#for patricia h

[sesiondemadrugada]

Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock, 1951).

[genevieveetguy]

An Unmarried Woman, Paul Mazursky (1978)

[vidreview]

VIDEO ESSAY ROUNDUP #1

[originally posted october 11th 2023]

so, i watch a lot of video essays.

i started this blog with the intention of reviewing video essays at length, in the hopes of highlighting best & worst practices, discussing the history of the form, and using them as a jumping off point for personal/political introspection. but as time has gone on, i've found myself encountering more and more videos that i didn't have a whole lot to say about, but that felt worthy of a spotlight anyway.

WITH THAT IN MIND, welcome to video essay roundup, an occasional list of stuff i've watched recently that i think is worth your time. enough preamble, let's get started.

"Self-Discovery Stories | Video Essay" by Glouder Glens.

are you watching Sylvia Schweikert? i know you're not because its numbers are disastrously low. her video about it/its pronouns is a genuine work of art, a video essay about the dehumanization of trans people that seamlessly transforms into lesbian werewolf erotica. this newest video is just as beautiful and strange, not least because it's rendered in portrait mode like a tiktok. it's an honest, far-ranging and personal essay whose sub-300 views is genuinely criminal. seriously, seriously, Sylvia's an essayist you NEED to be paying attention to. it's making the kind of stuff that simply does not play well with the youtube algorithm, and that's the stuff that i live for. watch her videos and share them with your friends. give it money on patreon for gods sake! also definitely go watch her short film "Self Centered," it's a haunting and masterful work of art.

"More unremarkable and odd places in Mario 64" by Any Austin.

i stumbled across Any Austin a couple months ago and he's quickly become one of my favorite "it's time to relax" creators. his "unremarkable and odd places" series scratches an itch i never knew i had, as someone who loves exploring the least interesting corners of any digital world i find myself in. his other series involves calculating the unemployment rate of video game locations by talking to every NPC and deducing their employment status. the editing is calm, his tone is measured and matter of fact, and his sense of humor ties it all together. this is the kind of thing that used to be the bread and butter of video teams at outlets like Cracked or Polygon, before they were summarily laid off or pushed out. it's good to see someone else picking up that mantle in a way that seems relatively sustainable and isn't under the umbrella of a layoff-happy corporate enterprise (except for google of course, but we're all in that boat together aren't we?)

does this count as a video essay? i think that's a reasonable question. i'm inclined to say yes, with the understanding that there are many different types and genres of video essay. but that's a conversation for another day.

"On the Ethics of Boinking Animal People" by Patricia Taxxon.

i should do a full vidrev on this one honestly, but i can't do a post like this and not include it. if you play around in any sort of furry-adjacent fetish space, have opinions about the sexual proclivities of furries, or are otherwise prone to pearl-clutching as an outsider, this is an essential watch. Patricia here does a great job drawing attention to how even well-meaning defenders of, say, feral furry porn, often give up unnecessary ground to opponents with fallacious devices like the Harkness test. i've talked to a lot of fellow kinky furries who came out of this essay exalting in the joy that finally, someone said it! many of the arguments made here, especially in underlining that all furry porn is immaterial and imaginary, are thoughts i've had since i first made a furaffinity account in 2007 or 08 (though i swore up and down i wasn't a furry until 2019) but was always too afraid to express.

this is scary, sensitive territory, but that's what makes this such an essential intervention. this is the perspective of an autistic transfem furry who just wants to have an honest conversation without all the moral fearmongering and shortsighted kneejerk cliches that come up when a topic skirts dangerously close to taboos that we just, generally, refuse to talk about like adults. these are conversations that, in my experience, only ever happened among friendgroups with a long-established repartee and understanding of each other's boundaries, if at all. otherwise, even progressive supposedly kink-positive spaces can encourage a sort of cop-brained punitive attitude towards imaginary sex acts that very easily bleeds over into puritanical takes on, say, kink at pride. frankly, i'm sick of the language & rhetoric of Respectability, because saying "no, most of us aren't like the freaks" only ever results in a liberal block decrying the deplorables and subjecting them to further marginalization and abuse. it takes a lot of guts to make a video like this and i'm so, so glad that Patricia Taxxon stuck the landing.

"Who Is Killing Cinema? - A Murder Mystery" by Patrick (H) Willems.

i've already written two separate vidrevs on Willems, but what can i say? this most recent stretch of work focusing on the business and philosophy of cinema in the streaming era is good stuff. nothing in this particular essay is new per se if you've been paying attention to the business of hollywood for the last ten years, but it does a great job assembling the broad strokes of a lot of different-but-common arguments into one far ranging thesis. much like the prior two videos, i think this works as a solid introductory primer to a more materialist understanding of these trends for folks who aren't necessarily familiar with materialist theory. bonus points for wasting no time getting to the point, unlike his otherwise excellent video on the word "content."

alright, i think that'll do it for this video essay roundup! enjoy :)

ROUNDUP #2 ->

[NOTE: as i'm migrating the archive, links between roundups will direct back to cohost. i probably won't get around to changing that until i write a new one.]

[perfettamentechic]

19 novembre … ricordiamo …

19 novembre … ricordiamo … #semprevivineiricordi #nomidaricordare #personaggiimportanti #perfettamentechic

2023: Anna Kanakis, Anna Maria Kanakis, modella e attrice italiana eletta Miss Italia 1977. Prima di passare alla carriera di attrice, svolge per diversi anni l’attività di modella, debuttando nel cinema nel 1980. Nel 2010 fa il suo esordio come scrittrice. Nel 1981 sposa il musicista Claudio Simonetti, da cui divorzia pochi anni dopo. Nel 2004 celebra le seconde nozze con il veneziano Marco…

[lilyofval81]

Family ❤️

[chic-beyond-the-wall-oc-acct]

So, project 2025 has been deleting their PDFs but a few lovely people have posted the list of books they want to ban and other than the fact that the entire list is stupid, here's some that stuck out to me + the reasons listed next to them. Most of the books on the list are lgbtq+ books which one would expect to find there, so I just did ones I didn't expect.

The Holy Bible - Challenged for religious beliefs and graphic content.

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin - Sexual violence, political intrigue.

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson - Death and religious content.

Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey - Toilet humor and "disobedience."

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak - Critique of the Russian Revolution.

Deadly Deceits by Ralph McGehee - Former CIA agent's critiques of the agency.

Emma by Jane Austen - Complex gender themes, social critique.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury - Censorship and media manipulation by the government.

Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling - Accusations of promoting witchcraft.

Howl by Allen Ginsberg - Explicit sexual content, anti-establishment themes

Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss - Concerns over violence against parents.

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez - Mental health, sexual content.

It's Perfectly Normal by Robie H. Harris - Sex education content.

It's So Amazing! by Robie H. Harris - Sex education content.

None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen - Discusses alleged hidden global power structure.

None Dare Call It Treason by John A. Stormer - Anti-communist and conspiracy-focused.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Critique of Soviet labor camps.

Operation Paperclip by Annie Jacobsen - Exposes secret U.S. program involving former Nazis.

My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier - Violence, anti-war themes.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt vonnegut- Anti-war themes.

Spycatcher by Peter Wright - Ex-MI5 agent's account of intelligence operations.

The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama - Criticism of religion, perceived political messages.

The Awakening by Kate Chopin - Female independence, sexuality.

The Book of Night Women by Marlon James - Slavery, graphic violence.

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede - Magic, feminism.

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein - Themes of selfishness, parenting.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy - Examines class and caste issues in India.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - Critique of religious extremism and patriarchy.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas - Examines police violence and racial injustice

The Hunger Games Series by Suzanne Collins - Depicts oppressive government and rebellion.

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster - Political subtext, wordplay.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - Critique of colonialism and missionary work.

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene - Critique of religion and political oppression

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle - Religious critique.

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli - Seen as a critique of political ethics.

The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare - Often challenged for themes of submission of women in marriage.

Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer - Themes of violence, supernatural elements.

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore - Political rebellion, violence.

War is a Racket by Smedley D. Butler - Critique of war profiteering.

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein - Dark humor, "rebellious" themes.

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak - Themes of rebellion, dark imagery.

Where's Waldo? by Martin Handford - Alleged inappropriate illustrations.

White Noise by Don DeLillo - Critique of consumerism and modern society.

Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes - Feminist themes.

Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss - Seen as political allegory.

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis - Critique of authority and societal norms.

[shakespearesdaughters]

What kind of books by Dark Academia do you suggest to me? At the moment I’m on Tolstoj but I wanna to know much

The Secret History by Donna Tartt anything by Donna Tartt (praying we get another book in the next 5 years)

Maurice by E. M. Forester

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

The Patrick Melrose series by Edward St Aubyn

Confessions by Kanae Minato

In the Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Piranesi and Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Dead Poets Society by N H Kleinbaum

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

An Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

The Idiot by Elif Bautman

The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Babel by R F Kuang

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Stoner by John Williams

The Queens Gambit by Walter Tevis

The odyssey by Homer

Carmilla by J Sheridan le Fanu

We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges

The October Country by Ray Bradbury

Inferno by Dante Alighieri

Just to name a few!

[sp7]

taking up the same space —-

[ oculus, sally wen mao / cat nap, malcolm t. liepke / vertigo peaks, dion anja / the pillars of creation / minecraft end poem, julian gough / a memorial to marriage, patricia cronin / the rainbow, d. h. lawrence / cluster KMHK 1231 / pink in the night, mitski ]

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🌈 Queer Books Coming Out in December 2024 🌈

Find these books and more here.

🌈 Good afternoon, my bookish bats! Here are a FEW of the stunning, diverse queer books you can add to your TBR before the year is over. Happy reading!

❓What was the last queer book you read?

[ Release dates may have changed. ]

❤️ Sugar-Coated Kisses - Echo Lark 🧡 Christmas at Watson Memorial - Clara Ann Simons 💛 Warm-Blooded - J Greene 💚 It Takes Three To Tango - Jem Wendel 💙 The Black Curse - N.A. Moore 💜 Heavenly Tyrant - Xiran Jay Zhao ❤️ Encrypted Hearts - E.V. Bancroft 🧡 Dangerous Devotion - Robin Jo Margaret 💛 Sew in Love - Rhea Fox 💙 Saint - Chani Lynn Feener 💜 Her Ladyship's Christmas Companion - Theresa Meiningen 🌈 A Sky of Emerald Stars - A.K. Mulford

❤️ Inked in Blood and Memory - Allison Ivy 🧡 The Key - Jo Morgan Sloan 💛 Home Between Homes - Flynn Woods 💚 A Kiss for the Holidays - C.S. Autumn 💙 Loving the Linebacker - Amaya Knight 💜 Close to Home - Allisa Bahney ❤️ Christmas Shelter - Eva Gonzay & Julia C. Brown 🧡 This Isn't Everything You Are - J. Marie Rundquist 💛 Keep It in the Dark - Justin Arnold 💙 Santa & His Elf - Bink Cummings 💜 On the Subject of Kittens and Mittens - Katie Silverwings 🌈 Winter's Whisper - M Bonneau

❤️ Boyfriends - refrainbow 🧡 Innis Harbor - Patricia Evans 💛 A Complementary Connection - Eskay Kabba 💚 Point of Sighs - Melissa Scott 💙 Bind You by Blood - Shepard DiStasio 💜 The Resurrectionist - A. Rae Dunlap ❤️ Fractured Dreamer - A.K. Adler 🧡 The Husky and His White Cat Shizun - Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou 💛 Becoming Disabled - Jan Doolittle Wilson 💙 A Caress of Water - Nico Silver 💜 How to Survive As a Villain 1 - Yi Yi Yi Yi 🌈 The Silent Concubine - Qiang Tang

❤️ Hadrian - Harlowe Savage 🧡 A Series of Rooms - A.J. Barlowe 💛 Inklings of Invisibility - S.L. Dove Cooper 💚 The Cobbler and His Elves - C.B. Wren 💙 A Nightclub for the Holidays - Arden Coutts 💜 Armor of Dusk - Jess Galaxie ❤️ Twisted Shadows - Allie Therin 🧡 A Deception of Courts - Ben Alderson 💛 Trial Run - Carsen Taite 💙 How to Flirt with a Witch - Tiana Warner 💜 Roughed Up - Kate Hawthorne 🌈 House of Crimson Curses - Ruby Roe

❤️ Sister Snake - Amanda Lee Koe 🧡 Roland Rogers Isn't Dead Yet - Samantha Allen 💛 The Rivals - Jane Pek 💚 Private Rites - Julia Armfield 💙 The Christmas Switch - Briar Prescott 💜 Ribbonwood - Ruby Landers ❤️ Shifting Lanes - Joanne Kwan 🧡 Twice-Spent Comet - Ziggy Schutz 💛 A Crush for the Holidays - E.L. Ough 💙 Resist - Lasairiona Lewis 💜 Free from Falling - E.L. Massey 🌈 The Legendary Master's Wife - Yin Ya

❤️ Tide Breaker's Curse - Ivy H. Marikova 🧡 Twist Her - Terri Ronald 💛 How to Fuck Like a Girl - Vera Blossom 💚 Dog Days of Christmas - Krystal Wolfgang & Kimberly Wolfgang 💙 Warmer, Colder - Alexia Onyx 💜 Salt in the Wind - Jenna Pine ❤️ What We Carry With Us - Joseff McKenneth Goodwin 🧡 Reinvention - Karol Yan 💛 Christmas Carols - Maxime Jaz 💙 I'm Not Your Pet - Fae Quin 💜 Something Extraordinary - Alexis Hall 🌈 I Might Be in Trouble - Daniel Aleman

❤️ Deck the Palms - Annabeth Albert 🧡 Don't Get It Twisted - Wren Taylor 💛 Ice & Sweet - Charlie Novak 💚 Speak EZ - Elle E. Ire 💙 The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish - Xue Shan Fei Hu 💜 Horns For Hell - Rafael Nicolás ❤️ Flamboyant Fictions - Ian Fleishman 🧡 Where the Heart Is - Jenni Simonis 💛 Sorry I Kissed Your Dad - Achilles King 💙 Merry Weihnachten - E.J. Noyes 💜 An Alpha for the Holidays - Emily Axon 🌈 The Blessed - Anne Shade

❤️ Our Sinful Love - Amy H. 🧡 Gambler's Conceit - Adara Wolf & R. Phoenix 💛 Fate and Flambe - Leena Metcalfe 💚 Figure You Out - Hannah Danielle & K.F. Starfell 💙 Amaranthine - Aricka Alexander 💜 Twisted Loyalties - Barbara J. Webb ❤️ Echoes of Us - Alex Cross 🧡 The Shadowbearer's Curse - Jasmyn Morning 💛 Too Many Beds - Various 💙 We Are the Beasts - Gigi Griffis 💜 Unspoken - N.N. Britt 🌈 Rainbows After Storms - Luka Kobachi

❤️ The Shutouts - Gabrielle Korn 🧡 Robin's Worlds - Rainie Oet & Mathias Ball 💛 What the Woods Took - Courtney Gould 💚 Rescue Me - N. Slater 💙 Seb & Ailin - Michele Notaro 💜 The International Love Story - Jonas Noelting ❤️ Waterlogged - Nance Sparks 🧡 The Guardians - Sheri Lewis Wohl 💛 The Changeling's Faerie Prince - K.D. Ellis 💙 Until at Dawn We Wake - Charlotte Dalwood 💜 How to Get a Life in Ten Dates - Jenny L. Howe 🌈 Hammajang Luck - Makana Yamamoto

❤️ The Rules of Royalty - Cale Dietrich 🧡 Tired of Waiting for Tomorrow - Allison K. Garcia 💛 One Last Run - Bryce Oakley 💚 Reckless Hearts - Jax Calder 💙 Christmissed - Blythe H. Warren 💜 How Could You - Ren Strapp ❤️ Blackened - Tyler Briggs 🧡 Gratification in Gluttony - Nik Knight 💛 The Mogul Meets Her Match - Julia Underwood 💙 How to Be Heard - Roxane Gay 💜 The Case of the Missing Maid - Rob Osler 🌈 Shades of Us - D.L. Sims

[thunderlina]

Analyzing the Magia Exedra character portraits (so far)

The character art for Magia Exedra has been absolutely gorgeous so far and while staring at it longingly in anticipation for the game's release I've noticed some things I want to discuss.

The main thing is that they all depict the featured magical girl fighting a specific witch. Let's go through each of them:

Homura's is the most obvious since we can see the witch she's fighting in full, Walpurgisnacht. Considering how central the fight against Walpurgisnacht is to Homura's timeloops, and the fact we've seen Walpurgisnacht in other promo art for Exedra, this doesn't come as much of a surprise.

Mami is an interesting case because she has two pieces of art at the moment. Both appear to depict her fighting Gertrud in episode 2, as evidenced by the flowers in the first image and the background which resembles her barrier in the second. Seeing as Gertrud is the first witch we see her fight in the anime this makes sense.

Sayaka's art depicts her fight against H. N. Elly (aka Kirsten) in episode 4. More specifically it's a direct callback to her final attack in said episode.

Kyoko's art depicts her fight against Oktavia von Seckendorff in Episode 9, moments before shattering her own soul gem. Notice her soul gem is not in it's typical place on her chest and her hair bow is nowhere to be found. You can also faintly make out the theater seats of Oktavia's barrier in the background.

I saved Madoka herself for last because I'm slightly stumped on hers. It almost appears that she's the exception and isn't fighting a witch at all. The patterns around her resemble those seen in episode 12 when she's saving all the other magical girls from becoming witches, so it's possible that's what's being depicted here. HOWEVER the cloudy blue sky backgrounds also resemble those seen in Patricia's barrier in episode 10, so perhaps this depicts that fight instead?

Iroha's portrait may carry some unfortunate implications for Magia Record game fans since she's depicted fighting Box Wood, a witch who originally debuted in the not particularly well-liked Magia Record anime, which could indicate Exedra's version of the MagiReco story will pull from the anime more than the game.

Yachiyo's art depicts her fighting Stacey, who appears in Magia Record Arc 1 Chapter 8, as well as Episode 8 of the Magia Record anime. I'm admittedly not very familiar with Magia Record's story (I've seen the anime but barely remember a lot of it, and watching several hours of Live2D models talking to each other is uhhhh not the most exciting thing to do) so I'm unsure if this holds any particular significance to Yachiyo herself.

Stacey's barrier is noticeably different between the game and the anime, which could be another clue as to which version of events Magia Exedra will be pulling from, but it's a bit difficult for me to tell which one this resembles more since so little of it is visible.

That's all I have to say on the matter though. PLEASE reblog with any details I've missed because I'm sure there's more to be read into here.

[denimbex1986]

We are lucky to be alive in the age of Andrew Scott, an actor of extraordinary breadth, skill and sensitivity, who can terrify as Jim Moriarty in Sherlock, make us fall in love (inappropriately) as the hot priest in Fleabag and cry in All of Us Strangers. He can also astonish, last year playing eight parts in a stage adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. He recently became the first actor to win the UK Critics’ Circle awards for best actor on stage and screen in the same year. And his latest project, Ripley, is a beautiful and chilling adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel The Talented Mr Ripley, with Scott playing the lead, dominating all eight one-hour episodes. It’s been a wild, crowning year for the 47-year-old Irish actor. But in March his mother, Nora, died of a sudden illness; she is who Scott has credited as being his foremost creative inspiration. His grief is fresh and intense and for the first half of the interview it seems to swim just beneath the surface of our conversation.

“We go through so many different types of emotional weather all the time,” he says. “And even on the saddest day of your life you might be hungry or have a laugh. Life just continues.” We are in a meeting room in his management company’s offices, talking about his ability, in his work, to modulate between emotions, to go from happy to sad, confused to scared, all within a matter of seconds. How does he do it? Scott laughs. “I would say that I have quite a scrutable face — is scrutable a word? — which is good or bad depending on what you are trying to achieve. But my job is to be as truthful as possible in the way that we are, and I don’t think that human beings are just one thing at any particular time. It is rare that we have one pure emotion.”

It’s an approach that is particularly appropriate for the playing of Tom Ripley, an acquisitive chameleon who inveigles his way into the lives of others (in this case Johnny Flynn, as the careless and wealthy Dickie Greenleaf, and his on-off girlfriend Marge, played by Dakota Fanning). “Ripley is witty, he is very talented. That’s gripping, to watch talent. I can’t call him evil — it is very easy to call people who do terrible things evil monsters, but they are not monsters, they are humans who do terrible things. Part of what she [Highsmith] is talking about is that if you dismiss a certain faction of society it has repercussions, and Ripley is someone who is completely unseen, he lives literally among the rats, and then there are these people who are gorgeous and not particularly talented and have the world at their feet but are not able to see the beauty that he can see.”

The show was written and directed by Steven Zaillian, the screenwriter of Schindler’s List. It’s set in Sixties New York and Italy, and filmed entirely in black-and-white, its chiaroscuro aesthetic evoking films of the Sixties — particularly those of Federico Fellini — while also offering an alternative to Anthony Minghella’s saturated late-Nineties iteration that starred Matt Damon and Jude Law. This has a darker flavour. “I found it challenging,” Scott says, “in the sense that he’s a solitary figure and ideologically we are very different. So you have to remove your judgment and try to find something that is vulnerable.”

It was a tough shoot, taking a year and filmed during lockdown. Scott was exhausted at the end of it and had intended to take a three-month break, but delays meant that he went straight from Ripley into All of Us Strangers. “Even though I was genuinely exhausted, it was energising because I was back in London, I was getting the Tube to work, there was sunshine,” he says. “I found it incredibly heartful, that film, there were so many different versions of love … I feel that all stories are love stories.”

All of Us Strangers, directed by Andrew Haigh, is about a screenwriter examining memories of his parents who died when he was 12. In it Scott’s character, Adam, returns to his family home, where his parents are still alive and as they were back in the Eighties. Adam is able to walk into the memory and to come out to his parents, finding the words that were unavailable to him as a boy. Some of it was filmed in Haigh’s childhood home, and there was a strong biographical element for him and his lead. Homosexuality was illegal in the Republic of Ireland until 1993, when Scott was 16. He did not come out to his parents until he was in his early twenties. I ask if he was working with his own childhood experiences in the film. “Of course, so in a sense it was painful, to a degree, but it was cathartic because you are doing it with people that you absolutely love and trust. I felt that it was going to be of use to people and I was right, it has been. The reaction to the movie has been genuinely extraordinary — it makes people feel and see things, and that isn’t an easy thing to achieve.”

The film is also a tender and erotic love story between Scott’s character and Harry, played by the Irish actor Paul Mescal. The two found a real-life kinship that made them a delight to watch on screen and off it, as a double act on the awards circuit. “I adore Paul, he’s so, so … continues to be …” Scott pauses. “Obviously it’s been a tough time recently and he just continues to be a wonderful friend. It’s everything. The more I work in the industry, I realise, you make some stuff that people love and you make some stuff that people don’t like, and all really that you are left with is the relationships that you make. I love him dearly.”

Scott and Mescal were also both notable on the red carpet for being extraordinarily well dressed. Scott loves fashion and has a big, well-organised wardrobe that he admits is in need of a cull. “I don’t like having too much stuff. I really believe that everything we have is borrowed — our stuff, our houses, we are borrowing it for a time. So I am trying to think of people who are the same size as me so I can give some of it away, and that’s a great thing to be able to do.” One of his favourite labels is Simone Rocha. “I love a bit of Simone Rocha. What a kind, glorious person she is. I just went to her show.” Fashion, he says, is in his DNA. “My mother was an art teacher, she was obsessed with all sorts of design. She loved jewellery and jewellery design. Anything that is visual, tactile, painting, drawing, is a big passion of mine, so I have tremendous respect for the creativity of designers.”

Today Scott is wearing Louis Vuitton trousers and a cropped Prada jacket, dressed up because he is collecting his Critics’ Circle award for best stage actor for Vanya. I ask how it feels to have won the double, a historic achievement. “Ah …” he says, looking at the table, going silent, having just been so voluble. “I’m sorry …” His voice cracks a little. “It’s bittersweet.”

At the ceremony Scott dedicated the award to his mother, saying of her “she was the source of practically every joyful thing in my life”. Is it difficult for him to carry on working in the circumstances, I wonder. “Well, you know, you have to — life goes on, you manage it day by day. It’s very recent, but I certainly can say that so much of it is surprising and unique, and there is so much that I will be able to speak about at some point.”

He is looking forward, he says, once promotion for Ripley is over, to taking some time off, going on holiday, going back to Ireland for a bit. He has homes in London and Dublin. To relax he walks his dog, a Boston terrier, dressed down in jeans and a hoodie “like a 12-year-old, skulking around the city” or goes to art galleries on the South Bank — he was considering a career as an artist until he was 17 and got a part in the Irish film Korea. He goes to the gym every day, “not, you know, to get …” he says, flexing his biceps. “More that it’s good for the head.” He is social, likes friends, likes a party. When I ask if he gave up drinking while doing Vanya, which required him to be on stage, alone, every night for almost two hours, he looks horrified. “Oh God, no! Easy tiger! Jesus … Although I didn’t drink much, I did have to look after myself. But we had a room downstairs in the theatre, a little buzzy bar, because otherwise I wouldn’t see anybody, so I was delighted to have people come down.”

Scott was formerly in a relationship with the screenwriter and playwright Stephen Beresford and is currently single, although this is not the sort of thing he likes to talk about. He is protective of his privacy, not wanting to reveal where he lives in London, or indeed the name of his dog — but he swerves such questions with a gentle good humour.

He is famous on set for being friendly and welcoming, for looking after other people. “The product is very important, but most of my time is spent in the process, so I want that to be as pleasant and kind as possible. I feel like it is possible to do that, that it is an honourable goal.” He is comfortable around people, with an easy charm — no one I have interviewed before has said my name so many times. And although when we talk he sometimes seems reflective or so very sad, there are also moments when he is exuberant, silly, putting on accents. “I feel like, as a person, I am quite near my emotions. I cry easily and I laugh easily, and there is nothing more pleasurable to me than laughing.”

Scott was raised a Catholic and is no longer practising, but says his view about religion is “ever changing — I definitely have a faith in things that cannot be proved”. When he was younger and felt overwhelmed, just before or after an audition, he would go to the Quaker Meeting House in central London and sit in silence, something that made its way into the second series of Fleabag, in which Scott’s priest takes Waller-Bridge’s character to that same meeting house. “It’s just around here,” he says, standing up, looking out of the window at Charing Cross Road. “When Phoebe and I first talked, we met at the Soho Theatre. We talked about love and religion, we walked all around here. And I said, ‘This is a place I go,’ so we called in and there was no one there, so we sat in there and we talked. It was a really magical day.”

Scott says he sees all the different characters that he has played as versions of himself. “It’s like, ‘What would this version of me look like?’ rather than, ‘Oh, I’m going to be somebody else.’ You filter it through you, and you discover more about yourself. I think that is a very lucky thing to be able to do, to find out more about yourself in the short time that we are here.”

[bekolxeram]

7x03 analysis part 2 — Too many Cats

Tommy flew a helicopter into a Category 5 hurricane, at least the show told us so. Is it even possible for an aircraft to fly in those conditions? Today, we are going to figure out just how strong the storm actually is canonically, and how realistic our beloved weewoo show is.

TW: Hurricane, extreme weather, natural disaster

What is the difference between a tropical storm and a hurricane? What even is a hurricane?

Both tropical storm and hurricane are tropical cyclones, just of different strength. A tropical cyclone is a rotating storm system with a low pressure center. The center, or the eye of the storm, sucks in warm moist air from an oceanic environment and it feeds into the generation of storm clouds that organize themselves into a spiral pattern due to the Earth's rotation, aka Coriolis effect.

A tropical cyclone is classified by its maximum sustained wind.

So if it's below 62 km/h, it's a tropical Depression. if it's between 63-118 km/h, it's a Tropical Storm. A Category 5 hurricane though has a maximum sustained wind speed of over 252 km/h.

A strong enough tropical cyclone is called a hurricane in North America, a typhoon in East Asian, and a cyclone in the Indian Ocean (including Australia).

How strong is the storm in 7x03 actually?

We first see the storm at the end of 7x01, when First Mate Kenneth tells Captain Ochoa there is a strengthening tropical storm in the ship's path. Captain Ochoa decides to reverse course back to LA and instructs Kenneth to alert the Coast Guard, but they get interrupted by the cartel.

Fast forward to 7x02, the next mention of the storm comes from Karen. When Hen is sent home by Chief Simpson, she tries to call Athena, but it goes straight to voicemail. Karen tells her cell service is probably spotty out at sea because of the hurricane, which has just got upgraded.

It's recently upgraded to a Category 2 hurricane, as we can see from Karen's tablet.

Then Hen goes to Maddie to ask the Coast Guard to look for Bathena's cruise ship. When Hen shows Maddie the ship tracking app on her phone, the time is 10:28. (I'm guessing PM because it's already dark outside during the Kyle Ortiz call.)

By the time Chief Simpson comes by to reinstate Hen, she's already talking about a Cat 5 hurricane. That can't be more than an hour or two later.

So which one is it? Is it a Cat 2 or a Cat 5? Who should I trust?

Tommy. Whenever he flies, his safety depends on his understanding of the local wind condition and weather. You should listen to him:

So it's a Cat 5, at least by the time the 118 set off on their journey to save Bathena.

Can a tropical storm intensify into a Cat 5 hurricane in hours?

No, not in real life. The record for most rapid intensification of a tropical cyclone is Hurricane Patricia in 2015, but it still took 24 hours. This doesn't mean the storm in 7x03 is completely made up. I believe I might have found the real life inspiration behind it.

Hurricane Otis (2023)

An area of low pressure formed on October 15, 2023 over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico. While it was during a significant El Niño period and the ocean temperature was record-breaking-ly high, strong vertical wind shear condition near the storm was predicted to hinder its development. It was originally forecasted to make landfall as a mere tropical storm. People in Acapulco went to bed on October 23 expecting moderate wind and light rainfall, many stopped seeking out updates of the storm.

In the early hours of October 24, meteorologists at the NHC recognized from satellite images that tropical storm Otis was rapidly intensifying into a hurricane. The NHC officially upgraded the storm to a Cat 1 hurricane at 13:00 CDT and sent out a hurricane hunter aircraft to accurately measure the actual wind speed of the cyclone.

Satellite images provide a pretty good model to estimate the strength of a tropical cyclone, but the most reliable way to measure wind speed is still to fly an aircraft into it and physically measure it. When the hurricane hunter managed to fly into the eyewall of Otis, everyone realized they made a huge mistake: Otis had already become a Cat 3 hurricane, and it was expected to strengthen even more. It takes time to process data received from the hurricane hunter, so operationally the NHC still classified Otis as a Cat 1 hurricane until the next advisory was scheduled to come out, which was at 16:00 CDT, but by that time, Otis was already near Cat 4 strength. It was then officially upgraded to a Cat 5 hurricane at 22:00 CDT.

While Otis did take around 24 hours to intensify from a tropical storm to a catastrophic hurricane, if you just look at the NHC advisories, it pretty much jumped from a Cat 1 into a Cat 5 in 9 hours. It caused extensive damage to Acapulco when it made landfall because the city was severely underprepared. I suspect the cruise ship disaster arc was inspired by hurricane Otis because it happened just a month after the writer strike ended. Also, in 7x02 Maddie, a 911 dispatcher, was not aware that the tropical storm had already strengthened into a hurricane, which mirrors the unexpected development of hurricane Otis.

As the storm in universe was going back at sea and not making landfall, the authority was probably in even less of a hurry to find out what the actual strength of the cyclone was. So it could take them even longer to send in weather reconnaissance aircrafts. I can imagine the 911-verse version of the storm jumping from a Cat 2 to a Cat 5 officially in mere hours.

Can a helicopter fly in a Cat 5 hurricane?

Technically yes, but the chopper won't be doing the flying. The aforementioned NOAA Hurricane Hunter is a Lockheed P-3 Orion specifically modified and fortified for weather information collection. If this four-engined workhorse has to fight tooth and nail against crosswind and turbulence in order to fly into the eye of the storm, a small single engine helicopter definitely would not fair any better. It would end up getting tossed around, a particular strong downdraft might slam it into the ocean, or a prolong bout of severe turbulence might rip it apart. Luckily in 7x03, Tommy is not actually flying into a hurricane, he's trailing behind it.

NOAA Lockheed WP-3D Orion Hurricane Hunter

In a blink-and-you-miss-it exchange between Buck and Tommy, after Tommy says "a Cat 5 hurricane passed through here", Buck asks why he means by "passed through" and what they are flying in at the moment.

"iNTermITteNt sHOweRs"

When looking at the cross section of a tropical cyclone, you can see rows of rainbands around the eyewall, increasing in size the closer it is to the center of the storm. If you have ever experienced a tropical cyclone making landfall, you would know it starts with sporadic bouts of rainfall (aka intermittent showers), which then gradually increase in frequency and severity as the storm approaches. Once you are within 100-200 km of the eye, wind speed would become violent while the rainbands become so wide and close together it basically keeps raining until you are right under the eye.

These are radar images of hurricane Irma (2017) making landfall in Florida. Bands of moderate to heavy rainfall spread across the inner core region of the cyclone, with still pretty consistent light to moderate precipitation between the gaps. But in the area further away from the eye in the southwest and southeast quadrants, you can see more squall line like patterns. Precipitation would abruptly begin and stop as you fly in and out of those outer lumps of clouds.

Wind speed in that area is no where near hurricane level even for a Cat 5 cyclone, it is typically under 100 km/h. That does not mean it is a safe condition to fly in. Because the outer rainbands of a cyclone are less affected by the storm's vortex dynamics, they behave more like regular thunderstorms. As you know, thunderstorms are big no-no's for aviation safety. In fact, the outer rainbands of a typhoon once contributed to a plane crash in Taiwan.

Conclusion

The hurricane in 7x03 is likely based on reality, albeit with a bit of exaggeration and a shortened timeline for dramatic effect. It is possible to fly and control a helicopter in this specific condition, but the danger is still quite high. Flying into a thunderstorm has a whole different set of risks associated with it, which I will tell you all about next time. Yes, part 3 of this series is "how to crash a helicopter with weather", so stay tuned.

[camisoledadparis]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … January 19

1851 – The "State of Deseret," better known as Utah, enacts a criminal code that makes sodomy illegal only between males, and sets the penalty at a prison term and/or fine in the discretion of the court.

1863 – Ogden Codman, Jr. was an American architect and interior decorator in the Beaux-Arts styles, and co-author with Edith Wharton of The Decoration of Houses (1897).

Codman spent his youth from 1875 to 1884 at Dinard, an American resort colony in France, and on returning to America in 1884, studied at the MIT. Wharton became one of his first Newport clients for her home there, Land's End. Subsequently she introduced Codman to Cornelius Vanderbilt II, who hired him to design the second and third floor rooms of his Newport summer home, The Breakers.

In 1907, Codman built the Codman-Davis House in Washington, D.C. for his cousin Martha Codman, one of the few intact homes that he designed. This included a carriage house, now the Apex Night Club, ironically a gay club.

Although a noted homosexual, on 8 October, 1904, Codman married one of his commissioners, Leila Griswold Webb, widow of railroad magnate H. Walter Webb, who died unexpectedly in 1910.

In 1920, Codman left New York to return to France, where he spent the rest of his life at the Château de Grégy, wintering at Villa Leopolda in Villefranche-sur-Mer: it is his masterpiece, the fullest surviving expression of his esthetic.

1887 – Newspapers report an apparent blackmail ring in Greenville, Ohio that leads to seven indictments and one conviction for sodomy, but the Governor of Ohio pardons the one convicted.

1897 – The Missouri Supreme Court upholds a conviction for assault to commit sodomy of a St. Louis police officer who attempted sodomy with another male after threatening to arrest him unless he accompanied him to a lumber yard, where the attempt was made.

1921 – Acclaimed mystery writer Patricia Highsmith (d.1995) was the author of one explicitly lesbian novel, as well as the popular series featuring the amoral bisexual Tom Ripley.

Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on January 19, 1921. Her father was of German and her mother of British descent. She was educated at Barnard College, New York, and became a freelance writer a year after she left college. She lived alternately in Europe and the United States, residing mostly in Switzerland.

Her first novel Strangers on a Train (1949), later a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, depicts that pattern of peculiar psychological imprisonment between two people that she was to continue as her personal motif. Instead of an absolutely moral Holmes/Watson type of reassurance at the center of the novel, there is the subversive, explicitly homoerotic and tortured obsession of two murderers for each other.

Carol, first published in 1952 as The Price of Salt, under the pseudonym Claire Morgan, is Highsmith's only explicitly lesbian novel. It sold nearly one million copies in the United States in 1953 alone. Lesbian readers' response was one of gratitude—finally they were offered a novel that did not end in death, despair, or debasement.

Of the Ripley series, critic Kathleen Gregory Klein argues that Highsmith has gone as far as creating a new fictional form, citing her introduction of the cult-figure serial killer Tom Ripley as a new type of criminal superhero, prefiguring similar cultural icons that appeared in the 1990s. (The Talented Mr. Ripley was awarded the Edgar Allan Poe Scroll by the Mystery Writers of America in 1955.)

The Ripley books are generically akin to a series. Characters reappear in subsequent titles and undergo development, and Ripley himself inspires readerly identification, at least because he is so amorally fascinating.

René Clément's subtly homoerotic Purple Noon (1960), starring Alain Delon as Tom Ripley, was the first adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Other adaptations of the Ripley novels include Wim Winders' The American Friend (1977), featuring Dennis Hopper as Tom Ripley in an existential take on the character; Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), starring Matt Damon; Liliani Cavani's Ripley's Game (2002), featuring John Malkovich; and Roger Spottiswoode's Ripley Under Ground (2005), with Barry Pepper in the title role.

According to her biography, Beautiful Shadow, Highsmith's personal life was a troubled one; she was an alcoholic who never had a relationship that lasted for more than a few years, and she was seen by some of her contemporaries and acquaintances as misanthropic and cruel.

Highsmith had relationships with women and men, but never married or had children. In 1943, she had an affair with the artist Allela Cornell (who committed suicide in 1946 by drinking nitric acid[9]) and in 1949, she became close to novelist Marc Brandel. Between 1959 and 1961 she had a relationship with Marijane Meaker, who wrote under the pseudonyms of Vin Packer and Ann Aldrich, but later wrote young adult fiction with the name M.E. Kerr.

Ray Stevens & Pat Paterson (R)

1941 – Born: Pierre Clermont, better known by his ring name Pat Patterson, was a Canadian former professional wrestler (d.2020). Pat was 17 when he started wrestling. He soon became one of the biggest names in the sixties and seventies. He worked for WWE as a creative consultant. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 1996.

Outside of the wrestling ring, Pat was really timid and shy. He was soft-spoken, with a cute French accent. Surprisingly, Pat was a former altar boy and candidate for the priesthood. He was a deeply religious man.

Pat Patterson debuted in Montreal, Quebec in 1958 as "Pretty Boy" Pat Patterson, an effeminate wrestler who wore red lipstick and pink trunks and was accompanied by his pet Poodle.

A Young Pat Patterson

Patterson wrestled frequently for affiliates of the National Wrestling Alliance throughout the 1960s, and was a ten time tag team champion in San Francisco with a variety of partners. His most famous pairing was with Ray Stevens, the two of them forming the heel tag team, the Blond Bombers.

Patterson was openly gay, although he had never stated so. It is rumored that Pat and Gerald Brisco, another of his wrestling partners, were lovers. In 1992, Patterson was accused of sexual harassment by former ring announcer Murray Hodgson and released from the company until the charges were dropped, when he was promptly rehired. After dropping the charges, Hodgson's attorney referred to Hodgson as "a lifelong con man."

In August 2006, Patterson underwent emergency heart surgery. In October, Patterson recovered from his operation and was released from the hospital.

On June 12, 2014, Patterson officially "came out" on TV. The video link is below:

(Click to view on YouTube)

Although Patterson was openly gay, having come out in the 1970s, his sexual orientation was never directly acknowledged on television until 2014 when he spoke about it on a WWE-produced reality TV show.

Louie Dondero, Patterson's longtime partner of 40 years, died of a heart attack in 1998. Patterson himself died in December 2020.

1943 – The name Janis Joplin (d.1970) is practically synonymous with the excesses epitomized by the counterculture of the 1960s: sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, all of which Joplin took to extreme levels. As troubled as she was talented, Joplin has been portrayed in numerous articles, full-length biographies, and documentaries as everything from a reckless, sex-crazed party animal to a victimized, lost little girl who never believed she was lovable.

Joplin was born in small, insular Port Arthur, Texas, where she grew up. She always stood out as a bright, creative misfit in her oil-refinery hometown. Joplin reportedly relished the attention that her bad-girl image brought, but her status as a social outcast hurt her deeply and would remain with her throughout her short life. She decided that school was not for her and began singing at the hootenannies of the day and at bars in Austin, San Francisco, and Venice, California. After some time spent traveling, Joplin moved to San Francisco and fully immersed herself in the counterculture there.

Before long, she joined the then-unknown group Big Brother and the Holding Company. Joplin scored a major hit at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival with her smoldering rendition of Big Mama Thornton's blues song "Ball and Chain." That major "Summer of Love" event heralded her big breakthrough; Big Brother signed a contract with Mainstream Records, and Joplin continued to perform with them for two more years. Joplin later formed the Kozmic Blues Band, and in 1969 released I Got Dem Kozmic Blues Again Mama! When the group fell apart, she spearheaded one last project, the Full Tilt Boogie Band, a more popular-style, professional-sounding group with whom she recorded her third album, Pearl. The widely acclaimed record was released posthumously and featured her unforgettable version of the Kris Kristofferson tune "Me and Bobby McGee."

As her fame grew, so did her alcoholism and drug use; she battled her heroin addiction but never relinquished her Southern Comfort habit. Joplin's sexuality was expansive and open, encompassing both men and women; but the "freak" circles in which Joplin circulated were generally heterosexual and not immune to sexism. Hippie women, after all, were not supposed to be crass and, as Janis was often described, "ballsy."

In addition, Joplin crossed the race line. Most people had never seen a white woman singing the blues and letting it all hang out the way she did, and perhaps not everyone was ready for her full-on explosion of voice and soul. Citing influences and inspirations such as Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, and Leadbelly, Janis interpreted the blues in a way that helped break down the old barrier of "black music" versus "white music."

Although Joplin took numerous female lovers, she never openly identified as lesbian or bisexual. Instead, she considered herself beyond categorization: she was simply sexual. Her friends mainly referred to her as bisexual, yet the press has long loved to heterosexualize her past, while lesbian culture often claims her as one of its own. The truth is that Janis maintained long-term relationships with several women, including Peggy Caserta, whose controversial 1973 memoir Going Down with Janis documented their affair and mutual drug addiction.

At the same time, Joplin was also on the lookout for "one good man" with whom to settle down. Twice engaged, she never did marry.

Although she had kicked heroin around the time she formed the Full Tilt Boogie Band, Joplin was tempted again one night when she ran into her former dealer in the lobby of the Landmark Motel in Los Angeles. She died of a heroin overdose, alone in her room at the motel, on October 4, 1970.

Joplin's music continues to flourish. Her Greatest Hits album still makes the Billboard charts. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.

The Johns Committee in session

1959 – On this date investigators summoned the University of Florida Geography professor Sigmund Diettrich to the Manor Motel in Gainesville, Florida for "interviewing". Soon after, he was fired from his job and lost the life he loved as a beloved teacher and dean. He attempted suicide the same day he was let go from U.F. Hundreds of other professors and students across the state were also terminated or expelled because of their sexuality. Many people are familiar with the McCarthy hearings but do not realize that Florida had its own committee designed to weed out communism and homosexual activity. State Senator Charley Johns started the investigations to "protect Florida's children."

The Johns Committee pursued people in academic institutions, courthouse bathrooms and bus stations. The committee's investigators went so far as tapping phones in motels, interrogating children as young as 10, and breaking up a teenage girl's slumber party looking for evidence of moral misconduct. In 1993 more than 30,000 pages of secret documents became public, including a University of Florida administrator's statement that there was no way to prevent Gay men from lingering in university bathrooms "unless you pour sulfuric acid on the floor to make people go fast."

1982 – Pete Buttigieg is an American politician and candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 United States presidential election. He is the first openly gay person to seek the Democratic nomination, and has built his campaign around the idea of generational change. He launched his campaign on April 14, 2019, after forming an exploratory committee in January. Initially considered a long shot, he gained significant momentum in mid-2019 when he participated in several town halls, forums, and debates. As of December 2019, several media outlets consider him one of four "top-tier candidates".

Buttigieg served as the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana from January 2012 to January 2020. Before running for office, he worked on the political campaigns of Democrats Jill Long Thompson, Joe Donnelly, and John Kerry. He was defeated in the 2010 election for Indiana State Treasurer before being elected mayor of South Bend, Indiana the following year, becoming the youngest mayor of a city with a population of over 100,000. In 2015, Buttigieg publicly came out as gay. Later that year, he was reelected with over 80% of the vote. In 2017, he ran for chair of the Democratic National Committee.

From 2009 to 2017, he served as a naval intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve, attaining the rank of lieutenant. In 2014, he was deployed to Afghanistan for seven months and was awarded the Joint Service Commendation Medal and the Joint Meritorious Unit Award. From 2007 to 2010, he worked as a consultant at management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Buttigieg is a graduate of Harvard College and Oxford University. He attended the latter on a Rhodes Scholarship.

In a June 2015 piece in the South Bend Tribune, Buttigieg came out as gay. By coming out, Buttigieg became Indiana's first openly gay elected executive. He was the first elected official in Indiana to come out while in office, and the highest elected official in Indiana to come out. Buttigieg is also the first openly gay Democratic presidential candidate, and the second overall, after Republican Fred Karger, who ran in 2012.

In December 2017, Buttigieg announced his engagement to Chasten Glezman, a junior high school teacher. They had been dating since August 2015 after meeting on the dating app Hinge. They were married on June 16, 2018, in a private ceremony at the Episcopalian Cathedral of St. James. As of April 2019 Chasten uses his husband's surname, Buttigieg.

Buttigieg announced that he and his husband had become parents on August 17, 2021. Buttigieg announced that they had adopted two newborn fraternal twins on September 4, 2021.

In June 2019, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, a watershed moment in the LGBTQ rights movement, Queerty named him one of its "Pride50" people identified as "trailblazing individuals who actively ensure society remains moving towards equality, acceptance and dignity for all queer people."

President-elect Biden named Buttigieg as his nominee for Secretary of Transportation in December 2020. His nomination was confirmed on February 2, 2021, by a vote of 86–13, making him the first openly gay Cabinet secretary in U.S. history. Nominated at age 38, he is also the youngest Cabinet member in the Biden administration and the youngest person ever to serve as Secretary of Transportation.

1996 – Jakub Jankto is a Czech professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for Czech First League club Sparta Prague, on loan from La Liga club Getafe, and the Czech Republic national team.

Jankto announced in February of 2023 that he is gay. He becomes the second current openly gay soccer player in top-tier men's professional soccer, joining Australian Josh Cavallo, who announced he was gay back in 2021. The current Sparta Prague player, on loan from Getafe, has spent most of his soccer career in Italy playing for Udinese, Ascoli and Sampdoria before joining Getafe in the summer of 2021.

His current club, Sparta Prague, issued a statement after his video message: "Jakub spoke openly about his sexual orientation with the club some time ago. Everything else concerns his personal life. No further comments. No more questions. You have our support. Live your life, Jacob. Nothing else matters."

Jankto, 27, has 45 appearances for his national team. He played in all five of his team's matches at Euro 2020 as the Czechs made the quarterfinals.

2004 – Ian Iqbal Rashid releases his movie Touch of Pink. Multi-talented Rashid is a poet, screenwriter and filmmaker known in particular for his volumes of poetry, for the BBC TV series This Life and the feature films Touch of Pink and How She Move.

Of Indian ancestry and Ismaili Muslim religion, Rashid's family lived in colonial East Africa for generations. Ian was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Different years of birth are given for Rashid in different sources, but academic work gives the year as 1968. In 1970, his family was forced to leave Tanzania. After failing to secure asylum in the UK and US, they settled in Toronto.

Rashid began his career as an arts journalist and critic and events programmer, particularly focussed on South Asian diasporic, Muslim and LGBTQ cultural work.

In the early 1990s, Rashid returned to London, Britain, where he lives today with his partner, the writer, curator, and academic Peter Ride.

In the late 1980s, Rashid was a regular contributor to the Canadian LGBT magazine Rites. Rashid published his first poetry collection, Black Markets, White Boyfriends and Other Acts of Elision, in 1991. Two more followed: the chapbook Song of Sabu in 1993 and The Heat Yesterday in 1995.

His poems "Another Country", "Could Have Danced All Night", "Hot Property" and "Early Dinner, Weekend Away" appear in John Barton and Billeh Nickerson's 2007 anthology Seminal: The Anthology of Canada's Gay Male Poets, and others were included in the 2009 anthology Forbidden Sex, Forbidden Texts: New India's Gay Poets.

Self-taught as a film-maker, in 1991, Rashid made the short film Bolo Bolo! with Kaspar Saxena. The film, part of an HIV/AIDS cable access series called Toronto Living With AIDS, resulted in the series being pulled from Rogers Television after complaints about sexually suggestive content, though it had a long and healthy life at film festivals.

Rashid went on to write two award-winning short films, Surviving Sabu (1999), and Stag (2001).

Touch of Pink, Rashid's first feature film, spent 12 years in development. In 2003, he finally had the chance to direct the project as a Canada-UK co-production. It premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival to great acclaim, a bidding war, and eventually, a sale to Sony Picture Classics. The film has attracted extensive scholarly commentary.

How She Move received a similar reception at Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Rashid in 2007, the film is set in the world of step dancing. It was nominated for a Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize and purchased by Paramount Vantage. The film opened to positive reviews and strong box office.

Rashid began working as a writer in UK television in the late 1990s. His credits include the soap London Bridge (Carlton Television for ITV) and the cult hit BBC2 series This Life, for which he received the Writer's Guild of England award.

[monicareconstructed]

Pat Barrington.

Pat screamed feminine sex appeal, like 'I AM WOMAN!!' at top decibels.

Not such a happy childhood, and lived the life of a stripper with a few forays into film. But her looks and body - oh, my! I would have loved to have her body in her prime!!

Her web bio:

Pat Barrington was an extremely buxom, curvy, and drop-dead gorgeous blonde topless dancer who popped up in a handful of enjoyably trashy softcore sexploitation features throughout the 1960's, often for producer Harry H. Novak's Boxoffice International Pictures and directed by William Rotsler.

Barrington was born Patricia Annette Bray on October 16, 1939 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her mother Willie Jo Bray had a fling with a local man named Claude Weidenhause and became pregnant at age sixteen. Weidenhause had already left by the time Barrington was born. Pat moved with her mother Willie Jo to Richmond, Virginia when she was only two years old. Willie Jo married another man, Eugene Lee Barringer. But the marriage was short-lived and Pat found herself moving once again with her mother to Hyattsville, Maryland. Willie Jo subsequently married a former Marine suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Upset with the unstable situation at home, Barrington left her mother and went out to fend for herself after her sophomore year in high school.

Pat relocated to Baltimore, Maryland, where she hooked up with an Italian-American mobster named Bob. Barrington got married for the first time in the late 1950's. But Pat soon left her first husband after the relationship became abusive. Bob helped Barrington get back on her feet by securing her a job as an exotic dancer. Pat then made a name for herself in Washington, D.C. dancing under the name of Vivian Storm. Barrington caught the eye of local jazz musician Melvin Rees and moved into Rees's abode in Hyattsville, Maryland in 1959. Pat moved down south with Rees in 1960. Alas, Rees was found guilty of murdering a Virginia family and was sentenced to life in prison.

Barrington moved to Los Angeles, California in 1962 and promptly got a job dancing at the prestigious nightclub The Classic Cat. Pat then decided to pursue a modeling career and subsequently started posing in spreads for various men's magazines as well as numerous commercial layouts. After an ill-advised foray into dancing in Las Vegas, Barrington returned to Los Angeles and resumed her career as a model while still dancing on the side. Pat eventually began auditioning for film work in the mid-1960's. Barrington achieved her greatest cult cinema fame as the female lead in Stephen C. Apostolof's unintentionally hilarious horror camp hoot Orgy of the Dead (1965), in which she also performs one of her patented steamy nude dances as the painted Gold Girl. Barrington had another rare substantial starring part as a bored housewife who works as a high-priced call girl in the seamy Agony of Love (1966). More often, though, the stunning and spectacularly alluring Pat was relegated to secondary roles as a go-go dancer in such delightfully down'n'dirty low-grade fare as Lila (1968), The Girl with the Hungry Eyes (1967) and Sisters in Leather (1969). She appeared as herself in both the lurid mondo item Hedonistic Pleasures (1969) and Russ Meyer's blithely silly documentary Mondo Topless (1966). During this time Barrington was briefly married to cinematographer Robert Caramico.

After calling it quits as an actress, Pat left Los Angeles and moved to New Jersey with a singer named Romeo. Barrington soon found gainful employment dancing in clubs up and down the East Coast under the pseudonym of Princess Jajah. In the mid-1970's Pat branched out into topless dancing. She settled down in Cliffside Park, New Jersey in 1980. Barrington eventually dumped Romeo and became involved with a much younger man named Robert. Pat moved with Robert to Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1984. Pat worked as a stripper using the name Yvette at assorted seedy clubs throughout Florida. After retiring from dancing in the early 1990's, Barrington went on to work as a telemarketer. In her later years Pat also helped local animal rescue groups (she was a lifelong lover of animals). Barrington died from lung cancer at age 74 on September 1, 2014.

[theantonian]

The Antonian Reading List

Mark Antony: A Life by Patricia Southern (Highly recommended!)

Mark Antony: A Biography by Eleanor Goltz Huzar (Highly recommended!)

The Life and Times of Marc Antony by Arthur Weigall (Recommended)

Marc Antony: His Life and Times by Allan Roberts (Recommended)

Marc Antony by Mary Kittredge

Antony & Cleopatra by Patricia Southern

Antony & Cleopatra by Adrian Goldsworthy (By far the most negative book on Antony by a modern historian, the Cleopatra portion is better)

Mark Antony: A Plain Blunt Man by Paolo de Ruggiero (Recommended)

Mark Antony and Popular Culture: Masculinity and the Construction of an Icon by Rachael Kelly

Mark Antony's Heroes: How the Third Gallica Legion Saved an Apostle and Created an Emperor by Stephen Dando-Collins

A Noble Ruin: Mark Antony, Civil War and the Collapse of the Roman Republic by W. Jeffrey Tatum (Highly recommend!)

Mark Antony & Cleopatra: Cleopatra's Proxy War to Conquer Rome & Restore the Empire of the Greeks by Martin Armstrong

Actium and Augustus: The Politics and Emotions of Civil War by Robert Alan Gurval

The Roman Revolution by Ronald Syme (Recommended)

Octavian, Antony and Cleopatra by W. W. Tarn

Fulvia: Playing for Power at the End of the Roman Republic by Celia E. Schultz

Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt by Joyce Tyldesley (Highly Recommended!)

Cleopatra by Michael Grant (Highly Recommanded!)

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff (Highly Recommended!)

Cleopatra - A Biography by D. Roller

Cleopatra and Antony by Diana Preston

Cleopatra by Alberto Angela (Recommended)

Cleopatra by Jacob Abbott

Cleopatra the Great by Joann Fletcher

Cleopatra and Egypt by Sally-Ann Ashton

Cleopatra and Rome by Diana E. E. Kleiner

Cleopatra Her History Her Myth by Francine Prose

Cleopatra Histories, Dreams, and Distortions by Lucy Hughes Hallett (Recommended)

Cleopatra’s Daughter Egyptian Princess by Jane Draycott

The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard (Good for beginners)

The Last Assassin: The Hunt for the Killers of Julius Caesar by Peter Stothard

Robicon by Tom Holland

Alesia 52 BC: The final struggle for Gaul (Campaign) by Nic Fields

Actium 31 BC: Downfall of Antony and Cleopatra (Campaign) by Si Sheppard

Pharsalus 48 BC: Caesar and Pompey – Clash of the Titans (Campaign) by Si Sheppard

Philippi 42 BC: The death of the Roman Republic (Campaign) by Si Sheppard

Mutina 43 BC: Mark Antony's struggle for survival (Campaign) by Nic Fields

The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry Strauss

The Battle of Actium 31 BC: War for the World by Lee Fratantuono

Rome and Parthia: Empires at War: Ventidius, Antony and the Second Romano-Parthian War, 40–20 BC by Gareth C Sampson

Rivalling Rome: Parthian Coins and Culture by Vesta Curtis

Classical sources:

Plutarch’s Lives

Cicero: Philippics, Ad Brutum, Ad Familiares

Appian, The Civil Wars

Dio Cassius, The Roman History

Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars

Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War

Livy, The Early History of Rome

Tacitus, Annals and Histories

Friction:

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra by Willian Shakespeare

All For Love or The World Well Lost by John Dryden

The Siren and the Roman – A Tragedy by Lucyl

Caesar and Cleopatra by George Berbard Shaw

Cleopatra (play) by Sardou

Antony by Allan Massie

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

I, Cleopatra by William Bostock

Cleopatra by H. Rider Haggard

Cleopatra by Georg Ebers

Kleopatra (Vol I & II) by Karen Essex

Last Days with Cleopatra by Jack Lindsay

The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George

When We Were Gods by Colin Falconer

The Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough

Caesar's Soldier: Mark Antony Book I by Alex Gough (Ongoing series)

The Antonius Trilogy by Brook Allen

The Last Pharaoh series by Jay Penner

Throne of Isis by Juith Tarr

Hand of Isis by Jo Graham

Woman of Egypt by Kevin Methews

The Ides of Blood 01-06 (Comics)

Terror - Antonius En Cleopatra (Erotic yet pure love, Dutch comics)

Cleopatra - Geschiedenisstrip (Dutch comics)

Les Grands Personnages de l Histoire en Bandes Dessinees – Marc Antonie (French comics)

Les Grands Personnages de l Histoire en Bandes Dessinees – Cleopatre (French comics)

Les Grands Personnages de l Histoire en Bandes Dessinees – Julius Caesar (French comics)

Cléopâtre (French Manga)

 Ils Ont Fait L'histoire - Cléopâtre (French Graphic Novel)

[kavalyera]

People I want to get to know better !

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