#season 7 was great but it had its problems and problem NUMBER ONE was that Tabitha was BARELY THERE

[citrinegay]

Tabitha Tate: Patron Saint of Time Travel, Inexpensive Milkshakes, and Jughead Jones — The Angel of Riverdale.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

1937, World's Highest Standard of Living :: Margaret Bourke-White

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 28, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 29, 2024

On Monday, October 28, 1929, New York’s Metropolitan Opera Company opened its forty-fifth season.

Four thousand attendees in their finest clothes strolled to the elegant building on foot or traveled in one of a thousand limousines to see Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, the melodramatic story of an innocent French girl seduced by wealth, whose reluctance to leave her riches for true love leads to her arrest and tragic death. Photographers captured images of the era’s social celebrities as they arrived at opening night, their flash bulbs blinding the crowd that had gathered to see the famous faces and expensive gowns.

No one toasting the beginning of the opera season that night knew they were marking the end of an era.

At ten o’clock the next morning, when the opening gong sounded in the great hall of the New York Stock Exchange, men began to unload their stocks. So fast did trading go that by the end of the day, the ticker recording transactions ran two and a half hours late. When the final tally could be read, it showed that an extraordinary 16,410,030 shares had traded hands, and the market had lost $14 billion. The market had been uneasy for weeks before the twenty-ninth, but Black Tuesday began a slide that seemingly would not end. By mid-November the industrial average was half of what it had been in September. The economic boom that had fueled the Roaring Twenties was over.

Once the bottom fell out of the stock market, the economy ground down. Manufacturing output dropped to levels lower than those of 1913. The production of pig iron fell to what it had been in the 1890s. Foreign trade dropped by $7 billion, down to just $3 billion. The price of wheat fell from $1.05 a bushel to 39 cents; corn dropped from 81 to 33 cents; cotton fell from 17 to 6 cents a pound. Prices dropped so low that selling crops meant taking a loss, so struggling farmers simply let them rot in the fields. 

By 1932, over one million people in New York City were unemployed. By 1933 the number of unemployed across the nation rose to 13 million people—one out of every four American workers. Unable to afford rent or pay mortgages, people lived in shelters made of packing boxes.

No one knew how to combat the Great Depression, but certain wealthy Americans were sure they knew what had caused it. The problem, they said, was that poor Americans refused to work hard enough and were draining the economy. They must be forced to take less. “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon told President Herbert Hoover. “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.” 

Slash government spending, agreed the Chicago Tribune: lay off teachers and government workers, and demand that those who remain accept lower wages. Richard Whitney, a former president of the Stock Exchange, told the Senate that the only way to restart the economy was to cut government salaries and veterans’ benefits (although he told them that his own salary—which at sixty thousand dollars was six times higher than theirs—was “very little” and couldn’t be reduced).

President Hoover knew little about finances, let alone how to fix an economic crisis of global proportions. He tried to reverse the economic slide by cutting taxes and reassuring Americans that “the fundamental business of the country, that is, production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis.” 

But taxes were already so low that most folks would see only a few extra dollars a year from the cuts, and the fundamental business of the country was not, in fact, sound. When suffering Americans begged for public works programs to provide jobs, Hoover insisted that such programs were a “soak the rich” program that would “enslave” taxpayers, and called instead for private charity.

By the time Hoover’s term ended, Americans were ready to try a new approach to economic recovery. They refused to reelect Hoover and turned instead to New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who promised to use the federal government to provide jobs and a safety net to enable Americans to weather hard times. He promised the American people a “New Deal”: a government that would work for everyone, not just for the wealthy and well connected.

As soon as Roosevelt was in office, Democrats began to pass laws protecting workers’ rights, providing government jobs, regulating business and banking, and beginning to chip away at the racial segregation of the American South. New Deal policies employed more than 8.5 million people, built more than 650,000 miles of highways, built or repaired more than 120,000 bridges, and put up more than 125,000 buildings. 

They regulated banking and the stock market and gave workers the right to bargain collectively. They established minimum wages and maximum hours for work. They provided a basic social safety net and regulated food and drug safety. And when World War II broke out, the new system enabled the United States to defend democracy successfully against fascists both at home—where they had grown strong enough to turn out almost 20,000 people to a rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939—and abroad. 

The New Deal worked so well that common men and women across the country hailed FDR as their leader, electing him an unprecedented four times. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower built on the New Deal when voters elected him in 1952. He bolstered the nation’s infrastructure with the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which provided $25 billion to build 41,000 miles of highway across the country; added the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to the government and called for a national healthcare system.

Eisenhower nominated former Republican governor of California Earl Warren as chief justice of the Supreme Court to protect civil rights, which he would begin to do with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision months after joining the court. Eisenhower also insisted on the vital importance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to stop the Soviet Union from spreading communism throughout Europe.

Eisenhower called his vision “a middle way between untrammeled freedom of the individual and the demands of the welfare of the whole Nation.” 

The system worked: between 1945 and 1960 the nation’s gross national product (GNP) jumped by 250%, from $200 billion to $500 billion. The vast majority of Americans of both parties liked the new system that had helped the nation to recover from the Depression and to equip the Allies to win World War II. 

Politicians and commentators agreed that most Democrats and Republicans shared a “liberal consensus” that the government should regulate business, provide for basic social welfare, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. It seemed the country had finally created a government that best reflected democratic values. 

Indeed, that liberal consensus seemed so universal that the only place to find opposition was in entertainment. Popular radio comedian Fred Allen’s show included a caricature, Senator Beauregard Claghorn, a southern blowhard who pontificated, harrumphed, and took his reflexive hatred of the North to ridiculous extremes. A buffoon who represented the past, the Claghorn character was such a success that he starred in his own Hollywood film and later became the basis for the Looney Tunes cartoon rooster Foghorn Leghorn.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[usafphantom2]

Former Blue Angels CO explains why the Team chose the A-4 Skyhawk over the F-14 Tomcat and the A-7 Corsair II to Replace the F-4 Phantom II

By Dario Leone

Apr 17 2023

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‘While we were doing this search for airplanes, a couple of squadrons were coming back from Vietnam and were being decommissioned. They had the A-4F, which was the latest model at that time,’ Ken Wallace former Blue Angels CO.

Built small to be cost effective and so that more of them could be accommodated on a carrier, the lightweight, high-speed the A-4 Skyhawk provided the US Navy and Marines and friendly nations with a maneuverable, yet powerful, attack bomber that had great altitude and range capabilities, plus an unusual flexibility in armament capacity.

Nearly 3,000 A-4s were produced between 1956 to 1979, their service including assignment to front line squadrons, duty as aggressor aircraft and the role of advanced trainers, the latter aircraft designated TA-4s and including two-seat cockpits. The A-4 also equipped the Blue Angels Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron.

After a series of accidents and maintenance problems with their McDonnell Douglas F-4J Phantom IIs in the 1973 air show season, the Blue Angels stood down for an overview of the program by the Secretary of the Navy, John Warner (who would later serve six terms in the US Senate representing the state of Virginia). Warner appointed a panel of six senior flag officers to review the Blue Angels program and they unanimously recommended its continuation as “prime recruiting asset.”

Blue Angels A-4F Skyhawks

As told by Nicholas A. Veronico in his book The Blue Angels a Fly-By History, Ken Wallace, 1954-55 slot pilot and 1961-63 team leader, was called upon to guide the team through rough waters. Wallace was serving in the office of the chief of naval operations as the tactical air plans officer. “Because of my past association with the Blue Angels, whenever anything that concerned them came up, I was rung in on it in some way,’ he said.

According to Wallace “the Secretary of the Navy was not fully supportive of keeping the team. Admiral Zumwalt, who was chief of naval operations and not an aviator, was very much insistent on keeping the team in business. So he and I went to chat with the Secretary of the Navy. The Secretary agreed to keep it in business, but we had to change airplanes. He would not let us continue with the F-4s-partially due to the crashes, and at this point we were in the fuel crunch of the mid-1970s. The F-4 is not an economical airplane on fuel, and it is a heavy maintenance airplane. It was just a little bit too visible for the times.”

Given the job of program manager for the Blue Angels, Wallace had his work cut out for him. Drawing on his previous experience with the team, he would implement many far-reaching changes. “I started casting about for a different airplane. The airplane that I really wanted was the F-14,’ he said. “I did not want an F-14 with all the weapons control systems in it; that was wasteful.” After proposing his idea to Grumman, they decided that it would cost more to make an airplane without the systems than it would to make one with them. Cost became the determining factor, and the F-14 idea went by the wayside.

For Wallace, the A-7 was the next logical choice. He said, “There simply were not enough airplanes in the pipeline to let us have them. The fleet needed the A-7 desperately and could not divert seven aircraft for our use. I went down to Chance Vought and flew the airplane and it certainly would have been quite suitable.”

Blue Angels A-4Fs

Although it had been looked at by a number of team leaders in the past, Wallace once again considered McDonnell Douglas’ A-4 Skyhawk. “The A-4 was about the only fleet airplane left that was anywhere near usable by the team,” he said. “It just so happened that while we were doing this search for airplanes, a couple of squadrons were coming back from Vietnam and were being decommissioned. They had the A-4F, which was the latest model at that time. They also had the latest engine, the P-408. It had more thrust than any of the previous engines the A-4 had used.

“We got together with the engineers at McDonnell Douglas and with some of the people at Naval Air Systems Command. We needed some changes to the control system. We needed more nose down force. Traditionally, the Blue Angels fly the airplane, regardless of the model, with full down nose trim. It gives us, in some cases, 40 pounds of nose-down stick force. We want that nose down force so we’ve got something we are putting pressure against all the time. Plus, in rough air it tends to make you bounce away from the formation rather than up into the airplanes ahead of you. By bracing our right forearms on our leg or knee, it provides a very stable or firm base to control the airplane with the stick. By just flexing your wrist a little bit, rather than having large-magnitude arm movements, you get your control that way. The engineers at McDonnell Douglas came up with a bungee cord arrangement that modified the bell crank assemblies in the airplane, thus providing the nose down force.

“We also bolted up the leading-edge slats. The A-4 in its normal configuration has aerodynamic slats on the leading edges of the wings. They are actuated by aerodynamic force and are used in heavy g-loads or accelerations. They increase the camber of the wing so that you get more lift. The problem with those aerodynamic slats is that depending on the condition of flight, if you’re not exactly in balanced flight or if you are in a turn, one slat may not come out and the other may fully deploy. It really depends on the air loads. If they come out asymmetrically, they can pop you right on your back faster than you can think about it. We determined that by bolting them up we would not add to the landing speed of the airplane by any significant amount.

Blue Angels A-4F Skyhawks

“We took the guns out, some armor plating, added a drag chute for operations from shorter airports, and added weight to the nose for balance. The overall weight reduction was significant. We ended up with an airplane that weighed 11,300 pounds [dry] and we had an engine that produced 11,400 pounds thrust. When you got down to a light fuel load, you could do some pretty cute tricks with that little airplane. The roll rate would certainly not spin your head, but it was more than enough for what we wanted to do in the air show.’

The final change was the rise of the status of the Blue Angels to that of a full U.S Navy squadron, giving the team leader the same powers and position as a squadron CO. This now meant that the flight surgeon, supply and administrative officers and the public affairs and maintenance teams were no longer loaned to the team.

The Skyhawk’s debuted in the 1974 show season and flew for the Blue Angels until 1986 when they were replaced by the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet.

Photo credit: U.S. Navy

[marcholasmoth]

OSRR: 3377

last night i did in fact cuddle with joel. i cuddled with him all night. i know this because i was also awake all night. i got bouts of maybe five minutes at a time. but most of the time i simply couldn't breathe. but he was high and it made me happy so i went with it until i had to get up and he reached after me 🥺

once i leave bed he gets cold. he wanted my warmth back. i also imagine he simply wanted to cuddle me more. i love him so much. he's a cuddle bug when i'm back after being apart from him for a while. yes, when that happens i don't sleep much, but i enjoy being cuddled by him. he is gentle and i love him so much and i am more than happy to be cuddled and uncomfortable to be close to him. i'm just glad that he can sleep.

i know he doesn't sleep well, and his sleep isn't good because of his restlessness, the insomnia, and his back pain. so when i get up i try to make sure i don't wake him. also, when i get into bed after he's asleep, its the same thing. and when he decides in the middle of the night he needs to be warm, i deal with it as best i can to extricate myself from it or simply get comfortable. i don't sleep much because the balance i need of temperature, fresh air, and specific spots of comfort is difficult to achieve. it's a problem. hopefully a new mattress will help.

anyway.

today was great! but we basically were weathermen as we sent out notification after notification after notification about a storm in europe along the english channel. bunch of warnings, bunch of health and wellness checks, bunch of emails back and forth, and a high-level briefing.

my coworkers were so happy to have me back.

😂

because i'm the resident grammarian of the gsoc, having me out for any period of time is difficult for the quality of write-ups that go out. so my return meant that everybody was better off, even when i left the room to go bake cookies. i made some cookies in the toaster oven to have some fresh ones for tom. he enjoyed them. i ate most of them. i also enjoyed them. freshly baked cookies? that's my shit, dude. fuckin love that.

anyway, cookies and write-ups aside, i was so happy to be back at work today. the four of us did typing tests to see who types the fastest, and i proved twice why i'm the one who takes notes in meetings. i beat the next person by an additional 50%. there's 30, 45, 50, and then. 75. at least. like shit. okay. if i do other ones that number should go up to about 100 or so if we don't count accuracy. i can type notes lightning fast with about 80-90% accuracy, and even if some of it is fucked up, i can still read what it says and correct it to have properly written for later distribution.

(thanks mom! i got that from you.)

anyway, that's all funny to me.

after work, i met kristen for dinner at olive garden! i REALLY needed some good carbs and im happy that i was not vegetable-d out after eating a pack of tomatoes today. (i started eating them at like 7:30 this morning which confused the shit outta me.) but it was all good, and i ate enough and was happy with it all.

it was also really nice to see kristen again after having not seen her for a few weeks because i've been sick. she's the sweetest.

after dinner, i went over to walmart for a few things, most of which i found. i got tissues and blister because my nose and lips are chapped from the sinus infection, and i got myself a new purse and a new wallet for the fall season. i got a triangle bag that's leather which is brown and is WICKED cool, and a burgundy wallet that fits EVERYTHING and i even have a pocket for my gift cards! it's amazing and it fits SO MUCH. i quite enjoy it.

and once again, anyway, i now find myself in bed, desperate to sleep. i hope i can sleep well.

[kevin-sedai]

The show is gaining some traction and being recognized and praised and hopefully it'll get a lot more popular, its numbers aren't bad but they're not great either. The episode count is a huge problem they should be getting at least 10, ideally 12-13 eps a season, they have to do so much in so little time and they're doing an amazing job with what they have, s1 fell victim to covid and them having a main character leave and having to reshoot things without actors or locations, I think they've proved that they know what they're doing and the respect they have for the books and the characters, I really hope we get at least 8 seasons, we still haven't had a single complete great adaptation of a high fantasy book series, GOT doesn't count bc the books aren't complete the show was a mess in the last 2 seasons and it's fantasy adjacent. You can't just say you want the next GOT and then give them 8 eps when even thrones got 10 and it has a third of the number of books of WOT, these streamers forget how big of a risk GOT was at first no one wanted to do it it's by taking risks like that you get the next stranger things or breaking bad (which didn't break out (haha) until s3 or GOT which exploded in popularity by s2/3.

100% this. I think a lot of people forget that season 1 had to stop a few times because that was during Covid, so it wasn't going to be perfect. It was going to be choppy and awkward, moreso at the end, bc the situation they were in was choppy and awkward. I thought they were doing fine up until 6/7 when the pandemic shut them down. They did their best.

It will always baffle me that they only give them 8 episodes. That is two whole hours that can be used to do the world building or character building they want/need to do. This world and cast are too large and diverse for them to cram it all in 8 one hour (sometimes less, sometimes more) episodes. I loved the last few episodes. But, it felt rushed when all of a sudden, everyone is in Falme fighting. The Whitecloaks were only in one episode for maybe 15 minutes and now they're in Falme? Two more episodes could have given them time to cut back to them going to Falme. And don't get me wrong, I don't fault the show for that sudden jump. They had to wrap it up bc they ran out of time, bc they only get 8 episodes. And that's just one criticism I have of the season that points back to that, as most of my criticisms do.

I mentioned in an ask I got last week that I don't keep up with ratings and that I'm just here for the ride bc I love this story and the characters that I'm happy we got anything. There are two people I got to try to watch it. One is still watching it, I explained a few things about it, and she is enjoying it. The other person couldn't get past ep3 of last season, the biggest complaint being that she thought it was overdramatic. Most other people I know irl dont even know the show is going on. So, I said I wasn't surprised if the ratings aren't all that good for what I've seen. It's a small sample size, but I wouldn't have been surprised if mostly other people had similar experiences.

And I 100% agree on the GoT comparison. The first time I saw the "It's the new game of thrones" on a headline, I got so mad. It's not fair to put that on a new show when GoT was so popular in its hey day and then ended so badly that some fans can't even stomach it. Basically telling people that they get another shot with this show at a good fantasy show, and then have them be disappointed when it's not like the GoT they knew before that show spiraled.

I'm glad to hear that the show is getting some recognition. I'm glad for any bc I'd love to see it keep going. I love these characters. Changes and all. The scene with Mat made me sob, and I'm not kidding. Even the scene when Rand denied Ishamael, I got choked up. I hope it keeps going❤️

[lollo-sw-br]

Flip: an unfair discard

Did you like my last vent post that I'm doing another one: at the request of my friend @flip-the-real-super-wing I will talk about the elimination of Flip in season 3 (worst season) which in my opinion should never have happened.

In the second season, Flip was introduced, Jett's number 1 fan, who liked him right away in his debut episode and liked him to be a character who teaches us the strength of perseverance and never give up on our dreams, he became one of my favorite Super Wings and I thought it was silly to remove him from the next few seasons, without an explanation or a possible return making me angrier at Alpha Group and the Funny Flux.

Funny Flux and Alpha Group have a very serious problem: creating new characters and then discarding them in a stupid way, this unfortunately happened with our "The Real Super Wing", being that, Flip (along with Leo in season 5) was the only member of the team that actually had a storyline of how he became a Super Wing, which, frankly, was well constructed.

Funny Flux deceived all Super Wings fans (especially those who favored those who would later be discarded) and unfortunately me and some friends of mine were deceived as a false hope of Flip's return in season 4, as in season 3, the company was focusing on Mission Teams (which for me was a bad idea).

But with season 4 coming up, I thought that Flip would come back to help Jett on missions that need an expert in any kind of sport, but none of that happened, to our bad luck.

Seasons 4 and 5 passed, and nothing Flip came back, and already in seasons 6 and 7 Flip was shown, eyes closed inside the cabin on the runway, or even the same cabin now as its symbol, which makes me intrigued. Will Flip return like Jerome did in season 7? It's just a theory, but I wanted this to be reality.

I wanted Flip to come back, or rather stay forever, he always dreamed of following in Jett's footsteps, his biggest inspiration and become one of the majors Super Wing.

That would be great, Flip Super Charge! Or a Flip Pet (Mini Flip), it would be great to see Flip interacting with other team members who weren't shown during S2,

He won't be forgotten, and let's fight for Flip to get back on the team soon, where mina should have been removed from and never reduce his abilities like he did with Grand Albert (my favorite Super Wing).

And another vent post I made, I hope you liked it. Bye Bye!

[themattress]

Battle of the Seasons

Once Upon a Time! I’ve gone over my opinion on this dozens of times by now, but given the subject matter I felt like it deserved its own “Battle of the Seasons” post, so here it is. It’s Season 1 (The Dark Curse Saga) vs. Season 2 (The Price of Magic Saga) vs. Season 3 (The Neverland and Wicked Witch’s Revenge Sagas) vs. Season 4 (The Frozen Storybrooke and Operation Mongoose Sagas) vs. Season 5 (The Dark Swan and Underworld Sagas) vs. Season 6 (The Savior’s Fate Saga) vs., regrettably, Season 7 (The Hyperion Heights Saga).

While judging on quality is certainly doable and how I’ve usually presented my ranking, for this post I’d rather focus on how well each season holds together when taken as a whole.

Season 1 obviously reigns supreme here. It manages to tell a complete, coherent and emotionally satisfying story in of itself, with every piece of the puzzle presented in both flashbacks and the present day narrative ultimately clicking together; nothing is wasted. Compare this opening scene with this ending scene, it’s such a great case of book ends, as is what starts with a dark cloud sweeping over everything to create a town where the clock is frozen at 8:15 ending with a different dark cloud sweeping over said town precisely as the now moving clock strikes 8:15, signaling a new beginning. The Dark Curse Saga spent the most time being fine-tuned before production, and it shows. It’s not perfect...but it’s close. 

Every other season is nowhere near as stable, being either seasons where two story arcs are told in each half of the season rather than a single story arc (3, 4 and 5) or a single arc is told and botched due to showrunner Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis’ complete inability to stay on track with what they have without throwing new shit in that clutters things up (2, 6 and 7).

Out of the first kind, Season 3 is the best, which seems odd at first since the Neverland Saga and Wicked Saga don’t particularly have much connecting them story-wise, as the former is closure for all plot threads the show had been pursuing since Season 1 while the latter is something of a fresh start. In addition, the former is significantly stronger than the latter. But what ends up making the season work is the character arcs and themes, which do manage to span both story arcs in a very organic way. Themes of facing your past in order to shape your future, of learning from your mistakes and the mistakes of others, of making your own home, of family and love and redemption: they make the story arcs click together, as do the personal stories of Emma, Snow, Charming, Hook, Regina, Rumple, Belle and Neal (but not Henry!)

Season 5 comes painfully close to this same standard, with its two story arcs being even more interconnected than any other in this format. Unfortunately, it’s plagued by three glaring problems: several missteps in the first half come back to haunt the season in its second half, a number of character arcs presented in the first half don’t connect with those in the second half, and the two-part season finale is almost completely disconnected from everything that preceded it, being more of a lead-in to Season 6 than a satisfying conclusion to Season 5. Season 4, meanwhile, has its core problem summed up in one word: Frozen. Quality-wise, the Frozen stuff is the best part of the season, but when taken as a whole it’s got almost jack shit to do with the rest of the season’s narrative and even the entire series’ narrative, and the stuff that does matter narratively usually feels alien to the Frozen stuff whenever they end up sharing screentime together. The Author, the Queens of Darkness, Regina and Robin Hood’s star-crossed romance, Emma and her dark counterpart Lily, the Sorcerer and the Apprentice, the magic hat, Rumple’s backslide into villainy and how it affects his relationship with Belle, Snow and Charming’s dark past, Hook’s dark past, and Henry’s gradual coming of age...all of this is present in the Frozen Storybrooke Saga, but if you removed all the Frozen stuff that makes up the bulk of that arc from them, nothing much would be missing. It all just feels so shoehorned in...much like the Will Scarlet character from OUATIW does the whole season!

In some ways, Season 2′s structure is weaker than Seasons 6 and 7, since it ended up creating something of a double story arc situation by accident, with the first arc only being its first 9 episodes rather than the actual first half of 11 episodes, whereas Seasons 6 and 7 have a more deliberately distinct first half and second half for their story arcs. However, Season 2 still ends up getting the edge of Seasons 6 and 7 because everything that transpired in those first 9 episodes still end up mattering and continuing to develop through the next 13 episodes. Cora is still the Big Bad who seeks to influence Regina who is still fixated on Henry, Hook is still seeking revenge on Rumple who is still seeking to make things work with Belle and reunite with his son who ends up being Emma’s ex and Henry’s father, with Emma having to deal with that while still learning to bring out the magic in her and to accept Snow and Charming as her parents. Because of A&E’s incompetence, precious little of what happens in the first half of Season 6 and 7 end up mattering to the second half, and even much of what goes down in the second half isn’t important by the time of their finales.

And between Seasons 6 and 7, obviously Season 6 is the superior of the two, since it still connects to the show as it was - Emma as the ostensible lead who fought for screentime and relevance against Regina, Storybrooke as the primary setting, and a certain set of characters and plot points always sticking around for better or worse, while Season 7 is a failed attempt at a reboot that ended up instead being the final season, creating a huge whiplash effect and making everyone wonder why the Hell the show didn’t just end at Season 6, which at least seemed built like an ending. Not an especially satisfying ending, but an ending all the same.

So it’s Season 1 > Season 3 > Season 2 > Season 5 > Season 4 > Season 6 > Season 7.

[yourreddancer]

Heather Cox Richardson 10.29.24

Heather Cox Richardson 10.29.24

On Monday, October 28, 1929, New York’s Metropolitan Opera Company opened its forty-fifth season.

Four thousand attendees in their finest clothes strolled to the elegant building on foot or traveled in one of a thousand limousines to see Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, the melodramatic story of an innocent French girl seduced by wealth, whose reluctance to leave her riches for true love leads to her arrest and tragic death. Photographers captured images of the era’s social celebrities as they arrived at opening night, their flash bulbs blinding the crowd that had gathered to see the famous faces and expensive gowns.

No one toasting the beginning of the opera season that night knew they were marking the end of an era.

At ten o’clock the next morning, when the opening gong sounded in the great hall of the New York Stock Exchange, men began to unload their stocks. So fast did trading go that by the end of the day, the ticker recording transactions ran two and a half hours late. When the final tally could be read, it showed that an extraordinary 16,410,030 shares had traded hands, and the market had lost $14 billion. The market had been uneasy for weeks before the twenty-ninth, but Black Tuesday began a slide that seemingly would not end. By mid-November the industrial average was half of what it had been in September. The economic boom that had fueled the Roaring Twenties was over.

Once the bottom fell out of the stock market, the economy ground down. Manufacturing output dropped to levels lower than those of 1913. The production of pig iron fell to what it had been in the 1890s. Foreign trade dropped by $7 billion, down to just $3 billion. The price of wheat fell from $1.05 a bushel to 39 cents; corn dropped from 81 to 33 cents; cotton fell from 17 to 6 cents a pound. Prices dropped so low that selling crops meant taking a loss, so struggling farmers simply let them rot in the fields. 

By 1932, over one million people in New York City were unemployed. By 1933 the number of unemployed across the nation rose to 13 million people—one out of every four American workers. Unable to afford rent or pay mortgages, people lived in shelters made of packing boxes.

No one knew how to combat the Great Depression, but certain wealthy Americans were sure they knew what had caused it. The problem, they said, was that poor Americans refused to work hard enough and were draining the economy. They must be forced to take less. “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon told President Herbert Hoover. “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.” 

Slash government spending, agreed the Chicago Tribune: lay off teachers and government workers, and demand that those who remain accept lower wages. Richard Whitney, a former president of the Stock Exchange, told the Senate that the only way to restart the economy was to cut government salaries and veterans’ benefits (although he told them that his own salary—which at sixty thousand dollars was six times higher than theirs—was “very little” and couldn’t be reduced).

President Hoover knew little about finances, let alone how to fix an economic crisis of global proportions. He tried to reverse the economic slide by cutting taxes and reassuring Americans that “the fundamental business of the country, that is, production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis.” 

But taxes were already so low that most folks would see only a few extra dollars a year from the cuts, and the fundamental business of the country was not, in fact, sound. When suffering Americans begged for public works programs to provide jobs, Hoover insisted that such programs were a “soak the rich” program that would “enslave” taxpayers, and called instead for private charity.

By the time Hoover’s term ended, Americans were ready to try a new approach to economic recovery. They refused to reelect Hoover and turned instead to New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who promised to use the federal government to provide jobs and a safety net to enable Americans to weather hard times. He promised the American people a “New Deal”: a government that would work for everyone, not just for the wealthy and well connected.

As soon as Roosevelt was in office, Democrats began to pass laws protecting workers’ rights, providing government jobs, regulating business and banking, and beginning to chip away at the racial segregation of the American South. New Deal policies employed more than 8.5 million people, built more than 650,000 miles of highways, built or repaired more than 120,000 bridges, and put up more than 125,000 buildings. 

They regulated banking and the stock market and gave workers the right to bargain collectively. They established minimum wages and maximum hours for work. They provided a basic social safety net and regulated food and drug safety. And when World War II broke out, the new system enabled the United States to defend democracy successfully against fascists both at home—where they had grown strong enough to turn out almost 20,000 people to a rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939—and abroad. 

The New Deal worked so well that common men and women across the country hailed FDR as their leader, electing him an unprecedented four times. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower built on the New Deal when voters elected him in 1952. He bolstered the nation’s infrastructure with the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which provided $25 billion to build 41,000 miles of highway across the country; added the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to the government and called for a national healthcare system.

Eisenhower nominated former Republican governor of California Earl Warren as chief justice of the Supreme Court to protect civil rights, which he would begin to do with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision months after joining the court. Eisenhower also insisted on the vital importance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to stop the Soviet Union from spreading communism throughout Europe.

Eisenhower called his vision “a middle way between untrammeled freedom of the individual and the demands of the welfare of the whole Nation.” 

The system worked: between 1945 and 1960 the nation’s gross national product (GNP) jumped by 250%, from $200 billion to $500 billion. The vast majority of Americans of both parties liked the new system that had helped the nation to recover from the Depression and to equip the Allies to win World War II. 

Politicians and commentators agreed that most Democrats and Republicans shared a “liberal consensus” that the government should regulate business, provide for basic social welfare, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. It seemed the country had finally created a government that best reflected democratic values. 

Indeed, that liberal consensus seemed so universal that the only place to find opposition was in entertainment. Popular radio comedian Fred Allen’s show included a caricature, Senator Beauregard Claghorn, a southern blowhard who pontificated, harrumphed, and took his reflexive hatred of the North to ridiculous extremes. A buffoon who represented the past, the Claghorn character was such a success that he starred in his own Hollywood film and later became the basis for the Looney Tunes cartoon rooster Foghorn Leghorn.

[misfitwashere]

October 28, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 28, 2024

On Monday, October 28, 1929, New York’s Metropolitan Opera Company opened its forty-fifth season.

Four thousand attendees in their finest clothes strolled to the elegant building on foot or traveled in one of a thousand limousines to see Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, the melodramatic story of an innocent French girl seduced by wealth, whose reluctance to leave her riches for true love leads to her arrest and tragic death. Photographers captured images of the era’s social celebrities as they arrived at opening night, their flash bulbs blinding the crowd that had gathered to see the famous faces and expensive gowns.

No one toasting the beginning of the opera season that night knew they were marking the end of an era.

At ten o’clock the next morning, when the opening gong sounded in the great hall of the New York Stock Exchange, men began to unload their stocks. So fast did trading go that by the end of the day, the ticker recording transactions ran two and a half hours late. When the final tally could be read, it showed that an extraordinary 16,410,030 shares had traded hands, and the market had lost $14 billion. The market had been uneasy for weeks before the twenty-ninth, but Black Tuesday began a slide that seemingly would not end. By mid-November the industrial average was half of what it had been in September. The economic boom that had fueled the Roaring Twenties was over.

Once the bottom fell out of the stock market, the economy ground down. Manufacturing output dropped to levels lower than those of 1913. The production of pig iron fell to what it had been in the 1890s. Foreign trade dropped by $7 billion, down to just $3 billion. The price of wheat fell from $1.05 a bushel to 39 cents; corn dropped from 81 to 33 cents; cotton fell from 17 to 6 cents a pound. Prices dropped so low that selling crops meant taking a loss, so struggling farmers simply let them rot in the fields. 

By 1932, over one million people in New York City were unemployed. By 1933 the number of unemployed across the nation rose to 13 million people—one out of every four American workers. Unable to afford rent or pay mortgages, people lived in shelters made of packing boxes.

No one knew how to combat the Great Depression, but certain wealthy Americans were sure they knew what had caused it. The problem, they said, was that poor Americans refused to work hard enough and were draining the economy. They must be forced to take less. “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon told President Herbert Hoover. “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.” 

Slash government spending, agreed the Chicago Tribune: lay off teachers and government workers, and demand that those who remain accept lower wages. Richard Whitney, a former president of the Stock Exchange, told the Senate that the only way to restart the economy was to cut government salaries and veterans’ benefits (although he told them that his own salary—which at sixty thousand dollars was six times higher than theirs—was “very little” and couldn’t be reduced).

President Hoover knew little about finances, let alone how to fix an economic crisis of global proportions. He tried to reverse the economic slide by cutting taxes and reassuring Americans that “the fundamental business of the country, that is, production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis.” 

But taxes were already so low that most folks would see only a few extra dollars a year from the cuts, and the fundamental business of the country was not, in fact, sound. When suffering Americans begged for public works programs to provide jobs, Hoover insisted that such programs were a “soak the rich” program that would “enslave” taxpayers, and called instead for private charity.

By the time Hoover’s term ended, Americans were ready to try a new approach to economic recovery. They refused to reelect Hoover and turned instead to New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who promised to use the federal government to provide jobs and a safety net to enable Americans to weather hard times. He promised the American people a “New Deal”: a government that would work for everyone, not just for the wealthy and well connected.

As soon as Roosevelt was in office, Democrats began to pass laws protecting workers’ rights, providing government jobs, regulating business and banking, and beginning to chip away at the racial segregation of the American South. New Deal policies employed more than 8.5 million people, built more than 650,000 miles of highways, built or repaired more than 120,000 bridges, and put up more than 125,000 buildings. 

They regulated banking and the stock market and gave workers the right to bargain collectively. They established minimum wages and maximum hours for work. They provided a basic social safety net and regulated food and drug safety. And when World War II broke out, the new system enabled the United States to defend democracy successfully against fascists both at home—where they had grown strong enough to turn out almost 20,000 people to a rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939—and abroad. 

The New Deal worked so well that common men and women across the country hailed FDR as their leader, electing him an unprecedented four times. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower built on the New Deal when voters elected him in 1952. He bolstered the nation’s infrastructure with the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which provided $25 billion to build 41,000 miles of highway across the country; added the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to the government and called for a national healthcare system.

Eisenhower nominated former Republican governor of California Earl Warren as chief justice of the Supreme Court to protect civil rights, which he would begin to do with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision months after joining the court. Eisenhower also insisted on the vital importance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to stop the Soviet Union from spreading communism throughout Europe.

Eisenhower called his vision “a middle way between untrammeled freedom of the individual and the demands of the welfare of the whole Nation.” 

The system worked: between 1945 and 1960 the nation’s gross national product (GNP) jumped by 250%, from $200 billion to $500 billion. The vast majority of Americans of both parties liked the new system that had helped the nation to recover from the Depression and to equip the Allies to win World War II. 

Politicians and commentators agreed that most Democrats and Republicans shared a “liberal consensus” that the government should regulate business, provide for basic social welfare, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. It seemed the country had finally created a government that best reflected democratic values. 

Indeed, that liberal consensus seemed so universal that the only place to find opposition was in entertainment. Popular radio comedian Fred Allen’s show included a caricature, Senator Beauregard Claghorn, a southern blowhard who pontificated, harrumphed, and took his reflexive hatred of the North to ridiculous extremes. A buffoon who represented the past, the Claghorn character was such a success that he starred in his own Hollywood film and later became the basis for the Looney Tunes cartoon rooster Foghorn Leghorn.

—

[olko71]

New Post has been published on All about business online

New Post has been published on https://yaroreviews.info/2024/02/ryanair-warns-of-10-fare-rise-due-to-lack-of-new-planes

Ryanair warns of 10% fare rise due to lack of new planes

Getty Images

By Katy Austin

Transport correspondent

The boss of Ryanair has said holidaymakers will face higher fares this summer due to new Boeing planes being delivered late.

Chief executive Michael O’Leary said the delayed delivery of the planes will constrain capacity for passengers.

He said that Ryanair’s ticket prices could be up to 10% more expensive this summer as a result.

Ryanair hopes to get some compensation, but is focused on getting planes delivered, Mr O’Leary added.

He said that a delivery of 57 Boeing 737 Max 8200’s was due by March, but the firm thinks only 40-45 may arrive in time for the summer season.

Boeing has been facing scrutiny since an incident in January when a piece of one of its jets blew out during a passenger flight. The Alaska Airline passenger flight did not lead to serious injuries but forced an emergency landing.

As a result, Mr O’Leary said, the US manufacturer had the US regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, “crawling all over them��.

Major concerns have been raised about quality control for new Boeing aircraft, sparking a slowdown in production speed.

Mr O’Leary said costs saved through hedging on fuel would mean that Ryanair’s fare increase would not be as steep as the 17% rise seen in 2023.

Some other airlines also have capacity constraints caused by aircraft not being available, he added.

A problem with Pratt & Whitney engines, for example, has grounded a number of Airbus planes used by carriers such as Wizz Air.

Mr O’Leary told reporters that there would be a “higher fare environment across Europe” this summer.

Ryanair’s original forecast for the year to the end of March 2025 was that it would carry 205 million passengers, up from 183.5 million in the 12 months before.

Speaking at the firm’s Dublin headquarters, Mr O’Leary said: “With less aircraft, maybe we’ll have to bring that 205 million down towards 200 million passengers.”

“If capacity was growing, I think fares would be falling,” he added.

Lucy Coutts, investment director at JM Finn, told the BBC’s Today programme: “Boeing itself has said there are going to be 9,000 fewer seats this summer available because of the delays at the company.

“Ryanair is a low-cost carrier and so its hikes of 10% are a little bit higher than the average at 3-7% but it is because it is coming from a low base.”

Boeing crisis management on display at top airshow

Ryanair cuts profit forecast after booking sites row

Boeing 737 Max boss out after blowout

Discussing the issues that have engulfed the US plane maker Boeing, Mr O’Leary described the message he was currently getting from the firm as “confusion”.

The boss of the carrier has repeatedly backed Boeing’s top management, but criticised the plane maker’s quality control standards.

He does not think the removal of the 737 Max programme’s boss Ed Clark was the right move, arguing that having both a replacement for Mr Clark and a new president for quality did not make sense.

Ryanair, he said, wanted one person in charge who was monitoring the situation daily, having previously said their products were “great aircraft, it’s just that they’re not making them on time or delivering them in time”.

A spokesperson for Boeing said: “We are communicating with customers that some delivery schedules may change as we take the necessary time to make sure that every airplane we deliver is high quality and meets all customer and regulatory requirements.

They added that they “deeply regret the impact this is having on our valued customer Ryanair”.

“We’re working to address their concerns and taking action on a comprehensive plan to strengthen 737 quality and delivery performance.”

Related Topics

Companies

Boeing

Aerospace

Air travel

Ryanair

More on this story

Ryanair cuts profit forecast after booking sites row

29 January

Boeing 737 Max boss out after blowout

4 days ago

Boeing crisis management on display at top airshow

3 days ago

[piacemia]

with otto snoring beside me

dear me,

you've come off a holiday season that stored you right back in that glowy firelit warmth you'd missed out on the past few years. the holidays truly felt like decades, but you lived in them fully and with so much delight. so much more to say, but this isn't about that.

here you are in a home you spent almost half your time in, with two dogpeople that have intertwined along the garden wall with you, three vines growing together more and more each day. what has the year looked like?

jan: grannys birthday! feb: everything everywhere all at once in theaters, julias car needed a stereo so played hookie, march: rain forever, to florida and dc for an east coast extravaganza april: titas birthday in fullerton, lots of outins with jmac, struggling through the last quarter may: finished indoor league <3 , got trapped on coronado, found mold in my closet june: SUMMER SUMMER SUMMER -> met claire, to valle for the first time, to the bay for birthdays and a flight to vancouver + boat to victoria, july: 4th of july at our house, MAGIC CASTLE, beach picnic with a canopy, cristinas birthday and reserving a fire pit at 7 am, and a new year begins with a new staff new admin, new kids. aug: watched barbie, TAYLOR SWIFT, house got painted, prepping our faces off for the europe trip sept: boston on the first day of vacation and then to london!, made one night in paris, and then home early to recover from the chaos, beach picnic and cards, and my car finally kicked the full bucket so welcome to the family rav 4, and the house finally finally got its numbers and a new green door, had a night out at fleet science center with FREE dinner, quieter homes finally giving us ac and windows and locking both me and julia out of the house concurrently, and babysitting of course oct: neighbor's pipe burst, first time surfing! decorating for halloween because we finally had the house back, yves tumor @ observatory, dinner @ amie's, babysitting ollie, creating the great pumpkin for trunk or treat, being cruella deville, and HOZIER!!!!!!!!! nov: billy raffoul w/ amie + steven, jinhui's birthday at din tai fung, TWO FIELD TRIPS (zoo, the grinch), starting mimi and mamie's mixed media martial arts, waffling about staying in sd or home for thanksgiving, home for pia's 21st in sf, camping with jmac in the rain, friendsgiving, driving home at 4am, relic bageri! dec: the whirwind of the winter season and fully embracing the fun at work, decorating the house for the holidays, my birthday at campfire!! , driving home with k, amie, nahla, and jules and spending a day with amie and home. enjoying the holidays with k, visiting carmel, visiting the cabin with furniture for the first time, and home again

in between all this, the sunday shopping trips, the weekend jmac excursions, the lack of a home, the car problems, the growing into yourself. you've felt a settling and a snapping into place of where you fit into this world, a sense of putting the last puzzle piece into the community, the friendships, the relationships, and life in general that you've made for yourself. when a puzzle's done, we break it up and start a new one. it feels like 2024 might be the year where we begin again and i'm scared to let go of the perfect life i have already. i'm scared of the new challenges ahead, of the way things are never quite the same as the days before. i'm scared to because i'm so happy and so loved, and i know life changes. i know i'm in a golden moment. i know life will change and give me more golden moments, but i have worked so hard to climb this mountain and reap these rewards, and i'm having a hard time knowing a new climb will be ahead even though i know that summit will be just as wonderful.

we grow, we change, life changes around us. we try and try again. happy new year, i love you. you can do it.

[mountainstory]

This is a complete guide for a bike trip in Leh Ladakh.

One of the most challenging yet beautiful road trip routes in India is the Leh Ladakh Bike Trip. It's everyone's dream road trip. We'll cover everything you'll need to know about the Leh Ladakh Bike Trip, including which bike to use, bike rentals, route, things to pack, and more. Chirag Joshi, our travel expert, curated these notes from his 15-day bag packing journey to Leh Ladakh. You can use this article as a complete guide for biking in Leh Ladakh.

About Leh Ladakh

Our bike trip to Leh Ladakh included a German family who asked us, "Why would you guys travel to other countries when you have such beautiful places like Leh Ladakh?". Leh Ladakh is one of the most beautiful destinations in the world, thanks to its unique combination of Buddhist culture, Ladakhi hospitality, beautiful landscapes, and mesmerizing scenery.

When is the best time to visit Leh Ladakh on a bike

By June - August every year, roads and routes in Leh Ladakh are fully operational, so bikers are safe to travel during this time.

Bike trip duration ideal for Leh Ladakh

Several routes can be taken to do a Leh Ladakh bike trip, however, including buffer days, rest days, and taking in the scenery, a minimum of 9 days to a maximum of 15 days is ideal for a Leh Ladakh bike trip. When you hire a travel expert like Adventourist to arrange your road trip, you can complete the Leh Ladakh circuit in 7-8 days.

Best bikes for Leh Ladakh Road Trip

It is known as the land of high passes because of its difficult terrain. As a combination of great tarmac roads, slushy crossings of the Zoji-La and Shyok rivers and the Chang la Pass, one would need a high torque bike to cover such terrain in the olden days. Since Royal Enfield was the only high torque bike available at that time and hence heavy, people still preferred Royal Enfield because they had no other option.

There are many options today for bike trips that are just as good or even better than a Royal Enfield.

Following bikes are suitable for such bike trips

KTM Duke: For a bike trip to Leh Ladakh, the KTM Duke is the best choice for carrying your luggage and giving you superior control. It's lightweight, powerful, and can carry your luggage.

Hero X-Pulse: It may not be great for mounting luggage, but the Hero X-Pulse is a great choice for beginners. It may be slightly underpowered, but it is light and great for beginners.

Royal Enfield Himalayan: It is by far the best and most practical bike RE has ever made. Despite the fact that there are a few quality issues, Himalayan is the most preferred because of its ease of availability and the ability of local mechanics to handle small breakdowns.

Bajaj Dominar 400: Great bike by Bajaj, which would be great for a Leh Ladakh bike trip.

KTM Adventure: KTM Adventure is the perfect bike for such road trips as Leh Ladakh, Spiti, etc. It is tall, powerful, and made for adventure road trips.

Bike rental for Leh Ladakh bike trip

There are many bike rental options available from Leh City, Manali, and Delhi depending on your route. Rental rates range from 800/day to 1500/day based on the season, the number of days, and the type of bike.

Leh City and Manali Rates: Rs.1000 – Rs.1800/day approx

Delhi: Rs.800 – Rs.1000/day approx

Leh City: Rs.800 – Rs.1000/day approx 

Leh Ladakh Bike Trip Route

The three main routes for doing a road trip in Leh Ladakh are as follows.

Route 1: Srinagar → Leh → Manali

The benefits of this route is that you gain altitude slowly and hence fewer chances of AMS and fatigue. This is one of the most traditional routes to Leh Ladakh. Due to disturbances in the valley, this route is less popular now.

Route details

Srinagar →  Kargil → Leh → Leh → Nubra → Pangong Tso → Leh → Sarchu → Manali.

Route 2: Leh → Nubra → Pangong Tso → Leh

As this route is best suited for people who find it difficult to get more than a week off in a row, if planned well one could do this route without any problems. Directly fly to Leh, take a break for a day and then start with your bike journey.

Leh Arrival →  Leh Local Sightseeing →  Nubra → Pangong Tso → Leh → Depart

Route 3: Manali → Leh → Manali

It is the most commercialized and marketed route in the region, because trips to Leh Ladakh are the main source of income for locals in Manali. It is easier to find travel guides, bike rental companies, and mechanics along this route.

Manali →  Sarchu → Leh → Leh → Nubra → Pangong Tso → Leh → Sarchu → Manali

If you have more holidays on hand, then you may want to explore going to Manali via Tso Moriri lake if you have more time.

Important things to know

→ Ensure that your bags and luggage are properly mounted on your bike and that you are comfortable while riding it. 

→ There is a lack of petrol pumps on the road from Manali to Leh and Leh Nubra pangong. In Pang or Sarchu, you can buy petrol in black. It is advisable, however, to carry a small amount of fuel with you. 

→ Don't depend on ATMs for your cash needs; carry cash instead

Things to pack

Tools

Tool Kit 

Tyre Tube

Bike Spare parts: Gear lever, brake lever, clutch cable, 

Food and Snacks

Energy bars

Camel bags

Chocolates 

Water

Dry fruits

Safety

Don't try to save money by not buying DOT-certified helmets

Head to toe riding gears

Riding jacket

Riding pants

Riding shoes

Important Documents

Valid photo identity documents

Valid bike documents

Clothes and Footwear & cosmetics

2 Woolen Jackets / Hoodies

Trekking shoes

2-4 Pants

2 pair of thermals 

Glairs

Sunscreen

Petroleum jelly 

Others

First Aid Kid 

Powerbank

Accommodation

There are a lot of accommodation options available in the area for an affordable price between Rs.500/day and Rs.3000/day. You don't have to pre-book as you can find it easily.

[mongen]

I’m 8 episodes into Hazbin Hotel

That is to say I finished season 1

It’s good.

From a top-down perspective, I always love to see animated series aimed at adults that aren’t just another clone of The Simpsons or Rick and Morty. This obviously isn’t the first (not by a long shot) but it’s definitely one of the first I’ve seen pick up this much traction with the casual viewing audience.

As I mentioned in my original post, there are a lot of really good changes from the pilot that help realize this concept in a way that feels like a better execution of the core concept.

The concept itself is nothing particularly new, but it will always be interesting to me from a philosophical perspective. The specific blend of The Good Place season 4 and This is The End that Hazbin Hotel employs is fun and interesting, and set up some good questions for season 2 (assuming we get one). I appreciate that the show never gives the characters a checklist of things they must do to prove they’ve become better people, and when someone attempts to make such a list, it’s a joke.

I love and appreciate the musical numbers,

even if the cramped pacing didn’t allow a lot of them to have the impact they should’ve had. In a perfect world, each song would’ve been the culmination of a single episode and there would have been enough room for some slice of life shenanigans. Unfortunately, the entertainment industry is a toxic wasteland, inhospitable to creative and original ideas, so the crew was told to cram all their ideas into 8 episodes. Not to say A24 and Amazon are solely to blame. If a writer is given 200 minutes to tell a story and chooses to still write 500 minutes of content for it, that’s on the writer, but there’s a push and pull there. From this point on, anytime I mention a character or idea being underdeveloped, it comes with the caveat that I know the creators were under time constraints they chose to partially ignore for the sake of their story and worldbuilding.

I will also say that both songs in episode 7 (out for love and ready for anything) didn’t sit right with me. The call-and-response with a chorus of cannibals is fun, but felt poorly set up, and the song about fighting well for the sake of love felt unearned because Vaggy was already doing what she was doing for love and Carmilla is a woefully underdeveloped character.

Lucifer and Alastair’s rivalry is well communicated visually, but the song lurches into motion from a standstill, which gave me musical whiplash, not unlike Poison, which also suffered from “we didn’t know how to organically lead into this so we’re just suddenly in a music video” syndrome. Both these songs - and in fact most songs in the series, especially Respectless - do a fantastic job of communicating a lot of information in a short amount of time without feeling bloated. Poison is a very dramatic look into Angel Dust, a focal character who previously lacked focus and sadly didn’t get the attention he deserved after the trial scene. Hell’s Greatest Dad plays up all three characters’ insecurities and motivations in both subtle and bombastic style that I love. I just wish Mimzy’s bit wasn’t in the album version, as she makes the song really annoying to listen to on its own, a problem none of the other songs have.

My personal favorite songs are Respectless and Loser, the latter of which is a beautiful use of Keith David’s powerful singing voice and is a great subversion of a tired musical trope of a character being at their lowest point and being told they’re actually doing fine. It does something I’ve seen more and more of lately by telling the characters (and audience) that misery loves company, and complaining about the shit you have to deal with can be cathartic with the right friend(s).

All these competing forces (good lyricism and instrumentation, solid vocals, underdeveloped plots and characters, poorly paced song lead-ups) culminate in one song, though: You Didn’t Know. It’s a beautiful song with a powerful theme and a dynamic tempo. The visuals are strong, from the reflection of hellfire in Sera’s eyes to Adam and Lute being seen from a low angle to the visual parallel between Charlie and Em - but this is where the pacing issue collides with the visual and musical quality. Em is nobody. At most she’s a fangirl with implied cosmic power, and her taking Charlie’s side seems to be due more to her naïveté than to a strong moral backbone. This weakens the impact of the otherwise bone-chilling line “if hell is forever, then heaven is a lie” and dampens the impact of the scene as a whole.

And sadly, that’s the state of the music as a whole, it’s really solid and well executed but ultimately undercut by the story being too much content for the given amount of time.

I wish we got to see more of the six month interim

At the very start of the series, we get a countdown clock, and then each episode skips huge amounts of time and development. It’s like trying to watch Avatar The Last Airbender but only watching the first, tenth, and last episode of each season. You miss all the hard work that it takes to improve oneself. There’s hints at it - the big moments, the revelations, the confrontation between a character’s new ideas about how they should be and how they used to be - but these big events are only made possible by the smaller moments we don’t get to see.

Sir Pentious’s development being marked by his ability to admit his feelings for Cheri Bomb is silly, and pays off well, but I want to see more of how he processed those ideas on his own.

Alastor’s machinations are hinted at very overtly but sadly don’t go far enough in this season to be properly interesting. They’re more like a character quirk than a functional part of the story, and it was weird getting nods to him using Charlie’s power for his own ends and making an ambiguous deal with her in the finale but not doing anything with it. On that note, if I hadn’t seen the pilot five years ago, i doubt the handshake scene would’ve had even half the impact it did. The function of deals within the context of this hell isn’t fully realized in Hazbin Hotel, which is a shame, because it means the audience is left to draw their own significance dependent on their knowledge of other mythology. Faustian bargains aren’t nearly as culturally ubiquitous as the broad concept of punitive afterlife, a concept that the show went to great pains to describe in its somewhat clunky opening exposition.

I want more Cheri Bomb. That’s it, that’s this whole paragraph.

The Vees are the best introduced characters in the series. It’s succinct, it’s easy to tell who and what they are within frames of seeing them, they’re not dynamic enough to need any more explanation than they get, but for all that solid introduction, they really don’t do much between episode 4 and the finale. They’re major players in the political landscape of the setting, but they drop out of the story until they’re neared as reaction machines in the final fight. Alastor puts Vox in his place within 10 minutes of them coming into conflict. Val makes Angel Dust’s life hard, which helps propel several of his big character development moments, but he’s just another bad boss character once he leaves frame after Poison. He loses a lot if his impact as an abuser character when Angel Dust talks about his job the same way an office worker talks about their overly demanding manager. Velvette has powerful stage presence but ultimately doesn’t do much to serve her own motivations. Instead, she answers a key question raised at the start of the show and fleshes out the Vees’ stance in relation to the more traditional Overlord hierarchy, but I have no idea what she wants.

Nifty sucks now. Not really. I still like her, but she’s just a “haha so crazy” character, rather than the more subdued and secretly sinister character she was in the pilot. I love that she got the last laugh in the finale with her Chekov’s knife, but it would’ve been more fun and interesting if she hadn’t been acting like that for 100% of her on-screen appearances.

I like Husker. He’s the most subdued character in the series. I still think he’s the most over-designed (only slightly edging out Alastor for the title) but I stopped caring about that about halfway through season one of Helluva Boss. His development and charm are subtle, and the overt difference in his behavior when Alastor pulls rank is fascinating. Unlike everybody else, he gets exactly enough screen time to get his character across and to see the challenges to his assumptions imposed by the rest of the cast. Keith David was also a perfect casting choice. I can’t get over hearing Doctor Facilier sing the phrase “You’re a power bottom at rock bottom.”

Charlie and Vaggie see the least development, understandable as they’re the paragon characters, but less understandable is the issue that their relationship feels underrepresented and understated. I just want to see them being happy together more, rather than mostly being presented as business partners with aligned goals who call each other babe (until the reprise of More Than Anything, of course).

All in all, the show has a LOT of content for all these characters across a long period of in-world time crammed into not a lot of episodes, and it mostly damages the ultimate theme of the series in having so much stuff happening all at once. I’m not sure if a story with this many moving parts could ever properly fit into only 8 episodes, though.

Things I’m glad they removed since the pilot and things I wish they’d removed more of

The Johnny-Test-esque overuse of expressive foley was the single worst addition to the pilot. I’m glad they didn’t use those in the final product.

The over-use of “fuck” is still present, and it comes across as forced in places, but it’s nowhere near as incessant as in the pilot or Helluva Boss. I get that the writers were edgy young millennials on Deviant Art in the 2000s, but just because I understand why a writing decision was made doesn’t mean I have to like it. Im not against the use of fuck, shit, damn, etc - I swear like an imagineer and I write like a terminally online nerd - but at a point it’s excessive. Judicious use of curses is just as important as careful use of any aspect of language.

The squash-and-stretch over-animation of faces in the pilot always bugged me. I kept hearing people say “oh the animation is so good! See how much everybody moves” and I just don’t see it that way. Quantity is not quality. Having a lot of animation isn’t the same as having good animation, just like having a lot of worldbuilding isn’t the same as good worldbuilding (looking at you, JKR). I appreciate the way the motion was toned down for the full production. It looks cleaner, more organized, less needlessly chaotic. It also means when powerful characters start distorting their form, it has more impact, which I like a lot. Alastor is a lot more intense now because he’s not constantly blobbing around like a Gumby character.

A correction/addendum for my original post

I appreciate the use of Adam as a stand-in for a patriarchal status quo, and his use as the head of the inquisitors makes more sense with the context that a majority of heaven’s residents are not aware of the annual exterminations.

I’m 3 episodes into Hazbin Hotel

It’s a lot better than I was expecting, but I have some criticisms:

1. The cast needs to stop acting like Angel is disgusting for being into what he’s into. Literally everybody they come across seems to comment on how gross they think it is, and it kind of clashes with how popular he supposedly is.

2. The songs need more breathing room. There’s 0.2 second of lead-in to some of them. I get that the snappy, overly energetic animation and editing is a rollover from the pilot, but it’s strangling the songs and preventing them from having the gravity they should have.

3. The plot progression feels like a list of bullet points. I’m not going to spoil it, but there’s a major mystery brought up in episode 1 that is answered in episode 3 very unceremoniously and with very little time for the mystery to stew. There’s potentially a very interesting intrigue plot going on, but it’s impact is damped by the fact that it’s delivered very matter-of-fairly by a bunch of supposedly very powerful characters who we haven’t seen before.

4. The spider dude who speaks in pseudo-Shakespearian English is very difficult to understand, and I couldn’t catch his many any of the three or so times it was said because I was trying to process the last thing he’d said. A lot of characters’ voice lines are mixed strangely, but his prose makes it almost impossible.

5. The animation and character designs are much better than in the pilot, but some of the steps they took to simplify the visuals backfired a bit. They cut back on the excess detail and over-animating just enough to make the style still distinctive, but ended up with some 3/4 perspectives that look real wonky. There are also a few shots where characters are forced into a perspective view and it shows.

6. Adam shouldn’t be the leader of the angels. Based on my (limited) knowledge of the worldbuilding, it’s based on 14th century occult appropriation of Jewish spiritual myths like Goetia (as described in the Lesser Key of Solomon) and concepts like the seven deadly sins, so by that token, the leader of the army of angels should be the angels whose name literally means “The Sword of God”: Gabriel. They could also have used the angels of death, Justice, light, or any number of other aspects. I get that they’re not being super strictly literal to those old times (and that’s for the best, Crowley, Aleister, and co were foundational to many modern antisemitic conspiracy theories), but Adam is a weird choice a leader of armies.

All that to say, I’m really excited to watch the rest of the series, but I’m not going to keep my expectations somewhat low.

[afeelgoodblog]

Best News of Last Week

Edition #022 - 🐱 — Hope you had a great weekend. Let’s read some positive news :)

1. Experimental treatment in Spain puts 18 cancer patients in complete remission

Barcelona’s Clínic Hospital announces hopeful results for people with multiple myeloma. Developed through the public system, the cost is lower than commercially available products. The new therapy extracts blood from the patients, selects their T cells (another type of white blood cell) and redesigns them in the lab through genetic engineering, making them better able to recognize cancer cells.

Have read a similar thing 12 years ago, they used genetically modified HIV to bring information into the T-cells. Problem was the needed destruction and reconstruction of the complete immune system and the bill of 1 million$ per treatment. The mrna basically does the same thing now for a fraction of the coast and risk... Amazing times to be alive

2. Denver Museum of Nature & Science receives $25M anonymous donation

An anonymous donor contributed $25 million to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and its supporting organization, the DMNS Foundation, which marks the largest gift in the institution’s 121-year history.

Ten percent of the donation will go to the museum to help with staffing, equipment and launch activities, the museum said. The remaining 90% will help establish an endowed fund at the DMNS Foundation.

3. Omicron up to 70% less likely to need hospital care

People catching Omicron are 50% to 70% less likely to need hospital care compared with previous variants, a major analysis says. The UK Health Security Agency says its early findings are “encouraging” but the variant could still lead to large numbers of people in hospital.

Protection against severe disease is likely to be far more robust. The report comes hot on the heels of data from South Africa, Denmark, England and Scotland which all pointed to reduced severity.

4. Lynx hunting in Latvia to be prohibited

Latvia’s State Forest Service (VMD) will not issue permits to hunt lynx this hunting season. The reason is because there are plans to add the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) to the list of especially protected species.

5. Government of Canada moving forward with banning single-use plastics

“We are taking action to get plastic pollution out of Canada’s communities and our waterways. The proposed Single-Use Plastics Prohibition Regulations are a big step forward in our goal to reduce plastic pollution and move to a circular economy for plastics. Smart, clear and collaborative regulations will help drive innovation across the country as reusable and easier-to-recycle items take their place in our economy.”

-Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change

6. Biden Signs Bill to Ban Goods Made by Uyghur Slave Labor

The White House says President Joe Biden signed into law Thursday a bill that bans the import of good produced by Uyghur slave labor.

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which got final Congressional approval last week after a year of negotiations, bans all imports from China’s Xinjiang region into the United States unless companies can show the U.S. government “clear and convincing evidence” their supply chains have not used the labor of ethnic Muslims enslaved in Chinese camps.

7. A teacher learned one of her students might go hungry over winter break. She now feeds thousands of kids each year.

Elementary schoolteacher Turquoise LeJeune Parker was a few days away from the start of her holiday vacation when she received a text message from the mother of one of her second-grade students. The parent wondered if Parker knew where she could find food for her children during the school’s two-week winter break because her refrigerator and pantry were almost empty. Her kids relied on free school breakfasts and lunches to get them through the day.

“This mom told me she wasn’t worried about herself, but she couldn’t let her kids go without food for those two weeks,” she recalled. “I told my husband about it, and we knew we had to do something.”

____

That's it for this week. Until next week,

You can follow me on twitter . Also, I have a newsletter :)

Subscribe here to receive a collection of wholesome news every week in your inbox :D

[jweekgoji]

Ive had this idea of yandere!five kidnapping you and diego finding you and feeling like needs to save you. Idk why but its been in my head all week 😭

warnings: mentions of kidnapping, dark/yandere themes, some villain!Five mentions, Diego here is a good guy, the end of the story remains uncertain, Diego/Lila relationship, Lila/Reader&Diego/Reader just friends.

oh my! i really love ur idea!! just imagine...Five, who actually spent his whole life trying to save people he loves from any disaster and Diego, who's basically suffering from hero complex 24/7. two overprotective guys who will do anything to save you! but there are some differences... let's start with Five.

Number Five

Well, you didn't specify if Diego here yandere too, so I'll only describe Five as one.

So, I don't think Five has a hero complex. Yes, he practically gave up all his basic human needs just to finally make sure that these 6 assholes do not die, but he didn't do this because he considered his destiny to be a hero for them, he saw the death of loved ones. He literally has no other choice. And I don't think Five ever told them how he saved them in the end of season 2. He's fine and satisfied when all of them are safe and sound.

I think that he would kidnap you only if you are in great danger, for example, someone from the Commission, or maybe The Handler herself is interested in you, which is why one of her goals will be to harm you, to kill you and possibly torture you. Actually, do something that you 100% wouldn't like, and obviously Number Five wouldn't like it too.

You shake your head, crossing your arms over your chest, looking skeptical about all this weird story. A visible annoyance and displeasure on your face due to the fact that you were literally offered to forget about your career and personal life, it was not surprising when you began to refuse his offer.

After a moment, you began to laugh quietly, turning away from Five so that he wouldn't notice your silly reaction to his words. Does he even understand what that sounds like?

“Do you have any idea how serious I am right now?” Five says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“What you're suggesting is not serious, Five,” you click your tongue. “What will I tell my friends? 'Excuse me, I have to pretend to be dead for God knows how long while I'm being chased by a space-time organization with a hundred highly dangerous assassins ready to kill me at any moment' ?”

“Why not?” he asks, it was obvious that he still didn't understand your main issue.

“Look, Five,” you sigh heavily. “I'm not even part of the Academy, you know? All these fights, escapes from one world to another...all of this stuff is not for me. Unlike you, I never lived as a hero, I'm just an ordinary person with boring problems.”

You rub your temples tiredly, trying to calm down, while there was a tense silence between you at this time. You didn't pay attention to how amazingly quiet Five was, perhaps you didn't notice because of how much you wanted to avoid conflict and not hurt his feelings at the same time.

“I wasn't a hero either,” he calmly replies to you, pausing a little, while he steps closer to you. “And I’m not sure I ever will be one.”

You turn your gaze to him, looking confused by his response, but you remain quiet, not sure what to say to that. Five comes up to you and just hugs you, pulling you closer to him.

“But if I get a guarantee that you'll be safe,” Five whispers softly in your ear, his grip on you tightens visibly. “Then I have no other choice then to be a villain.”

Number Two

And right after that, here we are, Diego appears on stage.

I don't think Five would tell anyone about you, because first of all, taking care of you is Number Five's private business, not Two's.

But the rest of the Umbrella Academy clearly knows of your existence, maybe just as one of Five's friends, maybe as a lover or just the person who somehow gets along really well with him, so it would be strange of Diego not to start worrying about your sudden disappear, since you were just a civilian with no superpowers.

And we all know that under the watchful eye of this lovable version of Batman nothing can escape.

Diego stared at Five, leaning back in his chair. It seems as if he is now going through that difficult period of his life at the Academy again, when Number Two played the role of an independent hero who always suspected everyone, only this time, he didn't know if his guesses were true.

Five seemed to be just ignores this man, too busy for now, while he makes some peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches.

“Are you going to stare at me like that all day?” Five asks.

“Where are they?” Diego spins his knife in one hand, narrowing his eyes, now he doesn't even try to hide the fact that he watches every single one Five's action.

“Since when do you care about their whereabouts?” Five barely noticeably frowns at the mere mention of it, but carefully hides his real emotions.

Diego suddenly stands up and quickly walks towards Five, grabbing his arm, stopping him from doing any further, having all of his attention.

“I know there's definitely something wrong here,” Number Two leans a little lower towards Five. “And I will-”

“Good luck,” Five scoffs, taking a tray of food before he quickly disappears from Diego's grasp, leaving the frustrated 'detective' all alone.

Let's be honest, I don't think anyone would be interested in your missing. Perhaps your family would have definitely applied for your search, and then Diego somehow found out about it, having old connections, but the Hargreeves rarely even worrying about each other, and even less about you.

You are very, very lucky that Diego will be the only one who is genuinely interested in finding you and helping you.

Diego has years of experience as a superhero who works alone, but it will be very difficult for him to find you by himself, so he would use the help of Lila in his heroic journey, because we are talking about Number Five, who have more intellect and experience than Diego.

Lila would be useful, given that she also worked for the Commission and may know all the habits they were taught there. Diego, on the other hand, was also worked some time on the Commission, even though not for too long, but he was definitely able to learn something there.

Lila coughs softly, trying to somehow brighten up this awkward silence between them.

“So, you really think shorty can do this?” the woman put her hands on her hips, tilting her head slightly to one side. “I mean, he’s really crazy, but not that much.”

The man only gestures for her to be quiet, these two tried to get to you as carefully as they can and without too much noise.

“I'm not sure, okay?” Diego hisses softly at her before continuing going forward, leaving Lila behind him despite her protests to go ahead with him. “Just believe me.”

Lila shrugs and runs up to Diego, now walking beside him.

“Yeah, I believe you and all,” she huffs, slightly puffing out her cheeks playfully. “But I don’t really like the idea of fighting this tiny bastard again.”

Number Two fell silent for a moment, when suddenly he stopped in front of the door, tugging at the handle, trying to open it.

“Come on, tough guy, use your power,” he hears the teasing voice of his companion from behind, and Diego quietly muttered something under his breath, but took this idea into account, and with a few strong kicks, he was able to open the previously locked door.

The door opened with a quiet creak, and your two rescuers slowly entered the room, quickly looking around, hoping to find and pick you up as soon as possible.

Luckily for them, you were there, but unconscious, wrapped warmly in the blankets that surrounds you. Diego quickly rushed to you, standing over your sleeping figure and began to shake your shoulders, trying to wake you up.

“Come on, come on, wake up,” he keeps repeating this over and over again until you sleepily open your eyes.

You were tired, still half awake, and unable to accurately process your surroundings. You blinked a few times, placing one hand on Diego's chest, slowly coming to your senses.

“Diego?” you say hesitantly, looking at Lila. “No-no, you shouldn't be here...You need to go now.”

“We didn't just make it this far and then leave you here,” you feel Lila's hand on your waist, trying to lift you up from bed.

You shook your head again, now panicking as the couple tried to drag you out of the room despite your weak protests and warnings about what might comes next if they wouldn't leave now.

The room lit up with blue light only for a second before your captor arrived with a new tray of food for you. Silence once again filled the room and all of you looked at each other, waiting for the next step.

The tray fell down with a loud crash, landing somewhere slightly away from you, making you flinch at the surprise and loud noise.

“What the hell is going on here?” Five says every word with anger, still standing in place, blocking the way and not letting anyone out.

Lila looks at Diego expectantly, to which the man leaves you in the arms of his companion, while he approaches Five..

“What you're doing is wrong, you literally kidnapped them against their will,” he points at you. “But you still have a chance to make things right, Five.”

Number Five grabs Diego by the collar, causing him to lean down.

“Listen to me carefully, you idiot. All I did was protect them until you break here and put them in danger, which was actually a really dumb decision,” Hargreeves continued to swear, but soon pushes Diego away from him and has already headed in your direction to pick you up, until this desperate poor man with a hero complex didn't stand in front of you.

“I don't want to fight you,” Diego says, practically begging but still standing his ground. This draws a disapproving reaction from Number Five, making him roll his eyes in annoyance.

“So do I.”

[lemondropdancer]

Grounding Techniques

Mental Distraction Techniques

Pick a category of objects and try to think of as many objects as possible that fit within that category (e.g., types of dogs, cities, types of trees, crayon colors, sports)

Pick a letter and think of emotionally positive or neutral words that begin with that letter

Pick a color and look for things of that color. Notice differences in their exact shades

Say or think the alphabet backwards or alternate letters and numbers (A1, B2, C3, D4, etc)

Count backwards from 100 by 3s, 6s, or 7s or count up by prime numbers or perfect squares

Play "fizz-buzz" with yourself. Begin counting to 100 (or over!), but replace any number that contains the number 5 or is a multiple of 5 with the word "fizz" and any number that contains the number 7 or is a multiple of 7 with the word "buzz." For example, 1-15 would be "1, 2, 3, 4, fizz, 6, buzz, 8, 9, fizz, 11, 12, 13, buzz, fizz." When you mess up, compliment yourself and start over

Think of the words to your favorite song or poem or think of facts related to a specific theme

Pick a word or your name and see how many other words you can make from the letters in it

Describe an every day event or process in great detail, listing all of the steps in order and as thoroughly as possible (e.g., how to cook a meal, how to get from your house to your place of work or school, how to do your favorite dance)

Read something technical or meant for children or read words backwards to focus on the process of reading and not the words

Watch a children's television show or movie or watch cute or funny videos on Youtube; it might help to have a playlist already prepared for this

Look at a current news article that is not likely to be upsetting or distressing

Distract yourself with Tetris, Solitaire, Sudoku, word searches, or other puzzle games

Reorientation Techniques

Say or think to yourself: "My name is _________. I am safe right now. I am _____ years old. I am currently at _____________. The date is _____________. If I need help, I am with ________/can call _________. Everything is going to be alright."

List reaffirming statements ("I am fine. Everything is going to be okay. I am strong. I can handle this.")

Ask yourself where you are, what day of the week it is, what day of the month it is, what month it is, what year it is, what season it is, how old you are, and other present-focused questions

Notice things in your surroundings that indicate to you that you're safe or that you're in the present (e.g., locks on your door, electronics that didn't exist when you were younger, the presence of trusted people, a phone so that you can call for help if you need it)

Describe your surroundings in detail, including sights (objects, textures, shapes, colors), sounds, smells, and temperature

Name five things that you see, four that you feel, three that you hear, and two that you smell or taste, and then name one good thing that you like about yourself

Pick four or five brightly colored objects that are easily visible and move your focus between them. Be sure to vary the order of your gaze and concentrate briefly on each one before moving to the next

Think about a fun time that you recently had with a friend or call that friend and ask them to talk about it with you

Sensory-Based Grounding Techniques

Run cool or warm (but not too cold or hot) water over your hands or take a cool or warm bath or shower

Spritz your face (with eyes closed), neck, arms, and hands with a fine water mist

Spray yourself with your favorite perfume and focus on the scent

Feel the weight of your body in your chair or on the floor and the weight of your clothing on your skin

Touch and hold objects around you. Compare the feel, weight, temperature, textures, colors, and materials

Keep a small object with you to touch or play with when you get triggered. Good examples include a smooth stone, a fidget toy, jewelry, or a tiny plushy

Bite into a lemon, orange, or lime, suck on a sour or minty candy or an ice cube, chew cinnamon-flavored gum, or put a few drops of Tabasco sauce on your tongue. Notice the flavor, scent, and texture

Eat something or drink warm tea, coffee, or hot chocolate, and describe to yourself the taste and texture in great detail

Place a cool wash cloth on your face or hold something cold like a can of soda

Listen to soothing or familiar music. If possible, dance to it

Hum, sing, recite poetry, or make up a silly poem or story as you go

Pick up a book and read the first paragraph out loud

Hug another person (if interpersonal touch isn't a trigger). Pay attention to your own pressure and the physical sensations of doing so

Hug a tree! Register the smells of being outside, the wind, and the sights around you

Movement-Based Grounding Techniques

Breathe deeply and slowly and count your breaths

Grab tightly onto your chair or press your feet against the ground as firmly as you can

Rub your palms and clap your hands or wiggle your toes within your socks. Pay attention to the physical sensation of doing so

Stretch out your arms or legs, roll your head on your neck, or clench and unclench your fists

Stomp your feet, walk around, run, jump, ride a bike, do jumping jacks, or do yoga

While walking, notice each footstep and say to yourself "right" and "left" to correspond with the foot currently moving

Squeeze a pillow, stuffed animal, or ball

If you have a soft pet (dog or cat), brush its fur and stroke it. If you don't, brush your own hair slowly and without pulling too much

Color in an adult coloring book, finger paint, or draw anything that comes to mind without worrying about quality

Write whatever comes to mind even if it's nonsense. Try not to write about whatever is upsetting you until you're more capable of doing so without increasing the upset

Write a list of things that make you happy or look for cheerful pictures to make into a collage

Pop bubble wrap or blow and pop actual bubbles

Dig in the dirt or garden, jump on a pile of leaves, or splash around in puddles or mud

Rip up paper or stomp on aluminum cans to crush them

Imagery Techniques

Picture yourself breathing in relaxation, calm, positive feelings, or strength. Picture yourself breathing out whatever is upsetting you. It may help to pair this with imagery of breathing in soothing colors (usually blue, purple, or green) and out more intense colors (usually red or black)

If you need to relax, envision a soothing white or golden light slowly moving up your body, warming and relaxing every part of you that it touches. You can also think of it as protecting you from negativity or from harm

If the problem is intense or uncomfortable emotions, physical sensations, or memories, picture them being surrounded and neutralized by a bright and healing light, temporarily placed in a mental box to be stored for later, or dialed back by an internal controller of intensity

If you have a clear mental picture of what's upsetting you, mentally change it to something silly or harmless. If you're a fan of Harry Potter, cast a mental "riddikulus" to banish the negativity

Picture yourself calm, focused, and able to tackle whatever problems you're facing. Focus on how that would feel in the moment. What would your expression and posture be like? Make whatever changes you need to in order to make your reality reflect your goal

How to Make a Grounding Box

Get a box or basket

Personalize and decorate it with construction paper, wrapping paper, ribbon, stickers, drawings, paint, photographs, glitter, sequins, or anything else that you like

Keep within it:

A list of grounding techniques that you know work for you

A list of positive affirmations and happy memories

A list of the contact information of trusted friends or family who are willing to help and support you

Small sensory objects such as: scented candles, perfumes, or lotions; hard candies or gum; soft fabrics, a stress ball, a stuffed animal, or a fidget toy; happy pictures of you with friends; a CD with relaxing music or meditation tracks. Try to cover all of the senses

A list of possible distractions such as books to read or movies to watch

Small portable distractions such as a pack of playing cards, a small game, or a joke book

A list of comforting things to do such as taking a bubble bath, snuggling up in bed, or meditating

A small journal or notebook

In the Case of a Flashback

Tell yourself that you are having a flashback and are safe now

Remind yourself that the worst is over, and you survived it. What you're feeling now is just a reminder of that trauma and does not fit the present moment

Remind yourself of when and where you are, who you're currently with, and who you can contact if you need help (use the reorientation-focused grounding techniques)

Breathe deeply and slowly. Count your breathes and make sure that you're getting enough air

Use other mental, sensory, movement, and imagery techniques in order to distract yourself, calm yourself, and reorient yourself within the present

If possible or necessary, go somewhere where you can be alone or with a close friend, where you will feel safe, or where you feel protected or shielded

If there is anyone who you can trust or who will support you, reach out to them, let them know what happened, and let them know what you need, what would be best for you, or what they could do to help

Be gentle with yourself and take the time to really recover. If what helps you to recover is to color, take a bubble bath, hug a stuffed animal, or watch a children's movie and if it would not be disruptive to do such things at that point in time, embrace those options whole-heartedly

If possible, note or write down what triggered the flashback, what techniques you tried to use to disrupt the flashback, and what techniques helped