#i do a lot of stuff that necessitates high standards and pleasing expectations

[telenovelameta]

woo let's go. new blog! created this mostly so i dont spam my main with stuff most gringos haven't even heard about lol

so as anyone who's talked to me for 2 minutes irl knows... i watch a lot of novelas. like a lot. specially when working all-nighters... i usually get through a lot of storylines pretty quickly (i can hit 20+ episodes in a night easy, healthy? idk... but there's just something about melodrama that hits The Right Chemicals in my brain, esp during Deadline Crunch Time). but, i'm usually someone that likes to analyze and criticize the stuff i watch, and it's usually pretty frustrating to not have anywhere to put those thoughts (besides the after mentioned off-topic spam on main), i also feel this medium is kinda under-scrutinized, even by "professional critics" (who are usually, tbh, pretty baseline in their analysis), so, hence this blog. expect takes / opinions / analysis just general comments on novelas i'm currently watching. maybe some gifsets reblogs here and there when i catch those rare fish, maybe some fanart if im really in the mood... in general tho i'm extremely busy w/ other projects (fandom projects included) so expect this blog to be rlly informal and "train of thought"- ish. sorta like ur personal broadcast of my internal monologue from injecting 200+ hours of melodrama into the brain. .... so, what to expect? currently i'm going through: 1- a viagem (the 90s globo remake, am at chapter 61 of 167)

2- totalmente demais (have about 10 eps to finish)

3- bom suceso (about 30 eps to finish i think?) 4- alem da ilusao (i was following this day-to-day when it was airing but kinda lost interest in the last month, i'm looking to finish it at some point though) --- there's 3 novelas that live rent free in my head and i will probably post about sporadically as well: i've also been doing an on-and-off rewatch of senhora do destino (third one, this time with my mom), we're on episode 90 or so I believe. it's been about 2 years of a rewatch tho so lol may take at least another 3. besides that, some n i'm part of the team of @floricientasubbed , and am always translating and analyzing the eps of floricienta. mostly the new takes i get while doing that are kept on our discord, but if there's a worthy enough idea to share, i'll put it here. i'm also working on a long-term sequel project (fan comic format) to cheias de charme, which i may also post about from time to time. --- in the future im looking to watch some venezuelan ones... and maybe rewatch las aparicio (maybe after reading dona flor y sus dos maridos? i feel in first watch i missed some of that literary context). i have more brazilian stuff in the queue as well, but i would like to switch it up a bit after finishing the ones i'm currently going through. well, that's it for now! back to the proverbial tube...

[thenichibro]

Spring 2018 Anime First Impressions

Two weeks into the season - basically on schedule by my standards! This season, as always, has ups and downs as well as popular shows I’m not watching (Megalobox) and shows I immediately regret starting (Devils Line). As a further point, I don’t do impressions of sequels, and in this case I’m including Steins;Gate 0 as a sequel because it is so based on the events of the main show. Regardless, here’s what I’m watching with MAL links and original shows marked:

Legend of the Galactic Heroes - Die Neue These (MAL) Look, I'm not going to immediately say go watch the original LOGH, but I'm kidding that's exactly what I'm going to say. LOGH is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. My issue with this series is not that they will not represent the characters badly, but that 110 episodes shoved into 12 episodes and three movies is simply not enough. LOGH has a scale, a grandeur, a weight that is conveyed as you invest yourself into it for hours on end, from bombastic space battles and the minutiae of day-to-day politics. You need both scales, the imperial and the individual, to really experience LOGH, and I feel like 12 episodes isn't enough time to have both. The LOGH remake looks and sounds fine (though with way too much CG and a bit of same-facing with Reinhard and Kircheis), but I am incredibly nervous about the pacing. This is a first impression, and if Production I.G. pulls this off it will be a classic reimagined for a modern audience that deserves it. But I simply don't think that's going to happen. I'm hopeful, but apprehensive. And again, watch the original. It is pure class.

Persona 5 the Animation (MAL) Play the game first. Please.

Devils Line (MAL) A world where vampires exist under the guise of normal people and some lose control and kill under cover of night. Basically Tokyo Ghoul with less of a vampire "society" and more just individual threats, with more of a sexual twist. Tsukasa is our helpless college heroine, adrift as she finishes school, when she finds out the guy who likes her is a serial murderer who wants blood! So wacky! She's saved by Anzai, a calm, collected member of the agency tasked with dealing with vampires, before unintentionally revealing himself a vampire. Yet we are expected to just accept Anzai forcing himself on Tsukasa because he's the savior? Right. Background sound design isn't bad, art/animation are bland and at times awkward. Devils Line is trying real hard to be a new Tokyo Ghoul, but now with more sexual undertones for whatever reason. Pass.

3D Kanojo: Real Girl (MAL) Ah, otaku love. At least it can't be worse than Saekano, right? That'd be a serious challenge. 3D Kanojo follows Tsutsui, an otaku that suffers the typical ostracization of anime, when he meets Iroha, a blunt girl who for once doesn't ostracize him. The first episode has plenty of the classics - falling into a pool, talking about "3D women" being out of his league, heroics when he knows he can't win. Everything you'd expect. By the end of the episode, things progressed a helluva lot more than I expected, in many ways. It seems thus far that the otaku thing is the impetus for Tsutsui's low opinion of himself, rather than anime being the point of the show. More introspective than I would otherwise think, I think 3D Kanojo holds a lot of slight surprises. It's interesting, for sure, and I hope it continues that way.

Tachibanakan Triangle (MAL) One of two short anime I'm watching this season, Tachibanakan follows a girl who moves into a girls apartment complex and gets more yuri than she bargained for.  We've got the fang-sporting short one, the quiet one, the onee-san, the blonde foreigner, you name it. I don't expect a lot of character development or anything similar, but three and a half minutes of yuri sounds just fine to me.

Uma Musume (MAL) First off, props to the show for making the horse girls' names just as stupid as those of real racehorses. I mean, I know it’s because the girls are named after real racehorses, but still. Uma Musume involves a world where horseracing is hugely popular, only the racers are anthropomorphic horse girls. Our main girl is Special Week, a newbie transferring to a popular racing school in Tokyo. She's your typical genki type - eager, energetic, bright-eyed. Enthralled by one of the top girls Silence Suzuka, she aims to become one of the top horse girls in Japan. Oh, and the top horse girls perform as idols after each race. This sure is a mobile game adaptation, god damn. P.A. Works' art looks solid as always (props to the flowing tail animation); the OP and ED are pretty standard idolish stuff. I prefer the ED. Anthropomorphic racing is fine, yet for some reason the idol part is what makes it weird for me. This show is strange, but if it's not much more than cute horse girls doing cute horse girl things, I'll keep paying attention.

SAO Alternative: Gun Gale Online (MAL) I hate SAO. I have a laundry list of reasons that I despised both seasons of SAO. The reason I'm giving GGO a chance is because the main charater is a girl playing a cute chibi girl in-game and she just wants to make friends. Hopefully, that will avoid the terrible pitfall that was anything relating to Kirito. GGO starts right in the action, with a topical Battle Royale mode putting our pink girl and her partner right into the action. The tactics are good and help set up the basic premises of the gametype, if that necessitated a bit too much monologuing by M, the partner. Also, plenty of pouts. Always a bonus. As always the invincibility of the protag is annoying, but I don't really expect breakthrough plot changes from an SAO spinoff. I mean, SAO S1 was good for the first 10 episodes too. Keep this cute girl and not-harem, focus on connecting with others through video games rather than shanking perverts in a parking lot, and it'll be solid.

Hinamatsuri (MAL) A super-powered middle-schooler falls into the life of a nicer-than-normal yakuza. Nitta is the yakuza, with a penchant for fancy porcelain. Hina is the middle-schooler, your typical otherworldly killing machine set into an unfamiliar world. Hinamatsuri puts a lot of good spins on the taking-care-of-a-supernatural-girl trope, with the main character being a yakuza rather than an "average high schooler." Furthermore, there are some nice father-daughter vibes going between the two, though it's clear Hina maintains the upper hand. Won over by Nitta's refusal to use her as just a tool, their life together begins. The comedy is your standard boke/tsukkomi, but the lightning-quick delivery of the lines had me cracking up regardless. Hinamatsuri looks like it could go darker any second, but if it doesn't I'm perfectly content to stay around.

Comic Girls (MAL) Probably the most classic cute girls doing cute things show this season, Comic Girls follows a group of mangaka girls living in a dorm together. Moeta is the worrywart crybaby, Koyume's the genki blonde, Ruki is the less-than-secret pervert, and Tsubasa is the tomboy. There's plenty of nice compliments between the girls' personalities, and Koyume and Moeta seem like a great fit as the newbies in the group. Furthermore, their personalities being informed by the manga they draw allows for a nice exploration of manga cliches through their interactions. This looks to be more on the character-driven side than a deep dive into the logistics of manga production, but that's just fine. Animation and sound aren't really anything special, but they're by no means bad. As a slice-of-life fan I'm all in, even if this show doesn't turn out to be anything super unique.

[ORIG] Tada-kun wa Koi wo Shinai (MAL) Tada-kun follows, well, Tada-kun - a student and photographer who runs into Teresa, a rich European while taking pictures. Tada-kun, following the show's title "Tada Doesn't Fall in Love," has a calm, somewhat stoic demeanor, while Teresa is your bright, beautiful girl finally in the Japan she'd only seen on TV. After meeting multiple times as Teresa wanders lost, Tada helps her out of the rain before she finds her hotel, right next to his family's coffee shop. And then, of course, she transfers into his school along with her bodyguard, the fiery-tempered Alec. The art is crisp and animated well, and both the OP and ED have their charms. I personally like romance focused tightly on a single pair (Tsuki ga Kirei and Ore Monogatari are two stellar examples), and I hope this delivers. With a single couple development becomes the key, but if this show keeps it up - increasing interactions leading to discovered feelings, all starting from a photo (sounds a bit like Just Because, don't you think?), this will be a emotionally engaging experience.

Fumikiri Jikan (MAL) The other short show I'm watching, Fumikiri Jikan is about conversations while waiting for the train to pass. The first episode ran the gamut all the way from peppy slice of life to romantic character drama. Being so tightly focused on conversations and with limited time, a show like this needs to nail the dialogue to set up the characters each episode. I felt like I almost watched a movie in three minutes this time, and that's a good thing. The main sticking point is that with individual stories each time, quality can vary wildly. This show is a bit strange but equally interesting, but it will certainly depend on the story being told.

Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii (MAL) Ah, otaku love. It can't be worse than Saekano, right? That would be a serious challenge. Wotaku ni Koi puts a spin on the genre by situating the main characters as adults who met each other in middle school and just now reconnected. The main cast of four and especially the banner couple Hirotaka and Narumi are uniquely quirky and their personalities gel so well with each other. Despite the long gap in meeting each other I feel the chemistry immediately between the two, and as episode one ends with their relationship actually beginning I'm all in. Not only does Wotakoi change things up by having the main characters as adults but it also gets past all the roundabout bullshit that often bogs down high-school romances. Furthermore, the true enthusiasm with which Hirotaka and Narumi can nerd out about what they like is refreshing, kind of like Animegataris before it became the Matrix. Combine that with a crisp art style and great musical themes, and maybe Wotakoi can provide the grounded otaku love story we've been waiting for. Oh, and fuck the Saekano shout-out. Not that I'm going to let that cloud my thoughts on Wotakoi - I just really, really don't like Saekano.

Golden Kamuy (MAL) This season's "a popular manga is finally getting an anime" show, Golden Kamuy is the story of a soldier and an Ainu girl suriving in the north of Japan in the Ruso-Japanese War era just after the turn of the 20th century. The pair aims to find a hidden treasure, stolen from the Ainu and stashed by a criminal somewhere, with the location hidden on tattoos of various escaped prisoners. I enjoy historical shows, and Kamuy is great in that it is more than just feudal Japan or something similar - the snowy, late-Meiji Hokkaido setting is undoubtedly unique. Sugimoto, the soldier, has earned his nickname "Immortal" due to his war exploits, and his personality shows it - confident in his skills yet cautious of threats. Asirpa, the Ainu, is the resourceful, collected partner Sugimoto needs in the wilds of Hokkaido, and shares Sugimotos motivations, having lost her father to the criminal who hid the treasure. The art is clean, and while the main characters look good there needs to be mention of the awful-looking CG of the two bears and the wolf that make appearances in the first episode. It just looks horrible. The dynamic between Sugimoto and Asirpa is great - the contrast between violence and peace especially - and I look forward to see where they're going. I only wish the overall tone was more consistent - the first episode is a great solemn look at the task in front of them, while the second episode inserts a whole lot of "comedic" moments that seem out of place with the action and Sugimoto himself. Regardless, quick shout-out to Man With a Mission for the OP - one of my favorite bands and this song is no exception.

[tanadrin]

Cool article about “genetic annealing” as source of the various lineages of life: the modern view seems to be that, in analogy with crystals forming out of a cooling solid, the early environment in which life arose was one sufficiently chaotic and chemically rich that concepts like distinct organisms and distinct genetic lineages didn’t really apply; over time, the environment changed and specific genetic templates crystallized, resulting in the three major lineages of life (archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes).

The picture painted of the cells of the ancestral genetic soup is an interesting one; they’re primitive even by the standards of simple bacteria:

If modern large proteins could not be produced by progenotes, then a modern type of genome replication/repair mechanism did not exist. As with translation, a rudimentary mechanism implies a less accurate one (26), and the resulting high mutation rates necessitated small genomes.

The structure of these genomes must reflect the primitive evolutionary dynamic in general. Therefore, I see the progenote genome as organized rather like the macronucleus of some ciliates today (25): it comprised many small linear chromosomes (mini-chromosomes), each present in multiple copies. Each chromosome was “operonally” organized, that is, functionally or structurally related genes were grouped together. The individual chromosomes were “semi-autonomous” in the sense that they more resembled mobile genetic elements than typical modern chromosomes. Cell division occurred in the simplest way possible, by a physical pinching of the cell into two approximately equal halves.

Small chromosomes are demanded because, when mutation rates are high, only these stand a chance of being replicated without a crippling number of mutations. A linear (small) chromosome makes both replication and transcription simple from a topological perspective (topoisomerases don’t seem to be needed). Chromosome multiplicity means genetic redundancy, which serves to ensure functionality when one or more copies of a gene are knocked out. Operonal organization is selected for by both the random mode of chromosome segregation (at cell division) and more strongly yet by lateral gene transfer (28)—there is little or no benefit in inheriting only part of a new metabolic pathway. And mobile genetic elements are well suited for lateral transfer as well.

Upon cell division, the mini-chromosomes distribute randomly between the daughter cells. This fact would lessen the mutational burden imposed by high mutation rates in the sense that the daughter cell with the better balance of functional copies of important genes has a selective advantage. If replication errors could be directly detected (e.g., as mispairings), a more direct way to eliminate them seems possible, through simple destruction of the mini-chromosome in question, say, by nuclease cleavage (25).

Small primitive genomes with low genetic capacity and imprecision in both translation and genome replication imply a primitive cell that was rudimentary in every respect (26). The progenote probably had no cell wall (see below) (13). Its subsystems were generally less complex and hierarchically organized and the cell itself was less integrated than are cells today. The states of that cell were fewer, simpler, and imprecisely defined and controlled (26). The progenote was more or less a bag of semi-autonomous genetic elements (the mini-chromosomes). These elements would come and go, especially on an evolutionary time scale. Higher level organization, among the mini-chromosomes and throughout the cell, was minimal.

The whole article is really interesting and talks about wild stuff like lineages that might mutate out of control, but still provide novel genes passed on via lateral gene transfer; gene transfer stopped dominating evolution as cellular metabolisms became more complex, and one simple part was no longer guaranteed to fit into another--unlike physical crystallization, caused by a lowering of physical temperature, genetic crystallization causes the “genetic temperature” of the early biosphere to drop.

The “tree of life” is just a model, of course, but it’s fascinating to see how that model breaks down the further back you go:

By now, it is obvious that what we have come to call the universal phylogenetic tree is no conventional organismal tree. Its primary branchings reflect the common history of central components of the ribosome, components of the transcription apparatus, and a few other genes. But that is all. In its deep branches, this tree is merely a gene tree. Genuine organisms (self-replicating entities that have true individuality and a history of their own) did not exist at the time the tree started to form. The tree arose in a communal universal ancestor, an “entity” that had a physical history but not a genealogical one. This tree became an organismal tree only as it grew, only as its more superficial branches emerged. By the time these formed, many more functions had crystallized and so, had come to have discernible histories; and these histories coincided with those of the ribosomal components and the like—but only after the point of their crystallization. 

In fact, at this stage in history, the evolution of genes strongly resembles the evolution of language, where, e.g., Proto-Indo-European should be thought of, not as a specific unified language spoken at a specific time and place, but probably a family of closely related dialects not entirely distinct from one another. Even separation into different lineages, as with language, doesn’t mean crystallization into a single column of vertical inheritance:

An interesting question is whether the universal tree had become an organismal tree by the time the three primary lines of descent began to form and branch. I think not. The cellular design commitments implied by the existence and vertical evolution of the bacterial, archaeal, and eukaryotic ribosome types should preclude many of the evolutionary innovations that occurred in one of the primary organismal groups from being successfully transferred laterally to one or both the others; but, in that the genotes of that day were less sophisticated than modern cells (and the evolutionary temperature was still elevated), more of these innovations might still transfer globally than would later be the case. I picture the ancestors of each of the primary lines of descent as being themselves to some extent communal, but in a much more local, restricted sense than that which holds for the universal ancestor. 

The analogies between language and genetics are quite potent--which is why linguists speak of “genetic relationships” between languages. Which makes sense; they’re both schemes for encoding information. The linguistic equivalent of lateral gene transfer among closely related organisms is why, for instance, modern English has both “enough” and “plough” (inheritance of pronunciation from different dialects), and why we should think of reconstructed languages like PIE as sets of features (i.e., individual genes), not true synchronic snapshots.

A final puzzle: why are there metabolic genes the archaea and bacteria share that the eukaryota do not? Contrary to the original scheme which led to the prokaryote/eukaryote division, the archaea are more closely related to the eukaryotes in a lot of ways. Lateral gene transfer is presumed to be responsible, but maybe it’s that eukaryotes ended up doing lateral gene transfer differently:

However, none of this addresses the absence of these genes in eukaryotes. Given that metabolic genes tend to be laterally mobile and that the eukaryotes engage in lateral gene transfers, especially (but not exclusively) through endosymbioses, it is reasonable to expect that the eukaryotes had no opportunity to sample the genes in question. Thus, the lack of these metabolic genes in eukaryotes seems more related to the nature of the early eukaryotic cell than to any specific ancestral relationship between Archaea and Bacteria. When the genomes of some of the deeply branching eukaryotes have been sequenced, the perspective to resolve this problem may exist. 

(I also can’t help but think of the early universe, when much higher temperatures meant different physical processes dominated; where much higher genetic temperatures dominated, lateral gene transfer becomes a dominant, not secondary, process governing evolution. Like the linguistic analogy, it’s quite easy to make too much of this, but it is a very pleasing symmetry.)

[vitalmindandbody]

14 Women Show Off Wrinkles To See A Potent Statement About Aging

Wrinkles. Laugh courses. Crow’s paws. No matter what you call them, the crimps on your look deepen as you age. But whereas numerous people look in the reflect and, with a collective rustle, deplored the excerpt of time that’s left its trace on their faces, others cuddle the changes, and accept the idea that germinating older is an integral — and even beautiful — part of living.

HuffPost photographer Damon Dahlen took portraits of 14 females, aged 52 to 90, who roll their eyes at ageist( and sexist) standards of glamour. Rather than fight the inevitable effects of aging, they accompany the lines on their faces as a road map of “peoples lives”. They are the etchings of many years fully lived — and each and every one of them has been earned.

So why not show them off? Take a look at their dazzling likeness below and read what each female has to say about hugging the attractivenes of every age.

Roz Halweil Sokoloff, 90

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“I’m a person — not an age. The best stuff about my being 90 is that I’m not recognizing also that I’m old. I do everything the method I used to do it. Perhaps I get tired quicker but I haven’t been saved back from doing anything I want to do. I don’t play singles tennis any more. But I do tai chi and yoga, and I swim laps. When it comes to my wrinkles, well, I stand back from the reflect at least two feet and I don’t assure one wrinkle and that’s the truth. I don’t even know that I have wrinkles. I’m proud of my the expected accomplishments and I don’t am worried about the wrinkles. I haven’t done any Botox or any facelifts. That stuffs not important to me.”

Mary Ann Holand, 59

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“When I look in the mirror, I still ascertain the “girls ” that I was and that I still am. I don’t appear 59. I have grandkids now, so I guess that constructs me believe I’m 59. But that’s about it. I adoration the TV show ‘Grace and Frankie.’ I think we need more pictures like that, that depict stunning older persons who hold their own. We have for too long glorified youth instead of beings. We’re all on the same excursion. After my breast cancer diagnosis, I consider each year a endowment. I want to live into my 90 s.”

Julieth Baisden, 62

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“I am happy at this age. To me, my photographs of me examine the same now as years ago. Not much different. I like the style I search. I put on some load but my appearance remains the same. Aging are honoured. Some people freak out when they accompany grey-haired hair or wrinkles. I don’t. I experience young. I feel very young. When I tell people my age, they don’t think it is. I experience that.”

Iris Krasnow, 61

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“I’ve had gray hair since I was in my early 30 s. I learned early on to not get my self-esteem or my gumption of glamour from my exterior but from my heart and my passions and my engaged in life. The happiest parties I know are the most fulfilled. They have a sense of anger and purpose and are surrounded by beings they enjoy. Very rarely do I sounds ‘oh, I’m so happy because I am the same weight I was in high school.’ The message I like to share is don’t count on your reviews since they are change. Discover an inner source of energy and fulfillment that has everything to do with your body and soul and little to do with your exterior. One thought for sure in life is that your exterior is going to change. I believe strongly in find beautiful without the spear. For me, wrinkles are … they are a delineate of “peoples lives”. I have four children. I have a husband of 28 times. I’ve experienced my life.”

Maria Leonard Olsen, 52

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“I tried 50 new happens the year I returned 50. After I rotated 50, I ultimately lived their own lives authentic to me for the first time. Regrettably that also involved rehab and getting a divorce but I detected who I truly am … and I am absolutely comfortable with myself. Lastly at 50. I got my motorcycle license. I hiked the Himalayas and I conjured fund to help build a library for impoverished children placed in Nepal. I learned to horseback trip. I got my first book produced. I ultimately know who the genuine Maria is. I lived the first half century of “peoples lives” trying to please others. But now I’m living for myself. I have a definite detect I’m on the downslope of my life and actually I predict I am and so I want to make it count. Wrinkles are a natural part of aging. When I was young, I detested my dark skin and examining different from my friends and classmates but now I revel in my uniqueness.”

Carole Paris, 83

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“I paint and I like to do faces so whatever success I’ve had with photographs has had to do with the character parties had in their faces. Those faces and those wrinkles and texts tell a life story. You can see the essence of the person or persons by looking at their appearance. I learn faces and I receive a appraise in age. There is life there in those faces … the high-pitcheds and lows of life. You can see that the person has ridden the curves of life, both the ups and the downs. A faceshows the character of a person. I would never think of going a facelift. You face loses life that way.”

Leslie Handler, 56

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“Each new wrinkle tells me that I subsisted and became glad after every defy in my life. When I discover a brand-new one, it doesn’t bother me. After two newborns, my belly bothered me, but my husband said it reminded him that I had given birth to our two children. I think the 50 s are the best of all the decades in so far. You truly come into your own … no more questions about what to do with my life … all the anxieties. You’ve gotten over all that. I had cancer in my 30 s. I’m still here. Complain? I don’t complain.”

Lavada Nahon, 57

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“I am roused about becoming a crone. We look at that negatively here … but in Africa, maidens move up in cachet as they go through menopause. It is all those times that play into your value. In Japanese culture and Asian cultures, elders are adored. I had a friend suppose lately that, as an elder, you don’t step out and away from people, but you take on more responsibility. You are responsible for training and teaching and helping others. The older women in my life were always the role model and they held everything together. I am looking forward to being that person that my mom was to me.”

Deborah Gaines, 55

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“Your vision of attractivenes is chosen when you are quite young. For me, my grandmother was heavy and had wrinkles and grey-headed whisker but she symbolized desire for me. She was 95 when she died. And I still thought of her as the most beautiful person I knew. Now I has definitely reconnected with that suffer. The people who are most important to me find me beautiful because of the adore I radiate and it has nothing to do with wrinkles or what is on my face. Until you have a babe, you worry about your form. But when you have a newborn you think your mas deserves an Academy Award. Being beautiful is about being present to those around you. I’m proud of the delineate of my face because it’s a delineate that pictures a long and joyful journey.”

Anne R ., 59

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“Wrinkles are a reflection of what happens to you as you age — they are part of who you are. Speaking the face wires is how to see a person’s know and resilience. They are a thought of having had to condition numerous tornadoes with house, sidekicks, drive. And for me the wrinkles are to be espoused and celebrated because they appearance you who I truly am inside. Wrinkles are not fatigues but preferably research results of a lifetime of all kinds of emotions.”

Barb Rabin, 67

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“Wrinkles are a natural part of aging. My forehead wrinkles are from are concerned about my teenagers and grandkids and my 95 -year-old mom. My favorite wrinkles are around my sees. They are from smiling and enjoying life and likewise sometimes weeping. Wrinkles to demonstrate that I am still alive and that acquires them absolutely worth it.”

Lisa Hirsch, 66

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“If i didn’t have my wrinkles I wouldn’t be this age. And a lot of people don’t make it to this age. Aging gracefully is — I imagine — something of a advantage. It’s a advantage that you are even here. My spouse is wholly against get undertaking done and he visualizes I’m beautiful and that women should age with grace. I accept that it’s precisely an integrated part of life. I repute women should age naturally and gracefully.”

Barbara Hannah Grufferman, 59

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“I feel good because I exert. And that everything happened after I passed 50. I started wearing sunblock and trying to stay as health and fit as I can. We can seem and feel good as we get older if we take care of ourselves. Sleep, activity and eating well … all of this is important. Since I moved 50, I wanted to get my act together. What does this necessitate? What is aging all about? What should I be doing that is different now than what I was doing before? As I inch my acces toward 60, I’m looking at what adjustments I should stir. My adage is: we can’t see going older, but we can domination how we do it. I espouse wrinkles. I call them my gag line — and they are my life lines. Because they are part of who I am now. I’ve embraced the evolution entirely. At the same hour, I want to make sure I’m doing everything right for myself so that I can age with mercy and vitality and force. The purpose shouldn’t be to look younger. But you want to look the best you are able to at whatever age you are.”

Sandra LaMorgese, 59

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“I is certainly looking forward to turning 60. I still feel like I’m 30. I don’t feel any different than I did at 30. The mirror image is the only thing that’s changing — and that’s in a good way. At first I did not like what I understood when I started aging because it was new. But then I changed my mind about what seductive and beautiful is — and I didn’t thinker. The wrinkles did inconvenience me at first — but once I changed my perspective, they didn’t. I have a 60 -year-old face, which I should. I’m not supposed to look like I’m 25 any more. About 20 years ago, a woman said to me ‘I feel sorry for you because you are so beautiful that when you rotate older and ugly, you won’t be able to handle it.’ I told her, ‘I’m not going to get ugly. I’m just going to age.’We guess aging has to do with being ugly. But it’s not ugly. It’s beautiful.”

The post 14 Women Show Off Wrinkles To See A Potent Statement About Aging appeared first on vitalmindandbody.com.

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Galaxy S8 and S8+ hands-on: Betting big on big

The Galaxy S6 was, by all accounts, a truly transformational moment for Samsung’s industrial design. After years of building plastic phones constantly lambasted for their “cheapness,” Samsung made radical changes in an attempt to completely redefine its smartphone brand. Those changes were generally well received, but it always felt like they stopped short: the software was still slow, bloated, and the battery life surprisingly poor. With the Note5 and S6 edge+ we saw significant refinement of that reinvention “moment,” but not until the S7 and S7 edge did Samsung really build the concept I think they set out to with those first metal and glass sandwiches.

The Galaxy S8 and S8+ are Samsung’s attempt to show us that they can do more than just iterate on that “Eureka” moment they had in 2015, even if those iterations have generally been quite good. And after the Note7 disaster last year, they really need to make good on that promise. After spending some time with the phones last week, I’m still on the fence as to whether Samsung has truly succeeded – but I think the pieces for success are there. Even if I don’t think they’re all terribly obvious, and even if the phones don’t take any real big risks.

The hardware

Take what you loved about the Galaxy S7 edge and Note7, then just imagine it all being better. More refined, more coherent, more polished. As to that final point: literally. The Galaxy S8 siblings now feature polished aluminum mid-frames, as opposed to the matte anodized finish of years past. In particular – at least in my opinion – this looks good on the Midnight Black version of the phone, which features a shiny black mid-frame to match. The whole phone visually sort of looks like a deep black stone – it’s a very interesting and striking effect Samsung has achieved here. As you’d expect of Samsung, the attention to detail is impeccable. The glass meets the aluminum in a very natural, near-seamless way, and the various body colors all have a distinct character.

The front of the phones, however, do not: unlike years past, all colors of the Galaxy S8 and S8+ will feature black surrounds on the display side of the phone, to accentuate Samsung’s “infinity display” and its minimal bezel. I absolutely agree with this design decision, because it brings the canvas – the screen – out as the sole focal point of the front of the device. You’re drawn to the screen, and everything surrounding it just sort of falls away.

Samsung has been paying attention to the little stuff, too. Everything from the design of the camera module (it now has more of stylized “lens” effect) to the smooth USB-C cutout seems carefully considered and manufactured with precision. The phones scream quality, and I am continually impressed by Samsung’s ability to iterate in this area. Samsung clearly spends a lot of time and energy on its design and manufacturing processes, and it shows.

Perhaps most notably, these phones mark the end of one of the last vestigial elements of the Galaxy brand: capacitive navigation keys and the physical home button. It really makes the S8 and S8+ the cleanest-looking handsets Samsung’s ever produced. Above the display sit the standard array of sensors, including a new 8MP front-facing camera with software-simulated autofocus (we’ll see how that goes) and the iris scanner array. Out back, Samsung says the 12MP rear camera is basically unchanged physically from last year’s, with most optimizations happening on the photo processing side. I’m certainly curious to see how photos compare to last year’s phones, then.

You still get IP68 waterproofing, and 64GB of storage is now standard (with microSD expansion available). Samsung has retained the headphone jack, but made the switch to USB-C it began with the Note7 last year. Wireless charging is intact, too.

As to the deceptively giant displays, at 5.8 and 6.2″, respectively, the phones are considerably taller this year. But they’re also narrowed, meaning they’re easier to get a grip on, and they really aren’t especially heavy or unwieldy. Ceding so much of what was previously bezel space to the expanded display seems an obvious choice in retrospect, but to me it definitely necessitated the end of the capacitive keys, otherwise all that extra height tends to feel a bit wasted. Speaking of those keys.

The software

To answer your first and greatest question: Yes, you can switch the order of the navigation keys. You can either have them in Samsung (read: wrong) order, or change them to the standard Android layout of back, home, and recent apps (left to right). Samsung also lets you customize the color of the navigation bar background, which is nice. Sure, the iconography is nowhere near stock, but I couldn’t really give a damn what the buttons look like as long as they do what I expect them to. And no, Bixby is not mapped to long-pressing the home key: that’s 100% Google Assistant. (Bixby’s functional overlap with Assistant is actually quite minimal – for now.)

The latest version of I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-TouchWiz is based on Android 7.0 (not 7.1, sigh) and feels basically similar to what we had on the Note7 and now have on the Galaxy S7 phones. “Grace UX” is the easiest on the eyes TouchWiz has ever been, and while there are still a bunch of old features in there I hardly think warrant the real estate in the settings app, Samsung continues to provide its own useful additions.

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I didn’t spend much time with the software in-depth, as I really didn’t have time. And Samsung’s Bixby assistant was only demoed to us in a controlled, scripted test environment, which is useless from an evaluation perspective. I can give you the overview, though: it’s basically Google Goggles meets Google Now meets voice-powered accessibility controls. It’s definitely an interesting mesh of features, though Samsung’s hardest push seems to be around the idea that people will want to use their voice to control things like their screen brightness, toggling the hotspot, picking a camera mode or filter, and generally controlling their device. I am, to put it bluntly, unconvinced anyone will use this. But maybe it’ll win me over when our review units come in and I actually have a chance to put it to the test.

But, if you were worried that Bixby was an attempt to subvert Google Assistant and replace it: please, don’t be. Not yet, at least. Google Assistant and Bixby happily coexist on the Galaxy S8, and are frankly rather different products.

Oh, and this is kind of interesting, I guess: Samsung has also implemented the fingerprint scanner gesture to bring down the notification bar. It’s off by default, I think, but it’s there.

Like the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge after their respective Nougat updates, the S8 and S8+ don’t actually display in their native, physical resolutions by default (they’re set to full HD mode). I remain very divided on this choice: while I know the vast majority of people who own these phones will never, ever notice and reap considerable battery life returns as a result, why put in these more expensive ultra-high-res panels in the first place? Samsung’s answer, of course, relies heavily on VR, because you need that Quad HD display mode to provide a good VR experience. But I don’t think anyone, even Samsung, has actually produced compelling evidence that consumers care about VR (apart from the companies making VR products). I guess it comes down to the question of how much more a Quad HD panel of this type would cost to produce than a 1080p version. If it’s not a big difference, then I guess I get where Samsung is coming from.

One feature I found quite interesting is the new home button wake gesture. Simply press your finger on the home button that is shown in the always-on display mode for a moment, and the screen will wake, indicated by a light burst of haptic feedback. While obviously you won’t get far if you have a fingerprint scanner lock set, you might be more likely to use Samsung’s iris scan or face unlock features (the latter is new to the S8). Given rumors that Samsung intended to place the fingerprint scanner inside the display itself with the S8 but failed to achieve the necessary yields, I have to wonder if this is the compromise they’ve settled on: pushing customers away from the ubiquitous fingerprint scanner, for now, until their more impressive technology is ready for primetime.

As for me, I probably wouldn’t use the home button wake regardless – the fingerprint scanner is simply my preferred mode of authentication. The reader is definitely a bit of a reach on these phones, though, and even with my relatively long fingers I found the S8+ would definitely take some getting used to in terms of default hand positioning. Samsung’s iris scanner tech is fast and very accurate, but I’m not always looking at my phone when I unlock it.

Performance on the phones is not something I feel comfortable expressing any definitive opinion on at this time. They felt fine – not crazy fast, not particularly slow – but given the notoriety Samsung’s phones have achieved for slowing down over time, my experience in a controlled demo environment is simply not going to be helpful in assessing these things. It’s probably better for me to end that discussion here and save the extended thoughts for our review.

I obviously can’t judge battery life yet, but Samsung shared an interesting figure with me: the new batteries in the Galaxy S8 and S8+ feature much better cycle longevity than the ones in last year’s phones. Whereas after a year of typical charge and discharge cycles last year’s Galaxy S7 and S7 edge would see around 20% of their effective capacity lost, Samsung says that figure is more like 5% of capacity lost over a year on the S8 and S8+. That’s definitely encouraging.

Final thoughts

The Galaxy S8 and S8+ are big, beautiful phones. The larger displays are absolutely great, and the switch to virtual navigation keys is long overdue. I’m sure they’ll have great cameras, and I expect battery life will probably be largely comparable to last year’s phones (i.e., good). TouchWiz is, as far as user experience goes, the best it’s ever been. That may not be saying much for some of you, but I generally find Samsung’s UI modifications at the very least aesthetically palatable nowadays, and some of the added features are genuinely useful. A switch to 64GB of storage as standard is absolutely welcome and, I think, should be the bar to meet for any flagship phone in 2017. Bixby, despite the fears of many (myself included), doesn’t really seem meant to displace Google Assistant or search on your phone. The Snapdragon 835 version of the S8 and S8+ we’ll get here in the US packs a lot of new and potent technology, too – it’s not just faster than the 820 and 821, it’s more efficient and more capable.

What am I not loving yet? Launching with Android 7.0 feels oh so typical Samsung: they can preach all they want about how they test their software endlessly in order to ensure updates are smooth and low on bugs, but I just can’t shake the feeling that Samsung really has no intention of changing its approach to Android platform updates. Performance is going to be a big question, too (and it’s one Samsung seems uninterested in discussing). I won’t even be able to conclusively come to an answer in our review, simply due to the amount of time we’ll have to use the phones before publishing. That’ll take weeks and months of additional testing. Finally, there’s a lot of uncertainty remaining around the value proposition these phones will offer, and without pricing, that’s hard to comment on just yet.

There’s also a lingering feeling that the S8 and S8+ feel iterative in terms of actual user experience versus being showcases for advancements in industrial design and engineering. Samsung itself seems very eager to present the reduced bezel and larger displays as the raison d’etre for the Galaxy S8. But it’s hard to tell if beauty is more than skin deep with these phones. Why is the screen curved? Because it’s pretty (fragile, and the edge UI experience sucks). Why is the aluminum frame now polished? Because it’s pretty (and will get scratched). Why aren’t the batteries any bigger? Because thin phones are pretty (even though everyone wants bigger batteries).

These are thoughts that I’ve had a harder time shaking than I expected. There’s no doubt the Galaxy S8 and S8+ are exceptional achievements from the standpoint of design and phone-building knowhow, but I think I can distill my feelings about them down to this: I’m really unsure why I’d want one of these that much more than a Galaxy S7 edge or, if it still existed, a Note7. If there’s some major improvement to performance I missed, maybe that could be it, but on most other fronts – aside from the switch to virtual nav keys – I’m left scratching my head a bit.

But, maybe that’s just a result of not having enough time with them. Hopefully, we’ll be reviewing these phones soon enough, as I’m eager to get a deeper sense of the changes Samsung’s made and how they translate into a real-world product experience.

Source : androidpolice

https://squipitme.com/2017/03/30/galaxy-s8-s8-hands-betting-big-big/