#march 28 2018

[mermaidinthecity]

leonalewis: Ready for a lil sing song ✨ #newyorknights

[ch-qw]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Private-sector Trumpism

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on WEDNESDAY (Apr 2), and in BLOOMINGTON on FRIDAY (Apr 4). More tour dates here.

Trumpism is a mixture of grievance, surveillance, and pettiness: "I will never forgive your mockery, I have records of you doing it, and I will punish you and everyone who associates with you for it." Think of how he's going after the (cowardly) BigLaw firms:

https://abovethelaw.com/2025/03/skadden-makes-100-million-settlement-with-trump-in-pro-bono-payola/

Trump is the realization of decades of warning about ubiquitous private and public surveillance – that someday, all of this surveillance would be turned to the systematic dismantling of human rights and punishing of dissent.

23 years ago, I was staying in London with some friends, scouting for a flat to live in. After at day in town, I came back and we ordered a curry and had a nice chat. I mentioned how discomfited I'd been by all the CCTV cameras that had sprouted at the front of every private building, to say nothing of all the public cameras installed by local councils and the police. My friend dismissed this as a kind of American, hyper-individualistic privacy purism, explaining that these cameras were there for public safety – to catch flytippers, vandals, muggers, boy racers tearing unsafely through the streets. My fear about having my face captured by all these cameras was little more than superstitious dread. It's not like they were capturing my soul.

Now, I knew that my friend had recently marched in one of the massive demonstrations against Bush and Blair's illegal invasion plans for Iraq. "Look," I said, "you marched in the street to stand up and be counted. But even so, how would you have felt if – as a condition of protesting – you were forced to first record your identity in a government record-book?" My friend had signed petitions, he'd marched in the street, but even so, he had to admit that there would be some kind of chilling effect if your identity had to be captured as a condition of participating in public political events.

Trump has divided the country into two groups of people: "citizens" (who are sometimes only semi-citizens) and immigrants (who have no rights):

https://crookedtimber.org/2025/03/29/trumps-war-on-immigrants-is-the-cancellation-of-free-society/#fn-53926-1

Trump has asserted that he can arrest and deport immigrants (and some semi-citizens) for saying things he doesn't like, or even liking social media posts he disapproves of. He's argued that he can condemn people to life in an offshore slave-labor camp if he doesn't like their tattoos. It is tyranny, built on ubiquitous surveillance, fueled by spite and grievance.

One of Trumpism's most important tenets is that private institutions should have the legal right to discriminate against minorities that he doesn't like. For example, he's trying to end the CFPB's enforcement action against Townstone, a mortgage broker that practiced rampant racial discrimination:

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-03-28-trump-scrambles-pardon-corporate-criminals-townstone-boeing-cfpb/

By contrast, Trump abhors the idea that private institutions should be allowed to discriminate against the people he likes, hence his holy war against "DEI":

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/29/trump-administration-warns-european-companies-to-comply-with-anti-dei-order.html

This is the crux of Wilhoit's Law, an important and true definition of "conservativism":

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

Wilhoit's definition is an important way of framing how conservatives view the role of the state. But there's another definition I like, one that's more about how we relate to one-another, which I heard from Steven Brust: "Ask, 'What's more important: human rights or property rights?' Anyone who answers 'property rights are human rights' is a conservative."

Thus the idea that a mortgage broker or an employer or a banker or a landlord should be able to discriminate against you because of the color of your skin, your sexual orientation, your gender, or your beliefs. If "property rights are human rights," then the human right not to rent to a same-sex couple is co-equal with the couple's human right to shelter.

The property rights/human rights distinction isn't just a way to cleave right from left – it's also a way to distinguish the left from liberals. Liberals will tell you that 'it's not censorship if it's done privately' – on the grounds that private property owners have the absolute right to decide which speech they will or won't permit. Charitably, we can say that some of these people are simply drawing a false equivalence between "violating the First Amendment" and "censorship":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/04/yes-its-censorship/

But while private censorship is often less consequential than state censorship, that isn't always true, and even when it is, that doesn't mean that private censorship poses no danger to free expression.

Consider a thought experiment in which a restaurant chain called "No Politics At the Dinner Table Cafe" buys up every eatery in town, and then maintains its monopoly by sewing up exclusive deals with local food producers, and then expands into babershops, taxis and workplace cafeterias, enforcing a rule in all these spaces that bans discussions of politics:

https://locusmag.com/2020/01/cory-doctorow-inaction-is-a-form-of-action/

Here we see how monopoly, combined with property rights, creates a system of censorship that is every bit as consequential as a government rule. And if all of those facilities were to add AI-backed cameras and mics that automatically monitored all our conversations for forbidden political speech, then surveillance would complete the package, yielding private censorship that is effectively indistinguishable from government censorship – with the main difference being that the First Amendment permits the former and prohibits the latter.

The fear that private wealth could lead to a system of private rule has been in America since its founding, when Thomas Jefferson tried (unsuccessfully) to put a ban on monopolies into the US Constitution. A century later, Senator John Sherman wrote the Sherman Act, the first antitrust bill, defending it on the Senate floor by saying:

If we would not submit to an emperor we should not submit to an autocrat of trade.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/

40 years ago, neoliberal economists ended America's century-long war on monopolies, declaring monopolies to be "efficient" and convincing Carter, then Reagan, then all their successors (except Biden) to encourage monopolies to form. The US government all but totally suspended enforcement of its antitrust laws, permitting anticompetitive mergers, predatory pricing, and illegal price discrimination. In so doing, they transformed America into a monopolist's playground, where versions of the No Politics At the Dinner Table Cafe have conquered every sector of our economy:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

This is especially true of our speech forums – the vast online platforms that have become the primary means by which we engage in politics, civics, family life, and more. These platforms are able to decide who may speak, what they may say, and what we may hear:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

These platforms are optimized for mass surveillance, and, when coupled with private sector facial recognition databases, it is now possible to realize the nightmare scenario I mooted in London 23 years ago. As you move through both the virtual and physical world, you can be identified, your political speech can be attributed to you, and it can be used as a basis for discrimination against you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/20/steal-your-face/#hoan-ton-that

This is how things work at the US border, of course, where border guards are turning away academics for having anti-Trump views:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/world/europe/us-france-scientist-entry-trump-messages.html

It's not just borders, though. Large, private enterprises own large swathes of our world. They have the unlimited property right to exclude people from their properties. And they can spy on us as much as they want, because it's not just antitrust law that withered over the past four decades, it's also privacy law. The last consumer privacy law Congress bestirred itself to pass was 1988's "Video Privacy Protection Act," which bans video-store clerks from disclosing your VHS rentals. The failure to act on privacy – like the failure to act on monopoly – has created a vacuum that has been filled up with private power. Today, it's normal for your every action – every utterance, every movement, every purchase – to be captured, stored, combined, analyzed, and, of course sold.

With vast property holdings, total property rights, and no privacy law, companies have become the autocrats of trade, able to regulate our speech and association in ways that can no longer be readily distinguished state conduct that is at least theoretically prohibited by the First Amendment.

Take Madison Square Garden, a corporate octopus that owns theaters, venues and sport stadiums and teams around the country. The company is notoriously vindictive, thanks to a spate of incidents in which the company used facial recognition cameras to bar anyone who worked at a law-firm that was suing the company from entering any of its premises:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/nyregion/madison-square-garden-facial-recognition.html

This practice was upheld by the courts, on the grounds that the property rights of MSG trumped the human rights of random low-level personnel at giant law firms where one lawyer out of thousands happened to be suing the company:

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/madison-square-gardens-ban-on-lawyers-suing-them-can-remain-in-place-court-rules/4194985/

Take your kid's Girl Scout troop on an outing to Radio City Music Hall? Sure, just quit your job and go work for another firm.

But that was just for starters. Now, MSG has started combing social media to identify random individuals who have criticized the company, and has added their faces to the database of people who can't enter their premises. For example, a New Yorker named Frank Miller has been banned for life from all MSG properties because, 20 years ago, he designed a t-shirt making fun of MSG CEO James Dolan:

https://www.theverge.com/news/637228/madison-square-garden-james-dolan-facial-recognition-fan-ban

This is private-sector Trumpism, and it's just getting started.

Take hotels: the entire hotel industry has collapsed into two gigachains: Marriott and Hilton. Both companies are notoriously bad employers and at constant war with their unions (and with nonunion employees hoping to unionize in the face of flagrant, illegal union-busting). If you post criticism online of both hotel chains for hiring scabs, say, and they add you to a facial recognition blocklist, will you be able to get a hotel room?

After more than a decade of Uber and Lyft's illegal predatory pricing, many cities have lost their private taxi fleets and massively disinvested in their public transit. If Uber and Lyft start compiling dossiers of online critics, could you lose the ability to get from anywhere to anywhere, in dozens of cities?

Private equity has rolled up pet groomers, funeral parlors, and dialysis centers. What happens if the PE barons running those massive conglomerates decide to exclude their critics from any business in their portfolio? How would it feel to be shut out of your mother's funeral because you shit-talked the CEO of Foundation Partners Group?

https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/funeral-homes-private-equity-death-care/

More to the point: once this stuff starts happening, who will dare to criticize corporate criminals online, where their speech can be captured and used against them, by private-sector Trumps armed with facial recognition and the absurd notion that property rights aren't just human rights – they're the ultimate human rights?

The old fears of Thomas Jefferson and John Sherman have come to pass. We live among autocrats of trade, and don't even pretend the Constitution controls what these private sector governments can do to us.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/31/madison-square-garden/#autocrats-of-trade

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Avicii - Hey Brother 2013

"Hey Brother" is a dance song by Swedish DJ and record producer Avicii from his debut studio album, True (2013). American bluegrass singer Dan Tyminski provides vocals for the track. Tyminski did the vocals for "A Man of Constant Sorrow" (poll #26) from the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

"Hey Brother" was written by Avicii, Ash Pournouri, Salem Al Fakir, Vincent Pontare and Veronica Maggio. The song, which serves as the album's third single, was solicited to Australian radio on 9 October 2013 and later released on 28 October 2013 in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In March 2014, a version of the track remixed by Avicii himself was released on his remix album True (Avicii by Avicii), this time featuring new vocals from singer Salem Al Fakir.

In the UK, after climbing for several weeks, "Hey Brother" peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart on 15 December 2013. In addition, "Hey Brother" peaked at the top of the UK Dance Chart. Including previous releases "I Could Be the One", "Wake Me Up" and "You Make Me", Avicii therefore reached the summit of the UK Dance Chart four times in 2013 alone.

In the US, the song entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart at number 77 in December 2013, and rose to number 16 in March 2014. After Clear Channel personnel noticed the song's success at pop and adult pop radio, they asked Island Def Jam to craft a remix that showcases the song's instruments more prominently. Support for this remix enabled "Hey Brother" to debut, and peak, at number 59 on Billboard's Country Airplay chart in March 2014. The song would become Avicii's final song to hit the top 40 before his death in 2018.

"Hey Brother" received a total of 67% yes votes!

[world-of-celebs]

Jordana Brewster attends Build series to discuss "Fast & The Furious" and "Zyrtec" at Build Studio on March 28, 2018 in New York City. 

[sscarletvenus]

this picture of Dr Adnan al-Bursh was taken after he performed 28 surgeries in one day during the Great March of Return in 2018, when the apartheid entity's snipers shot 6000+ Palestinian protesters, killing over 200.

please listen to his words, he remained until the last moment saving the wounded before the IOF kidnapped and tortured him to death.

we will never forget. we will never forgive. the entity's reign of terror will end before our eyes.

[infiniteglitterfall]

this is my most autistic half-birthday ever!

I gave myself the day to pursue a special interest and fulfill an offer I'd made last year.

The Jewish Virtual Library has a page listing all the rocket and mortar attacks on Israel since 2001 (which was when they first started). But it's incomplete. Last fall, I noticed it stopped in August, so I wrote to them offering to help update it. They thanked me and gave me some places I could look.

Today, I finally did it. I ended up cross-referencing with the lists on Wikipedia, digging through multiple Twitter accounts and outside news sources and NGOs, and sending them an email with my updates... plus an html file where I'd updated the code on the page so they could just check it and upload it instead of typing in all the data themselves.

I am such a huge nerd.

There's definitely more research to do. But I think I found a strong stopping place that let me actually send what I found and post about it. Which is always the hardest part. As my drafts folder could tell you.

I have more than two thousand drafts on here.

Anyway, I'm going to put my findings under a cut tag. Before you read on, I want you to try to guess.

Because one of the things I've been told most often by people who wanna Argue About Palestine Without Having To Learn Anything About Palestine (Or Israel Or History Or Imperialism Or Fact-Checking Or ?????) is that the reason for October 7, the reason for literally anything in fact, is that "Israel bombs Palestine constantly."

I want to put together a list of Israeli airstrikes next. I would love to reblog this with that information. But first, I want you to guess:

Note that this DOES NOT include terrorist car rammings, mass shootings, mass stabbings, bus bombings, suicide bombings, etc. It therefore excludes almost the entire Second Intifada.

After correcting the most recent four years and sending in my corrections, I made a list of the totals using the most complete collection I could find for each year. (Sometimes it was Jewish Virtual Library, sometimes it was Wikipedia, and sometimes they matched.)

2024: 12,629 (an average of 35 per day)

2023: 12,295 (34 per day)

2022: 1,180 (only 3 per day)

2021: 4,425 (12 per day)

2020: about 203

2019: 798+

2018: 348+, 0.95 per day

2017: Only 47!!! Why, it's almost like living in Canada!! 0.1 per day.

2016: Wow, only 20. See, if you go through the years backwards, it looks like progress is being made.  Very exciting. Until I get to the Second Intifada, probably. 0.05 per day.

2015: 58.

2014: oh right, that war. 4,778. (Wikipedia's 2015 list claims " In August 2014, Operation Protective Edge was ended after 4,594 rockets and mortars launched toward Israel. From the end of the operation came into force an unofficial cease-fire between Israel and Hamas." but there were three more after that, and 181 before it, listed on wikipedia alone. so like. 4,778 actually, for 13 a day.)

2013: 70 total. Wikipedia notes this was the lowest number since 2001.

2012: 2,442, or 6.7 per day.

2011: 680, for 1.9 a day.

2010: 365, for exactly one a day.

2009: 858, or 2.4 per day.

2008: 3,107! that's 8.5 a day.

2007: 2,807: 7.7 a day.

2006: 1,275, or 3.5 a day.

2005: 858. An average of 2.4 per day.

2004: 1,158.

2003: 637.

2002: 472.]

2001: "These attacks commenced in April 2001, although the first rocket to hit an Israeli city was on 5 March 2002, and the first Israeli fatality was 28 June 2004." I count 173 mortar attacks in 2001, however. Which makes the first fatality a critically-injured baby in 2001. And as soon as I make 250+ more edits and have the power to edit Wikipedia articles on "controversial" topics, I'll make it say so.

Grand Total: 51,685.

An average of SIX PER DAY.

FOR 24 YEARS.

I've been saying four.

But there were actually thousands that weren't listed on the Virtual Library site yet. It really cranked up that average.

Now consider this: between 10%-30% misfire and either crash into the sea, or hit Gaza.

A surprising number of Gazan casualties in every "conflict" have been from Hamas & Co's own missiles.

And they know this. And not only do they not care, but they keep using everything from mosques to humanitarian zones as rocket launch sites.

And why shouldn't they? You have to really dig to find information on how many Gazans die that way. Almost everyone just attributes the deaths to Israel. Hamas is never going to get any actual flak for accidentally killing its own civilians. It barely gets any flak for intentionally killing Israeli civilians, for pete's sake.

[vivziepoparchives]

Angel Dust and Cherri Bomb ready for a night of partying posted to Viv's twitter March 28, 2018.

[source]

[labyrinthofstreams]

Jewish musicians of the 1960s

✡︎ Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman; May 24, 1941)

✡︎ Lesley Gore (born Lesley Sue Goldstein; May 2, 1946 – February 16, 2015)

✡︎ Leonard Cohen (September 21, 1934 – November 7, 2016)

✡︎ Barbra Streisand (born April 24, 1942)

✡︎ Marty Balin (born Martyn Jerel Buchwald; January 30, 1942 – September 27, 2018) and Jorma Kaukonen (born December 23, 1940) of Jefferson Airplane

✡︎ Robby Krieger (born January 8, 1946) of The Doors

✡︎ Paul Simon (born October 13, 1941) and Art Garfunkel (born November 5, 1941) of Simon & Garfunkel

✡︎ Phil Ochs (December 19, 1940 – April 9, 1976)

✡︎ Cass Elliot (born Ellen Naomi Cohen; September 19, 1941 – July 29, 1974) of The Mamas & The Papas

✡︎ Mary (December 28, 1948 – January 19, 2024) and Elizabeth Weiss (born November 27, 1946) of The Shangri-Las

✡︎ Neil Diamond (born January 24, 1941)

✡︎ Janis Ian (born Janis Eddy Fink; April 7, 1951)

✡︎ Robbie Robertson (born Jaime Royal Robertson; July 5, 1943 – August 9, 2023) of The Band

✡︎ Gary Hirsh (March 9, 1940 – August 17, 2021), Barry Melton (born June 14, 1947), Joseph Allen "Country Joe" McDonald (born January 1, 1942), and David Cohen (born August 4, 1942) of Country Joe and the Fish

✡︎ Manfred Mann (born Manfred Sepse Lubowitz; October 21, 1940)

[golden-lovers]

the new beginning in sapporo january 28, 2018 // strong style evolved march 25, 2018

[mermaidinthecity]

deltagoodrem: I’ve hidden codes inside some of my physical CDs…📀 Follow the link to my bio to buy #ThinkAboutYou & pre order the “Versions” edition to see if you’ve won a special VIP Experience ✨ I want to meet you! More info on my website. Good Luck! xx

[marleneoftheopera]

Phantom & LND Gifts!🎁

Another holiday season, another round of gifts! Wishing you all a gentle and restful holiday and New Year. Here's hoping for a good next year, or at least an uneventful one. Included are some new recordings, some older, and some that have already been shared but are current favorites of mine. All audios are to be traded as normal, the videos can be either traded or gifted at the request of the master.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xVsYDH_tmMNR6fJxEgssH93TdD6v5Ux6?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Y0Wd5RicQyy3CwEBV6Wu2TqQjMOp0aKx?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_anh8dlNcFG-kgZTllARNWckAX97_mKj?usp=sharing

The Phantom of the Opera

Glyn Kerslake, Jill Washington, Chris Harley, Anthony Raffell, Leo Andrews, Jasna Ivir, Heather Jackson, David Hillman, Amanda Light March 6, 1999; London

Marcus Lovett (Phantom), Anna O'Byrne (Christine), Antony Hansen (Raoul), Lara Martins (Carlotta Giudicelli), Barry James (Monsieur Firmin), Gareth Snook (Monsieur André), Louisa Lydell (Madame Giry), Jeremy Secomb (Ubaldo Piangi), Layla Harrison (Meg Giry) October 26, 2012; London

Jeremy Secomb (Phantom), Ashleigh Fleming (Christine), Sean Palmer (Raoul), Lara Martins (Carlotta Giudicelli), Andy Hockley (Monsieur Firmin), Martin Ball (Monsieur André), Shena Sanders (Madame Giry), Marc Vastenavondt (Ubaldo Piangi), Cat Lane (Meg Gir July 31, 2014; London

Leonardo Neiva (alt. The Phantom), Giulia Nadruz (alt. Christine), Fred Silveira (Raoul), Sandro Christopher (Firmin), Marcos Lanza (André), Bete Diva (Carlotta), Cleyton Pulzi (Piangi), Taís Viera (Madame Giry), Fernanda Muniz (Meg) July 28, 2018; Brazil

David Thaxton, Kelly Mathieson, Danny Whitehead (u/s) January 26, 2019; London

Tim Howar, Amy Manford (alt.), Danny Whitehead (u/s), Kimberly Blake, Paul Ettore Tabone, Ross Dawes, Alan Vicary, Rachel Spurrell (u/s0, Georgia Ware, Tim Morgan, Kris Manuel, Adrian Delacey, Matt Bateman, Paul Erbs September 3, 2019; London 4 days before cast change. Really great quality and this is one of my favorite Wishing’s. A must have!

John Martin Bengtsson, Hanna Ulvan, Jonathan Boiers, Anna Hammarqvist, Filip Barna, Sebastian Lamberth, Anton Salvin, Hanna La Fleur, Johanna Westholm March 4, 2023; Kristianstad Evening

James Gant (u/s), Paige Blankson (alt), Matt Blaker, Kelly Glyptis, Greg Castiglioni, Matt Harrop, Tim Southgate (u/s), Emma Harris (u/s), Ellie Young May 17, 2023; London

Jon Robyns (Phantom), Eve-Shanu Wilson (u/s Christine), Joe Griffiths Brown (Raoul), Kelly Glyptys (Carlotta), David Kristopher Brown (Piangi), Leonard Cook (u/s Firmin), Adam Listead (Andrè), Francesca Ellis (Madame Giry), Maiya Hikasa (Meg), James Gant (Auctioneer), Samuel Haughton (Reyer), Hywell Dowsell (Don Attilio), Andrew York (u/s Lefevre), Connor Ewing (u/s Buquet-Marksman), Simon Whitaker (Passarino), Michael Colbourne (Hairdresser), Zoe Vallee (Confidante) September 27, 2023; London

Geronimo Rauch (Phantom), Tal​ia del Val (Christine), Ruben Lopez (u/s Raoul), Omar Calicchio (Firmin), Enrique del Portal (Andrè), Marta Pineda (Carlotta), Francisco Ortiz (Piangi), Silvia Luchetti (Madame Giry), Laura Martin (Meg), Alejandro Rull (Buquet), Sergi Albert (Auctioneer/Lefevre), Ezequiel Salamann (Passarino), Alberto Sanchez (Attilio) October 27, 2023; Madrid Matinee

Jon Robyns, Chumisa Dornford-May (alt), Joe Griffiths-Brown, Kelly Glyptis, Adam Linstead, Matt Harrop, Francesca Ellis, David Kristopher-Brown, Maiya Hikasa March 15, 2024; London Chumisa's debut!

Nadim Naaman (Phantom), Georgia Wilkinson (Christine), Dougie Carter (Raoul), Lara Martins (Carlotta), Rhidian Marc (Piangi), Nicholas Garrett (Firmin), Arvid Larsen (André), Valerie Cutko (Madame Giry), Nikki Skinner (Meg Giry), Aaron Price-Lewis (Buquet), Paul Erbs (Monsieur Reyer), Daniel Jasuz Holley (Auctioneer/Fop 1 (Il Muto)), Kyle Nolan (Fop 2 (Il Muto)), Grace Chapman and Iris Toula-Gourgiotou (Confidente 1 and 2 (Il Muto)), Michael Franks (Don Attilio), Josh Hankey (Passarino), Michael Kirby and Joseph Birstow (Stagehand 1 and 2), Stavros Volkos (Monsieur LeFèvre / Firechief) April 19, 2024; Bulgaria (Middle East Tour) (When I got sent these either the files and/or I might've messed up whether this is the matinee or evening show lol.)

Anton Zetterholm, Lillian Maandag (u/s) Roy Goldman, Milica Jovanovic, Greg Castiglioni, Thomas Sigwald, Rob Pelzer, Eva Maria Bender (u/s), Laura May Croucher May 19, 2024; Vienna Matinee

Dean Chisnall, Lily Kerhoas, Joe Griffiths-Brown, Joanna Ampil, Adam Linstead, Martin Ball, Helen Hobson, David Kristopher Brown, Millie Lyons September 30, 2024; London

Greg Castiglioni (u/s), Lisanne Clémence Veeneman (Christine Daaé), Roy Goldman, Milica Jovanovic, Thomas Sigwald, Rob Pelzer, Patricia Nessy, Robert Meyer (u/s), Laura May Croucher October 23, 2024; Vienna

Love Never Dies

Bronson Norris Murphy, Meghan Picerno, Sean Thompson, Jake Heston Miller, Karen Mason, Mary Michael Patterson, Katrina Kemp, Richard Koons, Stephen Petrovich October 2, 2018; Philadelphia Evening show, opening night. marleneoftheopera's master. Note: This was my first time recording an audio. The quality is pretty nice though in my humble opinion, you can hear everything well. Cast is brilliant.

Patrick Stanke, Martina Lechner, Sebastian Seitz, Sarah Gadinger, Manja Stein, Sophia Gorgi, Thomas Wissman, Maike Katrin Merkel, Dani Spampinato June 19, 2024; Magdeburg First open air production of the show, non-replica.

POTO Videos

Ted Keegan (u/s The Phantom of the Opera), Julia Udine (alt Christine Daaé), John Riddle (Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny), Raquel Suarez Groen (Carlotta Giudicelli), Craig Bennett (Monsieur Firmin), Nehal Joshi (Monsieur André), Maree Johnson (Madame Giry), Carlton Moe (Ubaldo Piangi), Sara Esty (Meg Giry), Carrington Vilmont (Auctioneer), Tug Watson (s/w Monsieur Reyer/Hairdresser), Scott Mikita (s/w Jeweler), Richard Poole (Monsieur Lefèvre/Firechief), David Michael Garry (Joseph Buquet/Don Attilio), Jeremy Stolle (Passarino), Kfir (Solo Dancer ("Hannibal")), Justin Peck (Solo Dancer ("Il Muto")), Kanisha Marie Feliciano (Page), Chris Georgetti (Porter/Fireman), Satomi Hoffmann (Wardrobe Mistress/Confidante), Elizabeth Welch (Princess ("Hannibal")), Kelly Jeanne Grant (Madame Firmin), Paul A. Schaefer (Marksman) April 3, 2023; Broadway Heavily obstructed, most of it is audio. Major songs included, WFMtrades' master.

Ramin Karimloo (The Phantom of the Opera), Amelia Milo (Christine Daaé), Bradley Jaden (Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny), Anna Corvino (Carlotta Giudicelli), Ian Mowat (Monsieur Firmin), Earl Carpenter (Monsieur André), Alice Mistroni (Madame Giry), Gian Luca Pasolini (Ubaldo Piangi), Jeremy Rose (Monsieur Lefevre/Don Attilio), Matt Bond (Joseph Buquet), Mark Biocca (Capo Balletto), Nicola Ciulla (Gioielliere), Chiara Vergassola (Confidante), Luca Gaudiano (Parrucchiere), Antonio Orler (Passarino), Marianna Bonansone, Martina Cenere, Robert Ediogu, Stefania Fratepietro, Jessica Lorusso, Marta Melchiorre, Margarita Toso July 15, 2023; Italy Heavily obstructed, most of it is audio. Major songs included, WFMtrades' master.

Dean Chisnall, Lily Kerhoas, Joe Griffiths-Brown October 9, 2024; Broadway Heavily obstructed, runs from the Prologue through MOTN. London's 38th anniversary! WFMtrades' master.

[the-obnoxious-sibling]

#bringing this back for no particular reason  #*whistles*  

👀

For the 'turn left' prompt, if you're still doing that - what would've happened if Thorn decided to become a mage instead of becoming a knight?

Yes, I’m still doing it, and this is a good one!

It’s easy for him to take mostly the same path pre-canon. He still feels the same pull toward national service. Ends up on the dragon mission as team mage, rather than team captain; kills the dragon with a desperate water attack instead of a desperate heartsword stab.

When they get assigned to the Embassy, he always has to remember to grab a weapon from hammerspace before entering the grounds, because he can’t cast new spells inside. Leif thinks his uniform is very dashing. Even if the cape is a bit much.

He’s able to help directly with the attack on the National Aquarium. Claps the power-blocking cuffs on Laceleaf’s stalker himself. When they walk into the diner that night and all he can smell is burning meat, he doesn’t pull a weapon – instead, the whole room turns into a splash zone.

When night falls on Summerfest, he puts magical dampers on the compulsions on Leif’s microchip, and they kiss under the fireworks. They have sex on their next date. Any time they’re in Thorn’s apartment, the recording device picks up nothing but ocean sounds, leaving Embassy tech support trying to make discreet inquiries about whether that’s just how mages’ apartments work.

Leif quietly despairs of one day getting sold back to Sønheim. After all, Thorn could quit the army (and why not, it’s not that great in the first place, it’s hardly the Sønska army), but he can’t quit his connection to Southern magic – which is the one thing that isn’t just as good, if not better, up North.

When [spoiler] happens at the performance of Leachtric, he’s able to help directly here too. Kale still asks him for the same favor, but as an exercise of authority, not an end-run around it.

Everything goes smoothly until [spoiler], which isn’t going to happen for like 8-12 more story arcs, and whoo boy. If canon Thorn is an active magical, it prompts the Embassy to revise his projected threat level from “manageable” to “oh stars get him as far away as possible and take out a restraining order and pack Leif back off to Sønheim so they can ensure that his safety is contingent on Thorn’s behavior.”

(They also consider just giving him Leif, hoping it’ll take away all his motivation to make trouble, but that’s not how Sønheim operates. Besides, it would make the rest of the plot much too easy.)

[seoul-bros]

Jikook Week 68 Complete (25/03 -01/04/2025)

Jikook have finalized their 68th week and it's time to look back at this week in 2019.

These were good times for BTS and they were feeling grateful. On 26/03, JK posted on Weibo, "Because of all our blessings we are living a very happy life". Jimin posted on Twitter on 01/04 with the words "I really want to see you"

On the 28/03/2029, Entertainment Weekly published The Greatest Showmen article. It's an odd article, all over the place it doesn't really hit its stride but to be fair it must be strange to be transported right into the middle of the intimate but chaotic BTS member dynamic. Like landing on an alien planet and not being able to read the cues.

Though they're unfailingly polite and attentive in interviews, there's a certain amount of contained chaos when they're all together—a sort of tumbling-puppy cyclone of playful shoves, back slaps, and complicated handshakes—but also a surprising, endearing sweetness to the way they treat one another in quieter moments.

"We've been living together for a while now, almost eight, nine years," says Jimin. "So in the beginning we had a lot of arguments and conflicts. But we've reached the point where we can communicate wordlessly, basically just by watching each other and reading the expressions."

The photographer also posted showing the behind of the set up for this iconic shot.

Post Date: 31/03/2025

[ahappydnp]

what was the 'week in march' thing 8 years ago?

omg peak phandom theories vs reality truly adsfsgjk

march 14th 2017- dan says he's had a challenging week and said to remind him to tell us about "that week in march" in 5 months (29:21)

march 21st 2017- the infamous liveshow where dan seemed off/got a little too personal (we now know he was going through rough withdrawals from his antidepressants) he says he's been irrationally sleepy and made a face when he says "well i do know why" (54:05)

august 8th 2017- chat says talk about the week in march (as it had been five months) and dan says to wait another 2 months (4:28)

october 10th 2017- world mental health day, the day before dan posted "daniel and depression". someone in the chat asks about that week in march and dan says he'll be able to explain it more tomorrow (22:59)

october 11th 2017- dan posts daniel and depression

october 17th 2017- dan says "that week in march" was when he forgot to renew his antidepressants and just decided to stop them altogether by himself and was really really sick for a week (9:34)

january 14th 2018- "that week in march" gets a shoutout in the top dan memes of 2017 because of all the phandom theories that got built up (3:35) except he tells you you'll have to wait until further in the video to find out so you can learn some patience. he reveals it at (21:21)

[kuroshitsuji-wiki]

Today (February 28), the Kuroshitsuji Wiki turns 16 years old!

It was founded in 2009 by Soxrocker04 who made two edits (to their own profile page) before they vanished forever. Twocents adopted the abandoned wiki a few months later on July 27, 2009 and make more edits (2671) to more pages than their predecessor.

The wiki over the years:

March 2010 | June 2010 | November 2015 | September 2019 | April 2022

The wiki now:

Only four days ago, the wiki left Fandom and migrated officially to wiki.gg.

Since Soxrocker04's very early departure, many people have edited and contributed to the wiki. However, its editor count has decreased greatly in the last few years.

Do you want to contribute too?*

All you need is an account (if you had/have a Fandom account, go here), read the policies, and you're good to go!

Don't know how? Take a look at these useful links. (If you don't get the technical aspects, just edit according to the manual of style. Your edits will be fixed for you.)

Don't know what? Take a look at the wiki's to-do list.

Need help? Ask here, or on the wiki's Forum Discord server. (You can also send an ask through the askbox!)

*might help to fight off Kuroshitsuji Hiatus-Induced Withdrawal symptoms**

**No responsibility is taken for the correctness of this information. Please consult your doctor or pharmacist.

Bonus:

The wiki in March 2018. Wait, that can't be right...