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homewardaffiliate · 4 years

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Is Six Figure Mentors a Scam or What – The Homeward Take

– By Jayson Gold-Pambianchi

Welcome back, fellow Homeward Affiliates! And greetings to our new visitors.

As we all know, the internet is saturated with numerous affiliate learning programs, some good, others…not so excellent. In this article, we will be diving into one of the more popular affiliate learning platforms used by aspiring affiliates today; Six Figure Mentors. I was a member of this organization for some time and would like to blend my personal opinion of the platform into this review; helping to break down whether SFM is a scam or a legitimate organization.

Without any further ado, let’s jump right in:

Name: Six Figure Mentors (SFM)

Website: https://thesixfigurementors.com/

Owners & Co-founders: Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek

Homeward Affiliate Overall Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0 stars

Pros:

Training: 4.0 out of 5.0

Business Model: 4.5 out of 5.0

Organization Support: 4.5 out of 5.0

Community Support: 4.5 out of 5.0

Affiliate Program: 4.5 out of 5.0

Cons:

Price: 2.5 out of 5.0 / Varies (From Free to $25 per month through upsells of $2500 per year plus $97 per month)

Pressure to Upgrade: 2.5 out of 5.0 / Access to better learning resources comes with steep prices

Respectable Training, But…

If there is one thing SFM can guarantee its members, it is respectable training. While there are a variety of different levels of learning hosted through the organization, the SFM team does an excellent job of breaking down the nature of affiliate marketing for members; walking them through the process of creating their own website and honing their marketing skills. In many videos, SFM creators Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek spend time breaking down their tried and tested marketing practices, giving learners the gist on how they can apply their lessons to actively grow and shape a unique online business. I can recall enjoying Stuart’s videos particularly, as he has a calm and collected way of speaking through his discussions. Everything he spoke about, from marketing funnels, to website development and advertising, I remember everything to this day.

However, while SFM excels at every level of education in providing proper learning material to their members, they fall short in a few areas, namely, the way they educate and their ever-present pressure to upgrade.

Training Modules vs. Homework Modules

Everyone learns differently. However, if there is one thing that we can all relate to, it is our disdain of feeling like a student back in high school, laboring over monotonous homework assignments and readings which we know we’re never going to remember or give any serious thought. At times, that is what the SFM learning process can feel like.

While a large portion of their trainings include well-produced videos (allowing you to sit back and learn while relaxing), there are a number of books, films, and long PDF documents you are more than simply ‘advised’ to spend hours reading and watching. In addition, they give you assignments in which they suggest that you print, fill out, and bring papers to live webinars and trainings. I imagine any respectable affiliate marketer would be all for reading good material, but requests like these can feel a bit excessive and demanding.

Becoming a full-time affiliate marketer does not happen overnight, and when people begin learning through a platform, they don’t have all the time in the world to focus on something that has yet to even become a part-time job. People need a way of sitting back and learning in a pragmatic and lenient manner. Unfortunately, SFM encourages far more work and attention than most people are capable of dedicating as they begin learning to market products. On the other hand, if you enjoy the rigors and challenge of a serious learning regimen, you will probably love their style!

Pressure to Upgrade

A good number of affiliate training platforms use upsells, offers centered around convincing members to opt for more expensive (and extensive) memberships. SFM is a prime example of one such platform, and has several different membership packages, scaling from moderate subscriptions of $25 per month to sums as high as $97 per month plus $2,500 per year. With each upgrade, they offer a vsriety of addiitional trainings and services to better hone your skills in marketing.

The Levels of Membership:

Affiliate Membership: Free to join

Promotion of SFM to earn commissions by promoting their memberships, products and services.

Student Membership: Free 30 Day Trial + $25 per month after trial

Access to the members-only site

Step-by-step Online Business Success Module

Recording of the SFM Founder’s Visionary Call (Great for additional insight into affiliate marketing)

Access to a business system consultant

Access to their Digital Skills Platform (Hundreds of learning turotials)

Essential Membership: One-time payment of $297 + $97 per month

Access to the SFM Digital Business System (live training, recorded training, learning modules, personal business coach)

Digital Business Lounge Premium Membership (used to purchase domains, design websites and market your business),

Eligibility to join live events (held throughout the year in the USA, UK, AUS, CAN)

Access to the SFM private Community Site

Elite Membership: $2500 per year + $97 per month

Access to live webinars and trainings hosted by SFM co-founders Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek.

Access to the highest commissions possible by promoting SFM membership packages as an SFM elite affiliate.

SFM’s 30 Day Money-Back Guarantee: SFM offers those who join and don’t feel strongly about their experience the option of canceling their membership and receiving their money back. If it isn’t for you, and you want to withdraw within 30 days of joining, that is absolutely fine. They are very humble about thanking you for exploring their services and wish you well.

What can come across as a bit obnoxious, however, is the way these offers are advertised to you during your first few weeks of learning as a student (or even as an essential member). I can recall that amidst my trainings, I would constantly see offers to ‘upgrade’ to receive a level of assistance I wasn’t going to receive with my existing membership, and honestly, that was quite off-putting. It also gave me the feeling that I wasn’t getting a strong education because without thousands of dollars to invest, I would have been hard-pressed to learn the most important secrets and lessons of affiliate marketing with SFM.

Again, while the trainings themselves were still highly educational, the constant barrage of advertisements and requests that I make investments stifled my learning experience.

They’re There to Support and Consult

Despite these several forms of aggravation, the community is most kind and helpful. The technical support team is excellent, and they try to service everyone as swiftly as they are able. Members of the community are also always around to reach out to for help with your learning track. The Facebook group is quite active, and the people there can be a major help if you ever feel stuck. At no point do you feel like you are alone. As they say on multiple occasions, they’re there for you. In areas of support, SFM does not disappoint.

Additionally, as long as you have student access, you will have access to a business system consultant. If you have questions about business tactics, advertisement ideas, or programs you would like to develop, you can have an expert chat with you and bounce ideas around; telling you which creative ideas have the potential to become profitable. At SFM you will always have someone to guide you on your learning path, even when things become complex.

High Ticket Commissions

Six Figure Mentor’s affiliate program is free, keeping with the gold-standard affiliate policy practiced across the digital market. Don’t want to spend $25, $97 or more per month on learning? No problem. You can advertise for SFM all the same. Depending on which membership you advertise successfully, you can make high ticket commissions, upwards of $250 in initial income and $250 in annually recurring income for referring members. If you wish to see those comission sums increase though, you will need to upgrade your membership.

Due to the combination of moderately high starting commissions and the nature of the program as free to join, the SFM affiliate program is most respectable.

Conclusion: Not a Scam!

Although SFM can become an expensive way to learn the ropes on Affiliate Marketing, between their effective learning platform (if sometimes obnoxious), consultation services, platform assistance and community support, they are most certainly a legitimate organization; a substantial option for learning affiliate marketing and how to design your own product businesses. Their free-to-join affiliate program is also a testament to their desire to empower aspiring marketers and is a respectable option for any homeward bound affiliate. If you would like to join Six Figure Mentors and explore their learning courses and seminars for yourself, head on over knowing you are in store for an excellent experience.

My Most Recommended Affiliate Training Platform:

While Six Figure Mentors might be the right learning platform for many homeward affiliates, my personal recommendation is to become part of a different learning community; one which I feel offers all the helpful services and welcoming qualities held my SFM but also avoids the issues I have found with them. I am speaking of the organization that I have passionately been a member of throughout the majority of my time in digital marketing: Wealthy Affiliate.

If you would like to read more about my #1 recommended affiliate learning organization and are tired of trying the find the best affiliate marketing program to start your online business, click here.

I hope this article has been an insightful introduction into Six Figure Mentors and will help you determine whether it is the right option for you to pursue in your affiliate marketing journey!

If you have absolutely any questions about Six Figure Mentors or Affiliate Marketing, please feel free to comment below and I will be happy to speak with you. Moreover, if you have experience with SFM and would like to share your thoughts and lessons you have learned, leave your own review below, I would love to read it! Until next time, stay well.

See you on the other side, Homeward Affiliate!

– Jayson Gold-Pambianchi

source https://homewardaffiliate.com/is-six-figure-mentors-a-scam-or-what-the-homeward-take/

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littlefearsdoodles · 5 years

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Further lessons in collaborations

Some further lessons, thoughts and misc wotsits on the Little Fears Sunday collabs. It’s a long, but maybe an educational post for any bloggers wanting to collaborate with each other. Some links to start with, for reference.

Little Fears Sunday collaborations Guidelines & initial email

Tracking collaborations

Straight up, I screwed this up so badly. On the initial posting, I had over 100 people email me. I reckon about 20 will follow through, but I got lost in the first barrages of emails. I know of at least three people that I’ve left hanging that I need to speak too. Liz, I was meant to send a story. Anonyole and Willow I was meant to send an image for approval. One of them has been waiting for two weeks. I just keep forgetting to do it because my I took on too much. I tried noting names on pen and paper. That only worked for so long.

This was confounded because I initially said, hit me up on social media or email. So I had messages coming from every direction. It wasn’t like I could just search my emails because I had DMs everywhere. Doh!

I’ve come to the conclusion I should use a spreadsheet. Four columns, name, email, website and collab progress. I can’t do that on previous collab contacts because then I’m collecting data. To do that I’d have to include a GDPR notice in the initial email stating what data I’m collecting, what I will do with it and how will I protect it. That’s something I’ll definitely do going forward.

Usernames, pen names and real names

My focus on always referring to peoples pen names has confused a few folks. It’s another thing I need to add to the initial email.

People post under pen names for a variety of reasons. The embarrassment that they write fan-fics. Not wanting family or friends to see their art. Hiding from a nutty ex-partner. Or sometimes, they just want to be identified as someone else. An imaginary online-persona. All valid reasons to respect someone’s username.

Privacy is darn near non-existent, online and real life, nowadays. What little control we have over privacy we should try to respect.

So if someone leaves comments on my website under the username AlphaDog345 but emails me under the name Robert, I’ll do my best to refer to them as AlphaDog345 unless corrected.

WordPress scheduling

I was asked by Nobbin how we could synchronize posts and link to each other’s stories ahead of time. Well, in WordPress Gutenberg, when you make a post you get a little link icon next to the post name. Click on that, and you can copy the URL of scheduled posts.

Videos pre-schedule

I’ve explained why I’m sticking with WordPress Gutenberg before, despite my straight up hate for it. But one issue that’s been noticed is that I can’t schedule videos that haven’t been published on YouTube already without resorting to classic blocks. There is no workaround in current Gutenberg because it’s crap. So I end up with classic blocks in my HTML or I leave it until 9 am, then post everything.

This has meant, when one collaborator copy pasted my entire post it came out janky as heck on their own site. It’s also meant most of my posts are never bang on 9 am.

#PeterHatesWordPress5.0GutenbergEditor

I think in future I’ll change my initial email to read “around 9 am,” unless someone wants to sync posts. Then I’ll pre-post the video so the URL is usable in WordPress.

Story length

Oh man, haha. Yeah. We had a laugh there. I’m flexible on the 512 character limit. I just didn’t want people writing essay-length stories. Not only would they not fit or work on the Little Fears, but I want the collaborations to be fast and fun. Not tireless hours of work.

This was taken to an extreme by an ex-subscriber, who sent me a chapter of a book he claimed was a short story. Some back and forth and he ended up saying he was trialling me to narrate his entire novel. For free. In the spirit of collaboration.

Yeah… No…

Got a bit pissy when I said I’d have to charge for that amount of work. Anyone who’s ever done audio work will tell you, it takes a staggering amount of time to record, edit, re-record and check through even short stories. A novel would take me a full working week. At least!

I find a lot of folks are up collaborations when asked. But try to be respectful of others time, aye?

Already published stories

I was asked by Ederren on the briefs post if I’d do stories that were already published. Eventually, yes. I’d love to narrate some of the funny stories and creepypastas I’ve read. Especially if they fit well.

Right now though, I’m getting my feet with collaborations. As you can see from this post, I still have refining to do. The initial email explosions died down now, but I got a lot of people submitting any old random story. Out of 40 stories sent to me without an email convo/brief first, maybe 5 worked for the Fears.

Taking submissions for pre-written poetry and fiction is something I need to work into the initial email. It all comes down being specific from the start. Otherwise writings sending submissions and I are just wasting each others time.

So, pre-written stories. In the future, yes, but not yet.

Some collaborations, already published

Knife Skill by Silk

Iron Nick by Peter

The Swing by Alex

Olivia’s Tree by Layne

Masked Sin by Jay

Conference art by Dee

Beau by Sue

Bad Karma by Tre

Conquest by Jessica

Saved by Aimer

Dark Paths by Lauren

I think that’s everyone…

Want to collaborate?

As you can see, I’m still refining my process. If you’re interested in collaborating with me, drop me an email to Peter at [email protected]

Want to support me in some way?

In the mean tie, if you love what I do, and fancy supporting me in some way, you can buy me a cuppa on Ko-Fi. Nobble one of my tees on Threadless. Buy one of my books on Amazon. Grab an original art or a print on my Etsy. Or, hit me up on Patreon for as little as $1 a month.

Thanks as always to Warren for the continued $10 Patronage.

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eden-rosebct · 5 years

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Circa Solar - realign with the nature of time

For emerging practices we were encouraged to look at a technological kick starter of our choice and identify our personal positions, the practice of it within the creative arts and industries, Articulate propositions and highlight alternative and future directions of the said artefact within the said industry.

Circa Solar. On my initial encounter with Circa Solar, it looked like a fun approach to the concept of time. It sells itself as an alternative clock, based around “the nature of time”. I thought this was an interesting and certainly an aesthetically engaging concept. From a shallow perspective, the whole article on Kickstarter was well-curated, colour coordinated, flashy, clean and had a lot of information from the artefact itself to the philosophy behind it.

It was my pretentious side that grasped to this idea that “I don’t need numbers for the time, this is way cooler” or “This is more natural for my body rhythms” and other naive thoughts. And the more I read the more caught out I was about how clingy it was.

We depend on time telling for everything in our culture, it is the main structure of our society. We do everything based around time. The stance they were taking, however, was to change the view of time into the visual concept rather than numerical.

First, look

The contemporary aesthetic included a lot of cohesive colour work in a bright sunlight yellow, contrasting this with a black and grey accent. This theme was used on all imagery, from photography, design and film. It was obvious they wanted an overall impactful “look” for this product. It did make it look professional and well organised, though when I watched the video I was introduced to the concept with a robotic voice over. It was well informed and to the point and used big words to further drive the importance of their research behind the project. It was clearly a persuasive approach into convincing us that our current reading of time was potentially a “toxic delusion”.

Though I understood the language they were using, it was a language that would be considered more academic than marketable in my opinion. Their language usage was also concise but ultimately intimidating. It came across as existential and conceptual, rather than whimsical, which I think is a loss, they take themselves too seriously so me to take them seriously.

They believe this is the solution to the additive “short term thinking” that our current culture is subject to. Using sentences like “if you choose to support solar in this critical moment in time” and overall sense of urgency, the language indicates that their main goal is to enter a new chapter of telling time. I think though, to me, it sounded pretentious. The words and overall approach seemed like an overpromising application. It seemed like they were building up this huge influential project and it would change the world. I was just waiting for a “and much, much more” sentence.

They separated their explanation from its most simplistic approach to its most complex. I did feel this was effective and worked well for the average viewer, it allowed you to see as little or as much as you want. Chapters are as follows…

Circa Solar in a sentence

Circa Solar in a paragraph

Circa Solar prototype

Circa Solar in a Story

Nature of Time

Nature of being

Toxic Delusions

Radical Coexistence

Furthermore risks etc.

What don’t they say is that this will replace time altogether, but it does seem to have a negative look on the current way of telling time, where that be analog or digital, as far as I know, this is all numerical based rather than visual sundial style. I think there is. the reason why we as people in society graduated from the sundial approach to telling time, to a numerical approach. They also don’t seem to mention anything about sundials and how they were a mix of numerical and visual time telling value. They also seem to compare humans to plant life and the “natural” cycle of light. Funny enough, we aren’t plants, we are people. Time to me at this point is a necessary and essential part of society these days, and it is that way for a reason, which I plan to further investigate. Text, Labels Signs are extremely well curated, it looked like everything was perfectly made to empower their message. It also looks like everything is completely staged and based on theory, rather than practice. I would have loved to see someone use their form of time telling for a week. As I think the biggest concern for people would be being late to things. I know that would certainly concern me.

((photo))

They had a lot of visual features including, imagery, photography, gifs and video. This was mainly used to show their movement of time.

Things I would note on.

-Didn’t show a human interactive experience, even the voice over was obviously robotic.

-Going backwards not forwards to me

-seems to be more aesthetically based than practical

-would be cool if it was added to current time telling, with out the numbers it reminds of me of “island time” or “meet me at noon”. Doesn’t work in an urban sense and creates timeliness risk.

The artefact itself

The artefact itself looks like a typical watch or phone app. With a basic monochromatic shading. The hand of the clock still moves around the circle, however, the sunrise and sunset elements are emphasised with the dark to light shading. There are dots around the screen where the hand can point to, however, I think it is still confusing to read as you can’t tell exactly what time sunrise is. For example, 6 is normally where the 3 hands would be, they have changed around the structure of what area of the clock means what time.

The way it works is below.

Similar products

David Beren and Jay Alba (2019)m Life wire: The 10 Best Wake-Up Light Therapy Alarm Clocks of 2019https://www.lifewire.com/best-light-therapy-alarm-clocks-4137028

Sunlight Clock Free

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sunlight-clock-free/id319009777

Day & Night map

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/day-night-map/id741375889

Sunrise Sunset Lite

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sunrise-sunset-lite/id321324581

Daylight Clock

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/daylight-clock/id822702909

Daylight one

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/daylight-one/id995040350

SolarWatch Daylight & Weather

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/solarwatch-daylight-weather/id1191365122

Sol: Sun Clock

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sol-sun-clock/id491537291

Sundial - Solar & Lunar Times

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sundial-solar-lunar-times/id976460540

Daylight

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/daylight/id324528814

Sunny Side Up – Sunrise to sunset, the measures time and robotics

komorebi – Platform for generative sunlight and shadow

https://www.creativeapplications.net/processing/komorebi-platform-for-generative-sunlight-and-shadow/

SUN – Sun’s cycle as an interactive (playful) experience

https://www.creativeapplications.net/js/three-js/sun-suns-cycle-as-an-interactive-playful-experience/

To investigate their concept more I wanted to go back to how time telling came about, which I would assume is by the sun rise and sun set. This was further confirmed for me with a video A brief history of time (keeping). Stephan Hawking also has books on a briefer history of time, even briefer history of time. I did not have time to read his books, but this video seems to sum it up pretty well. For a lot of our lives in the early days, sun and seasons were all the time keeping we ever needed, however with the development of civilisation people needed schedules.

Egyptians made clocks using shadows and split the day into 12 hours depending on where the shadow lay, this can be referred to a sundial. This concept is increasingly similar to how this watch proposes to operate, using the “shadows” and visual representation of time. I can't help to think, is this not just going backwards? Or maybe that's the point? It’s not exactly a wildly new concept, but maybe it's new in regards to how we live now, and new in the way it reinterprets the past. For nighttime they would 12 of their favourite constellations rise. 12 because Egyptians preferred duodecimal numbers to match lunar or funny enough the number of joints we have on each hand. It took over 3000 years of “clock” making to get to where we are today with our digital and analog clocks.

This Artefact is taking on this idea that we could re connect with the natural light cycles again, removing a minute to minute living. Reading the article again I also understand that they are not trying to change the main form of time telling, more so showing an alternative to living with time. Their purpose is to draw us back to our roots of living. Though I can understand that this would be appealing either aesthetically, or used as a form of a relaxed way to tell time, I do not think it would be practicle as the only source of Time telling and not everyone can afford to be on “island time” sort of sounds like it was made by someone who was always late.

Conclusion todo

What is the argument behind the value proposition or the future scenario?

Evaluation questions

References

Sundials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI0GqYJha1Q.

Circa Solar - realign with the nature of time

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1289884842/circasolar?ref=discovery&term=technology%20

A Brief History Of Time(keeping) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjSwRwAqQA4.

#ctec702

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theliberaltony · 5 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Former Vice President Joe Biden joined the 2020 presidential field Thursday, immediately becoming its front-runner on the back of near universal name recognition and polls that regularly show him capturing around 30 percent of respondent’s support.

While many of Biden’s fellow Democrats openly welcomed him to the race, behind the scenes, several — including Sen. Cory Booker, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, Sen. Kamala Harris and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke — began to fundraise off of the news, showcasing an awareness that the path to the nomination just became all the more difficult.

Here’s the weekly candidate roundup:

April 19-25, 2019

Michael Bennet (D) The Colorado senator tweeted last Friday that he “underwent a successful surgery” to treat his prostate cancer and “requires no further treatment.” Bennet previously said that he had been ready to announce a presidential run until he received the cancer diagnosis, but would still enter the race if he was ultimately declared cancer free. Joe Biden (D) The former vice president announced the launch of his presidential campaign Thursday after months of build up, releasing a video in which he said that “everything that makes America, America, is at stake” in the upcoming presidential election.

Biden’s first television interview will take place on ABC’s “The View” on Friday and then he will hit the road, making trips to Pittsburgh Monday, Iowa and South Carolina later next week, then Nevada, California and New Hampshire before mid-March.

He and his wife Dr. Jill Biden will also sit down with Robin Roberts, co-anchor of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” ahead of his Pittsburgh event. The interview will air on GMA Tuesday.

Biden’s campaign was immediately endorsed by Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and all three members of his home state of Delaware’s congressional delegation, Sens. Tom Carper, Chris Coons and Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester. Cory Booker (D) Booker became the latest Democratic presidential candidate to release his tax returns Wednesday evening, posting 10 years’ worth to his campaign website.

Though the New Jersey senator made only $152,715 in 2018 — on which he paid $29,446 in taxes and donated $24,000 to charity — he revealed himself to be relatively wealthy from years of accumulated speaking fees and royalties nearing $3 million total. The returns also showed fairly substantial charitable giving, with over $20,000 in contributions every year since 2012, including two years that topped $82,000 and $240,000, respectively.

At Wednesday’s “She the People” forum in Texas, Booker again pledged to select a female running mate should he be the Democratic presidential nominee. Pete Buttigieg (D) Buttigieg earned his first endorsement from a member of Congress this week, with Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia releasing a statement saying that he was backing the South Bend, Indiana mayor and comparing him to former President Barack Obama.

“I endorsed Barack Obama early, having been moved by both his intelligence and his political capability. I am similarly inspired by Mayor Pete,” Beyer said. “With him, I feel the promise of a new generation, and I see a way out of the darkness.” Julian Castro (D) In an interview with The New Yorker, Castro outlined his position on immigration, which has been the centerpiece of his campaign, explaining that he doesn’t believe those attempting to cross the southern border “are a national security threat” and that he found it “beautiful” “that people still see this country as a place of opportunity and safety.”

Speaking with BuzzFeed News Tuesday, Castro pushed back against the idea that Congressional impeachment proceedings would backfire on Democrats, saying that it was possible for the party to “walk and chew gum at the same time” — holding Trump accountable while pitching their strengths ahead of the 2020 election.

Castro was the center of a humorous moment at Wednesday’s “She the People” forum in Texas, when he revealed that the event’s program featured a photo of his twin brother Rep. Joaquin Castro and joked that his brother “would say that’s a good thing because he’s better looking than I am.”

John Delaney (D) After President Donald Trump met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Tuesday and reports emerged that the president raised concerns about a dip in the number of his followers, Delaney called on Twitter users to unfollow Trump’s account, arguing that he “cares more about his Twitter followers than the American people.”

In a tweet, the former Maryland congressman said that Trump’s “continued dishonesty and weaponization of social media has been divisive” and that the reduction to his follower count would “hit him where it actually hurts him… his ego.” Tulsi Gabbard (D) The Hawaii congresswoman shared her belief that “it’s time for the country to focus on the issues that matter most to Americans” in lieu of the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia after the Mueller report revealed “no collusion.”

“The conclusion that came from that Mueller report was that no collusion took place,” Gabbard said on Fox News Sunday. “Now is the time for us to come together as a country to put the issues and the interests and the concerns that the American people have at the forefront, to take action to bring about real solutions for them.” Kirsten Gillibrand (D) In an appearance on “The View” Wednesday, Gillibrand was supportive of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats’ efforts to subpoena key figures named in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, despite Trump’s insistence that they should not have to testify before Congress.

“The Mueller report was very damning,” Gillibrand said, adding, “If President Trump takes on Nancy Pelosi over whether he’s going to respond to her subpoenas, I will put my money on Nancy Pelosi every time.”

During the same appearance on “The View,” a day ahead of Biden’s official campaign announcement, she said he’s “going to have to directly answer to voters” on allegations of inappropriate touching. Kamala Harris (D) Harris received some criticism that she was too cautious during a CNN town hall on Monday, during which she repeatedly called for “conversations” and “debate” about a number of issues, including felon voting rights, the voting age, slavery reparations and student debt forgiveness.

The California senator did signal her support for impeachment during the event, arguing that the Mueller report presented evidence that Trump engaged in obstruction of justice, but said she was a “realist” about the whether the efforts would ultimately be successful, given Senate Republicans’ support for the president. John Hickenlooper (D) The former Colorado governor joined in calls for Mueller to testify before Congress in an interview with WBUR-FM, and, on evidence that Trump and his administration misled the public about contact with Russia, said that Americans should “expect more from our commander-in-chief.” Larry Hogan (R) Hogan, the governor of Maryland, continues to say that he is considering a Republican primary challenge of Trump, explaining at a New Hampshire Institute of Politics “Politics and Eggs” event Tuesday morning that people continue to approach him about the possibility.

“People have asked me to give this serious consideration and I think I owe it to those people to do just that. That’s what I’m doing,” he said.

Hogan was further critical of the Republican National Committee, which he said had “the right to support the sitting president” but shouldn’t “change the rules and… insist 100% loyalty.” Jay Inslee (D) The Washington governor penned an open letter on Earth Day to his fellow 2020 candidates urging them to support his proposal for the Democratic National Committee to dedicate one out of 12 planned primary debates to solely focus on climate change. Amy Klobuchar (D) In the CNN Town Hall hosted earlier this week, the Minnesota Senator said that Trump should be held accountable following the Mueller report, but she stopped short of calling for impeachment.

Klobuchar also hosted a meet-and-greet event in Lexington, South Carolina to talk with local residents about her positive economic agenda to move the country forward. Wayne Messam (D) Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam’s presidential campaign was undergoing allegations that his campaign staff isn’t getting paid.

According to a report published by the Miami New Times, an anonymous former campaign staffer said that a campaign team member sent an email to staff with the subject line “Notification of hold on paychecks,” which blamed the failure to disburse checks on Messam’s wife, Angela.

Messam, whose lawyers are reviewing the allegations, told ABC News that “an unnamed staffer making a claim like that can’t be validated.” Seth Moulton (D) The Massachusetts congressman officially announced his candidacy for president this week on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“And I am running because I am a patriot, because I believe in this country and because I have never wanted to sit on the sidelines when it comes to serving it,” Moulton said. Beto O’Rourke (D) Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, while speaking to the press at the “She the People” forum in Texas, joined some of his fellow 2020 presidential candidates by stating that he is willing to “rethink” the voting rights of non-violent prisoners.

O’Rourke will also be returning to Nevada for his second trip since announcing his candidacy for president to participate in various grassroots events across the state. Tim Ryan (D) Ryan, who as a sitting member of the House would be in a position to vote on impeachment, said this week that he doesn’t believe his chamber should begin proceedings against Trump, telling CNN that the House Judiciary Committee should continue to investigate.

“Let the Judiciary Committee look at this. There’s a process in place here. I trust [committee chair Rep.]Jerry Nadler, he’s one of the smartest guys in the United States Congress, I think that’s the natural next step and let’s see where that leads,” Ryan said. Bernie Sanders (D) During a CNN town hall Monday, Sanders shared his opinion that incarcerated felons should be allowed to vote, a stance that was met with immediate backlash from Republican Party officials.

“I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy — yes, even for terrible people — because once you start chipping away … you’re running down a slippery slope,” Sanders said. “I do believe that even if they are in jail paying their price to society, that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy.” Eric Swalwell (D) Like Booker, Swalwell promised to select a woman to be his running mate, should he capture the Democratic nomination.

“I’ve pledged that I would ask a woman to serve as vice president,” he said in an appearance on MSNBC. “I would put forward a diverse candidate, and I would put forward policies that would make sure that inherent bias that exists, or discrimination that exists in communities, would be eliminated.” Elizabeth Warren (D) Warren was among the first presidential candidates to call for proceedings last Friday in the aftermath of the Mueller report’s release, tweeting that “to ignore a President’s repeated efforts to obstruct an investigation into his own disloyal behavior would inflict great and lasting damage on this country, and it would suggest that both the current and future Presidents would be free to abuse their power in similar ways.”

The Massachusetts senator released a proposal this week to wipe out student loan debt for millions of people and make public colleges free. Warren said that the plan would cost the federal government $640 billion, but be paid for by a tax increase on families with $50 million or more of wealth. Bill Weld (R) Weld outlined his campaign strategy in an interview with The New York Times, pointing out that independent voters can vote in the Republican primary in 20 states, including the early-voting state of New Hampshire and his home state of Massachusetts.

“If people speak to issues that are of interest to millennials and Gen Xers and suburban female voters, I think the size and character of the electorate who are going to be voting in the Republican primaries is going to be quite different than you get right now,” the former Massachusetts governor said.

Weld additionally revealed that he’ll campaign in California, Oregon and Washington in addition to heavy travel in New England and the mid-Atlantic states. Andrew Yang (D) A Yang rally in Los Angeles on Monday attracted over 2,000 people, his campaign claimed, and it’s the latest sign of widespread interest in a campaign once off most political observers’ radars.

At an event in Las Vegas Wednesday, Yang compared himself to Trump, explaining that like the real estate mogul in 2016, he plans to speak about issues and ideas that other Democrats are ignoring, highlighting automation as a threat to American jobs.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Adam Kelsey and Elizabeth Thomas

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developing-feminist07-blog · 6 years

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So, Who is a Feminist Icon?

I think I need help reconciling the critiques of both Minaj and Beyoncé. At least from my opinion, there are many similarities between the two. Most notably, both use a strategy of multivocality. Minaj appeals to different audiences through her use of alter egos, while Beyoncé has appealed to different audiences due to her natural progression of life. However, Beyoncé is, in the words of Lieb, abusing multivocality while Minaj is not critiqued in this manner. Both use our capitalist society to enhance their own wealth. Minaj does this through product placements of the brands she is endorsed by while Beyoncé creates clothing with her most notable phrases. Again, Beyoncé is heavily critiqued in this light while Minaj is not. Finally, both Minaj and Beyonce are beautiful in their own rights. Minaj gets criticized for the barbie and plastic image she is portraying. On the other hand, bell hooks calls Beyoncé a “terrorist” for showing her natural beauty on the cover of a magazine. I am not going to lie, I just do not understand this. Perhaps my biggest question is who gets to decide what aspects of each stars lives are critiqued while turning a blind eye to other aspects and merely critiquing that aspect in someone else’s career. I must admit, this confusion does come from merely the articles we read in this unit. It is possible my confusion can be resolved by reading additional articles, but I think the crux of my argument remains. Why are these stars so heavily critiqued?

Most of my frustration with these critiques comes from the critiques of Beyoncé. Particularly with Ashley’s article. Ashley writes “how [Beyoncé] carries herself, the message in her music and her personal life…. Well, I would call her a feminist as well”. However, Ashley continues to write “That was until I read Bell Hooks response to the video Lemonade in my Intro to Women’s Studies class at Cal State LA.”. Okay, so essentially Bell Hooks rhetoric convinced Ashley to change her thoughts. I would encourage Ashley to think on her own. Later in her article, Ashley writes “Lemonade is simply banking off the interpolating emotions of black females and stereotypes of angry women cheated on by their spouse. All motives for her work are stemmed from financial gains”. To be fair, Ashley could be correct, but what an awfully cynical interpretation this is. Ashley says that after being cheated on by her spouse, Beyoncé is merely releasing this album so Beyoncé can create more wealth. What if Beyoncé was releasing this album to help in her grieving process? There is no way we will ever know for sure, but from my perspective, I do not believe it is fair to jump to conclusions without truly understanding the content of one’s heart. There is no way for Ashley to understand the motives and intentions of Beyoncé’s heart when releasing this album, so for her to claim Beyoncé released this out of greed is not fair, at least in my opinion.

I have nothing but respect for Bell Hooks, she is incredibly smart and has great thoughts. She inspires many different people, and I think that is incredible. However, from my perspective, I am curious when Bell Hooks will ever be happy. What is Beyoncé to do to make Bell Hooks happy? Divorce Jay-Z, sacrifice all of her wealth and somehow become uglier? Bell Hooks is highly critical of the way Beyonce uses capitalism. But I do not understand how the way Beyoncé is using capitalism is fundamentally different than how Bell Hooks is. After all, Bell Hooks is utilizing capitalism to sell her books. I do not understand why it is such a bad thing to use our economy to share thoughts. Bell Hooks is incredibly smart, respected, and inspires countless people. However, my first impression of her is how critical she is. Bell Hooks has great thoughts, but I wonder if, at times, she is analyzing things on a much deeper level than even the artist themselves could have anticipated. Beyoncé has openly supported the feminist movement, only to be met with intense scrutiny from Bell Hooks. Further, it appears from reading these articles Bell Hooks only encourages other feminists to critique feminist icons rather than offer encouragement.

Essentially, my sincere confusion stems from everyone critiquing ever single little detail of these feminist icons. I readily admit that I am a rookie in the topic of feminism, but I believe my fresh perspective to be valuable and valid. From my perspective, I see both Minaj and Beyoncé as amazingly talented black women leveraging their talents to empower other black feminists, white feminists and other women alike. From my perspective, identifying as feminists and supporting feminist causes have only subjected Minaj and Beyoncé to more criticism than encouragement. We all have imperfections and failures, I just do not understand why these women are being as critiqued as heavily as what they are. To an extent, I wonder if this amount of public criticism has prevented other women from openly expressing feminism. Unfortunately, for me, reading this amount of criticism has made me shy away from identifying as a feminist. There just appears to be significantly more negative comments than positive thoughts. Again, this could just be a result of the specific articles I have read, but this is a theme I have picked up on from what I have read.

In my heart, I know women are equal to men. I openly acknowledge that many things in society prevent women from achieving things that men take from granted. I know these things are true, and I want to do my part in fixing them to the best of my ability. However, I am afraid of identifying as a feminist simply due to the fact that I am not able to relate to the level of academic writing these critiques are done at. I see the reason for critiques, but I do not understand the reasoning for heavily criticizing these two stars, when at the end of the day they are just trying to they are just trying to pursue a dream. I said at the beginning of my blog I would be honest, and these are my honest thoughts. I have seen people who I initially regarded as feminist icons be disregarded, so my question remains, who is the ideal feminist icon? Or even most importantly, why can’t these stars be encouraged for publicizing a feminist message? I will forever believe the two truths I stated earlier, but before I will fully embrace feminism, I believe I need help reconciling these things.

#feminism #nickiminaj #beyonce #confusion

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arrianna21 · 6 years

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~Skid Marks on My Heart~

Street racing can be a dangerous game, like playing with fire, but the rush of adrenaline makes it worth it. You love to support your boyfriend, who is one of the city’s top racers and you convince him to let you accompany him on his next race.

Game: Need for Speed: Most Wanted

Note: Please drive responsibly

Word Count: 3,727

“How close are you to finishing that paper?”

“Almost done. I just need to write one more body paragraph and then the conclusion.” You tell your friend.

The class you were in had just let out and you were currently waiting outside on the campus lawn. As much as you had wished you could have a stress-free summer vacation, you needed to take this class since it was a prerequisite for another one you were going to be taking in the fall semester.

Summer classes at your campus went for about three hours, which ate up most of your morning so you and your friend decided to grab a quick bite to eat for lunch while you waited for your boyfriend to come pick you up.

“That’s good. I’m missing a source so I need to find one to add and then I’m finished. Ugh, I cannot wait for this course to be over,” she sighs, falling back into the grass. The only reason she was taking this class is because she also had a part-time job and didn’t want to have to deal with a full-blown student schedule this year.

“Well, at least there’s only one week left in this class.” You tell her, taking a swig of your bottled water.

“True, at least there’s that.” She sits back up so she can finish eating the prepackaged sandwich, tugging the plastic wrap lower and taking a bite of the bread.

The two of you converse, talking about the essay and other plans you had for the end of summer while you bask in the heat of the sun. Getting up to throw away the remains of your meal, you offer to take hers as well before heading to find the nearest trash bin. When you return, you find your friend leaning her head against the tree with her eyes closed. As you quietly sit down next to her, you grab your textbook from your bag and fish out a highlighter, getting a head start on your next reading assignment.

“Thanks for throwing away the trash,” she mumbles, eyes still shut.

“No problem,” is your reply.

“So how’s Hoseok with his…job?” she asks after a minute of silence.

“He’s doing good. Slowly making his way up the list.” Hoseok, your boyfriend of almost two years, was a street racer. He had been at the top of his game for a while, until he lost his car in an unfair match. There was hard speculation that Razor had sabotaged Hoseok’s car prior to the race, causing him to lose. When you race against the Blacklist, your car has to be put on the line, and so after handing over the keys to Razor, Hoseok had nothing until he was able to find another car.

Now he had to make his way up the Blacklist, a group of notorious racers that are wanted by the city’s police department. The only way you can challenge each one to a race was to have a high bounty and win races, which is exactly what Hoseok has been doing these last couple of months. Currently, he’s #10 on the Blacklist, getting ready to go up against #9 as soon as he can win a few more races. Unfortunately, Razor is at the top of the list, standing high at #1, having used Hoseok’s car to help him take the lead.

“Hey, at least he gets to do what he loves. Better than working retail,” your friend jokes and you laugh.

“Yeah, I agree with you on that one.” Out of all your friends, she was one of the select few that actually knew about Hoseok’s current dilemma. You didn’t want word to spread and then have the police catch wind of it.

The ground vibrates as an engine growls and soon a red car is pulling into the parking lot of the campus. A few passerby gawk as they walk past the Porsche, the glossy red shining under the sunlight, black and white flames decorating its sides.

“Well, well, look who’s here.” She says while you scramble to put your things away.

“Catch you later,” you tell her, slinging your backpack over your shoulder.

“Have fun!” Your friend yells to your retreating back as you race to the sports car, kicking grass up in your haste.

Yanking the door open, you toss your bag over the passenger seat and it lands in the back with a thud while you sit down.

“Hi, speed racer.” Your boyfriend greets as you get situated, pulling the seat belt over your chest before clicking it into place.

“Hey, I should be calling you that.”

“I don’t know, you’re the first person I’ve ever seen run like the speed of light.” You give him a look, narrowing your eyes briefly. “I’m kidding. Hi, baby.” He leans in to kiss you on the lips and you happily accept.

“Hey, Hobi.”

He puts the car into gear and drives to the street, leaving your campus behind for the weekend. When he turns out onto the main road, he revs the engine once and speeds away.

“How was class?”

“Eh, alright. I’m just ready for it to be over.”

“You’re almost there.” He encourages and you hum in affirmation.

“So, what’s the plan for today?”

He turns his head and looks at you in confusion. “Umm, take you home?”

“You’re not doing anything else tonight? Nothing at all?” you prod further.

“I mean there’s a circuit race I might do later,” he steals another glance at you, “oh no, babe.”

He groans upon seeing the eager glimmer in your eyes.

“Aw, come on Hobi, please take me with you!” you beg, clasping your hands together as you plead to him.

“Babe, how many times do I have to tell you? It’s too-”

“Too dangerous and not safe, I know.” You finish for him. “But I wanna see your driving skills in action.”

“You have though,” he counters.

You roll your eyes. “On the Internet. I’m talking about in person.”

“Sorry babe, you know…what are you doing?” he asks in bewilderment when he hears the click of your seat belt as you proceed to crawl over the console separating you two. “Cut that out, you’re gonna get hurt.” Hoseok reprimands though you ignore it, only continuing to slide forward until you’re leaning against him, shoulder to shoulder.

You nose is pressed directly into his cheek as you stare up at him. “Please,” you whimper. “Please take me with you.” Even though he is clearly displeased by your reckless actions, you can see the faint smirk of amusement on his lips.

Hoseok sighs, turning his head slightly and his nose lightly brushes your own. “Fine, but just this once.”

“For now,” you counter, kissing his cheek in thanks.

“Right, now can you please get back in your seat and buckle up before we get into an accident.” He complains and you oblige, having been successful in your persuasion.

Your boyfriend continues driving through Rosewood, casually remaining under the speed limit even if he could easily take these streets at 70 miles per hour.

“So where’s it gonna be?”

“All the way in Ocean Hills,” he informs you.

“Cool! Down by the old boardwalk?” you ask, energetically bouncing in your seat.

“Yep, that’s the place.”

“How many other racers?”

“Probably three.”

“Laps?”

“Two.”

“Sweet~” you sing, watching as he continues driving through the congested roads.

“You’re really excited about this, huh?” He wonders, giving you another look and you bob your head happily.

“Of course, I am! I finally get to see you race. And I get a front row seat.”

“You’re so cute,” he laughs, reaching over to pat your thigh lightly.

The rest of the ride is spent chatting about weekend plans and other menial things while you interject with random questions about the underground racing scene. It isn’t long until you’re soon pulling into the street where three other cars are already waiting behind the red smoke on the sidelines.

“So who’s the one with the purple Mustang?” you ask, though you can’t really see anyone through the dark tinted windows.

“That’s Ace, the green Corvette belongs to Lars, and the yellow Camaro is Quicksilver.” Hoseok explains, pointing to each vehicle as he does. There was a black Mazda parked on the side, which apparently belonged to the flag girl who also collected and dealt all the winnings, for this race the winner received $6,000 cash from each person.

“Quicksilver?”

“We all gotta have some kind of cool nickname.”

“Makes sense. And this beautiful red Porsche? Who does it belong to?” you ask, tracing the veins of his arm and you see goosebumps forming on his skin as he shivers.

Clearing his throat, he answers your question. “Apparently, he goes by the name of Jay. Sounds like an interesting guy if you ask me.”

“I bet he is.” You agree and he chuckles.

A notification pops up on Hoseok’s phone and he opens the message, reading it briefly before setting the coordinates into his GPS. 5.3 miles around Ocean Hills, 2 laps around the area. All the vehicles line up and you grip your seatbelt in anticipation. Engines growl as the cars vibrate and the girl standing in the middle drops the flag. Tires squeal and motors roar as the racers peel down the street.

Hoseok lets the other lead, remaining in the back and you look at him in confusion, watching as the green car uses some of their nitrous to pull away from the others. “Why aren’t you speeding up?” you ask.

“I will in a bit. This first turn is going to knock everyone together,” he explains, nonchalantly driving as if he were going for a midnight stroll around the park instead of participating in a street race.

Sure enough, as soon as the cars come around the bend they have to dodge other cars. The yellow Camaro slams on the brakes so they don’t rear end a blue van. Hoseok hits the accelerator, shifting the vehicle into the next gear as he passes both the yellow and purple cars, leaving only the green one in front. Following the path, you notice that while there aren’t many curves, the few that were present are sharp, easily giving racers time to catch up or the ability to lose their opponents. There are quite a few cars on the other hand, but Hoseok easily maneuvers around them, swerving through an intersection that had a truck stopped at the red light.

You glance at the passenger rear view mirror and see a glint of purple. “Purple’s coming up on your right,” you say, watching the speck grow in the background.

“Got it, thanks babe.” Peeking in the mirror, he observes the fast approaching Mustang and steps on the gas.

You speed past the buildings and other vehicles, everything warping into a blur as the needle on the speedometer hits just beneath 100 miles per hour. The next turn leads you to a straightaway, the road wide open and you were right behind first place.

“Nitrous, use the nitrous.” You whisper in anticipation, heart thumping in your ribcage.

“Not yet.”

The green Corvette speeds up, blue rushing out of their exhaust pipe as the driver uses their nitrous to try and lose you, but Hoseok quickly catches up. As you approach the turn, you knew everyone would have to decelerate to avoid crashing, yet your boyfriend manages to surprise you. He flips a switch and a burst of nitrous boosts the car forward. The surge of energy also triggers your adrenaline as the Porsche slips past 110 miles per hour. Your skin heats up and the high speed feels incredible. It’s also enough to push Hoseok ahead of the green car and he lifts his foot from the gas pedal, allowing the cherry colored car to slow down as he steers effortlessly around the curve.

Almost halfway through the first lap, there are two more turns shaped like squiggly lines, one after the other. Your boyfriend takes the turns with no problems whatsoever, still driving fast while also managing to go around the civilian cars without getting too close to them. That is, until a familiar purple Mustang drives directly in front of you, seeming to appear out of nowhere.

Hoseok slams on the brakes and swerves around them as they continue driving through traffic before crashing through another set of gates. Looking over your shoulder, you realize that there was a gated parking lot right before you enter the two curves and that they must have just decided to go straight instead of going around.

“Is that legal?” you ask, heart pounding from the near collision.

“Definitely not legal, but it is allowed since it’s considered a short cut.”

“Why didn’t you take it then, since it’s technically fair?” Your question goes unanswered and you turn around to face forward, noticing Hoseok silently concentrating on the road ahead. “It’s because I’m here, isn’t it?”

Again, silence.

“Seriously, Hoseok?” you deadpan.

“What? Is it so bad that I don’t want to do anything risky with my girlfriend in the middle of a street race?” he counters.

“No, but you would do it I wasn’t here, don’t bother denying it. That means you have no problem putting your own life in jeopardy. Come on, Hobi, pick up the pace. We are not losing this race today.” You clap your hands together to further describe your urgency and that you mean business to which he laughs, shaking his head at your cuteness.

“Okay, okay. Let’s do this!” he hollers and steps on the gas again.

True to his word, Hoseok kept up with the other racers, being a little more adventurous with his driving. It was now the final lap and he was holding steady at first place. The end was practically in sight, the two infamous curves coming up fast before you had to pass the boardwalk and then a tunnel to reach the finish line.

“Hold on,” Hoseok warns as he drives straight through the parking lot that used to have a gate until the purple race car destroyed it. Your grip is tight, nails digging into your seatbelt strap as you go airborne, the Porsche flying high before landing on the ground and Hoseok cuts across the street towards the second shortcut.

Again, the car jumps over the edge and it was a little steeper than the previous one so the impact jars you somewhat, body hitting your seat from the impact. Since it was the last leg of the race the other drivers were starting to get antsy. Green and purple were knocking into each other while yellow was trying to pass your car.

Hoseok tries to pull ahead, but the yellow Camaro cuts him off, bright taillights your only indication as they hit their brakes, forcing your boyfriend to slow down lest he end up running into them. He grits his teeth, attempting to swerve around the other racer, but to no avail as the person in front predicts his movements. Yellow bumps into the passenger side of the Porsche and the force knocks you around, a grunt tumbling out of you from the aggressive hit. The two vehicles are side by side, a guardrail coming up fast and you can only watch with bated breath. Your only available option was to get back on the road or go through the amusement park if you wanted to avoid being crushed.

“Fuck it,” you hear a hiss from beside you. “Hang tight, babe, we’re taking a shortcut apparently.”

Veering left, he drives onto the boardwalk, crashing through the roadblocks and you were relieved that it had been closed for renovation, leaving the park completely vacant. Hoseok tries his best to avoid hitting anything, but it becomes difficult when the other two racers follow behind you, also deciding to take the shortcut as well. He ends up running down an old picnic table, the pin-striped umbrella flying off as chairs and trash cans get knocked into different directions.

Hitting the nitrous, the red car shoots forward and soon enough you are able to get off the pier, driving onto the main road where the yellow car is at, almost as if you had never left. All four racers are nearly neck and neck, but Hoseok does something unexpected. He takes the last turn sharply and hits the nitrous one more time, using it all up in the last stretch as he drives through the tunnel and weaves around the approaching cars. Emerging from the dimly lit underpass, Hoseok stomps on the gas, speeding in between the red smoke before skidding to the side so he’s out of the way of the other drivers.

“You did it, Hobi!” you cheer, reaching over to hug him and he wraps an arm around you in return.

With 10 seconds to spare, Hoseok was able to win first place, Ace coming in second, followed by Quicksilver, and then Lars. The flag girl comes up to your driver window and hands him a wad of cash.

“Congratulations, Jay. That was an interesting tactic taking the boardwalk.” She notes.

“Spur of the moment decision,” he says in response. The woman nods, high-fiving him and waving at you before walking back to her car.

You hear someone yell, “cops!” when suddenly there’s a flash of blue and red reflecting in the rear view mirror. Everybody scrambles in a blind panic, revving their vehicles as they all speed away, leaving only dust behind.

“Shit! Someone must have tipped them off.” Hoseok hits the gas and drives off in a random direction. Sirens wail in the background, three police cruisers chasing after you while a whole squadron goes for the rest of the group. Swerving around the other cars, Hoseok tries to lose them by going under tunnels, cutting through various side roads, and even taking sharp turns to try and lose them, but it’s difficult to shake them as they are extremely persistent.

The cops retaliate by attempting to box you in, with one ramming the back of the Porsche and your hands clutch the armrests in fear while you risk peeking out the back window.

“Everything’s fine, baby, I’ve got you.” Hoseok reassures you and it takes you a second to realize that you’re panting heavily so you focus on regulating your breathing instead of paying attention to the police surrounding you.

After 10 minutes of some of the most stressed out moments of your life, you finally manage to lose them by driving through a nature trail, the trees giving good cover as he shuts off the car and waits until the chaos fades away. More time passes and everything is soon quiet once again. Hoseok is silent as he turns on the car, stone-cold expression lingering on his face while his hands clench the steering wheel tightly.

“There’s a safe house nearby, we can go there until things cool down.” He murmurs softly, putting the Porsche into gear as he drives along the dirt.

~*~

Pulling into the hidden garage, you watch as Hoseok turns off the car and get out when the automatic garage door slides shut. He sits on the hood and you climb out as well, sitting next to him. His elbows are on his bent knees, hands holding his head as he stares ahead without saying a word.

“You’re worried,” you comment, noticing his rigid posture even though the imminent danger is over.

Eventually he sighs before answering after a brief pause. “A little bit, yes.”

“Is it because of the cops? You did great today, they didn’t even get close to catching us.”

“You’re right, but if I hadn’t been careful, if I hadn’t been paying attention then they could have.” His fingers move to cover his face and you rub his shoulder, trying to ease his tension.

“Yeah, but don’t you have those ‘get out of jail’ markers from previous Blacklist races?”

“I do, but you don’t. And, honestly, I’d rather not see my girl get taken away in handcuffs, especially because it was my fault.” He huffs in frustration before mumbling, “I shouldn’t have brought you with me.”

You reach over and pry his hands away from his face, cupping his jaw upon hearing his words.

“Don’t say that, Hobi. There is no other place I’d rather be than with you. Even if that means sitting in a jail cell with you.”

“Not funny,” he interjects and you scoff.

“I’m serious. Baby, I’ve seen you when you were at your peak, I was with you during your lows, and I’m still going to be with you until the end. Everything’s going to be alright.”

“I know, it’s just…things are going to get harder the higher I get on the Blacklist. And as my bounty grows, the police are going to be keeping even more tabs on me.”

“You’re right, but you’re almost at the top. Earl is next, isn’t he? I mean, he’s #9. Once you get your car, you can take things a little easier. No more trying to build a reputation and all that stuff. Get your car back and then just race because you enjoy it.” You tell him comfortingly.

“Trust me, I will.” He says, leaning towards you so he can kiss your nose. “Thank you, babe.”

“You’re welcome. Feel better now?”

He hums a yes and you grin, kissing his lips.

“Good, so calm down. It’s the weekend and you just won a race so we should enjoy that victory.” You take this chance to push him down and he falls back onto his windshield while you straddle him.

“Oh, yeah? What should we do to celebrate?”

“I can think of a few things,” you insinuate with a whisper, hands sliding through his hair while you pepper light kisses down the side of his neck, the skin turning a light shade of red.

Hoseok’s own hands play with the bottom of your shirt, tugging lightly on the fabric until he can get access to the front of your chest. With his lips biting the flesh above your breasts while your own mouth is preoccupied with the underside of his jaw, it isn’t long before either of you are forgetting all of your worries.

A/N: This game was very intense! I love doing the races and crashing into things, but the cop chases can be downright terrifying the higher you get on the Blacklist. I was seriously afraid of losing my cars and getting them impounded, but wow, the excitement is real! Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little story as well and as always feedback is graciously appreciated! <3

#hoseok scenarios #bts scenarios #bts imagines #hoseok #bts #videogame!BTS

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portlandlac · 3 years

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Celebration of Life for Stanislava Danutė Dubosienė/ Memorial Service Stanislava Danutė Dubosienė(11/11/1942 - 08/11/2021)

Danutė gimė Gavėnių kaime, Širvintų rajone, Mikalinos ir Adomo Greiciūnų šeimoje. Būdama vos dviejų metukų, neteko abiejų tėvų ir buvo užauginta savo krikšto mamos. Ši netektis nulėmė jos tolesnį gyvenimo kelią ir suformavo tvirtą, likimo audrom nepasiduodantį charakterį. Jos motiniška meilė ir beribis atsidavimas visada išliks jos dviejų vaikų, Gražinos ir Rimanto, atmintyje. Draugai ir pažįstami ją prisimins kaip puikią dainininkę, talentingą mezgėją bei siuvėją. Bet labiausiai patraukianti jos savybė – begalinis optimizmas – visada asocijuosis su jos vardu tiems, kam teko ją pažinti.

Danutė was born in Gavėniai village, Širvintos district, in the family of Mikalina and Adam Greiciūnai. At age of two, she lost both parents and was raised by her God mother. This loss determined her further life path and formed a strong character. Her maternal love and boundless devotion will always remain in the memory of her two children, Gražina and Rimantas. Friends and family will remember her as a great singer, talented knitter and tailor. But its most compelling Danute's feature was an infinite optimism - to those who have known her, it will always be associated with her name.

Toliau prašome paskaityti Danutės dukros Gražinos laišką Portlando Lietuvių Bendruomenės nariams:

Ačū visiems, susirinkusiems paremti mūsų šitą netekties valandą. Ir nors liūdesys stengiasi įsibrauti į kiekvieną mintį, aš norėčiau šiandien kreiptis į visus su kitokia gaidele – norėčiau kartu pasidžiaugti šviesia ir tvirta mamos asmenybe, nežiūrint nelengvo jos gyvenimo kelio.

Kaip jau dauguma is jūsų žinote, abu Danutes tėvai buvo nužudyti miškinių, kai jai tebuvo dveji metukai. Ši tragedija suformavo jos tvirtą ir niekad nepalūžtantį charakteriį

Faktai, kurių galbūt nežinojote apie Danutę

Jos tevai buvo nužudyti visai per klaidą: grupė miškinių gerokai pagėrę ir sumaišę namus, kuriems buvo paskelbę mirties bausmę.

2. Būdama keturiolikos metų, Danutė pradėjo kartu su visais suaugusiais dirbti fermoje.

3. Dvidešimties metų išsilaikė sunkvežimiu vairavimo teises.

4. Ištekėjusi 13-os metu su savo šeima (vyru ir dviem vaikais) gyveno 12 kvadratinių metrų kambarėlyje be patogumų (130 kvadratinių pėdų)

5. Didesnę dali savo darbinės karjeros susiejo su geležinkeliu: dirbo Vilniaus stoties informacijoje, dėl ko puikiai žinojo visos buvusios Tarybų Sąjungos geografiją.

6. Dėl papildomo pajamų šaltinio, nusprendė lankyti siuvimo ir kirpimo kursus ir tapo puikia siuvėja. Mano vestuvinė suknelė buvo jos siūta.

7.Kai buvau dvejų metukų, sunkiai sirgau mažakraujyste . Gydytojai jau neturėjo vilties ir paleido mane iš ligoninės namo mirti. Tik begalinės mamos meilės ir tikėjimo dėka šiuo metu esu gyva. Kiek reikėjo mamai turėti stiprybės kad nugalėtu ligą prieš kurią net medicina buvo bejėgė?

8. Visą laiką buvo pilnai pasinėrusi į savo vaikų gyvenimą: buvo nuolatinė tevų komiteto narė kai mes su broliu lankėme mokyklą.

9. Vieną kartą, kai man buvo kokie 13-a metų o broliui 8-neri, mes norėjome abu eiti paslidinėti po Panerių apylinkes, kur neseniai buvome persikėlę. Mama, kad neleisti mūsų vienų į nepažįstamas vietas, pati užsidėjo slides ir mus lydėjo, nors visai nemokėjo čiuožti.

10. Kai aš išvykau į Ameriką, mama po kelių mėnesių nusprendė aplankyti, nors visai nežinojo anglų kalbos ir labai bijojo skristi lėktuvu.

11. 2004 metais visam laikui persikraustė į JAV ir nuo nulio pradėjo mokintis anglų kalbos. Po kelių metų jau skaitė storiausias angliškas knygas, perskaitydavo apie 5 per savaitę.

12. Kai 2009 metais jai buvo diagnozuotas inkstų vežys, nepuolė į paniką, bet išliko optimiste, nors jau nuo 2006 metų gydytojai jai prognozavo tik 6 menesius.

Užbaigiant norečiau pasakyti, kad esu laimingiausia pasaulyje dukra, nes likimas man lėmė turėti tokią nuostabią mamą kaip Danute.

Visada esi ir busi su mumis, mamyt!

(ENGLISH) Following letter is from Danute’s daughter Gražina:

Thank you all for gathering here today to support this unfortunate loss. Even though sadness is trying to invade every thought, I would like for all of us to focus on another tone today. Let’s rejoice in my mother’s bright and strong character despite her difficult life path.

As most of you already know, both of Danutes parents had been killed by “Miskiniai” (who fought for Lithuanian independence), when she was only two years old. This tragedy has shaped her strong and unbreakable character.

Facts, which you may have not known about Danute :

Her parents had been killed entirely by mistake: a group of “Miskiniai” had gotten greatly drunk and mixed them up with the family whom been declared the death penalty.

2. At fourteen, Danute started working on the farm with all the adults.

3. At twenty she earned a commercial driver’s license.

4. For 13 years, she lived in a 12 square meter (130 sqare feet) room with her husband and two children.

5. The greater part of her career related to the trains: she worked in the Vilnius train station information office, where she got a really good sense of the former Soviet Union's geography.

6. For an additional source of income, she decided to attend sewing and cutting courses and became a great seamstress. In fact, she made my wedding dress.

7. When I was two years old, I was heavily ill from anemia. Doctors had no hope of my condition improving and released me from the hospital. I am alive today only thanks to my mother's endless love and faith. How much strength did my mother need to have to overcome the disease against which even medicine was helpless?

8. She was fully immersed in our lives as we were growing up: she was a regular member of the parent committee while my brother and I went to school.

9. One time, when I was 13 and my brother was 8, we both really wanted to go skiing in Paneriai, where we had just moved to. Our mom, to avoid leaving us alone in an unfamiliar place, put on skis and joined us, despite not knowing how to ski at all.

10. A few months after I flew to the US, my mother was determined to come visit me. Despite being terrified of flying in an airplane and not knowing any English, she made the journey over.

11. In 2004, my mother fully moved to the US and started learning English. Within a couple years, she went from not knowing a single word in English to bringing home stacks of thick books from the library every week.

12. When she was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2009, she didn’t let panic consume her. She remained optimistic even though in 2006 doctors predicted she only had 6 months left to live.

In conclusion I would like to say that I am the happiest daughter in the world, because fate brought me the most wonderful mother - Danute.

You are always and will always be with us Mom!

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bittermedecine · 6 years

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How does everyone in the group relate to this memoir?

By - Danielle Diores

I can relate very much to the memoir. As a person who struggles with depression and anxiety, I know very well how mental illness doesn’t have a simple cure. It is true that mental illness is a long-term mental battle no one tells you about nor can you explain to someone.

The way Clem and Olivier explain the memoir, I wanted empathize more with them. Since I struggle with mental illness, my family or friends don’t know how I struggle with my mental battle. Mental illness is different for everyone and I admire how strong the Martini family was despite not knowing what to do to support Olivier. A family that sticks together like that and continues to support each other is difficult to find. The struggles and the support everyone gives in the graphic memoir makes it even more inspirational on how they strong they came out of the mental battle even if the long term mental battle continue to today.

In addition, with the informative information on schizophrenia, it made me change my opinion about it because no one talks about the truth on schizophrenia. I had no idea the struggles someone would go through and even found an interesting video of a stimulation having schizophrenia. I understand it varies with each person but this video was enough to empathize with people who struggle with schizophrenia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr8IyNGAqlw

Overall, I really enjoyed how personal and inspirational this graphic memoir was. It makes me glad and happy see the positive message they are spreading on mental illness to stop the stigma.

By - Remy-Jai Barranger

I felt that I related to Martini’s story on a deeply personal level. I’ve had my own experiences with neurological differences, and how most of the authoritative figures I’ve had throughout my life choose to perceive it in an indifferent light. Though I’ve never suffered from anything like schizophrenia, I have been diagnosed with autism, and society tends to approach it in a strikingly similar way. In this story, I am reminded of the complications I’ve had to face growing up with both the health and education systems, in that both those on the spectrum and those with mental illnesses have been massively misunderstood and ostracized by not only these systems, but also society in general. From a lot of the maltreatment from these figures, I’ve grown up with both anxiety and depression, and endless thoughts about something being wrong with me, primarily because that’s what I’ve been told for the majority of my life. Again, I can’t speak for those who are schizophrenic, or any psychiatric patient for that matter, because I haven’t experienced what it is to be mentally ill, however individuals with autism, ADD, aspergers are faced too often with very much the same sort of negligence, misunderstanding, and even abuse.

When Clem Martini referred to the concept of “Laissez-faire Health Care”, it made almost too much sense to me. “In Laissez-faire Health Care, there’s a striking difference between how psychiatric patients and patients with all other ailments are treated, … Psychiatric patients are certainly ‘let alone.’ In fact, I’d suggest that this present ‘letting alone’ by our health care system has conspired to beggar psychiatric patients…“ (Martini & Martini, 2010, p. 153) The health care system prioritizes and provides treatment to physical injuries and illnesses more than mental illnesses, and psychiatric patients, as well as many people of neurological differences. No one’s disposition should be ignored just because it can’t be physically seen or perceived, or because it’s difficult to understand.

So many people struggle to find jobs and maintain relationships with family and friends, and their needs are being neglected because they are largely marginalized by the health care system and misunderstood by the general public. What I hope will happen is that topics on mental diagnoses, conditions, and illnesses are normalized, and I hope that this memoir was able to educate people and have some kind of influence on raising awareness of the concept of neurodiversity in society.

In conclusion, this is a very informative, brilliantly constructed piece, especially in the way it highlights their personal account of mental illness and the flaws in the health care system, and I believe that perspectives like this are extremely essential to our understanding of mental health and neurology as a whole.

By - Alison Glasgow

I have mixed feelings about this graphic memoir. I found the images almost illegible, the handwritten text and the drawings themselves are very rough and it took quite an effort to decipher what they meant. As a student of illustration, it was hard to ignore this, as clear visual communication is the crux of illustration. At first this was a hurdle for me in terms of finding value in the book, but as I reflected more on the intent of the authors, it dawned on me that these shaky and unsure drawings offer insight into the schizophrenic mind of Olivier, which further enriches my understanding of his experience.

I found Clem’s prose to be blunt and at times jarring, but pleasurable to read nonetheless. I think the tone used fits perfectly with the subject matter and message of the memoir.

Clem and Olivier Martini’s graphic memoir shares a message of the importance of family understanding and support in times of crisis. They took a socially and emotionally difficult topic and transformed it into a work of art, appealing to a wider audience than, for example, an article written on the same subject.

Coincidentally, this story entered my life shortly after my best friend discovered that her sibling was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is among the most taboo mental illnesses out there because of it’s association with criminal activity. The absolute worst cases of schizophrenia are often what the media focuses on, as opposed to the many people who leave peacefully with this taxing mental condition.

Although I really enjoyed this memoir, I can’t say I would recommend it to my friend. Despite the ultimate message of hope in this story, it is overall quite grim and I wouldn’t choose to recommend this book to my friend and possibly give her the impression that this is the way life with schizophrenia goes. Clem and Olivier’s story, although I’m sure many other families have had similar experiences, is only one story about mental illness, and each family’s circumstances are unique.

So I’m left with a relatively positive impression of the book, and even though it has a valuable message to share, I wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing it with the people in my life it most closely relates to.

By - Anna Rehman

I found this memoir to be very relatable and informative, and it did a good job of describing mental illness which is a topic that’s already difficult to put into words. Olivier’s artwork also adds to the memoir and gives the story more character and a personal touch. The story hit me very personally as I have been diagnosed with mental illness myself.

The memoir puts the problems of mental illness into perspective. For example, it discusses society’s stigma of mental illness and the shortcomings in the Canadian healthcare system when it comes to mental illnesses. I have had situations where I needed medical attention for my mental illness myself, and the healthcare system doesn’t always do an adequate job of properly assessing and treating people with this type of illness as mental illness is sometimes still seen as being less important than physical illness in terms of treatment. Clem brings these issues to light to advocate for change in the healthcare system which needs to address the concerns of mental health in order to provide better treatment. This is very important because it also would help prevent suicide, which unfortunately happened in Ben’s case.

Olivier’s case also brings up the aspect of daily life for those living with mental illness and shows the difficulty in keeping a stable job and keeping positive relationships. With mental illness, every day becomes a struggle and Clem did a great job of describing what it feels like to deal with mental illness. Clem also describes how mental illness affects those around the person who has it, including family and friends, which is a topic that is often not discussed about.

Overall, Bitter Medicine effectively shows the reality of mental illness and the struggle for everyone impacted by it. I enjoyed this memoir and would recommend it to anyone dealing with mental illness, anyone who knows someone affected by it, or just anyone who would like to learn more about mental illness.

#How does everyone relate to the memoir #Danielle Diores #Alison Glasgow #Remy Barranger #Anna Rehman #reflection

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keywestlou · 4 years

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AMAZING DISCOVERY.....GREEK AND ITALIAN BLOOD COMINGLED 700 B.C. TO 800 B.C.

DAY 28…..Greece the First Time

Posted on June 24, 2012 by Key West Lou

This may be the most amazing blog I have written this trip. Perhaps the most amazing I have ever written.

I have read travel is educational. What I learned yesterday, I never knew. It was extremely revealing!

We start with bread.

The last two mornings, I have purchased at the local bakery shop a hot loaf of bread. Spread butter on it. Delicious.

The bread was familiar. Very. It was De Vito’s.

De Vito’s was a bakery in Utica. On Jay Street where I grew up. Across from Brandagee School. I did first and second grade there.

The bread was initially baked in a garage in the back. Then a for real bakery was built on the site.

The elder Mr. De Vito made a unique bread. I have never tasted any like it. A long thick bread. Crispy hard crust. Flavorful inside. Sides of loaf soft, not crusty.

After Mr. De Vito passed away, his son continued to make the bread. Then he aged and the business was closed.

A sad day.

Several years later, Mr. Zenzillo started making the same bread. He had worked for the De Vito’s for a number of years.

I have been away from Utica for some time now. I do not know if Mr. Zenzillo is still baking the bread.

Nowhere anywhere have I ever tasted the De Vito bread again till the last two days. I tasted it here in Greece on a small island called Amorgos.

My breakfast bread baked here on Amorgos.

I was confused. How? It was Italian bread and a Greek was making it.

Then I thought of my meals at Demetrius’. Dishes of my youth. Food my mother and grandmother used to prepare.

I again thought how? I was on a Greek island with Greeks cooking.

Search and ye shall find. I asked around. Talked with some of the locals. What they represented to me is one of the most startling pieces of information I have ever learned.

The southern Italian cooking I am so fond of has a Greek component. Perhaps a significant influence.

This is the story.

Greece was a commercial nation in the thousand year period before the birth of Christ. The Greeks always sought new ports from which to do business.

Between 700 B.C. and 800 B.C., Greeks immigrated to southern Italy to establish commercial places of business. It was a colonization of southern Italy by Greeks.

Calabria, Puglia, and Salento were the primary areas where the Greeks settled. They were sort of like an expatriate community. The Greeks and Italians got along. There were no ethnic battles.

Other areas settled in subsequent years by this Greek invasion included a part of Sicily and the foot of the boot. The immigration was significant. These two areas became known as the Magna Graecie. Latin for Greater Greece.

The Greeks blended into southern Italian society over the years. The Greeks became Italianized, especially during the Middle Ages.

There was another influx of Greeks in the late 1400s. To Venice.

The final significant immigration was following World War II. A time when many displaced Europeans were moving to the United States, England, and Australia. Some Greeks opted not to enter those countries. Instead they settled in southern Italy.

This immigration process has not ceased. It continues to this day. Though it is much slower at this time.

What am I saying?

Southern Italian cooking has been decidedly influenced by Greek cooking. Otherwise, how could I purchase cooked meals and bread on this Greek island made by people who have never left the island? They and their families have been born and died here for centuries.

This theory, which I consider reality, can be taken a step further.

How many present day southern Italians and Italian Americans have Greek blood in them? It has to be. All those years with no intermingling of the two nationalities? No way.

Believe what you like. I think I am part Greek. As were my father and grandfather and many of our ancestors before them.

There is another way of viewing my conclusion. Perhaps I have been in Greece too long.

Enjoy your day!

—

Boeing has real problems. How long will people fly with an airline that uses Boeing planes. The manufacturer of the plane to be flown on will be an item for inquiry every time a trip is planned.

Several years ago, it was the 737. Most recently, the 777.

Boeing’s problems could easily result in serious economic pain for the company.

Alexandria Casio-Cortez is a strange duck. The Democratic House member from New York City brings a new way to governing. She views something wrong or a situation where she can help, she gets involved.

Her personalty may leave much to be desired. Abrasive. However, she attacks problems and must be given credit for it.

Texas has power and water problems of the highest magnitude. Cruz takes his family and sneaks off to Cancun because his home is without power. Ocasio-Cortez raises $4.7 million in very few days and see that it is delivered forthwith to Texas to help.

Cruz got caught. He returned in less than 24 hours. He is in pics and videos handing out bottles of water. Ocasio-Cortez follows up the $4.7 million by going to Texas to see what she can do in addition to the $4.7 million.

Why her interest in Texas? Far from her New York City home base. Doubt she will get many votes because of it.

My sense is it goes to her ethnicity. Her family is of Spanish origin. Many Texans are also. Immigrants from Central and South America. These are her people.

Cruz is of Spanish origin, also. His ancestry Cuban-American.

Ted Cruz. What a guy. Wants to run for President in 2024. Good luck. He ain’t going nowhere.

First because he became one of Trump’s lap dogs. He voted not guilty in the impeachment trial.

However, Cruz has gone even further.

His Houston area home was without power. Cold! He took his wife and 2 daughters and ran off to Cancun.

His trip was discovered. Admittedly not in the best of taste.

He arrived in Cancun 10:30 Wednesday evening. After being discovered, he was out of Cancun on the 6 o’clock plane the next morning.

Cruz made one further error. One of magnitude. He left the family dog home alone. In a house without heat and fresh water.

Cruel!!!

Dogs are America’s favorite pet. No way can a pet dog be left home alone under these circumstances. People will not forget this act of cruelty.

Water is a problem in Texas. Where available, foul. Serious sickness or death could result. Boil water signs are up all over Texas.

Originally, drinkable water was required for 14.9 million Texans. Last night, it was announced that 5 million of that number were no longer required to boil water.

Most are lined up in cars waiting to get government provided water. The waiting time sitting in a car to receive water has been 5 hours.

On top of all this, homeowners are receiving electric bills in the thousands of dollars. Some in excess of $10,000.

None of the preceding makes for happy campers. Especially when Texas was warned 10 years ago that a storm such as struck the past few days could occur. The warning was ignored. .

Florida Democratic House member Charlie Crist sent a letter to the Department of Justice yesterday. Yes, on Sunday. He asked the Department to open an investigation into allegations that Florida Governor DeSantis was being selective as to who would receive the vaccine.

Seems the Governor is designating areas where he has a large number of supporters. Especially those that contribute heavily to his campaigns.

Recall when the vaccine was first available in Florida, Key West got something like 400 doses immediately.However Ocean Reef just outside of Key Largo got 8,000. Ocean Reef members are extremely affluent.

Then there is the Lakewood Ranch in Manatee County. The parent company owning Lakewood Ranch and its head have given DeSantis $900,000 in contributions.

Money talks.

I am 85 with underlying conditions including a bad heart. I am still waiting. I have been on the local college’s list for just under 3 weeks. The college has provided shots the past 2 Sundays. I do not know the number. What I do know is I am still waiting.

How many others in my age bracket are still waiting also?

Recall the age qualifying a person initially was 85. Then it dropped to 65 and 75 in some places. The college’s eligibility number dropped consistent withe such move.

Such means to me the State figures they have provided vaccine to most if not all persons 85 and older.

Not the case!

Syracuse, my Syracuse. Yet to turn into a great season. The quality of the team evidences itself in most games. The problem is Syracuse cannot hold a significant lead in the second half.

Syracuse played Notre Dame Saturday. Syracuse won 75-67.

The significance of the victory is two fold.

Syracuse was losing by 20 points in the first half. Syracuse came back to win.

The other involves Boeheim’s son Buddy. A class player. The 3 point shot his game.

Boeheim scored 29 points. Included were six 3 point shots. Boeheim made 5 of them in the second half.

Enjoy your day!

AMAZING DISCOVERY…..GREEK AND ITALIAN BLOOD COMINGLED 700 B.C. TO 800 B.C. was originally published on Key West Lou

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theeverlastingshade · 7 years

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Favorite Albums of 2017

I can’t help but marvel at the progression of these intro paragraphs preceding my 10 favorite albums of each year. Each year has seemed to be bleaker than the last since I started this blog. This year like any other in recent memory was characterized by wide-spread moral bankruptcy and a pervasive atmosphere of failing self-accountability and disregard for even the most basic tenets of human decency, and that doesn’t even factor in the Trump presidency. Thankfully there was also still plenty of impressive music this year, and perhaps more so than any year in recent memory, as obvious as it may seem for anyone that doesn’t really pay attention to this kind of thing, 2017 was dominated by young, talented individuals that really came into their own artistically this year. Tyler, The Creator, King Krule, Moses Sumney, (Sandy) Alex G, Arca, Oso Oso, Julien Baker, Perfume Genius, Kendrick Lamar, Zola Jesus, Sampha, SZA, Thundercat, Jay Som and many others released if not undeniable career highs, then at least records that are on par with anything else that they’ve ever released. There was truly something for everyone this year, as well as plenty of LPs that pushed the limitations of the form, challenging what an album can still be. Without further ado, here are my favorite albums of 2017.

10. World Eater- Blanck Mass

I never thought I’d be talking about a solo record from either member of Fuck Buttons within the same breath as any of their proper albums, but World Eater is far from being just another Blanck Mass record. With World Eater John Powers has created a lean, brutal electronic record that perhaps better straddles the juxtaposition between noise and melody more impressively than anything that Fuck Buttons have done to date. World Eater opens to churning static and the breezy music box of “John Doe’s Carnival of Error”, and glides along unassumingly for a few minutes until double time kick drums and manipulated vocal loops collide into the mix. From there the urgency jumps from 0 to 100 as we barrel into the industrial collision course “Rhesus Negative”. World Eater plays much like this throughout the course of its seven tracks, with a few moments of tranquil relief scattered throughout that act as brief respites from the ensuing chaos. The balance between these dynamics is constantly in flux, and part of what really thrills about World Eater is that it feels as if one side of this duality could give way to the other within any given moment.

World Eater has the most extensive range of any Blanck Mass album to date, and it pushes both ends of his sound to their logical extremes. Whereas “Rhesus Negative” reaches for the jugular, “Please” feels more reminiscent of a plea for armistice. The latter fuses manipulated vocal samples, bird chirps, woodwind synths, and woodblock percussion into an uplifting march, and is one of the few songs on World Eater that doesn’t completely divulge into chaos. While the tone almost always suggests despair, “Hive Mind”, the album’s stunning conclusion and high-water mark, serves to remind us that things will not always be this bleak. “Hive-Mind” builds to a frenzied coda over the course of 8.5 minutes, and the melody towards the end has a euphoric quality that seems to approximate the feeling of hope against unreasonable odds. Of course this is all speculative given that the album is instrumental, but the music that Powers has made thus far has yet to suggest he’s one for blinding nihilism. He’s responded accordingly to the times that we’re living in, but for all the menace and terror that World Eater is dripping with, he never once outright rejects the possibility that things won’t improve.

Essentials: “Hive-Mind”, “Rhesus Negative”, ��Silent Treatment”

9. Nothing Feels Natural- Priests

While Priests have been active for the past half decade, they couldn’t have chosen a more fitting moment to release their debut album. Released towards the end of January, Nothing Feels Natural was a too good to be true spike of adrenaline fixated on the power of resilience. The band’s music has always emphasized the dismantling of oppressive power structures, but the songs that compose Nothing Feels Natural are richer and more nuanced than anything they’ve done up to this point without sacrificing an ounce of their pointed fury. “Pink White House” presents the band at their most outright menacing; a perfect anthem of disillusionment that finds Greer manically sneering at the façade of choice that we’re made to believe we have within binary systems “A puppet show in which you’re made to feel like you participate/Sign a letter, throw your shoe, vote for numbers 1 of 2”. “Nicki” takes shots at opportunist leeches “You hinge your success on that which you might bleed from me” and thrusts their ambitions in the face of the patriarchy “Got more appetite than a bear or a forest full of mouths to feed/So save your paltry dowry/I’m gonna buy you before you buy me”. On “No Big Bang” the band ponder the accumulated costs of progress, while on “Puff” they outwardly dismiss accerlationism as an acceptable countermeasure for dismantling an inherently broken system.

While remaining true to their sound Priests still manage to take plenty of interesting sonic risks, and Nothing Feels Natural succeeds in large part because of it. “JJ” fuses surf rock riffs with jittery piano chords and a galloping tom rhythm as Katie Alice Greer tears into an ex and fantasizes about being a cowboy since Red’s were her cigarette of choice. The opening song, “Appropriate”, juggles punk, noise, and jazz without losing an ounce of the momentum. Closing track “Suck” finds the band trying their hand at tense new-wave, while “Puff” combines shards of distortion with supremely funky basslines and presents Greer at her most animated. The title track balances scorched post-punk and crusty surf rock as Greer delivers a few definitive bleak sentiments “But to people in sanctuaries all I can say is/You will not, you will not be saved” amidst a sea of ambiguous imagery. They’ve never stretched themselves to the extent that they do on Nothing Feels Natural, and we’re all the better for their relentless experimentation. Nothing Feels Natural is far more than a mere call to arms; it’s a manifesto for how to live, and it’s through all the layers of seething contempt that a path towards solace can be traced.

Essentials: “JJ”, “Nothing Feels Natural”, “Pink White House”

8. Arca- Arca

For Arca’s third LP in four years he’s released the first one of his records that could legitimately shock those who’ve been onboard since Baron Libra. For the first time since the dream pop that he recorded while in his teens, Arca’s voice was front in center of his music. Following the progression from Xen and Mutant this could have seemed like a disastrous prospect, and yet it’s resulted in, if not his most accomplished work, certainly his most fearless and honest work to date. Here he’s pared down the mind-melting production that’s distinguished his work thus far in favor of sparser, less obtrusive soundscapes that better support his operatic delivery. Instead of trying to outdo the brilliant, otherworldly labyrinths on Mutant, he’s opted for something even more insular but far less abrasive this time around. The music throughout Arca is just as unsetting and unpredictable as anything he’s ever released, but what makes it the strangest release of his to date is how unbelievably human it sounds.

“Piel” sets the tone for the album as metallic strings and a trembling low-end approximate the sound of the walls closing in around you while Arca sings off shedding the skin from yesterday and cutting himself off from the mouth of honey. It’s eerie and unfamiliar in the way that only Arca is, but he’s showing far more restraint than he typically allows in his music. I can’t think of many musicians where the notion that more is less couldn’t be further from the truth than it is with Arca, but on his self-titled he’s achieved an impressive balance between allowing the music to take a backseat to his voice while still providing room for him to explore new sonic terrain. “Castration” is a throwback of sorts to the frenzied drum and bass onslaughts that he’s perfected on previous LPs, and it also manages to pack in a surprising amount of melody given the nature of the song. And on album closer “Child” he recedes back completely behind the boards once more to deliver the most tender song of his to date.

Arca primarily holds its own within Arca’s discography due to the fact that, despite working almost entirely within instrumental parameters up to this point, not only does he have a surprisingly sturdy, agile voice, but he manages to consistently utilize it in surprising, affecting ways. “Saunter” creeps forward apprehensively while providing one of his most gorgeous melodies to date and lies in wait for his full-throttled bellow to tear it apart from the seams. On “Desario” Arca’s at his most shrewdly populist as he softly makes masochistic pleas and assures us that there’s an abyss inside him, while on the thunderous “Reverie” he takes on a commanding, cathartic tone as he dares a former lover to try and love him once more. There’s an unflinching level of vulnerability coursing throughout Arca that’s always existed in his music but had never previously been articulated so explicitly despite how cryptic the lyrics to these songs still are. With his self-titled LP Arca has managed to vastly expand the parameters of his artistry without having to simplify what he excels so peerlessly at. Here’s to Arca the pop star.

Essentials: “Piel”, “Castration”, “Saunter”

7. Always Foreign- The World is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die

Harmlessness is the kind of album that seemed guaranteed to posit a follow-up as inherently disappointing. It’s still an untouchable document of relentless ambition that continues to sound so refreshing in a climate where the vast majority of bands hardly seem capable of or interested in challenging themselves or their audience. On Always Foreign, the spirit of optimism that has propelled the vast majority of their music to date has started to dampen. It’s an album that finds the band thoroughly dissatisfied with the status quo and baring their fangs at a few different targets (primarily Donald Trump and former guitarist Nicole Shanholtzer) without once coming off as outright petty or bitter. It’s easily their most mature release to date, and an album that finds them comfortably settling into their status as elder statesmen of emo’s fourth wave without slipping into complacency.

While Always Foreign lacks both the immediacy and the adventurous spirit of Harmlessness, the band has still managed to push their sound forward in a number of different directions that sound both natural and fresh. Both “Dillion and Her Son” and “The Future” explore spiky pop-punk, and find the band at their most concise and accessible. “Fuzz Minor” begins groggily with simmering post-rock and switches on a dime through a few break-neck transitions before firmly landing on charred emo. “Gram” channels deceptively funky baroque pop and “Infinite Steve” calls back to the wistful post-rock that helped distinguish their debut Whenever, If Ever. On Always Foreign the band never lose sight of who they are, and where they came from, but they’re hardly beholden to the past. They’ve managed to tastefully push their sound forward and expand their wheelhouse with the most confident and assured songs of their career thus far.

As is the case with each of their other albums, Always Foreign contains a handful of their best songs to date, and finds the band reaching heights unparalleled in contemporary rock. “Marine Tigers” takes stock of the racism and xenophobia that David Bello’s father experienced growing up in New York throughout the 40s, and chillingly addresses how prevalent it remains today, in the process penning the album’s thesis statement “Making money is a horrible and rotten institution”. They reach one of their characteristically blistering codas propelled by a storm of brass and strings, but instead of catharsis the song practically disintegrates at the seams before tumbling into “Fuzz Minor”. “For Robin” is perhaps the most devastating song that the band has penned to date. Over delicate acoustic plucking Bello ponders how we’re able to grieve so openly for celebrities that we admire, but have no actual relationship with, while we struggle so profoundly to naturally process the deaths of those who we couldn’t be any closer to.

The album’s crowning achievement, and one of the most powerful songs that I’ve ever ever heard, however, belongs to “Faker”. “Faker” is a perfect song that finds the band at the height of their powers, disillusioned beyond belief, and channeling their collective frustration squarely at Donald Trump. It’s a frank, no-holds barred depiction of life under his administration, positing a procession of horrifying, but perfectly plausible scenarios that could befall the United States while he’s in office. No other song or album in 2017 has even come close to tapping into the grim reality that we face with him as president as “Faker”. It’s the kind of song that in nearly anyone else’s hands could have easily come off too on the nose, too cynical, or too ham-fisted, if not all three at once. But this is the kind of thing that’s been in the band’s wheelhouse since the beginning, and their execution astounds. As awful as the world may seem throughout the course of Always Foreign, the band continue to find strength and solace in one another. The World is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die may have shed some of their optimism in the time between Harmlessness and Always Foreign, but their belief in the power of community as a balm for assuaging the horrors of daily existence remains as firm as it’s ever been.

Essentials: “Faker”, “For Robin”, “Marine Tigers”

6. A Deeper Understanding- The War on Drugs

Following up a breakthrough album as ambitious and well-executed as Lost in the Dream must have been a daunting prospect, but you’d hardly know it from the sound of their even better fourth LP A Deeper Understanding. Here is where The War on Drugs have solidified their status as rock auteurs, widening the scope of their shoegaze-inflected, psychedelic heartland rock with elements of krautrock and synth pop. And while A Deeper Understanding is handedly the most accessible LP in their discography, it comes at no cost of the perfectionist sensibilities of bandleader Adam Granduciel. Much in the way that records like Currents and Swing Lo Magellan respectively found Kevin Parker and David Longstreth indulging their populist impulses more thoroughly than ever before while simultaneously writing some of their most sophisticated arrangements to date, A Deeper Understanding has only benefitted from Granduciel’s improvement on the immediacy of songcraft.

As far as lyrics as concerned, just like with previous albums from The War on Drugs the emphasis isn’t on specificity, but on establishing mood, and here they continue to exist among the great purveyors of atmosphere in contemporary music. “Holding On” offers little more than the likelihood that it was written about trying to move on following a breakup “No I’m headed down a different road, yeah/Can we walk it side by side?/Is an old memory just another way of saving goodbye?”, but that sense of untamable longing is conjured through the scope of their arrangements with far more justice than mere words could articulate. Lead single “Thinking of a Place” finds Granduciel relying on the light of the moon to guide him to through the darkness and towards a place of love, and the expanse of isolation that Granduciel feels himself rooted in is conveyed in spades. That kind of slight vagueness extend itself to the album as a whole, which only reinforces its dreamlike quality. You don’t have any real idea of where you’re going, you just know that you need to press onward, and perhaps if you’re lucky you’ll be able to retain pieces of your journey after the fact.

While The War on Drugs have obvious, undeniable reference points (Springsteen, Dylan, Petty, etc), their take on widescreen heartland rock incorporates far more than such comparisons would suggest. Their music is grander, and denser, each song incorporating dozens of instruments and overdubs that would come off over-baked and clunky in anyone but Granduciel’s hands. The drums draw far more from the nimble strutting of Krautrock than it does from any mainstream American rock throughout the 80s, and the massive array of synthesizers hew much closer to pure synth-pop than any electronica-dabbling Americana that existed within that time frame. Their music continues to retain elements of psychedelia and shoegaze on top of this, further distinguishing them from obvious reference points and their contemporaries alike. While The War on Drugs remain reminiscent of several legacy bands, there’s still nobody that sounds like them, far more so in 2017 than in 2014.

Where The War on Drugs continue to noticeably excel are in their arrangements. Lost in the Dream was were The War on Drugs truly locked into their sound, and on A Deeper Understanding the band are perfecting it. The songs on A Deeper Understanding are simply massive, and necessitate a quality pair of headphones or speakers more so than everything else that I’ve heard this year. Granduciel has grown into one of the most meticulous producers currently working, and the level of detail pouring out of each of these songs is just ridiculous. Whether it’s the interlocked electric/acoustic guitar layering in “Pain”, the thick motorik rhythms of “Nothing to Find”, or the sweeping synthesizer sprawl of “Thinking of a Place”, these songs contain a level of craftsmanship that make a strong case for nothing but ambition for ambition’s sake. The further that Granduciel seems to delve inward, the richer and more engrossing his music becomes, and A Deeper Understanding is the band’s most compelling chapter to date, one that further cements Granduciel’s status as one of the most consistently rewarding musicians currently recording.

Essentials: “Nothing to Find”, “Strangest Thing”, “Thinking of a Place”

5. Crack-Up- Fleet Foxes

The entire landscape of music had seismically shifted throughout the gap between Crack-Up, and the previous Fleet Foxes LP, Helplessness Blues. From trends, to distribution models, to methods of consumption, Fleet Foxes were entering an entirely different playing field in 2017 than the one that existed in 2011. Thankfully, the music suggested that this didn’t seem to faze the band too much, and they returned this year with their most complex and compelling LP to date. Put simply, Crack-Up is an enormous folk record. Exquisitely arranged and produced, it’s their most gorgeous record as well as their most ambitious, a record adorned in maximalist string and horn arrangements, sublime textures, and those heavenly multi-part harmonies that have been the band’s calling card since their Sun Giant EP. While this is easily the album of theirs most guaranteed to shun casual listeners and alienate many who have been onboard primarily because of the melodic mastery exuded on their self-titled, it’s also much bolder, assured, and dynamic than anything most could have reasonable assumed this band was capable of and/or interested in making. What the band has sacrificed in immediacy they’ve gained several times over in longevity.

After just a minute into “I’m All That I Need / Arroyo Seco / Thumbprint Scar” it becomes clear that this is a very different kind of Fleet Foxes record. The band has always contained at least five members, each of which are multi-instrumentalists, but Crack-Up is the first album to completely take advantage of the breadth of their instrumental range. I’m All That I Need” initially lulls you into a false sense of security before an avalanche of acoustic guitars storms the mix. From there we’re taken through several different sections that pile on keys, bass, mellotron, violin, and clarinets as Robin Pecknold begins to take stock of his isolation. The song ends with a snippet of “White Winter Hymnal” being covered by a high school choir low in the mix, emphasizing how the band couldn’t be further removed from the wide-eyed, youthful disposition they fully exhibited just a decade prior. It rings like a sober acknowledgement of the passage of time, and the realities reckoned with throughout the years since. Much of the record finds Pecknold growing disillusioned with those around him and society at large while seeming to harbor crippling feelings of self-doubt and indulging in the impulse to isolate himself. It’s the coldest record they’ve made yet, but due to their refusal to give into expectations or frame feelings in a more agreeable light, it’s also their most honest work to date.

With an album this dense and complex it’s easy to dismiss much of it as an exercise in indulgence, but the album succeeds on a number of fronts. Both “If You Need to, Keep Time on Me” and “Kept Woman” pair down the instrumental extravagance in favor of sparse acoustic guitar/piano compositions, acting as breathers that emphasis the band’s rich harmonies in-between their baroque walls of noise; the former a mediation on acting within allocated boundaries in a relationship with a close friend and artistic collaborator while the latter is a longing ballad that seeks reconciliation with a figure named Anna. “On Another Ocean (January / June)” slowly builds from little more than scattered handclaps, cello, and piano beneath Pecknold’s understated croon before the song settles into a groove that piles on guitars, harpsichord, and mellotron with Pecknold delivering one of the strongest melodies that he’s ever written. The pacing throughout Crack-Up is superb, and they’ve achieved a remarkable balance between doing justice to the band’s inherent melodic sensibilities while remaining willing to challenge themselves.

This is hardly the kind of album that I ever would have expected Fleet Foxes to make, but it sounds like a perfectly natural extension of their sound. It feels firmly removed, and out of step with the current landscape of music in all of the best ways possible. Everything that made Fleet Foxes a great band since the beginning is completely amplified here, and each risk they take they manage to pull off completely. Whether it’s the nearly 9 minute, 3 movement epic prog-folk lead single “Third of May / Odaigahara” or the ambient-leaning psych folk of “Cassius” or the anthemic baroque stampede of “Mearcstapa”, the songs on Crack-Up are the band’s finest to date because, despite what the overarching tone would suggest otherwise, sonically this sounds like a band falling in love with the act of creating all over again. Before 2017 a legitimately underrated Fleet Foxes album seemed inconceivable to me, but here we are. While it took a few albums and almost a decade, Fleet Foxes have released their masterpiece, having finally carved out a lane entirely unto themselves.

Essentials: “On Another Ocean (January / June)”, “Third of May / Odaigahara“, “Mearcstapa”

4. Rocket- (Sandy) Alex G

After several stellar bandcamp releases (and one official LP for Domino under his belt already) (Sandy) Alex G has returned this year with Rocket, his proper breakout LP. Much like Car Seat Headrest with Matador, Alex G has been able to turn a fairly sizable following on bandcamp into a record deal with a major indie. His first commercial release, Beach Music, was solid but a little uneven and rough around the edges, and ultimately failed to completely distill everything that makes him such a compelling artist. Rocket, on the other hand, is an ambitious, multi-faceted record that, while his most accessible, is also just his best period. There’s a staggering level of improvement in nearly aspect of his artistry on Rocket. His songwriting has never been sharper, while the arranging and production are miles apart from even what he was doing on Beach Music. He’s still writing and recording almost entirely himself, and for the most part he’s working within the same parameters, but he’s never taken so many sonic risks on any previous LP, and each of them pay off handsomely. Rocket is the sound of one of the most compelling songwriters of the last handful of years completely coming into his own as a musician, with his fearlessness only matched by his curiosity.

This is still singer-songwriter indie rock through and through, but there’s far more happening throughout Rocket than those kinds of parameters initially suggest. The album as a whole is far more twangy than your typical Alex G affair, with songs like “Poison Root” and “Rocket” that keep jangly acoustics high in the mix. “Bobby” is the closest that Alex has ever dipped into full-blown country, and incorporates violin and gorgeous harmonies courtesy of Emily Yacina. “Witch” explores droning psych pop while on “Brick” he opts for blood-curdling noise the likes of which could not be any further removed from everything else found here. That being said, “Brick” still works as an immensely effective segue from the frenzied free jazz plucking of “Horse” to the auto-tune drenched r&b ballad “Sportstar”. While some may find Rocket an incoherent and unfocused listen, Alex manages to not only pull off these stylistic leaps steadily and seamlessly, but he also displays a vast breadth of range previously unexplored this fully in his music up to this point. Nothing on Rocket feels forced or out of place, but it all feels like a perfectly natural extension of Alex G’s resourcefulness.

It can be easy to read too much into the lyrics of Rocket as Alex has always been prone to keeping listeners at arm’s length, and he continues to abstain from transparency throughout. “Proud” begins simply enough with proclamations of admiration “Wanna be a star like you/Wanna make something that’s true” before he flips the intention on its head a few verses later “I wanna be fake like you/Walk around with rocks in my shoes” and the tone never provides a straight answer. “Bobby” finds an unreliable narrator eager to destroy aspects of himself, both those he loves as well as those that disgust him, in order to salvage a crumbling relationship “I’d burn them for you/If you want me to” but it’s entirely unclear if Alex plays a role in this story or not. “Judge” finds someone presumably ruing having taken someone once extremely close whose no longer in his life for granted “That day meant nothing to me/A hiccup in my memory/This life will leave you hungry/I am completely guilty” while “Guilty” ends Rocket on a particularly morose note “Have you buried all the evidence of/What you used to be?/Has the question/Become darker than the answer?/Baby, I’ve got news”, brilliantly juxtaposing some of his bleakest lyrics to date over warm organ chords, maracas, and cool saxophone lines. Each song is grounded in reality but contains subtle surreal twists that leave much of the intention up to interpretation. This reluctance to oversimplify or dispense information first and foremost ensures that Rocket is consistently engaging and rewards multiple listens.

While easily his most accomplished album to date, the cohesiveness and range of Rocket were hardly unprecedented. He’s been perfecting his craft for years through a handful of bandcamp releases recorded by himself in his bedroom. While Rocket is his most collaborative LP to date, it still manages to not only completely capture the unconventional essence of his artistry, but amplify it. Taken as a whole, Rocket constitutes the most dynamic and confident songs of his brief but prolific career, and suggest that far less is off the table moving forward than one might have reasonably assumed from hearing nothing more than a handful of pre-Rocket Alex G songs. He’s quickly and unassumingly become one of the most consistently compelling storytellers in music today, and regardless of the shape his tales continue to take they’re certain to be engaging. In an increasingly crowded realm of singer-songwriters across a multitude of genres Alex G stands far from the pack through sheer ingenuity alone. With any luck his adventurous spirit will continue to spoil us for years to come.

Essentials: “Proud”, “Bobby ft. Emily Yacina”, “Judge”

3. Aromanticism- Moses Sumney

After years of hype from the likes of Solange and Chris Taylor among many others despite having not recorded anything until last year’s understated and gorgeous Lamentations EP, Moses Sumney delivered a debut that capitalized on the potential that his live show and songs like “Lonely World” suggested. Aromanticism is a sublimely meditative record that finds Moses pondering how best to live a life without romantic love. Most of the compositions are fairly minimal, with little more than guitar, synths, and Sumney’s tremendously expressive falsetto. On the whole his songs achieve a serenity through his terrific use of space, and it’s easy to get lulled into the ambience of his compositions without realizing how impressive the arrangements actually are. Like many of the musicians on this list, Sumney has grown staggeringly as an artist since his last release. From songwriting to singing, composition, arranging, and production, Aromanticism is a remarkable leap forward that is at times loud, quiet, challenging, accessible, but it’s never anything less than bold and entirely firm in his convictions. It’s the rare debut that, not only completely lives up to all hype surrounding it, but more importantly suggests a plethora of directions that Sumney could continue to take his singular soul music.

Where Aromanticism truly impresses is in Sumney’s ability to convey so much while seeming to do so little. With the exception of the latter half of the album’s centerpiece, “Lonely World”, the songs on Aromanticism are truly skeletal in their construction. The pervading atmosphere is one of smoky ambience, with little more to really latch onto aside from Sumney’s consistently engaging vocals and murky guitar strums, along with the occasional brass flourish, string sweep, or ambient synth tone to help sketch out the compositions. Everything is given plenty of room to breathe and develop organically, and this spartan-like sparsity helps allow details like the extended jazz coda tacked onto the end of “Quarrel” feel like natural and welcome embellishments instead of pure indulgence. “Don’t Bother Calling” is stripped to a chugging bassline, occasional strings, and Sumney’s tender croon. His sparse harmonies cast an eerie shadow over the mix as he gentle acknowledges reservations about a relationship “I don’t know what we are/But all I know is I can’t go away with you with half a heart”. The production throughout seamlessly compliments the richness of his voice, and while he’s proved more prone to deliver his vocals with grace and precision over sheer spectacle, there are moments like the closing track “Self-Hape Tape” where he completely lets loose, gliding up and down octaves with reckless abandon above skittering guitar plucks and a rumbling low-end. There’s just enough on each song to help flesh out his deeply affecting vocal performances, and Aromanticism as a whole is all the better for his tremendous sense of restraint.

Aromanticism is a concept record centered around learning to live with the absence of romantic love. The songs on Aromanticism never take on a chiding or condescending tone; they simply challenge some preconceived notion about romance until Sumney’s gaze veers towards some other element to fixate on. They draw their power from Sumney’s heartfelt, engaging inquiries into the very nature of our psychological impulse to co-habitat. “Plastic” draws from the Greek myth of Icarus as he compares his emotional state to the malleability and deception inherent in plastic “My wings are made up/And so am I”. “Quarrel” explores the nature of romantic love as a political device used as a further extension of control over people. Here he breaks down the difficulty of being in relationship with someone who won’t recognize the legitimacy of their problems “With you, half the battle/Is proving we’re at war/I’d give my life just for the privilege to ignore” before reflecting that due to the inherently discriminatory nature of the world there can never be an equal relationship since someone will always be “othered” by society more so, even if marginally, than the other person “We cannot by lovers/Long as I’m the other”. On “Indulge Me” Sumney seems to find solace in silence, having grown comfortable with all his old lovers moving on “I don’t trouble nobody/Nobody troubles my body after/All my old others have found lovers”.

While there isn’t a single song here that does anything less than astound (interludes and all), it isn’t until “Doomed” that everything finally clicks into place. The first song that Moses Sumney released for Aromanticism, while perhaps as unorthodox as singles come, is the best song that he’s ever released and easily one of the best songs released all year. It’s an ambient-soul lucid dream that finds Moses at a croon-whisper over smoldering synth tones as he questions whether it’s even possible for him to live a meaningful life if romantic love perpetually eludes him. It moves along at a crawl, but by the time we reach the coda his delivery conveys nothing short of pure devastation. There are very few musicians who can, or even care to summon the courage to ask these kinds of questions in the first place, and although by the time that “Self-Help Tape” concludes we don’t seem any closer to answering the questions that Sumney posits throughout Aromanticsm, it feels like a reward in itself to hear someone so talented and thoughtful grapple with these dilemmas. There wasn't another debut released in 2017 that was as singular, full-formed, multi-faceted, and engaging from start to finish as Aromanticism. So far, Sumney has been asking all the right questions, and making all the right moves.

Essentials: “Doomed”, “Lonely World”, “Don’t Bother Calling”

2. The Ooz- King Krule

Archy Marshall’s return to form as King Krule is a remarkably cohesive voyage into the dark recesses of his mind. Following the muted lo-fi trip-hop that defined his last LP, 2015’s A New Place 2 Drown, The Ooz is far more in line with the more sonically adventurous music that he records under his King Krule moniker. 6 Feet Beneath the Moon still holds up as a great record, but it does sound somewhat reserved in retrospect, like Marshall was slightly hesitant to completely push against the boundaries of his artistry. The Ooz is the first album that Archy Marshall has made that completely lives up to the full scope of his talents. It’s a more fully-realized vision of the bleak dystopia he’s been depicting since he first started recording while fully incorporating sonic elements from everything that he’s done up to this point. He’s achieved a sound that incorporates indie rock, post-punk, punk-jazz, and trip-hop, and there’s nobody that sounds anything even remotely like him. His distinct baritone warble is front and center, but he’s never sounded as dynamic as vocalist, shrieking manically with as much ease as seamlessly transitioning into a tender croon. The Ooz is long and can be a fairly challenging listen at times, but the sonic variation, stellar songwriting, and rich production ensure that it’s a consistently rewarding listen. Everything that Archy Marhsall has released up to to his point has been impressive, but The Ooz is a particularly remarkable achievement that owns Marshall’s singular talents, existing entirely in a class of its own.

The sound that Marshall cultivates throughout The Ooz is more impressive than anything he’s attempted on previous records. Opening cut “Biscuit Town” sets the tone perfectly as Krule’s weary rasp lays waste to a slithering tom/snare rhythm and bleary organ chords while he begins to make note of his desolate surroundings “I seem to sink lower/gazing in the rays of the solar”. From there we begin to descend further through the gunk. “The Locomotive” continues what is handedly the strongest four song punch on a 2017 LP as Krule’s forlorn wail cuts through the fog alongside a whistle aimlessly trailing off into the void. By the time we reach the first interlude, “Bermondsey Bosom (Left)”, it becomes immensely clear that Krule has made his riskiest and most ambitious LP to date. Here he’s managed to tastefully fuse the instrumental trip-hop he explored on A New Place 2 Drown with the punk-jazz blues rock that he’s been recoding under King Krule from the start without falling prey to awkward growing pains. The Ooz is the most immersive record I’ve listened to all year, and masterfully sustains the distinct atmosphere throughout the course of its runtime despite such immense variation. While certainly on the long side, The Ooz avoids devolving into a joyless slog through his deft sense of pacing. There are a few instrumental interludes scattered throughout that help round things out in-between the more substantive cuts, and nothing overstays its welcome.

There’s an immense diversity present throughout The Ooz, both sonically and compositionally. The first two singles, “Czech One” and “Dum Surfer”, are not only two of his most impressive songs to date, but they could hardly be more different from one another while still completely adhering to the album’s sensibilities. The former is hushed and solemn with Krule gazing through an airplane window recounting life on the road over somber piano chords and unimposing snare taps. The latter trades the nuance of the former for something far more brash. “Dum Surfer” barrels forward courtesy of a propulsive low-end, thick saxophones, and jittery snares as Krule snarls about vomiting on pavement slabs and getting into car crashes while riding in a cab. While these two songs exist within the same sonic parameters, they suggest a scope of vast range that Krule more than lives up to throughout The Ooz. The chugging sleigh bells and theremin wails that define “Slush Puppy” are miles away from the reverb-drenched, jangly lounge blues that Krule exhibits on “A Slide In (New Drugs)”, but at no point could you ever mistake either song as the work of any other musician. King Krule continues to thrill as a producer, and throughout The Ooz he demonstrates an impeccable use of texture that elevate each of these compositions beyond what they could have been in the hands of most other producers. Whether it’s the storm of brass and saloon piano chords that dance in tandem throughout “Cadet Limbo” or the slippery, sinister basslines that aggressively creep forward throughout “Vidual”, Krule consistently manages to keep things interesting.

As is the case with everything that Archy Marshall has released up to this point, The Ooz is an unrelentingly bleak record. “I wish I was people” Krule pointedly warbles on “The Locomotive”, providing one of the album’s few conceivable thesis statements, matched only by “I don’t trust anyone/Only get alone with some” off of “Vidual”. Krule’s commitment to unwavering solitude has only seemed to increase with each release of his, and here his isolation has reached a new peak. “In soft bleeding, we will unite/We ooz two souls, pastel blues/Heightened touch from losing sight/Swimming through the blue lagoon” he offers up on the title track, and it seems to convey an inability to move on after having lost someone that meant the world to him. For all the gruffness that he’s prone to front, vulnerability has always been key to his work, and here he comes closer than ever to exposing the tender seams that compose his aloof temperament. As is to be expected, he provides no legitimate closure for his torment, but does offer a few thoughts on how he may find solace moving forward on “La Lune”. “They found reasons to try/Clone the sea at night/Brave waves bathe the eye/Well I crave ways to dry” he intones solemnly, seemingly vowing not to fixate on trying to find love. Whether that holds true is yet to be seen, but what’s certain is that our generation’s self-proclaimed greatest poet has delivered his as-of-now opus; a sprawling teatise on how to navigate such a horrific, unredeemable world.

Essentials: “The Ooz”, “Dum Surfer”, “Czech One”

1. Flower Boy- Tyler, The Creator

I haven’t followed artistic growth across any medium within my lifetime as astounding as that of Tyler, the Creator’s. Since the release of his seminal mixtape, Bastard, it was clear that Tyler was an immensely talented individual with a singular perspective and an unparrallelled imagination, but it was hard to imagine how he would, or rather if he would be capable, of maturing gracefully as an artist when his sound was tethered so strongly to such juvenile impulses. With each release following Bastard Tyler began to shed this careless fronts, allowing his introspective inclinations to begin dominating the proceedings where off-hand quips about murder, snorting coke, and worshipping satan previously took precedent. Tyler’s fourth LP, Flower Boy, is by and large the most accomplished, cohesive, honest, and fully-realized release of his to date. By fusing the Neptunes indebted synth heavy hip-hop he’s been perfecting from the start with lush neo-soul, warm baroque jazz, and elements of psychedlelia, r&b, and pop he’s managed to land on a sound that evenly distills his passions into fluid, and unconventional, but undeniably sturdy structures. One get’s the feeling that he’s released the album that he’s always wanted to make having finally reached the height of his creative powers. By responding faithfully to his imagination alone, Tyler has made an album that bleeds with intimacy and identity, one that’s elevated far beyond the sum of its components.

In many ways Flower Boy is simply a massively refined take on what Tyler was trying to accomplish with Cherry Bomb. While Tyler was definitely on to something with the latter record, the execution was too volatile and scattered to really leave much of an impact beyond the cult of OF. Flower Boy retains the marriage between the melodic and chaotic that Tyler was reaching for on Cherry Bomb, but improves it on every font. On Cherry Bomb he had grown visibly disenfranchised with the art of rapping, and was hurdling towards growing pains with awkward vocal deliveries in place of traditional rapping akin to Kid Cudi’s unfortunate trajectory. His rapping throughout Flower Boy is the tightest and most concise of his entire career, with flow change-ups and various masterfully implemented inflections that help punctuate the tone of each song throughout. He’s still trying to distance himself as a rapper, and he actually sings on a few songs throughout Flower Boy. When he opts to sing he recognizes the limitations of his voice and operates accordingly, remaining well within his range and using other voices when necessary to bring his colorful compositions to life. There are 11 features on Flower Boy, and each guest is given plenty of room to provide their talents on instrumentals that perfectly complement their sensibilities. This is still Tyler’s album through and through, but never before has he demonstrated such an impressive utilization of an eclectic and well-balanced ensemble.

Production has always been Tyler’s primary draw, and Flower Boy is the most superbly produced record in a discography defined by eclectic, forward-thinking production. Consistently layered in a rich assortment of strings, brass, keys, and synths, Flower Boy is a dense orchestration of disparate sounds, but unlike Cherry Bomb it never actually suffers from Tyler’s maximalist sensibilities. “See You Again” is tender baroque r&b that finds Tyler harmonizing with Kali Uchis, penning the most genuine and thoughtful love song in a discography ripe with them. “I Ain’t Got Time” and “Who Dat Boy” mark returns to the chaotic, unhinged sensibilities that defined Bastard and Tyler’s debut Goblin. “Who Dat Boy” is the only song on the album where Tyler doesn’t seem to even remotely challenge himself or his audience, but it’s saved from pure caricature thanks to Tyler’s tight delivery, his sinister, trunk-rattling production, and a surprisingly solid A$ap Rocky verse. “I Ain’t Got Time” bangs in a more traditional sense, and proves that Tyler can still raise pure hell when so inclined. On “Droppin’ Seeds” Lil Wayne spits another late-career gem over understated cool jazz and on “Garden Shed” Tyler tries his hand at psychedelic r&b that finds him and Estelle harmonizing with one another before a thick wall of distortion signals the arrival of Tyler’s most heartfelt verse to date. Nothing here feels all that unprecedented if you’ve been following Tyler’s trajectory closely, but the execution here simply dwarves all past efforts of his.

Tyler has always provided fleeting glimpses of sincerity beyond the veil of irreverence on each release of his since Bastard, but on Flower Boy he exudes an unflinching level of transparency that shocks more than anything else about this album. From the opening cut, “Forward”, Tyler establishes the album’s earnest tone on a bed of lavish synths while providing a legitimate breakout moment for Rex Orange County. “Boredom” finds Tyler continuing to grapple with loneliness and contains the most impressive string arrangements that Tyler’s ever assembled, while “Glitter” has one of the best melodies he’s ever written and offers a glimpse of the potential pop album Tyler recently suggested would follow Flower Boy. “Pothole” initially scans as a stealth re-write of Wolf’s “Slater”, but fixates on the disappointment of being ignored by old friends while trying to help them achieve their goals and contains a bafflingly well-executed hook courtesy of Jaden Smith of all people while “November” showcases some of his tightest flows to date as he raps about a series of concerns regarding his fame, creativity, and relationships that ends with him leaving a voicemail to someone he’s fallen for, the voicemail being “Glitter”. The album’s most powerful moment, sonically and lyrically, arrives on “Garden Shed”. Speculated by many to be his official coming out of the closet “All my friends lost/They couldn’t read the signs/I didn’t want to talk and tell them my location/And they ain’t wanna walk” and despite never confirming whether that’s what it’s supposed to signify or not it’s still the most open that he’s ever allowed himself to be on record.

With Flower Boy Tyler has blossomed into the musician that his potential has always suggested was within range. The record’s second single, and perhaps his finest song to date, “911 / Mr. Lonely”, completely distills everything that makes Flower Boy such a compelling listen, and made it immediately apparent that we’re dealing with a markedly more assured and accomplished artist than the one who recorded Cherry Bomb. The first half is dreamy, soulful boom-bap with Tyler copping to intense feelings of loneliness despite the success that he’s had “I got a sold out show but it don’t matter cause you not front row”. On the second half he lets loose with his sharpest verse since “Rusty” over demonic trap that’s tonally in-line with his past work but constructed far more impressively. The additional vocals of Frank Ocean, Steve Lacy, and Anna of the North are utilized brilliantly, with Tyler wisely allocating plenty of space to his guests so that no one really dominates until “Mr. Lonely”, which in turn only further amplifies Tyler’s verses. His willingness to push all aspects of his artistry coupled with a heightened transparency and an increasingly collaborative approach have allowed Tyler to make the best project of his career, and the most consistently compelling 2017 album that I’ve had the pleasure of listening to.

Essentials: “911/Mr. Lonely” ft. Frank Ocean, Steve Lacy, & Anna of the North, “See You Again” ft. Kali Uchis, “Garden Shed” ft. Estelle

#Tyler The Creator #king krule #moses sumney #(Sandy) Alex G #Fleet Foxes #the war on drugs #The world is a beautiful place and I am no longer afraid to die #arca #priests #Blanck Mass

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