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ezratm · 4 years ago

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* chicago’s very own ezra calhoun has been spotted on madison avenue , with a striking semblance to brandon larracuente ! you may know them as @calhoun or hitting the front page of tmz as calhoun curse ? the neighbourhood singer calls off third engagement in as many years . according to tmz , you just had your twenty - third birthday bash . your chance of surviving new york is uncertain because you’re imprudent , but being astute might help you . things that would paint a better picture of you would be a beat up telecaster slung over your shoulder , a clenched jaw as you try to play nice ( and fail miserably , ) a sharp tongue hiding the fear of ending up alone . ( cis man + he/him ) + ( teddy , 18+ , she/her , cst. )

𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 : homelessness mention , drug mention .

𝟎𝟎𝟏. 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐒 :

ezra is the eldest of five , half of his siblings having a separate dad and the other half being unsure of who their dad is at all . their mom has never stayed with a guy for longer than a few months , a year being the usual cut off before it’s onto the next or revisiting the old . either way , this level of dysfunctionality makes a lasting impression on ezra .

the revolving door of guys telling him “ call me dad ” left him with the feeling that perhaps he’d never be able to rely on another man in his life , stepping up to be the man of the house much before he ever knew what that role entailed . he finds his mother passed out far too often , laughter shared over dinner yet the billowy white wisps leaving her mouth from a small glass pipe on the balcony when she thinks he’s not watching . he’s the one helping siblings with homework , packing shoddy lunches with whatever food stamp goodies they can get their hands on , making sure everyone gets to the bus on time while his mother is semi - conscious in their bathroom .

there’s guy one that lasts , daryl who enters when ezra is 13 . he sends ezra’s mother into a spiral , enabling her past the point of daily function and rendering her a full - blown junkie while he mooches off the little savings she managed to scrape together . ezra acts out to all hell , a plague of any classroom he inhabits , mouthing off as if to blow off the steam from a home life that forces him into silence . he’s a tyrant in the classroom but a savior at home , where a wisdom beyond his years leads him to show up to his siblings’ parent - teacher meetings as the only “ grown up “ in their lives who truly gives a shit .

he’s 17 when a row so horrifying with his mother , siding with a man practically dragging her down to hell , forces ezra onto ��the streets for some sort of reprieve . he’s heartbroken to leave his siblings but finds some comfort in the next eldest girls being equal parts brilliant and responsible . as a final fuck you to the man who ruined his only source of stability , he steals daryl’s most prized belongings : among them , a limited edition signed nirvana cd , and a rosewood martin acoustic guitar , more suited for display than use considering the price .

he hops from shelter to bench to shelter throughout most of california and doesn’t talk much about what he has to do to survive . with all the time in the world to lounge about , he learns how to play guitar from other street buskers in exchange for protection in numbers , and before he knows it , he’s able to afford a long term hotel in los angeles by playing on a busy corner . he sings as if his life depends on it , and at times , it does , but before long , he’s being recognized in the bus station he plays in . he’s 18 when someone posts a video of him singing “ creep ” by radiohead on a corner which sends him viral , a talent agent quickly taking him off the streets and shoving him into a recording booth . they’re based in chicago , and fly him out , cementing his love for the city that gave him his break .

he brings along a couple of lads he had met on his travels , some fellow vagabonds , some simply guys he’d met throughout his time in la , and before long their debut ep “ i’m sorry ” catapults them to radios and a local tour . by the time their full length album drops , the neighbourhood is one of the world’s biggest international touring acts , a push of indie meets pop with grunge and hip hop influences .

ezra calhoun , a true rags to riches story , indulges perhaps a bit too heavily in the lifestyle he has suddenly been thrust into , becoming something of a media frenzy for his unpredictable nature . sternly keeping his personal life out of social media but writing open - hearted love songs to each conquest he lands ( as well as being a rather high - profile serial philanderer , ) he’s a curious contradiction , stumbling about onstage with eloquent penned lyrics yet stepping offstage and being caught up in every scandal in the book . shattered engagements , cheating scandals , drug busts , sloppy performances , ezra’s more and more a liability with a short fuse , risking almost as much for the team behind him as what he’s worth .

he doesn’t try to use his past as a sob story to fuel him moving forward , but anyone who knows what he’s seen growing up can see how it takes hold of him in adulthood . he’s every bit a mess as what his aesthetic would make him seem , destructive to a fault and with a mouth on him that gets him in as much trouble as it gets him out of . though he is as responsible of a brother as his siblings could have asked for , his notoriety now is credited to the chaos he causes seemingly just for fun .

truly little to no moral compass as at this point , he tells himself that he’s been through enough shit that he deserves whatever indulgences he chooses to give himself . he’s a hedonist through and through , a philanderer as if it keeps him breathing , and a naturally addictive personality , ezra is all points of a powder keg ready to blow .

𝟎𝟎𝟐. 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 :

ezra has one degree of separation before he’s got a superiority complex , readily staring down anyone who crosses his path with unflinching eye contact and a flexed jaw . everything to him is a confrontation and one he makes an effort to come out unscathed by . if it’s not his biting wit fighting his battles for him , he’ll engage in a fist fight , though he hopes to make that his last case scenario . he goes off his mind’s whims and desires and does so with little prudence for the sentiments of others . slack jawed and eye rolling , ezra is a bad attitude with little to lose , and has a habit of butting heads with those who stand in his way .

people point out the interesting dynamic of someone so aggressive also being the one who pens albums packed with love ballads . between sex jams and bare - alls detailing the sentiments he feels over connections he has , ezra may seem hidden away emotionally but is really more prone to reveal his feelings than most . he’s disconnected and aloof at first when simply entertaining himself , but truly engages with only a few who can get him to tap into that vein of passionate energy that keeps him from being a useless waste of space and create something beautiful . if he can sense the energy taking a negative turn , he’s every bit the kind of smart ass to get the last word in and end up in a street fight over it ( something he’s no stranger to given the brand of guitar he so proudly carried with him during his time on the streets . )

he seeks out whatever makes him feel good and seems to still be hiding whatever hole was left by his mother’s abandonment , of whom he hasn’t talked to since he left home . he’s in constant contact with his siblings , but this isn’t enough to quell the resentment within him from the loss of his one sense of stability . this explains his long string of failed relationships and a tendency to act on impulse , setting fire to whatever good thing may come to him ( although with his tastes , he doesn’t often chase the good things . )

𝟎𝟎𝟑 . 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 :

link can be found in the source 🤍

#wealthyhq:intro

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usamotorscycle-blog · 8 years ago

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2017 Harley-Davidson Road King Special FLHRXS First Ride Review

Harley’s new Street Rod was our excuse to go to Daytona last week, but while we were there we got to ride The MoCo’s new Road King Special too. Okay, so, yeah, the Street Rod was a bit underwhelming, but it would be fun to sit all the commenters heaping abuse upon H-D for that bike on one of its FLs for about a 10-minute ride. I think it would shut most of them right up. Well, actually it probably wouldn’t. I think we’ve all learned how hard it is to unseat deep-rooted preconceptions lately. Harley has this type of bike so dialled, it’s easy to forgive them their dysfunctionality in some other arenas. The Road King is the base-level FL model (the FLs being the touring models), and as such we could’ve seen the RK Special coming, since there are already Street Glide Specials, Road Glide Specials, etc. This is the bike for people who want a naked bagger and don’t care about a stereo or Infotainment. Purists! (H-D offers various optional windshields.) It is altogether fitting and and proper that Harley should so honor the Road King, as it’s been one of the company’s biggest sellers since its 1994 introduction. The new bike is to the original as an Airbus A380 is to a DC-3. H-D product planner Paul James points out that, in a recent dealer-customizing competition, almost everybody chose an RK as the starting point. It’s a blank slate, a clean canvas…

And the best thing about the new Special is its Milwaukee Eight 107 engine. The new eight-valve Twin felt pretty sporty when we sampled it in a Street Glide in our Bagger Brawl a couple of months ago. With a few less pounds to haul and no fairing to push, the ’King really scoots when you give it the gas.

Sixty-five mph in top cog is just about 2400 rpm, about 500 rpm shy of the Milwaukee Eight’s 102-pound-feet Dynojet-measured max torque; 100 smooth mph from here comes up quickish, no downshift required. (The ’94 Road King would barely do 100.) In addition to that powerful and smooth-running V-Twin, Harley’s stylists ganged up on the King, slathering it in darkness and leaving just enough chrome to set off the engine architecture. Otherwise, a black fork topped by a big black headlight nacelle and nine-inch mini-ape handlebar lead the “gleaming locomotive rolling through a trainyard at midnight.” That goes with black hand controls (with internal wiring), triple clamp, mirrors, turn signals, engine covers, mufflers… and black turbine wheels, including the 19-inch front mit low-profile tire.

Stretched saddlebags, which actually do hold a bit more stuff, add to the long, low look, though suspension is the same 2.15 inches as the standard Road King and the ’Glides. On bumpy pavement, that’s not always enough, but the bike’s upscale emulsion shocks do a remarkably good job anyway. On smoother slab, all the FLs are veritable chariots of the gods, and in exchange for the minimal wheel travel you get to sit on a seat just 27.4 inches from the pavement, which is actually pretty swell when you’re climbing on and off a lot.

That rear fascia panel fills in the space between the bags and the bike for a custom, finished look. The 180/55-18 Dunlop tucked up under there lets the King handle better than you might expect. Up front, the new 49mm Showa “dual bending valve” fork serves up 4.6 inches of well-controlled travel. As we learned on the aforementioned Street Glide, these things go around corners surprisingly well, and in fact H-D specs say the RK will lean a degree further to each side than the Street Glide: 32 degrees to the right and 31 left – and more than that if you don’t mind scraped up floorboard edges. The Special’s low-profile Dunlops give it a really solid, taut feel: Shame we couldn’t find any curvy roads in Florida to give them a better work-out. Triple 300mm disc brakes, the front two clamped by Brembo four-piston calipers, provide more than enough solid, two-finger braking power through the comfortable blade-style front lever, and are equipped with standard ABS (as well as H-D’s Smart Security System). The rear brake’s right where your foot expects it to be when you want it. The clutch is light and progressive; the six-speed box shifts fine, mostly without need of the clutch in the higher gears. The H-D faithful would think they’d been cheated if first gear didn’t clock in with the traditional reassuring clunk.

Housing a dual halogen headlight in a blacked-out vintage nacelle is an excellent blending of old with new. Another nod to modern functionality is at your left thumb, a one-button cruise control that works as seamlessly as any in the business. With that in place, I’m fully down with the minimalism of the rest of the bike. For long days, you can’t beat floorboards that let you turn the other cheek (I use the passenger mini-boards too). A heel/ toe shifter doesn’t hurt. The seats on these bikes are some of the best stock seats I have ever placed glutes upon (though taller riders felt a bit locked in on the Street Glide). It was only in the 60s on the my day in Daytona and I experienced no heat issues on the RK, but it’s good to know on hot days, Harley has anticipated and addressed the heat issue that plagues some of its competitors. The 107 “features a precision cooling strategy that targets a flow of oil around the hottest areas of the cylinder heads,” in an engine designed with reduced heat absorption compared to the Twin Cam. EITMS, Engine Idle Temperature Management System (a.k.a. parade mode), is enabled when you roll the throttle past closed, and cuts fuel and spark to the rear cylinder when you’re stuck in traffic. The exhaust is repositioned and the catalyst is positioned to route heat away from the passenger, idle speed is down from 1000 to 850…

Rubber engine mounts mean no vibration. What else? You’ll never need to adjust the Milwaukee Eight’s eight valves… its electrical system puts out 50% more juice at idle… that six-gallon tank should give well over 200-mile range… If you’re getting the impression I’m fond of this bike, you’re right. It’s got that classic look that attracts love wherever you go, yet you can flog the snot out of it like a large naked sportbike and not be at all disappointed in its performance; 102 lb-ft of torque at 2900 rpm is its own bull-in-china-shop kind of fun. At the same time, those easy-open saddlebags, low seat, excellent low-speed handling, and quiet demeanor at low throttle openings make it a great grocery-getter, kid dropper-offer, commuter, and social gathering conveyance. And with the cruise control, excellent comfort and ability to add a windscreen, I’d happily go anywhere tomorrow for a week on the King if I didn’t have to sit here pounding this computer all the time. Actually I’m off to the south of France this afternoon to ride the new Ducati Monster 797, but I could really go either way. Am I getting old? 2017 Harley-Davidson Road King Special + Highs Minimalism without the masochism What Harley does best, it does better than anybody Fabulously functional and a breeze to ride – Sighs I could do without the mini-ape, but that’s just me Passengers may not love their part of the seat Everybody wants to tell you about their Harley 2017 Harley-Davidson Road King Special Specifications MSRP $21,999 Vivid Black; $22,449 Charcoal Denim, Olive Gold; $24,399 Hard Candy Hot Rod Red Flake Engine Air-cooled OHV V-Twin; 4 valves/ cylinder Milwaukee Eight 107 Displacement 107 cu in (1746 cc) Bore x Stroke 3.937 in. x 4.375 in. (100 mm x 111.1 mm) Compression Ratio 10.0:1 Fuel System Electronic Sequential Port Fuel Injection (ESPFI) Transmission 6-speed Final drive Belt Front Suspension 49mm inverted Showa dual bending valve fork, no adjustment; 4.6 in. travel Rear Suspension Dual premium emulsion shocks; preload adjustable (by hand), 2.15 in. travel Front Brake Dual 300mm discs, 4-piston calipers; ABS Rear Brake 300mm disc, 4-piston caliper; ABS Rake/ trail 29.25 degrees/ 6.9 in. (175mm) Wheelbase 64 in. (1625mm) Seat Height 27.4 in. (695 mm), unladen Fuel Capacity 6.0 gal. (22.7 l) Dry weight 781 lb. (354 kg), claimed Wheels Black, turbine cast aluminum Front tires 130/60 B19 61H Rear tires 180/55B B18 80H Color Options Vivid Black, Charcoal Denim, and Olive Gold

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shesaidwithirony · 8 years ago

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La Repubblica interview on Social Media in the Trump Era

Questions from Luciana Grosso (La Repubblica)

Luciana Grosso: What’s next? What is coming after the social network era? What will arrive after this social-mania, if it will ever end?

Geert Lovink: I do not mind to act like a futurologist but I have to disappoint you: we’ll be stuck in this social media age for some time to come. We Europeans failed to develop alternatives. There is no ‘market’ and we all let it happen: crippling monopolies are a fact, we’ve locked ourselves in and now we complain. Unless there’s going to be a global crisis or war, we will not able to free ourselves from the ‘tremendous’ addiction to these real-time apps. I have given up that individuals who make the courageous exodus will make a difference. Boredom or dispear won’t make a difference either; the physical, social and emotional dependency is already too big. We were naive to think that users would move on, as they did from Geocities to Blogger to Friendster to MySpace. Then it stopped at Facebook. Youngsters migrated to Whatsapp and Instagram, but these are owned by the same old Facebook Corp. and are currently being integrated into the same data empire. What’s left is the proposal of a public takeover of platforms (including the datacentre infrastructure). This a political proposal we need to further discuss and put on the table in this year of crucial elections.

For decades European elites deliberately looked away, convinced that the internet was a fad, a fashion that would fade away, and now they have been pushed to the sides. Brussels thought telcos such as Orange and Telefonica, and traditional technology players such as Philips and Siemens would develop alternatives. Nothing happened. Instead, we’re using hardware produced in China with services controlled in the United States. Lately Europeans have woken up and have installed austerity-driven neo-liberal ‘creative industries’ policies that try to foster start-up cultures. Ever since Evgene Morozov we know that techno-solutionism is not the answer. Developing an app is not a solution to overcome platform capitalism. For the social media drama it might already be too late, unless drastic measures are taken that implements anti-trust measures overnight.

LG: In the beginning, Internet was seen as a utopian place where the only rule was ‘no rules’: everyone was free to say and write and read whatever they wanted. Was this in fact the case at the time?

GL: There is no doubt that 1990s internet culture was more wild. But I am not nostalgic. There were far less users. The user base was homogeneous and the interfaces and operating systems didn’t work very well. These days we’re not often confronted anymore with crashing devices. Instead, dysfunctionality has moved to the level of society. The smoothness of today comes with a price. Jaron Lanier often points at the anarchic nature of individual homepages—a far cry from the standardized communication environments of Facebook and Twitter. Why learn Linux or XML anymore as an ordinary user? This overall loss of technical knowledge amongst users has lead to crisis in media literacy. The idea is that we do not need anymore instruction. All platforms are self-evident for a child—and this is what we actually see happening around us. This is also the case of moderation. That’s an art form: how to run a community, to overcome differences and structures debates (without policing them). One of the sources of the problem here is the lack of tools to develop communities. Social media are not built for that, on purpose. They are outward-looking with the aim to connect as much data with other data with the aim to sell the profiles to third parties for advertisement purposes. Everyone knows that social media is an alienating echo chamber and fosters narcissism as a necessary act in the struggle for self promotion. In the end, empowerment is not satisfying. We need a cold restart, from scratch, and build peer-to-peer networks that focus on collaboration and discussion, not just on ‘news’ that ‘shared’ and commented by ‘friends’. This has already been said time and again, but nothing happens. That’s how we got stuck. Many feel that way. That’s the disillusion of the internet, which is no longer a progressive tool nor a parallel reality but an abyss that takes us down further into a state of inequality, fear and hatred.

LG: How did that happen, a place celebrated for freedom becoming so dark, filled with lies, violence and fascism? Is this jungle what freedom looks like?

GL: I have not lost my belief in freedom and subversion. Let’s go back to Erich Fromm’s Fear of Freedom. There is so much fascinating literature that we can read together. Take Hannah Ahrendt, or Isaiah Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty. Promote such thinkers and contrast them with the libertarian dogma’s of Ayn Rand that is being promoted so much these days. Which freedom do we want? Many of us have second thoughts when it comes to radical openness. We can’t deal with the ‘open society’ and intuitively search for a ‘New Order’ as Michael Seemann, the Berlin ‘Kontrollverlust’ blogger and author of Digital Tailspin, calls it. What comes after radical transparency? Will we find a new equilibrium after the dust has settled? Do we withdrawal in a new cult of secrecy, as Byung Chul-Han in his Transparency Society proposes? Will we ever get used to the bright light of over-exposure, to put in terms of Jean Baudrillard? I would love to answer your question in an orthodox psycho-analytical way. Why do we want to punish ourselves after a period of excessive communication and radical freedom? How can we escape this vicious circle of orgy and remorse? Where is the psycho-historian Lloyd deMause, now that we need him? Who updates his epic book on Reagan’s America?

LG: Should we be afraid of fake news? Lies and the manipulation of the truth have always been around, ever since the times of Moses. Why is this suddenly a problem?

GL: As you say, fake news has always been core business, it’s was once called ‘manufacturing consent’ or ‘public relations’. As Morozov tweets: “Messing with the media, celebrities, facts, etc does not really get in the way of getting the job done – for Trump, it’s *the* job.” Our problem is the ‘authenticity bonus’ of direct communication. We do not see the social media managers that operate behind their dashboards (as Douglas Rushkoff teaches us). Why the fake news question did not come earlier has got to do with moment in which social media became mainstream. Until recent, the Net was still looked upon as something unknown and new, at best an additional toy. Experts talked about multi-media as if it was some sort of symphony, a media concert in search for harmony between all the different channels. But the liberal ‘multimodality’ view of ‘remediation’ has been blasted away by the directness and real-time of social media.

Now that the introductory period of ‘digitization’ has come to an end, we are exposed to an unprecedented form of acceleration. In the original idea of networked democracy it was assumed that the multiplicity of channels would lead to a greater diversity of voices. This did not materialize and it would be useful to reconstruct where precisely the process derailed. In classic internet fashion, things move fast, and that will also be the case with the fake news meme itself, which will be overruled by even more spectacular propaganda acts, pseudo-events–and historical tragedies.

LG: Is preventive censorship a solution?

GL: In past weeks we see that the ‘perception management’ industry is busy figuring out which ‘anti-missile missiles’ they should invent to calm down the media frenzy. A Minority Report technique to isolate evil behaviour might work on the individual level but is no longer effective once the political upheaval has already started. Facebook is entirely naive as they still believe in filtering of ‘fake news’ by temporary consultancy firms such as Correctiv or Snopes, as if this problem can be solved and will disappear in a few months. There are also fact-checking firms on specific topics such as Ukraine or climate change. The next step is the ‘democratization’ of the meme design workshops, ‘meme sprints’ where multi-disciplinary ‘agile’ teams of designers, coders and ’trolls’ gather to unleash ‘meme wars’–and then disappear: organized networks that take the ideas of Adbusters one step further but shy away from the long-term commitment of the work that is done out of The Agency, a presumed ’troll farm’ office building in St. Petersburg (see also this Guardian article). Not far from here is the NATO observatory in Riga that looks in Russian social media manipulations.

LG: Will our grandchildren read Facebook or The New York Times?

GL: The New York Times, which by then will be owned by Facebook. That would be the Dutch pragmatist answer. The correct one is of course neither of them. The kids will navigate through Uber Entertainment. You must have heard from Alfabet, the mother company of Google, an umbrella structure for mega corporations, which is also likely to happen to Facebook as well. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, now owns The Washington Post. The new rubber barons are running the largest non-profits in the world (think of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). Others enter different industries such as space travel. What we need is a new iteration of cyberpunk literature that takes us on a tour through corporate cities owned by Snapchat, Tesla factories that mass manufacture killer robots and the Huawei hacking bunker, a smart internet observatory, masterminded by Chinese hipsters.

http://networkcultures.org/geert/2017/01/25/la-repubblica-interview-on-social-media-in-the-trump-era/

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