#is that the same as broken telephone or is that when you deliberately change it each time?

[softness-and-shattering]

If they decline and walk out, as they pass through the door a bucket of paint falls on them and an automatic photo is taken like on a theme park ride. The next room is a gallery of painted people. The next room you can buy the previous paintings for astronomical amounts of money (prodits donated to the museum or a charity or something)

[girlinthepictureframe]

The Briefest Kiss Part 5

Part 5

“Miles,” said Alex with an uncharacteristic level of annoyance in his voice, “I told you, we’ll be in France all week. Bloody stay at my place, will you? You’ve got the key, there’s food in the fridge and you’ll have plenty of space and time to sign all those CDs and prepare for the release.”

“Alright,” Miles gave in. “I’ll stay there. Thanks, Al. I just want to make sure I’m not getting in the way of things.”

“In the way of what things? Since when do you ask these kinds of questions?” It wasn’t the first time that Miles had made remarks in complete seriousness that, two years ago, he’d have found ridiculously silly and laughable. When had they ever worried about being in each other’s ways?  

“Forget it,” grumbled Miles. “I just need a new place. Soon.”  

Alex understood that Miles was trying to change the topic, and because he didn’t want this conversation to end in a fight, he let him. It was rare enough to get him on the phone these days and he didn’t want this to become a discussion about something that he found stupid to begin with. “Do that, get a new place! How can you even get sleep with those awfully loud neighbours?”

“I’m in no position to complain,” countered Miles. “The last neighbours moved out because I always play guitar at night!”

Alex chuckled. “You’re supposed to sleep at night.”

“Oh yeah? Is that what you’re doing at night?”

“It doesn’t matter what I do at night. I don’t have any immediate neighbours who could take offense,” pointed Alex out, adding, “you should consider getting a house, Mi. That way you’d finally have room for all those shoes and guitars!”

Alex smiled when he heard Miles laughing on the other end. “I’ll consider it,” said his friend. After a moment of silence, Miles spoke again. “Hey, about the other night, sorry I didn’t go out with you. I wasn’t feeling it. But we definitely need to meet up again. It’s been ages since we had a proper night out.”

“Definitely,” agreed Alex and nodded, even though he knew Miles couldn’t see. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re pissed at me for some reason. It’s been over two months since we last saw each other.” It might not seem like a lot of time, but for them it was. “And when you were here, you barely even spent an hour. I know you’re busy, Miles. But when did you become too busy for me?” He was only half-joking. Sometimes it felt as though their friendship had taken a hit along the road, but no matter how often he checked, he could never spot the damage, only knew that it was there, hiding beneath the surface. If he had to describe it to a mechanic, all he’d be able to say is that it feels different.  

“I’m not too busy,” objected Miles, his voice heavy with regret. “I don’t know what’s going on. I feel like I’m in bit of a funk at the moment.”

Alex wished he was with him just then. He didn’t like conversations via telephone. He preferred looking people in the eyes while speaking to them. It made it easier to read emotions. And he desperately wanted to read Miles’ emotions. He sounded as lost and as confused as he himself felt too often these days. “You have to tell me if I did something wrong. You know me, Mi. I don’t always get it when I say something stupid.”

“It’s not you,” said Miles reassuringly.  

But Alex knew his friend, he could tell when Miles was being deliberately ambiguous, and, clearly, there was something that Miles was not saying. They needed to meet. It was the only way he could press him for answers. “Come to France. The weather is nice, we can hang out and I’ll leave you plenty of space to prepare all your shit for the tour, I promise. I’m sure Taylor would love to see you as well!”

“No, she wouldn’t.”

Alex sighed at Miles’ matter-of-fact statement. “It’s been months. How long do you want to drag this out?” And, also, what, precisely, were they dragging out? It was the one thing that Taylor and Miles deliberately kept from him. Sometime last year, the two of them had a big argument. He’d only overheard the tail end of it and knew it was about Miles’ break-up with Hannah. When he went and asked, first Miles, then Taylor, for details, they had both kept quiet about it. It annoyed him greatly that he didn’t know the whole story. He’d like to fix it but how could he fix it if he didn’t know where to begin!

“She’s your girlfriend, not mine. No need to make things right.” Miles went quiet and Alex waited patiently. “Al...I gotta go. I’ll call soon.” Then he hung up.

Alex couldn’t believe it; he stared at the phone in shock. This might very possibly be the first time that Miles hung up on him. “Bloody hell!?”

“You’re okay?”  

Turning around, he found Taylor leaning behind him against the kitchen counter. Alex shook his head. “No. Just talked to Miles. Something is going on with him, I just know.”

She shrugged and turned around. “Who cares?”

“I do!” said Alex quickly and resolutely. “I’m worried about my friend. I’m worried about my friendship with Miles! I’d like to think you care a little about that.”  

She spun back around and found him staring at her with a mixture of expectation and accusation. “Here’s what I would like,” said Taylor bitterly. “I’d like to think you worry about our relationship.”

Alex sat down, his eyes darted away from her and his demeanour took on a far darker shade. “I wasn’t aware I needed to worry about us.”  

“If you paid a little less attention to Miles and a little more attention to me, you’d be aware,” she all but snapped, clearly trying to contain her anger.  

Alex could tell, because he was trying to do the same. Both were doing that a lot, lately. Every dialogue between them was never more than one or two poorly chosen words away from erupting into a fight. It was a never-ending walk across a high wire. “How about a change for once,” he suggested, fed up with this perpetual undercurrent of unresolved tension, “let’s actually talk about this. Tell me why you’re so fucking mad at Miles that you can’t stand the thought of him and I being friends! It never bothered you before.”

“You’ve never kissed before.”

And there it was. His entire body tensed up. They were back to that, apparently. Alex groaned as he drove his fingers through his hair. “I thought we were over that.”  

That. The stupid, bloody kiss. The one that kept haunting his dreams more often than it should. The one that was the reason why he now locked the door to his recording studio, lyrics and notes inside. “We discussed this, Taylor. It was one silly kiss, two years ago. I meant nothing. We were drunk. That’s all.”

“I would appreciate it if you stopped calling that fucking kiss ‘silly’.” Taylor crossed her arms, staring at him angrily, reminding him, “you wrote a fucking song about that kiss!”  

What a big mistake that had been, thought Alex resentfully. But, as always, he hadn’t been able to help himself. That damned kiss occupied so much bloody space in his head that he had needed to literally write it out of there.  

‘And in response to what you whispered in my ear, I must admit sometimes I fantasise about you, too’

In its original form, the song had included a bit about a kiss. Last year, as he had been sitting at the piano, trying to find the right arrangement, she’d sat down next to him, had leaned in, and had asked, “what did I whisper?”

And he, dumb idiot that he was at times, had been so lost in his thoughts that he had promptly replied, “not you. Him.” After that, his life, complicated though it was already, had become considerably less comfortable. For the rest of the day, she had continued asking question after question, relentlessly pushing for explanations that he couldn’t give. He had only been able to take so much and after four long hours of artfully avoiding giving any sort of actual answer, he had snapped and blurted out, “Miles kissed me and, yes, I fucking liked it!”  

He guessed he should be grateful she was still with him. After all, Hannah had broken up with Miles over the whole thing. Sure, he’d told Taylor that wasn’t the reason. But who was he kidding? They all knew it was the very reason. Maybe not the only one. But it was the deciding one.  

Taylor took a step towards him, kissed his head and tilted his chin up with one finger. “Alex, I love you. And I know you love me. But maybe you need some distance from Miles? He’s busy right now, anyways. And you’re about to go on tour as well. Let’s take a vacation together. Let’s see a bit of the world. You’ve always wanted to go to India. We could do that before you’re off with the band?”

Oh, he wanted to go to India, alright. He had read much about that country. About the culture. About everything, really. And he couldn’t wait to see it with his own eyes. But it wasn’t Taylor he wanted standing next to him when he got there. Not that he could tell her that. “Babe, the timing isn’t right. Not now.”

“But you agree about needing some distance from Miles?”

“No. I barely see him as it is and once touring starts, we’ll see even less of each other. He is a very big, very important part of my life.”

“Yes,” she muttered in resignation. “And we’ve got the lyrics to prove that, don’t we?”

“I hate when you do that!”

“You do?”

She was pissing him off and he was beginning to think she was doing it on purpose. Which, in return, riled him up more and more. “You told me you made out with some girl backstage while Miles and I were playing in New York. I really don’t think you should be sitting on such a fucking high horse right now!”

“We were fucking joking around, it didn’t mean anything,” she all but yelled. “I didn’t write a fucking love song about her!”

“It’s not a love song!” As she glowered at him, he began pacing the kitchen angrily. “A love song is what I wrote for you, Tennessee, remember?”

Taylor slumped back against a wall, deflated and tired. “You want to know the difference between my song and his song? My song is everything a good love song should be. It’s passionate, it’s sexy, it’s got the rights words to it. It’s perfect. And it’s perfect because you’re Alex Fucking Turner and when you decided to write me a love song, naturally, you wrote the perfect song with the perfect words and the perfect arrangement and you wrote it so that everyone knows how fucking good of a songwriter you are!”

“Is that a compliment or a bloody insult?” He asked indignantly.

“Mine is the romantic tale that you want the world to know. His is the deepest truth that you desperately try to keep a secret.” A bitter laugh broke free from her lips. “Tell me, Mr. Songwriter Extraordinaire, which song would you like to have written about you?”  

Alex didn’t answer. He wasn’t entirely sure she wanted an answer. He wasn’t entirely sure he was ready to make up his answer. And, also, he wasn’t entirely sure that, at this point, an answer would make any kind of difference.  

“Out of words. Imagine that,” said Taylor and left the kitchen.  

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 5.8

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time in chapter 5’s plotty part in which most of the plot is a lie, and the last time we see Kokichi alive outside of flashbacks, Kokichi did the literal direct opposite of what he would have hypothetically wanted out of the mercy kill plan, almost certainly did not need to have murdered two people to convince everyone he’s the mastermind, deflected his trust issues one last time for posterity, and him kidnapping Kaito was very definitely him making the stupid decision to use Kaito in his plan, because he can’t possibly think this is actually going to end anything at all. Meanwhile, everyone else despaired.

This time, more despair. And then maybe some hope… although calling it that will be debatable, really.

(I haven’t been putting content warnings on any of these posts because everyone reading should have seen the whole story and know what to expect, but this time I feel I should put a heads-up: there’s some pretty heavy suicidal thoughts coming up here, which I am going to be discussing at some length. Please take care of yourself if you need to. If you have to avoid it entirely, you can search for the words “Hope’s Peak” and just skip ahead to that part.)

Monokuma Theater has some philosophical musings about how people’s voices in telephone calls and flavours of shaved ice are technically fake.

Monokuma:  “Do you think these facts are lies? Do you deny that these facts are lies? Puhuhu. What would the world be like if all lies were denied outright? I bet it would be a very lonesome world. Lies are what make the world go ‘round.”

He sounds like Kokichi. But these are the kinds of lies that are essentially like fiction – as in, nobody is ever really trying to claim that they’re the truth, and even if you realise they’re lies then it doesn’t really matter because pretending they’re true makes things more convenient and/or fun anyway. Lies that are truly meant to deceive people are something of a different matter.

(Not that deliberately deceptive lies are necessarily always bad either; then there’s still the question of whether or not there’s any malice behind them, like Kaito talked about once before.)

Shuichi:  (There’s no reason… to keep living. There’s no reason to live. There’s no reason to live. There’s no reason to live. There’s no reason to live.)

Guh, Shuichi. This numb repetition really hammers home how broken he is. It’s heartbreaking but completely understandable that what he’s seen would make him start thinking this way.

Shuichi:  (This is an epilogue. All that’s left… is to take up time. …What a boring story.)

Yep, that’s there. I wonder if this is in-universely influenced, in that the characters were written in such a way that they’re slightly more liable to think of things in these terms, or if it’s just the out-universe writers dropping a hint even if it means making Shuichi think something he might not necessarily think. Or it could be a thing with Shuichi’s character in particular – his Likes in the report card are listed as “Novels”, so he’s apparently into fiction. That’s definitely something the out-universe writers gave him on purpose to be thematic, and it’ll be worth keeping in mind as we begin to approach the end here.

Shuichi:  (I wonder… what everyone else is doing…)

You’re still not quite alone, Shuichi! They’re a reason for you to live!

…But then his thoughts just drift back into hazy nothingness. The image of his room behind the text box is blurred out, suggesting that his eyes aren’t even properly focusing on anything.

“What everyone else is doing” probably amounts to much the same listless staring into space as he is. Well, at least for Himiko, and maybe Keebo too – you’d think Keebo’s inner voice would be yelling at him not to give up hope, but I guess that isn’t actually affecting him much right now. Maki is still being more proactive, though, and of course Tsumugi is fine and probably busy programming one bumper Flashback Light for tomorrow.

The next thing we get is the bell for nighttime again, which also really hammers home the fact that oh god, he’s just been lying there in despair all day. That’s pretty powerful.

At least, it’s powerful for us in the out-universe audience who simply realise that fact in a single moment without having actually sat through the whole day. However, the in-universe audience must have been really, really bored today. They supposedly love despair just as much as they love hope – and, sure, the moment when a character falls into despair makes a good story. But as it turns out, the despair itself, when that’s all there is and there’s no hope to fight against it and it’s not making anyone do anything worse because they don’t care anymore, is really kind of boring.

Shuichi:  (I wonder… what Kaito is doing…) “That’s right… I wonder if… Kaito is okay…? Is… he…?”

Shuichi’s vision comes back into focus as he has this thought, and it’s the only words he’s actually spoken all day. Worrying about Kaito is an important enough thought that it manages to spark some kind of life out of him! That’s also a reason to stay alive, Shuichi! Kaito might need you!

Shuichi:  (… It’s no use. My mind isn’t… working… And my body…)

…But this still isn’t enough. Depression will do that to you, making it difficult to get yourself to care about things you know you should care about. Shuichi isn’t usually depressed, just anxious, but it’s no wonder his brain’s messed up like this right now after what he saw yesterday.

(And it’d be hard for Shuichi to really latch onto the idea that Kaito could even need him in the first place. Kaito’s always fine, right? More fine than Shuichi, at least.)

Monokuma:  “Your life doesn’t need a meaning. It just needs a purpose. In other words, you just need something to live for.”

Here’s another Monokuma Theater quite relevant to the themes at hand. This is actually a philosophy I’ve always personally agreed with! Life has no inherent greater meaning, so you should just try to spend it doing whatever makes you happy (so long as it doesn’t make other people unhappy).

Monokuma:  “If you say Danganronpa is your reason to live, I couldn’t be happier.”

This is another nod to the in-universe audience and the idea that at least some of them, like the Makoto kid we’re going to see, really do see Danganronpa as their reason to live. It’s also still fairly relevant to me, since “whatever makes me happy” happens to include a lot of enjoying works of fiction that I’m into – hence this entire commentary. It won’t always be, but right now, Danganronpa V3 and the fun I’m having analysing it like this genuinely is one of the biggest things I’m living for.

Shuichi:  (I should… get up. Or I might not ever get up again. I… … I don’t care. If I… just kill my—)

*ding-dong!*

Maki’s visit is very well-timed. Hang in there, Shuichi. Not yet. There’s still things you can do.

This sprite of Shuichi’s is another thing that’s great for getting across how broken he is. Even though he did presumably get some sleep last night as well, he looks like he hasn’t slept in days. He also didn’t eat (or even drink?) anything yesterday, which can’t have helped.

Maki doesn’t bother telling him she found a Flashback Light; she just instructs him to take a shower and then come to the dining hall with everyone, and he does. Even in the depths of despair (or perhaps especially because he’s in despair), Shuichi is still the kind of person who’ll just do whatever someone tells him to do, if they tell him in an assertive enough way and he doesn’t have a reason not to.

On the way out of the dorms, if you examine Kaito’s door…

Shuichi:  (Is Kaito okay…?)

…Shuichi still manages to muster up a tiny bit of energy to worry about him. Aww.

Maki:  “…Everyone here looks terrible.”

Being the one who’s least in despair out of anyone here, Maki still has it in her to be concerned about how awfully everyone else is doing.

Tsumugi:  “What are we talking about?”

Himiko:  “We’re discussing how we wanna die, right?”

No, Himiko! Can’t you see the Flashback Light on the table? Maki did not call everyone here for a group suicide. It’s painful that that’s what her mind immediately goes to.

Himiko:  “I wanna go without suffering… Maki… can you do something about that?”

Maki:  “Sure… but before that, take a look at this.”

It’s also a bit much that Maki doesn’t even protest the request in and of itself, given that she isn’t suicidal right now. I have to assume that she’s only saying that because she’s imagining that whatever they see in the Flashback Light will change their minds, and so there’s no point arguing about it before they’ve seen it.

Himiko:  “Don’t stop me… I just wanna die. Tenko… probably wouldn’t be mad if I chose to die in this situation.”

It’s specifically Himiko who is this openly suicidal – the others also look equally down, and Shuichi was just about to think it earlier, but it seems none of them quite want to voice it out loud, except for Himiko. This makes a heartbreaking amount of sense when you consider that she was always depressed, and all of her efforts to fight back against that must seem so pointless right now. She’s even managed to convince herself that Tenko’s wish for her doesn’t apply any more… which, honestly, might be right, if this really were the truth.

Tsumugi:  “We don’t need to confirm anything… We saw… the outside world for ourselves…”

Tsumugi is apparently employing reverse psychology, since of course this is her Flashback Light and she very much wants them to see it.

Maki:  “Do you want to die… comfortably? I can help you, but…”

I love this turnaround of Maki’s catchphrase. Suddenly her specialisation in killing people painlessly is a way for her to help and be kind to her friends, at least if they do end up concluding that there’s nothing else to do but die.

Maki:  “If we’re going to die, then we might as well do anything we can. We’ll have no regrets that way.”

Yes, do anything we can, including watching this Flashback Light… and then also rescuing Kaito. Not doing that would definitely leave regrets.

Maki:  “Either way, there’s nothing for us to lose… We don’t have any hope left.”

We do. We have Kaito. If anyone could muster up optimism at a time like this and manage to find some kind of silver lining, some reason to keep going, it’d be him.

I can understand this not occurring to everyone else, because they’re so broken, but Maki is not in despair like the rest of them. She spent all of yesterday staking out the Exisal hangar and thinking of a way to rescue Kaito. I have to assume that she’s only not mentioning this because she’s hoping the Flashback Light will help everyone feel better first, and if that wasn’t going to work, then she would mention Kaito. Her words here have to be just an attempt to persuade everyone else that there’s no reason not to use the Flashback Light so that they’d do so.

Just… imagine if they did all commit suicide here, and then Kaito somehow managed to escape from the hangar on his own (or Kokichi let him go after realising that his plan was pointless now, good job Kokichi this would be almost entirely your fault), only for Kaito to come here and find all of his friends already dead. God, that would absolutely destroy him. You can’t do that to him, guys. You just can’t.

If the outside world really was as ruined as it looks and they really were the only people left alive, then group suicide would maybe be an understandable response to the apparent truth of their situation… but only if Kaito was there and agreed to it too. Like Kaito said, your life isn’t something you can decide to throw away on your own – it belongs to everyone who cares about you as well, which right now means the six of them. They cannot do this only as a group of five. Maki has to know this. I refuse to take an interpretation in which she is okay with putting Kaito through that pain.

Himiko:  “So when you kill me… will it be like I’m falling asleep?”

Himikooooo, don’t be so fixated on that! It probably would be (Maki is, after all, very good at her job), but you’ve got something else you need to do first!

Shuichi:  (Maki switched on the Flashback Light. And in that moment… The world— Flipped upside-down— Turned inside-out—)

This time, there’s a stronger description of how it feels than usual (usually he just says the world “warped” and that’s it). Fitting, since this is the biggest rewrite of their minds they’ve had other than the one which made them into who they are in the first place.

Finally there are different words in the background of the Flashback Light cutscene, about things such as Hope’s Peak, and the Tragedy. It would have been nice to have each chapter’s Flashback Light have different words appropriate to its content, but if they only had time to edit the scene once then this makes sense as the one they’d do it for.

Every time I get to this moment in the game where the Danganronpa 1 theme music starts playing, all I can think about is the fact that the anime adaptation’s version of that theme for its opening added some lyrics, the first two lines of which go: “Reality slips far away/Fiction comes alive, we start to play”. Which seems pretty damn appropriate right here. I get the sense that maybe the Danganronpa writers always kind of wanted to write a story like this.

So. All this Hope’s Peak stuff suddenly being part of the backstory when it was never even mentioned before is blatantly ridiculous. It’s pretty difficult to buy that they’d all forget something so major, but even if you accept that that’s possible with a mind-wipe, it still leaves us with the fact that everyone should have grown up in a post-apocalyptic, gradually-rebuilding society. They should at the very least remember that fact, since it would be integral to their backstories and upbringings that they still remember, even if they forget the exact reason for the apocalypse. Not one of them, not once at any point talking about their pasts, has given any kind of indication that they grew up in such a world.

So when I got to this part on my first time around, I raised an eyebrow or two. I basically accepted it anyway, with the thought that while this may be forced and arbitrary, if they really wanted this to suddenly be part of the Hope’s Peak universe as a big plot twist here then maybe there weren’t any better ways to do it, so sure, whatever, let’s go with this I guess. But no, turns out I was completely right to be sceptical and the forced arbitrariness of it is precisely the point.

Suddenly revealing a huge infodump about the backstory like this is honestly a pretty bad way to write a narrative. It can work, but only if all the details revealed really are intrinsically connected to parts of the story that the audience is already invested in, so that they now see those parts of the story in a new light. This is not that. Shuichi says they’re “connected”, but it’s actually a very tenuous connection. There was a whole other massive, interesting conflict that happened in the backstory… that really doesn’t matter at all because none of the characters who are part of this story took part in it, and then meteorites fell and everyone who was involved in that conflict is now dead for unrelated reasons. The only part properly connected to this story is that all of these students here were actually all part of the same school… but they were still in different classes and didn’t know each other, so that still doesn’t mean much. It only nominally matters because apparently this school is a rebuilt version of a school which was at the centre of that big backstory conflict… but, again, that big backstory conflict was something that these characters had no part in, so, so what?

This only works on any level because the audience of this story, both in-universe and out, is expected to be already invested in the events of the Hope’s Peak story and care about them for their own sake. But on the level of how relevant this is to these students here at the Ultimate Academy, this falls flat. Imagine if you played V3 while having not seen any other Danganronpa content at all. You’d be so bewildered, and probably really frustrated about why you were supposed to care about all this. This is making it seem like the Hope’s Peak story is suddenly more important and meant to matter more, even in the context of this story, than this story itself is. The in-universe writers are terrible at this, and the out-universe writers are doing this on purpose.

(If anyone who did play this game without knowing any other Danganronpa canon happens to be reading this, I’d be really, really interested to hear how you reacted to this part.)

I should also point out that, were this actually true, it would be the worst, most unfair way imaginable to treat the Hope’s Peak story. All those efforts the characters went to to finally get some vague semblance of a happy ending and a normal-ish life, and then suddenly rocks fall everybody dies? Everything ends in despair not because of some resurgence of the problems they had in the first place, but just by random chance? That is the most completely unsatisfying ending ever and anyone who cares about any of the surviving Hope’s Peak characters continuing to live on happily should not want this at all. It was a relief when I realised this was all a lie.

Shuichi:  (We were all attending the rebuilt Hope’s Peak Academy!)

Confession: I only watched some of the DR3 anime, losing interest halfway through when it clearly wasn’t going to deliver what I’d personally wanted from it. I didn’t see how things ended (and honestly don’t care enough to find out), but I gather that this part where Hope’s Peak was rebuilt is canon to how it ended. Which, to briefly make this a commentary about the Hope’s Peak story instead of about V3… is an extremely stupid decision? That whole messed-up culture – putting a handful of teenagers on a pedestal just because they happen to be talented in one particular area even though they are otherwise still flawed human beings, and in doing so implying that anyone who isn’t talented is worthless – is a big part of why the world ended in the first place. Why would anyone think it was a good idea to do that again?

Shuichi:  (We were the students that applied after learning Hope’s Peak was rebuilt. And the new Hope’s Peak was like the last, in that it accepted applications for talented students, and cultivated Ultimate talents…)

I assume that in the anime, it didn’t necessarily make it explicit whether the new Hope’s Peak still scouted people or not. Or it did, but V3 is nice enough to not assume that players have necessarily seen the anime. Because it somewhat sticks out how Shuichi goes out of his way here to say, oh by the way the original Hope’s Peak definitely also accepted applications, so that anyone who’s played DR1 (which is probably expected to be basically everyone playing this) will be able to realise that that’s off.

Shuichi:  (Hope’s Peak Academy was a large school, so we were all in separate classes…)

Really? Even accounting for them being spread between all three years, that’s at least six classes per year. Didn’t the original one only have one class of talented students per year? Seems a bit of a sudden increase in size, especially when it’s drawing from a significantly reduced post-apocalyptic population. It would have made more sense (and given a little more narrative meaning to this reveal) to have them remember that some of them were in the same classes and had known each other beforehand. Maybe Tsumugi didn’t do that because fake past interactions and friendships between these characters would take a lot of effort to write, and she was in a hurry.

Shuichi:  (But… we just happened to be immune to the virus…)

If they could find sixteen students (well, fourteen and a half, plus a robot) who were immune to the virus within the presumably only a few hundred students at the academy, that’s… actually a pretty high immunity rate. There should be several thousands, maybe even millions, more humans outside the academy who were also immune to the virus. And the Gofer Project just… left them behind because they weren’t talented? Geez.

In fact, that’d be enough humans that, if they all managed to band together and co-operate, which is precisely what humans do in dire times like this, they might have been able to put together some sort of underground shelter and air purifying system to protect themselves from the rest of the meteorites making the world uninhabitable. It’s entirely possible, even if what everyone saw outside were actually the truth, that there still could be some surviving remnants of humanity somewhere on the planet. The in-universe narrative never tries to suggest this, though. It’s not even one of the options for the Flashback Light about “the survivors” that Tsumugi would presumably have made next chapter if things had stayed on script.

Shuichi:  (That world… This world… It’s all connected!)

The way they’re talked about here as if they’re separate worlds should also raise eyebrows. That really is how the person who programmed the Flashback Light thinks of them, after all.

Here’s New World Order, that dramatic BGM piece from the Hope’s Peak games. This is actually not the first time it’s heard in V3 – for some reason they also put it in those bits that lead into the class trials starting. Which kind of dampens this moment a little, since it would be very appropriate if this here was the first time we’d heard it all game.

Tsumugi:  “Why… How could we forget something so important.”

I don’t know, Tsumugi, how could they have forgotten something which should be so central to their understanding of the world they grew up in?

Maki:  “Kokichi Oma… the mastermind behind this killing game… his organization’s real identity… They were the Remnants of Despair.”

Shuichi:  “That’s right. The cult organization out to destroy the Gofer Project. If Kokichi is the leader, that means he controls the Remnants of Despair.”

This part is inconveniently vague about whether or not they explicitly remember that Kokichi was a Remnant of Despair. Maki makes it sound more like she remembers that, wheras Shuichi makes it sound like he’s only deducing that based on what Kokichi claimed and the fact that they now know that organisation he talked about must have been the Remnants.

Later lines make it clearer that they are very much supposed to have remembered Kokichi being a Remnant of Despair. This then helps call into question the validity of their memories once it becomes clear Kokichi wasn’t actually the mastermind. But I’ve seen a lot of first time players remain under the impression that the characters didn’t explicitly remember that, meaning that once Kokichi’s lie is uncovered, they no longer think that him being a Remnant is still somehow supposed to be the “truth” and so don’t get that hint towards the truth being a lie.

Time for a brief complete tangent! While Himiko is narrating to us that this killing game is just like the previous ones, we see the shot of the V3 cast’s reactions to the announcement of the killing game at the beginning… except that this is the first time we see this shot without Monokuma and his cubs blocking most of it off. So, I didn’t talk about this way back at the beginning when it happened because you couldn’t see it then, but…

…look at this face Kaito was making. And his body language. In that moment right as everything began, before he had any time to think about putting up a façade and when everyone was focused on Monokuma and not paying attention to him anyway, Kaito looked freaking terrified. That’s always how he’s felt about this beneath the stubborn optimism and the encouraging grins.

Also of note is Maki’s fierceness. Such child caregiver right there.

…And I guess it is also relevant to mention that Kokichi looked pretty nervous and not remotely excited about this either.

Back to the present, Maki wonders why Kokichi gave up on this killing game if he’s such a fan of despair, and the others argue that he was copying Junko and just got bored of his plan like she often did.

Maki:  “…”

Shuichi:  “…What’s wrong, Maki?”

Maki:  “Nothing… I’m just not convinced… It’s probably… fine, though. It’s not a big deal.”

Since Maki isn’t convinced Kokichi will just end things this easily (but she is utterly convinced by now that he’s a dangerous evil mastermind who wants to hurt them), this is most likely the point at which she starts thinking about killing him, so that he won’t be able to continue this and keep hurting anyone. But she tells everyone it’s not a big deal to drop the subject because she knows they would try to talk her out of it.

Shuichi:  “…Are you sure?”

Tsumugi:  “We finally learned the truth, but we still can’t do anything…”

Shuichi still doesn’t seem convinced… but then Tsumugi is the one to just move the conversation on and ensure he disregards Maki’s suspicious behaviour. That may well be on purpose.

Himiko:  “Even if we get out of this academy, the outside world is still destroyed. There’s… no hope left for us.”

I’m glad that at least someone here is somewhat aware of this. This huge backstory dump is basically meaningless because it doesn’t change anything about the reason they’re in despair. Everyone is still dead. The fact that we now know a little bit more about everyone who died and what they all fought for does not change that fact. Nothing about what they just learned implied that there are any other survivors.

Keebo:  “No! We just need to become that hope!”

But of course, Keebo’s inner voice must be going nuts right about now with rampant genwunnerism. This Flashback Light is making it out like we’re suddenly supposed to care about the Hope’s Peak story more than this story right here… and apparently, most of the outside world does feel that way.

Keebo:  “After all, we’re students of Hope’s Peak Academy, aren’t we!? We’re all that’s left of the 16 who survived the battle between hope and despair! If we give up now, everyone who fought on the side of hope will have fought for nothing!”

They already did fight for nothing. Everyone is dead. The Gofer Project failed. The only way in which these kids can still salvage something good from this is if they somehow manage to restart the spaceship and make it to an inhabitable planet anyway to continue the human race, but that’s not what anyone ever talks about doing and therefore not what Keebo means by “hope” here.

Remember how I mentioned a few times before that Danganronpa usually likes to throw around the words “hope” and “despair” so much that it forgets their real meanings? This is the part in which Danganronpa V3 starts doing that too – but in this case, I at least like to think that, again, this is exactly the point.

Maki:  “Fought for… nothing…”

Noooo Keebo you’re making Maki feel like she has to murder Kokichi for the sake of a meaningless buzzword-y “hope”, which is exactly what the real mastermind wants!

Keebo:  “Because as long as we’re alive, we still have the power to decide that meaning for ourselves… That’s what I believe hope is!”

Tsumugi:  “That’s what hope is… I see… Yeah, you’re right…”

No, it isn’t. Deciding there’s meaning in your life is connected to hope, because you generally need to feel hope to be able to do that, but that’s not what the word means.

Hope simply means the ability to believe that something you want to happen will happen even though it’s uncertain. It’s actually a pretty simple word that does not have all these deep loaded meanings that Danganronpa has insistently given it over the years.

Tsumugi:  “If we – the students of Hope’s Peak – give up, the world really will be plunged into despair!”

The world already has been plunged into despair! Everyone is still dead! Hope’s Peak worked as a “symbol of hope” (at least in theory) because all those talented kids inspired the rest of the world to feel like the things they want could happen, too. But the rest of the world is now dead. Dead people cannot hope. These seven surviving students can no longer inspire anyone else to feel anything. There’s no point in a luminary that has nothing to illuminate.

(Consider: the character in this story who is the single best epitome of the word “hope”, both in terms of always having it himself and in terms of being able to inspire others to have it too, is Kaito. And the game never uses the word “hope” to talk about him, not once. It doesn’t need to in order to get across how he is, and if it did, then the meaningless buzzword-y effect that that word has come to have in Danganronpa by now would probably lessen the impact Kaito is meant to have.)

Tsumugi:  “In the end, it’s all about willpower! I’m gonna live till the end and never give up!”

Never give up on what? “Hope” requires that there is a specific thing that you are believing will happen despite the odds. What exactly are you hoping for? Nothing! There is nothing to hope for!

Himiko:  “But making the impossible possible is what magic is all about!”

Believing you can make the impossible possible is absolutely an expression of hope (again, did I mention, Kaito) – but there still needs to be an actual supposedly-impossible thing you are trying to do! What are you even trying to make possible here?

Shuichi:  “…You’re right. Let’s do it. Let’s fight, together! Against despair!”

Let’s do what exactly???

“Despair” also does not have anywhere near as loaded a meaning as they’re giving it. It’s simply another type of thought – the belief that everything will always be terrible and nothing good will ever happen to you. They are clearly no longer thinking that way any more – so, congratulations! You’ve defeated despair already!

And they’ve defeated it by suddenly feeling this inexplicable arbitrary positivity out of nowhere, even though it’s not really hope because they’re not hoping for anything (other than no longer feeling despair any more, which is tautological). Their situation is exactly as dire as it was before they saw the Flashback Light – if anything, it’s slightly worse, because now they know that the things they’ve lost had even more weight to them. Nobody has any meaningful ideas on how to make this situation any better, things that would actually be something to hope for and would combat the reason they’re in despair. This Flashback Light has essentially just brainwashed them into feeling good again, in the most narratively boring way.

Tsumugi could have given them a Flashback Light which would actually organically give them hope – she could have made one about there being survivors, maybe hidden here in the Ark, maybe on another planet, maybe even somewhere on Earth, and that would give them something to work towards, some hope that they can find the survivors and not be alone. Honestly, she should have done that, as that would be a better-written story than this. I assume the reason she didn’t is that she was getting a lot of complaints from the in-universe audience about how boring things had just become, and to make up for it she wanted to do something which would pander to them, whether it was a good story or not. Or she’s just a bad writer and doesn’t even realise this is a terrible story and thought it totally was the best way to bring hope to everyone. That might well be it. She has not shown much of a track record of good writing so far.

See, I think the thing is that the in-universe audience doesn’t even realise that this is a bad story because they’re too busy geeking out over the callbacks to the past seasons. None of the actual blind LPers I’ve watched ever really picked up on this being bad writing either, because they were also generally pretty excited by this. Which is understandable, since they’re fans who loved the previous Danganronpas. It makes them feel happy and filled with the notion of “hope”, so it doesn’t quite cross their minds that it doesn’t make sense for the characters to be feeling the same way.

But to the characters in this story, what they’ve remembered isn't a beloved work of fiction; it’s just history. They shouldn’t be as affected by it as the audience are.

Shuichi: (The hope born in this academy, a tree of life with roots down deep… It was supporting each and every one of us.)

No matter how poetically he’s suddenly talking about hope (almost as if he’s been brainwashed into doing that too), it won’t change the fact that it’s not hope because they’re still not hoping for anything.

Himiko:  “Nyeeeh… Motivation is rushing through my entire body.”

Motivation! That might be the right word for what they’re actually feeling. They’ve definitely regained the motivation to do something with themselves, at least, even if they don’t know what that something is because there’s still nothing to hope for.

Keebo:  “Kokichi may have left that Flashback Light to make us give up… But if that was his plan, it failed.”

Shuichi:  (It’s true… it does seem as though Kokichi’s plan went wrong somewhere.)

Even Shuichi is completely oblivious to the fact that the sudden motivation they’re all feeling has no actual logical basis for it and therefore must be an emotional manipulation caused by the Flashback Light affecting their brains. It should be obvious to them that this was the intent of the person who gave them the Flashback Light, but, nope.

Himiko:  “We’ve gotta stop You-Know-Who, the Remnant of Despair, or this despair will never end.”

You’re already not feeling despair any more. You only need to stop him if there’s a chance he’s going to do something to make you feel it again, which he’s at least claiming he’s not doing. Kokichi is merely a person who is supposedly capable of making people feel despair – he is not actual despair itself. Despair cannot be a person. But because they seem to think it can, and because they’ve been brainwashed into this meaningless objective of “defeating” despair when that’s not how despair works, they’re feeling like it is necessary to take down Kokichi.

(And by “they”, I mostly mean Maki, which of course was the other point of this Flashback Light.)

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[Next post]

[marjanefan]

Scott and Bailey- An appreciation

Scott and Bailey was a police drama ran for five series with 33 episodes between 2011 and 2016 on ITV (it gets regular re runs on ITV ) It focuses on the titular Rachel Bailey (Suranne Jones) and Janet Scott (Lesley Sharp), who work for Syndicate Nine Major Incident Team of the (fictional) Manchester Metropolitan Police. It was created by Sally Wainwright and Diane Taylor from a concept by Suranne Jones and Sally Lindsay (apparently it took six years to full develop the show- that tells a story). Jones and Lindsay wanted a show that offered strong roles for women (as Jones said in interview with TV Times ‘brilliant parts for women only come along once in a blue moon – you are always the mistress, lover or daughter’ (see link below)’ . In an interview about the show Jones mentioned that Lindsay is a fan ‘Cagney and Lacey’ and ‘Scott and Bailey’ carries on the tradition of focusing on a female police duo who work well together in spite of very different lifestyles. (Jones also joked in the TV Times interview that the show is the ‘Cagney and Lacey of Manchester’). Sally Wainwright would write the majority of series 1-3 (19 episodes of 22) giving these series continuity and a distinct feel. Amelia Bullmore who stars as DCI Gill Murray also wrote seven episodes.

https://www.whatsontv.co.uk/news/suranne-its-the-cagney-lacey-of-manchester-162259/

The contribution of co-creator Diane Taylor, who had been a Detective Inspector for Greater Manchester Police helped make this a very distinctive police show. She brought knowledge of police procedure and practice to bring realism and detail to the investigations portrayed in the show. We see the hard work and the processes that go into a murder investigation and how police teams work . We also see the dark humour and coping mechanisms deployed by police to deal with the crimes they investigate. They get on with the business of investigating sometimes horrific crimes because that is what needs doing. This was a deliberate decision by the creators who wanted to show how police investigate murder in a more emotionally realistic manner than usual police dramas..

The show is not just interesting for focusing on the two female leads. They work for a female head of syndicate DCI Gill Murray (Amelia Bullmore) and we see their very different and changing relationships with her. We also see Murray’s relationship with her friend and colleague (and eventual boss) DSI Julie Dodson (Pippa Haywood). I cannot think of another police drama where we see several women in different levels of power and how this affects their working relationships.

When we met DI Rachel Bailey (Suranne Jones) she is in her early thirties and her long term boyfriend Nick Savage (Rupert Graves) has just broken up with her. DI Janet Scott (Lesley Sharp) is in her late 40s with two teenage daughters and about to mark her 25th wedding anniversary. Scott acts as a mentor and guide to Bailey in the early series but this dynamic changes over time. Over the course of the five series we see how Bailey develops under the guidance of Murray and Scott. Both women have different skill sets. Scott is a brilliant interviewer while Bailey has insights into human behaviour and ability to pay attention to detail that enable them to crack complex cases.

DSI Gill Murray is shown to be just as exacting and professional as any male boss. She brooks no nonsense on her team (to the point she has the nickname ‘Godzilla’). She works her team hard but this is motivated by a desire for justice. When one of her team makes disparaging remarks about a senior female colleague, Murray sharply and publicly reprimands him. We see her back story and the effect her ex-husband’s infidelity and a painful divorce. We also see her role as a single mother to a son (Sammy) in his late teens who is inspired to join the police by her example. In series four we see the effect that the stress and trauma of her job has had on Murray. Full disclosure- Murray is my favourite character in the show by far and Amelia Bullmore completely owns each scene she is in .

Scott has a long friendship with Murray going back twenty years which leads to Bailey feeling side-lined at points. Bailey’s sometimes impulsive behaviour and chaotic personal life also undermines her in Murray’s estimation. But Murray comes to respect and value Bailey for her dedication to her work and her skills.

We also get to see both Scott and Bailey’s relationships with their mothers. Janet has a comfortable and supportive bond with her mother Dorothy Parsons (Judith Barker) to the point she lets her move in with her. Rachel comes from a dysfunctional family with both her parents being alcoholics, Her mother Sharon ( Tracie Bennett) walked out on her family when she was twelve and Rachel and her older sister Alison (Sally Lindsay) are mistrustful when Rachel’s love interest Sean McCartney (Sean Maguire) tries to bring her back into their lives. We see the effect that her dysfunctional childhood has on Bailey’s relationships with others and how it motivates her to prove herself (in some ways Murray is the mother figure who helps Bailey develop self discipline and boundaries Bailey never had).

Both Scott and Bailey achieve the status of Detective Sergeant over the series. We see Scott dealing with the double responsibility for an elderly parent and two teenage daughters which curtails her career. Bailey is able to pursue her career more freely and gain the experience to rise further in the ranks.

Women are portrayed not just as victims but also perpetrators of murders in the show. Sometimes this is to the astonishment of the male detectives but Scott on occasions works that particular killings were done by women long before her colleagues. Sometimes the female killers are every bit as psychopathic and scheming as their male counterparts. Sometimes they are victims of circumstance. Women are allowed to be as morally complex as men. In particular I want to mention Nicola Walker’s astonishing performance as Helen Bartlett in series three.

The cases that Syndicate Nine investigate genuinely hold the viewers attention and can have some interesting twists and turns. Occasionally the cases take a back seat to the dramas in Scott and Bailey’s lives and sometimes the issues particular investigations throw up reflect back on what Scott and Bailey are going through personally. There are the occasional serial killers but even then these are handled in a thoughtful and considered manner. The series also occasionally deals with social issues such as modern day slavery in the UK and the 'rough sex' defence.

The dialogue on the show is another strong point. As noted before there is a lot of dark humour. One example is the telephone conversation between Murray and Dodson in Series 2, episode 2 about a freshly discovered body. The banter between characters is also beautifully observed and believable. It is fascinating to see women discussing quite grisly crimes in a matter of fact manner. The scene in Series 2, episode 3 when Murray and Bailey have to deal with phone calls about their domestic lives at the same time are two particular gems.

It is interesting to note that Scott and Bailey frequently communicate about both the cases they are investigating and their private lives in the women’s toilets. They make use of the specific female space to communicate in a way they could not in front of their male colleagues.

Generally Scott and Bailey usually get on well with their male colleagues. Scott is possibly more accepted as a longer established member of the team. However there can be occasional tensions and sexist attitudes.

If the show has a weak point, it is the truncated series five which only has three episodes (I was also not keen on the plotline). If possible it is also best to watch in order particularly as storylines develop across each season although you can usually get something out of an individual episode.

The show obviously has a devoted fan base as evidenced by the number of fan fictions and fan videos on YouTube and is still finding fans. I highly recommend this series to anyone who enjoys dectective dramas and female centred dramas.

[islamicrays]

VICTIMS OF FREE-MIXING Umm Muhammad, a mature woman over the age of 40, tells her story. I lived a life of modest means with my husband. There was never any closeness and harmony, and my husband did not have the kind of strong personality that a woman would hope for, but his good nature made me overlook the fact that I was the one who was responsible for most of the decision making in the family. My husband often used to mention the name of his friend and business partner, and he would talk about him in my presence, and I often used to meet with him in his office which was originally part of our apartment. This went on for many years, until circumstances led to us exchanging visits with this person and his family. These family visits were repeated and because of his close friendship with my husband, we did not notice how the number of visits increased and how many hours a single visit would last. He often used to come on his own to sit with us, me and my husband, for long visits. My husband’s trust in him knew no bounds, and as days passed I got to know this person very well, and saw how wonderful and decent he was. I began to feel a strong attraction towards this man, and at the same time I began to sense that the feeling was mutual. Things took a strange turn after that, when I realized that this man was the kind of person I had always dreamed about. Why had he come along now, after all these years? The more this man’s status increased in my eyes, the more my husband’s status diminished. It was as if I had needed to see the beauty of his character in order to discover how ugly my husband’s character was. The matter between this person and myself did not go beyond these persistent thoughts which were occupying my mind night and day. Neither he nor I ever voiced what we felt in our hearts… until today. Yet despite that my life is over and my husband is little more than a weak man with no self-esteem. I hate him and I do not know how all this hatred towards him started to boil over. I wonder how I put up with him all these years, bearing all these burdens by myself, facing life’s problems on my own. Things got so bad that I asked him for a divorce, and he divorced me at my request. After that he became a broken man. Even worse than that is that after my marriage was wrecked and my children and husband were devastated, problems arose in this man’s family. His wife, with her feminine intuition, realized what had been going on in his heart of hearts, and his life became hell. She was overwhelmed with jealousy to the extent that one night she left her house at 2 a.m. and came to attack my house, screaming, weeping and hurling accusations. His marriage was also about to collapse. I admit that the lovely gatherings which we used to enjoy gave us the opportunity to get to know one another at a time that was not appropriate at this stage in our lives. His marriage has been wrecked and so has mine. I have lost everything, and now I know that my circumstances and his will not permit us to take any positive step towards coming together. Now I am more miserable than I have ever been, and I am looking for illusionary happiness and lost hopes. Tit-for-tat Umm Ahmad tells us: My husband had a group of married friends, and because of our close friendship with them, we used to get together with them once a week in one of our houses, to enjoy an evening of chat. Deep down in my heart I was never really comfortable with the atmosphere in which we would have dinner, sweets, snacks and drinks of juice accompanied by waves of laughter because of the jokes and chit-chats that often went beyond the bounds of good manners. In the name of friendship, the barriers were lifted and every now and then one would hear suppressed laughter between a woman and the husband of another woman. The jokes were too much, dealing – with no sense of shyness –with sensitive topics such as sex and women’s private matters. This was usual and was even accepted and regarded as desirable. Although I indulged in these things along with them, my conscience made me feel guilty. Then the day came when it became quite clear just how ugly and filthy this atmosphere was. The telephone rang, and I heard the voice of one of the friends in this group. I said hello to him and apologized that my husband was not home. He replied that he knew that, and that he was calling to speak to me! After he suggested starting a relationship with me, I got very angry and spoke harshly to him and cursed him. All he could do was laugh and say, “Don’t try and show these good manners to me; go and check on your husband’s good manners and see what he is doing…” I was devastated by what he said, but I pulled myself together and said to myself, this person is only trying to cause the break up of your marriage. But he succeeded in planting the seeds of doubt concerning my husband. Shortly after that, the major disaster struck. I discovered that my husband was cheating on me with another woman. It was the matter of life or death as far as I was concerned. I found my husband out and I confronted him, saying: “You are not the only one who can have a relationship. I have received a similar proposition.” And I told him all about his friend. He was stunned and absolutely shocked. (I said:) “If you want me to respond in kind to your relationship with that woman, then this is for that, tit-for-tat.” This was a huge slap in the face for him. He knew that I did not intend to do that in reality, but he realized the great disaster that had befallen our lives and the immoral atmosphere in which we were living. I suffered a great deal until my husband finally left that loose woman with whom he was having a relationship, as he admitted to me. Yes, he left her and came back to his family and children, but how can I ever feel the same towards him as I used to? Who will restore respect for him in my heart? This huge wound in my heart is still bleeding out of regret and rage at that filthy atmosphere; it still bears testimony to the fact that what they call innocent get-togethers are in reality anything but innocent. My heart still begs for mercy from the Lord of Glory. Intelligence can also be a temptation (fitnah) ‘Abd al-Fattaah says: I work as the head of department in one of the big companies. For a long time I admired one of my female colleagues, not for her beauty, but for her serious attitude towards her work, her intelligence and her excellent achievements – in addition to the fact that she was a decent and modest person who focused only on her work. This admiration turned into attachment, and I am a married man who fears Allaah and never misses any obligatory prayer. I expressed my feelings to her and she rebuffed me. She is married and has children as well. She sees no reason why I should have any kind of relationship with her, whether it be friendship, as work colleagues or based on admiration… etc. Evil thoughts come to me sometimes, and deep down I wish that her husband would divorce her so that I could get her. I started to put pressure on her at work and put her down in front of my bosses. Perhaps this was a form of revenge on my part, but she accepted it with good manners and did not complain or comment. She works and works; her performance speaks of her quality, and she knows this well. The more she resisted me, the stronger my infatuation grew. I am not a person who is easily tempted by women, because I fear Allaah and I do not overstep the mark with them and go beyond what is required by my work. But this woman attracted me. What is the solution?… I do not know. Baby ducks know how to swim N.A.A., a nineteen-year-old girl, tells us: At that time I was a little girl. My innocent eyes watched those evening get-togethers when family friends would meet in the house. What I remember is that I could only see one man, who was my father. I watched him as he moved about the room, how his glances would devour the women present, looking at their thighs and chests, admiring this one’s eyes, that one’s hair, the other’s hips. My poor mother had no choice but to take care of these get-togethers. She was a very simple lady. Among the women present there was one woman who would deliberately try to attract my father’s attention, sometimes by coming close to him, and sometimes by making enticing movements. I would watch this with concern, whilst my mother was busy in the kitchen for the sake of her guests. These gatherings stopped suddenly and I tried, young as I was, to understand and make sense of what had happened, but I could not. What I remember was that my mother collapsed completely at that time, and she could not stand to hear my father’s name mentioned in the house. I used to hear mysterious words whispered by the adults around me: “Betrayal… bedroom… she saw them with her own eyes… despicable woman… in a very shameful position…” etc. These were the key words which only the adults could understand. I grew up and came to understand, and I bore a grudge against all men. All of them were treacherous. My mother was a broken woman and accused every woman who came to us of being a man-snatcher who wanted to make my father fall into her trap. My father hasn’t changed. He is still practising his favourite hobby of chasing women, but now he does it outside the home. Now I am nineteen years old and I know lots of young men. I feel great pleasure in taking revenge on them, because every one of them is an exact copy of my father. I tempt them and entice them, without letting them get anywhere near me. They follow me in gatherings and in the marketplaces because of my movements and deliberate gestures. Sometimes my phone never stops ringing and I feel proud of what I do to avenge the sex of Hawwa’ and my mother. But sometimes I feel so miserable and such a failure that it almost chokes me. My life is shadowed by a huge dark cloud, and its name is my father. Before it is too late S.N.A. tells of her experience: I never imagined that my work circumstances would force me to be in contact with the opposite sex (men), but this in fact is what happened… In the beginning, I used to cover and screen myself from men by wearing niqaab (face-veil), but some of the sisters advised me that this dress was attracting more attention to my presence, and it would be better for me to take off the niqaab, especially since my eyes were somewhat attractive. So I removed the cover from my face, thinking that this was better. But by continuing to mix with my colleagues, I discovered that I was the odd one out because of my antisocial attitude and my insistence on not joining in the conversation and chatting with others. Everyone was wary of this “lone-wolf” woman (as they saw me), and this is what was stated clearly by one person who affirmed that he would not want to deal with such a snooty and stand-offish character. But I knew that I was the opposite, in fact, and I decided that I would not oppress myself and put myself in a difficult position with my colleagues. So I started to join in their chats and exchanges of anecdotes, and they all discovered that I could speak eloquently and persuasively, and that I could influence others. I could also speak in a manner that was determined yet at the same time was attractive to some of my colleagues. It was not long before I noticed some changes in the expression of my direct supervisor; with some embarrassment, he was enjoying the way I spoke and moved, and he would deliberately bring up topics in the conversation where I would see that hateful look in his eyes. I do not deny the fact that I started to entertain some thoughts about this man. I found it astonishing that a man could fall so easily into the trap of a woman who was religiously committed, so how must it be in the case of women who adorn themselves and invite men to commit immoral actions? In fact, I did not think of him in any way which went beyond the bounds of sharee’ah, but he did occupy a space in my thoughts for quite some time. But soon my self-respect made me reject the idea of being a source of enjoyment for this man in any way, shape or form, even if it was only psychological in nature, and I stopped getting involved in any kind of work that would force me to sit alone with him. In the end, I reached the following conclusions: 1- 1) Attraction between the sexes can occur in any circumstances, no matter how much men and women may deny that. The attraction may start within the bounds of sharee’ah and end up going beyond those bounds. 2) Even if a person protects himself (by marriage), he is not safe from the snares of the Shaytaan. 3) Even though a person may be able to guarantee himself and he works with the opposite sex within reasonable limits, he cannot guarantee the feelings of the other party. 4) Finally, there is nothing good in mixing and it does not bear fruit as they claim. On the contrary, it corrupts sound thinking.

[lynchgirl90]

#TwinPeaks Review: The Person Everybody Has Been Waiting to See for Over 25 Years Doesn’t Disappoint

Plus, here are some theories on how the dots connect through electrical crackles, coins, and Hawk’s heritage

While “Twin Peaks” continues to play the long game when it comes to its various mysteries, Sunday’s episode at least offered a tantalizing carrot to viewers one-third of the way through the season. Fans finally got to see whom Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) has been speaking to all of these years: The never-before-seen Diane, naturally portrayed by David Lynch favorite Laura Dern.

Diane was Cooper’s secretary from his earliest days in the FBI and the recipient of all of his audio reports and musings. She never appeared on screen, but he confided everything in her. Many speculated long before the show premiered that Dern, who had never been a part of the original “Twin Peaks” cast, would get the plum role of Diane.

The scene, while brief, is satisfying in its details. Albert’s (Miguel Ferrer) important work that evening is to follow up on that promise that he “knows where she drinks,” which is apparently Max Von’s Bar. The peroxide blonde bob is a slight misdirection, since that sleek hairdo doesn’t telegraph Dern’s usual beachy-blonde waves.

But just as Lynch giveth, he taketh away. The glimpse is fleeting. Diane clearly knows Albert after addressing him by name, but beyond that, we only know that she’s rather stylish, smokes and drinks martinis. Answers about how she will help with Cooper or any Blue Rose cases will have to wait. And wait we will through 12 more episodes if necessary.  

The timing and the brevity confirm just how deliberate all of these revelations and dribbles of information are. It is a bright moment in an episode that continues to unspool its disparate storylines but this time, actually makes a few more connections without any hugely surreal or inexplicable moments.

The Caffeinization of Cooper

The season has stretched out its “getting to know” Cooper phase throughout the episodes in tandem as he is finding himself, instead dumping it at the beginning of the series. Thanks to a combination of coffee and MIKE, aka the Man with One Arm (Al Strobel), who pleads with Cooper to “Wake up. Don’t die,” Cooper continues to become more lucid.

As in the casino, Cooper has visions that lead him, but this time it’s in the case files given to him by Lucky 7 Insurance to review. There is method to this Dougie madness as he doodles ladders and staircases and lines connecting names in the files. His boss Bushnell Mullins (Don Murray) seems to make sense of it and asks him to “keep this information to yourself” for now.

READ MORE: ‘Twin Peaks’: Why We Need Agent Cooper’s Arrested Development Even When It’s Exhausting

Again, the show’s credits give the best clues as to what’s happening since Tom Sizemore’s character Anthony Sinclair wasn’t seen in the episode much, but he was peering out of his office when Cooper got called in to see Mullins. Anthony Sinclair’s name is also seen as a signature on an insurance claim. Could we say fraud? And didn’t Cooper say, “He’s lying” about Sinclair before?

This is a situation though, in which the answers may not be that important except as a means to an end. Only the events of the show will be able to confirm whether or not corruption means anything, but what it important is that whatever the powers that be are up to, they’ve been active. In a scene right before Cooper has his vision in front of the case files, we see a street light change and hear that familiar electrical crackle (that we heard in the glass box room and other places before) that coincides with or precedes an important event.

Riding the Electrical Crackle

Unfortunately, whatever the power of that crackle is, it’s not just a force for good, which makes sense since there is a White Lodge and Black Lodge, good and evil. Over in Twin Peaks, the second time we hear that buzz is right after that dastardly Richard Horne (Eamon Farren) is the perpetrator of a horrifying hit and run. As the distraught mother cradles her dead son’s body, our attention gets called upwards to a telephone pole and that familiar crackle. Is this how garmonbozia travels and then somehow gets spit out elsewhere as creamed corn?

Richard’s actions confirm that he’s as bad as his first impression led us to believe, but the episode reveals that he’s small fry, a mere pawn. Mr. Finger Guns himself, Red (Balthazar Getty) is calling the shots in what sounds like an illegal drug deal. Red also acts oddly… as if he’s new to his body or can’t control it as well as he does dimes. Bits of metal may have some significance this season. That he seemed to know Shelly (Madchen Amick) in the second episode in the Bang Bang Bar could be cause for concern.

One more note about bad guys in Twin Peaks. Richard had bribed Deputy Chad Broxford (John Pirruccello) who was in plain clothes in the previous episode at the Bang Bang Bar, and Chad continues to appear without conscience, kindness or empathy after a scene in which he mocks the suicide of Sherriff’s son as a result of PTSD.

The Dougie Connection

Even before Cooper was reborn via electrical socket and took over Dougie’s life, people were out to kill Dougie, not Cooper. While we await answers on the why, the episode did start to offer a few answers and connections. For one, the people whom Janey-E was so concerned about owing money are merely small-time. They don’t appear to have any more sinister or supernatural evil powers that would connect them with the Black Lodge.

Unfortunately, those who want Dougie dead do have a connection with things or people disappearing into thin air and turning into bits of metal. A hitman that the credits helpfully lists as Ike “The Spike” Stadtler (Christopher Zajac-Denek) takes out Lorraine (Tammie Baird), whom was stressed out in the previous episode after finding out Dougie was still alive and asked her lackeys, “Are you trying to get me killed?” What a sad premonition that turned out to be.

This is where a second connection comes in. The nervous Las Vegas exec Duncan Todd (Patrick Fischler) who unhappily follows an unidentified boss’ orders (perhaps the same person as Lorraine’s boss), sees a message pop up as a red square on his computer, which prompts him to retrieve a mysterious envelope marked with a dot from a locked safe. We soon find out that this envelope contains the photos of Lorraine and Dougie. We’ve seen Lorraine’s excruciating fate (really? more women’s violence?) at the hands of The Spike, and it seems that only a bent spike may delay his targeting Cooper in Dougie guise in the near future.

Heads, Hawk Wins

When a buffalo nickel rolls away from Hawk (Michael Horse) in the Sherriff’s station’s men’s room, he follows it into the stall and sees it land face up showing the image of the composite Native American. Heeding the Log Lady’s words that his heritage will lead him to a clue that deals with Agent Cooper, Hawk sees a plate on the stall door for Nez Perce manufacturing, which in turn allows him see that part of the door has lost a screw and is gaping open. Once he pries open the door siding with a crowbar, he pulls out a few small pieces of notepaper that appear to have been hidden there.

The Log Lady’s words have presumably come true, and it’s indicative once again how this show is intricately crafted. It’s no accident that this incident also echoes the flipping of a coin earlier in the episode with the line, “Heads, I win. Tails, you lose”

While trying to find connections in every little scene may not be the point, the show is rewarding viewers just like it rewards Hawk. Without tuning in and being aware of the types of signs he needed, he could very well have missed them.

The Log Lady’s words have presumably come true, and it’s indicative once again how this show is intricately crafted. It’s no accident that this incident also echoes the flipping of a coin earlier in the episode with the line, “Heads, I win. Tails, you lose”

While trying to find connections in every little scene may not be the point, the show is rewarding viewers just like it rewards Hawk. Without tuning in and being aware of the types of signs he needed, he could very well have missed them.

In this way, the show is nurturing viewers in another sort of awakening, one that allows for being in the moment, but also piecing together clues from the past while speculating about the future. Each episode doesn’t just build off previous ones but almost encourages backtracking to see what may have been missed. It’s a circular viewing experience that truly ties together the 18 episodes.

Potent Quotables

Janey-E: “Think about it. It’s hard enough to get that kind of money, let alone with broken legs”

Man with One Arm: “You have to wake up. Wake up. Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die.”

Diane: “Hello, Albert.”

Red: “I will saw your head open and eat your brains if you fuck me over.”

Janey-E: “We are not wealthy people. We drive cheap, terrible cars. We are the 99 percenters.”

Link (TP)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Australia announces plan to ban working cryptography at home and in the US, UK, New Zealand, and Canada

The Australian Attorney General and a key Australian minister have published a memo detailing the demand they plan on presenting to the next Five Eyes surveillance alliance meeting, which will be held next week in Ottawa.

The Australian officials will demand that their surveillance partners join with them in a plan to force "service providers to ensure reasonable assistance is provided to law enforcement and security agencies" when spies and police want to read messages that have been encrypted.

The encryption technologies under description are widely implemented in products and services that are often run by volunteer communities, or by companies who operate entirely outside 5 Eyes borders, but whose products can be used by anyone, anywhere in the world.

Working encryption is how we ensure that malicious parties don't hack our voting machines, pacemakers, home cameras, telephones, banking systems, power grids, and other key systems. There is no way to make working cryptography that can defend these applications against "bad guys" but fail catastrophically the moment a police officer or spy needs to defeat them.

The demand to ban working encryption dates back to the Clinton administration and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's groundbreaking victory in Bernstein, which ended the US ban on civilian access to working cryptography. The delusion that authorities can ban working crypto and still secure their national infrastructure persists, and is presently being mooted in Germany, and formed a key plank in Theresa May's party platform in the disastrous UK election.

As a reminder, here's what countries would lose, and what steps they would have to take, to ensure that police and spies could decrypt any communications they wanted to target:

It’s impossible to overstate how bonkers the idea of sabotaging cryptography is to people who understand information security. If you want to secure your sensitive data either at rest – on your hard drive, in the cloud, on that phone you left on the train last week and never saw again – or on the wire, when you’re sending it to your doctor or your bank or to your work colleagues, you have to use good cryptography. Use deliberately compromised cryptography, that has a back door that only the “good guys” are supposed to have the keys to, and you have effectively no security. You might as well skywrite it as encrypt it with pre-broken, sabotaged encryption.

There are two reasons why this is so. First, there is the question of whether encryption can be made secure while still maintaining a “master key” for the authorities’ use. As lawyer/computer scientist Jonathan Mayer explained, adding the complexity of master keys to our technology will “introduce unquantifiable security risks”. It’s hard enough getting the security systems that protect our homes, finances, health and privacy to be airtight – making them airtight except when the authorities don’t want them to be is impossible.

What these leaders thinks they're saying is, "We will command all the software creators we can reach to introduce back-doors into their tools for us." There are enormous problems with this: there's no back door that only lets good guys go through it. If your Whatsapp or Google Hangouts has a deliberately introduced flaw in it, then foreign spies, criminals, crooked police (like those who fed sensitive information to the tabloids who were implicated in the hacking scandal -- and like the high-level police who secretly worked for organised crime for years), and criminals will eventually discover this vulnerability. They -- and not just the security services -- will be able to use it to intercept all of our communications. That includes things like the pictures of your kids in your bath that you send to your parents to the trade secrets you send to your co-workers.

But this is just for starters. These officials don't understand technology very well, so they doesn't actually know what they're asking for.

For this proposal to work, they will need to stop Britons, Canadians, Americans, Kiwis and Australians from installing software that comes from software creators who are out of her jurisdiction. The very best in secure communications are already free/open source projects, maintained by thousands of independent programmers around the world. They are widely available, and thanks to things like cryptographic signing, it is possible to download these packages from any server in the world (not just big ones like Github) and verify, with a very high degree of confidence, that the software you've downloaded hasn't been tampered with.

Australia is not alone here. The regime they proposes is already in place in countries like Syria, Russia, and Iran (for the record, none of these countries have had much luck with it). There are two means by which authoritarian governments have attempted to restrict the use of secure technology: by network filtering and by technology mandates.

Australian governments have already shown that she believes she can order the nation's ISPs to block access to certain websites (again, for the record, this hasn't worked very well). The next step is to order Chinese-style filtering using deep packet inspection, to try and distinguish traffic and block forbidden programs. This is a formidable technical challenge. Intrinsic to core Internet protocols like IPv4/6, TCP and UDP is the potential to "tunnel" one protocol inside another. This makes the project of figuring out whether a given packet is on the white-list or the black-list transcendentally hard, especially if you want to minimise the number of "good" sessions you accidentally blackhole.

More ambitious is a mandate over which code operating systems in the 5 Eyes nations are allowed to execute. This is very hard. We do have, in Apple's Ios platform and various games consoles, a regime where a single company uses countermeasures to ensure that only software it has blessed can run on the devices it sells to us. These companies could, indeed, be compelled (by an act of Parliament) to block secure software. Even there, you'd have to contend with the fact that other states are unlikely to follow suit, and that means that anyone who bought her Iphone in Paris or Mexico could come to the 5 Eyes countries with all their secure software intact and send messages "we cannot read."

But there is the problem of more open platforms, like GNU/Linux variants, BSD and other unixes, Mac OS X, and all the non-mobile versions of Windows. All of these operating systems are already designed to allow users to execute any code they want to run. The commercial operators -- Apple and Microsoft -- might conceivably be compelled by Parliament to change their operating systems to block secure software in the future, but that doesn't do anything to stop people from using all the PCs now in existence to run code that the PM wants to ban.

More difficult is the world of free/open operating systems like GNU/Linux and BSD. These operating systems are the gold standard for servers, and widely used on desktop computers (especially by the engineers and administrators who run the nation's IT). There is no legal or technical mechanism by which code that is designed to be modified by its users can co-exist with a rule that says that code must treat its users as adversaries and seek to prevent them from running prohibited code.

This, then, is what the Australian AG is proposing:

* All 5 Eyes citizens' communications must be easy for criminals, voyeurs and foreign spies to intercept

* Any firms within reach of a 5 Eyes government must be banned from producing secure software

* All major code repositories, such as Github and Sourceforge, must be blocked in the 5 Eyes

* Search engines must not answer queries about web-pages that carry secure software

* Virtually all academic security work in the 5 Eyes must cease -- security research must only take place in proprietary research environments where there is no onus to publish one's findings, such as industry R&D and the security services

* All packets in and out of 5 Eyes countries, and within those countries, must be subject to Chinese-style deep-packet inspection and any packets that appear to originate from secure software must be dropped

* Existing walled gardens (like Ios and games consoles) must be ordered to ban their users from installing secure software

* Anyone visiting a 5 Eyes country from abroad must have their smartphones held at the border until they leave

* Proprietary operating system vendors (Microsoft and Apple) must be ordered to redesign their operating systems as walled gardens that only allow users to run software from an app store, which will not sell or give secure software to Britons

* Free/open source operating systems -- that power the energy, banking, ecommerce, and infrastructure sectors -- must be banned outright

The Australian officials will say that she doesn't want to do any of this. They'll say that they can implement weaker versions of it -- say, only blocking some "notorious" sites that carry secure software. But anything less than the programme above will have no material effect on the ability of criminals to carry on perfectly secret conversations that "we cannot read". If any commodity PC or jailbroken phone can run any of the world's most popular communications applications, then "bad guys" will just use them. Jailbreaking an OS isn't hard. Downloading an app isn't hard. Stopping people from running code they want to run is -- and what's more, it puts the every 5 Eyes nation -- individuals and industry -- in terrible jeopardy.

That’s a technical argument, and it’s a good one, but you don’t have to be a cryptographer to understand the second problem with back doors: the security services are really bad at overseeing their own behaviour.

Once these same people have a back door that gives them access to everything that encryption protects, from the digital locks on your home or office to the information needed to clean out your bank account or read all your email, there will be lots more people who’ll want to subvert the vast cohort that is authorised to use the back door, and the incentives for betraying our trust will be much more lavish than anything a tabloid reporter could afford.

If you want a preview of what a back door looks like, just look at the US Transportation Security Administration’s “master keys” for the locks on our luggage. Since 2003, the TSA has required all locked baggage travelling within, or transiting through, the USA to be equipped with Travelsentry locks, which have been designed to allow anyone with a widely held master key to open them.

What happened after Travelsentry went into effect? Stuff started going missing from bags. Lots and lots of stuff. A CNN investigation into thefts from bags checked in US airports found thousands of incidents of theft committed by TSA workers and baggage handlers. And though “aggressive investigation work” has cut back on theft at some airports, insider thieves are still operating with impunity throughout the country, even managing to smuggle stolen goods off the airfield in airports where all employees are searched on their way in and out of their work areas.

The US system is rigged to create a halo of buck-passing unaccountability. When my family picked up our bags from our Easter holiday in the US, we discovered that the TSA had smashed the locks off my nearly new, unlocked, Travelsentry-approved bag, taping it shut after confirming it had nothing dangerous in it, and leaving it “completely destroyed” in the words of the official BA damage report. British Airways has sensibly declared the damage to be not their problem, as they had nothing to do with destroying the bag. The TSA directed me to a form that generated an illiterate reply from a government subcontractor, sent from a do-not-reply email address, advising that “TSA is not liable for any damage to locks or bags that are required to be opened by force for security purposes” (the same note had an appendix warning me that I should treat this communication as confidential). I’ve yet to have any other communications from the TSA.

Making it possible for the state to open your locks in secret means that anyone who works for the state, or anyone who can bribe or coerce anyone who works for the state, can have the run of your life. Cryptographic locks don’t just protect our mundane communications: cryptography is the reason why thieves can’t impersonate your fob to your car’s keyless ignition system; it’s the reason you can bank online; and it’s the basis for all trust and security in the 21st century.

In her Dimbleby lecture, Martha Lane Fox recalled Aaron Swartz’s words: “It’s not OK not to understand the internet anymore.” That goes double for cryptography: any politician caught spouting off about back doors is unfit for office anywhere but Hogwarts, which is also the only educational institution whose computer science department believes in “golden keys” that only let the right sort of people break your encryption.

https://boingboing.net/2017/06/26/crypto-denialism.html

[mg-bsl381]

Purity

Recently I have been struggling to write anything and getting this finished was a massive effort.

One of the things I love most about Shelagh and Patrick’s relationship is how it unfolded with so much respect and integrity. This story explores that idea.

This is for @snoopctm for her unfailing and diligent support and encouragement.  Thank you.

I hope you like it.

Purity

November 1957

It was her voice that first awakened his grief crushed senses.  Although he didn’t know it was her voice at the time.  

It had been a bitterly cold night and Sister Julienne’s bicycle had a puncture, so he had offered the nun a lift to save her from the long cold walk home.  The labour they had both attended had been long and arduous but thankfully the outcome was successful.  It was almost early morning but although Patrick was tired, it was hunger that was his primary feeling.  Sister Julienne ushered him into Nonnatus and alerted Nurse Franklin who was next on call that she had returned.  At that moment Patrick’s stomach growled very loudly.  Nurse Franklin quickly suppressed a giggle and offered him a cup of tea and some toast, correctly assuming that he had missed his dinner the previous evening.  Sister Julienne excused herself, needing to clean her instruments before chapel.

The tea was hot and the toast filled the gaping hole in his stomach.  He thanked Nurse Franklin and paused for a moment as he heard singing echoing down the corridor.  The voice was high and clear with a purity that soothed his aching spirit.  There was something about that voice that seemed not to belong to the world of the East End but transcended far beyond the earth.  The shrill ringing of the Nonnatus telephone shattered the peace that the singing had given him.  He waited long enough to find out if he was likely to be needed but left Nurse Franklin with instructions to call him if things didn’t go as expected.  

The coldness of the hour before dawn hit him as he walked down the steps and back to his car.  He was grateful that Timothy was at Granny Parker’s tonight but a void of emptiness filled the flat.  He collapsed into bed half-dressed and fell asleep almost as his head hit the pillow.  A pure clear voice threaded through his dreams and his sleep although brief was peaceful.

November 1958

Patrick now knew who owned the pure high voice that had soothed his dreams for many months.  The voice had belonged to Sister Bernadette but now it belonged to Shelagh.  His life had love once more and he felt so alive.  There had been months of uncertainty following Sister Bernadette’s diagnosis of TB but she had left the Order and had now agreed to be his wife.  It was not only her voice that soothed him but the whole of her being.   Her very presence soothed him.  It had been less than a month since she left the sanatorium but he already felt the changes in his life in those few short weeks.

Tonight however, Shelagh was agitated.  She seemed restless and out of sorts and something was clearly troubling her.  She tried to keep up the pretence of normality but once Timothy was in bed, her edginess ratcheted up a notch.  Patrick gently took hold of Shelagh’s hand and encouraged her to tell him what was troubling her.  She tried to brush him off saying it was nothing for him to worry about but he gently persisted.

Shelagh had been walking around Poplar and buying a few bits and bobs in the market when she heard a comment about her.  The voice was deliberately loud so that it would be audible to her.  The speaker voiced accusations about her that Shelagh was horrified by.  To have one’s character besmirched in such a blatant manner was shocking to her.  Patrick asked her what form these comments had taken and Shelagh went white at the prospect of describing them to him.  

So Patrick himself retold some of the things that had assailed his ears since news of their relationship had broken in Poplar.  He left out some of the choicest comments he’d heard while attending a patient in a pub.  It was the same innuendo and speculation for both of them.  Their relationship was being pawed over like a gossip rag and he abhorred it.

Patrick knew exactly what hadn’t happened between them until Shelagh left the Order.  The only digression had been his kiss to her hand after the three legged race.  It was a moment he could only half regret because it came with it the revelation that their love was shared.  In worldly terms it was an innocent gesture but both of them knew that she was not of the world at that moment and he had overstepped a line between propriety and desire.

There had been no displays of passion.  No fervent kisses in the darkened alleys around Poplar.  No physical contact at all apart from a kiss to her hand.  Not even his fingers on her skin when he placed his stethoscope.  There might have been a momentary brush of their fingers when he handed her her suitcase outside the sanatorium but that might have been wishful thinking on his part heightened by their imminent parting.

He knew why the talk was rife around the streets and tenements of Poplar.  It was something out of the daily humdrum of existence and exciting.  It was exciting for him and Shelagh too but he wondered about the need to turn something precious and beautiful into something sordid.

The talk of what might have happened while Sister Bernadette was in the Order was the worst.  Patrick was a man who worked closely with women and respected them.  They were not objects to fulfil his desires.  The talk about habits and being respectable in the habit but behind closed doors getting up to all sorts of things nauseated him.  The lack of respect for Sister Bernadette was appalling to him.  She was someone who had selflessly looked after these people for years and to suggest that she had been behaving in such a manner saddened him.  He knew it was about him too but there was always that double standard where rumours about illicit relations between men and women were concerned.

He knew the gossip would eventually die down and he reassured Shelagh that the people who knew her wouldn’t think like that.  Shelagh had shaken her head sadly and hoped he was right.

The gossip took far longer to disappear than he had imagined and finally petered out in the early months of 1959 when it became clear due to Shelagh’s reed slim body that she was not expecting.  By the time they eventually married Poplar was fully behind their fairytale romance.  

November 1959

Once they were married Patrick realised that purity was not simply a bodily thing.  It was a state of the heart and the mind too.  It was only after their reconciliation and the arrival of Angela that he fully understood the pain Shelagh had endured during their estrangement.  Shelagh hated lies and falsehood.  Secrets were something she struggled with because they came with an element of deception.  Openness and honesty were the values that upheld her life and he was learning the benefit of her way of doing things.  He felt so much freer now he was not trapped by the burden of silence his past had held over him for so many years.

Patrick knew how much Shelagh had struggled with her feelings when she felt unable to express them.  She had needed to suppress her feelings for him while she was still in the Order and it had caused her much distress.  

June 1962

One evening during one of Patrick’s visits to her in St Cuthbert’s, Shelagh related to him the tale of the mothers in the maternity home who had been speculating whether she was in the family way.  Although Shelagh loathed idle gossip and was appalled at the idea that they were placing bets, her excitement about her condition had overruled her.

A part of him would always regret that moment of rashness in the parish hall kitchen.  He knew he should not have behaved in such a way towards one of the Sisters.  To him however, she was not just one of the Sisters, she was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.  His kiss to her hand had revealed his heart to her and she had responded in the only way she could at the time.  He understood that her heart was not able to be shared with another person but if it was it belonged to him.  

It was not the habit that attracted him to her.  It was the woman who wore it.   The purity of her voice was the outpouring of her spirit and that was what drew her to him.  He loved Shelagh in a way that was so pure and he could not ever envisage any of the slanderous accusations that had whirled around Poplar happening between them.  It was unthinkable to him.  Only when they were married did he allow his desires expression.

Patrick knew that integrity and honesty ran as deeply within Shelagh as her love for him and her faith in God.  They were part of what made Shelagh who she was.  

[gliddenqpmelgarxn59insuranc-blog]

car insurance 500 or 1000 deductible

car insurance 500 or 1000 deductible

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car insurance 500 or 1000 deductible

[andrewdburton]

The virtue of thrift

When I was a boy, we lived in the country. That is, we lived five miles from the nearest town (Canby) and 25 miles from the nearest city (Portland). We were surrounded by farmland. Life was quiet. Pastoral. Bucolic.

The road we lived on was especially quiet, with very little traffic. Even from a young age — five or six, I think — I was allowed to walk the quarter-mile to visit my grandparents. (My father's parents lived “next door” to us, but next door was across a large field.)

Visiting grandma and grandpa was fun. As quiet as life in the country was, life at their house was even quieter. There was a stillness in their place unlike anything I've experienced since. Their home seemed stuck in time.

Part of this stuckness stemmed from the things they owned.

They lived in a little white farmhouse built in 1920. My grandparents moved there in 1943 — two years before my father was born — then remodeled the place. Sort of. (Like all Roths, they left the job undone — for more than forty years!)

During the 1970s, when I was young, they still owned and used many of the things they'd purchased when they moved in.

They still had a big, white Kelvinator refrigerator, for instance, with a moving door handle and hardly any space inside. They called it the “icebox”.

They listened to hymns (sometimes) and radio sermons (daily) on an imposing wooden console “hi-fi” system as big as a couch.

They owned a long pink-ish, purple-ish “davenport” with scratchy, well-worn fabric on which grandpa would nap every afternoon after “dinner” (which was lunch).

They used a black bakelite rotary telephone on a party line.

My grandparents themselves were very much like the things they owned. They were old. (They were in their seventies when I knew them.) They were calm. They moved slowly during the day, and even more slowly at night. One of my fondest memories is sitting with them in the evening, watching as they sipped “sanka” and played Scrabble while a fire roared in the nearby woodstove.

For children, time always moves more slowly, but it seemed to me that nothing every changed in my grandparents' world. Their home was frozen in time. It was stuck. It was still. It was silent.

It was comforting, and I liked it.

Changing Times

My life is not still. It is not silent. It's more peaceful than most, I suppose, but it sometimes moves at a frenetic pace.

At this very moment, for instance, I am writing to you via a wireless internet connection on my laptop computer. I am sitting in a small room on a big boat — a cruise ship — that is plying its way through the Ionian Sea, just off the shore of Greece. On my wrist is a watch that isn't really a watch. It's actually a small computer with more power than those that were used to land men on the moon.

This morning, I've communicated instantly with friends in Maryland, Oregon, and Alberta. I've checked up-to-the-minute news stories from the United States. I've sent a dozen business email messages. I'm making plans for a big conference in Washington D.C. next week.

Mine is not a pastoral life.

Too, I am a consumer in a way that my grandparents never were. As much as I try not to be, I'm deeply entrenched in our materialistic culture. I am a Material Boy.

A large part of the problem is that I expose myself to advertising. I don't watch much TV or listen to the radio, but I practically live on the internet. I'm bombarded by web ads. Worse, I deliberately allow myself to visit sites that promote consumption. Yes, Wirecutter is cool and all, but it's also a ginormous gateway to desire.

At the same time, our world today is different from the world my grandparents inhabited in the forties and fifties. (Today is the 18,410th day of my life. That day for my grandfather was 22 February 1953.)

Advertising and marketing were certainly a factor for them, but they weren't as pervasive as today. When my grandfather was my age, just over a third of American households owned televisions. (He never owned one his entire life.)

Meanwhile, modern appliances (and other consumer products) are designed around planned obsolescence. They're deliberately not built to last. They're difficult or impossible to repair. (Thus the rise of the “right to repair” movement.) Or they're made to be stylish rather than timeless so that when tastes change, consumers feel motivated to replace them.

Technology adds another layer to the problem. Tech changes quickly. Some of this is merely a result of progress, of course. Our computers are smaller and more powerful than they were five years ago. Or ten. Or twenty. We all keep our machines as long as we can, but at some point we run into a wall. We want to do something and we can't. When that happens, we're faced with a decision: Upgrade or not?

Recently, I sold an old computer to my niece. She paid me some nominal amount for a 2009 iMac. Before I gave it to her, I wiped the hard drive and updated the operating system. But I could only update it so far. Beyond a certain point — 2014? 2016? I can't remember — Apple stopped supporting that computer. It still runs great, but now it's frozen in time. Eventually, new software won't run on it.

My Life as a Consumer

Kim believes I buy too much. She may be right. But when I started writing this article, I was ready to hold myself up to be pilloried. I was going to mock myself, then let you join the fun. Turns out, I'm not as bad as I think I am.

When I look at big items around our house, I have to give myself high marks (with one big exception, which I'll explain). For the past fifteen years, I've done well at choosing quality over price.

My Stickley furniture was expensive when I bought it ten years ago (even though I got it a deep discount), but it ought to last a lifetime. Plus, I still own a chair that Kris and I bought soon after we were married in 1993.

I deliberately buy top-quality tools with the idea that I never want to replace them.

As much as I've been pining for a new car lately, I'm fine with the two I already own: a 2004 Mini Cooper and a 1993 Toyota pickup.

So, on the big infrastructure stuff in my life, maybe I'm closer to my grandparents than I thought.

I'm not so good at smaller consumer items, though, and I know it. I buy a lot of books. I buy a lot of clothes. (It doesn't help that my weight and waste have fluctuated so much over the past twenty years: up and down, up and down.) And, especially, I spend a lot on technology. This is the big exception I mentioned above.

Because I live online, it's important for me to have the best available tools at my disposal. (Or maybe I'm just rationalizing?) I've upgraded every device I own in the past twelve months, and I know it. I'm now going to see how long I can make them last.

Eat It Up. Wear It Out. Make It Do. Go Without.

My grandparents embodied the virtue of thrift. Whether consciously or unconsciously, they followed the old New England proverb: “Eat it up. Wear it out. Make it do. Go without.” (Nowadays, that's more commonly seen as: “Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without.” It's the same thing.)

This simple mantra is powerful. It encourages you to:

Don't buy things until you need them. Use up your current supply first. When you're out, make a note of it, and replace the item next time you're shopping. Don't replace it before you're finished, though, and do not stock up on case of it from Costco. (I'm bad at this, I'll admit. Low on ketchup? I'll buy a case today!)

Make the most of what you have. If it's not broken or depleted, don't replace it. This is especially important when it comes to clothing and other items subject to fashion. If your old jacket still sheds rain and keeps you warm, don't buy a new one simply because the old one is out of style.

Be creative and resourceful with the things you already own. Yes, sometimes you'll need to buy specialized tools. I learned that last winter when replacing our kitchen faucet. I didn't want to buy a basin wrench, but I needed a basin wrench. Many times, though, you can make do with something approximate. Or something less than perfect.

Finally, and most importantly, recognize that you can't have everything. It's okay to live without some of the things you want. It's good for you. It builds character! (Wow. I sound like my grandfather…)

I'm pleased with the changes I've made to my lifestyle during the past fifteen years. Yes, I'm more materialistic than my grandparents, but I'm getting better. Yes, my life moves at a faster pace than theirs did, but I've made choices to slow things down.

And while I probably will never embody that New England style of thrift, I do make deliberate decisions that are aligned with this mindset. I try to choose quality over price. When possible, I avoid items designed for planned obsolescence. I've reduced my exposure to advertising by avoiding radio, television, and magazines. (I still see plenty of ads on the internet though.) And I don't give a whit about keeping up with the Joneses.

Honestly, it doesn't make sense for me to expect to live like my grandparents. I live in a different world than they did. I have different priorities, different goals. But in my own way, I can work toward a life based on the virtue of thrift. It's all about making smart purchases, about spending mindfully in ways that are aligned with who I am and what I want out of life.

The post The virtue of thrift appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/virtue-of-thrift/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[bharatiyamedia-blog]

Samsung: We'll announce Galaxy Fold timing 'within the coming weeks'

http://tinyurl.com/y4ctbujw Samsung hasn’t given up on the Galaxy Fold, even 45 days after its first foldable cellphone was deliberate to go on sale within the US on April 26. A Samsung spokesperson affirmed to CNET in an e mail, “We are going to announce timing within the coming weeks.” The corporate paused its $1,980 luxury device on April 22 as a consequence of screen breaks, flickering and bulges beneath the screen on assessment items. Whereas Samsung did not present a selected time-frame by any means, this can be a contemporary affirmation that the world’s largest smartphone-maker nonetheless plans to launch the Galaxy Fold. In Might, Samsung cell chief DJ Koh mentioned that the Fold’s US launch “will not be too late.” CNET’s Galaxy Fold remained intact throughout the assessment interval.  The Galaxy Fold is not the one Samsung product that is on maintain. The Galaxy Home smart speaker, pushed by Samsung’s Bixby assistant, is reportedly coming later this yr, over a yr after it was first introduced, and plenty of months after its projected April window. These delays are uncommon for Samsung, a model that has developed a robust observe file for launching its smartphones very quickly after launch.  The case of the Fold is certainly one of injury management, as Samsung works behind the scenes to fix the screen issues that precipitated injury within the first place, earlier than the $2,00zero units get into clients’ arms. What is not clear is what number of clients are nonetheless wanting to pay up for the cutting-edge cellphone that folds in half, even after Samsung reinforces the show.   Samsung says its Galaxy Fold continues to be coming. Angela Lang/CNET Best Buy recently canceled its Fold preorder sales, which signifies that Fold house owners must preorder anew when and if the cellphone goes again on sale. Samsung’s latest silence casts doubt on Samsung’s ability to ship its foldable device in June, a time-frame prompt by an email AT&T sent in April to its preorder customers. Samsung additionally emailed preorder clients, saying they’d cancel their Galaxy Fold order by May 31 if consumers selected to not opt-in. The tech large will not cost bank cards till the Galaxy Fold ships. AT&T didn’t reply to contemporary requests for remark concerning the Fold’s timeline launch. A T-Cell spokesperson replied, “Please attain out to Samsung for additional info relating to Samsung Galaxy Fold. T-Cell didn’t open up preorders for this system.“ Now enjoying: Watch this: Our Galaxy Fold did not break. Here is what’s good and… 10:12 Nicely, that is awkward… Samsung’s Galaxy Fold delay places Samsung in an ungainly place. Because the world’s largest cellphone maker and the the first major brand to announce a foldable cellphone, Samsung’s fame as an innovator is driving on the Fold, particularly after its spectacular unveiling on Feb. 20.  Samsung’s troubles underscore simply how dangerous and fragile the idea of a foldable cellphone actually is. Foldable telephones characterize a brand new sort of system that is meant to maximise display measurement with out increasing the general measurement of the system. The tech large wished to cleared the path, burnishing its fame as an innovator within the cellphone’s transition to the following large factor.  Till Samsung and different manufacturers can allay consumers’ fears, the way forward for foldable telephones hangs precariously within the steadiness. Intense criticism might damage future gross sales and shake shopper confidence within the idea of foldable phones generally.  The Galaxy Fold’s likelihood to guide the rising class might come underneath hearth if consumers flip their backs on the revolutionary design, or go for a rival mannequin akin to Huawei’s Mate X, TCL’s upcoming designs or a rumored foldable cellphone just like the Motorola Razr. On the flip aspect, these different corporations have the prospect to learn from the Galaxy Fold’s mistakes. Why precipitated Galaxy Fold display injury within the first place? A number of early reviewers skilled injury to the screens on their Galaxy Fold mortgage units, which made the foldable telephones unusable. Photographs of the broken Folds ranged from a completely blacked-out display to a bubbled system, and one with a portion of the display white and the opposite half blacked out.  The Fold has a horizontal clamshell design, the place onerous glass halves shut like a ebook to guard a young 7.3-inch plastic show inside. Samsung even features a case within the Galaxy Fold field as further armor for the glass exterior, in case you drop the cellphone. There could also be a selected motive that among the telephones got here to hurt. Two reviewers skilled a complete display failure after they eliminated a skinny plastic movie that runs alongside the Galaxy Fold’s display. There is a slender hole between this movie and the bezel-edge of the show, which has led to confusion concerning the nature of the movie.  Now enjoying: Watch this: Samsung Galaxy Fold issues defined 3:56 It is not instantly apparent if the plastic layer belongs to the cellphone or if it is the movie you generally see on units to maintain screens smudge- and lint-free throughout delivery and storage. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman came upon the onerous approach that the latter wasn’t the case. He tweeted this about his assessment unit final week: “The display on my Galaxy Fold assessment unit is totally damaged and unusable simply two days in. Arduous to know if that is widespread or not.” YouTube reviewer Marques “MKBHD” Brownlee had the same expertise after peeling the layer off his Galaxy Fold assessment unit.  PSA: There is a layer that seems to be a display protector on the Galaxy Fold’s show. It is NOT a display protector. Do NOT take away it. I acquired this far peeling it off earlier than the show spazzed and blacked out. Began over with a alternative. pic.twitter.com/ZhEG2Bqulr — Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) April 17, 2019 “PSA: There is a layer that seems to be a display protector on the Galaxy Fold’s show,” he tweeted. “It is NOT a display protector. Do NOT take away it.” However the protecting movie is not the one supply of Samsung’s early troubles. CNBC’s Todd Haselton experienced screen flickering on the left aspect of his assessment system. The Verge’s Dieter Bohn additionally had points, with Bohn’s display forming a bulge beneath the floor. On Tuesday, YouTube reviewer Michael “Mr. Cell” Fisher additionally found a bump beneath his Galaxy Fold display. Learn: The Galaxy Fold can’t have this one useful thing These studies of a defective Galaxy Fold are a nightmare scenario for Samsung, the primary main model to promote a foldable cellphone. The Fold — which has a 4.6-inch display on the surface, a bendable 7.3-inch display on the within and a virtually $2,00zero price ticket — is a serious threat for the tech large. Ought to I be nervous? Whereas the reported issues make the affected Galaxy Fold unusable, they don’t seem to be harmful, in contrast to the ill-fated Galaxy Note 7, which was discovered to overheat and typically catch hearth. What’s Samsung doing to repair the issue? We’re conscious that Samsung is doing three issues: Investigating damaged units. Reinforcing the internal plastic screens for remaining manufacturing items. Clarifying packaging to speak with Fold house owners to not peel off a protecting display layer. Samsung mentioned in an announcement, “We are going to take measures to strengthen the show safety. We may even improve the steering on care and use of the show together with the protecting layer in order that our clients get probably the most out of their Galaxy Fold.” Now enjoying: Watch this: Individuals attempt the Galaxy Fold for the primary time 5:50 As well as, we have requested Samsung what it thinks occurred, if consumers can really feel assured that their Folds will not break, and the way Samsung will make it clear what future Fold house owners ought to and should not do to guard their telephones. To this point Samsung hasn’t addressed these particular questions, however has mentioned that Fold house owners ought to contact Samsung buyer care (1-800-SAMSUNG) in the event that they expertise any issues. We hope to get a couple of extra particulars earlier than the foldable units go on sale.  Learn: Sucking up to buyers might be Samsung’s best way out of this Galaxy Fold mess What does this Fold incident imply for Google Android assist? Google’s support for the category of foldable phones is unwavering. At its annual Google I/O conference on Might 7, Google’s Senior Android Director, Stephanie Saad Cuthbertson, mentioned that foldable telephones “open up a whole new class which, although early, may simply change the way forward for cell computing.”  Android Q, the upcoming refresh of Google’s cell working system, will give attention to App Continuity, the software program that helps telephones just like the Galaxy Fold shortly transfer an lively app from one display and orientation to a different, say from a small display on the surface to a bigger display on the within and again once more, with out lacking a beat. Since builders do not usually make their apps for foldable screens, standardized developer instruments and greatest practices will assist make these apps work higher on foldable screens.  Google’s ongoing function right here means that the Fold’s points are a pothole, moderately than a roadblock, on the trail to foldable cellphone designs. What is that this movie layer thingamajiggy everybody’s speaking about?    Let’s deal with the movie layer first. I had acquired my assessment unit on Monday morning, then shot an unboxing video, and nervous that I had forgotten to take off this plastic layer — what would the YouTube viewers say?!  Seems, what appears like a paper-thin sheet of plastic overlaying the foldable cellphone’s 7.3-inch show is a protecting layer that is essential to serving to preserve the cellphone damage-free. You may see the perimeters of that layer right here, on my assessment unit: Look intently and you’ll see a skinny line hugging the display simply past the bezel. That is the protecting layer that Samsung needs to stay firmly in place. Angela Lang/CNET OK, so now we’re clear: No matter you do, do not peel again this movie. It is a part of the display and unhealthy issues occur if you take away it. However once more, the protecting layer is not the entire story, as a result of two different reviewers, Haselton and Bohn, mentioned that they did not take away the movie, and nonetheless had issues that rendered the Fold unusable. So what is going on on? What is the cope with the Galaxy Fold’s display? The Galaxy Fold has a totally totally different display setup than every other cellphone. There is a 4.6-inch show on the surface that is coated with Gorilla Glass — that is the identical as different Galaxy phones just like the S10 and S10 Plus ($900 at Walmart). However inside, the display is fabricated from a plastic (polymer) materials that Samsung calls its Infinity Flex Display. Samsung created this with a brand new course of and particular adhesives to resist the display’s bending and flexing with out breaking. The display protector layer is supposed to stay in place to forestall injury to the show beneath — that is the factor that really makes your “display” mild up. With out the hardness of glass to cowl the fragile show, the Fold is extra susceptible, one thing that is develop into vividly obvious. What it is like to observe Netflix on the Galaxy Fold Angela Lang/CNET Is there one thing totally different concerning the assessment telephones? Sure. Reviewers acquired early manufacturing fashions. Which means these aren’t the ultimate assessment items, and might be vulnerable to sure points that Samsung might need the chance to repair earlier than the Fold reaches consumers’ arms. For instance, I used to be advised that my assessment unit is an unlocked European model that does not assist US companies like Bixby Voice, Samsung Well being and Samsung Pay. Likewise, I used to be warned that decision high quality is perhaps compromised as a result of the cellphone is not optimized to US bands. Whereas I am totally testing this assessment unit of the Galaxy Fold, I’m withholding a ranking till I obtain the ultimate manufacturing mannequin CNET ordered. Now enjoying: Watch this: Watch Samsung’s Galaxy Fold stress check 1:02 Did Samsung say you are not alleged to take away the movie? It is not clear if Samsung totally briefed each reviewer who acquired a cellphone concerning the display protector layer. There was no instruction in my field — no literature in any respect, the truth is — but in addition no different indication, like a pull tab, that you must take away it. I nearly did anyway. As a reviewer, I prefer to expertise the cellphone as “clear” as potential. Which means all the things I can peel off goes to return off. I emailed Samsung for extra details about this layer on Tuesday. A spokesperson responded, “Galaxy Fold is manufactured with a particular protecting layer. It isn’t a display protector — don’t try and take away it.” 100% did the identical actual factor and the within display spazzed. There must be a PSA or writing within the field. — Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) April 17, 2019 The corporate additional elaborated its place: “A couple of reviewers reported having eliminated the highest layer of the show inflicting injury to the display. The primary show on the Galaxy Fold contains a prime protecting layer, which is a part of the show construction designed to guard the display from unintended scratches. Eradicating the protecting layer or including adhesives to the principle show might trigger injury. We are going to guarantee this info is clearly delivered to our clients.” Samsung added this assertion as properly:  “The protecting layer is a part of the show construction designed to guard the display from unintended scratches. The primary show of the Galaxy Fold is made with a brand new, superior polymer layer and adhesive that is versatile and hard sufficient to endure repeated folding actions. As a result of the principle show is made with polymer, the additional protecting layer is in place to protect towards impression. It is constructed into the show which is why it shouldn’t be eliminated by power. Shoppers who discover that the protecting layer isn’t built-in on the show ought to contact Samsung buyer care at 1-800-SAMSUNG as quickly as potential to keep away from any extra injury to the show.” Desmond Smith, director of artistic content material and a tech evangelist at T-Mobile, tweeted that the service’s remaining manufacturing fashions will include a warning on the wrap that goes over the Galaxy Fold’s display: However peeling off the Fold’s display layer is not the one difficulty  Whereas eradicating the plastic movie precipitated an issue for some, it is not completely clear what the protecting movie does or how its removing pertains to the display’s conduct. Do not forget that two of the reviewers stored the protector on. Bohn and Fisher suspect {that a} piece of mud or particles might have develop into lodged underneath the display to create the bulge he felt, and a slight distortion on the Fold’s floor. Haselton, in the meantime, noticed a persistent display flicker over the left half of the display. We all know that two batteries, one on both sides, work in live performance to type a single energy supply. I am not {an electrical} or chemical engineer, however I ponder if that might point out a battery difficulty. Hopefully we’ll all discover out a method or one other. At any fee, the Galaxy Fold’s dangerous design has created some inconsistencies that might injury its early manufacturing telephones and its fame. The cellphone comes with this protecting layer/movie. Samsung says you aren’t alleged to take away it. I eliminated it, not understanding you’re not alleged to (shoppers received’t know both). It appeared detachable within the left nook, so I took it off. I imagine this contributed to the issue. pic.twitter.com/fU646D2zpY — Mark Gurman (@markgurman) April 17, 2019 Why are bendable screens fabricated from plastic within the first place? Proper now, glass would not bend so properly. That is one thing that Corning — the maker of Gorilla Glass, which covers most high-end telephones — is working on. Do not count on bendable glass to avoid wasting second-gen foldable telephones, although. It will not be prepared for a while. Now enjoying: Watch this: The bendable glass that’s shaping as much as cowl foldable… 4:06 Revealed April 17, 2019. Up to date most not too long ago Might 31 and June 7, June 10, 2019 at 8:05 a.m. PT: Provides Samsung’s affirmation that it’ll nonetheless announce a timeline for the Galaxy Fold launch. Source link

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHAT YOU KNOW

And so in starting a startup generally. The only way you're ever going to extract any value from it is to redefine the problem. They let their acquaintance drift, but only a few thousand are startups. The angel agrees to invest at a pre-money valuation of $1 million to a 20% chance of $10 million, while the percentages might end up looking like this, where your mind is free to roam, that it bumps into new ideas. You can mitigate this with subsidies at the bottom and taxes at the top, but unless taxes are high enough to discourage people from creating wealth, not by suing people. At least, that's the recipe for a lot of startups that end up going public didn't seem likely to at first. Though quite successful, it did not crush Apple. So Don't be evil. There was a friend they wanted to make more, but not random: I found my doodles changed after I started studying painting.

The word was first used for backers of Broadway plays, but now that the reaction is self-sustaining what drives it is the people. By breaking software development, Apple gets the opposite of what they intended: the version of an app currently available in the App Store approval process is broken. Enjoy it while it lasts, and get as much as a checkout clerk because he is a warlord who somehow holds her in thrall.1 Like a kid tasting whisky for the first time, realizing with shock that the players were deliberately bumping into one another, and techniques spread rapidly between them. Silicon Valley and other places. Don't go out of business, even if the audience doesn't understand all the details. They let their acquaintance drift, but only a little more extreme than other big companies because they can threaten a counter-suit.2 Want to try a frightening thought experiment?3 If you've truly made something good, you're doing well.

They'd face some challenges if they wanted me to introduce them to more investors. Then I asked what was the maximum percentage of the money they manage: about 2% a year in management fees, plus a percentage of the gains.4 The four causes: open source, which makes software free; the Web, which makes promotion free if you're good; and better languages, which make development a lot cheaper. We would at most have said that one could be a problem if customers feel pinched: you may even be false, in industrial democracies.5 Craigslist is effectively upwind of enormous revenues. Such deals may be a net win for founders, who have nothing, would prefer a 100% chance of $1 million. Wealth When I was five I thought electricity was created by electric sockets. Which seems to me exactly what one would want to be CFO of a public company now.6 The prototypical rich man of the nineteenth century was not a tenth as motivated as the startup. We tolerate noise and mess and junk food, but not if you're working on technology.

It certainly describes what happened in finance too. Some of the founders. Responding to Tone. Most people prefer to remain in denial about problems.7 And yet fighting is just as much work as thinking about real problems. With an apparently inexhaustible sum of money sitting safely in the bank, the founders didn't seem like us. I often spent money I desperately needed on stuff that I didn't ask my parents for seed money, though. Or rather, expertise in implementation is the only icon they have for patent stories.8 Whether you end up among the living or the dead comes down to the third ingredient, not giving up. You turn the fan back on, and the serfs who work their estates. Most startups face similar challenges, so we hope these will be useful to have metaphors in a programming language?

Throw away a perfectly good rotary telephone?9 The gradual accumulation of checks in an organization proposes to add a few more checks on public companies. Forms up to this point can usually be ignored as proving nothing. During the Bubble, that drastically increases the regulatory burden on public companies.10 A frightening prospect? For a startup, then if the startup fails, you fail. And yet also in a way a question doesn't. Viaweb's was the Microsoft Word of ecommerce. I can't think of one that began in an incubator. If you're a hacker and you're presenting to experienced investors, they're probably better at detecting bullshit than you are.11

Angel rounds are their whole business, as online video was for YouTube.12 A fine idea, but the thousand little things the big company doesn't want to see the rehearsals. It seemed like selling out. The rewards would come later. Palm and RIM haven't a hope. General Motors. So seed investors usually care less about the idea than the people. And everyone knows that if you don't have to be wound. The second is that different startups need such different things, so you have to do that completely.

Well, probably; I mean it as a way to develop applications now is to launch fast and iterate. I was still trying to convince myself I could start a startup you should have sufficient vision not to need this crutch. So why do they need to offer different kinds of prosperity. The importance of personal introductions varies, but is less than with angels or VCs.13 The good news is that they're getting it for free. Where can you find more people who love that sort of thing? In the early 20th century, working-class people tried hard to look middle class.

Notes

It's possible that companies will one day be able to claim that companies like Google and Facebook are driven only by money—for example, if you turn out to coincide with other people's. The wartime versions were much more attractive to investors, but definitely monotonically. If only one person could go at a 5 million cap. You may be whether what you care about the Airbnbs during YC.

01. Do not finance your startup.

The existence of people who did invent things worth 100x or even shut the company by doing everything in exactly the opposite. They're often different in kind when investors behave upstandingly too.

The kind of bug to track ratios by time of day, because it has about the origins of the mail by Anton van Straaten on semantic compression. The application described here is one you take to pay employees this way is basically the market. 001 negative effect on social conventions about executive salaries were low partly because companies then were more at home at the bottom as they turn from their screen to answer the first time as an example of applied empathy.

Hypothesis: A company will be familiar to slip back into it. Forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups.

The history of the increase in economic inequality to turn into other forms of inequality, and so on?

Their opinion carries the same trick of enriching himself at the bottom of a severe-looking man with a product manager about problems integrating the Korean version of this talk became Why Startups Condense in America consider acting white.

Of the remaining outcomes don't have a better user experience. 9999 and. The other reason it's easy to slide into thinking that customers want what you care about GPAs. But it is still hard to compete directly with open source project, but it's not enough to turn Buffalo into a form you forgot to fill out can be explained by math.

We just store the data, it's easy to believe this much.

As the art business? Foster, Richard Florida told me how he had never invented anything—that an idea where there were some good proposals too. The top VCs thus have a one world viewpoint, deciding to move forward. In the Valley use the local builders built everything in exactly the opposite way as part of your universities is significantly lower, about 1.

But that oversimplifies his role.

Icio. Doing Business in 2006, http://www.

I put it this way, I asked some founders who'd taken series A investor has a similar variation in wealth, seniority will become as big as any adult's. I wonder how much they lied to them about. In A Plan for Spam.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Benedict Evans, Rich Draves, Fred Wilson, Carolynn Levy, Garry Tan, Jackie McDonough, Jessica Livingston, and Sarah Harlin for inviting me to speak.

[trendingnewsb]

5 Old Photos From History That’ll Blow Your Minds

We have this idea that history was all pomp and circumstance, and despite this site’s best efforts to ruin/improve your understanding, it’s a myth that persists. Case in point: There are certain places that you immediately think of as being boring forever. But once you dig into the richness of history, you kinda find the badass, surprising, and occasionally stupid secrets that have been kept buried. Like how …

5

Tutankhamun’s Tomb Looked Like A Hoarder’s Cave Of Crap

Although we’re fairly certain that nobody reading this was there at the time, you probably have an idea in your head of what the tomb of King Tut must have looked like when they opened it up in 1922. Surely, the archaeologists were greeted by cascading piles of gold treasure, well-preserved scrolls describing lost-long wisdom of the ages, and at least one ancient booby trap containing a skeleton with an explorer hat, right? Nope! It mostly looked like piles of millennia-old crap, like a dud episode of Storage Wars.

Harry Burton

Harry Burton

Harry BurtonIs that a portable bidet on the lower-right? Was … was King Tut a gamer?

You see, packing for a long vacation is always stressful, and it was the same for the Ancient Egyptians, except a little more death-y. It was a popular belief that the afterlife was basically another life (nowlife?), and that whatever possessions you packed in your tomb, well … that was it. You were stuck with them forever, because the next realm had little in the way of IKEA and Walmart. And Tut, being a one-percenter, had more death baggage to pack than most.

Read Next

Uranus Is Secretly Amazing (So Knock Off The Fart Jokes)

The tomb, known by the droid-esque name of KV62, was so tightly packed with miscellenea that it took nearly ten years to catalog and empty the place. This might sound like the archaeologists were milking their overtime pay, but KV62 contained, give or take, 5,000 antique, fragile-as-hell objects, including six chariots, chests of jewelry, enough weapons to outfit an army, 30 jars of wine, more board games than an old folks’ home, countless statues and ornaments, and over a hundred walking sticks. That’s not even including, you know, the gold-plated body. The real curse, it turns out, was compulsive hoarding.

Harry Burton

Harry Burton“Where does he want the giant bull’s head?” “No idea, just stick it in the corner.”

4

The Sphinx Was Once Surrounded By Vacationing Samurai

The samurai are considered to be one of history’s greatest fighting forces, whose very name invokes images of honor, badassery, and people getting sworded through their chests, Alien-style. The Sphinx is one of history’s greatest icons, reminiscent of empire and lore and mystery and big-ass cat people. Combine the two, and you’ve got yourself a surefire blockbuster summer hit, possibly about time travel and definitely starring Mark Wahlberg.

Or this photo, whatever.

Antonio BeatoSamurai Spring Break was one of Kurosawa’s lesser-known films.

This photograph from 1864 shows a group of fully decked-out samurai, complete with the costumes, hats, and swords that you’re already picturing in your mind’s eye, relaxing in front of the Sphinx like they’re on a brocation. And to be fair, they kinda were. The guys were travelling to France as part of the Ikeda Mission, a diplomatic mission so important that they simply couldn’t resist the urge to have a pit stop and make every holiday photo you’ve ever and will ever take look like a crusty dog turd by comparison.

3

The Lincoln Memorial Once Looked Like A Rejected Fallout Landscape

Washington, D.C. is fetid swampland, both metaphorically and literally. In its early days, before America was even a thing, it was a low-lying marsh known as Tiber Creek, and it was this way until the late 1800s, when the creek was dredged and dried out to create this magnificen- oh.

Library of Congress“D.C.” originally stood for “Danger: Crocodiles.”

This photo of the Lincoln Memorial was taken in 1917, which is both shockingly modern and, in terms of demonstrating how well we’re doing at hashtag draining the swamp, a very effective visual metaphor. The greenery isn’t the result of having sent all the gardeners and horticulturalists to get machine-gunned in equally damp conditions (although construction of the memorial’s interior had stalled by this time for this reason); it’s the swamp trying to reclaim the land. By 1922, we’d won that war and locked the nature beneath a solid foundation of concrete, tarmac, cherry blossoms, and intern skeletons, where it sits bubbling away, waiting.

2

St. Petersburg Once Hosted A Massive Game Of Human Chess

It’s fair to say that even the most anti-sports among us like it when sporting events go big — the Superbowl, the FA Cup, the World Polo Championship, etc. There’s just something about spectacle and frenzied crowds that makes the hateful, cynical part of our brains switch off, although that’s also a common side effect of drinking so much beer that your bar tab can be measured in kegs.

It was the same in the old-timey days, although the events were … a little different.

Russian Federation37 people died when one player got upset and flipped the board.

Take this gigantic chess match played in St. Petersburg’s Palace Square between the mightiest nerds of 1924, Peter Romanovsky and Ilya Rabinovich, who called their moves in via telephone. This wasn’t just some geek shit, either. It was part of a huge government push to get more young people interested in chess than Russia’s other popular youth activity of the day, shooting aristocrats in basements. As a result, the pieces were cosplayed by the military, with the Red Army representing the black pieces and the Soviet Navy representing the white ones. There’s no word on who won the match, but we can bet that both players duked it out relentlessly for the grand prize of coming in second place and not having their lunch money stolen by Lenin.

1

Here Are The Photos That The Supreme Court Doesn’t Want You To See (For Some Reason)

The Supreme Court is possibly the most important court in the land, after those of the “food,” “basketball,” and “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s“ variety. It’s where gavels are banged, arguments are settled, and bitterly sarcastic judgments are made. In other words, it’s as boring as any other non-TV courtroom … except for the bizarre rule that photography is completely banned, to the extent that all electronic devices are confiscated, no less in an age where even our shoes are hardwired.

Of course, if you tell a mouse that cookies aren’t allowed, that mouse is going to chew through your walls and eat cookies right in front of your stupid face. Behold, the forbidden sight:

Erich SalmonHoly crap! It’s a court!

The only two photos in existence of the Supreme Court come courtesy of 1932 and 1937, back when Judge Scalia hadn’t yet watched his parents be gunned down in an alleyway by progressivism. The first photo, daringly reprinted above, was taken by Erich Salmon, who faked a broken arm and hid a camera inside the sling, showing a degree of inventiveness only matched by horny teenagers in ’80s sex comedies.

The second was taken by an anonymous woman who cut out a hole in her purse, slipped a camera inside, and mastered shooting from the hip so as to avoid suspicion.

As far as video goes, there’s also this tantalizing piece shot by Citizens United protesters in 2014, after they interrupted deliberations to rally against big money in politics, but got served a hearty dose of security boot heels inside their bungholes.

But don’t worry, no one’s gonna come arrest you just for watch- hold up, someone’s at the door.

Adam Wears is on Twitter and Facebook, and has a newsletter about depressing history that you should definitely subscribe to.

Did you know they’re still making Polaroid-style cameras? The printed photo, making a comeback!

Support Cracked’s journalism with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more, check out 5 Modern Things In Historical Images That Shouldn’t Exist and 29 Images That Will Change How You Picture History.

Follow us on Facebook, if you like jokes and stuff.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_25552_5-old-photos-from-history-thatll-blow-your-minds.html

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[webittech]

Secret activities presume completely thought messages to Chinese intel were erased "Mallory communicated amaze at seeing some protected message history."

On June 22, Kevin Patrick Mallory was brought under the watchful eye of a US government judge for his first hearing on charges that he sold exceedingly grouped records to a Chinese knowledge operator. These reports, which are viewed as "National Defense Information," included no less than one Top Secret archive and three delegated Secret and were found on a telephone Mallory had been given by his Chinese contacts. Mallory, a 60-year-old previous Central Intelligence Agency worker living in Leesburg, Virginia, had thought the records were in messages that had been erased naturally from the gadget. Mallory faces life in jail if sentenced.

Mallory, a free expert, had already been a representative of "different government offices" and also a few safeguard contractual workers. An Army veteran, Mallory worked at the State Department from 1987 to 1990. Furthermore, as indicated by The Washington Post, Mallory was additionally affirmed to have worked at the CIA, among different spots. As indicated by the FBI, Mallory was likewise an Army reservist amid this time and served on dynamic obligation for a few organizations. For quite a bit of his vocation, he held a Top Secret leeway, which was repealed when he cleared out taxpayer supported organization in 2012.

As indicated by the prosecution, eventually amid his administration at the anonymous office or at a resistance temporary worker, Mallory—who is conversant in Mandarin—discharged out a gathering of reports. Mallory told the FBI that while in China doing counseling work for a state-financed think tank in March and April of this current year, he was drawn nearer by people he at that point accepted to be with China's insight benefit and was given a telephone to speak with them subtly. Amid a meeting with the FBI on May 24, FBI specialist Stephen Green described in an oath asking for a capture warrant:

Mallory told the specialists that amid his latest trek to the PRC in April 2017, he had been given the gadget by [one Chinese contact] and was prepared to utilize it particularly for private interchanges with [that contact], an individual he trusts works for the PRCIS [Peoples' Republic of China Intelligence Services]. Mallory construct this evaluation in light of the different cases of PRCIS tradecraft and taskings which would be predictable with PRC government authorities or insight officers (hereinafter "IOs"), and would be conflicting with the acts of a real business organization. Mallory told the FBI operators that he was a previous U.S. government representative who had preparing and abroad operational experience, which made it simple for him to spot tradecraft.

Mallory's issues started when he came back from China on April 21, when US Customs and Border Protection discovered $16,500 in trade out his gear that he had neglected to pronounce. Mallory told the Customs specialists talking with him that he had gone to China to meet "with a person whom he knew through Mallory's congregation, and expressed that he was counseling with this person on hostile to harassing/family wellbeing improvement," the FBI oath states. Mallory likewise disclosed to CBP that he had not gotten anything from that individual.

Promptly after he was permitted to change his affirmation and finished his traditions talk with, Mallory endeavored to contact a worker at an anonymous government organization (likely the CIA) to set up a gathering to enlighten them concerning his contacts in China. On May 12, he got that gathering and was approached to get the telephone for examination. When he returned for that second gathering (on May 24), he was welcomed by FBI specialists and consented to a deliberate meeting. He asserted that he had been paid for "white papers" he had composed for his "customer" and had not exchanged any ordered information.

As Mallory disclosed the gadget to the operators, he demonstrated the mystery informing application he had been told to utilize. Sadly for Mallory, the FBI affirmation reports, "While doing this, Mallory communicated astound at seeing some safe message history. Before the show, he had told the specialists that he trusted the correspondence framework was intended to erase all past history." The message history included one from him that stated, "I can likewise come amidst June, I can bring the rest of the records I have around then."

Mallory guaranteed to specialists that he was "leading on" the Chinese.

The FBI took a measurable picture of the gadget and could recuperate different messages traded after Mallory's arrival from China. They were condemning:

Mallory asking for technical support: "Likewise, we may need to go again well ordered in my getting the archive to end up some portion of the picture. At that point sending it to you."

The Chinese contact: "I recommend you send all and retype the penmanship. Furthermore, [document] NO1 is clear the main page of an entire article, where the else is and why it is dark to finish everything and bottom....We will attempt our best to apply for another entirety of sum, as you required. Be that as it may, I don't know it will be the Same sum for the time being and I will attempt, and for security, we can't send u in one time or in a brief period by and large, need to make sense of a superior way."

Mallory reacted: "The dark was to cross out the security grouping (TOP SECRET//ORCON//...I needed to get it out without the possibility of disclosure. Unless read in detail, it seemed like a straightforward note...I have organized a USD account in another name. You can send the assets broken into 4 level with installments more than 4 back to back days.. .When you concur I will send you the bank E.g. guidelines."

Mallory once more, speaking obviously about the Customs talk with: "It was uncertain (find it) when they requested me by name. In the event that they we searching for me as far as State Secrets, and found the SD card..., we would not talk today. I am going for broke as you, [another China contact], and higher up managers know... When you get the OK to supplant the earlier installment, at that point I will send more docs. I will likewise type my notes. NOTE: later on, I will obliterate every single electronic record after you affirm receipt... I effectively annihilated the paper records. I can't keep these around, excessively unsafe."

Another Mallory message: "your protest is to pick up data, and my question is to be paid for."

His contact's reaction: "My present protest is to ensure your security and endeavor to repay you."

Pictures found in the telephone's information incorporated a written by hand file of eight archives. Four of those records were on the telephone, and they included Top Secret and Secret ordered information.

[sudsybear]

Playing house before good-bye

Greg and Ross had been best friend since childhood. Greg’s birthday was coming up, and Ross wanted to make his friend happy with a birthday gift. The “Dart” letters of Greg’s car were missing, so I suggested we buy Greg an “F” – change his Dart to a Fart. Ross loved the idea…but was stumped. Where to buy an “F”? We called the Ford dealership, and for something like $26.95 (expensive for us at the time) we bought an “F”, took it home and found a jewelry box to put it in. Presentation is fully half the fun, so I wrapped it in pretty paper and used fancy ribbon and large loopy bow. We thought it was hysterical. When he opened it, Greg was a bit befuddled. Either he didn’t get the joke, or we thought it was much funnier than it actually was. An expensive (for us at the time) joke that fizzled.

 *          *          *

 Like so many teens preparing to leave home, I was scared. And my anxiety was escalating. In an attempt to mollify my fear, Dad called the University housing office and got names and phone numbers of my suitemates. I had applied and was accepted to live on the Inter Class Living Center; one floor of a dorm set aside for a hand-picked group of students – with a deliberate mix of class standing; sixteen freshman and sixteen upperclassmen – sophomores, juniors and two seniors. I thought staying away from a “freshman ghetto” would be a good experience. Still, I was anxious. And sometime between Fourth of July and Ross’ birthday on the 23rd, I got a formal note from the school regarding my assigned roommate, Vivyan Golbois.

 With my parents’ permission, I called her long distance. I said I wanted to coordinate large ticket items – stereo? TV? But I was really far more interested in finding out if we would “click”. Would we have anything in common? On the phone, she had a thick NY accent, which didn’t inspire confidence. Her family’s apartment in New York City was in the flight path of Kennedy airport. We paused our conversation every 3-5 minutes, whenever an airplane took off or landed. I learned she would attend an earlier orientation session, so we would not meet up until it was time to move in together. I didn’t get a good feeling about this at all.

 Even with the application-only housing, and calling my intended roommate, I was still scared. I signed up for a “big sister” program on campus. The University matched me with an enthusiastic sorority girl, and we exchanged a letter or two, with promises of showing me the ropes when I arrived on campus. It was something to look forward to anyway.

 *          *          *

 In late July, my parents went off to Augusta Heritage Center at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, WV  (I called it adult summer camp). Ross’ parents spent that same week vacationing in Michigan. When I started this project, I found Mom’s postcards mixed in the same box with Ross’ letters, and I smiled at the memory. Ross and I were well aware of the timing and did all sorts of non-answering of questions to make sure our respective parental units were unaware of each other’s travel plans. Just imagine a full week of two teenagers madly in lust and no parental supervision! Ah sweet freedom! Sure, I still had to take care of the dogs, and mow the lawn if it needed it, and Mom did arrange to have someone stay at the house to make sure all was safe. But the freedom! We played house together that week, arranging meals and other domestications. We both had to work, so we couldn’t get into much trouble anyway.

 One afternoon while we were on our own, Ross and I went to the Swim Club (for his birthday?). The Swim Club was just that – a private club formed for the sole purpose of providing a private swim experience. The facilities consisted of an Olympic size in-ground swimming pool, with separate deep end for diving, a snack bar and a kiddie pool. We must have had guest passes since neither of our families were members. When we arrived, the pool was mostly empty. The mothers with toddlers had gone home for naps, and the pre-teens were called home for dinner. With twilight falling around us, a few friends showed up and we played Marco-Polo, got into splash fights and the like. Our play eventually became an in-pool wrestling match, and I got up on Ross’ shoulders and we teamed against another couple, trying to knock the other pair over. Games like that always inspire sexual passion, and we were no exception. After a while we left the swim club and drove back to his house to finish the game privately, delighting in our physical pleasures as comfortably as we enjoyed each other’s company.

 That same week, while our parents were away, Ross and Scott decided to re-paint their basement. A dark dank room with two small casement windows and the stairway to the main floor, the room was the main entrance to the house from the garage. It was also the hallway to the laundry area. Scott and Ross wanted to use the space for their music equipment, so wanted to spruce up the room. They enlisted Mark’s and my help and dug out some maroon house paint – the same stuff Ross had used to paint the Pinto. We put down drop cloths and started painting. No wall preparation, no thought to the project at all. Just pull out the paint and start in.

 We had no ventilation. The windows hadn’t been opened in twenty years – they were covered with vines from the window wells. Sure we propped open the door to the garage, but that’s not “adequate ventilation.” We had no experience with proper painting techniques either. We set up the paint bucket and roller pan in one corner of the room and proceeded from there, not even bothering to move the decrepit pump organ that was planted in the corner. We just painted around it.

 A few hours later, paint fumes affected our juvenile brains. Tired and hungry, we abandoned the project. Paint dripped across the floor because we hadn’t figured out how to move the paint tray around with us as we finished one section and moved to the next. I don’t think we ever actually finished painting all four walls. But some months later, Scott did move his guitars and amplifiers down there for his band to practice. I learned later that the basement stayed in that state of arrested development for another fifteen years. It was finally re-painted when they put the house on the market and built new.

 *          *          *

 Over a week to ourselves, our reliance on each other deepened. We mastered communication skills, coordinated schedules, arranged meals. We practiced the art of living together. Our respective parents returned from their sojourns from parenting and the four of us, Ross, Scott, Mark and I all had to readjust to life with supervision. But by this time, Ross’ and my late night escapades were normal for us - dinner and a movie, late at night, talking intimately as he drove around the Hamilton County back-country.

 My absence from home drove my parents crazy, and they tried to crack down on us. I was rarely there – only to sleep, LATE at night (early morning?) and to use the shower and laundry facilities. I still had to mow the lawn, and help with chores, but overall, they couldn’t stop us.

 My parents finally confronted me on a night in early August. I got in none too quietly at 3 a.m. or later just one too many times for their comfort. The dogs barked from under their bed, waking them up. They accosted me in the kitchen as I walked in the back door.

 “Young lady, where have you been?”

 “With Ross.”

 “Where? We called Jeynes’ and they didn’t know where you were.”

 “Out. We were driving around. We went to Denny’s after the movie.”

 “We’ve had enough of this. This behavior is not acceptable. We can’t trust you.”

 “I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs. I work (babysit) every Friday and Saturday night to earn my own money. I’m not going to get pregnant. I tell you who I am going to be with and where I am going. When I go out with Ross, we go after work (mine and his). The typical “date” lasts 4-5 hours. If we leave at 11 p.m., that means I get in at 3 a.m. or later. I’m sorry if that bothers you. Do you have another solution?”

 …uncomfortable silence…

 “We’ll be watching you. Now get yourself upstairs, and we’ll talk more tomorrow”

 “Well, I have to be at so and so’s to babysit at 7:30 ‘til 1 p.m., then I have to be at so and so’s at 3 p.m.”

 “Oh.”

 So much for that discussion…

 Ross and I tried to spend more time at my house, especially after that encounter, but we had dogs – two of them. Ross was vehemently allergic to any creature with fur. Five minutes in our house and he was miserable. He stopped by and stayed in the back yard as much as he could…but it was a challenge. He couldn’t even be in the back yard for long without tearing up and starting with terrible post-nasal drip. (We tried!)  I wanted to be with Ross, and he couldn’t stay at my house, so…I continued staying at his. My parents kept tabs on me…I checked in by telephone, and stopped by the house to leave messages.

 *          *          *

 August 12, my 18th birthday:  Ross had to work, but I arranged my babysitting schedule so I had the day off. Erin invited me to the swim club work on my suntan. We visited with the few friends who were around. Tommy, my Teen Counseling partner, was lifeguard that summer. Late in the afternoon, I dove into the pool to cool off, and hit bottom headfirst. I swam up for air, broke the surface of the water and realized my two front teeth were broken. Shocked, I gulped air and swam to the bottom of the pool to try to find my broken teeth. Unsuccessful and slightly panicked, I swam to the side of the pool and climbed out. I grabbed my towel from my chair, and walked to the front desk to borrow the office phone to call Mom. I lisped my explanation of what happened, and asked what I should do. While she called the dentist office, I dried off and dressed in the changing room. Remarkably calm by this time, after just a couple of more phone calls I told Erin goodbye and drove down to the dentist’s office.

 The dentist was an old family friend – his daughter was a year behind me in school. He and his assistant stayed late to repair my teeth. For my sixteenth birthday I had requested that the gap between my front teeth be closed. The dentist used a new material on the market – bonding. I loved it, and except for photos, had forgotten the gap had ever existed. Two years later, there I was back in the dentists office, hooked up to the nitrous oxide, chatting away with the dentist and his assistant, getting my front teeth repaired. By 7 p.m., with an admonishment to not bite into any apples, no one would ever guess anything had happened.

 Mrs. Jeynes had a package waiting for me at their house…Another plush Opus. I received cards from my brothers and aunts, and all included some money for the coming semester away from home. From my parents? I asked them to foot the phone bill for my upcoming semester…little did I know how much that was going to cost!

 *          *          *

 A few days after my birthday, I stopped by Jeynes’ house per my usual routine. We’d enjoyed a private moment in his bedroom, but Ross was agitated. We stopped, straightened our clothes, and started talking – really talking. The topic was sex, and in my naivete, I didn’t understand masturbation. I was not a practitioner and in my yes, innocence, I didn’t comprehend that young male adolescents survive only because of masturbation. I mistakenly believed masturbation was a practice resorted to because of my own inadequacy. Ross tried to reassure me that my notion was ludicrous, but new to the sex game, I still had my doubts.

 But that’s not all that was wrong. The conversation was awkward and embarrassing for both of us, but we cared for each other and needed to finish our discussion. Scott arrived home, and our privacy was compromised, so we retreated downstairs. Ross still needed to get something off his conscience, and I needed to hear it for him. We sat on the front stoop, a public place that was remarkably private even as cars drove by, and Ross confided his private fetish. He loved wearing women’s clothing. Lingerie was a turn-on for him. Women’s shoes felt wonderful on his feet. He loved to dress up.

 Oh, that was too much for my young self. It’s too much for many old selves. Instead of telling him I loved him for all his generous ways, and for all the good ways he made me feel, I hyperventilated. Breathing heavily, but not getting enough air, I trembled with fear and confusion. I tried to walk away, but could not bear to leave him sitting on that stoop by himself. The late afternoon sun hit the front yard, shadows were long, and the breeze was still hot. I finally calmed down, regained my composure, and started crying. If I felt threatened by jacking-off, how were we going to get through this? We both needed time to cogitate, to meditate. What effect would this have on our relationship? What would we let it do to us? We pledged our love to each other, and agreed to let the matter rest.

 *          *          *

 Julie and Valli were both going to Miami University – not the one in Florida – the one in Oxford, Ohio. They had decided to room together, and had to be up at school in mid-August for rush period. (Miami was almost exclusively Greek.)  Julie’s parents took off the day, and brought Julie and her things to school. For whatever reason, Valli’s parents didn’t have the time to do that. So Ross and I were enlisted to take Valli to college. We packed up the Jeynes’ Oldsmobile Station wagon with her boxes and boxes and suitcases and grocery bags (Valli never did learn to pack well – she always took too much stuff with her) and drove up to Oxford for freshman move-in day. We were there with Valli and Julie and thousands of other freshmen and their parents, jostling for prime parking spots, waiting our turn for the baggage carts, and carrying boxes to the room where Julie and Valli would spend their freshman year.

 I felt bad for Valli. This was a major milestone in her life, and her parents weren’t there to share it. They weren’t there to reassure her. They missed a life-changing event in their daughter’s life. Ross and I left Valli with Julie and her parents, and drove back home. It was a quiet drive back. I sat in the middle of the bench seat, resting my head on Ross’ shoulder. I worried about my own imminent drop-off at the University dorm, and held Ross just a little bit tighter for the fear. I wonder now what thoughts swam through Ross’ head that day. Was he remembering moving in at Wooster? Did he regret moving back home? Was he worried about me going away? Did he wish he was going away to college again?

 *          *          *

 At age 85 my grandmother’s health was failing. (I called her Mommer, a name given her by my cousins years earlier.)  She suffered congestive heart failure for years, along with osteoporosis. She was remarkable in her ability to follow doctor’s orders. She gave up all salt and sodium, took her medications as directed, she exercised daily and wore her back brace every day. Her eyesight was failing despite two cataract surgeries. She was aware of her appearance, maintaining her hair and keeping her clothing neat and in good repair. Her mind was sharp as ever, and she retained her dignity.

 Over the course of the summer, she slowed considerably. Throughout the spring and summer Ross and I stopped by her apartment on occasion to check in or to drop something off that she had requested. Finally in August, she was hospitalized. And in the days before I left home, Ross accompanied me to see her in the hospital. She seemed so tiny in the hospital bed, an IV in her arm, oxygen at her nose, wires hooked up to the heart monitors. Her hair was mussed and uncombed, a testament to her tiredness. We visited, chatting about my plans and gossiping about her neighbors. I naively wished her a speedy recovery. She finally said,  "You don't need to spend time in here with an old lady. You go on out and have fun and don't keep that nice young man waiting.”

 I hugged her awkwardly across the hospital bed, telling her good-bye. Ross said goodbye and we left. I didn’t know it then, but that was the last I would ever see her.

 *          *          *

 Ross arranged to take me sailing. The Saturday before I left for college, we took a picnic lunch up to some lake and borrowed a little sunfish. It was a beautiful afternoon. The height of summer, the heat and humidity might have otherwise been unbearable. But out on the lake with the breeze blowing and the water to cool us off, we didn’t notice how hot it was. When he was growing up, Ross’ family spent summer vacation time either in Michigan along the lake or on the Atlantic seacoast. Ross was very comfortable on the water. I was a little nervous, I last sailed when I was just a preschooler with Dad and my older brothers. I’m much more comfortable in a canoe. Years of Girl Scout camp and a brother who kayaked taught me to enjoy rivers and small lakes, I’ll paddle right along. But I really don't care to be on the water so far from shore. But Ross was at peace; it was what he knew. He had command of the boat and the sails. He watched the wind, and told me when to duck under the sail while he tacked.

 At one point the wind died and we were adrift and had a chance to talk. With all our summer experiences together, sharing our hearts, our bodies, our families, we spent this time sharing our childhoods. He shared memories of playing at the beach with his cousin. I told him about vacations with my family in the mountains of West Virginia. Without a doubt, we were in love.

   An “off to college” gift – delivered the day before I left in late August 1985:

 Read Carefully

 Instructions

 Read instructions

Follow instructions

Read writing below line

Open attatched pkg.

Turn page

Read inside of card

________________________________________________

If, when you are at college, things start to go badly and you think your whole world is going to fall apart,

(open package)

 [inside of card]

 You can fix it.

 Love

 Ross

Pinto ;���

[cinema-tv-etc]

Blow-Up (1966)

A mod London photographer finds something very suspicious in the shots he has taken of a mysterious beauty in a desolate park. Director: Michelangelo Antonioni Writers: Michelangelo Antonioni (story), Julio Cortázar (short story "Las babas del diablo") (as Julio Cortazar) | 3 more credits » Stars: David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles |

See full cast & crew »

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060176/

'Blowup' is frequently mentioned as one of the most influential movies of the twentieth century. And I believe it is. But it is no dry and dull document that the viewer must force himself to "appreciate" while he stifles his yawns. Like 'Citizen Kane', 'Breathless' and 'Psycho' it is not only an important movie milestone, it is still a living and breathing work of art that will fascinate and impress any movie lover who approaches it with an open mind. 'Blowup' lures you in with its snapshot of swinging 60s London, and it's tease of being a murder mystery, which it really isn't, but by then you're hooked. This movie is a puzzle with no solution, a text with any interpretation the viewer cares to bring to it. That may sound heavy going and off putting, but this is a surprisingly watchable movie. Even the "boring" sequences are interesting! Anyone who enjoys David Lynch, Dario Argento (whose 'Profundo Rosso' deliberately referenced this), Nic Roeg or Jim Jarmusch, movies where atmosphere and visual images are more important than characterization, plot or dialogue, will appreciate this 60s classic. I think it gets better with every viewing.

Storyline

A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. Then he meets a mysterious beauty, and also notices something frightfully suspicious on one of his photographs of her taken in a park. The fact that he may have photographed a murder does not occur to him until he studies and then blows up his negatives, uncovering details, blowing up smaller and smaller elements, and finally putting the puzzle together.                Written by Anonymous            

The plot is 24 hours in the life of a glamorous fashion photographer named Thomas (David Hemmings), inspired by the life of an actual "Swinging London" photographer, David Bailey. In the opening scene, Thomas wakes up after spending the night at a doss house where he has taken pictures for a book of art photos. He is late for a photo shoot with Veruschka von Lehndorff (playing herself) at his studio, which in turn makes him late for a shoot with other models later in the morning. He grows bored and walks off, leaving the models and production staff in the lurch. As he leaves the studio, two teenage girls who are aspiring models, a blond (Jane Birkin) and a dark-haired brunette (Gillian Hills) ask to speak with him, but the photographer drives off to look at an antiques shop. Wandering into Maryon Park, he takes photos of two lovers making out. The woman (Vanessa Redgrave) is furious at being photographed and demands that Thomas hand over the film, but he refuses. When she walks away to rejoin her boyfriend, he is gone and she runs away with Thomas taking photos of her as she runs. Thomas then meets his agent for lunch, and notices a man following him and looking into his car. Back at his studio, the mysterious woman from the park arrives asking for the film, but he refuses. The woman introduces herself as 'Jane' and tries to seduce Thomas by removing her top to entice him to hand over the film and negatives. Thomas agrees without going any further, but he deliberately hands Jane a different roll of unused blank film. She in turn writes down a telephone number to give to him. After Jane leaves, Thomas begins work on developing his photos that he took that day. His many enlargements of the black and white film are grainy but he finds something strange. In the Maryon Park photos, Thomas notices a figure hiding in the bushes near Jane and her boyfriend and upon enlarging them in a series of 'blow-up' shots, sees that it is a man with a gun (the same man he saw following him earlier). In the shots where Jane is running away with her back to the camera, Thomas also notices something on the ground in the distance. The blow-up shots of the blurred figure on the ground that Jane is running to appears to be a body in the grass. Thomas gets the feeling that he just witnessed the before and afterwards of a murder. Thomas is disturbed by a knock on the door, but it is only the two girls again, with whom he has a group-sex romp in his studio and falls asleep. Awakening, he finds they hope he will photograph them but he tells them to leave, saying, "Tomorrow! Tomorrow!" As evening falls, Thomas goes back to the park to investigate and finds a dead body (Jane's dead lover), but he has not brought his camera and is scared off by a twig breaking, as if being stepped on by someone unseen watching him. Thomas returns to his studio to find that someone (possibly Jane and her gunman accomplice) has broken into his place and all the negatives and prints from the park are gone except for one large, very grainy blowup showing the body (which proves nothing). He tries to call the phone number Jane gave him, but learns from the operator that the number does not exist. After driving into town, he sees Jane and follows her into a club where The Yardbirds, featuring both Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck on guitar and Keith Relf on vocals, are seen performing the song "Stroll On." A buzz in Beck's amplifier angers him so much he smashes his guitar on stage, then throws its neck into the crowd, the photographer makes a grab for it as a souvenir. Thomas grabs the neck and runs out of the club before anyone can snatch it from him. Then he has second thoughts about it, throws it on the pavement and walks away. A passer-by picks up the neck and throws it back down, not realizing it's from Beck's guitar. Thomas then goes to a drug-drenched party in a house on the Thames near central London. He finds a strung-out Veruschka, who had told him that she was going to Paris, and when confronted, she says she is in Paris. Thomas then meets his agent Ron (Peter Bowles), whom he wants to bring to the park as a witness to show the dead body. However, Thomas (after taking a few puffs from a joint given by a party guest) cannot put across what he has photographed. Ron invites him to stay and they take LSD. Waking up in the house at sunrise after the party, Thomas takes a spare camera from Ron's house with film in it and goes back to the park alone to take photos of the murder victim, but the body is gone without any trace. Befuddled and emotionally defeated, Thomas (aware that someone has just gotten away with murder), begins walking out of the park when, he watches a group of mimes arrive and play a mimed tennis match. Thomas is drawn into it when the mimes beckon him to retrieve their imaginary tennis ball that they have "lost". Beat and deciding to play along, Thomas picks up the imaginary ball and throws it back to the two mimes playing. While he watches the mimes, the sound of the ball being played is heard. Thomas walks out of the park as his image fades away, leaving only the grass as the movie comes to an end.

During the 1960’s, life was all about sex, music, drugs, and night life. People loved expressing their life through their own freedom. The 60’s photography was booming and sex was selling and films were being told in very different ways through the use of cameras. Carlo Di Palma’s Blow-Up was a film that broke all the rules in cinema, which is exactly what people loved. His cinematography is legendary when it comes to taking chances.

Director Michelangelo Antonioni had to have every shot perfect. He is noticed as one of the most successful and visionary directors of his time, if not the best. He would change the whole environment of his films, where he would even end up having structures built. Antonioni had wonderful ideas, but would have had masterpieces if his ideas were not matched with expertise cinematography. The way he illustrates the 60’s in London in this film makes in a living time capsule of the era. The scenes and angles make the film provide a feeling for the viewer as if one was there.

Di Palma said that “there was a lot of preparation for [the film].” He used four cameras to shoot the movie sequence, which was the first time director Antonioni has ever done that in his movies. The lighting was very crucial to the film. They had so many different lights for the movie to look well. Since they had four cameras, it was hard to hide all of the lights in all of the different shots that would happen. The four cameras all had different size lenses, and some of them were moved ways they have never been moved before on cranes and dollys. “We did things that we had never seen before,” Di Palma said about the lightening and cameras.

Blow-Up took the win for the 60’s visionary cinematography. It did, and still is, inspiring both producers and directors through it’s cinematography. Di Palma stated how fortunate he and Antonioni were to complete this film with all of the struggles and problems they faced. Antonioni ended up being the first European director to shoot a film with four cameras. Their hard work paid off and Di Palma and Antonioni became the most looked up to when it came to directors and cinematographers. At this point in time, they were the best the world had to offer. If you watch any movie today, there is a great chance that you will find something that was based off of Anonioni’s ideas and Di Palma’s cinematography.

Whether you love the movie or hate it, you can not deny the fact that the picture of this film opened up a new world for filmmakers. People loved that fact that this photographer was seducing women, and at one point, almost rapes two girls but ends up having a threesome. There are many affairs happening in this movie, whether it be with Thomas and all of the models, or with Jane and her men. Overall, I think that this was a good movie and had even better cinematography. The reason why it became so popular in 1966 is still one of the reasons it is popular today.

https://dollar26.wordpress.com/2014/12/08/blow-up/