as publishers appear to be increasingly trying to get retailers to stock for the holidays in October.   Six percent fewer comics have come out in 2018 so far; unit sales are down 6%. Pretty direct connection there. Since comics dollar sales are slightly up — and 2017’s unit sales were inflated by overships and 25¢ books — the comics that did come out did a little better relative, per issue, than last year.

Thogh the ^5 drop may be explained by fewer comics, graphic novels are down 6-7% for the year, and that’s a troubling trend. 2018 held its own but it still didn’t quite have the kind of break out hit that makes everyone stand up and cheer.

  TOP COMIC BOOK PUBLISHERS

PUBLISHER

DOLLAR

SHARE

UNIT

SHARE

MARVEL COMICS

40.80%

43.75%

DC ENTERTAINMENT

26.74%

29.51%

IMAGE COMICS

8.57%

8.50%

IDW PUBLISHING

3.62%

3.39%

DARK HORSE COMICS

3.37%

2.58%

BOOM! STUDIOS

2.95%

2.49%

DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT

2.24%

2.11%

VIZ MEDIA

1.26%

0.48%

TITAN COMICS

1.20%

0.80%

ONI PRESS INC.

0.97%

0.80%

OTHER NON-TOP 10

8.28%

5.58%

   COMPARATIVE SALES STATISTICS

DOLLARS

UNITS

NOVEMBER 2018 VS. OCTOBER 2018

COMICS

-16.49%

-19.71%

GRAPHIC NOVELS

-21.10%

-23.49%

TOTAL COMICS/GN

-17.81%

-19.99%

TOYS

6.76%

-23.81%

NOVEMBER 2018 VS. NOVEMBER 2017

COMICS

-4.98%

-11.24%

GRAPHIC NOVELS

-30.36%

-31.11%

TOTAL COMICS/GN

-13.61%

-13.02%

TOYS

-10.88%

-19.52%

YEAR-TO-DATE 2018 VS. YEAR-TO-DATE 2017

COMICS

1.48%

-6.06%

GRAPHIC NOVELS

-6.67%

-7.25%

TOTAL COMICS/GN

-0.98%

-6.15%

TOYS

-3.25%

-3.25%

  NEW TITLES SHIPPED

PUBLISHER

COMICS SHIPPED

GRAPHIC NOVELS SHIPPED

MAGAZINES SHIPPED

TOTAL

SHIPPED

MARVEL COMICS

79

39

0

118

DC COMICS

67

40

0

107

IMAGE COMICS

57

18

0

75

IDW PUBLISHING

33

14

0

47

BOOM! STUDIOS

23

16

0

39

DARK HORSE COMICS

16

19

0

35

TITAN COMICS

10

13

5

28

VIZ MEDIA LLC

0

26

0

26

DYNAMITE

17

4

0

21

ONI PRESS INC.

8

4

0

12

OTHER NON-TOP 10

113

206

17

336

TOTAL

423

399

22

844

  TOP 10 COMIC BOOKS BY UNITS SHIPPED

RANK

DESCRIPTION

PRICE

ITEM CODE

VENDOR

1

UNCANNY X-MEN #1

$7.99

SEP180791-M MAR

2

THE GREEN LANTERN #1

$4.99

SEP180430-M DC

3

WEB OF VENOM: CARNAGE BORN #1

$4.99

SEP180855-M MAR

4

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #10

$3.99

SEP180916-M MAR

5

BATMAN #58

$3.99

SEP180450-M DC

6

BATMAN #59

$3.99

SEP180452-M DC

7

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #9

$3.99

SEP180914-M MAR

8

HEROES IN CRISIS #3

$3.99

SEP180434-M DC

9

AVENGERS #10

$5.99

SEP180829-M MAR

10

VENOM #8

$3.99

SEP180918-M MAR

  TOP 10 COMIC BOOKS BY DOLLARS INVOICED

RANK

DESCRIPTION

PRICE

ITEM CODE

VENDOR

1

UNCANNY X-MEN #1

$7.99

SEP180791-M MAR

2

WEB OF VENOM: CARNAGE BORN #1

$4.99

SEP180855-M MAR

3

THE GREEN LANTERN #1

$4.99

SEP180430-M DC

4

AVENGERS #10

$5.99

SEP180829-M MAR

5

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #10

$3.99

SEP180916-M MAR

6

BATMAN #58

$3.99

SEP180450-M DC

7

BATMAN #59

$3.99

SEP180452-M DC

8

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #9

$3.99

SEP180914-M MAR

9

HEROES IN CRISIS #3

$3.99

SEP180434-M DC

10

VENOM #8

$3.99

SEP180918-M MAR

  TOP 10 GRAPHIC NOVELS & TRADE PAPERBACKS BY UNITS SHIPPED

RANK

DESCRIPTION

PRICE

ITEM CODE

VENDOR

1

VENOM BY DONNY CATES VOLUME 1: REX TP

$17.99

AUG181081 MAR

2

THANOS: THE INFINITY CONFLICT HC

$24.99

AUG181076 MAR

3

JUSTICE LEAGUE VOLUME 1: THE TOTALITY TP

$17.99

AUG180630 DC

4

BLACK EYED PEAS PRESENTS: MASTERS OF THE SUN: THE  ZOMBIE CHRONICLES TP

$24.99

APR171143 MAR

5

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN BY NICK SPENCER VOLUME 1: BACK TO BASICS TP

$15.99

SEP181008 MAR

6

THE IMMORTAL HULK VOLUME 1: OR IS HE BOTH? TP

$15.99

AUG181082 MAR

7

BATMAN: WHITE KNIGHT TP

$19.99

JUL180733 DC

8

UNNATURAL VOLUME 1: AWAKENING TP (MR)

$9.99

SEP180132 IMA

9

STAR WARS: LANDO: DOUBLE OR NOTHING TP

$15.99

JUL181171 MAR

10

DOMINO VOLUME 1: KILLER INSTINCT TP

$17.99

AUG181085 MAR

  TOP 10 GRAPHIC NOVELS & TRADE PAPERBACKS BY DOLLARS INVOICED

RANK

DESCRIPTION

PRICE

ITEM CODE

VENDOR

1

X-MEN MUTANT: MASSACRE OMNIBUS HC

$100.00

MAY180951 MAR

2

THANOS: THE INFINITY CONFLICT HC

$24.99

AUG181076 MAR

3

ABSOLUTE TRANSMETROPOLITAN VOLUME 3 HC (MR)

$125.00

MAR180362 DC

4

SILVER SURFER BY SLOTT AND ALLRED OMNIBUS HC

$75.00

MAY180954 MAR

5

BLACK EYED PEAS PRESENTS: MASTERS OF THE SUN: THE ZOMBIE CHRONICLES TP

$24.99

APR171143 MAR

6

VENOM BY DONNY CATES VOLUME 1: REX TP

$17.99

AUG181081 MAR

7

FIREFLY: BIG DAMN HEROES BOX SET

$150.00

SEP181294 BOO

8

WONDER WOMAN: THE GOLDEN AGE OMNIBUS VOL. 3 HC

$125.00

APR180285 DC

9

MARVEL MASTERWORKS: THE MIGHTY THOR VOLUME 17 HC

$75.00

MAY180957-M MAR

10

JUSTICE LEAGUE VOLUME 1: THE TOTALITY TP

$17.99

AUG180630 DC

  TOP 10 BOOKS BY UNITS SHIPPED

RANK

DESCRIPTION

PRICE

ITEM CODE

VENDOR

1

LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD: CREATING A CHAMPION HC

$39.99

JUL180425 DAR

2

BLACK PANTHER LITTLE GOLDEN BOOK

$4.99

NOV172179 GOL

3

GIGER HC

$15.00

SEP181990 TAS

4

ART MATTERS: BECAUSE YOUR IMAGINATION CAN CHANGE WORLD

$19.99

OCT182016 WIL

5

DARK SOULS III DESIGN WORKS HC

$49.99

JUN182173 UDO

6

SPECTRUM ART BOOK 25 SC

$35.00

SEP181796 FLE

7

FIREFLY: BIG DAMN HERO HC

$22.95

AUG182286 TTN

8

GHOSTBUSTERS LITTLE GOLDEN BOOK

$4.99

JUL162266 GOL

9

FINAL FANTASY VII: ON THE WAY TO A SMILE SC

$14.00

AUG182452 YEN

10

MARVEL STUDIOS: THE FIRST 10 YEARS HC

$24.99

SEP182051 TTN

  TOP 10 TOYS BY DOLLARS INVOICED

RANK

DESCRIPTION

ITEM CODE

VENDOR

1

DC COMICS BOMBSHELLS: BATMAN & CATWOMAN STATUE MAY180613 DC

2

BATMAN BLACK & WHITE: THE BATMAN WHO LAUGHS STATUE MAY180609 DC

3

MARVEL GALLERY: VENOM COMIC PVC FIGURE MAY182304 DST

4

MARVEL GALLERY: AVENGERS INFINITY WAR: DR. STRANGE PVC FIGURE AUG178008 DST

5

LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD: GUARDIAN NENDOROID JAN188701 GOO

6

EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN: ASH WILLIAMS BISHOUJO STATUE MAY182647 KOT

7

MARVEL UNIVERSE: BLACK PANTHER ARTFX+ STATUE MAY182646 KOT

8

MARVEL GALLERY: BLACK PANTHER MOVIE (VER. 2) PVC FIGURE MAY182305 DST

9

MARVEL SELECT: JUGGERNAUT FIGURE JUN101512 DST

10

DC COVER GIRLS: CATWOMAN BY JOELLE JONES STATUE MAY180610 DC

  TOP 10 GAMES BY DOLLARS INVOICED

RANK

DESCRIPTION

ITEM CODE

VENDOR

1

MY HERO ACADEMIA CARD GAME JUL183082 SHI

2

MAGIC THE GATHERING TCG: GUILDS OF RAVNICA BOOSTERS AUG183192 WIZ

3

D&D ICONS OF THE REALM SET 10 AUG183199 NEC

4

BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES: GOTHAM UNDER SIEGE GAME JUN180756 IDW

5

RISK RICK & MORTY BOARD GAME OCT182927 USA

6

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES MUNCHKIN MAY180770 IDW

7

PATHFINDER BATTLES: KINGMAKER BOOSTER BRICK AUG183201 NEC

8

RICK AND MORTY DBG: THE RICKSHANK RICKDEMPTION MAY188741 PSI

9

FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDYS MONOPOLY BOARD GAME SEP182828 USA

10

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS RPG: WATERDEEP DRAGON HEIST HC AUG183190 WIZ

How does Diamond calculate the charts? It all starts at the comic book shop.

Sales Charts: X-men, Venom and Green Lantern lead the way in November Diamond just released their top sellers for November, and nothing was amiss, as much ballyhooed launches for Uncanny X-men, Green Lantern and Venom led the way.