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chorusfm · 9 months ago

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The Decemberists – “Burial Ground”

The Decemberists have returned with “Burial Ground,” their first new song in six years. They’ve also announced some new tour dates. Tour Dates 04/30 – Kingston, NY @ Ulster Performing Arts Center 05/02 – Boston, MA @ Roadrunner 05/03 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount Theatre 05/06 – Toronto, ON @ Exhibition Place – Queen Elizabeth Theatre 05/07 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE 05/08 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore Philadelphia 05/10 – Washington DC @ The Anthem 05/11 – Durham, NC @ Durham Performing Arts Center 05/12 – Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern 05/14 – Dallas, TX @ Majestic Theater 05/15 – Austin, TX @ Bass Concert Hall 05/17 – St Louis, MO @ The Pageant 05/18 – Milwaukee, WI @ Riverside Theater 05/19 – St Paul, MN @ Palace Theatre 05/21 – Chicago, IL @ Salt Shed 05/22 – Detroit, MI @ Royal Oak Music Theater 05/24 – Nashville, TN @ Ryman Auditorium 07/12 – Bend, OR @ Hayden Homes Amphitheater ^ 07/13 – Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater 07/15 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Bellwether 07/18 – San Diego, CA @ Humphreys 07/19 – Tucson, AZ @ Rialto Theater 07/20 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren 07/22 – Santa Fe, NM @ The Bridge at Santa Fe Brewing 07/23 – Denver, CO @ The Mission Ballroom 07/24 – Sandy, UT @ Sandy Amphitheater 07/26 – Missoula, MT @ Kettlehouse Amphitheater 07/27 – Spokane, WA @ Spokane Pavilion 07/29 – Vancouver, BC @ Queen Elizabeth Theatre 08/03 – Troutdale, OR @ McMenamins Edgefield Press Release The Decemberists will head out on an expansive North American tour with both spring and summer legs. The tour kicks off on April 30th in Kingston, NY at the Ulster Performing Arts Center and wraps up in August on the West Coast. Highlights include the Brooklyn Paramount Theater on May 3rd, the Salt Shed in Chicago on May 21st and the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on May 24th. The band will return to their home turf, wrapping the tour in Troutdale, OR on August 3rd at McMenamins Edgefield. VIP pre-sale begins tomorrow, Wednesday, February 7th at 10AM Pacific. The tour will go on-sale to the public this Friday, February 9th at 10AM local time. Full tour dates listed below. For 20 years The Decemberists have been one of the most original, daring, and thrilling American rock bands. Founded in the year 2000 when singer, songwriter, and guitarist Colin Meloy moved from Montana to Portland, Oregon and met bassist Nate Query, keyboardist Jenny Conlee, and guitarist Chris Funk, The Decemberists’ distinctive brand of hyperliterate folk-rock set them apart from the start with the release of their debut EP 5 Songs in 2001. After making their full-length debut with Castaways and Cutouts in 2002, the band signed with Kill Rock Stars for the release of the acclaimed albums Her Majesty the Decemberists (2003) and Picaresque (2005), which was produced by Chris Walla. The 2004 EP The Tain – an 18-minute single-track epic – made the band’s grand creative ambitions clear. Around this time the band’s permanent line-up fell into place with the arrival of drummer John Moen, and they made the unexpected leap to Capitol Records for their first major label album in 2006. Fans’ concerns of whether the band would alter their trademark sound quickly vanished when they delivered their most ambitious and audacious record to date in The Crane Wife, a song cycle produced by Walla and Tucker Martine (who would become a longtime creative partner) that added elements of ‘70s prog, hard rock and even quasi-disco to their palette. The album was met by wide acclaim from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, SPIN, Stereogum, and was named Best New Music by Pitchfork. Three years later, The Hazards of Love – a full-length concept album based on Meloy’s idea for a stage musical - was a Top 20 hit. In 2011, they topped themselves yet again with their first #1 album, The King Is Dead, which featured the GRAMMY-nominated song “Down By The Water.” After their 2015 album What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World, which included the #1 AAA radio hit “Make You Better,” The Decemberists changed up… https://chorus.fm/news/the-decemberists-burial-ground/

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redfreesias03 · 4 years ago

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Seishun Kozou ga Naiteiru (“An Adolescent Boy is Crying”)

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“So get rid of your anxiousness as well. Yes, because when you’re in trouble, you’ll surely just plant your feet and stand firm, over and over—so get rid of it.”

OR: Teenage woes are real but not permanent.

saigo wa kimi no ude shidai saigo wa kimi no ude shidai

In the end, it all comes down to your skill In the end, it all comes down to your skill

dakara watashi waratte ageru sou donna toki datte anshin shite iru yo watashi

That’s why I’ll Smile for you Yes, because I feel at ease At all times

dakara kimi mo jishin wo motte sou nando nankai mo yarinaoseru dakara kimi ga

So you too Have more self-confidence as well Right, because you can start over over and over again So have more

ironna ironna yatsu ga iru ironna ironna michi ga aru ironna ironna yatsu ga iru ironna ironna michi ga aru

There’s lots and lots of different kinds of people Lots and lots of different paths There’s lots and lots of different kinds of people Lots and lots of different paths

iro wa nioi edo chirinuru wo waga yo dare zo tsunenaramu

The flower’s colors are fragrant but they Will eventually scatter Who in this world Is unchanging?

seishun kozou ga kyou mo naiteiru ren’ai beta tte kao ni kaite aru AH kuratto kichatte seishun da ne kuratto kichatte seishun da ne YO dare zo

An adolescent boy is crying yet again today With the words “clumsy at love” written all over his face Ah, going weak at the knees is what youth is Going weak at the knees is what youth is YO, who-?

AH kuratto kichatte seishun da ne kuratto kichatte seishun da ne waga yo dare zo

Ah, going weak at the knees is what youth is Going weak at the knees is what youth is Who in this world-?

saigo wa kimi no ude shidai saigo wa kimi no ude shidai

In the end, it all comes down to your skill In the end, it all comes down to your skill

dakara watashi kawatte ageru sou donna yume datte kanshin ari aru yo watashi

That’s why I’ll Stand in for you Yup, I’m interested in any kind of dream I am

dakara kimi mo fuan wo keshite sou kitto nankai mo funbaru dake dakara kimi ga

So you too Get rid of that anxiousness of yours as well Yes, because when the time comes, you’ll surely just plant your feet and stand firm, over and over So get rid of it

ironna ironna asu ga aru ironna ironna hoshi ga aru ironna ironna asu ga aru ironna ironna hoshi ga aru

There’s lots and lots of different tomorrows Lots and lots of stars There’s lots and lots of different tomorrows Lots and lots of stars

ui no okuyama kyou koete asaki yume miji yoi mo sezu

Crossing the deep recesses of The mountains of vicissitudes today, We shall not dream shallow dreams Nor be drunk on pleasure

seishun kozou ga kyou mo naiteiru kore ga saigo tte kyou mo naiteiru Ah kuratto kichatte seishun da ne kuratto kichatte seishun da ne YO dare zo

An adolescent boy is crying yet again today Crying and saying “This is the last time” yet again today Ah, going weak at the knees is what youth is Going weak at the knees is what youth is YO, who-?

AH kuratto kichatte seishun da ne kuratto kichatte seishun da ne waga yo dare zo

Ah, going weak at the knees is what youth is Going weak at the knees is what youth is Who in this world-?

seishun kozou ga kyou mo naiteiru ren’ai beta tte kao ni kaite aru AH kuratto kichatte seishun da ne kuratto kichatte seishun da ne YO dare zo

AH kuratto kichatte seishun da ne kuratto kichatte seishun da ne waga yo dare zo

Ah, going weak at the knees is what youth is Going weak at the knees is what youth is Who in this world-?

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Took slight liberties with this one, as some of the lines dakara kimi ga are clearly trailing trains of thoughts. As for what the waga yo dare zo is supposed to refer to, my (totally unfounded and completely amateur!) theory is that it’s actually supposed to reference the iroha poem quoted throughout the song. Much like how the iroha says, “Even the most fragrant flower will eventually scatter–likewise, who in the world is unchanging?”, the lyrics here sound like they’re saying “Look, a teenager is a mess over love–likewise, who is the teenager?” (More like, who isn’t that teenager, amirite? >>;)

Kozou is also a relatively old-sounding term for boy (like “youngster” or “lad” I’d suppose), in line with using the iroha.

As for the kuratto, it literally just means to be dizzy or lose bearings, which is why Momusu does a “swooning” gesture during the dance. I thought ‘a teenage boy is swooning’ sounded a little too mean, though, so I substituted a similar substitute.

I won’t translate Tsunku’s liner notes in full this time, just my favorite bit:

"In the end when everything's said and done, it's all you" is the theme for this one. Going through all sorts of things is what life is–crying and laughter, meetings and goodbyes.

It's alright to cry, alright! And, thinking "this is the last time I'll cry!" each time you cry is alright too! That's what the song says.

Someone being there for you gives a sense of security and relief. It might be a universal feeling, but even so, it's absolutely a precious feeling.

The singer being comforting in the gruffest of ways is also hilarious, and this is probably one of my favorite “EDM” style Momusu songs, so it’s a bit of a shame it’s not more popular.

#Seishun Kozou ga Naiteiru #Morning Musume #Morning Musume '15 #single: Seishun Kozou ga Naiteiru / Yuugure wa Ameagari #lyrics #translation #Lyricist: Tsunku #Composer: Tsunku #Arrangement: Egami Koutarou #motivating aidoru songs #release date: 04/15/2015 #I will never forgive them ignoring the winner of the mv contest like this #the 'ironna ironna yatsu ga iru' part is my favorite bc it is PEAK hello! project philosophy

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tmbgareok · 2 years ago

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YouTube suggested this to me. It's by CapitalQ

This is my attempt to document all of the musical/lyrical/poetic references and samples in released They Might Be Giants & solo project songs. This project has been a few months in the making, and I hope you enjoy and discover some great music to listen to! Thanks to the research of hundreds of fans on TMBW.net for making this project possible, as well as the great work by projects like the Don’t Let’s Start Podcast. Many of these references will likely never be confirmed by TMBG, but I’ve tried including ones that feel intentional. Non-TMBG clips I’ve included in this video are meant to represent the most well-known version of each song (that the Johns were more likely to have been exposed to), and I’ve noted the original writers of each included song in the end credits. The years I’ve specified for these songs are typically when the song was first released by the relevant performer. Some clips have been further edited for timing/content to highlight relevant parts of songs. Dates for Dial-A-Song tracks are best guesses from TMBW. Covers such as “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” and ��New York City” are not included in this video, as they would form another video just as long - which may be coming.

00:00 ‘80s Demo Tapes 01:10 They Might Be Giants (1986) 03:17 Hotel Detective EP (1988) 03:54 Lincoln (1988) 07:55 They’ll Need a Crane EP (1989) 08:40 Miscellaneous T / Don’t Let’s Start (1989) 09:34 ‘80s Dial-A-Song 11:45 Flood (1990) 14:05 Istanbul EP (1990) 14:18 Apollo 18 (1992) 15:02 The Guitar EP (1992) 15:12 Hello the Band EP (1993) 15:37 John Henry (1994) 17:31 Factory Showroom (1996) 18:50 Mono Puff - It’s Fun to Steal (1998) 19:23 Severe Tire Damage (1998) 19:41 John Linnell - State Songs (1999) 21:08 TMBG vs McSweeney’s (2001) 22:10 Mink Car (2001) 22:45 No! (2002) 23:36 Direct from Brooklyn (2003) 23:58 Indestructible Object (2004) 24:30 The Spine (2004) 25:29 Venue Songs (2004) 27:52 TMBG Podcast (2005) 28:33 The Else (2007) 30:09 Cast Your Pod to the Wind (2007) 30:41 TMBG Friday Night Podcast (2008) 31:03 Here Comes Science (2009) 31:37 Almost Alice (2010) 32:02 Join Us (2011) 32:47 Album Raises New and Troubling Questions (2011) 34:49 Nanobots (2013) 35:53 Glean (2015) 36:04 Why? (2015) 36:32 Phone Power (2016) 36:54 I Like Fun (2018) 38:27 My Murdered Remains (2018) 39:29 Roman Songs (2021) 39:46 BOOK (2021) 40:07 Credits

#tmbg #they might be giants #submission

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jcapehartjr · 2 years ago

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How "Something Wicked" Brilliantly Breaks STARSET's Formula

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Ohio-based hard rock band STARSET released their fourth album, Horizons, in October 2021. The album featured some of their finest songs to date, most of which followed a formula that the group has followed since their first album in 2015. However, the final track of the album does away with the typical STARSET formula in striking ways. I’d like to dissect just what makes “Something Wicked” so intriguing, especially compared to the rest of STARSET’s discography.

STARSET’s formula follows a very common song structure: alternating three verses and three choruses, with a bridge almost always coming after the second chorus. Many STARSET songs open with a build into the first verse (“Carnivore”, “Monster”, “Manifest”, “Earthrise”). Other STARSET songs jump directly into the first verse’s lyrics (“Halo”, “Satellite”, “Tunnelvision”)

“Something Wicked” does neither of these. It instead begins with a piano playing one note over and over again, with a faint “ticking” sound accompanying the piano notes. After just three notes, lead singer Dustin Bates begins singing. No build-up, but it doesn’t jump straight in either. The clock ticks and piano continue as Bates sings in a breathy, exasperated voice. This bare-bones orchestration is somewhat atypical of STARSET’s music already. For listeners who know STARSET, this change of pace is unsettling. Even in just the first four words of the song (“Loving, hating, hoping, taking”), there is brilliant songwriting. For “Loving” and “hoping”, only Bates’s natural voice is heard. On “hating” and “taking”, words with a more negative connotation, the notes are harmonized a few octaves lower. This effect gives these negative words a particularly ominous feeling to them.

After the first four words, the lyrics and the melody start to unfold, stretching into full phrases and sentences. After a few phrases, string instruments are added to the texture. Over the first 1:30 of the song, there is this sense of gradual growth. STARSET’s music is not typically gradual in nature.

At about 1:33, the strings exit and Bates begins singing again. This time, he sings a different melody. It’s obvious that this is a new section, but it doesn’t quite feel like a chorus. Interestingly, the melody that Bates sings here sounds new to the listener, but was actually foreshadowed by the strings just a few seconds prior. The orchestration is stripped back down to singer, piano, and some ambient synths. After a few phrases, a cello comes in playing a gorgeously tragic counter line to Bates’s melody. Again, this section feels like it’s growing gradually, growing toward something. At 2:04, there is a moment of pause, and then the same melody heard previously starts to repeat, but now we hear drums and guitars added, as well as Bates’s vocals being doubled in octaves to sound thicker and more present in the mix. It isn’t until about 2:20 that STARSET achieves their typical “metal” sound. It feels like all that growing has paid off here. It feels like the pot has started boiling over.

Then it gets bigger.

Drummer Adam Gilbert starts hammering away at cymbals, a track of Bates screaming can be heard behind more new melodic material. Bates is reaching higher and higher notes and even screaming parts of the main melodic line. There are more complex synth lines, heavy guitars, the strings return and the whole texture gives Bates a thick wall of sound to back him up.

As Bates screams out “I have come alive”, the song transitions to yet more new melodic material in what feels like another new section. Here we hear Bates’s vocals harmonized in a way that feels almost like a choir. The song pushes to its ultimate climax as Bates screams out “What you fear you have become”. Impressively, Bates switches from screaming to whispering in a matter of seconds as the wall of sound comes to a screeching halt and leaves Bates and the piano alone to utter the title of the song for the first time with only 15 seconds left in the song. Almost all of STARSET’s songs use the title in their chorus lyrics. For this song to employ its title in a whisper in the last 15 seconds is strikingly divergent from their formula.

One of the most striking differences between “Something Wicked” and the rest of STARSET’s discography is the song’s form. I conceptualize “Something Wicked” in four main sections.

The first section is from 0:00-1:32, which we’ll call the A section. 1:33-2:36, I’ve labeled as the B section. The C section lasts from 2:37-3:09. This section is signaled by Bates singing “Out of myself…”. The final section, D lasts from 3:10 to 3:44. The rest of the song, from 3:45 to the end acts as a sort of “coda” that recalls the A section but present the whispered “Something wicked this way comes”. All of these sections have distinct letter labels because they don’t have much in common in terms of melody. While the strings do foreshadow the B section melody at the end of the A section, the sections still feel distinct from each other in terms of how the song progresses. The song does not return to its previous ideas in any significant way like STARSET’s songs usually do. None of these four sections feel like they could be distinctly labeled as a “verse”, “chorus”, or “bridge”. Over the course of these four sections, A-B-C-D-coda, there is this general sense of gradual growth. D is bigger than C is bigger than B is bigger than A. Eventually, this growth gets to be so much that it just explodes. Section D literally ends with a scream. This explosion of energy makes the whispering of the ending all the more poignant, and all the more distinct from the STARSET formula.

There is something to be said also for the placement of this track within the album: the final track. Listening straight through, the last thing you hear is whispers that “Something wicked this way comes”. Is this STARSET alluding to an uber-intense, darker fifth album? It isn’t unusual for STARSET to drop hints like these. Before the release of Horizons, STARSET fans were sleuthing through encrypted messages from the band that included lore related to the band’s ongoing sci-fi narrative. Perhaps something is brewing…

#starset #metal #something wicked #dustin bates #rock #drums #piano #horizons #music #Youtube

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offender42085 · 3 years ago

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Post 0127

Shawn J Larson, Ohio Inmate A736376, born 1990, incarceration intake at age 27, expected release date: 04/25/2060

Firearms in motor vehicle, Rape, Attempted rape, Kidnapping, Attempted Burglary, Possession of Deadly Weapon while under detention, Felony Assault

Shawn J. Lawson, Jr., received a sentence of 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to three first-degree felony rape charges and nine other related felonies. This was the longest single prison sentence of a non-life term in the court's history, Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn said during the sentencing in county Common Pleas Court.

Lawson was arrested after the use of advanced DNA collection technology in an rape in Lancaster, Ohio, identified him as the suspect the Athens Police Department had been seeking for two uptown rapes and one attempted rape over a 10-year period.

In January 2016, the Athens Police announced to the public that they were seeking a man suspected of committing the series of rapes. They released a composite sketch of the suspect and later commissioned a phenotype DNA profile that included likelihood of genetic traits such as hair, eye, and skin color, as well as a computer-generated portrait.

The police called in around 30 different people for voluntary DNA samples in their search for the perpetrator, they confirmed.

Lawson pleaded guilty to all charges related to the two Athens rapes and attempted rape as well as a bill of information for the rape in Lancaster.

Lawson's crimes in Athens involved three separate victims on June 20, 2015; Dec. 12, 2015; and June 11, 2006. He was 15 years old at the time of the first incident in 2006.

He also gave a brief statement to the court.

"I just want to tell the victims that I'm sorry. I hope they can move on," Lawson said, his voice breaking. "I'm so sorry."

Lawson is a graduate of Alexander High School in Athens and had been employed as a tree-trimmer prior to his arrest.

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feelingofcontent · 3 years ago

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DNP Rewatch: The Making Of 'The Amazing Book is Not on Fire'

Date video was published: 10/08/2015 (X)

DNP Main Channel Rewatch: 283

The release of TABINOF! I already know I’m going to write way too much about this video...

0:00 - filming this intro from a hotel in Glasgow (1, 2), because the tour also started there on this day

0:08 - that’s a lot longer to work on something than they had ever done before for anything they made

0:28 - Phil is just fond smiling in the background so much. The trailer was released back in March of 2015. The explanation video is no longer public.

0:48 - back almost a whole year! To sometime after they had put their tree up while filming A Festive Day in the Life of Dan and Phil! apparently. Why did they film this with Dan on a chair and Phil on the floor? The angle is so weird.

1:00 - the “something made of metal” Dan got Phil for Christmas 2014 is the “tin for my random crap” Phil shows in I'M IN A MOVIE!

1:13 - I love when Phil catches himself staring at Dan for too long and jerks back to face the camera and always looks a little sheepish

1:20 - every time Dan talks about TABINOF you can tell it means so much to him

1:35 - I mean...they do know how to keep a secret or two

1:44 - it is cheesy but they don’t care

1:51 - I hope Dan is exaggerating or 10 hours seems like a long time for that.

1:57 - fuck Dan with the soft voice describing the book again 🥺 Of course, Phil breaks the seriousness with a joke.

2:20 - this was from Phil’s homemade Weakest Link that he had their friends play at a New Year’s party

2:28 - they really planned every detail out, together, didn’t they? Also love the fringes in the drawing. 😂

2:42 - oh my god his posture is terrible. Intense writing their with the double screens.

2:53 - love the reflection of Phil filming in the mirror along with all of the plushies on top of Dan’s wardrobe

3:04 - I love the writing montages in this video. They always seem to be writing when it’s completely dark outside.

3:05 - DAN’S HAIR 😂

3:09 - Dan panicking about literally everything that might be on camera

3:16 - I bet Phil does need the lightest possible shade

3:26 - “massive improvement” ...burn

3:30 - Phil gets to get him back though

3:38 - most of this is very “on brand” for the time, but the inclusion of Dan’s fluffy hat and Phil’s old camera is sweet. They apparently had over 700 photos from this photo shoot to choose from.

3:45 - again I will say...I hate those paper masks.

4:03 - “do I look like a baby’s butt” I don’t think that is the saying there, Dan, lol

4:06 - Dan trying to be much more perfect with the whiskers than usual here

4:12 - this is when they were in Orlando for Playlist Live! in February. Even writing when they were at a convention, yikes.

4:15 - same hotel room but different clothes, so a different day in Orlando. Personal space does not exist.

4:29 - from these glimpses, I do think they chose the right one!

4:42 - almost-quiff Phil

4:44 - wow that corner of the gaming room is a mess. This is a creative idea that they did. Again, the posture scares me.

5:17 - they are so fond during in these clips. They love to make each other laugh.

5:33 - so many drafts! so many markers on the table. Phil is taking the quiz development very seriously.

5:51 - totally normal, lol. I love that Phil knows this is ridiculous but is making it hilarious with the “work the camera” and such

6:03 - Phil was not prepared at all. And then Dan was laughing too hard to keep the camera steady. Poor Phil with a headache but trying to make light of it. And Dan’s slightly concerned face. 🥺

6:10 - airplane writing. Not sure which flight this was.

6:15 - the manically laughter is something...the part of the writing process where they’ve apparently gone insane.

6:17 - this writing clip is from one of the Playlist Live! flights, as it’s the same outfits/setup from the clip Phil shows in THE NOT-MILK CHALLENGE. So not everything in here is in chronological order.

6:26 - again, they made every single decision themselves

6:47 - I don’t care about the paper conversation I only care about Phil knocking something over (of course) and Dan’s fond little smirk

6:55 - Dan was doing a lot of sniffing of the book at the end of TUMBLR TAG 3!

6:59 - such a random clip to include! I love it so much! It’s so casual. Phil lounging on the bed. Dan with his hair pushed back. The sneaky filming. The giggling. 😭 He was apparently seeing which noises would reverb in his piano.

7:33 - Dan is so excited about this part. Also, either that paper is smaller than normal paper or his hands are actually huge

7:55 - I really wonder what they consider “early” lol

7:58 - love supportive-Phil prompting and giving Dan a chance to talk about. Clearly the trailer was a lot of Dan’s ideas and Dan’s thing. He’s taking charge during this whole trailer-filming part.

8:30 - I love finding out that Phil wrote those fake headlines in the trailer. of course he did!

8:36 - ahahaha, them having to show a makeup artist the whiskers 😂 And the horrified glance at “sharpie.”

8:52 - well that some foreshadowing of DAN CURLS MY HAIR! Why does Phil lean into it though...

8:59 - that was a great idea! So many details.

9:03 - help, I can’t handle the window talk...”maybe one day” PLEASE. 😭 Because now they do have huge windows in the forever home.

9:29 - Phil just quietly filming Dan leading this.

9:40 - “serious director Dan” I CAN’T with supportive Phil 😭😭😭

9:53 - Dan cares so much

10:26 - Dan really was the leader of this part and Phil’s just keep quietly filming him from the corner

10:47 - the trailer release day in March! I wonder who all is there with them.

11:17 - I wish Dan wouldn’t have cut Phil’s head off here but he’s fond smiling yet again

11:21 - they are intensely prepared. They did tweet at almost exactly the same time that evening (1, 2), and it was the only thing they tweeted that day.

11:47 - I’m glad they had some immediate excited reactions since some people ended up being very skeptical/cynical about it

11:59 - now the clips are from post-Japan-trip as you can see the Mt. Fuji air can in the background

12:10 - they were doing SO MUCH work in 2015

12:30 - Phil was unprepared. Love the 2 mugs + 1 glass + scattered candy wrappers. That seems about right.

13:09 - what the fuck did Dan mumble here...I heard “that’s one of the hamsters on the radiator.” Is that actually what he said?

13:11 - well this is confusing as heck if you haven’t read the finished TABINOF, lol

13:33 - important content of course. “I love working by pressing my face against a floor” 😂

13:44 - Phil was very enthusiastic there. Always asking each other for suggestions.

14:00 - Dan with a huge grin. An exciting moment with the final pages! They are so casual here. Also so many background things...is Phil drinking out of that giant cup on the sofa arm?! ahahaha.

14:21 - love that Phil felt the need to clarify that he’s wearing shorts as Dan just looks mildly amused

14:33 - pajama Dan! I love that this is the method Dan thought was reasonable. And horrified at the amount of printer ink that must have used.

14:41 - the golden pig!!! This is the first shot we ever see of it, so they must have acquired it sometime in early-2015.

14:59 - Dan still wears that t-shirt

15:11 - the first copy! They got it at the end of September and posted an Instagram photo from that day too.

15:13 - Phil adorably hiding behind it 🥺

15:19 - another ‘oops-I’ve-been-staring-too-long-jerk-back-to-the-camera’ moment there. For about two seconds before he starts staring again.

15:35 - they are so giddy. and proud.

16:02 - DNP plushies on the mantle! 👀

16:19 - they’re really pleased with the paper they chose

16:31 - Phil does not care about spoiling things

16:44 - “probably going to cry or something” and then Phil’s little nod 😭

17:17 - “we can be proud” 😭😭 This video is so much.

17:36 - guessing that had most of this already edited together and then just added the intro and this outro

17:55 - awww at them thanking their audience

I love this video. I love that they filmed all these moments and shared them. If you count this as a DITL video, it might be my second favorite one of those. This was again on Dan’s channel, as most of the TABINOF-related content was.

As a countdown in the days leading up to the release, they shared little snippets on Instagram and Twitter each day - Dan (5, 4, 3, 2, 1); Phil (5, 4, 3, 2, 1).

#dan and phil #dnp #dnpRewatch #daniel howell #amazingphil #danisnotonfire #dan howell #phil lester #daniel howell videos #The Making Of 'The Amazing Book is Not on Fire'#tabinof

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welcometomy20s · 2 years ago

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June 21, 2022

#328 - Solar System Disco (Nayutan Seijin) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 17-06-24, Upload Date: 17-01-20

Probably one of the best expressions of the N.S. style. And probably the song that sounds most like a lively enka song, or song from the 80’s. All the qualities are there, the tuning, the chorus, the puns, and there is a rap part to boot.

#329 - Mushroom Mother (PinocchioP) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 17-07-04, Upload Date: 11-08-13

Song that is referenced and is the basis for many songs after. Probably the song established the current PinocchioP style, both in terms of topic and PV as well. Strange that it’s a song about mushrooms, but it doesn’t like a reference to two yabai things which mushrooms are usually associated with, other than kind of a fakeout?

#330 - Perfect Life (Nayutan Seijin) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 17-07-09, Upload Date: 15-10-06

This song feels like a filler song in the middle of an album, then the chorus hits. Also the lyrics seem to be most complex and frustrating, somewhere between the melancholy of Planet Loop and the joy of Comet Honeymoon or Solar System Disco.

#331 - Spirit of Azalea (Tohma) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 17-07-09, Upload Date: 12-11-05

If Tohma wrote a kemu song, I think this would be the result. Tohma already has certain similarity with the other rock greats at the time, but this wouldn’t feel out of place with Kagerou or KEMU VOXX. It’s still very much a Tohma song, though.

#332 - Daybreak Arrival (Last Note.) [Hatsune Miku, Megurine Luka]

Achievement Date: 17-07-15, Upload Date: 12-02-24

It’s a song about a best friend, one dead and one swearing to remember forever… but it’s pretty clear it’s pretty much a yuri song. Last Note. wrote yuri songs before, so this is not just forcing yuri glasses on everything… Oh just listen to the great instrumentation!

#333 - Rain and Petra (balloon) [flower]

Achievement Date: 17-07-20, Upload Date: 17-03-09

Song that grows on me every time I listen. Definitely more of a traditional rock, which plays with the flower’s voice. Seeing Avogadro’s illustration move… this much is quite jarring, actually. The song is very good regardless of this features.

#334 - Dear Doppelganger (kemu) [GUMI]

Achievement Date: 17-07-21, Upload Date: 17-05-31

kemu’s comeback song after five or so years? Another instant hit, another song about superpowers gone wrong. Song is basically a chunni version of Duplicity. I don’t know why I mentioned that movie, except that I like Michael Keaton’s performance.

#335 - Sand Planet (hachi) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 17-07-27, Upload Date: 17-07-21

Hachi also came back after five years, but he only left this kind of shady song. Hey, it reached the list in six days. If he released this song in 2015, it would have made sense, but we are now in 2017, and things have gotten better, including this song. I really hope there will be a hachi song soon, although even Kenshi Yonezu isn’t making too much music these days. You can hear the major vibes on this song.

#336 - Leave in Summer, Yet You're in My Fluffoughts (baker) [Hatsune Miku]

Achievement Date: 17-07-28, Upload Date: 11-08-29

Baker thought this song was not as well done and so privated the video. Why? This song is fantastic. It’s cute! It’s fluffy! The theme is very good! There are many covers. And it’s funny this is baker’s first song on this list. Soft-spoken tuning is very nice, and the jazz swing is always appreciated. Yeah, it’s a good song, baker.

#vocaloid #review #music

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whenyouknowyouknow · 4 years ago

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Harry the Womanizer

This thing started because I find the whole womanizer image of Harry absolutely disgusting and wanted people to see how utterly bad and wrong it was.

Please be aware that the following does not reflect Harry’s personality but it shows us the image their label wanted him to be seen as.

Some disclaimer about where the data comes from

written, digital coverage (no print, 1-2 videos, no radio)

google search “Harry Styles”, I looked through the first 20 hits each month but didn’t read all of them ( headlines usually are a dead giveaway if an article contains a new “conquest”)

I did not list every woman that was mentioned in the same article as Harry. Also not those that showed interest in him. But most of those that were said he showed interest in (I might have skipped a few in the worst years just bc it was so freaking disgusting)

Often articles contained offhand comments about his pulling power or unrelatedly recounting his latest conquests in any given article to enforce the womanizer image. These did not make it into the list.

Deleted articles are of course not included (as of Aug 2020)

Some of the women turn up again for a round 2 (or 3 or 4), I only mention them once a year tho

I put the women into the list on the date the news coverage happened/started because many articles date back things by saying “pics have circulated since…” “They have been reportedly seen together since…” or simply tell a story that supposedly happened a few years prior

Some dates overlap. Thats either bc they pushed several woman at once (very effective to drive the whole womanizer image home) or its bc one woman was seeded in while the other was happening.

Because this is a freaking long post, I’ll put it under the “read more”

About the list

split by years

each year has Harrys age for that given year in brackets

each data set has in brackets the age, occupation and date of news coverage for the woman (if available)

winter gf get their own category as they sometimes overlap with other woman

Some of the woman get brought back up (not just mentioned in passing), those are listed at the end of each year with the dates when they where brought back up

“again” is for those who dated him again

Women linked to Harry

2010 (16)

5(?) girls from bootcamp

Cher Loyd (17, txf fellow contestant, Oct)

unnamed girl fan (13.11.)

2011 (17)

Adele (23, singer, 27.09.)

Sarita Borge (record executive, 29.11.)

2011-2012

Caroline Flack (31, txf, 23.10.-27.01.)

2012 (18)

Pixie Geldoff (21, 09.02.)

Alexa Chung (28, model, 16.02)

Alexandra Burke (23, txf, 20.02.)

Jo Wood (56, ex of Ronny Wood 21.02.)

Denise Welch (54, actress, 21.02.)

Georgia May Jagger (20, Mick Jagger daughter, 21.02.)

Sarah-Louise Colivet (24, photographer, 11.04.)

Lily Halpern (19, singer, 11.04.)

Jillian Harris (32, reality TV star, 13.04.)

Emma Ostilly (18, actor for Gotta be You MV - 22.04.)

Ellis Calcutt (18(?), friend, deniedm, 30.04.)

Emily Atack (22, TV star, 20.05.)

unnamed girl (Article about her one night stand with H, 06.06.)

Lucy Horobin (32, radio presenter, 24.06., dated back to Aug-Oct 2011)

Caggie Dunlop (23, TV star, 12.07.)

Allyssa Reid (19, singer, 23.07.)

Blond girl with pink bag (from a night out, 26.07.)

Cara Delevingne (19, Model, 05.08.)

Natalie Imbruglia (37, singer actress 28.09.)

2012-13

Taylor Swift (22 singer 19.10.-07.01. (fling dated back to April 2012 then getting back together)

2013 (19)

Hermione Way (27, reality star, 08.01.)

Millie Brady (18, actress, 24.02.)

Shaniece Nesbitt (fan, 11.03.)

Yvette Fielding (44, TV presenter, 11.03.)

Fia Litton (niece of Preston Mahon (security), 14.03)

Chelsea Ferguson (25, stripper, 14.04)

Kimberly Stewart (33, confirmed by Rod, 27.04.)

Camilla Foss (18, fan in oslo, 09.05.)

Kara Rose Marshall (22, model, 03.07.)

Alexis Allen (19, fan, 21.07.)

Cara Delevingne (20, model, 11.09.)

Paige Reifler (17, model, 30.09.)

Sjana Earp (18, model, 25.10.)

Samantha Armytage (36, TV presenter, 27.10.)

Daisy Lowe (24, model, 01.12.)

Caroline Flack (brought back up, 01.02./11.09.)

2013-14

Kendall Jenner (17, model, 21.10. - 23.02)

2014 (20)

mystery brunette (20.01.)

Alison Mosshart (35, singer, 07.03.)

Daisy Lowe (25, model, 11.04.)

Larissa de Macedo Machado (21, brazilian popstar, 08.05.)

Lou Teasdale (30, hairdresser, 26.05.)

Sinitta (45, Smons ex, 22.07.)

Paige Reifler (18, again, model, 25.07.)

Meghan Trainor (20, singer, 27.08.)

blond woman (at Coldplay concert, 18.09.)

Katy Perry (29, singer, 01.10.)

Erin Foster (31, 08.10.)

Kate Moss (40, model, 03.11.)

two blond woman (leaving a club in LA with H, 30.11.)

Taylor Swift (brought back up, 12.02./02.03./20.08./14.10./04.12.)

Emily Atack (brought back up, 23.03.)

Caroline Flack (brought back up, 26.03.)

2014-15

Nadine Leopold (20, model, 20.12.- 12.03.)

2015 (21)

Emma Watson (24, actress, 14.01. dated back to 26.12.14)

Suki Waterhouse (23, actress, 05.04.)

Joy Muggli (23, talent agent, 12.05.)

Sara Sampaio (23, model, 15.06.)

Georgia Fowler (22, model, inspiration for Kiwi, 15.10.)

Nicole Scherzinger (34, singer, 17.10., dated back to 2013)

Taylor Swift (brought back up, 15.01./13.02./10.03./08.05./13.10./28.10.)

Caroline Flack (brought back up, 24.05./11.10.)

2015-16

Kendall Jenner (again, 30.12.- 31.01.)

2016 (22)

Pandora Lennard (28, model 31.01.)

Lindsay Lohan (30, actress, 10.03., dated back unspecified)

Kendall Jenner (again, 05.09.)

Kara Rose Marshall (brought back up, 07.10.)

Suki Waterhouse (again + dated back to 2013, 11.11.)

Taylor Swift (brought back up, 01.02.)

2017 (23)

Tess Ward (26, food blogger, 09.05.)

Townes Adair Jones (20s, 17.05., dated back to 2014)

Camille Rowe (31, model, 31.07.)

Sjana Earp (22, again, 05.12.)

Taylor Swift (brought back up, 18.04./12.05./03.09./09.11.)

Kendall Jenner (brought back up, 31.01.)

2018 (24)

Delta Goodrem (33, voice coach, 27.04.)

Camille Rowe (ends 31.07.)

Kendall Jenner (brought back up, 15.07./12.12.)

Taylor Swift (brought back up, 21.03./)

2019 (25)

Kiko Mizuhara (28, denied by K, 12.01.)

Camille Rowe (brought back up, 22.11.)

Kendall Jenner (brought back up, 11.12.)

Taylor Swift (brought back up, 23.08./04.11./13.12.)

2020 (26)

Daisy Lowe (brought back up, 20.06.)

Taylor Swift (brought back up, 02.03./24.07.)

data from here on is not included in the graphs, I will keep adding when things happen

Tracee Ellis Ross (48, actress, 28.10.)

The age differences

The graph shows clearly how

the age gaps are very big in the beginning, likely to attract an older audience in addition to the usual target audience of teenage girls

the amount of woman linked to Harry gets smaller each year because in later years, articles could just reference his history with woman

the amount of woman linked and mentioned in regards to Harry gets significantly lower after hiatus started

A rough timeline of women that where connected to Harry over the years

Why give Harry the womanizer image?

Would the image of a womanizer not damage the image of 1D?

If they’d portrait him as a sleeze it would have surely damaged the overal image of 1D. But Harrys image portrait him as charming, a bit quirky and overall an airhead that likes people and doesn’t want to be tied down. Thus giving the illusion of being potentially available to every woman and showing them a good, no strings attached, time. Which is a massive selling point for boybands to increase the age range of their fans.

In addition, all his conquests would be used to stir up drama or simply generate attention at crucial times to get 1D in the press without mentioning their current promo focus in every headline.

The winter girlfriends had a special role as they were the only ones actively worked as continuous dating. To build some attachment, have a continuous storyline that could be tied to the just released album and bridge the holiday pause, and when the relationship ended generate more drama to be used for promo.

Harry did keep on using his womanizer image to promote both his solo albums but in a very controlled manner. The numbers of new woman linked to him declined to 1 in 2019, for now we are at 0 (1) in 2020

HS promo used 3 woman as inspirations for songs (Towns, Fowler, Swift) and a tour gf (Rowe)

FL promo only uses the previous tour gf as now ex to push the storyline of a breakup album

He is very visibly changing his image while still maintaining a level of connection to his old image. Whether that's due to contractual restrictions or a strategy to not alienate to many fans is unclear

Jeff Azoff

For what I’ve seen Jeff and Harry seem close (the Azoff family having him on family pictures, posted by Jeff’s brother)

Looking at the timeline of Jeff and Harry

2014-03-25 first mention of Harry at Azoff family home in an article about Irvin

2014-04-23 first pics of Harry and Jeff at a sports event (Jeff named as a friend, no name or position yet)

2014-12-22 Jeff not named yet but identified as his agent

2015-01-10 first time Jeff being named and being the link between Harry and a woman

2016-03-07 Jeff leaves CAA as a music agent and launches his own company Full Stop Management

2016-03-11 Harry confirmed to have joined Full Stop Management

Jeff likely took over as Harry’s agent in early 2014. In 2015 Harry’s image change starts to become aparent and changed drastically after hiatus.

Harry choosing Jeffs management firm as soon as he left Modest is a clear indication that he feels Jeff will represent him how he wants

The Timeline - Women connected to Harry and Promo

I started the visual timeline in end 2011 when his womanizer image started to take off

The instances before where likely used as seeding for this image (first instance was a segment in txf where he was linked to 5 of the girl contestants and funny enough one older guy)

purple - women from the entertainment industry

pink - fans/no-names

lilac - winter gf

dark burgundy - thos who date him again

dusky pink - brought back up

light blue - single release

royal blue - album release

mid blue - other releases

dark turquoise - tour legs

Adendum: a few numbers analyzed,

#Harry Styles #womanizer #masterpost #aug2020 #womanizer timeline HS

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icharchivist · 3 years ago

Note

I thought i will have my first maxed zone and then mission kill that shit 30 times, when i have barely 15 hosts left.

Salt. And betrayal.

Also do you know perhaps chronological order of Societte's and Yuel's fate ep?

OH MAN RIP DLKFJDKLFJDF

and for the FEs i think it should be in chronological order in term of when the units released so it should be:

(date shown in Year-Month-Day)

-Fire!Yuel base (2014-04-30)

-Water!Societte base (2015-03-17)

-Fire!Yuel 5*: (2016-01-29)

-Fire!Societte: (2016-09-15)

-Forgiveness and Gratitude : 2017-10-31

-Event!Yuel (2017-10-31)

-Water!Yuel (2017-10-31)

-Wind!Yuel (2019-03-18)

-Kou and the Hollow Existence (2019-10-28)

-Wind!Societte (2019-10-31)

-Kou (2019-10-31)

-You (2019-10-31)

-Water!Societte 5* (2021-04-09)

here you go o7 good luck in your reading!

#ichareply #lucyferros #ichafantalks gbf #ichablogging gbf

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sherlockwatson03-blog · 4 years ago

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tvaofficial decoding

So because everything going on at @tvaofficial I decided to do some research. I found a thread from reddit made by the user PJL80 who figured out that the codes that didn’t translate to text in Base64 where actually dates in Hex. So…. I translated all of them

Here you go:

Monday 5 August 2002 16:23:23

Wednesday 3 March 1976 07:07:46

Monday 5 September 1994 12:46:10

Wednesday 23 August 1995 14:31:56

Wednesday 27 December 2084 16:21:38

Monday 27 March 2034 16:02:22

Friday 9 September 2016 16:44:38

Monday 10 August 2015 10:33:46

Friday 11 February 2084 04:56:44

Tuesday 7 July 1970 09:02:53

Friday 3 December 2021 04:58:20

Friday 9 March 2063 23:58:11

Friday 22 October 2077 07:29:05

Saturday 10 August 2052 16:00:51

Wednesday 10 December 2008 08:24:37

Monday 23 May 2089 23:28:52

Saturday 26 December 2071 01:50:07

Saturday 8 July 2084 04:40:12

Friday 13 March 2065 15:33:55

Saturday 24 April 2032 23:38:44

Thursday 18 June 2082 05:39:30

Saturday 6 January 2035 14:22:56

Wednesday 6 July 2078 15:05:28

Monday 7 December 2071 12:05:11

Thursday 1 January 1970 00:00:10

is this thiIGlzIHRo / aXMgdGhp

Thursday 1 January 1970 00:00:10

Thursday 1 January 1970 00:00:11

Thursday 24 August 1989 18:48:05

Sunday 2 May 2021 13:08:48

Wednesday 15 November 2017 20:08:40

Sunday 18 February 2024 14:01:55

Sunday 26 May 2052 08:58:54

Sunday 30 April 2017 20:32:33

Saturday 17 July 2027 00:57:00

Tuesday 21 September 2021 13:34:16

Sunday 21 February 2083 01:21:31

Thursday 4 September 2081 07:20:52

Tuesday 10 April 1984 05:04:32

Wednesday 4 February 1976 22:50:12

Monday 3 June 1985 09:22:57

Saturday 26 August 1978 22:22:49

Monday 27 March 2090 13:00:58

Saturday 6 October 1990 04:48:38

At first, the dates seem to be appearing at a random (and they where kinda boring!!!!) , until one thing happened that spiked my interest.

From nowhere a thread translated to this:

Thursday 1 January 1970 00:00:10

is this thiI

Thursday 1 January 1970 00:00:10

Thursday 1 January 1970 00:00:11

The first 2 dates are the exact same and the last one is just 1 second later. In the middle, it didn’t translate to a date at all but to text.

Maybe this is a really important occasion which they returned to multiple times? I wonder what happens here, anyone got a clue?

and isnt this when loki is released?

Sunday 2 May 2021 13:08:48

#loki #loki laufeyson #marvel #loki series #marvel series #tva #tvaofficial #time variance authority

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a-silent-symphony · 3 years ago

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NIGHTWISH Announces May 2022 North American Tour

Finnish/British/Dutch symphonic metallers NIGHTWISH have announced the North American leg of their "Human. :II: Nature." world tour 2022. The 10-date trek will kick off on May 6 in Montreal with stops in New York, Chicago, and Denver before concluding in Los Angeles for two back-to-back shows at The Wiltern on May 20 and May 21. Joining the band as the special guest are fellow Finns BEAST IN BLACK.

Tour dates:

May 04 - History, Toronto, ON CANADA May 06 - Mtelus - Montreal, QC CANADA May 07 - Tsongas Arena - Lowell, MA May 08 - Terminal 5 - New York, NY May 10 - The Fillmore - Silver Spring, MD May 12 - Radius - Chicago, IL May 13 - The Fillmore - St. Paul, MN May 15 - Mission Ballroom - Denver, CO May 18 - The Warfield - San Francisco, CA May 20 - The Wiltern - Los Angeles, CA May 21 - The Wiltern - Los Angeles, CA

This past July, NIGHTWISH played a special "secret" concert in Oulu, Finland as a warm-up for its festival appearances in Finland. The gig marked NIGHTWISH's first fan-attended show in more than two a half years. It was also NIGHTWISH's first proper concert with session bassist Jukka Koskinen's (WINTERSUN), who stepped into the group as the replacement for longtime NIGHTWISH bassist/vocalist Marko "Marco" Hietala. Hietala announced his departure from the band in January, explaining in a statement that he hadn't "been able to feel validated by this life for a quite a few years now."

Koskinen made his live debut with NIGHTWISH at the band's two interactive experiences in late May. The shows reportedly drew 150,000 viewers, setting the record for the largest paid virtual concert in Finland's history. Most of the viewers came from Europe and North America, but the performance was a truly global event, with fans in 108 countries purchasing tickets to the show and the box office gross exceeding one million euro.

In May, NIGHTWISH keyboardist and main songwriter Tuomas Holopainen said that Hietala's decision to leave the band "came as a bit of a surprise." He told Finland's Kaaos TV: "Marko informed us in December last year [that he was leaving the band]. And even though he has been very open about his state and problems during the past years, it still came as a bit of a surprise for us. So it was a really tough pill to swallow. And for a few days, I was actually quite confident that there's no coming back, that this is it. I remember talking to Emppu [Vuorinen], the guitar player, and we were, like, 'You think this is it?' 'Yeah, I think this is it.' I mean, enough is enough. So much has happened in the past. Something that broke the camel's back, as they say. Then, after some time had passed — a few days — we started to think that it's been such a ride of 25 years, with so many ups also, that this is not the way to end it."

NIGHTWISH's latest album, "Human. :II: Nature.", was released in April 2020. The follow-up to 2015's "Endless Forms Most Beautiful", "Human. :II: Nature." is a double album containing nine tracks on the main CD and one long track, divided into eight chapters, on CD 2.

#Nightwish #Live 2022 #2021 news

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rheaitis · 4 years ago

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growing up gay on the internet

(apologies if you’ve seen this on twitter)

The first time I told a girl I loved her, she'd been telling me stories from fanfic she'd been reading. Not right then, a few hours before. When I told her, she stared at me, horrified, and said, "You're trying to make everything like that fanfic." [friends to lovers, slow-burn] Harry Potter, of course. I think Ron/Harry? Of course because everyone I knew in school read Harry Potter, often in great heaving knots gathered around OotP till teachers intervened. Many of us then read fanfic because we just wanted more stories in that place.

I read in other fandoms, at the time X-Men. I am still angry about X3, not just because X3 was bad, but because it wasn't Minisinoo's Grail in re Warren Worthington III. Not that I expected it have a queer Warren. I didn't know at the time that Warren is canonically queer in at least one timeline, and I never expected satisfying queerness from media in any case. This was 2004, early 2005, and wee teenaged Rhea knew better. I was wrong, but not about the movieverse unqueering X-Men. (Incidentally, if you haven't, please watch @eruthrosish's amazing Straightening Up the House, which talks about just this)

But anyway, back to 2004-05, a very little and increasingly angry Rhea trying to explain that it was love! Uninfluenced by fanfic! All me, baby! I mean, it wasn't true, a lot of that was very definitely the fanfic. Where else was I gonna find models of happy queers? Not in Indian media, for sure. In American... Tara Maclay died, Will Truman never got any dates, Lex Luthor was only coded queer. I was years away from reading queer lit, and even there fandom was my guide.

I was lucky, insofar as I went to a single-sex school where a lot of people were gay-for-the-stay, including the girl I was confessing to. But for-the-stay, mostly, leading to my current consternation about the batch group chat I've just joined. The girls I kissed, tho, the girl I was in love with, they weren't thinking of queer futures, and all my dreaming happened with my nose pushed up to the screen of boxy desktops with limited or paid-by-the-hour internet. The last three years of school, I skulked around fandom. I read everything. First as much queer Harry Potter stuff as I could find, then whatever my favourite authors had written in other fandoms, then whatever their friends had written in those. The Magneto in my heart is penknife's wry, wounded one written in the wake of the 1st film. I read *so much* in so many fandoms, wandering around forums and livejournal blogs and the personal & communal websites where people like @astolat and @rageprufrock and @seperis hosted their fanfic. Smallville and pre-Cas SPN and SG1/SGA.

And of course, Harry Potter. We rp'ed Harry Potter en masse, in 04-05: my batch the Marauder generation, our juniors the protagonist's. Rampages and letter-writing and patched-together friendships across school, and in the middle of it, I with my trove of queer fic in a dis/similar school.

This is not, btw, to commend fandom, then or now, but especially then, 5-2 years before RaceFail. (i-was-there-gandalf.gif) Even in my limited (by pocket-money) and very single-minded experience, it was misogynistic & racist, but I could see a brown girl on TV any time. Probably as a joke if she was dark and fat like me [by the standards of my community at the time] but there, anyway. There and straight. Fire had come out when I was learning I liked girls, but it wasn't exactly accessible. Girlfriend had just been released & I hated it.

All I wanted from fandom was to be flooded with stories of queerness, the possibility that I could become an adult without suddenly wanting to kiss (or marry!) men, that it didn't have to be a phase I would grow out of, or an entanglement, like Ma said, from which I could escape. A paucity of imagination, perhaps. I didn't know to demand canonical queers till I was in college. I still barely know how to demand canonical Indian queers. All I wanted was girls kissing girls, not as a game or dare or all the excuses the girls kissing me used. Queer love, queer domesticity, queer pining that ended in mutual confessions, fandom's favourite games. I'd have done so much better in my board exams if I hadn't been spending every free minute reading about Remus/Sirius or Lex/Clark or Jack/Daniel. (Notice the lack of f/f)

A note also in memory of all the we're-not-gay-we-just-love-each-other fic that I very possibly read against the grain as people escaping the shackles of comphet because of the strength of their love. (I didn't know the word comphet. What I was thinking was very awkward.)

Fandom found me friends. Fandom found me community. Fandom raised me in the bits of my life I couldn't admit to any of the adults around me. But honestly, fandom's job was done the moment it gave me access to queer texts, queer narratives I never expected from canonised media. I could go home from school, ferret my pendrive from its hiding place, and just spend a couple hours every day reading about Sirius & Remus raising Harry, Clark & Lex driving to the ocean, Jack & Daniel wandering alien sands. Queer people! Not defined/restricted by queerness! okay fine, cis white dudes, primarily. but that's a fandom problem, and I was used, anyway, to all my English-language media being about white folk. Queer POC still blew my mind in 2015, desi queers still do. Queer people! Who can pronounce my name maybe?!

If you'd told me at 15 that I could read published books that had queer people in them... Well. And again, fandom did that work for me as well. That's how I discovered queer lit beyond, like, Oscar Wilde. Fandom recc'd me Maurice & Mary Renault & Sarah Waters.

I usually conclude this kinda spiel by saying fandom helped me find love, and that's true, but only in a roundabout way each time. The first girlfriend I had was the girl at the beginning of this story; three years after we broke up, I met @filianoctis and immediately told her Renault stories: the novel, first, and then fic. Yes and no, basically. But fandom let me imagine it, in all the stories of queer adults buying groceries and making beds, drinking beer and raising kids. Desire I knew I had the first time I wanted to kiss a girl but a future was harder to imagine. The first time I told a girl I loved her, the 2009 decriminalisation was four+ years away. I had no queer adults to turn to; I wasn't entirely sure adults could be queer. Nothing in my experience suggested it.

Except fanfic.

#queerness #here and queer

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tattooed-alchemist · 4 years ago

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From 2015 to 2021, a code purple was called over 4,500 times, according to the new Children’s data released to Crosscut this week. Of those, nearly 700 were against Black patients and family. That’s nearly 15 percent of all calls, despite the fact that Black patients made up just over 6 percent of patients. White patients made up about 50 percent of the hospital's population and faced 55 percent of code purple calls.

“There’s institutional racism; there's systemic racism,” said Gregorian. “We're not immune to that.”

That disparity is consistent dating back to at least 2008. In the 2012 report, staff found that 16 percent of security calls were against Black patients and family, who made up 7 percent of the patient population.

Having a code purple called on a family can leave them feeling “embarrassed, demoralized, and feel like they are being treated like criminals and are being disempowered,” the 2012 report read. “Parents have reported feeling misunderstood as they are escorted away from their sick child, when they were trying to advocate for their child but are perceived as a threat.”

The report identified one instance in which a father “of African descent” was escorted away from his child after advocating for a different approach to drawing blood from his child. The experience left him feeling “powerless, embarrassed, and seen in the eyes of other families on the unit as a criminal.”

#seattle #children's hospital #systemic racism #code purple #black patients

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punjabengineeringworks · 3 years ago

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Edible Oil Industry

India Was Stripped of Its Atmanirbharta in the Edible Oil Industry The rise and fall of the biggest importers of edible oil in the world. Nov 04, 2020 | B.M. Vyas and Manu Kaushik A man loads empty containers of edible oil onto a tricycle at a roadside in Kolkata, India, August 27, 2015. Photo: Reuters/Rupak De Chowdhuri

‘Freedom is the greatest fruit of self-sufficiency’

– Epicurus

The COVID-19 pandemic has been detrimental for globalisation and has led to a clamour for protectionism.

India’s national strategy is also in line with this trend with calls for ‘Atmanirbharta’ and ‘vocal for local’ increasing.

Traditionally, India was an exporter of edible oil before Independence, became self-sufficient post-Independence (till the early 1970s), floundered in 1970s and 80s and regained self-sufficiency in the early 90s (1991-94). We are currently the biggest importers in the world!

India imports around US $ 10 billion of edible oil (15 MT) annually which constitutes nearly 70% of our annual edible oil requirement of 23 million tonnes. Thus, whether you eat a roadside samosa, matthi, dosa or chola bhatura, branded biscuit or namkeen, or even aloo puri or sabzi at home, there is almost a 70% chance that it is made using oil which is not from India.

Furthermore, imported palm oil or its derivatives are used as ingredients in soaps, shampoos, shaving creams and other cosmetics too. This is not an industry that comes across as a shining example for ‘atmanirbhar’ India. An analysis of the last five decades will help us understand how we reached here.

From Independence until the mid-1970s, we averaged 95% self-sufficiency in edible oil, except for the war years and its aftermath when self-sufficiency fell down to early 90s in percentage. The cuisine, cropping patterns and climatic conditions had led to the preference of mustard oil in north and east India, coconut oil in south India, groundnut or cottonseed oil in west India, and sesame oil in Rajasthan.

This regional preference for indigenous edible oils had evolved over centuries and had become a part of our culture. In 1973-74, groundnut, mustard and cottonseed oil had a whopping 96% share of the total consumption of edible oils in India. The oil seeds were traditionally extracted by cold pressing and then filtered; a technology suited to small scale processing leading to employment for generations. It also encouraged localised procurement and distribution networks having a smaller carbon footprint. Thus, it was an ecologically sustainable system and a virtuous cycle.

The 1971 India-Pakistan war compounded by the drought in 1972, led to inflation and food shortages. The per capita edible oil availability, which was 5 litres per annum in 1971 fell down to 3.9 litres per annum in 1973 (its 19 litres now). There were acute shortages in milk and consequently ghee. The shortage of oil and ghee combined with slick marketing led to the demand for vanaspati – which was marketed as a healthier alternative to ghee.

Also read: ‘Agriculture and Atmanirbharta’ Is a Noble Vision, but Needs Hard Decisions and Political Consensus

Edible oil was hydrogenated – by adding hydrogen to convert ‘unsaturated’ liquid fats into ‘saturated’ solid fats – and made into vanaspati. The vanaspati thus formed was ghee-like not just in appearance but also had a higher melting point than oil and was thus more suited for deep frying. Dalda was the flagship brand in the industry.

Dalda vegetable ghee. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

This further reduced the edible oil available for consumption as oil per se. Vanaspati consumption essentially took away one fifth of the availability of edible oils during the 1970s-80s. This led to groundnut oil or mustard oil being banned for making vanaspati from 1976-77 to 1987-88, and imported palmolien became the mainstay of the vanaspati industry.

The popularity of vanaspati had a detrimental effect on the growth of domestic edible oils as it pushed the price of edible oil down, making oilseed crop a losing proposition for farmers. Its production stagnated – staying around 10 million tonnes of oilseeds from 1970 to 1986 – while the growing population pushed demand up, forcing the government to import more edible oil. Thus, a vicious cycle was in place.

The public resentment transformed into action on December 20, 1973, when students protested against the hike in their mess bills leading to the Navnirman movement, in Gujarat. This, in turn, inspired Jayaprakash Narayan’s Total Revolution leading to the emergency and the formation of the Janta Party’s Morarji Desai government in 1977. While everyone remembers George Fernandes for having kicked out Coca Cola, the Janta Party government also opened the import gates for edible oil. The 95% reliance on domestic edible oils maintained in the 1960s and 1970s, fell down to 70% during 1977-80.

In 1977, the then finance minister, H.M. Patel – father of Amrita Patel, who later became chairperson of the NDDB – suggested to Dr Verghese Kurien an “Operation Flood” like project for edible oils via a farmers cooperative network based on the Amul model. The objective was self-reliance in edible oils through increased productivity, effective distribution and price stability through Market Intervention Operations (MIO) by NDDB, leading to improved farmer livelihoods. The intent of MIO was to handle 15% of the edible oil produced in the country to manage price fluctuations.

The project was named Operation Golden Flow. Central to the operation was the brand ‘Dhara’, which was created to build a market for the Indian oilseed grower. It was inspired by the wordmark of Dalda in green on a yellow background, the leader in vanaspati. This was a part of the market intervention operation. Dhara was launched in Delhi on August 23, 1988. Dhara pricing was kept low due to economies of scale and blending with the donated oil from CLUSA (Cooperative League of the USA), a strategy taken from the ‘pump priming’ of donated SMP and butter-oil during Operation Flood.

Thus, Dhara brought prices of domestic oil at par with cheaper imported edible oil. NDDB and GCMMF worked as one team and launched several varieties of oil such as filtered and refined mustard oil, cottonseed oil and double filtered groundnut oil. While NDDB handled the cooperatives, procurement and production, GCMMF was the distribution partner. The established Amul distribution network helped launch Dhara in a blitzkrieg. It took the market by storm. By 1991-92, Dhara had achieved sales of 1,32,000 MT pa, which was around 50% of the organised market share.

In a coordinated attempt the then PM Rajiv Gandhi created a Technology Mission on Oilseeds (TMO) in 1986. Headed by Sam Pitroda, it took concrete steps to boost domestic production of edible oils. The area under oilseed cultivation which had stagnated between 15-18 million hectares between 1970-85 increased to 25 million hectares by 1991 and oilseed production which was stuck at around 10 million tonnes (1970-85) went up to 18 million tonnes in this timeframe. India was producing 98% of its edible oil requirement by 1990-91. A true atmanirbhar success story!

Also read: With Palm Oil Expansion, India is Blazing a Trail to a Parched Future

The period between 1990-94 could be considered the golden era of the Indian edible oil industry.

This self-sufficiency continued till the Narsimha Rao government signed the WTO agreement in 1994 and edible oil was put under OGL (Open General License) with 65% duty. By 1998 we were again importing around 30% of our edible oil. We could never foresee then, what was in store in the near future.

A woman works in a field of mustard plants. Photo: Reuters

Under the Vajpayee government, the import duty on edible oil was further reduced to 15% in July 1998 and coincidentally the Argemone adulteration Dropsy case took place in August 1998. Sixty people died and around 3,000 got sick in Delhi and caught the nation’s attention. All of a sudden, all domestic brands selling mustard oil became outcasts and even loose mustard oil was banned. NDDB had to release advertisements to inform consumers not to buy its trusted Dhara Mustard Oil. Out of fear consumers shifted to ‘purer’ aromaless, colourless, tasteless oils or solvent extracted refined oils, as we know them. Over the next few years, that black swan event, led to a shift in the socio-cultural cooking and consumption patterns of edible oil in the country.

Industry followers consider it deliberate sabotage to discredit indigenous and loose oils and promote imports. Mustard oil contaminated with argemone (essentially weed seed contamination) is an ancient occurrence, but adulteration is never more than 1%. In these cases, adulteration was up to 30%, with argemone, diesel and waste oil as contaminants. The adulteration was therefore done in such a way that it would kill, and do so conspicuously and rapidly. Thus, the tragedy was seemingly not a result of the normal business of adulteration.

As the then Delhi health minister Harsh Vardhan stated, this is not possible without an organised conspiracy. NDDB had always faced opposition to Operation Golden Flow since its inception from the local telia rajas, oil kings. Its Bhavnagar Vegetable Products (BVP) plant had suffered eight mysterious fires between 1977-1982 and senior executives like A.A. Cholani and G.M. Jhala suffered serious accidents while travelling. Even now, it appears as if to set an example, the officers of NDDB and GCMMF till date attend court hearings of the dropsy case. While the mill owner from whom the said lot was bought, and was the main accused, was acquitted in 2006 due to lack of evidence.

After this incident, the Vajpayee government imported a controversial consignment of a million tonnes of soybean seeds from the US, previously rejected by the EU. Prices of indigenous oils fell and farmers protests fell on deaf ears. The area under oilseed cultivation started falling as farmers abandoned the crop. The area under mustard cultivation fell from 7.04 million hectares in 1997-98 to 4.5 million hectares in 2003-04. While edible oil imports increased from 2 million tonnes in 1997-98 to 4.5 million tonnes in 1998-99 and five million tonnes in 2002-03.

Men work on palm fruits at a palm oil factory. Photo: Reuters/Thierry Gouegnon/Files

By 2018, 20 years since the dropsy incident, the situation transposed and 70% of edible oil consumed in India was imported. It is primarily palm and soybean oil both non-indigenous to the country, the cuisine and its people. Palm oil in itself is 50% of the oil consumed in India, one of the unhealthiest oils on the planet.

Thus, one single policy decision, and one suspected sabotage, devastated not just the entire domestic oil cooperative network built over 20 years with painstaking effort but also the cropping pattern of the country which had evolved over centuries. Domestic edible oil prices stagnated and all cooperative federations wound up like a pack of cards. Most cooperative oil mills were forced to shut down. Even today some are lying defunct and vacant.

The NDDB and GCMMF parted ways and distribution of Dhara was taken over by NDDB in 2003. The country which had doubled its oil seed production from 108 lakh tonne to 221 lakh tonne in just a decade (1986-96), was left in a lurch. Today, that very country has become the world’s largest importer of vegetable oil, in spite of having the land, the resources, willing farmers, a ready market and the ability to achieve this self-sufficiency earlier!

Also read: Expanding Oil Palm Plantations in the Northeast Could Exact a Long-Term Cost

This vacuum left the door open for the ‘ABCD quartet’– the big four Agri commodity companies of the world – Archer Daniel Midlands (ADM), Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus and other American multinationals to enter India. Cargill did a JV with Parakh Foods in 2004. Bunge bought over Dalda from HLL in 2003. Conagra bought a majority stake in Agrotech from ITC in 1997 and the brand ‘Rath’ in 2000. ADM’s was one of the earliest ones and its route was through Malaysia. In 1999, Adani did a 50-50 joint venture with Wilmar to launch Fortune Oil, which in turn has Archer Daniel Midlands (ADM) as a shareholder since 1994 (present stake 24.9%). Wilmar International itself faces a lot of criticism from organisations like Greenpeace & Friends of the Earth for deforestation of tropical Indonesian forests. Amnesty international accuses it of using child labour in plantations.

ADM, in the 1990s, was the poster boy of corporate lobbying in America. It’s then CEO Dwayne Andreas was famous for being a political campaign donor for Nixon, Ronald Regan, Bill Clinton, George Bush and Bod Dole. Allegedly his contribution to Nixon’s re-election campaign was the $25,000 found in the possession of the Watergate burglar Bernand Barker. The ADM Board included Howard Buffet (son of Warren Buffet) and Brian Mulroney, former Canadian PM. Yet in 1999, ADM was fined USD 100 million for price fixing in the international lysine market and Dwayne Andreas’s son, Michael Andreas was sentenced to 24 months in prison. ADM also perfected the art of cultivating senior politicians by flying them in ADM corporate jets. Bob Dole, in his 1988 presidential campaign flew ADM corporate jets 29 times. As recently as 2005, Obama flew twice.

Today Adani Wilmar accounts for one-third of the total edible oil imported in India. The early bird does get the worm.

If one parks aside the balance of trade and the self-sufficiency angle, studies have shown that every additional kg of palm oil consumed per capita annually leads to ischemic heart disease (IHD) mortality rates of 68 per 100,000 in developing countries. India consumes some 7.2 litres per capita of Palm oil. Just replacing it with indigenous oil shall not just save lives but also reduce overall medical costs in the country. Similarly, soybean oil has also more than its fair share of negative reports on health.

Additionally, when oilseed production grows, the country produces not only edible oil but also oil cakes and extraction which is the raw material for dairy (cattle feed) and poultry industry (poultry feed). When we go for more edible oil imports, we are depriving protein supply to dairy and poultry and have to resort to importing corn and maybe soya eventually. In the end, our agriculture is shifting to other countries and so is rural employment and farmer incomes.

The website of the US Department of State in its Agriculture Policy states that “The office of Agricultural Policy (AGP) boosts prosperity of American farmers and ranchers by opening foreign markets to American farm products, promoting transparent, predictable, and science based regulatory systems overseas; and reducing unnecessary trade barriers around the world.”

While we may debate whether we have been ‘opened’ or not, by dismantling technology missions like the TMO and adopting extra liberal import policies at the cost of rural economy we are certainly not helping our cause. We are satisfying urban consumer demands by imports at the cost of the rural economy, thus leading to rural unemployment and rural migration towards cities in search of ‘labour’ work.

Is the dream of doubling farmers income, going to be achieved by reducing the number of farmers by half?

In the light of this history, we are better placed to evaluate the advice received by the PM from agricultural scientists and economists, which he shared while laying the foundation stone of Manipur Water Supply Project on July 23, 2020, regarding cultivating palm oil in North East. The follies of the last two decades can still be overcome by reverting back to the traditional cropping patterns for oilseeds and promoting traditional edible oil as ingredients for food and non-food FMCG. It will take a missionary zeal and the strategic intent of the government, but the self-sufficiency status-quo ante of 1994 in edible oil can still be achieved. By taking up palm oil plantation in the North Eastern States we will not just accept the LAC as LOC, but as the international border.

Also read: How ‘Dirty’ is India’s Palm Oil and What Should We Do About It?

On January 8, 2020, the India Directorate General of Foreign Trade had put palm oil from the ‘Free’ to ‘Restricted’ List in what appeared to be a reaction to the criticism by the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed regarding the Citizenship Amendment Act and India’s action regarding the reading down of Article 370 in Kashmir. Around 40% of the palm oil imported to India, or 17% of the total edible oil consumed, is from Malaysia.

This led to a spike in palm oil prices and consequentially of other edible oils, making their cultivation more appealing. Improved MSP this year also contributed to the cause. The Ministry of Agriculture’s CWWG report as on September 4, 2020, reported that kharif oilseeds cultivation showed a growth of 12% compared to a growth of 6% for all kharif crops. The edible oil industry is resilient and has the potential for being atmanirbhar. The question would remain- do we really want that?

B.M. Vyas is the former managing director of GCMMF Ltd and had been instrumental in the launch of Dhara. Manu Kaushik is a management professional and has also been associated with GCMMF Ltd.

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