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megacircuit9universe · 4 years ago

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Relative Charisma & the Incel

WED SEP 30 2020

So the first of three debates between Trump and Biden happened yesterday, and it was... as CNN’s Jake Tapper so aptly put it, “A hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck.”

I didn’t see it, because I was at work, but I’ve heard enough sound bytes, and seen enough post debate coverage to know that... history will remember this one and play back those clips for centuries to come... of Trump, behaving like an angry, wounded animal.

For some context, despite my last entry, in which the indy left media (TYT mostly) was crying that Biden was losing the election, based on two stand alone polls that had Trump up a tick in two states... Biden’s lead in those and all other states is actually holding, or slightly growing.

I should disclose that my information is coming from an independent YouTube polls analyst whom I’ve come to trust over the past few years. There are many such channels on YouTube, but this guy eventually won me over, because he’s thorough, transparent, always has receipts, and pretty good at calling trends, while keeping expectations grounded in reality.

In my experience, news outlets... be they mainstream media, or indy news sources, only present polling data that they can sensationalize.

Right wing media just deny reality and convince their viewers all news of Trump being behind is fake. But Mainstream media always wants you to think it’s a dead heat... because that gets ratings. Meanwhile, the indy left news wants you to think Biden is losing, to fuel more activism and more participation.

And none of this is the subject of the entry at hand, but... it’s important to get this out of the way as we move into October, when the polling data is really going to be indicative of what happens on Election Day.

I vetted a lot of different YouTube analyst channels and settled on the one I have, because... I trust this guy.

So... when I sit here an say that Biden has a significant lead in all critical states, has several paths to 270, is ahead in national polls, etc... I’m getting that from a trusted source. It’s not just me being blindly optomistic based on some things I happened to pick up here and there.

Okay...

Back to context for Trump behaving like a wounded animal in yesterday’s debate...

On the one hand, yes, Biden is still way ahead, and looking like he’ll be the clear winner... which I’m sure Trump doesn’t like. But on the other hand, Trump was also deeply humiliated this past Sunday when The New York Times published a bunch of his tax returns... going up to 2017 and 2018, when he was, of course, President.

And the story reveals that he’s drowning in debt, and has been for quite a long time... with most of it being owed to mysterious unknown parties... which is a security concern. It also exposed how little taxes he’s paid... which may or may not be tax evasion, technically, but is not a great look for a populist President.

Quick sidebar here... Presidential tax returns are never normally news, because all Presidential candidates since Nixon have willingly published theirs upon declaring their candidacy... until Trump.

So it’s not like he’s being singled out by the New York Times for exposure of his private business.

On the other hand, the tax returns weren’t exactly a bomb shell. More like a fizzling sparkler. No personal check from Putin, with, destroy democracy, written on the memo line.

Yeah, he pays almost no taxes, but... we already knew that’s par for the course for all billionaires. It’s kinda the reason the progressive left exists.

But in terms of context for Trump being a wounded animal... it’s the drowning in debt thing he never wanted to go public. For Trump... it’s an unspeakable humiliation, like getting pantsed in public, only to reveal that you like to wear Wonder Woman Underoos or something.

It’s a massive blow to the image he’s created for himself, and defended so dearly... of being a legitimate billionaire, who used his shrewd instincts, and financial brilliance to amass deep pockets of untouchable wealth... self proliferating, tax free, multi-generational wealth.

Instead, he’s just an idiot, billions of dollars in debt, forcing the US government to pay millions to his Mara Lago resort, for hundreds of golf outings (around 200 to date) and he’s still in the red... at Mara Lago! Forget his other debts and failing ventures!

A quote from Iron Man 2 is very apt, here...

Ivan Vanko : [laughs] If you could make God bleed, people would cease to believe in Him. There will be blood in the water, the sharks will come. All I have to do is sit back and watch as the world consumes you.

That was Ivan’s rationale for attacking Tony Stark at the racetrack. It’s also been interpreted as a foreshadowing of the scene in Infinity War, several years later, where Tony Manages to punch Thanos hard enough to scratch his cheek and get a single drop of blood out of the mad titan.

Here in 2020 reality, the New York Times did get that single drop of blood... on Sunday.

And going into his first debate with Biden... who has been stubbornly leading in the polls all summer long... Trump was so furious, he could not keep his composure.

And this, at long last, brings us to the matter of relative charisma.

I’ve talked about it several times in the past, saying that, if you want one simple rule of thumb for predicting the next president... it’s that, whoever has the most relative charisma will win the election.

Relative, in this model, meaning... relative to the opponent.

A great example of this would be George HW Bush (Bush1) who had way more charisma, relative to stodgy, stuffy, Michael Dukakis, in 1988. But four years later, the same George HW Bush, looked himself, quite lacking in charisma compared to his new opponent, Bill Clinton.

It’s happened in every election of modern times. Carter had more relative Charisma than Ford, but far far less relative charisma than Reagan... and on and on back to FDR.

It was also, obviously true that in the match up between Trump and Hillary Clinton... Trump had all the relative charisma. PT Barnum levels of charisma!.. as the happy, quippy, rude, outsider... to her... boring gramma persona saying, “Pokemon Go to the polls!”

And early this year, during the primaries, when Bernie Sanders was still in the running, I said several times that Trump would, “mop the floor,” with Biden in a debate.

But... that was before Covid19... and 200,000 dead. Before record unemployment and record evictions. Before the Black Lives Matter movement caught fire in the streets, facing off with fascist police with tear gas and batons all summer. Before Biden sailed through all the insanity, staying ahead of Trump in the polls, to get the nomination.

And it was before Trump, in recent months, sent thugs to kidnap protesters in Portland, threatening all other democratic cities with the same, began knee-capping the post office, was exposed for calling our soldiers suckers and losers, refused to accept the election results if he wasn’t the winner, refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power unless we, get rid of the ballots, and... was exosed as swimming in debt.

So in Tuesday night’s debate... while he did try his level best to mop the floor with Biden... Trump came off as... well, an incel*.

We all, sadly know how incel’s debate, having suffered them like a bed bug infestation in every comment section on the internet for the past ten years, and in last night’s debate... Trump was, incel personified!

Moderator Chris Wallace, of Fox News, even gave Trump the chance to back away from the event horizon of the black hole that is at the heart of incel culture, by asking him to simply denounce white supremacy.

And not only could Trump not denounce white supremacy... after dancing around the quesion, he wound up saying that a group of white supremecist incels known as the Proud Boys, should, “stand back, but stand by!”

In other words... he’s not only banking everything on the incel vote... he’s calling on the incels to join Beta Force, and be ready... to intimidate voters in person on election night... and to create mayhem when he loses.

Please stand by, incels... but you understand, this is not a paid gig, right? I’m kinda tight on money right now, so you’ll need to be fighting for me out of the prematurely ejaculating spite in your sexually inadequate hearts!

The point here, is that the question of relative charisma between Joe Biden and Donald Trump has finally been answered.

Incel vibe, is not charisma. It’s the opposite of charisma. It’s a combination of wounded spite, bitter frothing at the mouth, and indefensible stupidity... all the things that make normal people want to puke.

So, while Biden may not have much in the charisma department... he does have a few charming attributes above the base line for a decent human being capable of empathy and logic.

And in a match up with the Trump of October 2020... that means, Biden has all the relative charisma... and he now has it on lock down.

We can talk soon about Trump’s incel chances of stealing the election by incel force, and the true threat that his army of incels present to our democracy, but for tonight... Trump is an incel... and incels have zero charisma.

I’m going to bed.

*Incel is a portmanteau for, Involuntarily Celibate.

It refers to straight, cis boys or men, most often white, from 15 to 35 who, despite deeply craving to engage in sexual activity with counterparts of the opposite sex, fail to attain it. Such males believe they are entitled to sex with the partner of their choice, and are thus baffled and aggrivated by their inability to obtain it consentually.

Incels are characterized by their extremely toxic interactions, which go beyond the mysogyny one might expect, to encompass all of society. For, in their mindset, it is not simply women who are to blame for their lack of sex, it is the entire framework of society... and that framework is also to blame for every other wish they perceive as being unfairly denied to them.

Incels resort to harassment, often thinly veiled as debate or argument, in order to torment those (most) who will not recognize their entitlement, and dream of reforming the societal order, such that their bullying rules the day... often waxing nostalgic for imagined times in the past when men such as themselves ruled without question.

They are thus, quite attracted to all forms of fascism, including, but not limited to white supremacy.

In the modern day, incels are widely regarded as a scourge, and considered by nobody outside their circle to have anything resembling charisma.

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keramalusundeep · 5 years ago

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‘KABALI’ PEAKED AT THE TRAILER. HERE’S WHY

First of all, I don’t do movie reviews. I am the guy who just watches a movie and then maybe talks about it during lunch at work to avoid awkward silences. So, why am I writing this review about a movie I watched a half hour ago? Because you know, how sometimes when you have a near death experience, your perspectives change and suddenly you want to do all this good in life, save lives, be a better person? Yeah, I am in that zone right now. I have been hit by something powerful. And it’s time to share it with the rest of my species.

Two months before today, I accidentally came across the trailer of Kabali on YouTube. I was immediately arrested by the killer original soundtrack for the movie. That’s where it had begun, for me.

Every time I watched the trailer at home, I’d go on and on to my wife about how I would not miss this movie. I don’t know why I had suddenly become such an aggressive fan of Rajinikanth. My mom was always a diehard fan, though. Two decades ago, I stumbled upon a large biology drawing book that had cut-out pictures and childlike hand-drawn sketches of him at my house in Bangalore. The book belonged to my mother. When I confronted her, she said that she was supposed to get rid of that book after marriage, but somehow it had come along with her. Super jealous of the superstar, my father would often mock Rajinikanth. I don’t blame him. He was just an ordinary South Indian man born in a conservative family. He is well educated and open-minded, yes, but he is still a man. I mean, when my wife used to look at Jason Momoa’s buttocks in Game of Thrones, I would run to the bedroom and do 50 squats and come out like I was all chill.

When you watch a Rajinikanth film, you better go to a local theatre. Not the multiplex ones where one is too shy to even release a silent fart. No, go to a local theatre. The kind where women best not venture. That’s the kind of place where you will know what it is like to be a Rajini fan.

In these theatres, as the lights dim, a new wave of energy crackles to life. Whistles, throat-burning screaming, firecrackers, shirtless dancing on seats. The entire room becomes a five-dimensional stimulation ride. Your seats rock. The walls vibrate. You smell smoke. It’s exhilarating to witness the madness, but deafening and annoying beyond a point as you can’t hear shit. Because from the time Rajini’s name pops up in the opening credits till the interval (where the fans begin to get a little tired), it’s a war zone. You would be lucky if you came out of the theatre entirely unbroken.

When you are watching a Rajinikanth movie, there is a 3000% chance that you will see something superhuman. Death-defying. Nonconforming to every law of nature. But you tell your mind to hush. During a Rajinikanth movie, only his fans can make a sound. If you are a non-fan and say something mocking, well, leave the address to your coffin.

Well, this time, I watched the film in a multiplex. Families and kids. So even if I had said something, I probably wouldn’t have got my ass whooped. Still, I watched quietly and saved everything for my keyboard. So now I’m going to spill my shit out. Here, I am Spartacus. Unyielding. Veracious.

Being 2016, being Kabali, being Rajini, you’d think, mafia being the spine of the story, it’d have all the beef in the universe to make Martin Scorsese take note. The opening scene, is the ending scene. When will writers learn that when you are showing Rajinikanth to be the gangster (especially when he is being released from jail), you know for sure that all his enemy gangsters will be dead, no matter what! Keep a little surprise, man! Henceforth, I want Santa Claus to write all the scripts for Rajini movies.

The story takes place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It’s a beautiful city. But they decided to show only the dark world. The Tamils. Their dark skin. Their dark labour problems. Their dark mafia. In all of this darkness, the only contrast in the colour palette was the ostentatious bling that these gangstas flaunted from start to finish.

After all these great movies in the West about drugs and gangsters, you’d go on to have this divine hope that the Tamil industry would go easy on making every hero a superhero. But nope. First of all, what kind of a gangster is comfortable with only a handful of business associates who also moonlight as security? I comprehend the fact that it is Rajinikanth and he can take care of himself, but he is old now. Besides, he carries only one gun. Not even an extra magazine!

When you are out of commission for 25 years, don’t you need money when you come back? Don’t you still need to be in business? Apparently, when Rajini is a gangster you don’t need to do gangster business to earn money. You just have it all sorted. Somehow he is able to run a free school for drop outs, drug addicts and ex-gangster kids. The funny part is, he himself is a gangster and hires kids on his team. So the point is that when you are in Kabali’s gangster squad, you don’t need to be rehabilitated, life’s all good.

P.A. Ranjith, before I forget, take this — you suck. You suck big time. Basha, for that time, had so much more swag than you have managed to squeeze out of Kabali. To a gangster, his family is very important. I mean to all of us, families are important. But to a gangster, it’s more of a prestige issue. If a gangster has let his enemy harm his family, it would convey that he is weak, incapable of protecting his own family . . . how then will he protect his business and other people who are dependent on him? But you could have involved his family saga in the movie in such a better way. There was no need for all the flashbacks. You have permanently ruined “once upon a time” for me.

I still cannot digest the fact that the director completely omitted to show us or explain Kabali’s business model. Maybe every time Kabali and his men whimsically went after the villains and delivered some soggy dialogues the producers would give them some candy money? Also, I think Indian movies should stop making the villains troll the hero and his affiliated people with dummy guns. Can’t take that shit anymore. If you want to shoot, just pull that plastic trigger and be done with it. Why do you have so many extras pointing all those useless toy guns at one old guy and still end up getting laid low by his stunt double?

Radhika Apte, who plays Rajini’s wife in the movie is a good actor. However, in this movie, she is a bad actor. When you have a bad script and a dumbass director, even a lion becomes a pig. I was happy to know that she was killed by the villains. Good riddance, I thought that’s what she must have thought. But no, she was brought back from the dead 25 years later and made to run for her life again. What torture, marrying Kabali!

Dhansika has tried to play a version of Rooney Mara in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, but the result is extremely unpleasing. The director concluded, perhaps, that if she is a girl and an assassin, she’s got to sport a punk bob cut and a lot of badly done temporary tattoos (which keep drastically changing and moving places). By the way, she is Kabali’s daughter, who he reunites with. Sadly.

What’s with the suit? I thought when you wore a suit, you had the license to kill. Oh, wait a minute! That was 007. In Kabali, if you wore a suit, well, you have the license to get killed.

The villain gangsters are real pussies, I tell you. I can’t fathom why they are so scared of Kabali. He is just a vintage chap with a few old friends who masturbate on the rusted bullets in their guns. Then again, it is Rajini. He can get bin Laden to marry Gandhi if he wanted to.

Movies in the south always thrive on comedy. In Kabali, there is nothing to laugh about. Nothing to cry for. Absolutely nothing to rejoice about. The soundtrack was the only saving grace. The movie was a drab, unsexy 150-minute quest for finding his family, which he could very well have done without us having to sit and watch. I liked the free trailer on YouTube. Not the full movie I spent 200 bucks for. Kabali, no magizhchi for you.

Reminds me of the famous Bruce Lee quote: “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” With all due reverence and respect for you as a great human being, I am afraid, Rajinikanth Sir, we are no longer afraid of your 10,000th kick. You have overdone it. It’s the same kick and it doesn’t give us any kick anymore. I know it’s the directors asking you to do lame stuff, not you per se. However, you could say no to them, yes? Maybe make meaningful cinema? You have earned that. But not the right to disappoint us, after all that hype.

P.S. Watch out for Tony Stark. He makes a sensational cameo.

Photo by Soloman Soh

#kabali #kollywood #radhika apte #rajinikanth #hollywood

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magzoso-tech · 5 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/social-media-platforms-that-thrived-or-died-in-the-decade-past/

Social Media Platforms That Thrived (or Died) in the Decade Past

“You are what you share.” These famous words from Charles Leadbeater’s renowned book ‘We Think: The Power Of Mass Creativity’ are extremely apt in today’s times. Your personal and professional resume gain extra weightage, based on the number of followers, and the number of eyeballs your social posts get. The last decade in particular, has seen the evolution of social media in tonnes of growth spurts. It saw TikTok become a household name, and Tinder became the new way for people to find partners. While some social media platforms thrived in this Internet era, some stumbled off the shelf.

The increasingly competitive market space and the ingrained fleeting nature of social media forced some platforms to shut shop as well. The biggest shockers were Orkut, Google+, Yahoo Messenger, and Blackberry Messenger or BBM, as users fondly liked to it. In the face of the competition, these didn’t manage to grab their audience’s attention long enough and were forced to close down. As far as social media is concerned, this was the decade of WhatsApp, Instagram, and TikTok.

We have compiled a list of big social media networking platforms that debuted in and reigned in the last decade, and a list of platforms that succumbed under pressure. Some of the platforms that died saw significant highs at the beginning, only to be shut down years later. This list is filled with nostalgia, heartache, and is a nagging reminder to a massive life reality check – nothing lasts forever.

Instagram

Instagram is one of the biggest social media platforms in the world right now. The image-sharing app was launched in 2010 by creators Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, and was acquired by Facebook in 2012. It enjoys over one billion monthly active users, and has 500 million users who use Instagram Stories every day. The app was also the second most downloaded free app on the App Store in 2018 (2019 stats still not available). Instagram allows users to share photos and videos, lets you follow friends and influencers, and even post 24-hour snippets called Instagram Stories. Currently, Instagram competes with Snapchat and TikTok in the social networking space.

Snapchat

Snapchat arrived at a time when Facebook and Twitter were already extremely popular, and Instagram was gaining momentum as well. Launched in 2011 by Evan Spiegel, the photo and video sharing app now enjoys 210 million daily active users (as of October 2019). Snapchat played on the idea of disappearing messages, something that wasn’t tapped into before. This feature has since been aped by Facebook in all of its properties – including WhatsApp and Instagram.

Telegram is essentially a WhatsApp alternative, and has grown quite a bit of fan following since its launch in 2013. As of March 2018, the app enjoys 200 million monthly active users, and Telegram gets new features regularly via updates. It competes directly with WhatsApp that has taken the instant messaging world by storm.

TikTok

Having launched in 2017, TikTok is touted to be the fastest growing social media app out there. It has almost 500 million active users, and was the third most downloaded app in Q1 2019 with 188 million downloads. This is 70 percent growth from Q1 2018. The app looks to fill the void that Vine left, but it offers a lot more. Influencing creators on TikTok are considered celebrities, and it is well on its way to world domination. The latest data from App Annie suggests that TikTok is continuing its explosive growth around the world, with the insights company ranking TikTok just behind Instagram in terms of monthly active users through the third quarter of 2019.

Founded in 2010, Pinterest offers online discovery of information in the form of images, GIFs, and videos. As of August 2019, the platform has reached 300 million active users. Over time, the platform has attracted over 200 billion Pinterest pins, and over 4 billion Pinterest boards. Interestingly the gender parity is quite large, and 70 percent of Pinterest users are females.

Over time, Pinterest has attracted over 200 billion Pinterest pins

Tinder

Tinder, a unique dating app, was welcomed with open arms. Launched in 2012, it has now become quite popular amongst teenagers. Recent user statistics are not known, but a 2018 report states that over 57 million people use Tinder around the world, out of which 4.1 million Tinder subscribers pay for a premium Tinder Plus and Tinder Gold. Furthermore, Tinder is used in 190 countries, and is available in 40 languages.

Quora

If you’re looking for answers, Quora is possibly the place to go to. From questions like ‘Which is the best way to learn programming?’ to questions like ‘Which is the best country to migrate from India and start a new life?’ – all of these are answered in detailed manner by varied users. This platform was launched in 2010, and is now a pool of some great answers. Quora’s userbase is constantly growing. It grew from 200 million monthly active users in 2017 to 300 million monthly active users in 2018.

Quora was launched in 2010, and is now a pool of some great answers.

Facebook Messenger

Facebook Messenger was introduced as a separate app by the social giant in 2011, forcing users to download the app from the app stores if they wished to continue chatting to their Facebook friends. While user base stats of the app are not known, Facebook last year introduced AI bots for businesses to chat with clients easily.

Mastodon

Mastodon, an open source decentralised social networking platform, is fast gaining popularity. Touted to be an alternative to Twitter, the Mastodon community has grown to over 2.2 million people. Unlike Twitter, where one corporation has full control over the rules and regulations, any user can create their own server of Mastodon and manage it.

Twitch

Twitch is a live video streaming platform that was launched in 2011 and is prominently used for gameplay streaming. It is particularly famous in the US, and as of 2018, it enjoys 2.2 million broadcasters monthly and 15 million daily active users. The platform is owned by Amazon. As of October 2019, Twitch owns 75.6 percent of the streaming market, and YouTube is second with 17.6 percent.

Periscope

Periscope is also a live streaming app that was launched in 2015 by Twitter. The successor of Meerkat, Periscope has managed to stand its ground in a space where many have faltered. Twitter doesn’t reveal usage stats of Periscope.

Minds

Minds was launched in 2015, and it essentially runs on the same principle as Mastodon. The open source network rewards its users with tokens for their contribution and engagement. As of March 2018, Minds has over 1.25 million registered users and 105,000 active users.

Helo

Helo is a newly launched social media app made for the vernacular speaking audience. The app has seen a sharp rise since 2017, and it has 50 million active users in India alone. While traditional social media apps are available in the universal language of English, Helo tries to offer solace to the large vernacular speaking audience. The app supports 13 Indian languages.

ShareChat

ShareChat follows the same principle as Helo, and taps into the vernacular speaking audience as well. The Indic language-based social network ShareChat app has been growing steadily over the last two years. Launched in 2015, the app is now touted to be India’s largest vernacular social media platform with nearly 60 million users. ShareChat has some big investors like Xiaomi and Twitter, and latest round of funding was led by the latter. The Bengaluru-based chat app startup is today valued at over $600 million.

Wondering why WhatsApp is at the bottom of this list? Because, it was launched in the latter part of 2009 missing this decade by a few months. While this list is all about the social media platforms that launched and grew in this decade, we couldn’t leave out WhatsApp as its evolution began in this decade, changing the digital social landscape of today. The app became the world’s most popular messaging app in 2015, and as of February 2018, it enjoys more than 1.5 billion users worldwide.

As of February 2018, WhatsApp enjoys more than 1.5 billion users worldwide.

Google+

Google+ was launched with a lot of promise in 2011, but succumbed to the competition from Facebook and others. The final nail on the coffin was a major security issue that was reportedly discovered, compelling Google to shut down Google+ in April this year. The company also claimed that its social platform wasn’t experiencing enough usage or engagement from its users with most sessions maxing out at 5 seconds.

Orkut

Orkut was a household name in India in the latter part of the last decade, but the growing popularity of Facebook got users to migrate from Orkut, leaving it no option but to shut down in 2014. Owner Google said that other platforms had outpaced Orkut’s growth, and the website no longer exists. Google then pegged its hope on Google+, but sadly, that platform also fell off the shelf this year.

Orkut was shut down in 2014 by Google Photo Credit: TheNextWeb

BlackBerry Messenger

BlackBerry Messenger also shut shop earlier in May this year, blaming the difficulty of bringing new users to BBM as one of the top reasons. BBM was one of the most loved instant messaging applications of its time, but its popularity dwindled as competing chat apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger gained momentum.

Vine

In 2016, Twitter announced that it was shutting down Vine, a popular video loop app that offered users the ability to make and share six second videos. The app couldn’t compete with the rising popularity of Instagram, and users who were once considered as Vine celebrities started posting videos on Instagram instead. Instagram can be considered as a big reason why Vine became obsolete.

Yahoo Messenger

If you’re a 90’s kid, there are high chances that you’ve used most of the apps mentioned on this grim list. While these apps don’t exist today, they were once an integral part of our online social life. Yahoo Messenger was once such instant messaging app that died last year. In its prime years, the service was the most used as it was an alternative to emails and SMS messaging. However, with the arrival of smartphones, Facebook, and eventually WhatsApp – Yahoo Messenger lost its steam and users started to switch.

Path

Initially launched in November 2010, Path social platform served as personal journal of sorts that you could share with your family and friends. This platform gained over a million users once, but eventually died in 2018 due to lack of proper growth and increasing competition.

iTunes Ping

Apple’s promising iTunes Ping social network failed to gain traction that it had hoped from the users. The music-based social network was launched in 2010, and was shut two years later. It is one of the biggest examples of Apple having difficulty in getting people to use its web-based services.

Meerkat

Meerkat, the once popular live-streaming app, closed in 2016. It was early on the scene by launching a live-streaming service ahead of Twitter and Facebook, but its fame was short-lived.

Yik Yak

Yik Yak was an anonymous messaging app for college students that shut shop in 2017. The app rode to popularity after its launch in 2014, but soon became a breeding ground for hate speech, cyber bullying, discriminatory speech, and gun and bombing threat, all under the garb of anonymity. The company tried to bring in measures to curb the slur, while also maintaining anonymity, but it then started to lose user base, and had to wind down operations eventually.

Friendster

Friendster was one of those social networks that helped kick off the social media era. It was founded in 2003, and soon lost credibility due to technology issues. There were problems in feature launches, and it soon drifted into irrelevance as Facebook gained momentum quickly. Interestingly, in the early days, Friendster investors reportedly had approached Facebook with an acquisition deal, which Mark Zuckerberg then refused. Zuckerberg later bought Friendster’s entire portfolio of social networking patents for reportedly $40 million. Friendster closed its doors on 2015.

Friends Reunited

Friends Reunited, another pioneer in the social media industry, announced that it would be winding down in 2016. The platform was launched in 2000, but couldn’t keep up with the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. In its closing announcement, the company’s founder Steve Pankhurst said, “It is clear that the site is no longer really used for the purpose it was built for … therefore, it is with a heavy heart, that we have decided to close the service down.”

Pheed

Pheed was launched in 2012, and the social platform let you share texts, photos, and videos, just like the others. It managed to top the App Store charts in the social networking category in just a year after launch. Aimed at teenagers, it failed to gain the long-term momentum it hoped for. Pheed was sold to American Movil in March 2014, and in April 2016, Pheed was shut down and the technology was integrated to América Móvil platforms.

DailyBooth

DailyBooth was a social network that allowed users to take a picture of them every day, and post it with a caption. The website would in turn generate a little flip book style video for its users. While the concept was intriguing, it never truly broke through to the mainstream, and had to close down in 2012.

Tbh app (Facebook-owned)

Tbh app, another anonymous social app, was launched in 2017, and in just a month it managed to rank number one in the US App Store. It was acquired by Facebook soon after, but its fame was extremely short-lived, as the social giant announced its discontinuation in July 2018 due to low usage.

Eons.com

Eons.com was yet another social networking site founded in 2006, and this one tried to cater to the baby boomers and users over the age of 40. The site was shut down in 2012, after a business issue with the service provider was not resolved. To this date, the site remains shut.

#Miscellaneous

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soulessarah · 5 years ago

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Children are the most long-awaited miracle for any parents. Today I would like to mention 11 Interesting Scientific Facts About Babies That Parents Should Know. [Reference: 1] Well the most amazing facts about Babies are: 1. Kids begin to understand the meaning of words from a very young age, it is from six months. Of course, they cannot pronounce them, but they are able to relate the phonetic sound to the object of reality. 2. The child is still continuing its formation for several weeks after birth. It is for this reason that they spend so much time sleeping and can cry. 3. When a woman is pregnant, she really should talk with her baby: they hear and remember her. They are also able to hear and understand music, which they will later like. By the way, even if the child then leaves to live in another country, he will still not speak like the locals, because the mother’s mother tongue plays a key role in this matter. 4. Until the age of one and a half years, the child does not understand that he sees his reflection in the mirror. 5. Children are born with powerful creative potential, however, as soon as they try to become more focused, creativity decreases. 6. Do not worry about the cold limbs of a child up to 3 months: if they are sometimes cold, then this is normal. 7. Kids do not just seem attractive to most people: nature is designed in such a way that the child seems cute. All for the sake of parents wanting to show care and attention. 8. Children can cry at night only because they do not want to allow intimacy between their parents. Scientists believe that this skill was acquired in the course of evolution: in this way children fight for resources so that a brother or sister does not compete. 9. Healthy daytime sleep is extremely important for a child. Scientists from Germany have found that with its help, memory function improves in children. 10. A smile is a person’s innate ability, which he practices while still in the stomach. By the way, children are very fond of this activity, because their smile can be seen more than 200 times a day. 11. Children perfectly read any emotions and try to provoke only positive reactions of their parents with their behavior. So, here are the most amazing facts about babies that you should know as a parent. Life is beautiful and you can make it more beautiful by living longer and doing much more good deeds that you deserve to do. If you want to live a healthy happy life then stay tuned with our channel and thanks for watching. #BabyFacts #ScientficBabyFacts DISCLAIMER: This video is purely informative. Do not self-medicate and in any case, consult a qualified medical professional before applying any information presented in the video. We do not guarantee any results and does not bear any responsibility for the harm that can be caused by using the information stated in the video. ------------------------------------------------- Health Apt Channel https://www.youtube.com/healthaptgala Facebook Page: http://bit.ly/2j1w04r Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpYmAdNGX8E by Health Apt

#11 Interesting Scientific Facts About Babies That Parents Should Know #ifttt #youtube

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dydturktek · 5 years ago

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Nem Kurutma | Nem Alma | Rutubet Kurutma | DYD 444 0 719

How the Season Finale Associated with 'The Bachelor' Was The Hardest But Also Extremely important

How the Season Finale Associated with ‘The Bachelor’ Was The Hardest But Also Extremely important

As a your childhood senior in the last session of high the school, I have begun to decide on my activities. Looking back again, it seems like a long time since I was basically that naive freshman. Out of the blue, I realized that the past three years are already incredibly longer and difficult. Perhaps even back then, I became ready to graduate student and I failed to even understand what I was doing (that section is still the same). We’ve come relatively far contemplating my cases, and of our all my achievements, one that stands out is the volume of television We have watched. The hours I actually dedicated to looking at numerous Present ranging from ‘Breaking Bad’ that will ‘Orange is definitely the New Black’ is significant and I will not regret any kind of it.

Yesterday morning, the conclusion with ‘The Bachelor’ aired in which viewers reached see the sentimental rollercoaster with the final participants. These latter contestants attained with Nick’s family where they either expressed many different feelings. They went on their ‘final date’ that concerned ice ice skating and for several reason Santa claus Clause.

Though Venessa do not quite understood how the indicate worked, Nick Viall decided to go with her and also sent Raven packing. As an alternative to choosing Raven, the perfect man, Nick opted reluctant Vanessa. Smh

We promise you will find a point to that.

From Corinne’s naps on the confused dolphin, ‘The Bachelor’ continually supplied drama and entertainment of which made my favorite Mondays a bit less undesirable. It is times when one has a couple of essays to publish, calculus faraway pipe dream to do, and also 200 pages of content to read in which TV may swoop in and make every thing better even though it’s for two hours.

Doing a little something you love or possibly having a inventive outlet is an excellent way to take care of stress as well as life generally. Everyone has a passion to have going. By just taking a little while from the persistent pace for life to complete something exciting, you can decrease you pressure levels. Therefore if her knitting, the baking, photography, or simply sleeping, complete the work!

Back to the exact ‘happy’ husband and wife, I permit them to have 3 months. Highs

The Enormous Gut

How do we trust “trust”? Naturally , the faith I’m talking about is your gut becoming. When you’re investigating that incredible college along with everything relating to this seems right- the people are actually funny plus friendly, it includes all ukessays referencing the classes you ever in your life wanted, and then the food within the cafeteria will be delicious, as well as the mascot can be your favorite canine, and you have this kind of feeling as part of your gut suggesting that this spot is right. Virtually all the time I may tell you that will cannonball on and start getting through plan papers. Nevertheless , in my experience As i realized that at the same time to think about this your sensing, rather than currently taking it from face value. So , what exactly is gut sense? How can being conscious of your instincts feeling help college lookups?

For youngsters that are looking through and are actually looking for the time (trust me, I was one of them), I will link this unique to college searches and all the fact that juicy stuff eventually. Basically hang on- I’ve have one or two good fortune to plow via first.

What is a digestive tract feeling? Why does it produce me to love a school instantly?

Typically the gut emotion is basically a form of intuition that people can educate with experience, in addition to being aware of just how it works can be hugely helpful. For example , I earliest learned how to do change turns within swimming related to four a long time ago. At that time I actually didn’t ‘turn’ as much as lemon back first into the structure, scramble from the water for a bit, after which cheekily sort my which were found into position. But this can be normal- Freezing learned a thing, and it has a considerable ways to go until it finally becomes progressive, and even longer until it becomes intuitive. A number of years and most likely a thousand moves (and a pair of thousand flops) later; I could flip flip with fogged over cameras and not become a wall pancake. The more I was able it, cardiovascular disease I thought that little voice within my gut revealing to me when to stroke, put, turn, and also kick off.

Why does this occur though? Reported by Carlin Bacteria of Psychology Today, of which tiny tone of voice is actually a cognitive process the fact that condenses reasons by taking benefit of the brain’s shortcuts. This procedure can be set off by even the smallest outside incitement, such as the color of the pool floor shifting near the wall, or the side of the road line shifting patterns. Your brain takes outdoors stimulus, will do a rapid lookup of a memory records, and chooses out the most effective course of action or possibly reasonable view.

So from the context of school searches, realise that whether you really feel like you instantly like a university or not are usually influenced by just prior experiences and memory. Always determine why you are feeling attached as well as hesitant in terms of a college, as well as the answer does not make sense. It would simply even be ‘the meals reminds me of home’ or perhaps ‘the campus smells like the gym locker room’. Being aware of precisely why you’re feeling like you would are presents to consuners one move closer to figuring out your wish school.

Why do we have confidence in the tum feeling? Why is it there?

I tend to look into the instinct feeling simply because rubber auto tires to a automobile. It’s not necessary per se, but while not it we may literally possibly be spending only two hours deciding upon what cereal to eat each day. Psychologist Antoine Bechara associated with University about Southern California made a study with mentally defective patients who have lacked the main gut sensing intuition. Without intuition and also having to manually factor in almost everything, the subjects required around time to decide in between cereals.

We tend to trust the exact gut sense simply because people can’t do without it, since that approach we have turn into quite along with it. Your personal gut sense is there to assist you, and when you are looking at a university, its almost certainly matching superficial elements of the institution to your existing ambitions for a student which will make the litigation process more sound. Be aware of individuals ambitions! Before you search in place or visit a school, contemplate: what am I looking for? In order, write the ones goals all the way down and bring them with you around the college tour or when you browse through the education site. This will likely help keep everyone on track with regards to what you would like.

What precisely influences our own gut becoming? Should I underestimate it?

Don’t disregard your abdomen! During my seek out, my gut was my best friend, despite the fact that it all gets mobile phone sometimes. The very distractions consider primarily coming from memory along with emotions. Remembrances and knowledge define typically the domain about what our own gut knows, and our own emotional say influences what we are looking for as well as our gut’s judgment. If I feel eager, I will the particular school’s caterers services at the higher main concern than, say, dorm amenities.

There are a few other things which will affect the digestive tract, and this catalog is most likely any oversimplification. Except for the reasons of simpleness and streamlining my recommendations for college or university searches, continue to keep a list of what exactly you’re looking for plus identify the reason why you’re that come with a school . Choosing a college is no small-scale task, and also you want almost everything at your disposal doing work at your appeal. Your instinct can be both your most important enemy or perhaps best friend- so provide a few guidelines, a cookie and a apt on their head, and permit it cleared the path.

https://www.nemkurutma.com/how-the-season-finale-associated-with-the-bachelor-9/

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thepetsworld · 6 years ago

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Look At These Katahdin Rams For Sale

By Jeffrey Wright

You would be really hard put to find a better breed than the Katahdin. Of course, we are going out on a limb here by claiming that. However, it is an incontrovertible fact that farmers and breeders look for many qualities when it comes to their flock. Low maintenance and high profitability are, of course, somewhere along the high echelons of the list. This enterprise is not the lottery, however, and to glean profit, one would have to delve into some knowhow and machination into what drives those qualities. For instance, the proper selection of rams and ewes are certainly top notch. For starters, browse over these katahdin rams for sale. The exoticism of the name should give you an idea about the wonders of this breed. Raised in the high altitudes of Mount Katahdin in Maine, this domestic sheep is a relatively newly developed one. It sprung in the latter half of the twentieth century, resulting from interbreeding between the Virgin Islands St. Croix sheep and other breeds, most notably the Suffolk. What is most remarkable with the Katahdin is that it is adaptable, hardy, and remarkably low maintenance. The staples they produce, from the meaty carcasses to other lamb crops, are widely recognized as high quality and superior. That makes them sure drivers of profitability. They even a few natural defenses that thoroughly makes them good value, which we will discuss later. Because of their high quality genes, Katahdins are very much apt and suitable for crossbreeding programs. Therefore, they are generally good candidates for interbreeding with the much more commercially popular wool sheep. It takes at most 3 generation breeding to obtain the quality characteristics of the Katahdin, like natural shedding, and when talking about animal husbandry, three generations is not a long time to wait. This breed is also extremely low maintenance. Because it naturally shears its winter coat, the farmer will not have to get himself in a jiffy in shearing it. The hair is also a flexible or versatile feature. Because the basis of the breed is not so much on appearance, the coat can come in any color. One also has the option of interbreeding them with the common sheep, so the offspring come out with a mix of hair and predominant wool. Another benefit that animal breeders can surely look forward to and take as a fact is that the ewes lamb easily. Their mothering predilection and abilities are really remarkable, and by remarkable, we mean exceptional. Lambs are rejected very rarely. And because of this high quality mothering, the lambs are born alert and vigorous, almost precocial. They are suited to many settings, and also many shepherding types. For example, you have pasture lambing, and then you also have the forage based kind of management. However, it goes without saying that all these desirable characteristics are still down on genetic quality. That makes sourcing good sires and dames altogether imperative. And since the rams are more active, productivity wise, and that they have the predilection to mark and settle multiple ewes at any point in time, special care should be taken in sourcing them. Carefully evaluate the stocks before you purchase them. A slight mishap can quickly accumulate and build its way down your flocks. Low maintenance is a good profit feature among commercial farmers. This particular livestock also does not call for particularities and finicky conditions. In fact, they are very much adaptable to all kinds of climates and conditions. Well, that holds true for nearly all kinds of hair sheep, but it would sound more impressive if we point that out as well. The lack of maintenance and necessary treatment makes the Katahdin a good choice for meat breeds and organic lambs. It is only deserving that they have become among the most prevalent and predominant breeds in the continental United States. The low maintenance quality of the Katahdin goes out of common the common way, and it certainly entails more than physical characteristics and features. The fact is, this breed is easily handled because they are so docile. Especially with the rams, temperamental changes and natural aggression are some things that will constantly keep you up on your toes. However, this breed expresses considerable flocking instinct, more so than other sheep. Profitability is also a sure thing. That is because the sheep exhibits early puberty and their productive life is long. Twin lambs are very common in mature ewes and you have at most a 200 percent assurance of gleaning lamb crop. It is important to source good quality rams, those that are fertile the whole year round, and aggressive enough to settle a good number of ewes. When you zero down on the selection, you can make good sure that your flock can consistently produce the whole year through.

About the Author:

You can get valuable tips on how to choose a sheep breed and more information about Katahdin rams for sale at https://ift.tt/2FsghJU now.

Look At These Katahdin Rams For Sale via zoologist01 https://ift.tt/2U6dbDF

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globalfilesystem · 6 years ago

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Continued Price Weakness Offers Great Opportunity To Pick Up Shares Of Preferred Apartment Communities

Summary

GAAP accounting rules forced APTS to incur a $0.07 per share hit when in reality it was a great investment.

Revenue growth, and expansion, continues its torrid pace, reaching 39.2% YoY.

Shares are still cheap at these levels considering the underlying metrics and growth.

An investment in APTS yields 6.9%.

What Happened?

The last time I wrote about Preferred Apartment Communities (APTS), it was just coming out of its 6-iteration multiple bottom last summer. Shares were trading at $15.17 at the time of publication. Since that day, shares soared to $18.50 before coming crashing down to $15.08, where we are now. Post-earnings report, there was a 12% drop which was both unwarranted and a great opportunity. I doubled my position at the ridiculous price of $14.01. The price recovered just a few hours later to a more reasonable $14.48 and while the recovery continued for a while, it has since come back down to extreme value levels.

Image from finviz.com

As I will point out later, the sell-off does not make sense to the fundamental investor. The highlights of the bull thesis are all still present:

-Ridiculously high YoY revenue growth, most recent quarter up 39.2% YoY.

-Diversification of holdings into Residential, Office, Grocery/Retail and Student Housing.

-High and just-increased dividend that yields 6.9%.

-Peer-best average age of properties (5.3 years) leads to lower capital expenditure on repairs and renovations.

-Unique capital structure of preferred shares and project-level mortgage loans create fixed rate borrowing rates with which APTS has easily surpassed.

-Lower home ownership trend across the country means demand for apartments is high.

Growth

Q3 FFO of $0.28 (missed by $0.09) and Revenue of $104.23M (up 39.2% YoY)

Q3 earnings caused a 12% intra-day drop, mainly due to the $0.07 hit to GAAP FFO from the early termination of a loan. Headline traders, trading algorithms and people unable to pour through the finer details panic-sold shares on the news. The loan is no longer a source of recurring revenue so it lowers FFO, but the company still managed to record a 12.9% IRR on the loan. Most of the time I criticize companies for hiding bad performance behind Non-GAAP reporting, but in this case it was GAAP reporting that caused the misconception. FY 2018 guidance was revised lower by about $0.04 to make up for the termination of the loan, so it stands now at $1.39-1.42.

Image from Seeking Alpha

Portfolio Composition and Strategy

A criticism of APTS is that it is not a pure-play apartment REIT, instead opting for opportunistic investments in apartments, retail (typically grocery-anchored) and office properties. Some theorize that at some point in the future the retail and office arms of the company could be spun off. I enjoy having my investment eggs in different baskets because it should smooth out performance and allow management flexibility to create shareholder return.

Here are some of the most recent acquisitions:

July 31st – APTS buys Wells Fargo Capitol Center, a 559,591 square-foot, 29-story office tower in Raleigh, North Carolina. Fixed-rate 30-year mortgage of 4.27%.

September 28th – APTS buys a 300-unit multifamily complex in Tampa, Florida. Fixed-rate 30 year mortgage of 4.32%.

November 15th – APTS buys a 200-unit multifamily complex in Charlotte, North Carolina. Fixed-rate 30 year mortgage of 4.51%.

APTS’ push into Raleigh and Charlotte makes a lot of sense because population growth, high demand and low supply of office space, retail space and multifamily properties will ensure the ability to increase rents in the future. I’m a big fan of buying into an up-and-coming secondary markets rather than chasing superheated, overpriced markets. The following graphs support the decision to hitch a ride on the market trends before they become the next Seattle or Denver.

Image from LoopNet

Another trend that I see as a positive for apartment REITs is the trend of fewer and fewer Americans owning their own home. With housing prices skyrocketing and wage growth relatively flat, renting makes more sense for many. 30-year fixed mortgage rates are close to 5% nowadays, which puts a damper on younger generation’s ambition to buy a home. This is helping keep demand high enough to swallow the increasing apartment supply nationwide.

Image taken from Hoya Capital Real Estate’s article

Big, Covered Dividend

Compared to its peers, I think that APTS offers the best risk-adjusted dividend yield. Lower-growth pureplay apartment REITs such as Essex Property Trust (ESS) or AvalonBay Communities (AVB) have yields of 2.88% and 3.15%, respectively. APTS’ covered dividend yield of 6.9% fairly compensates you for the risks of the sector. Average dividend growth rate of 14.4% since the 2011 IPO shows a commitment to shareholder returns.

Image from author, with data coming from Seeking Alpha

Past nine-month dividend coverage comes in at a very respectable 74.5%. The temporary FFO hit mentioned earlier makes the future of the dividend look uncertain to the cursory glance. But in reality, once new acquisitions and redeployed capital contribute to the bottom-line, the FFO should return to prior levels. If management didn’t have confidence in its ability to fund the dividend, it probably wouldn’t have just raised it to $0.26 a quarter.

Summary

For investors who are seeking income, growth or both, this stock is a gem. With 84% fixed rate mortgages and preferred share sales funding growth, the company can drum up huge amounts of capital and deploy it into undervalued growth regions such as North Carolina. Revenue growth and dividend growth continue to go up and to the right, and by timely adding shares on dips, you can generate sizable returns.

Disclosure: I am/we are long APTS.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Additional disclosure: I doubled my long position in APTS on November 6, 2018, at a price of $14.01.

Source Article

The post Continued Price Weakness Offers Great Opportunity To Pick Up Shares Of Preferred Apartment Communities appeared first on Why You Should Take Big Homes For Rent Ln Charlotte NC.

Read full post at: http://www.globalfilesystem.org/continued-price-weakness-offers-great-opportunity-to-pick-up-shares-of-preferred-apartment-communities/

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the-truth-just-sounds-bette-blog · 7 years ago

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September 19, 2017 I have decided to create an original + uncensored space with the intention to a) gather and sort through some of my own thoughts b) share what I feel to be worthy information with others and c) openly explore a wide variety of relevant topics that I've been vigorously studying for quite some time. Over the years curiosity, concern, and genuine personal interest have led me to research a broad array of information which I strongly feel is not only generally ignored by the masses, but often times ridiculed or exhausted before even given a fair moment of attention or consideration. Truth is not always kind and it is rarely comfortable or safe. Raw truth can often times feel very scary to take in despite ones best attempt at keeping an open mind and strong heart. That said, if you sincerely claim to be any sort of thoughtful human of substance and honor.. then you must know and breathe the following fact: IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS. In some ways, it has almost become uncool or faux paux for a person to speak ones mind or effectively express their personal, honest and unfiltered thoughts in the present day. In other ways; people of all creeds, sex, ethnicity and age merely mechanically parrot others without attempting or being bothered to do their own research and evaluation - they skip right over the very critical part of personal analyzation which is absolutely key to (in turn) responsibly forming any original opinion at all. Many may mimic or mirror the opinions of their parents or other family members, maybe they restate narratives their friends tend to support or perhaps they simply regurgitate a few key words that a news anchor read off from yesterdays cue cards on channel whatever. Don't get me wrong, I have an immeasurable + absolute sincere respect for many individuals in the truth movement and for all those wanting to learn what is real. I don't believe there is anything more commendable than an individual who is willing to openly advocate for ALL human (and animal) rights by directly speaking out against the evil doers on this earth who repeatedly commit injustices like it's nothing. Accountability depends on knowledge. Acknowledging unpleasant issues and evils out loud (not only to ourselves, but also to others) is a crucial part of exposing the harsh realities left in their wake. There is no doubt in my mind that people all over the world are absolutely waking, but so many more are still fast asleep. Snapchat this, Facebook that, tunnel vision and daily routine take precedent and so on. Let me take a moment now to say this.. I myself value entertainment very much and I believe with all my soul that the importance of enjoying this life here on Earth in all ways humanly possible is *imperative* to keeping your spirit happy and afloat. I do not live to work, rather work to live. I collect new experiences with great fondness and I have had just as much fun at a $20 dinner as a $200 dinner. I am a concert addict and the music that deeply moves my soul truly has the unique ability to bring me alive in childlike ways. I listen to 90's trance for hours and hours at home. Bones Thugs will never ever not make me dance immediately. I never get sick of it. I regularly spend quality time with souls dear to me. I love to swim. I love all seasons and all food. The ocean makes me smile from miles away. A hint of salty air and a single ray of sunshine makes me indescribably giddy. I love to watch films of all kinds and I'm a total YouTube junkie, just like the lot of us. I often binge read books and articles during my free time to the point that sometimes, I actually have to set a manual two hour alarm to avoid blowing the whole day away and getting sucked into the author of the weeks world. I have to physically and mentally set limits over my own Self on particular days so I don't get too carried away.. so that I am still able to adequately focus on my present as well. I work full time and pay my own bills. I eat 10-12 snacks a day. I stop to pet every dog I see on the street no matter where I'm heading or what time it is. I consistently make time for traveling because creating new experiences, immersing myself in other cultures and living a wild life of adventure is half of my whole heart. In this life, I am a free spirit by design.. that said I value my family, my relationship with God and the love in my life immensely. As an adult I have acquired countless hobbies, interests and responsibilities as most of us do over time. I also regularly make time to study, research and learn more about the world I live in because I consciously choose to do so. I am so naturally drawn to caring. I couldn't even help it if I tried because this deep desire for trueness is in my very blood for better or worst and it runs all though my innermost core. I unquestionably yearn to not only grow as a free thinking person, but also to willfully expand my mind more and more with each passing day until my very last little breath. I thirst to question that which deserves debate. Occasionally, I seek answers to questions that are difficult or cannot truly be answered clearly, this can be equally rewarding and frustrating depending on the matter at hand. Here's a touch of background about me so that you can have a simple idea of where I came from as we move forward. I am originally born in Bulgaria (South East Europe) and fled from communism and the hell it left behind once lifed when I was a child. I always kept up my first language and to this day I am proudly fluent in Bulgarian. If I do have children of my own, they too will undoubtedly be raised bilingual. My family (parents and I) were temporary relocated to Germany after applying to countries outside of home via legal channels with proper papers/passports.. in crucial moments there were even in depth handwritten letters brought forth stating why 'they' should accept us into their land. That was what it is when it was. Nothing was guaranteed and everything was a gamble. When we did eventually find out that we were leaving, my parents were not allowed to tell anyone of our plans or whereabouts, not even family. We were permitted to take a total of two suitcases for three whole people. One was filled with clothes, the other packed with books. Maybe that's a part of why there is a deeply instinctual thirst for knowledge in my very blood. And maybe it isn't. I later attended kindergarten in W. Europe, I spoke + sang fluent German and after a couple of years of living in a Bavarian hotel we received more word from afar which prompted us to proceed along our path. Ultimately, we were given the option to move to St. Louis, Missouri or Thunder Bay, Ontario. My sweet parents were so brave and hopeful for better days ahead. This awesome courage is something that I can never ever repay them for, even if I tried. Despite all that they had been through back home - and despite all that they had battled and conquered always fighting tooth and nail, real masters of the poker face - the Land of the Free would surely hold a more promising future for us all. So off we went. We were each sworn in legally before a judge, took on US citizenship and then immediately dropped off with our two suitcases in tow straight into a small one bedroom apt in the middle of a grim city containing just a single mattress on the floor and a perfectly empty fridge. We didn't have an air conditioner and no one warned us we would need one. My father immediately hit the ground running and got a full time job to support us, an air conditioner was bought and a few years later my brother was born. The rest is history. As far as formal schooling goes, I went to an elementary school in North City and then later a second in South City - after that I attended a public county school until my senior year and I did not receive any formal education after I graduated high school. I have touched almost every state and spent a great deal of time in Europe, Asia and Africa. And I have a thousand more places I want to go. What I quickly learned in the years to come was that even though my high school was widely considered to be an extremely solid and reputable one, I wasn't ever really taught much about the rest of the world during my time there. We studied slavery, the Bill of Rights, the American Civil War and the Holocaust every single year. The same criteria in just slightly different forms from 6th grade thru 12th. I took math classes and I also learned how to cut open a frog and a worm during science. I learned how to play kickball and volleyball and struggled to knock out a few pull ups in gym. As a 'subject,' World History was extremely general and brief, and that particular 'subject' was only optional to graduate. You could easily have chosen the 'US Government' option if you so preferred it. Required reading was restricted to a minimal and predetermined list which was given to the teachers as a manual at the start of each semester. We took mandatory geography tests covering all the states, but were never taught too much about the rest of the worlds corners. All my friends assumed Bulgaria was somewhere in South America because it kind of sounded like Bolivia. 18 year old kid adults from 'good families' and 'nice homes' actually thought that Paris, London and Amsterdam were names of countries. They didn't know where or how to quickly find non cities like France, England or Holland on a globe unless given more than a little time to squint and wonder, spinning the neon colored globe globe round and round. No one ever taught us about Mao. No teacher mentioned Stalin. Not a singular note was taken regarding atrocious genocides all over the huge continent of Africa. My GPA on paper was very high but I felt somehow limited in my learnings later on as I began to jet around and experience new lands, cultures and countries on my own. So as I grew older and literally began to see more and more of the world as 'we' know it, I also began to question my own smarts. I began to touch different continents physically and trotted on to experience some places I had never even heard of before. I discovered cities and towns I couldn't pronounce and most times, I found myself consistent feeling invigorated by the massive breath(s) of fresh air. But occasionally, I felt unignorable deeply stunted inside.. almost child like, like something had been omitted along the way. Something big. I decided to teach myself everything that I possibly could including what was omitted earlier in my primary education. I feverishly studied world history, religion and cultures of all kinds, maps and atlases galore, languages and dialects. I studied people near and far. I studied myself. I also passionately studied the unpredictable realms of the rapidly changing world all around me in the form of journals. I wrote down so much. I filled stacks of notebooks with my learnings and flipped tons of pages along the way.. and then more pages and more pages. I read til my eyes burned. I dove into foreign press, I wrote to my senators, I watched the local news. I got lost on the Internet. I let it all sink in as much as I could take it. I did all of this because I wanted to. We are now living in a time where the brave ones who do speak out against the norm are often immediately labeled as subversive, crazy or overly "intense." These outspoken individuals are often times written off by society + regularly ridiculed for their thoughts and expressions.. as a result their messages are quickly discarded into a never ending trash bin manned by the mindless and secured by the masters.. ironically enough their voices simply just get thrown away probably ending up somewhere right alongside free will and basic rights. That said - I have always, *ALWAYS* whole heartedly believed in being a voice and not an echo, so here we are. Everything you see and read here is meant to be digested just the way it is presented, my writing and imagery of choice is always forward and direct - no more, no less. I'm not ever going to hold your hand or explain myself as if I am addressing a fragile sheltered little babe. I'm just going to share with you what I can, while I can. A few months ago I created an Instagram account (separate from my personal) where I approached topics which I felt were extremely important to our world today. I just wanted to share my findings with normal people, or most simply with anyone at all who felt like having a look. That account ranged from revisiting history to accessing current day events.. neither modern day politics as we know it nor honesty were ever excluded or sugar coated in the slightest. Soon enough people were engaging in back and forth intelligent conversation, giving regular feedback/input, asking questions and sending me kind messages of gratitude. This was so much more than I could have ever expected from just another social media outlet.. yet one day when I hopped onto IG to log in, very much to my surprise - I found that my username was no longer valid and my account had been wiped clean. This happened overnight. No warning, no reason.. here today + gone tomorrow, literally. No Instagram rules were remotely violated along the way, but down it went. Point in case: censorship is real. If you haven't realized that humanity is being systematically dumbed down by now, then it is highly likely that you too, have been systematically dumbed down somewhere along the way. I used to have a 'popular' blog online years ago where I shared personal writing photos of my life, travels, interests, etc.. that site seemed to mash together almost all my passions under the sun (music, film, art, fashion, recipes, etc etc) but I never really got 'political' there by choice - I wanted to keep that separate. I knew that I had to be very careful with my viewpoints if I ever wanted to be a writer or accepted by publisher(s) later on. Well that blog had a few million visits and a ton of followers when I decided to delete it (by choice) one day. People from all over the world wrote to me and I met dozens of them in countries all over which was super rad. Despite all that hype, for some reason it had just ran its course for me and I can say with certainly that I was definitely more bummed when this recent Instagram with just a couple hundred 'followers' was abruptly taken away bc I didn't make that choice myself. While I'm very well aware that your followers are not always your fans.. it has just become increasingly more important to me to focus on what matters to me most, everyday and in every way. Of course I still love movies and exploring exhibits at museums near and far. I still study fashion magazines from cover to cover and attend shows just like I always have. But I have a deeper desire to share with others, that which is purposefully being withheld because I wholeheartedly believe it affects us all in the end. Moving forward, I will be posting pieces I have written on topics including but not limited to; HAARP: what is it and why should you know more about it, why traditionalism and nationalism are not equal to racism/hate and the reason I will probably never vote for president in the USA again, even though I literally moved to America for freedom of democracy. The irony is so real. I am going to look inside the unignorable and ever growing parallels between the Roman Empire and the United States because they simply fascinate me. I'll review their differences too, but you will soon see for yourself that the similarities greatly outweigh the latter. I'm going to discuss impeding race wars, media manipulation, distraction tactics, corrupt politians, illegal wars, unjust occupations, false prophets, and the many toxic poisons that are destroying us not only as individuals but also as a whole. Along the way, I will share my own fears and doubts with an audience of 1 or 100 because the simple truth is: I clearly don't have all the answers, not even close. You'll read about systematic indoctrination and it's direct ties to the endless bloody wars based on lies that our very tax dollars pay for year after tired year. You'll read about why the system was born broken. I'm going to tell you all about how I discovered that most things we have been taught to believe are just part of a big story. I'm going to describe the game as I know it, call out the big players and acknowledge the pawns. I may have to remind you that the narrative is not in your favor. It never was and by the looks of things, it may never be. It doesn't mean doom and gloom. It means that self educating and awareness has never ever been more important. Until then, please remember this much.. A nation of sheep is bound to be governed by wolves. You should never confuse education with intelligence. And last but definitely never least, thinking for yourself out loud is the absolute best thing you can do in this life. ❤✌🏼

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photomaniacs · 7 years ago

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I Gave Up Painting to Do Photography, And It Shows in My Work http://ift.tt/2vghCyn

Painting and photography are often considered similar artistic expressions. Henri Cartier-Bresson was a painter before he became a photographer, and became a painter again in his retirement. While his artistic sense informed his photography in terms of his ability to see the world in constantly changing light and compositional potential, he never considered photography as art.

I can only wonder: if HCB had lived to see the full potential of digital and how it has afforded us the ability to paint and create with light as never before, might he have come to change his mind?

Brush Strokes

As a painter, I always cherished the gentle friction of brush over canvas, the pressure used to create those sparkling nuances that brought my imagination to life. I would always begin with a brush but would quickly find my fingers smudging the colors. This technique has often provided an additional depth and added an element of life in my paintings

As I gradually embraced photography, I could experience a similar feeling while experimenting with slow shutter smudging techniques. The camera as brush or thumb, light as paint or charcoal. A photographer would normally adjust shutter speed as a part of his exposure triangle and play around with it. A painter-photographer would do the same, but in my case, I am often thinking about smudging. This is done with slow shutter, or slow shutter combined with camera movement.

I photograph on the street all over India, but mostly in Mumbai where I now live, and Kolkata where I am from and often visit. The street, especially the Indian street, is a whirling canvas of colors in motion. For me, it’s a kind of motion picture flashing frame by frame until it smashes into my imagination and triggers my shutter. And if I am lucky, that motion, that whirl, is captured in a way that others find captivating. Or at least interesting…

Streets of Manali, India. 1/5, 28mm, f2.8, ISO 200, Manual Mode

While most street photographers venture out to discover and shoot an unimagined frame or series of frames — only later finding a particular thematic thread — a painter turned street photographer will have already imagined those frames, as if he were to paint them. This cannot always be the case of course, and it’s not a precision process. There is always the element of chance and chance discoveries are part of the thrill, but even then, mind and imagination mesh to determine just how to capture the moment. Of course visualizing your frame “live” is vitally important, and something many amateur photographers in their haste to capture a subject often forget to do.

Below are three photographs taken at Holi, the Indian Festival of Colors. They illustrate well this collision of imagination and chance — the brightness, the riot of colors, the banter and playfulness all so vivid and mesmerizing. Photographing here comes closest to the feeling I used to get while holding a brush instead of a camera when I would sing and chant and playfully “riot” across the canvas.

Dancers during Holi, Banki Bihari temple, Barsana, India. 1/5, 35mm, f20, ISO 100, Shutter Priority

Rangili Galli, Barsana, India, during Holi. 1/6, 35mm, f2.8, ISO 3000, Manual Mode

This image was a case of imagining a painting first, then having it appear in living colour before me. I used an ultra-wide lens to show the man’s hand exaggerated larger than reality. Shot at Rangili Galli, Barsana, India, during Holi. 1/40, 17mm, f8, ISO 3000

The Transformation

Children have great imaginations. Most have their imaginings subdued as they get educated in the reality of worldly affairs and become members of workaday society. Children with imaginations not subdued become artists! At least that’s how it was for me. A painter is always imagining, always obsessed with expressing their inner vision in tangible form. The journey can take hours, days, months or years.

A photographer works at a much faster pace, mostly in fractions of seconds. This was a definite attraction for me, as it was for HCB back in the day. More expressing, less time. Another attraction – no paints to mix, brushes to clean, or heavy canvases to lug to the post office and send off to the next exhibition. And no monthly storage fees to house them all!

The more I thought about it the more I felt a certain sense of relief and lightness in leaving traditional painting behind (although I still dabble digitally) and excited about becoming a photographer. Photography held its own particular set of challenges, and I had a lot of learning to do, which of course is ever ongoing. Initially, the changeover was more practical and logistical than intuitive. But an artist is born with certain instincts that continue to live within. Eventually, I began to feel a similar creative energy to painting, and I realized the passionate painter in me had never left. He’d only changed tools.

Charcoal on Sensor

Charcoal on paper is an amazing gift to the artist. A charcoal offers incredible shades of gray if applied rightly, deftly, with the smudging thumb. The photograph of the horse statue below gives you a good idea of the charcoal effect with camera. For me, it was like using the charcoal on handmade paper and smudging it to add that element of life, of movement. It took 40 or 50 frames of “smudging while shooting” to get the look I wanted, swiftly moving the camera as if to draw a horse in motion. This I always do free hand.

Black Horse of Mumbai. This statue stands at Kala Ghoda, and shows the result of the “smudging” technique mentioned above, only as charcoal on paper. The open sky background conveniently provided the “paper”. 1 sec, f2.8, ISO 200, Manual Mode.

An old man carries food for his camels. Shot at Pushkar, India during the camel fair. Dodged & burned in post. 1/125, f2.8, ISO 100, Shutter Priority.

Imagination

Since my earliest recollections, I have spent much of my life traveling the virtual world of my imagination. I have always derived my energy to survive as well as create from elements found in this phantasmal space. Trance for me is a spontaneous and effortless way of seeing more deeply, where the existing becomes imaginary and the imaginary existing. It’s like living inside an illusion in a way, and yet this “illusion” almost invariably energizes, informs, and clarifies my everyday reality.

The painting below and the photograph beside it, are an example of imagination expressed in contrasting artistic approaches. On the left is a digital painting (oil on canvas) where I imagined a lifeless town with the sole survivor carrying an umbrella through the street. Monochrome for me is the apt color for isolation. The photograph on the right taken on a foggy Kolkata morning two years after the painting was done, is the nearest I have come to capturing a similar sense of isolation. I returned to this same spot three consecutive mornings until the lone cyclist finally made his appearance. Trust me, with a population of 1.3 billion it’s not easy to shoot wide and find anyone alone!

Drawn Digitally in Monochrome using Procreate

Maidan, Kolkata, India. 1/125, f2.8, ISO 100, Shutter Priority

Extreme Expressions

As an artist, I have always been moved by extreme states of human being, especially the more esoteric states of trance and ecstasy. Both are instrumental aspects of Hindu mythology. These states of being are connected but not the same. Trance has a distance to it, a solemnity, while ecstasy is very present and inclusive. The former I see in monochrome, the latter in vivid colors.

Disowned & Alone – Barsana, India. 1/125, f3.5, ISO 300

Ganja – Sacramental Trance. Varanasi, India. 1/50, f2.8, 24mm, ISO 1200

Sacramental Trance II, Varanasi, India. 1/50, f2.8, 24mm, ISO 1200

Holi Ecstasy, Barsana, India during Holi. Here I used the zoom-blast technique with my ultra-wide, where I was able to maintain sharpness on the subject’s eyes. Background slightly enhanced with radial blur in Photoshop. Overall I wanted to induce an effect of emitting sound and ecstasy from the images. 1/8, f7.1, 16mm, ISO 400, Shutter Priority. Below: 1/250, f3.5, 16mm, ISO 1250, Shutter Priority

And there you have it, my brief story of a painter turned photographer. As you can tell, I must respectfully disagree with the great Cartier-Bresson on the matter of art versus photography. He was a fine artist as a painter, but he was a great artist as a photographer, even if he never intended to be. He was a photojournalist, a documentarian, so one can certainly understand his position.

As for me, not bound by the rules of journalism, I am free to interpret the world not only as I see it, but as I imagine it. Art should have no restrictions, so perhaps this is where HCB drew his line.

About the author: Swarup Chatterjee is an award winning painter turned award winning photographer based in Mumbai, India. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. Swarup conducts regular photo workshops in Mumbai, as well as travel photography tours around India. You can reach him via email here, and see more on his website.

Go to Source Author: Swarup Chatterjee If you’d like us to remove any content please send us a message here CHECK OUT THE TOP SELLING CAMERAS!

The post I Gave Up Painting to Do Photography, And It Shows in My Work appeared first on CameraFreaks.

August 08, 2017 at 11:01PM

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yahoo-big-league-stew-blog · 7 years ago

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How five players on the awful 1999 Marlins made the team unforgettable

Kevin Millar, Preston Wilson and Cliff Floyd were at the core of the 1999 Florida Marlins. (AP Photo)

Ryan Dempster stared at the burning limousine and tried to recount what just happened. His team, the 1999 Florida Marlins, were on the way to meet former teammate Gary Sheffield at his mansion in Los Angeles. Kevin Millar rented two limos for everyone, but then ditched them to ride with Sheffield in one of his luxury cars.

For Dempster and everyone else, the ride was a disaster. About halfway to Sheffield’s house, one limo’s air conditioning failed in the LA heat. The players in that limo had no interest in sweating the rest of the way, so the entire team crammed themselves into the back of one limo.

Things went surprisingly smooth until they pulled up in front of Sheffield’s gate. The limo driver started yelling, “Get out, get out!” The limo had caught on fire, and players were climbing over Mike Lowell to get to the door. Before the limo was fully engulfed in flames, Livan Hernandez dove back into the car to save his Louis Vuitton bag.

As the wreckage burned, Millar pulled up with Sheffield wondering what the hell just happened.

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That story is the perfect metaphor for the ’99 Marlins. Which part? Well, that’s up to your interpretation. The ’99 Marlins were not a good club, winning just 64 games. So, “What the hell happened?” seems apt.

They also could have been the burning limo. While the team was awful, it also contained some incredible players. Guys who would go on to do tremendous things in the big leagues.

“Anybody who watched that ’99 team, you could tell how hard we played,” Preston Wilson says. “Almost everybody in that starting lineup ended up being an All-Star at some point.”

The All-Star Game will be played in Miami on Tuesday. The team name has changed to the Miami Marlins, but there will be constant reminders of popular players, and memorable seasons in franchise lore.

That ’99 team, despite its record, will be tough to ignore. You won’t just see members of the club in Marlins Park, you’ll see them plastered all over your TV. Five players from the team: Ryan Dempster, Cliff Floyd, Mike Lowell, Kevin Millar and Preston Wilson reunited, and work together as broadcasters with MLB Network today.

The 1999 Marlins may have failed on the field, but something memorable was happening in the clubhouse. Every day, a group of some of the loudest, wackiest and most rambunctious players in baseball were thrown together and forced to co-exist. The locker room was boisterous. The stories bordered on unbelievable. The 1999 Marlins were full of some of the biggest personalities in the game.

#ASGWeek – a time to celebrate Miami & our former @Marlins. @CliffFloyd30 @mikelowell25 @Al_Leiter22 @PrestonWilson44 @KMillar15 @Dempster46 pic.twitter.com/3oRaa9LvOt

— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) July 10, 2017

If it looks like those are just five random players from one team who conveniently happened to stumble into each other a decade later, it’s one hell of a coincidence. Those five players were very much at the center of that 1999 Marlins club. They bonded and formed lifelong friendships. They grew as ballplayers and men as they learned how to play in the majors together.

They also had a ridiculous amount of fun, creating unforgettable memories, some of which they are still hesitant to share today.

They were, in many ways, “the island of misfit ballplayers,” Wilson says.

Cliff Floyd was one of the few veterans on the ’99 Marlins. (AP Photo)

Looking back on the team, it’s evident why the Marlins struggled to win games. The team not only employed a number of rookies and inexperienced players, but many of them hardly played together in the minors.

Millar was the only player of the group to come up with the Marlins. Dempster joined him in 1996 after he was acquired in a trade from the Texas Rangers. Wilson came over in a 1998 deal with the New York Mets. Lowell was acquired from the New York Yankees just a month before spring training in 1999. All four of them walked into the clubhouse that season with their rookie eligibility intact.

Floyd was one of the few veterans on the club. As such, he became the de facto leader on the team. While some players might have bristled at the thought of dragging a bunch of rookies through their first taste of the big leagues, Floyd proved to be well suited for the role.

“Sometimes, if a guy is more of a veteran, he does things different and alienates himself from the young guys, but Cliffy wasn’t that,” Lowell said.

“When you’re young coming into a big league environment, you need someone to shorten that learning curve,” Wilson says. “You need someone who has been there, seen that, heard that, experienced that — that you can bounce ideas off of and, for me, Cliff was that guy.”

Floyd’s role was to police the clubhouse and make sure the rookies stayed focused. But that responsibility didn’t just fall on him. Even though Millar lacked big league experience, he made his presence known in that clubhouse.

“Kevin Millar was the anchor,” Floyd said. “He held down the fort and kept it loose and made sure we didn’t go crazy.”

“I’ve always had a leadership quality because I was vocal,” Millar said. “If someone wasn’t running out a ball, I let them know. If somebody wasn’t doing their job, I let them know.

“It’s not easy to get on guys when things aren’t going well. Guys get defensive and guys have egos. With our group, it was never taken that way.”

Kevin Millar brought the locker room together. (Getty Image)

Millar, unsurprisingly, brought levity to a locker room that had to deal with a lot of losing. His most important quality may have been his ability to connect with every single player on the roster.

“I didn’t see Kevin as a leader. I saw him as a guy who kept everything loose,” Wilson said. “He was always a guy who was joking. He had this magnetic personality. No matter what language you speak, he’s going to make you laugh.

“He tended to draw that out of other people. Some guys who came over from the Dominican Republic could barely speak English, but they’re joking with Kevin Millar.”

Millar had a partner in crime in the form of Dempster. Together, the two were considered the class clowns on the team. It didn’t matter that Dempster was a pitcher. This locker room didn’t operate like a football team. Pitchers and position players didn’t function like NFL offenses and defenses. Dempster was firmly a part of the group.

Dempster “and I lived together every year in spring training,” Millar says. “He was like my second wife at the time. I’ve said I’d marry Ryan if I could have.”

Millar and Dempster were involved in plenty of hijinks that had the team in stitches. It ranged from simple things like ragging on each other and giving fake tours on the team bus when they were in a new city to slightly more involved antics like wearing fake teeth and glasses and trying to distract each other during interviews.

There was also some physical comedy, including one time when Dempster intentionally threw himself down about 16 stairs in a crowded restaurant, got up, dusted himself off, let the horrified patrons know he was fine and then casually walked away. It even entered into the magical realm. Dempster would put on magic shows in the clubhouse. That practice regrettably came to an end.

“I wasn’t doing a very good job of making the ball disappear so I had to start doing that a little bit more,” Dempster explains. “I probably could have benefitted in my career a little bit by maybe being a little more serious.”

It may have looked like fun and games most of the time, but some teammates were able to see some sincere qualities in Dempster’s antics.

Dempster “ended up being a starting pitcher for, like, 14 years in the big leagues,” Wilson says. “In his rookie year, in between starts, he’s going to a comedy club in Boston and standing on stage. Do you know how fearless you have to be to do an open mic night in Boston?”

Ryan Dempster kept the clubhouse entertained with magic shows. (AP Photo)

With two guys willing to go to extreme lengths to entertain, you might think that would rub some teammates the wrong way. But that wasn’t the case. On a team that lost so many games, their ability to keep things light kept everyone from getting frustrated.

That was especially important to Lowell. Weeks after he was acquired by the Marlins, Lowell was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He missed two months of the season undergoing treatment.

“I met the team for the first time when I finished my cancer treatments,” Lowell said. “Guys like Kevin and Demp were huge for me. Where I was in my life, I really welcomed that. [Being able to have fun] was easily my biggest challenge [after] overcoming a health scare.”

The team may have struggled on the field, but the rookies could play. No one embodied that more than Wilson. But it took him a while to figure things out.

After a tough start, Wilson found himself hitting under .200 during the season’s first month. He turned his entire season around May 9. Wilson hit a pinch-hit solo home run against Los Angeles Dodgers starter Chan Ho Park to bring the Marlins within one run.

They would go on to win that game, and Wilson would credit the home run as the play that got him on track. From that point on, he hit .296/.366/.517, finishing second in the Rookie of the Year voting.

Wilson exemplified what many members of the 1999 Marlins saw every day. The team wasn’t winning, but the talent was there.

“We probably had 14 or 15 guys go on to play 10-plus years in the big leagues,” Millar adds. “That’s pretty unique on a team that was probably worst in baseball.”

Preston Wilson finished second in the Rookie of the Year voting in 1999. (AP Photo)

The games may not have been memorable, but the stories were. While all five players laugh at the memories, there are still some things they can’t share with the public 10 years after the fact.

“I’m trying to find the G-rated version,” says Lowell. “I’ve got a couple that there’s no way I can tell.”

“I can’t share any of my best stories from that season,” Wilson laughs.

On a team full of entertainers, it’s impossible to keep everything buried. Like the time Dempster and Floyd spent the entire night out on the town in South Beach the night before a game. Instead of going home first sight of sunlight, they went to Waffle House to complete the all-nighter.

As they were sitting down, they noticed a man looking at the sports section of the local paper. He keeps looking down at the paper, and then looking over at Dempster and Floyd. After doing this a number of times, the man finally opens the paper to show them the story he’s reading and says, “Shouldn’t you be at home sleeping?”

A few hours later, Floyd crushed a home run.

“It was unbelievable,” Dempster said. “We were like, ‘We’re going to Waffle House again at 5:30!’”

But the biggest thing to come out of that season is a slogan every baseball fan knows and uses today.

“I don’t think we thought that when we first heard Kevin Millar say “got him” it was going to go public 10 years later,” Floyd says.

Yes, “got him,” or “got heeeeeem” as Millar says it today, actually originated around this time. It became the go-to phrase anytime someone on the team succeeded against a pitcher.

“The ‘got him’ thing was Paul Bako and me,” Millar says. “We used to sit on the bench. When a guy would hit a home run, we would be like ‘got him.’ “

The phrase caught on with the team, but Millar never thought about bringing it to a national audience until he started broadcasting games.

As he was prepping for his first broadcast on FOX, Millar received a text from Bako telling him he had to use the phrase as a home run call.

“Bako had texted me like, ‘Bro, you gotta get a good home run call,’ thinking I’m going announce the home runs,” Millar says. “Joe Buck does all that, but I’m like, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ So we’re gonna use ‘got him.’ You know, ‘high drive, got heeeeeem!’ “

“Obviously, I never used it because Joe Buck is the real announcer, but that’s how it all came together.”

Millar resurrected the phrase while hosting “Intentional Talk” with Chris Rose on MLB Network. It’s become one of the most popular, and most quotable, segments on the network.

Millar was the first of the ’99 Marlins to join MLB Network roughly a year after it launched in 2009. He decided to give broadcasting a shot after he was released by the Chicago Cubs in 2010. By his own admission, he wasn’t good at it initially, but he loved it.

The rest soon followed. Dempster, Floyd, Lowell and Wilson came aboard, and suddenly, the ’99 Marlins were back together again.

Mike Lowell provides a unique insight into his hitting philosophy on MLB Network. (AP Photo)

While none of them had any idea broadcasting was in their future back in 1999 — MLB Network didn’t exist until 10 years later — they’ve all carried parts of their playing career with them in their current roles.

Lowell is considered one of the smartest hitting analysts at the network. Dempster is a natural entertainer. Even his mom knew he was bound for television when his playing days were over. Millar still doesn’t know how to tie a tie.

They are comfortable being themselves every time they step in front of the camera. Both Floyd and Wilson refer to the group as “authentic.”

It’s those same qualities that led these five to form a tight bond back in ’99. It’s a major reason they still remain friends today. As often as you might read puff pieces on teams with great chemistry, forming lifelong friendships that last long after playing careers end is what sets this group apart.

“Not every teammate is your friend,” Millar says. “Once you get traded, you lose touch. But this group, they are still in the cell phone to this day and now obviously we work together which makes fun television when we’re on together because the chemistry has been there for over 20 years.”

“We grew up together like family,” Dempster says. “At the core of it all, I think that’s what they all have in common … they are just really, really good people.”

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Chris Cwik is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Chris_Cwik

#_uuid:9f81d949-56b6-3ea9-9755-7f0d77b1e823 #_lmsid:a077000000CFoGyAAL #_author:Chris Cwik #_revsp:6b24cdb1-fb0e-4eae-8f3f-41b3d8741f6b

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binghamkeith-blog · 7 years ago

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4 Peaks 4 New Beginnings

New Beginnings Charitable Foundation, based in Kilkeel, brings hope to Ugandan children. In a population of 30 million, most of Uganda's (known) 2.3 million orphans have little or no hope of freedom from disease, adequate shelter and prospects for the future. In June, a team from Kilkeel, Dromore and County Kerry embarked on 'The Four Peaks Challenge' to support New Beginnings continuous fundraising efforts. Skippered by Robin Annett, team members Warren Redmond, Tom Knox, Derrie O'Sullivan, Jonny Marcus, Andrew Annett, John McKee and Keith Bingham climbed the four highest mountains in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Rodney and Ewa McBride took on the equally, if not greater, logistical challenge of programming, driving, and fuelling the team's exploits. The challenge was to climb Ben Nevis (1343m), Scaféll Pike (965m), Mount Snowdon (1085m) and Slieve Donard (850m) during a weekend. The 'Three Peaks Challenge' is a popular event which excludes Slieve Donard but the team thought they'd go one better. Perhaps next time the team will attempt five peaks in five countries including the Republic of Ireland's highest peak, Mount Carrantuohil in Killarney (1039m). After making the journey to the Scottish Highlands, a brief overnight respite and a hearty breakfast of porridge with dates, the eight-man team set out at 6am to climb every inch of the huge bulk of Ben Nevis. It was a misty morning with a few bouts of showers but the team headed up the Pony Track, zig-zagging their way up to the peak. Snow on the top made for some great photos and it was a novelty to be at the highest elevation on European land for hundreds of miles. The New Beginnings flag was unfurled in the mist - one down, three to go. The team had also unwittingly become the newest members of the 'Munro-bagging' club! The summit survival shelter built on top of a ruined observatory (1883) provided ample respite for a cup of tea from the biting zero degree temperatures. [Editor note: A Munro is a mountain in Scotland with a height over 3,000 feet (914 m). Munros are named after Sir Hugh Munro (1856–1919), who produced the first list of such hills, known as Munro's Tables, in 1891. There are 88 Metric Munros which are Scottish mountains over 1000m with a topographic prominence of over 200 m (656 ft). The best known Munro is Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the British Isles. The practice of 'Munro-bagging' is to climb each of the Munros. Extracted from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munro] After five hours walking, the team arrived back down at base at 11am and prepared for the long journey south to the Lake District and Scaféll Pike. Bacon baps certainly helped line stomachs for the journey. Leaving Fort William, past Glencoe, Loch Lomond, and onwards to Glasgow and the Scottish Borders, the journey made for beautiful viewing even if mildly unpleasant on the vernacular! A couple of stops were required for refreshments and much needed leg-stretching. It was a quiet journey south, if occasionally interrupted by the less-than-tranquil music collection on board. Quite a few hours later, the team entered the Lake District, passing Whitehaven and Sellafield nuclear power plant on the way. Had the sat-nav had its way, the team may have ended up at Whitehead or Ballylumford! The roads became narrower and the villages more remote as Scafell Pike (965m) beckoned. After a brief camping respite during darkness, the climb began in earnest from Wasdale Head at first light 5:15am. The team made short work of the climb arriving at a calm and sunny Scaféll Pike peak by 7am. After the obligatory photo with the New Beginnings flag and a very pleasant descent, an 8.45am breakfast of eggs, bacon and sausage baps soon replenished depleted reserves. After a quick round up of gear, it was all hands onto the bus again and on the road south west to Wales. The journey skirted Manchester, Liverpool, Chester and then went deep into North Wales. All didn't go to plan with road diversions and forced stoppages causing scheduling difficulties. A delay in Kendal town allowed the team to sample Kendal mintcake - famed for providing Sir Edmund Hillary with sustenance when he conquered Mount Everest. Mount Snowdon was also used in training for the 1953 ascent of Mount Everest so it was an apt, if unplanned, addition to the adventure. So - mintcake on board - onwards into Snowdonia National Park. Rolling countryside soon became mountainous with some picturesque villages. Snowdon is perhaps the busiest mountain in the British Isles with some 500,000 people climbing each year. It has a variety of routes up and down, including a railway line from Llanberis (5 miles). Needless to say, a train journey wasn't in the itinerary for the team as they opted for the Pyg track route to the summit. Setting out at 6pm, the weather was slightly more intolerant than the previous treks and the route required some scree-scrambling, but all was well with the peak reached in under two hours. Wet and windy at the summit, the team didn't stay long, except to have a quick photograph and get moving again! On the descent, the weather cleared and some fine weather was enjoyed by all - it was a beautiful evening to be walking in Snowdonia. Set against a magnificent backdrop of the mountains, Electric Mountain was visible - with its hydroelectric station disguised inside a disused quarry. The team's leg power may have been depleting but spirits were recharged in the knowledge of three down and one to go. On arrival in Llanberis, the team tucked into extremely welcome cheeseburgers at 10pm. Some much needed refreshment was also found in a local hotel before departing at midnight for the 3am Holyhead to Dublin ferry journey. Some sleep was found on board the ferry before arrival in Dublin at 6am. Most also slept on the journey from Dublin to Newcastle, except for a stop in Kilkeel for breakfast and a photo outside New Beginnings HQ. The team arrived at a sunny Bloody Bridge car park to commence the familiar climb up Slieve Donard at 8.45am. The final customary unfurling of the New Beginnings flag took place and the descent was completed by 11:30am. Four out of four conquered and challenge completed. While each mountain was spectacular in its own way, the Mournemen of the group remarked that Slieve Donard was the only mountain which truly "swept down to the sea" - who could disagree with the beauty on our own doorstep! Some snacks and coffee awaited the team in Newcastle before the final bus pickup journey home. The team gathered thoughts on climbing four peaks with a cumulative elevation of nearly 14,000 feet and journeying 1000 miles overland. A video of the team's challenge '4 Peaks 4 New Beginnings' may be viewed on YouTube - https://youtu.be/VcWhDA4Layo Walking was the easy bit. Credit to Robin and those in the background who worked to make it all possible. Sponsorship has been very generous and it is hoped that a total of over £3,000 will be realised to help Ugandan children. New Beginnings thanks all who contributed and supported in any way. Anyone who would still like to pledge can do so via New Beginnings - www.newbeginningscharity.org or via their Facebook page. Keith Bingham

#newbeginnings #4PeaksChallenge #3PeaksChallenge #Ben Nevis #Mount Snowdon #Scaféll Pike #Slieve Donald

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