#like I'm calling The Hague

[starsapphire]

earth-616 dashboard simulator

🪩 thethang

it probably feels really good to get killed and revived in the negative zone tbh

372 notes

🐺 princeofpower reblogged

🧚🏼‍♀️ lunasncws Follow

no bc why is the new hulk lowkey gnc af...

🔄 🐺 princeofpower

i mean personally i think he looks super masc. and powerful. and muscular

23 notes

🎇 genosha-girls-were-unforgettable

can people stop making jokes about the n*gative z*ne like it's some quirky vacation?? my cousin is literally traumatized from being crawled on by resurrection worms and you're joking about it??? get over yourself

4 notes

🐌 lesbianhawkeye

so funny to me that people write ant man x reader where he uses his powers to climb in the pussy. you know damn well he's not even getting pussy at regular size!!!

16 notes

🔄 🫖 darladeeringlovebot reblogged

✖️ xmensource Follow

The Daily Bugle - Opinion: Is Professor X Really a War Criminal?

After he allegedly vaporized a bus full of orphans with his mind in August, some human rights activists have been calling for Charles Xavier — better known as Professor X, leader of the X-Men — to face charges at the Hague... keep reading

#GET HIS ASS

987 notes

🍎 longshotsbackshots

spiderman dropped some guy in a rhino costume on my car dawg i'm going to be late for work 😭😭

#this is the third time

💟 mutie4mutie

doctor doom? more like doctor dumb LOL

🔄 💟 mutie4mutie

a doombot just blew up my house

[ceiling-karasu]

I had a dream about the Ray Bradbury story All Summer in a Day (because a plane dripped water on me while I was trying to doze in my assigned seat?? Just decided to ignore that at least we were finally ON the plane at that point). That one where humanity has bases on Venus, and it rains all day except for the one time every seven years. Anyway, the classmates lock a girl from Earth in a closet because they think she is making things up about this 'sun' thing.

Which later somehow started making me think of Dalnim living in a small apartment by himself, but some misunderstandings make his classmates think he was living under a local bridge. Then one entire week, it rains super hard, and starts flooding rivers, and some of the classmates freak out and lock Dalmin in a school closet over night/the weekend 'for his own good,' on the idea that they don't want Dalmin to fall asleep and get swept away to drown. Which only increases everyone's misunderstandings of one another.

But yeah, in the dorms sounds nice! Plus, work-study programs where he and everyone else can find out about the archives and photography. Maybe Sena is a guest lecturer one day.

I don't know much about what high schools are like nowadays. I remember 7 classes, but some days you had to rotate (class A M-W-F at 10 am, class B T-Th at 10 am), so it was technically more.

I just wound up writing about Tokgasi because parts of Lightning Rod were starting to focus on the aftermath of Aekku's secret document. Like, was everyone caught in one swoop, or did some of the agents notice others getting captured and run off somewhere? And why is the Tokgasi group named after this one individual? Has he done operations like this before?

Personally, I am also kind of obsessed with Field Mouse Number 8.

We see that he was apparently not chosen by Aekku, but is still away on a mission somewhere. Why was he not chosen? Where is he? Will Mulmangcho disguising as him have repercussions? If he is a field mouse/dormouse, and was actually known reasonably enough around the base that Mulmangcho could disguise as him without anyone asking questions, then he was probably close to Commander Jogjebi like the other field mice. Which means he could be off on a spying mission somewhere as part of Jogjebi or the Special Forces' groups. If Commander Jogjebi is gone, what would that mean for his mission if he is on one?

Yeah, maybe the past parts are good to have first. They are entertaining to read, so far.

The layout would be for the farmhouse villa in Lily Bell. Technically I have it all written out in the story, so the details are already there and I can take some liberties. Nothing really seems to contradict itself, but making an actual schematic is hard. I'll have to do it by hand. But, I have figured out I can make something by hand, upload it, and then trace over something in another layer and hide the first layer. So that's nice. Less worried about merging layers and more annoyed that sometimes I can't use the fill function in certain sections anymore after random periods of time. I am learning to use layers when I make clothing, though.

I kind of wish I could have gotten to know my grandfathers, but they both passed away young due to issues with heavy smoking.

I was thinking 'beauty and gracefulness' for Nayeon, for reasons that will come out much later. But yeah, at the moment, they are just not letting Nayeon figure out the truth about Jollin, since her interest in helping the neighbor distracts her from missing her parents, I guess. Plus, she would be bonding with someone who is also missing their parents, from everyone else's perspective.

It wouldn't have been only a simple reference. I was planning on writing more chapters involving perspectives from Geumsaegi, Juldarami, and Flower Hill and their search/investigations to figure out what happened to Bamsaegi. Which would have included a lot of dredging the ocean floor for a bit, and secret internal investigations. So a bit of a duel story going on there. But a soft romance just seemed disrespectful.

Thank you very much for the feedback! It means a lot to me. Although I think the amount of research you put into your own stories is great as well! And you are way better at the naming conventions and Hangul than I could ever be.

Something I did while I was waiting for class.

I don’t know if she would be a new character of mine. But if she was, she would be working as an archivist or doing something based around culture. Idk. She isn’t a character I would place in OFP since she wouldn’t be a solider. She would have been exempted.

The quality came out a bit wonky

[directdogman]

Hey there's someone trying to say you said you were pro Israel on discord? They're anonymous and say you blocked them before they could get screenshots so I don't really believe them, but still :[

Mhm. Nice bit of news to wake up to, this.

Yeah, so this person's a troll and they're more than likely lying on purpose in order to try to me look bad because I blocked them on Twitter for being unpleasant, something I rarely even do and they're still seething about it. The block had nothing to do with Gaza, the person was just being annoying and I thought it'd be healthier to block and move on. I'd really prefer not to have to give this person energy, but if there's a rumor going around, I'd like to nip it in the bud, since it's very easy to disprove in this case.

To explain what this person's blathering about: Earlier this week, on a Phonegingi plush advert, this random user that doesn't follow me (and actually instructs fans of mine not to interact with them in their bio) made a dramatic QRT decrying me for posting a DT advert during a strike week, which I honestly had no clue it was, especially since my own timeline was (and still is) full of accounts posting normally.

Given that the person seemingly encountered one of my posts in the wild and ended up seething because of it + likely didn't want anything to do with me on their timeline (as their bio indicated), after thinking it over briefly, I did the healthy thing and just blocked the person + moved on. Makes sense, right? I'll admit: Even if the way the person approached me was regrettable, if I'd known it was a strike week, I'd have participated (as I'd participated in the last one), so I stopped posting teasers for the week anyway, only resuming again yesterday.

I'll also say: I checked my own timeline btw and looked at the accounts posting, and nobody else had anyone acting like this in their replies, even the much larger accounts. Nor did anyone else contact/reply to me in any way stating any disapproval.

Given that I've only blocked one account recently that isn't a replybot (and ofc, given the subject matter of that tweet), I'd have to assume that this is the anonymous person spreading stuff.

I'd understand where this person was coming from if maybe I'd stayed completely silent about Gaza, (which a lot of accounts I follow have) but I haven't. I had a Palestinian aid post pinned on my Twitter for weeks, I've talked about Gaza's child population and my support for South Africa's Hague suit in my discord server, I've engaged in the boycotts, wound down posting during strikes, donated a pretty substantial amount of Dialtown revenue towards sending money/esims... I have 4 bucks in my bank account right now and when my next DT check comes in, you'd better believe I'll be giving more. That's my right as a private citizen and one I'll continue to exercise.

I feel pretty uncomfortable having to put this stuff in front of me to 'prove' myself, even if some of it is public anyway. Charity should be something you do because you CARE and if it wasn't for this person, I'd have been far happier keeping a lower profile and not explicitly calling attention to my own aid, but given this ask, I feel it'd be stupid not to nip this in the bud. The majority of this information could be easily found with the tiniest amount of digging, btw, so it's not like the user couldn't have known any of this. This is the part of having a fandom that creators seldom talk about. You block one person for being a lil annoying, next thing you know, there's rumors that you support genocides! Fun.

So yeah, I'd like you to tell this person to just move on like a normal person (send them this post if you have to) and to stop spreading incorrect rumors about me out of spite. If they insist, I'm happy to pull up receipts to prove everything I've said. If they actually thought I was pro-Israel, they wouldn't be spreading it anonymously, they'd be writing another public post about the subject matter. Also if you see anyone repeating the rumor, please correct them. Thanks.

[mikerickson]

8/29/2024 - 9/6/2024

If I had a nickel for every time I took a vacation in a small European naval power that historically punched above its weight in global affairs I'd have two nickels, which... ah, you know the rest.

Just got back from a trip to the Netherlands and Belgium that was basically: Amsterdam -> Apeldoorn -> Utrecht -> Den Haag -> Brussels -> Ghent -> Amsterdam. I will now proceed to talk to myself about the highlights below the cut.

Still can't sleep on planes. I even took a sleeping pill and bought a fancy new neck pillow thing to help, but instead I was just exhausted and strangling myself. My dinner also didn't sit well with me, so every time I was about to fall asleep, my gag reflex would trigger and I felt like I was gonna throw up. Seven hours of this was not very relaxing.

Landed at ass o'clock in the morning local time and had 6 hours to kill before hotel check in. I've always read that spending time outdoors in natural sunlight helps regulate your circadian rhythm and can fight jet lag, so I took us to look at some windmills. This was kind of a blur and I'm not certain it made much of a difference because I did end up crashing and taking a nap in the afternoon anyway.

Acknowledging that I am biased about this because I am 1) American and 2) literally a traffic engineer by trade, I simply cannot describe the Netherlands as anything other than "car-hostile". I felt actively unsafe driving around each city we visited because there are so many people on bicycles everywhere, who have right of way. Hell, even as a pedestrian I didn't feel safe because they come at you from every direction and you gotta keep your head on a swivel at all times. In The Hague I watched a woman get knocked into by a cyclist who just shouted over her shoulder "Let op voor fietsen!" ("Watch out for bikes!") and carried on.

Amsterdam ended up being more interesting than I was expecting and now I kinda wish I had dedicated one more day for it in the itinerary. Convenient and easy mass-transit system, some of the best bookstores I've ever been in, and beautiful canals everywhere you look.

Were I forced to describe the geography of the Netherlands, I would have to call it "suspiciously flat." I also got to continue my tradition of traveling to foreign countries, seeing literal hundreds of spinning wind turbines all over the place, and seething with jealousy.

Utrecht was a neat, smaller city with a central canal that I wish I had set aside more time for. Felt like a place where you'd actually want to live more than a touristy city.

The Mauritshuis in The Hague is where Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring is located, and you know that before you even get to that room because she's plastered on 99% of everything for sale in the gift shop right at the entrance.

When we drove over the Netherlands-Belgium border, it started getting overcast. These gray skies hung around for four days, and dissipated as soon as we traveled back north on the final day. All of my memories of this country will now have a gray/de-saturated filter on them.

I know Brussels has a reputation of being a run-down or dangerous city among Europeans, but it just felt like a regular American city to me (specifically like the architecture/street layout of Boston with the political importance of Washington DC). Like, I don't know what to tell you, sometimes cities have visible homeless people, unsightly graffiti, and ethnic minority neighborhoods? It's gonna be okay, I promise. Amsterdam felt like Weenie Hut Jr. by comparison.

Going through the European Parliament building was very cool and very well laid-out and informative. Definitely a personal highlight of the trip for me.

The Belgian War Museum kinda just felt like some rich guy's personal collection of artifacts the public shouldn't have had access to? Not a lot of labels explaining what you're looking at in any language.

Belgian chocolate is fine. Not bad, but I mean it's chocolate, that's hard to screw up, you know?

During my research before this trip I kept seeing a general consensus that Bruges is super touristy and sanitized and feels fake and that Ghent was better for a more "authentically" preserved medieval center. I'm glad I opted to go there instead because it exceeded my expectations. Awesome architecture everywhere you turn, way fewer crowds than I expected, and it still felt lived in by modern people rather than a giant open-air museum.

Literally did not see a single physical Euro at all on this trip. Both of these countries are entirely cashless societies, and everyone (both tourists and locals) used chip readers and contactless payment for damn near every interaction. If anything, I saw tons of "Card Only/No Cash" signs and none of the opposite.

[aprito]

I know you won't reply to that, I just want to say something. I'm hurt. I guess you're on Gaza's side. Even though Hamas aren't the only monsters who hurt my people. Those "innocent people" rape , hit and torment my people. I don't care that monster lost her eye! Most of them want to kill us, And YOU either. They hate us more, but they hate you too. I liked your drawing so much, But now I'm just sad. Don't do that again, please- and I'll keep appreciate your work, because sasosaku are the best!

Aside from the fact that South Africa is sueing Israel for crimes against humanity at the Hague with receipts that include Israel's own admissions: Do you not realise how evil it sounds to look at the bombardment and blockade of a civilian population, half of whom aren't even 18, in the internationally recognized world's largest open air prison, and say that they deserve to die due to a group last voted for in 2006, a year half of the current Gazan population wasn't even born at? Do you think it's fair to bomb hospitals and block water and food supply? Do you think think it's fair to displace 85% of a civilian population? Do you believe it's fair that Israel is currently responsible for the largest share of child casualties? Do you believe that, ignoring everything that happened after October 7th, it's okay for Israel to be the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes between 500 and 700 children each year in military courts lacking fundamental fair trial rights? Those children are the people you call monsters? Do you hear yourself?

I am from Eastern Europe. The wars and consequent economic shock therapies Western Europe and the US have provoked and encouraged there for the past 30 years have displaced and killed more people than I'd like to count. People I met, People I'm related to even. Yet unlike you, I do not believe the children of those countries deserve to the punished for the crimes of a dozen corrupt, imperialist, racist, bloodthirsty leaders and their military henchmen. And I heavily encourage you to find that same empathy in your heart.

[animentality]

I can't go back to thirsting for Astarion now that I'm hooked on Gortash, like, I'm sorry, you're calling your man evil?

He's like a little amoral at best.

MY man should be prosecuted by the Hague.

[jewish-sideblog]

i have a question. i don’t mean this horribly!! but per this post you reblogged: https://www.tumblr.com/jewish-sideblog/744967243590434816, you believe to call what’s going on in palestine a genocide is antisemitic. can you elaborate on that, please?

I don't want to get in the habit of addressing things other people have said in posts I reblog, because those aren't my words and a reblog isn't a blanket endorsement of everything other people have said. But this topic is really important, so I'll weigh in just this once.

The primary concern I have with the use of the term genocide is Holocaust Inversion. Most people don't have a conception of genocide outside of the holocaust, so the usage of the word genocide is often an obvious ploy to weaponize Jewish suffering against Jewish people. Its sole purpose is to equate Israelis to Nazis and Jewish government to fascism.

Yet, there is a lot of death in Gaza right now. Horrible death, needless death. I think any erasure of that is as horrible as Oct. 7th denial. To outright deny that a genocide is happening exclusively because of the historical reality of the Holocaust isn't just or beneficial. So we have to look at it objectively. As I said earlier today, I'm not an international relations expert, so the following is my understanding and should be taken with large grains of salt.

"Genocide" as a war crime is extremely similar to murder as an individual crime. The key component (besides death) is intention. If you kill someone on accident in most English-speaking countries, you'll likely be charged with manslaughter, not murder. Similarly, genocide requires the intentional destruction of a population of people, well beyond the necessary realities of civilian casualty in active war zones. Death itself, even in large numbers, does not a genocide make. Civilians will always die on the battlefield. Always.

The International Criminal Court says that Israel has to meet standards of care in Gaza to ensure that genocide does not occur, meaning they don't think one has already occurred. There's some dispute on whether or not those standards are being met-- Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International say that Israel is failing to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, while the Israeli government issued sealed documents to the Hague last month detailing their compliance measures. It'll take a while to hear back on those. Personally, I think starving Gaza is an obvious measure of intention to destroy Palestinian civilians.

Anybody is obviously welcome to disagree with the highest court of international law in the world. But the fact that the experts seem hesitant to make that determination gives me pause. Why are so many people keen to bring Israel to the Hague, not Russia for their indiscriminate killing of Ukrainians or the Houthis for manufacturing a humanitarian crisis in Yemen? Hamas, one of the governments of internationally-recognized Palestine, fully admits to intending to destroy the Jewish people in part. They say they'll do it again if they get half the chance. Why is only the Jewish state called out as a unique, genocidal evil? Must we label Palestinian deaths as a genocide in order to mourn them effectively? Aren't hundreds dead a day reason enough to mourn and to push for peace?

Again, I don't want to deny the allegations of genocide any more than I want to accept them. I'm following the experts on this one. And so far, the experts say "maybe". As long as they say "maybe", anybody who insists on definitely and absolutely labelling it as a genocide creeps at least suspiciously close to Holocaust Inversion in my eyes.

[ceiling-karasu]

Update on AU World-building

Like how the concept of Jollin means I have to restructure my plans with Cherry Valley and the Flower Hill Command Center, the idea of Rana Roja means that I need to do some restructuring of some of my countries in the AU.

This is a lot of work that is coming from a reporter background OC that I might plan on using for one or two scenes later down the line.

I was talking to both kosmicpowers and 32girassoisdevangogh about some of the countries in my AUs, and I realized that I have been seeing the Equatorial Allegiance (Africa)

As one 'country,' per say, with the color separations representing a flag, while in South America I have been seeing this

As two entirely separate countries divided down the middle, with the one on the right being the República de Cultivos Oleaginosos (mostly Venezuela, and I know the name is awkward in Spanish, but I did not expect to ever have to say it more than a few times).

I'm not sure why my brain decided on that? Possibly because this screenshot suggests that many countries just have one color on the flag, and I attributed that to South America but not Africa somehow.

Assuming those are the flags of other nations and not symbolizing something else, or even just not showing detail here.

So now the problem is more or less this area.

I kind of want Rana Rosa to be pink like the figurine I found, but not unnaturally so.

She would need to be a natural color found in nature. The closest to pink a frog (for the most part) can get in a variant of the Strawberry Poison Dart Frog found around Red Frog Beach of Isla Bastimentos, Panama.

Naming the entirety of Panama in the AU as Red Frog Beach, a peaceful fishing, tourist, and agricultural nation, sounds nice. It also sets a precedent for the entirety of China to just be called 'Rabbit Village.'

The problem is, why would that area not already be a region the United States Alliance had taken over in order to be used as a base or foothold to get the oil down below? It could be protected by the República de Cultivos Oleaginosos, but it is next to the green country.

UNLESS the green and yellow there are also a flag, and this was one country all along. Kind of big though, but I guess it did the same thing as the Equatorial Allegiance, with a group of countries banding together to protect from occupiers wishing to steal their oil and lives.

I DO NOT PLAN to just retcon my own stories and AU once they have been already published, though. I skimmed back through The Rod that Blocks the Lightning, and I do not appear to have mentioned a separate country next to the oil producing one, so I should be good to go in making it one country.

Red Frog Beach, however, was not allowed to join the República. It is too distant and remote for the army to move into the areas if they were invaded. They would also need offices and collections of important documents, which could be used against the rest of the country if occupied by the United States Alliance that wants the oil.

As per a treaty, both the República de Cultivos Oleaginosos and the United States Alliance leave Red Frog Beach as a neutral territory, although both may have secret bases of operations within the country. Something like this may have happened in real life? I'll have to look it up.

Perhaps The Hague also have an office there, in order to keep the peace as much as they can, which is how Rana Roja joins after she accidentally stumbles upon a secret wolf base one day and successfully manages to gather evidence and report on it.

Anyway, here is a basic Picrew of how I would expect she dresses as a court reporter (since I can’t draw frogs yet).

[samueldays]

I'm rereading Just and Unjust Wars, trying to resolve something that's been niggling at me about war crimes and the laws of war.

I think it might be an insufficient distinction between (gestures vaguely) law-as-command, the decree of a legislating authority to subjects; and law-as-custom, the agreement of peers about how to behave with each other.

Rules about war crimes necessarily lean towards law-as-custom, because war is the business of sovereigns who are not subject to any other authority's decree.

Yet many people treat war crimes as entirely law-as-command: wanting to call the War Cops on you for violating War Law with your War Crime and the War Judge will give you a War Trial before putting you in War Jail. (I caricature a little to illustrate the sentiment, they don't say "War Cops", they say "The Hague".)

Here's HRW as an example of law-as-command thought:

The Israeli military’s repeated, apparently unlawful attacks on medical facilities, personnel, and transport are further destroying the Gaza Strip’s healthcare system and should be investigated as war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today. Despite the Israeli military’s claims on November 5, 2023, of “Hamas’s cynical use of hospitals,” no evidence put forward would justify depriving hospitals and ambulances of their protected status under international humanitarian law.

On the view of law-as-command, Hamas committed crime #1 by using hospitals and ambulances for military purposes, and Israel committed crime #2 by then attacking hospitals and ambulances. HRW is speaking as though on behalf of a Global Sovereign who is in charge of everyone, saying that such-and-such statute prohibits such-and-such action of the nominally sovereign state of Israel. Law-as-command is enforced by the Global Sovereign sending in the War Cops.

On the view of law-as-custom, there was an implicit agreement which sounds something like "I'll leave the hospitals and ambulances out of it if you will", and when Hamas stopped holding to this agreement, it ceased to have any force on Israel as counterparty. Law-as-custom is enforced by the threat of losing the protection of the agreement if you violate it.

Both of these views have (gestures vaguely again) unsatisfying philosophical gaps, I think.

The gap in the law-as-command view is that the de facto Global Sovereign of the past fifty years has been the United States of America, and so "war crimes" de facto reduces to whatever the USA won't let you get away with. The HRW cites the Rome Statute, which neither America nor Israel are party to, slightly more weighty than citing "My uncle who works at Nintendo said so".

The gap in the law-as-custom view is that it entitles Israel to target Palestinian hospitals more broadly now, because their protection only arose from a mutual agreement in the first place, which Hamas has now un-agreed to. Sucks for the Palestinians.

Of course, philosophical gaps very rarely move people with guns in the short term.

[no-goodbyes-no-regrets]

so the incoming Dutch government has (among others)

a prime minister who is not a member of a political party but basically just someone who knows the right people to get him a nice job, former head of immigration and naturalisation services

a health minister/deputy PM who used to be a member of a white power/neo nazi forum and strongly opposes late term abortion.

a minister in charge of trade and international aid (as in aid sent to other countries from the Netherlands) who wanted to cut that aid significantly or even get rid of it altogether to pay for a hair brained plan to lower health insurance costs here a few years ago, who is (or was i'm not entirely sure) a board member for an even more racist and unhinged Dutch version of fox news, believes in some ass backwards conspiracy theory that the "elite" are trying to "replace" the population with non white/non western (Jewish!) people but claims that is not nazi rhetoric but a "factual description of a demographic development" , pro zwarte piet (loooong story but basically she's pro blackface)

a minister of immigration who also believes in the replacement conspiracy theory, is also racist, has referred to Islam as despicable. She's been called out on spouting nazi bullshit and just went "it's possible it's a nazi thing, I don't know, I don't really care/think about that"

a speaker of the house who also believes in the replace conspiracy theory and has mentioned it several times as an mp. He also complained about being sick of talks about slavery when there was a discussion on whether or not the (then) prime minister and the king should officially apologise for the Dutch slavery history. July 1st is Keti koti in the Netherlands - which celebrates the end of slavery and remembers those who lost their lives during it (kind of like Juneteenth in the US) and there is an 'official' celebration/memorial service in Amsterdam where normally at least some politicians would show their face and speak. The organisation has said they don't want Bosman (that's his name) there because he's a racist asshole. He's planning to go anyway.

an MP who blatantly denies there is famine in Gaza and says 2000 aid trucks enter the Gaza strip every week.

the leader of that ^ gang who is bffs with Viktor Orbán (Hungarian PM) and the American republicans (that should tell you enough), who was going to make sure there would be 'less Moroccans' in The Hague after winning local elections there, has insulted Islam on various occasions throughout the past 20 or so years, and wants to ban people from having dual citizenship except that one guy in his own party he kinda forgot about

The daughter of an immigrant who opposes immigration and wants to stop people from bringing their family here when they've officially been told they can stay. The EXACT same law that allowed her father to bring her and her mother and siblings here after he left Turkey when she was a kid. She also claims hundreds of thousands of people do this every year - which is bullshit, but she 'didn't do it on purpose' so it's ok.

a minister of housing who actively opposed building plans in her city. And also who nobody takes seriously because she got kicked out of her old party for openly criticising their covid policies during lockdown. Comedians love her because she says stupid shit all the time that they can use to make fun of her.

the leader of the farmers party who can't do maths, won't let anyone run the numbers on her party's plans because it's "not important what things cost or how they'd be paid for"

So yeah - the country is going to shit!

[jokeroutsubs]

Chantal van Mourik (Kris Guštin's mother) about the New Wave on NPO Radio 2

You can find and listen to the original podcast here (40:30).

Voiceover: Blokhuis (host's name) World hit

Leo: So, Anneli, where are we going?

Anneli: Slovenia.

Leo: Slovenia. Slovenia was where the weather was so bad when I was on holiday. Yeah, whole campings have been washed away there.

Anneli: Oh, no

Leo: And people have been evacuated in busses, but we're not talking about that now.

Anneli: No.

Leo: Because we are talking about the music of Slovenia. We'll go to Chantal van Moerik.

Anneli: (correcting) Mourik

Leo: Van Mourik, sorry.

Anneli: You are still in Greek mode, mixing up vowels, or what?

Leo: I'm still in [unintelligible]. Chantal van Mourik, a year ago we also spoke with her, and back then she introduced us to a band: Joker Out, and that was a very cool band, or- that is a very cool band. And that's not by coincidence, because Chantal is the mother of one of the band members, so it is a Slovenian slash...

Anneli: Dutch.

Leo: Dutch band, *laughs* a little bit at least. And because the band recently had a very unexpected collaboration, we wanted to talk about that for a little. So we're gonna ask Chantal what the deal is exactly.

Chantal: Joker Out. Earlier this year they took part in the Eurovision Song Contest and won a place in the final. And since then they have been going through Europe at rocket speed. So they have already been on tour in the UK and Ireland and later this year we will see them in Scandinavia, Germany and also the Netherlands. In between all of that international success, they have also had the chance to record a single with none other than Elvis Costello.

Leo: But wait, wait, wait, wait, we're talking about a Eurovision act from Slovenia, that's working together with Elvis Costello.

Anneli: Yeah, with Elvis Costello, the one and only.

Leo: Okay the man is a little older, but I still wanna know how that's possible.

Chantal: The godfather of the former bassist of the band is from Liverpool and close friends with Costello and he showed him the original Slovenian version of 'Novi val' ('New Wave'), with an explanation of the meaning. That was enough, because Elvis Costello felt this song, and in record time, he wrote his own English lyrics, and also recorded them.

Leo: I see... Firstly I am hearing an unstoppably proud mother, *laughs* and I love that. And rightly so, Chantal, rightly so. Chantal van Mourik speaking about her son, and the band of her son, and that band is called... er

Anneli: Joker Out.

Leo: Joker Out. And the song is called 'New wave', and Elvis Costello is gonna be singing on it. And now she will quickly introduce the track herself.

Chantal: 'Novi val', ('New Wave'), is about a new generation that grows up in a time where the world is burning, literally, but still has the power, through connectedness, in love and hope, to make a difference. 'Generacija ljubezni in upanja, novi val' ('The generation of love and hope, the new wave'). You could say that this song is like a hymn of a generation, with which Joker Out shows that they sense exactly what is going on in the world and are trying to counterbalance that. They can be seen live in Amsterdam and The Hague on the 5th and 6th of December, but first, with Elvis Costello, 'New Wave'.

~

Translation cr: @italimix @britte00

[fairyhagmother]

okay i’m sorry i simply have to come here. i just love the persephone lore you are sharing. please, im begging for more persephone thoughts from you.

HIIIIIII LILY IN THE INBOX!!!!

the thing is right, you have heard most of my Pippa lore bc a.it is largely inspired by yours and b.whenever I am struck with a Pippa insight I literally run to yell at you in ur inbox, replies, etc.

+ I 100% believe her situation during the civil war was extremely dire. she literally had to resort to cannibalism. it must have been real bad.

+ I'm so sorry everybody. but her relationship to festus is so, so precious to me. It's one of the first things I was dead set on when I finished the book and decided to forego all feelings of shame and write. a 4 weddings and a funeral AU. as they were my wedding 1 I guess I have spent a lot of time with them and I'm very attached now okay.

+ they literally bring out the best in each other. persephone is actually very shy and quiet and he makes her more adventurous and fun! persephone mellows festus out. she hates gambling so he quits cold turkey for her sake. she makes him feel more confident so he drops the macho facade as he matures. still loves a party though! sorry back to pippa

+basically the moral compass of her friend group. like: no livia dont take apart palmyras pointe shoes so she breaks her ankle come on now. her friends are insanely protective of her because they see her as this pure soul that must be protected at all costs. additionally, vip and livia both know how traumatic the war was on the price household (not the cannibalism I dont think, but they know it was bad), and they really admire / are puzzled by how she emerged from all that while remaining kindhearted.

+ she has a little boy who, at times, violently reminds her of mizzen.

+ she's kind of a blindspot of coriolanus's but not because he underestimates her, but because he finds her so repulsive that he refuses to see her as anything more than an abstract concept. livia keeps saying these insane things about him to Pippa over tea, and Pippa is immediately like. this guy is crazy actually. but festus is like nah Pippa that's just coryo he's a bit of a freak but he's harmless, he was my best man!

+ festus dies out of nowhere. the coroner rules it a morphling overdose. to Pippa's dismay, no one in the friend group is shocked and they keep coming to her and: she should have said something if festus was struggling with addiction! you remember how he was at the academy, etc, etc. where the fuck did these stories even come from you know? well pippa can't prove it but she has an inkling.

+ she goes insane with grief. like. its horrible. she keeps telling everyone that something's off but no one listens to her because as far as they are concerned its just the insane ranting of a recently widowed woman.

+ and as I said, she keeps a box of 'evidence' that coriolanus is somehow behind all these mysterious 'purges'. it gets brought up when snow is tried at the hague of panem circa mockingjay.

+ Pippa feels guilty for having been a passive cog in an objectively evil machine, along with festus. she loved / loves him so much but she never really gets over the fact that they were complicit with the regime. she thinks back to all the times her friends called her kind, and she wonders if they're wrong.

[arbitrarygreay]

So I've removed some of the caps I took from this ep, since at the end I'm going to do single profiles. These ep posts will focus on observations on what we see of the group as a whole

For ep 3, the first cap demonstrates the Biddies doing different things before being called to attention by Alder. They are in grey uniform to greet the Witchfather.

This is obviously somewhat production limitation, but while some Biddies sync with Alder's steps, they mostly don't when going up/down the stairs. You can also see that there's not a consistent formation for which Biddies go where relative to Alder or each other.

The Biddies wear a different set of uniforms to the Hague. Rather than "dress blues", they apparently have dress reds.

The Hague sets out chairs for the Biddies to sit at, but I think that's the only time I've ever seen that done. In Fort Salem, even during meetings (like the Kiev operation last episode), they're almost always standing.

There are some implications to the fact that Biddies return to their young bodies at death. Despite Alder taking back her years/relinquishing energy back to the Biddy, they still die, indicating that they aren't necessarily dying of old age/age-driven health issues. Or, that the Biddy Working isn't necessarily fueled by just their physical energy (i.e. the Working is eating their souls or something). This is matched by the Marshal taking on extra years when any of his marshals die, despite the latter not changing age, unless there's some hilarious twist like "the marshals are all actually children aged up 30+ years."

There's also a rather significant weirdness to the fact that a Biddy almost died on the floor of the Hague, in the sense that Alder let it happen. She apparently is not monitoring the health of her Biddies very much, if she couldn't feel it and take precautions (like maybe swapping one out before taking the hours-long flight to Europe). Furthermore, the fact that apparently Alder feels secure enough in her power that becoming weakened in this way in front of the Hague wasn't really a thing she was scared of? And neither did the Hague seem particularly shocked or worried by it happening, so evidently it was never going to be an opportunity that any of them would think of seizing. It's just a thing that happens probably as frequently as once a year, if Eliot's dubious claim of Biddy tenure being only 5-6 years is correct.

[woodsfae]

B5 s03e10 Severed Dreams table of contents - previous episode

Londo fully deserves all the inconvenience that an extremely pedantic Narn security force can muster against him. It's the least his genocidal, fascist ass deserves. I hope many more little miseries for him. 

"This never would have happened if the humans hadn't started fighting each other!"

This also would never have happened if Londo hadn't thrown the entire fucking galaxy under the bus in exchange for temporary political cred. 

Having moral qualms about firing on one's own people mid-civil-war does seem like the sort of emotions one would have as a member of the military that's schisming against itself. 

Psst, while the opening is playing, I have a secret. I'm 100% going to count these words towards my NaNoWriMo count. Probably am not going to make it, since I didn't write at all from the 11th to the 26th. But I did write more than 14k words in the last two days so ya never know. I could whip out 11k a day for the final two days of November. No I'm not lingering over this paragraph to inflate my word count, how very dare?

General Hague's ship is coming to B5. It's called The Alexander, which is a pretty obvious allusion to Alexander the Great, although the Rangers haven't been conquering any vast tracts of land lately in B5.

I fucking LOVE G'Kar helping with the Rangers now! He's like "I AM A GOOD ALLY JUST LIKE I ALWAYS KNEW. Watch me carry this slender little Minbari as far as you'd like." 10/10, no notes. I think he might be my favorite character overall. I mean, Susan is the BEST, but I think G'Kar might be my favorite, yanno? There's a difference. 

"Our humanity got us into this. It's our humanity that's going to get us out again." 

I certainly do hope so, John Sheridan. Because as always, this show is eerily prescient about our present, when it was intended to be a social commentary on the socio-political state of the 90s. 

This side character Minbari is a kickass actor. He welled those tears up no problem. Also very lame that there's even more instability that'll inevitably benefit the Shadows. How much more bleak does it need to be for them to have a satisfying, underdog victory? They're already under, dawg! 

General Hague is dead.  Most of General Hague's fleet is destroyed. And Earthforce is bombing Mars. The plea from Mars not to fire, that there's women and children, is chilling. But the random Aflack commercials on Tubi are great about lightening my mood. /s 

It's so funny that Delenn makes sure to tell Lennier she will support any decisions he makes in her absence, because I just know she's about to go fuck shit up on the Grey Council. 

This journalist is so brave! The journalists were lying, spreading earthgov propaganda, but it didn't matter. The government still came to take them down in the coup because they weren't extreme enough. 

The Agrippa and the Roanoke are coming to seize command of B5....Agrippa was a general, but I don't recall what he is most known for. Roanoke is famous in the USA for being an early colony, which the colonists all disappeared from in a fabricated mystery, when it was obvious they had joined the nearby Roanoke tribe. I wonder if the Roanoke is going to switch sides at the last moment in this episode, or go fuck off to do their own thing or something. 

John giving his senior staff the same inspirational speech he uses for himself because it's 100% "Do it for Delenn!!!! And freedom. But mostly Delenn!" It's extremely cute. 

tHe CoUnCiL wIlL NoT sEe YoU. - useless Minbari dude

"Then I will see them!" 

Yes you will, Delenn. That whole speech is excellent. and wasted on that little pissant. But her speech to the Grey Council is even better! 

Mira Furlan delivers this speech, as all of her speeches, so powerfully. 

And she has such pointed things to say to each of them. Yessss be shamed!! Delenn you badass. Shattered that staff literally with her bare hands!! Was that the strength of prophecy, or her mad grip strength? She got five of them...are there nine on the Council at a time? I can't recall. 

It's very endearing that John called home to make sure to check in with the folks before he can't do it easily for awhile. 

"Where's Mom?" "Oh, she went to town....errands to run. You know how it is."

Actually, in this family, I do know how it is. Is Mom Sheridan in jail for protesting or agitating or something? 

I remember liking the design for B5's little fighter holds when the series started, but I like it even more now. It's just so smart. They're stored so there's easy access with the spin-gravity, and so they can't deploy accidentally. And then they get whooshed out to space when the pilot is in. I'm sure the new opening which highlights it in such crisp, remastered HD helps a lot with my newly arisen appreciation for their fighter deployment systems. 

It pleases me greatly seeing Sheridan using DraalPlanet's hologram! I'm a sucker for continuity. 

Susan Ivanova is right, damn it! One of them, her or Sheridan, does have to be out there, fighting with their people against the rest of EarthForce. And it does have to be Ivanova: Sheridan is the captain. He can't captain while he's starfighting. 

OK they're here! The Churchhill - authoritarian leader who speaks first and deploys their fighters first. Sheridan speaks eloquently. The Agrippa and Roanoke fall silently in line. I'm so curious to see how this plays out. Ivanova is engaging with the Churchill. The Alexander comes out as well! And there's a breaching pod on B5 - something for the B5 security forces to do so Garibaldi doesn't feel left out! 

It's horrible to see the Narn security forces going in without armor, ahead of the humans in armor. At least give them some protective gear, damn! So many of them went down, and idk if their blasters even have stun capability. I'm assuming they're all dead. Which, fuck. 

I think Hiroshi rammed the Roanoke? Ah, and the Roanoke is destroyed. I think all three of the attacking ships were straight up destroyed. I'm usually able to track the B5 battles, but this was the largest and most complicated one.  And I am also kinda crossfaded. 

"If you value your lives: be somewhere else." 

Delenn is getting all the best speeches this episode, as she deserves. Really, excellent Delenn episode all around! She is a badass. Love to see more aspects to her badassery highlighted. 

Zack Allen is now a paragon of helpfulness and loyalty. And Garibaldi got injured again. 

It suddenly sounds like the Churchill was on B5's side which...I definitely misunderstood part of that battle, if so. But at least B5's fighter crews are at full strength since they're taking the Churchill's survivors. 

John Sheridan has a good conversation with the Major whatshisface, and I am charmed again by his deciding not to wear his uniform till he can be proud of it again. Will he extend that decision to every personnel on board? Is everyone about to be running around in civvies? Soace fashion! Space business casual!  

Dang, Delenn's "Hello, John," was sultry. And her dress is much simpler and akin to a human wrap-dress than her usual, structured Minbari robes.

"I don't know how much this cost you personally, and I suspect I never will. But I want you to know that seeing your face is that moment was the finest moment of my life." 

cute, but I think Delenn heartily enjoyed ripping the council a new one.

I am glad Sheridan got applauded by all his B5ers at the end, and the pan over to the partially torn down Nightwatch poster was c h i l i n g

want another one?

[naradreamscape]

We need to hold the mass crimes over the heads of "Israeli veterans" as long as they live. I'm not joking in any way

We need to bring back the domestic backlash people had after the Vietnam War. A guy just came back to America from Gaza? You call him a baby killer instead of their name. Greet them every time you see them like, "OH hey, babykiller! Done any sex crimes lately?" Mock them in every way imaginable, especially if they attempt to brag about the "war" they just "fought in". Wow Bill, you really shot up that hospital full of civilians? Didn't ask questions; just defied all conventional trigger discipline the moment you saw Brown skin? How brave and intelligent of you, a round for the bar on this guy

Man I. just. The things the IOF has gotten away with (FOR NOW) warrant constant mockery at all times. You don't get to go kill and torture a native population based on hearsay and then get to come back to your life of comfort, with your Netflix and instant coffees and numbness to the lives you just ruined. You need to be reminded of your crimes against humanity for the rest of your life, and being constantly mocked is but a penance compared to standing in the Hague where you belong

[joemuggs]

Winging It

Thirty years ago today, one of the greatest albums of the 90s came out. I wrote about it for MOJO in 2018, including some hilarious words from the sadly missed Andrew Weatherall.

👇🏻

The album that soundtracked the end of the acid house honeymoon – for the select few that loved it – has a suitably decadent beginning.

“I was playing at a club in Rimini as part of some Balearic charabanc,” says DJ / producer Andrew Weatherall, “and at about 6am when it finished the owner opened up the back of the club onto the beach and said we'd be carrying on on his yacht. Not quite a Roman Abramovic superyacht, but sound enough – and off we went. So there I was, spangled and enjoying the view, and a young lady came up and started singing in my ear. 'I'm Dorothy Allison and I've got a band in Glasgow,' she said. Then we landed and stumbled back up the beach, terrifying the tourists.”

Her band was called Dove, a trio of Allison, Jim McKinven (formerly of Altered Images and Berlin Blondes), and Ian Carmichael (producer and occasional keyboardist for Sarah Records janglers The Orchids). They'd only released one song, “Fallen”, on Glasgow's Soma label – but that song's dub space, insinuatingly whispered vocal and harmonica lifted from a Supertramp record had captured the bittersweet mysteries of the morning after the rave better than almost any, and caused quite a stir. Weatherall, meanwhile, was on a high in every sense having – despite next to no studio experience – just marshalled Primal Scream into completing Screamadelica.

The first collaboration to come out of the yacht introduction was reworking “Fallen” for the renamed One Dove. “I was nervous!” says Carmichael. “Andy [Weatherall] came to my studio in Glasgow and I was late meeting him so he was waiting outside when I got there. I thought he'd be really pissed off, but the reviews for Screamadelica had just come out, so he was reading the papers on the doorstep and was obviously delighted.” The remix happened quickly. “It was instinctive and spontaneous,” says Carmichael “The whole time I was watching recording levels on my old Revox 1/4” bouncing into the red, and splicing lots of sections of tape together with shaking hands; it was terrifying for me. I thought the whole thing would be a mess, but when we played it back at the end and heard his version of 'Fallen' it was miraculous.”

This quickly developed into a slick working relationship, releasing on Weatherall and friends' Boys Own Productions. The three would write, send tracks to Weatherall, who brought in associates like Jah Wobble and Primal Scream's Andrew Innes for embellishment. Surprisingly rapidly given the fervid times – “I remember next to nothing of the process, I'm afraid” says Weatherall, “or indeed of those years” – it fell together into an extraordinarily coherent whole. “Every song we came up with went on the album,” says Carmichael, “we were buzzing the whole time as each one came together.” The sound blended the ambient dub of the time with a rich streak of country heartbreak (something they'd nod explicitly to by covering “Jolene” on a b-side), everything covered in sonic velvet to match the purity of Allison's softly breathed mysteries. “There were no histrionics,” says Weatherall; “it was the antidote to the wailing diva thing we'd all embraced in house music.”

It's a gorgeous, lingering dream of an album with a dark heart, and it's a perennial puzzler why it didn't sell like hot disco biscuits; after all, Boys Own now had the backing of major label London. “It's easy to blame the record label,” says Weatherall, “so let's do just that. The album came together nice and quickly – if they'd just have put it out, said 'here's a cool new band' and let them get on with it, one suspects the second album would have been where they got big.” But London kept Morning Dove White in limbo for a year, insisting on more pop mixes of the album's singles by Stephen Hague, and pushing for quick fix success. In fact those single mixes are gorgeous, but, Carmichael says “maybe they put a lot of the hardcore Weatherall fans off.” William Orbit remixed too, sonically prefiguring his work with Madonna and All Saints.

Despite promising performance from the singles, MDW didn't become the hit London wanted, and the stress took its toll. The second album – made without Weatherall – was painful, the band's relationship disintegrated, their “failure to become the new Eurythmics” led to the label shelving the album, and they split in 1996. Allison would go on to make some great solo records, working with everyone from Death In Vegas via Pete Doherty to Scott Walker. McKinven still plays and DJs in Glasgow, and has released with occasional projects including the fantastically moody electro guises Organs Of Love and WomenSaid on the connoiseur's imprint Optimo Music. Carmichael worked with trip-hoppers Lamb for some time, produced for the likes of Bis and The Pastels, and maintains an ongoing relationship with The Orchids – as well as being a director of the School of Sound Recording. MDW, a couple of b-sides and some leaked second album demos on Soundcloud remain the only remaining monument to their time together: just a glimpse of what might have been, and as such perfectly evocative of the “Transient Truth” of the pleasures and regrets of its era.