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allie1804-fan · 4 years ago

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Please Assist Me (Chapter 18)

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Ch6apter 10 , Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15 , Chapter 16, Chapter 17

Warnings: Explicit Content

He Said

At last in January of 2021, the schools opened and we felt like there was more every day normal going on. There were a few more restaurants open with outdoor service too so Sophia and I had the occasional lunch out together when he had free time. I was training hard though so I didn’t have much free time which meant we tended to need to stick to Hollywood rather than driving out to the coast off the beaten track and that was our first mistake. Sophia had been my assistant for almost 2 years now so it wasn’t odd for us to be seen together but as there was almost never any other women seen with me, Cheryl alerted me that pictures started appearing in gossip rags, putting 2 and 2 together based on their (correct!) reading of intimate gazes and body language.

She Said

In the new year, a few photos started to come out of me with Keanu online and in gossip rags. The publicity wasn’t hugely invasive and I wasn’t too bothered by it - my family and friends knew the truth so this only really attracted random contact on social media from acquaintances being nosy rather than any real invasion at first.

My first direct experience that the attention was getting invasive came one day at the school pick up. I had noticed a man hovering at a distance from the gates who I was pretty sure wasn’t a parent. My attention was torn away when my kids came out but as I turned to take them to the car, I saw a teacher cautiously approach him and after a brief exchange he turned on his heal and left. That’s when I spotted the camera slung over his shoulder. A couple of days later, pictures of me and the kids were published on-line on a gossip site. The kids’ images were a little blurry but still, I was furious.

He Said

“Fuck!”

I’d just clicked on my phone on a link Sophia had sent to me for a photo news site showing pictures of her and the kids at their school gate. Some low life pap had tracked them down and deemed them newsworthy because of her link to me that had been emerging more and more frequently of late.

I forwarded it to Cheryl and asked her to arrange an urgent call with her and my lawyer to work out an action plan. Then I called Sophia, nervous that I might be in for a tirade of Spanish insults.

“Hun, you OK?”

“No, I’m not OK. Que pendejo insoportable!”

Here we go, I thought!

“who me?!”

“No, no, the photographer, this isn’t your fault!”

“kind of is though isn’t it?”

“No, I won’t let you take the blame – but we have to stop them. The kids need to be kept out of this right?”

“Yeah, I’m waiting to hear back from Cheryl. I asked her to arrange a call with the lawyers. I’ll let you know when they can set it up OK? And I’m sorry, even if you say it isn’t my fault, it wouldn’t be happening if we weren’t in a relationship.”

She sighed.

“We’ll figure it out, OK, I just, I need to keep them safe”

“I know, I know sweetheart”

We managed to issue a cease and desist order on that particular photographer to not take further photographs of the children and put out a general statement asking the press to respect their privacy but that did seem to have the effect of making them more thirsty for pictures of Sophia and I – we were still game. As pictures circulated of us eating out or on bike rides, this apparently spawned a trend of what I understand are called “Trolls” seeking out Sophia on social media to send her hateful messages to ‘leave me alone’ and to stop ‘trying to wheedle her way into my life’ and ‘get her grubby Latino hands on my money’. And, she said, if they didn’t do it directly, there would be comments underneath her photo on fan sites with people expressing their disgust at my choice of romantic partner. On top of that, there was a lot of denial - people saying that Sophia was and could only ever be my PA – just like Janey they said. Good grief the world really had gone to hell - why did who I was dating even matter?

Apparently there were many people being kind and saying it was nice that I’d found love and that she was beautiful, might give me the babies I’d missed out on etc etc but I could see the comments of the trolls weighed on her mind and lodged there far more than anything positive. Eventually I said she should really just follow me into the social media free wilderness. She could keep an active messenger service for group chats with friends and use a cloud service to share photos of the kids with our parents but for her sanity, she needed to drop Facebook, Instagram and Twitter before she went insane!

She Said

I knew I shouldn’t get drawn into looking at what Keanu’s fan base were saying online but the curiosity was hard to control. I actually only started getting drawn in after the trolls started tracking my down and sending me abusive DMs. That made me want to know if there were any positive voices or if these nasty people basically spoke for the whole of his fandom. I found myself wasting so much time going down rabbit holes trying to find out who these people were but there was no way to do that really.

When my general tetchiness finally got too much and Keanu said I should join him in the 1990s and get off social media, I knew he was right but at the same time it was infuriating as I had got so used to using it for sharing news, family photos, jokes etc as well as using all the messenger tools to connect with my friends. After all the isolation of 2020, this new isolation felt like a kick in the teeth but I felt so childish to think that way and didn’t dare say anything to Keanu. Having never been on social media, he just wouldn’t get it! After about a week though, I had to admit I felt better and admitted that his way was probably the sane option – after weeks of anxiety, I finally felt free from the worry of silly people out there who didn’t know us personally having an opinion about whether we ‘should’ be dating.

Happily, we also had a trip to New York to look forward to - Keanu would be starting filming on John Wick 4 and we were heading there as a family with around a week free to enjoy the city together before he would start on set.

The kids were beyond excited to be flying, not ever having done so before. They each had a little pull-along case and we booked first class so we would have as little time as possible milling around in the public spaces at the airport. I was sure there’d be paps about - we couldn’t ban them from taking our photo altogether even though we’d asked for their privacy to be respected so I was desperate to minimise their chances.

When we got to LAX, it was literally minutes after we’d got into the building when a fan approached asking for a photo. Keanu started to try and explain that he was on his down time with his family and would they mind if he didn’t take one today but he hated the crestfallen look on their face and he quickly suggested that we split up and meet up in the lounge. I rummaged through my bag to get his ticket out and handed it to him with a pointed look at the woman before heading off to check in with the kids, not caring that my silent displeasure might make it online somewhere to be used as evidence of what a bitch I was!

We went on through to departures and waited a good half hour before he showed up.

“Hey Keanu why did you take so long” Eva whined.

He chuckled.

“Sorry honey, but I guess it’s because ‘I’m Duke Caboom, Canada’s greatest stuntman’ he boomed, tickling her sides “and sometimes that means people want to say hi and take a photo so it took a while to catch you up.

“Oh OK” she said matter of factly not at all phased by that idea. I guess she knew how excited Julie and Miranda’s kids had been when they zoomed with him when he was in Berlin so it made sense to her even though Toy Story 4 was the only thing she’d ever seen with him in so she had no idea just how truly famous he was!

“You’re too good to them” I said, still a bit put out that we’d already been separated for a while right at the beginning of our trip.

“Yeah, but it never ends well if I’m an ass…. I mean not nice and you’ve got to remember that I’m usually ‘so high’ on a screen and seeing me in real life is exciting …. to them at least” he said cocking an eyebrow at me as if to say that I no longer saw him as special.

“You’re exciting to me too silly!” I said, relenting a bit from my sulk.

He squeezed my hand.

“Don’t worry, I’ll try to give off some ‘stay away’ vibes in New York so we can all hang out like real people.

“I know, I’m being a bitch, I just wanted this to be, you know, normal”

When we arrived in New York, we had a car waiting so were quickly away from the airport and managed to pass through it without being bothered. On the journey, the kids were pressing their faces against the car windows to see the famous sky-scrapers and there was much anticipation of getting to his apartment to see how their bedrooms looked. We’d arranged to have them decorated and bought new duvets and drapes which Keanu’s maid service had taken care of putting up for them. We got take out pizza for the first night and once again I felt safe and cocooned from the outside world of fans and paparazzi.

He Said

It was strange that Sophia and I had been together for not much short of a year before the public interest in me, and its impact on living our lives, really became a pain in the ass and the source of some conflict between us. I had to remind myself that I’d been living this way for about 20 years and had learned to just allow a little extra time in my day for stopping for a photo. It only affected me when I was on my own so I had to learn to see if from her point of view - it was a shock to her system basically. She’d been my PA for 2 years but we had rarely needed to conduct our business in the public eye so she hadn’t even experienced the attention when we weren’t dating – it was all happening in the context of her being my significant other and with the backdrop of the online trolls and the need to protect her kids.

I guess it would have happened much sooner if I hadn’t been away filming for almost 5 months shortly after we started dating so we’d had an extended time of being together but with no-one outside of friends and family knowing. I tried to tell her we should be grateful all this hadn’t started sooner. I’m not sure that was the right thing to say!

My celebrity did have some advantages though and in New York I’d managed to arrange a private tour of the Empire State Building and rink side seats at a Rangers game. Those earned me points but we weren’t so lucky in Central Park. My apartment isn’t far from there so we headed out for a walk one afternoon, ending up in in the Conservatory Garden figuring that this would be a nice place to be by some water but not where most people would be like Bethesda or the model boat pond.

We’d bought some sandwiches on our way (my time to enjoy the pastrami, pickle and Russian salad I so love) and settled on a bench to chill and rest the kids’ legs when I saw a guy across the other side of the pond raising his camera. It was clearly a Pap with a long lens. I’m normally not a hot head but it was such an intrusion to our pleasant afternoon that I handed Sophia my sandwich and marched up to him.

I was striding fast, not caring much that my stance was clearly threatening and some people idling by the pond scuttled out of my way. The Pap, surprisingly stood his ground until I reached him, squaring up to him.

“Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing? We’re just having some private time as a family and you come along determined to ruin it!”

I was yelling and drawing the attention of others by the pond but I didn’t care.

“hey man, you’re fair game” he responded brazenly.

“Yeah that’s right, I, me, I’m fair game, me not them ,now get the hell out of here”

He was a short weasel of a guy and I was towering above him. He soon thought better of trying to take a picture and scurried away. A woman a few feet away spontaneously clapped!

“Good for you Keanu” she said.

I blushed, coming down suddenly from the adrenaline of the confrontation. It has been a long time since I’d even spoken to a Pap. I usually just ignored them, occasionally putting my hand in front of my face to ruin the shot. It generally wasn’t worth antagonising them but this dude had pushed it too far.

I thanked her and returned to the bench. Sophia handed me back my sandwich while the kids eagerly asked why I’d been shouting at the man. I explained as best I could and I think they were grateful that I just wanted their mom and them to enjoy their time without strangers photographing them.

A couple of days later, Cheryl let me know that the guy made a claim on-line that I’d assaulted him – no actual legal claim was made, I guess because he knew it was bullshit. That was quickly proven when people quickly came forward that they had witnessed it and no such thing had happened. I wondered if the lady clapping was one of them.

She Said

After the Central Park incident, I was so proud of how Keanu had stood up to the paparazzo but we still made a decision to do most of the tourist things without him after that. I couldn’t see us being in Time Square, The Lego Store or the M&M store with him alongside us comfortably. And that was strange and a little sad for me to be back to the single parent feeling, having experienced some very cherished family days.

Our time to go home was fast approaching and I was keen to get one day just for the two of us. Luckily I have a cousin in New York who wanted to spend time with the kids and they offered to take them on the boat trip to the Statue of Liberty for the day. We made the kids breakfast and handed them over to my cousin with backpacks, ready for their adventure.

We just had coffee ourselves as we were planning on a brunch out for ourselves later after some us time between the sheets!

The minute the door was shut, Keanu was pulling me by the hand back to bed.

We quickly shed our pjs, climbed under the covers and started to kiss

Keanu soon reached down and started to gently tease my folds. I moaned into his mouth thrusting myself against his fingers.

A thought came to me and I pulled back and asked

“Can we um, try something today ?”

“Mmmm - what?”

“Well you know your movie, Siberia? “

He nodded

“Well, I watched it while you were away and, um that thing with your thumb ....”

“Oh you want that do you?” - a wicked grin spread across his face

“Well we can try that lots of ways ….. so, we can try that from behind. Get on all fours for me”

I obliged and I felt him slip his stiff cock into me, my folds parting with a pop. He was moving very slowly, then after a few thrusts as I was moaning softly, I felt his wet fingers reach around to gently tease my clit. He did it just enough to make me moan louder but not enough to make me cum. Then he pulled out leaving me bereft

“What?” I cried out

Then he rolled over on his back and pulled me onto him.

“And then there’s lady on top”

I happily sank down on his cock and started to ride him. I was groaning but at the same time I could hear my voice quavering as I neared orgasm once more. He licked his thumb, this time, re-enacting the Siberia moment making me throw my head back in pleasure. I was about to lift off, my voice raised in pitch but again he stopped me before I could, holding my hips to stop my movement.

The he flipped me over onto my back and straddled me, making me wait a few moments as he played with my breasts and smoothed his hands down my sides .

“And finally we can try man on top”

“Will you do that thing ?” I asked

“What the thumb ?”

“No, well yes, but first the thing where you lift me onto you”

“Oh like our first time?”

I nodded, glad he remembered.

He obliged lifting me onto him, pulling me up, ensheathing him slowly so I could feel every vein of his rigid cock and he could feel every ridge of my tunnel.

I was wailing by now each time he pulled me up then released me – I could feel his cock getting even harder when he asked simply

“Ready?”

I just whimpered and nodded my agreement.

He Said

I was so close to coming, I needed to really focus to give her everything she deserved.

I manoeuvred her fully onto her back and encouraged her to lift her legs up over my shoulders.

This allowed me maximum access to thrust in all the way to her cervix and pump in and out.

I could already feel the beginnings of her orgasm, her pussy pulsating around me. It was as if she was a beautiful flower, attracting me with her petals then sucking me in, holding me there in a vice like grip to take what she needed from me. It was primal and all encompassing

As I felt the ripples get more intense, I managed to balance on my left hand and free my right hand, lick my thumb and circle it over her clit.

That was it, it was all over for both of us. She clamped around me, her legs quivering and I shot my hot load inside shouting out as she screamed “yes, yes oh god, yes”

My thrusts gradually slowed, I was still moaning and fighting to catch my breath. I eased her legs down and lay on her just holding my weight off her by resting on my elbows. I gave her a sloppy kiss before easing off her onto my back. I still couldn’t speak. and just squeezed her hand. Tears leaked out of my eyes and I gulped, looking across, I found her in a similar emotional state.

“Wow that was - god I don’t think I’ve ever, ever come so hard”

“Me neither - love you so much Mr Reeves”

“Why do you always call me that after really great sex?”

“Dunno” she chuckled “maybe to give you the respect you deserve for making love to me so, so ….”

“What?”

“So masterfully, so beautifully”

“Mmmmmmm”

“Let’s have a snooze before brunch yeah?”

“Mmmm”

I think she was almost asleep already as she turned away and I spooned behind her, holding her warm breast in the palm of my hand.

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nerd-army-blog · 6 years ago

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bonusnew327 · 3 years ago

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kindabraveandlittlestupid · 6 years ago

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It seems Disney underestimated the power of the Dark Side of its fan base with the box office failure of Solo: A Star Wars Story. It shows a fracturing among viewers and how future movies will be received (or not received) by audiences around the world. The major issue with the fans isn't that people outright hate the new direction of the series but many are upset that the universe they know and love for long is changing before them. Some of those changes are for the better with new stronger female leads in the movies (which was needed) and then there are changes that for the worse such as changing the established lore of the force and cutting back the extended universe, which ironically took dozens of strong female characters with it. So yay! Progress?

So I plan to make the case for being critical of the new movies. I plan to also chastize those jerkoffs who decided to attack female actresses for being role models for young girls. I plan to make a rational argument for the removed content cut away by Disney writers. I also plan on talking about how we can bridge these divides and bring everyone back together. You might not agree with everything I say or maybe you will. Most people almost never share 100% of their opinions with another person which was kind of the problem in all this... dissent was widdled down to either or and those fans with legit criticisms were pushed into the camp of those assholes who hate women and the concept of social justice/equity. Because there was no discourse or room for dissent, Disney Ultimately gambled on that disgruntled fanbase not being as influential as it is and they were wrong.

No Room For Dissent

This is a common problem in society these days, where we view things in absolutes; be it politics, movies, religion and so on. Perhaps we have always been like that (I only been around since 1985) but it feels pretty bad these day especially in regards to politics being so divisive or movies that look to present more female roles and ethnic roles in their casts taking so much flak. While I might make some political parallels to create examples, I intend on focusing on the cultural divides taking place in these popular movies.

There is plenty of blame to go around for the tribal mentality that comes when critiquing a movie. Studios benefit from having a cultural high ground because it's easier to say “You’re being sexist or racist” instead of handling a critique and having to answer for poor choices they made while making the movie. I imagine this is what happened in the case of the Ghostbusters reboot, some people asked why the black character wasn't the scientist and the studio reacted with “Why don't you like women?” A kind of deflection mentality that avoided a valid critique of the movie and shames the critic from raising his or her voice again.

The blame also falls at the feet of the very worst patrons of our society. On one side you have the army of trolls of the web who are by far the worst people the interwebs (and the world) has to offer. These are the sort of guys who see any female lead role as an insult and seek out to harass them in the real world forcing the said actresses to abandon social media. These sort of people (most of them male) leave me gritting my teeth because this isn't so much a passion of a fandom they want to protect as it is a lifestyle of attacking people who are not them. Everything is a fucking battle and anything that progresses or enhances another race/gender/sexuality beyond their own is considered a threat to their manhood.

On the other side, we have people who you would call PC and they are sometimes PC to a fault. I tend to find myself agreeing with people on this side more often than not but even then we have our moments where I am wondering what the fuck the objective is. They become advocates for a worthwhile cause but become blinded to valid points or arguments. Back to Star Wars, I wondered why Admiral Holdo was even in the movie because she was killed right away and Akbar or Leia could have had the noble death. The response is defensive of the female role simply because it's a female role. Studios obviously love these advocates because they still don't have to answer the questions and its a private army of people to protect their franchise.

The last group is fans which is a wide spectrum of people from little girls who see Rey and get excited to see a girl kicking ass on the screen to long-term fans who have questions about the lore of the movies being changed or questions why the movie changed directions. Most of us reside here between the two extremes; the PC movie defenders who see the film as a tool to improve society and those little troll fuckers who want to see the world burn.

The failing in this discussion about the movie is the fact those two polar opposites dictated the discourse for the rest of us. You either accepted the movie as it was and enjoyed being on the moral high ground or join the trolls if you have any small critiques of the movie whatsoever. Perhaps we more moderate critics failed a bit by letting the trolls become the loudest voice in the room and let them write letters where they basically bashed women became the only thing people could see. Much like a peaceful protest where 97% of the people are there to say their piece with civility and clarity but its those 3% (the Trolls) throwing trash cans thru the window that get the cameras on them and they define the protest with the media coverage.

I blame also the Directors and Disney for playing this absolutist mentality where they say anyone who is complaining about the movie is a baby, sexist, racist or some other insult. They didn't seem to want to have any criticism and why would they?! Having a golden franchise that can basically prints money and where you can say anyone who dissents against us is a bigot of some sort, is a hell of a defense. No one wants to be with the trolls and be labeled as chauvinist or racist but because there was no spectrum or room for dissent they ultimately pushed critics and concerned fans to that side.

Respecting The Lore/Establish A Vision

Disney may not realize this but they fucked up pretty bad by cutting away the extended universe. I understand WHY they did it; thousands of characters, hundreds of worlds, dozens of stories to consider compiled over 40 years? I imagine the collective writers of Disney who saw the scope of what other people had built together and collectively shit their pants. It's a massive undertaking to try and apply the lore in a way that fans might enjoy or explore plots that we would love to see executed. The problem is instead of looking at this expanded universe as a foundation to build their movies on, they decided to slice it away and leave nothing but the core movies and a cartoon. I will try and break down why that was a mistake.

Fans Invested Most of Their Time Into The SWEU

What they may have not realized is the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy was not where fans invested most of their time. Yes, we loved those movies for being the gateway into this great fictional universe but ultimately watching the 6 films would take only 13 hours. Knights of the Old Republic a single game of that Star Wars Universe (that they cut away), takes at least 28 to 48 hours to complete. Then you add on other games Knights of the Old Republic 2, The Old Republic MMO, Shadows of the Empire, Battlefront 1/2, The Force Unleashed, Rogue Squadron, Empire at War, Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, Jedi Academy, Republic Commando and so on you are now looking at hundreds of hours invested to a single play thru or more likely THOUSANDS of hours for true gamers play each game a few times.

This is where the true long-term fans who buy Star Wars merchandise over a lifetime instead of a holiday season reside. It stays fresh in our minds as books, comics, games, and yes the movies become part of regular media diet. Disney perhaps felt overwhelmed by it or perhaps wanted to reboot the universe decided to take the vast majority of where our love resides in the Star Wars Universe and scrapped it. Like it or not this is where they lost most of their following and since they did it just before the release of the The Last Jedi they have since been dealing with the fallout of loyal fans who feel betrayed and I am not talking just about the bitchy trolls from online either.

Removal of Strong Female Roles

I like seeing Ray as a strong female character and we all, of course, we all love Leia as well. There is no doubt the Star Wars movies while centered around some strong female characters have been pretty much been male-dominated for those first six films. So the change is not only warranted but welcomed.

What is a shame as while that was true for the movies it was far from the truth for the SWEU content where there were literally dozens of strong female leads they could have been explored by Disney.

Meetra Surik

Mara Jade

Bastila Shan

Mission Vao

Juno Eclipse

Iden Versio

Jaina Solo

Maris Brood

Visas Marr

Jan Ors

And so many more...

These women come different walks of life being the daughter of Han and Leia (Jaina Solo), plucky engineers who travel with a Wookie (Mission Vao), former Sith turned to the Light Side (Mara Jade), former Imperial Pilots and Soldiers fighting for the Rebellion (Juno and Iden), or even one of the most powerful Jedi’s in the Galaxy (Meetra Surik). I suppose what is best about them being fictional is that they still exist and if Disney wants to start mending bridges they should star readapting these characters into the canon universe.

The Best Stories Exist Before And After The Movies

I suppose for some the story of Skywalker family struggle was enough for them but the bigger stories existed long before the Empire/First Order and greatest conflict took place years after. The Mandalorian Wars, where warriors raider world after world forcing the Galactic Republic to step in. The Great Galactic War pitting the Sith against Jedi across the galaxy. The Invasion of the Yuuzhan Vong leaving trillions dead across hundreds of worlds and nearly destroying all life.

These stories are part of that extended universe and far more compelling than the recycled Death Star plot we saw in 4 of the 10 Star Wars movies. The audience craved to see the Jedi at their peak when they maintained peace across the universe, or they wish to see the Sith exist not in pairs but as an Empires themselves. If Disney wants to explore this franchise than embrace the stories that have not yet been shown on screen.

Establishing A Vision

Disney has enjoyed great success with the MCU and dozens of movies its created. They also managed to get their mittens on the Star Wars Universe and seek to milk it much the same. The problem is they don't seem to have a clear idea where they want to go with the movies or what they should do with it. I already discussed how complex the universe is with all its lore but you (Disney) have control over the movies. The rights to the toys, games, books, comics and films an like it or not we are at your mercy of where you decide to take it.

I suppose I am advocating having a vision for the future of this series. Marvel Cinematic Universe works because the stories were planned out with a sort of climactic point to be explored (IE the Infinity Wars) so we know you can practice good foresight. On the other hand... John Carter, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and the Lone Ranger display a carelessness of other franchises. Not trying to be mean, just stating a fact. We saw it happen with other movies like Batman in the 90′s where the objective was selling toys and not making a quality film that could encourage people to buy merchandise for decades. I guess what I am trying to say is Harry Potter this franchise, treat it with love and care that the fanboys and fangirls so we can go with you on this adventure into a galaxy far far away.

A Letter to You Troll Douchbags

Some of us critics truly love movies. We see the flaws as they are and we want to be able to say our views with other people around a table. I had my issues with the magical properties of the heart-shaped herb in Black Panther. I wish they continued Ghostbusters 3 with Oscar (Jason Gordon Lovitt) taking over and having some young black scientists (played by Donald Glover and Jessica Williams) being the Ghostbusters (and Role Models) in the movie. I have some issues with The Last Jedi and how they changed the flow of the movie from one director to the next but you little bitches keep making these debates about race and fucking gender every fucking time. You see a woman on screen and you write up a review of a movie that isn't even out yet because you’re somehow afraid of the 50 movies released over the year you somehow won't be represented.

Cut your fucking shit out you little pricks. We cant make honest critiques now because you’re the first fucking twits to review a film and all you spew is the vial fucking hate raging against everything that isn't you. Honestly, the rest of us just want to enjoy ourselves, we are grown up enough to know white isn't the only skin color in the seats of the movie theater and male isn't the only gender of a hero (we call them heroines) in movies.

I picked these movies on purpose because they were topical and I had my issues with them (and I have my issue with every movie save Shaun of the Dead which is fucking perfect). I wanted to write reviews that were balanced because I want to believe we can have that discourse again where we can chat why a movie works or doesn't work without the risk of having labels like sexist or racist applied to us because you want to act out. So please for the love of god either commit to shoving your head further up your ass so we can't hear you or pull your head out and join the rest of the world. Either way, I am tired of having to apologize and denounce your rhetoric... it's honestly fucking exhausting.

Regards Michael California

#Star Wars #Disney #The Force Awakens #The Last Jedi #Star Wars Expanded Universe #Personal Rant #MovieReview

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Thursday, January 14, 2021

US will require all arriving passengers to get COVID-19 test (AP) Anyone flying to the U.S. will soon need to show proof of a negative test for COVID-19, health officials announced Tuesday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requirement expands on a similar one announced late last month for passengers coming from the United Kingdom. The new order takes effect in two weeks. COVID is already widespread in the U.S., with more than 22 million cases reported to date, including more than 375,000 deaths. The new measures are designed to try to prevent travelers from bringing in newer forms of the virus that scientists say can spread more easily. The CDC order applies to U.S. citizens as well as foreign travelers. The agency said it delayed the effective date until Jan. 26 to give airlines and travelers time to comply. The new restrictions require air passengers to get a COVID-19 test within three days of their flight to the U.S., and to provide written proof of the test result to the airline. Travelers can also provide documentation that they had the infection in the past and recovered. Airlines are ordered to stop passengers from boarding if they don’t have proof of a negative test.

Trump impeached after Capitol riot in historic second charge (AP) President Donald Trump was impeached by the U.S. House for a historic second time Wednesday, charged with “incitement of insurrection” over the deadly mob siege of the Capitol in a swift and stunning collapse of his final days in office. With the Capitol secured by armed National Guard troops inside and out, the House voted 232-197 to impeach Trump. The proceedings moved at lightning speed, with lawmakers voting just one week after violent pro-Trump loyalists stormed the U.S. Capitol after the president’s calls for them to “fight like hell” against the election results. Trump is the only U.S. president to be twice impeached. It was the most bipartisan presidential impeachment in modern times, more so than against Bill Clinton in 1998. The soonest Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell would start an impeachment trial is next Tuesday, the day before Trump is already set to leave the White House, McConnell’s office said. The legislation is also intended to prevent Trump from ever running again.

Americans across the political spectrum fear what the Capitol attack portends (Washington Post) Clinton Lynn, a retired fire captain, firmly believes that the election was stolen from President Trump, and he says that those who share his views are finding an ever-narrowing path to express their outrage, losing at the ballot box, the jury box and now the soapbox. If you take away those things, he says, what is left? “I’m so mad, I see red about the [expletive] steal,” said Lynn, 64, sitting in his Kansas farmhouse over the weekend. “I believe with all my heart that the Democratic Party stole the election, and I will never believe otherwise as long as I draw breath. Liberals, you’re driving us to civil war.” As authorities raise alarms about the potential for more extremist violence in the wake of the storming of the U.S. Capitol, Americans across the political spectrum are also bracing for more and grappling with the realization that Jan. 20—Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day—may be not the end of the Trump era but the beginning of a new dark chapter in American history. In a HuffPost poll Friday, about a third of Trump voters said they sympathized with the Capitol mob, and a majority of respondents said they did not believe last week’s riot was an isolated incident. Lynn, for example, said he was seeing calls for violent retribution continue to spread on conservative websites such as Newsmax and on social media apps such as Gab and Parler. “I don’t know how this will manifest itself in our country, because they are pushing us to the edge,” Lynn said. “... I’m not advocating we pick up arms—right now.”

Manhunt Intensifies as Authorities Warn Some Rioters May Face Sedition Charges (NYT) Federal law enforcement officials vowed on Tuesday to accelerate a nationwide manhunt for hundreds of people who committed serious crimes during last week’s assault on the Capitol, even as new evidence surfaced that the F.B.I., police and White House were warned of potential violence that day. Michael R. Sherwin, the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, called the investigation into the attack on the Capitol “unmatched” in scope and said it had already resulted in more than 170 cases involving 100,000 digital tips. He pledged that prosecutors could file charges of seditious conspiracy, murder and other serious felonies in the weeks ahead. His remarks came as evidence mounted that before the grim events at the Capitol, top officials in government had reason to be deeply concerned about the possibility of violence. The indications included a pair of F.B.I. reports that warned of war and blowing up a building at a Midwest statehouse.

Capitol Hill assault revives calls for domestic terrorism law (The Intercept) Since Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday, evidence has piled up showing that many had violent intentions. Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin, a former Defense Department official who touted her experience as a CIA analyst in Iraq and her expertise on terrorism and insurgencies when she ran for Congress in 2018, told MSNBC. “We are in a new era.” While noting that external threats like Russia and China remained, Slotkin continued that “the single greatest national security threat right now is our internal division. It’s the threat of domestic terrorism. It’s that polarization that threatens our democracy.” However Trump leaves office, a new Congress appears poised to revive a years-old debate on whether the U.S. should expand the legal framework for going after “domestic terrorism.” But civil liberties advocates are wary of such a move, noting that federal law enforcement already has powerful tools to investigate and prosecute acts of domestic terrorism without any new laws, and that importing the anti-terrorism framework risks creating broad and vague powers that could be used to go after activists or religious minorities. “Anyone familiar with the scope of surveillance and targeting of Black political dissent, or Muslim communities, knows that law enforcement has all the tools it needs to aggressively disrupt and hold accountable those who planned and participated in the storming of the Capitol,” said Diala Shamas, a staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights.

World warily watches America’s postelection aftershocks (AP) For America’s allies and rivals alike, the chaos unfolding during Donald Trump’s final days as president is the logical result of four years of global instability brought on by the man who promised to change the way the world viewed the United States. From the outside, the United States has never looked so vulnerable—or unpredictable. Alliances that had held for generations frayed to a breaking point under Trump—from his decision to back out of the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal, to quitting the World Health Organization amid a pandemic. And then, by seeking to overturn his loss to Joe Biden, Trump upended the bedrock principle of democratic elections that the United States has tried—and sometimes even succeeded—in exporting around the world. How long those aftershocks could endure is unclear. People tend to think of fragile countries “in terms of war as the biggest problem, rather than violence, and thinking in terms of state collapse as the biggest problem rather than states that internally disintegrate,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, a scholar of democracy and violence at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Kleinfeld, like many others, said the assault on the U.S. Capitol may have come to a head in a matter of weeks but was years in the making. And the U.S. capacity to fight for democracy was already tarnished before the mob egged on by Trump sought to overturn his election loss. For many, those events were merely confirmation. Adversaries including Russia, China and Iran used the violence to question U.S. democracy more generally. In many ways Europe has already moved on, forging ahead on the deal with Iran, negotiating a trade agreement with China spearheaded by Germany, and organizing global actions to protect the environment.

Northern Ireland stores see empty shelves as Brexit trade rules bite (AP) The U.K.’s biggest supermarket chains warned Wednesday that food supplies in Northern Ireland face disruption because of new checks imposed by Britain’s departure from the European Union. Britain left the economic embrace of the 27-nation bloc, the final stage of Brexit, at the end of 2020. A trade deal that took effect Jan. 1 allows Britain and the EU to trade in goods without quotas or tariffs. But that is a far cry from the seamless, hassle-free trade the U.K. enjoyed while it was part of the EU’s single market. Companies face new expense and red tape, including customs declarations and border checks. Firms already say they are staggering under the burden of new paperwork. After photos emerged showing empty shelves, the chief executives of Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Iceland, Co-Op and Marks & Spencer wrote to the government saying there would be “significant disruption” unless urgent action was taken to fix an “unworkable” system.

Indian partying hotspot Goa counts losses, braces for change (AP) The sun’s golden rays fall on Goa’s smooth, sandy beaches every evening, magical as ever but strangely quiet and lonely. This holiday season, few visitors are enjoying the celebrated sunsets in the Indian party hotspot. The unspoken fear of the coronavirus is sapping Goa’s vibrant beach shacks and noisy bars of their lifeblood. A Portuguese colony until 1961, this western Indian state usually comes alive in December and January, its tourism-led economy booming with foreign travelers and chartered flights bringing in hordes of vacationers. The pandemic and the ensuing travel restrictions have changed everything. Nightlife has died. Seema Rajgarh, 37, is a lonely figure on nearly deserted Utorda beach in South Goa, her blue sari set against the expanse of the Arabian sea as she hawks jewelry made of beads and stones. None of the handful of domestic tourists is interested in buying them. On good days during the holiday season, the mother of three girls, the youngest not yet two years old, said she used to make 2,000 rupees ($27). Now, times are bleak. “Some days, I make barely 200 rupees ($2.7), not enough to even buy milk and food for my children,” she said.

In Kabul, Pocket Notes to Prevent Anonymous Death (NYT) Tareq Qassemi, a bookseller, lost a close friend to a suicide bombing that killed 80 civilians in Kabul one scorching summer day. Four years later, he still mourns his friend, but also the nameless Afghans who perished with him. Mr. Qassemi, 28, now carries a special slip of paper, known as a pocket note, that contains his full name, his blood type and the phone numbers of family members—like a homemade, civilian version of a soldier’s dog tags. He knows too well how fragile and ephemeral life in Kabul can be, and he refuses to become an unidentified victim. “I could get killed on my way to work or in a car or anywhere, and no one knows about me and they will look for my body everywhere,” he said. “I could just vanish.” The bearers of pocket notes hope the slips of paper will help emergency medical workers identify an injured person’s blood type for a lifesaving transfusion. They might also help authorities quickly summon family members for precious final moments with a mortally wounded loved one. And they could help identify a badly disfigured corpse.

Japan widens virus emergency for 7 more areas as cases surge (AP) Japan expanded a coronavirus state of emergency for seven more prefectures Wednesday, affecting more than half the population amid a surge in infections across the country. Prime Minister Yoshide Suga also said Japan will suspend fast-track business entry permits, fully banning foreign visitors while the state of emergency is in place. Suga’s announcement comes less than a week after he declared a state of emergency for Tokyo and three nearby prefectures. The new declaration, which adds seven other prefectures in western and central Japan, takes effect Thursday and lasts until Feb. 7. The government is asking bars and restaurants in Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo, Fukuoka, Aichi, Gifu and Tochigi prefectures to close by 8 p.m., employers to have 70% of their staff work from home and residents in the affected areas avoid going out for nonessential purposes.

Israel launches unusually intense strikes on Iranian positions in Syria (Washington Post) Israeli warplanes struck eastern Syria overnight on Wednesday, Syria's state-run news agency said, hitting targets that a local monitoring group said included Iranian military and associated militia positions and forces loyal to Syria President Bashar al-Assad. The bombardment lasted for 35 minutes, according to al-Mayadeen, a pro-Assad Lebanese channel, and was one of the largest-scale attacks on Syria in years. [The head of a monitoring group] said the attack killed no more than 40 members of local and foreign forces loyal to Assad. In a phone call with The Washington Post, he said Iranian-backed militias had brought a shipment of missiles into Syria to be stored at the warehouses in the past three weeks.

Breakfast (Food Dive) Breakfast as a concept has been a rare winner of the pandemic, with the absence of commutes for many leading to a more reliable pursuit of the first meal of the day. In 2020, home consumption of pancakes grew 25 percent over 2019, bacon was up 15 percent, and waffles were up 20 percent. Even the $8.5 billion cold cereal category, which had been in decline, bounced back. With the possibility of a return to normal approaching, the makers of those cereals are fretting about how to ensure that people will remain—to use industry jargon—cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

‘A pandemic of broken toes’: Life at home has been painful for feet (Washington Post) The coronavirus hasn’t been satisfied with unleashing a serious, contagious disease that has altered everyday life around the planet. In its overachieving way, it is also responsible for increases in anxiety and depression, teeth-grinding, anger, sleeplessness, migraines and another physical ailment being noted by orthopedists and podiatrists: “There’s a pandemic of broken toes,” said John Keeling, an orthopedic surgeon in Chevy Chase, Md. He estimates the number of broken toes seen at his office has tripled or quadrupled. Ben Pearl, a podiatrist whose practice is Arlington Foot and Ankle, said he has “absolutely” seen an increase in broken toes, “and the short reason is that with the pandemic, people are spending more time at home.” Keeling says that whatever his patients’ age, “they’re going around with either stocking or bare feet, and in the haste to get to the next meeting, they bump into the furniture.” Or, in an effort to improve our spaces, we might be moving furniture or carrying boxes of decluttered items or packages of online purchases, which we then drop on our toes. If you can avoid stubbing (or dropping something on) your toe in the first place, of course, you won’t need any [medical care].

Lost Passwords Lock Millionaires Out of Their Bitcoin Fortunes (NYT) Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million. The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations—to no avail. Bitcoin, which has been on an extraordinary and volatile eight-month run, has made a lot of its holders very rich in a short time. But the cryptocurrency’s unusual nature has also meant that many people are locked out of their Bitcoin fortunes as a result of lost or forgotten keys. They have been forced to watch, helpless, as the price has risen and fallen sharply, unable to cash in on their digital wealth. Of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin, around 20 percent—currently worth around $140 billion—appear to be in lost or otherwise stranded wallets, according to the cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis. Wallet Recovery Services, a business that helps find lost digital keys, said it had gotten 70 requests a day from people who wanted help recovering their riches, three times the number of a month ago.

#headlines #news

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brajeshupadhyay · 4 years ago

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Trump, House Republicans embrace candidate who believe in QAnon and has made racist statements

The decision has left many House Republicans privately griping about irresponsible leadership, even as they do little publicly to challenge the party’s position or to state their opposition to Greene’s joining their conference if she is elected in November, as is expected, in a reliably Republican district.

Greene promotes the QAnon conspiracy theory, whose followers believe Trump is battling a cabal of “deep state” saboteurs of his administration who worship Satan and traffic children for sex. She has also made racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic comments, asserting that Black people are “held slaves to the Democratic Party,” likening the election of the first two Muslim women to Congress to an “Islamic invasion of our government” and calling George Soros, the liberal Jewish donor and Holocaust survivor, a “Nazi himself trying to continue what was not finished.”

Some retiring members spoke out against the party’s accepting Greene into its ranks, but those seeking reelection were reluctant to do so.

“How can we warmly receive someone that’s publicly stated some of the things she stated in her videos?” asked retiring Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-Mich.). “You can’t dismiss people because of their religious beliefs and their ethnicity. You can’t. … It’s just wrong.”

The rise of Greene shines a spotlight on the GOP’s internal debate over how to handle fringe groups and candidates who support Trump and whom he often supports in return. Republicans privately acknowledge that there is no future for a party that antagonizes people of color and has members who make statements or take policy positions supported by white supremacists. But they also have done little to stand up to Trump, a president who embraces such rhetoric and candidates who make those remarks.

Greene’s emergence comes during a summer of protests that have sharpened questions about how to address racial discrimination after the death of another Black man, George Floyd, in police custody. Democrats have embraced the calls for greater racial justice, and on Tuesday, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden announced his selection of Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) to be his running mate. She is the first Black woman and first Asian American to run on a major-party presidential ticket.

McCarthy’s decision to welcome Greene into the Republican conference also comes against the backdrop of party leaders’ last year stripping Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) of his committee assignments after he publicly wondered how white nationalism and white supremacy had become “offensive.” The move followed years of pressure for the party to disown King, who lost a primary this year. Some House Republicans have been left scratching their heads over the quick acceptance of Greene.

“We’re going to look like hypocrites,” said one senior House Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from party leaders.

Greene, who owns a construction company, was originally a Republican contender in suburban Atlanta, challenging Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath in the 6th Congressional District, but Greene relocated and switched races when Republican Rep. Tom Graves announced his retirement at the end of last year.

She has only doubled down on her controversial comments over the course of her campaign, offering a preview of the sort of oratory she might bring to Washington. On Wednesday, Greene used the Republicans’ online fundraising tool WinRed to solicit donations off using a vulgar and sexist expletive to describe House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

“Nancy Pelosi impeached @realDonaldTrump. She put our country through hell with the Russian collusion conspiracy,” Greene wrote. “She’s anti American & we’re going to kick that b— out of Congress. RT & donate below to help make this happen.”

Those remarks are in line with the type of rhetoric Greene has used on the campaign trail. One ad depicted her racking the slide on a semiautomatic rifle while warning antifa, a loose collection of activists who oppose fascism and have sometimes embraced property damage and violent protest in recent years, to “stay the hell out of northwest Georgia.”

Facebook removed the material from its website, citing policy violations. She also rejected the notion that inequalities exist.

“Guess what? Slavery is over. … Black people have equal rights,” she said in another video, first reported by Politico.

In response to the controversy over her comments, Greene defended herself in June and took aim at House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), both of whom condemned her remarks.

“Every Republican, every Christian Conservative is going to be called a racist and a bigot by the Fake News Media, as have Steve Scalise and Liz Cheney,” she said in a statement. “I’m sorry my future colleagues are unable to stand up to the pressure and fight back.”

Greene’s campaign did not respond to several requests for comment for this article. In a tweet Tuesday night, the candidate put reporters on notice that she would not be responding to inquiries, echoing Trump in calling the media “truly the enemy of the people.”

The division among Republicans over how to handle Greene’s runoff victory was apparent in Georgia on Wednesday. Some Republicans took to social media to congratulate her. Among them were Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) and her primary challenger Rep. Douglas A. Collins (R-Ga.), who are locked in a heated special election matchup.

Others, such as Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) withheld praise, reflecting the distinct political pressures at work in the state. Unlike Loeffler and Collins, who are competing for support in Georgia’s Republican strongholds, Perdue is fending off a challenge from Democrat Jon Ossoff.

Greene’s ascension could cause headaches for McCarthy, who faces growing discord within his ranks. More than a half-dozen members implored McCarthy to personally involve himself in the race. His own No. 2, Scalise, donated to and hosted a fundraiser for Greene’s primary opponent, John Cowan, a neurosurgeon, in hopes of stopping Greene.

Yet McCarthy — after initially distancing himself from Greene — decided to stay neutral. According to the candidate, he recently phoned her and signaled his support, though McCarthy’s office did not comment in response to questions about the encounter.

“We look forward to Georgians Andrew Clyde and Marjorie Taylor Greene — and all of our Republican candidates across the country — winning in November so that we can enact policies to renew the American dream, restore our way of life, and rebuild the greatest economy in the world,” McCarthy’s office said in a statement. “It’s clear that the Democrat Party does not share those goals.” (Clyde is a Republican candidate in Georgia’s 9th Congressional District.)

Greene’s embrace of QAnon elevates within the party what many see as a dangerous conspiracy theory identified by the FBI as a potential domestic terrorism threat. But many of the president’s supporters have embraced parts or all of the theory as has his campaign to some degree.

Just hours after Trump tweeted praise for Greene, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who served in the U.S. Air Force in Iraq and Afghanistan, said on Twitter that there is “no place” for such beliefs in Congress and mocked Q, the supposed person working within the bureaucracy to protect Trump from the “deep state.”

“Qanon is a fabrication,” he wrote on Twitter. “This ‘insider’ has predicted so much incorrectly (but people don’t remember PAST predictions) so now has switched to vague generalities. Could be Russian propaganda or a basement dweller. Regardless, no place in Congress for these conspiracies.”

That observation, which mentioned neither Greene nor the president by name, drew a swift and critical response from the Trump campaign.

“When will @RepKinzinger condemn the Steele Dossier fabrications and conspiracy theories pushed by Democrats? That actually WAS Russian propaganda,” a campaign spokesman, Matt Wolking, wrote on Twitter.

But though Greene’s association with QAnon has trained a national spotlight on her district, many Republicans said they are more concerned about her racist comments tainting their ranks at a time when the party and Trump are already unpopular with communities of color.

That’s one of the reasons retiring Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.) decided to help Greene’s primary opponent, working alongside members of the Georgia delegation to defeat her. Walker, a former pastor, has spoken to GOP leadership multiple times about doing more to welcome minorities into the party, not repel them.

Now, he said, the voters have spoken — and he’s hoping Greene decides to change her ways.

“She has been duly elected at this point,” Walker said Wednesday. “My take on this now is: I hope that she will grow and learn, but I still can’t deal with the fact that some of the comments are …” He trailed off. “They’re problematic to say the least, offensive.”

Greene is among numerous pro-Trump congressional candidates who have seemed to signal support for QAnon. More than a dozen of them will appear on the ballot in November. Unlike Greene, however, most stand little chance of being elected because their districts vote dependably for Democrats.

Some Republicans have justified the move to embrace Greene as the lesser of two evils. Sue Everhart, a former chairman of the Georgia GOP, said she disapproves of some of the candidate’s statements — especially the talk of Satan common to the QAnon worldview. But she said she prefers Greene to a Democrat, arguing that no candidate is perfect and expressing optimism that Greene will change her ways upon arriving in Washington.

“She is a Republican, and I’m glad she got it, but let’s just say I wasn’t close to her,” she said. “I wish her all the luck in the world. … I don’t speak ill of other Republicans.”

The post Trump, House Republicans embrace candidate who believe in QAnon and has made racist statements appeared first on Shri Times News.

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#Blogger #House Republicans embrace candidate who believe in QAnon and has made racist statements #Tr

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olmopress · 5 years ago

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The end.

week 13: Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, “Remediation”

Maghada Kingdom, Northern India. Somewhere around 2500 years ago:

I feel you Sha’

All beautiful things must end, and so also my smart-ass blogposts have to.

SAD

But I don’t know maybe you can pool some kind of financial resources and grant me a salary to write you reviews on stuff. It’d be cool, and I’d be constantly on strike to try and negotiate a better wage because

But anyways.

Before we start this last ride about digital media, I have a kind message addressed to my dear friends Bolter & Grusin

No for real guys. Don’t get me wrong here, your paper is great and you sound like chill dudes, but

DUDE

your points are SIMPLE, and we’re all grown ups with an education. You DO NOT have to state and re-state the obvious and make multiple and equally obvious examples

LIKE, WE GET IT

Instead NO, it takes these two little bitches something like

THIRTY PAGES

to get to the main point of the essay.

But oi, maybe I get it. Maybe you were writing for some whiny-ass professor/boss who gave you a nasty word count, or maybe editorial draconian policies by the journal forced you to do this. Boh. I don’t know. Don’t wanna antagonize her but reading you kids was a tour de force.

BUT LET US NOT GET DISTRACTED LIKE WE DO ALL THE FUCKING TIME

Bolter and Grusin’s article does something quite simple: it attempts to set theoretical lineaments to the three concepts of immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation. Very cool.

The ‘core’ of the whole essay is something pretty much like this:

Our [sick-ass neurotic] Western culture is fixated on both immediacy and hypermediation. To achieve the first, we [very reasonably and not at all pervertedly] paradoxycally construct hypermediated environments. But we do also the reverse [again great reasoning abilities here]: in going all-in for hypermediacy we tend to rely on seemingly immediate devices. All this media push-and-pull is fucking bipolar implies a logic of remediation, in which the emergence of every new media generates reciprocal ‘borrowings’ and incorporations between the new and the old.

Now Bolter. Grusin.

DOES MY PARAGRAPH LOOK THIRTY FUCKING PAGES LONG?

B & G: No

GOOD. THEN WHY THE HELL YOURS DOES?

Fucking academics, man. They drive me crazy.

So the point is that this logic of remediation is based upon the mutual dependence of contradictiory determinations (the fact that immediacy depends on hypermediacy). And well, what is it if not another episode of my highly acclaimed sit-com series

“What famous philosopher is featured in this paper?”

Our guest star today is a boy you’ve already seen in this post.

Oh yeah baby, keep those antithetical determinations struggling with each other!

And so yeah, “Immediacy depends upon hypermediacy,” and very much like an original synthesis that transcends thesis and antithesis,

“the desire for immediacy leads to a process of appropriation and critique by which digital media reshape or ‘remediate’ one another and their analog predecessors” (314).

From this point, B. & G. write words upon words to disscuss the concepts of immediacy and hypermediacy, constructing what they define a “genealogy” of the two concepts. But they means this in a very specific way. Is another guest star of “What famous philosopher is featured in this paper” coming to join us?

OF COURSE

but surprises don’t end here, because

IT’S A RETURN!

Oh yeah, your favorite bald philosophical sex symbol is back to tell you that by saying “genealogy” he means

“an examination of descent” which “permits the discovery, under the unique aspect of a trait or a concept, of the myriad events through which—thanks to which, against which—they were formed” (qtd. in 315).

Therefore Bolter and Grusin investigate the way in which these two concepts have been shaped by cultural discourse over history. Which is all fun and leisure, but not really that important to us.

One thing I did want to talk about tho is the political aspect of immediacy. So let me get this straight. When discussing VR, B&G write:

“All these enthusiasts promise us perceptual immediacy, experience without mediation. They expect virtual reality to diminish and ultimately to deny the mediating presence of the computer and its interface” (317).

Now, you have been blessed enough to encounter some Marxism in your life, you might be reminded of the crucial concept of ideology. An ideology is a set of beliefs shared by members of a society – or imposed upon them – that naturalizes artificial relationships and norms inside that community. The thing about ideologies, though, is that they are not immediately visible. They are, to borrow from B&G, transparent, because they are designed to be invisible and to provide a sense of immediacy in social dialectic. Moreover, the stronger an ideology is – the more rooted it is in culture – the less visible it is. We could say, for instance, that Mark Fisher’s concept of Capitalist Realism works as a very transparent ideology.

Rest in peace, comrade.

But going even deeper, it seems to me that this whole transparency thing is very totalitarian. Like VR is kind of totalitarian, because it seeks complete and utter control over your body and senses. Totalitarianism is like a transparent interface. It is a form of cultural VR. Or rather, ideology is a form of virtual reality.

And, oi, B&G make it clear enough that this works also when individuals have personal freedom. Sure, they’re talking about digital media, but still look at what they write:

“For if immediacy is promoted by removing the programmer/creator from the image, immediacy can also be promoted by involving the viewer more intimately in the image” (324).

That’s DEEP bruh.

Now let’s move on. So immediacy is essentially the dominant regime for much of the history of Western culture. Or at least ever since the Renaissance. It is the dream of being able to produce objects that trick us into believing that what we see is real. Fine.

Hypermediacy is sort of like its nemesis. It is the cultural regime of fragmentation, indeterminacy, multiplicity, heterogeneity and pretty much also of deliberate and explicit artificiality.

IT’S VERY POSTMODERN

VERY META-

It’s culture that is aware of its mediated nature, and breaks that suspension of disbelief stuff that makes you care for characters created by someone else.

youtube

See this at work in one of the greatest moments of digital media history.

Bolt ’n’ Grus have a lot of superfluous stuff to say about it, but unfortunately for them I am very postmodern too and my attention spans are short and so I’ll jump to remediation.

Remediation is B&S’s killer application. All their money is on this nice idea. The idea is that one of the defining characteristic of contemporary digital media – or rather, a phenomenon sparked by the emergence of them – is the fact that media represents other media in them. This, they say, can happen in four different modes.

1. Transparency: digital media highlights and re-presents an older media without any trace of irony or critique. This is like when you go search for that old album you really like on Apple Music. The platform does not ‘comment on’ the music. It just allows you to experience it by reproducing the older vynil/CD medium.

2. Emphasis on difference: digital media underlines and renders particularly evident the difference between itself and older media. Kinda like an improvement of older media through digital tools. This encompasses all the ‘expanded’ stuff you can get. Like library guides on our our library’s website. They are text-based like a physical library guide would, but they also have nice little video tutorials which improve them. Through the digital.

3. Refashoning: an ‘aggressive’ form of remediation that tries to refashion older media entirely while still signaling its presence and therefore retaining a sense of multiplicity. Here artificiality is explicit and discontinuity is visible. It is kind of like a new media collage. Something like this, perhaps:

youtube

4. Absorption and incorporation: the fourth and final mode is one in which discontinuity is minimized, because a media has entirely absorbed one or more characteristics of another one. Thus, we sort of come full circle, in the sense that absorption is superficially quite similar to transparency. Note that absorption works in both directions. Therefore you have it both in film through CGI and in videogames through cinematic cutscenes.

Our reading for this article ended with Bolter and Grusin saying that at the present moment (which for them is 1996, but non importa) all mediation is remediation, in the sense that “each medium or constellation of media […] responds to, redeploys, competes with, and reforms other media” (345). Which is also a way to offer a new connotation to the concept of media environment.

Now, sadly

WE ARE DONE.

It’s been a hell of a ride. I mean a hell. But also a ride. So we’re kind of even. It is time for me to bid you farewell; remind you to have protected sex always; assure you that, no, you won’t have panick attacks for the rest of your life (it’s the oppressive and ultra-competitive educational system’s fault); and re-assure you that, eventually, the dialectic of history will complete its cycle, unveil the inherent contradictions of capitalist societies, and prepare for the advent of a millenary communist civilization.

This come from Amazon, lol

Everything will turn out well. We will be fine. One day Donald Trump, Matteo Salvini, Boris Johnson, Marine Le Pen, Vladimir Putin, and Jair Bolsonaro will all rot in hell. We will probably have to deal with the catastrophic consequences of climate change brought about by capitalism but we’ll come out of this with a stronger, more inclusive, and more just society. Our dreams will come true and we’ll all become badass human beings who will be pillars of a reformed, humane society.

Enjoy the ride!

Today’s culture is a celebration of our struggles to become great and revolutionary individuals. Enjoy that too.

Coldplay - Lost!

youtube

William Blake, The Angel of Revelation (1805)

Adieu!

Image Sources: GIPHY, metmuseum.org, thenewpolis.com, micciacorta.it, amazon.com

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teq-talks · 5 years ago

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Digital Activism and Protest

Almost every day we see our friends liking or sharing charitable causes on social media. The global reach and power of social media in today's society is undeniable, in my opinion. The online world breaks down boundaries and connects people from different walks of life and gives us an opportunity to form communities in which everyone can participate in global public discussions without the restrictions of time and place. It has enabled digital citizens, including those in oppressive countries, to confront dominant views and the opportunity to participate in activist movements, as well as mobilise for protests and sometimes even social revolutions.

Social media is making us more connected and sometimes, this can result in societal change. These new connections and the ease of communication are also resulting in changes to the dynamic of the media landscape. The media we can access today is a mix of traditional media and media produced by users for others to read, share, comment on or act upon. Social media has given citizens a platform for interacting with higher echelons of society, allowing them to critique and even effect politics and sociocultural conditions. This has resulted in a comparatively new and dynamic media landscape which includes 'culture jamming'.

The phrase "culture jamming" was popularised by Mark Dery and is a reaction to the sociocultural and political conformities in today's society. It is the idea of producing media that highlights the flaws, inequalities and unethical elements of society by turning the media on itself with the intention to send a specific message or interrupt dominant “frequencies” usually broadcasted on that media channel.

Different forms of culture jamming include graffiti and performance art as well as “hacktivism” and “adbusting”.

Hacktivism (hack and activism) is the use of technology to promote a political agenda or a social change. One example of Internet activism is the online movement #MyStealthyFreedom.

It started almost accidentally, says the founder of the movement, Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist and human rights activist living in exile in Brooklyn. In 2014 she posted a photo of herself running on a London street with the caption:

“Every time I run in a free country and feel the wind through my hair it reminds me of when my hair was hostage to the Iranian government”.

She later posted a second photo of herself online, which was an old photo of herself, driving in the mountains without her hijab in Iran. The caption read: “you have to create your own secret moments of freedom” where she also encouraged other women to share their secret moments of freedom online. Numerous Iranian women gathered online and protested the obligatory dress code by posting photos on social media in order to make the government react. The law has now been lifted and women can legally expose their hair. This provides a clear demonstration of the power of social media as it was through social media that #MyStealthyFreedom spread to all areas of Iranian society and caused great change.

The king of culture jam (in my opinion) is the anonymous artist Banksy, who through his art, continuously critics the rules of society, capitalism and today's excessive consumer culture. The elusive artist is behind numerous headlines like “What the Hell Happened: Banksy Shreds His Painting”. The painting made by Banksy sold for $1.4 million dollars, last year, at an art auction. Immediately after being sold, the painting shredded itself and according to the artist himself, it was to critique the excesses of the art market.

Banksy posted an Instagram video of himself installing the shredder into the frame back in 2006 (!!) with the caption:

“The urge to destroy is also a creative urge’ —Picasso.”

youtube

“Adbusting” is the act of turning an advertisement message against itself to prove a point or send a message

youtube

However, some are asking just how effective online activism really is and claim that social media simply introduces a new passivity amongst its users because it makes us feel like we are doing more than we actually are, and thinking that the job is done by clicking like or sharing a post. Bettens reminds us that we can not assume everything can be done from behind the comforts of a phone screen and “we shouldn't “overlook more “traditional” forms of activism”.

I believe that social media can be a very powerful tool for promoting awareness and creating change. However, we must tread a middle ground. While these platforms are good for spreading ideas, it takes real action to make changes in society. We should use these platforms in addition to traditional forms of political activism and protest to have the greatest impact.

#Social media #Digital Citizen #digital art #activist

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gospelmusic · 4 years ago

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DANGERS OF SEXUAL SINS.

.. I AM WRITING THIS MESSAGE TO THOSE WHO ARE GENUINELY BORN AGAIN, BUT THEY ARE STRUGGLING WITH SOME SECRET SINS... BECAUSE, I WAS ONCE THERE! .... There is something glorious about your future God will show you, you will not need your pastor to keep preaching holiness message to you daily... (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); When you see a girl singing in the choir, yet, from the choir, she keeps sexual appointments, check that girl, she has not seen anything yet about her future... When you see a young boy who dresses to church, to seduce those small girls to bed and his mates will be clapping for him, check that boy, he has a spiritual eye problem... He hasn't seen anything about his future yet... If you do it again and again and again, God will forgive you again and again and again... But, while He is busy forgiving you, angels are busy searching for some one else heaven will use to replace you ... (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); What separates men before God is not how long they can pray or how much scriptures they know... The value God places on people is not determined by the position they occupy in the church... But how much they can bear for His Name sake... Some times, He allows your salary to be delayed, to know if you will start stealing in your office... Sometimes, He allows some lose ladies to start suggesting sex with you, to know if you have grown... But unfortunately, you still fall again .... Yes, He will forgive.... But, you will still remain in the same class in the school of glory... Decision separates men... There is an OIL that comes with separation... The weight of a man is buried in the decisions he makes when no one is watching him ... Many times, God allows you to be lonely so that you can be holy... Forget this public revival messages all of us are preaching... Many are still behind in the school of glory... Not because they chose to, but because they still don't want to pay the price of separation... If it takes a man to be married to be responsible, we will not have many married irresponsible men scattered all over the place who are renting houses for their girlfriends, while their wives are still at home.... (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); When a man is due for marriage, he should get married... But don't tell me to get married because you want me to escape fornication... Marriage is not an escape route into a responsible life... What you cannot control when you are single has the power to control you even when you are married ... No matter how beautiful your wife will be, you will still see other beautiful ladies.... Teach me how to die to flesh sir... Teach me that I can live alone in a house alone and yet, I will not think rubbish thoughts... Joseph was not married before he ran away naked from Portiphar's wife bedroom ... It was not a marital ring on his finger that made him refuse that gesture.... But because he knew the future God has planned for Him will be messed up by a single decision.... God wants to raise a generation of young boys and girls that will love God where no one is seeing them ... God wants to raise a breed that doesn't appear holy only when they see their parents or their pastors... This holiness by dressing is sending people from choir seats to hell fire... They are dying in secret sins, yet, they have none to cry to, because, once they confess, they will be stigmatized... (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Consequently, we are raising a generation that is speaking in tongues on their way to hell... Sister, singing in choir doesn't confer value on men before God, but decision... Stop attaching your spiritual growth on night vigils where you go and flog enemies ... God is waiting for you when no one is there... If you can succeed there, you will be a commander of the supernatural... The greatest tool against the end time church is the adulteration of the message of grace... They teach you that God will forgive... But they will not teach you that God will not promote you to another class... No matter how you love your child, you will not give him your car key to use when you know he has not perfected his driving... As long as that child is finding it hard to drive perfectly, he will keep trekking to school... There is someone reading this posts now, heaven is saying that you are due for manifestation, but you have not made a decision yet... You are still afraid of hunger.... You don't want to starve.... You are ashamed of what people will say when you stop sleeping with men for money to pay bills... They have even told you that there is no young person like you that doesn't have sexual partners... That human beings were wired by God to fall and rise again... Several times, you have made moves to delete all those phone numbers that connect you to your vomits... But you have been afraid of the days of loneliness... You don't want to miss those cuddles... You don't know if you can ever look into his eyes and tell him: "No more sex"... Even if he accepts, you are afraid that you might never cope... Sister, don't let weekend orgasms rob you of eternal value... Your enemy is no more that witch in the village.... But any man that is making you comfortable in a place of rebellion with God ... Don't be in church singing in the choir and God will go to the nearest hotel and catch a prostitute, wash her, clean her and fill her with His power... I know you have been trying to make amends ... You have answered altar calls several times, yet, you still fall back, even more deeper ... (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Some of us were there not too long ago... Singing in choir, leading in powerful prayer sections, yet, battling with addictions... Worse of all we were afraid to tell anyone... Because, people around would never have understood how much we were trying to be better ... We bought different anointing oil, from different men of God, yet, we were not free... We even afflicted ourselves with fastings... Yet, nothing changed ... Until we encountered the Word of God..... When Jesus said that " We are made clean by the Words that I speak unto you..." We began to read and study the Bible... Like Job, we began to esteem God's Word above our necessary food... Gradually, addictions began to lose its grip... God began to change our appetites... Until today, the darkness is past, the true Light now shineth ... Brother, I want to recommend you to the Word of God.... The Word of God will settle that lust issue... Don't go and rush into marriage if you are not ready, because you want to avoid temptation... The spirit of lust does not respect wedding ring... Especially now that our sisters who are still in Babylon even prefer having it with married men ... (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); There are still single guys who are serving God in spirit and in truth... 5 chapters of the bible every day and 1 hour prayers or more... You will see that your mind will stop going to those thoughts ... Jesus did not say it is easy... But He said that with God all things are possible ... Your heart is beating faster now as you are reading this... You are wondering if you will ever get free from the things you are struggling with... Friend, that God that did it for us, He will show up on your case... Receive grace to feast on the Word from now.... In Jesus Name...please teach the young ones in your church and God bless you. There is no obligation to share. No whips or curses if you don't share. But we both know that when you share this, it goes a long way to help someone. So I'm asking you to help someone . .. Thank you for reading God bless you. Author: Unknown Follow us on social media: Facebook: @hottestnaija.com Twitter: @wherehot Instagram: @hottest9jablog Click here to take a look at our posts on gospel music download or click this link to see all posts that include gospel music lyrics You may also like our gospel worship songs page which contains, the best, coolest and hottest Nigerian Gospel Songs, and Foreign Gospel Songs. Whatsoever is the mood, we've got you covered. Do you feel like dancing, rejoicing, shouting, screaming, or you're filled with jubilation because of the Mighty things the Lord has done? Then look no further, cos our gospel praise songs page, containing the hottest Nigerian and foreign praise songs collection, was prepared specifically for you. Peradventure you need the lyrics of the songs you are downloading now, just downloaded, or have downloaded before, our lyrics page is the best place to look. What more could be more helpful and entertaining than seeing the lyrics of your most favourite song before you, as the music unfolds unto the climax. Hey we've been there before, and still encounter it from time to time when the vocals get lost in the cloud of heavy orchestration. Are You a Classical Music lover, our classical music page, contains the best of classical songs, composed and written by composers like G. F Handel, Bach, Joseph Haydn, etc. As you listen to your best gospel song, you may also want to get some more insight and knowledge about the word of God, from eBooks written by God's servants, or you may want to learn something new or build yourself up in some way. Then our eBook Page is the right place to look. You may be in need of entertainment, and probably want to watch a video too. We understand that as well. You can get entertaining video downloads from our video downloads page.

#Music #Lyrics

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megacircuit9universe · 5 years ago

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What Will the 2020s Be Like?

DEC 13 2019

I focus a lot in this blog on technology, because it’s something I understand, and also because it does very much transform society and civilization. The cotton gin made slavery sustainable, and the Civil War, therefore, inevitable.

Tech made WW1 the deadliest war ever, and many believe that the advances of tech in the 1920s (radio, telephone, automobiles, etc) was so disruptive, it made the Great Depression inevitable.

WW2 wasn’t so much brought on by advances in technology, but more than any other event before it (or arguably since) it catapulted technology forward. From the first rockets and computers, to the first atomic bombs.

I grew up in the 1970s, which was the peak of the analog world... the world of newspapers, and three-network broadcast TV. There was an antenna on every roof... a pay phone and a mail box on every street corner. Cameras used film, recorders used tape, and electric typewriters had ribbons.

Your watch and your clock were analog, as was your record player. Your electric guitar had pick ups that fed an analog signal to an amplifier with a tube inside it. And your car... well all the gauges on your dashboard had needles. Any feedback systems it had, such as the automatic transmission, power steering, or the carburetor, relied on fluid dynamics or vacuum pressure.

Tech-wise, the 1970s wasn’t much different from the 1960s or the 1950s, other than doing all these things more cleverly... as one would expect after several decades of honing techniques.

Politically, however, the 1970s was a lot different from the 1950s, because of all the upheaval and transformation that happened through the 1960s. Civil rights were finally being taken seriously. The Draft had disappeared in favor of an all volunteer military. Social conformity was out the window forever. Secularism was on the rise, abortion was legal, and divorce was becoming more common and more acceptable.

Conservatives have never gotten over these political changes, which is why they have, in every succeeding decade, fought dirtier and more desperately to regain control of society... still dreaming to this day of overturning Roe V Wade, for example, but also longing to bring back racism, the subjugation of women, the persecution of gays, and state sanctioned Christianity to the exclusion of all other religions... and of science.

Not that I want this entry to be a screed about conservatism... so let’s just acknowledge that they’ve always been out there, through the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, and teens... struggling like hell to claw us all back to the 1950s any way they can... and move on...

Having grown up in the 1970s, I became of teenager of the 1980s. So I can recall clearly that what made the 1980s different from the previous three decades was the advent of, “electronics.”

I put that word, “electronics,” in quotes to emphasize that this was still a world that did not have computers as we know them now, and nobody thought of their electronic devices as being, “digital”.

Yes, home computers existed in the 1980s... for hobbyists. I even had a very crude home computer, the Timex/Sinclair 2000 in the early 80s, but there wasn’t much you could do with it, and after it flopped, all support for it vanished.

This was the story for a lot of home computers in the 1980s. If they were useful for anything, it was teaching you how to program in BASIC, and learn the fundamentals about how these analytical engines worked, but many people saw them as kind of a fad.

Only super hardcore computer geeks really stuck with them through the 1980s. The rest of us just kind of lived our lives, knowing they were out there, but not really thinking they would ever matter much.

Electronics, on the other hand, was seen as a different kind of tech that really did revolutionize our everyday lives in this decade before the World Wide Web came into its own.

The term, “electronic,” was for any device from the analog days, that now had a circuit board inside it... with transistors on it... maybe a chip? People didn’t talk a lot about chips in the 80s, even if they did exist inside our devices.

A Telephone, for example, was an analog thing in the house, with big curly cords. In the early 70s, they still all had analog dials on them. By the late 70s, they all had all become, “touch tone,” with a keypad that sounded, “electronic,” tones to do the “dialing.” But the first truly electronic phones, were the magical cordless phones... with the stubby antenna on the handset that you could amazingly take all the way out to the front stoop!

This same kind of transformation happened to everything... from digital clocks, to electronic tape decks, cameras, speedometers, and even typewriters with little LCD screens on them, that could save what you were writing to little discs... which they called, “word processors.” :O

There were a million hand held devices... I remember owning an electronic dictionary and thesaurus, about the size of a small tablet today, and twice as thick, with a tiny LCD screen. It allowed you to play a few shitty word based games like hangman. It seemed like a modern marvel.

Video arcade games, of course, had a massive impact on our lives in the 1980s, as well as the first home game consoles, for those who could afford them... usually the upper middle class families that also could afford cable TV.

And after video games, the other huge tech that really transformed our lives was the video recorder. Again, you had to have some money to own one back then, but those giant, klunky camcorders of the day were a massive improvement over the old Super8 film cameras that only recorded video, with no sound.

With a camcorder, you not only could capture both video and sound, but on magnetic tape, rather than film... which meant you could watch it immediately. No need to have it developed... or rent a projector!

I could go on, but the point here is that the 1980s was a time when the analog world of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, was being magically transformed by electronics, and we really felt like electronics were going to allow us to do anything... and yet nobody imagined home computers, networked together, would be a part of that.

The original Ghost Busters movie from 1984 is a wonderful example of this, because it’s set in the real world... which is beset by the supernatural problem of ghosts, spirits, vengeful gods that range from nuisances, to existential threats, but heretofore have never been tangible, touchable, or provable.

But three, clever, modern men of the 1980s have developed an arsenal of electronic devices to deal with these ghosts. They can detect and analyze them, track them, attack them, trap them, and hold them in a containment grid... all with state of the art transistorized tech.

The movie really captured the feeling of the times, like no other... that we can use electronics, here on Earth (rather than in a galaxy far far away) to deal with problems in our everyday lives (rather than hacking into NORAD to teach an AI that nuclear war is pointless) and be heroes in our home town.

Young people did take that message to heart, embracing electronics to do what young people like to do... create stuff. In 21st century parlance we would say they were creating, “content,” but at the time, the big problem was in publishing said content.

Garage bands recorded songs and albums. Others recorded videos, both long, short, and very short form videos. People wrote poems and prose on their word processors... started, “zines,” which were published using photocopiers, in stapled booklets.

All this stuff we attempted to shop to big publishers, who’s gate keepers ignored it, so we tried to sell zines, and indie tapes in local record stores, or showcase local videos at get-togethers in coffee houses. We developed an, “underground,” of indie music, video, writing, comics, etc... which relied on a network of high school and college students disseminating copies of content from hand to hand, throughout the country, and across the pond.

Most of the greatest musicians and other artists of the 1980s... the ones who did get signed to indie studios to produce more professional material... were never acknowledged by the mainstream media... which by the 80s was under the control of 30-something baby-boomers whose only agenda was to celebrate their own youth, and crank out cheep garbage pop for commercial consumption.

So, when the 1990s arrived, and the World Wide Web came into being, with cheep, but reliable home computers that had dial up modems to get anybody with a paycheck online... that underground movement from the 80s took it over immediately.

Most of us had at least some prior experience with BASIC, as mentioned above, and knew the fundamentals about computing... even if we hadn’t used that knowledge much for several years.

Now, those skills were suddenly relevant, and most of us were still young enough (in our twenties now, rather than our teens) to take on the learning curves necessary to do everything from code HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, but learn how to work on and upgrade our machines, how to master operating systems and all the big applications... the word and graphics processors, the animation tools, the video tools, the audio tools... how to get freeware... how to make freeware... you name it.

The teens of the 1980s, including those hard core computer hobbyists mentioned above, who helped build the primordial backbone that would become the WWW a decade later, built the internet. We pioneered it, formatted it’s culture... of memes, piracy, boundless creativity, and the free sharing of ideas and technology.

And we did it all in the late 1990s and early 2000s before the mainstream media had any real clue that this silly internet thing could be come kind of a threat to their carefully curated analog kingdom.

Flaming and trolling were things back then... conspiracy theories, fake news, and disinformation were problems back then... but they were manageable. Nothing like what they are now, at the end of the twenty-teens.

The problem there, is that in the twenty-teens, the old conservative farts finally left the safe confines of AOL and began to slowly populate places like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter... as did all the AM radio shock jocks they listened to.

At the same time, “Big Media,” began to take the internet seriously as a threat, with YouTube and Netflix stealing so many of their captive eyeballs and earlobes, and launched a hostile takeover of the internet that continues to play out to this day... with Disney buying up every franchise and attempting to shut down Netflix, and net neutrality itself having been destroyed by the Trump administration two years ago now, allowing ISPs to partner with big media outlets and throttle competitors content, as they all attempt to stamp out independent, original content altogether.

YouTube’s on life support, for independent creators. Tumblr is a zombie husk of what it was just two years ago. Twitter is a hellscape. Facebook is for lifeless mannequins. Vine is dead. Blogger and LiveJournal are forgotten to time. MySpace, Geocities and AngelFire... all ashes now. All destroyed by blind corporate greed and the same army of bigoted killjoys we’ve been trying to beat back since the dawn of civilization.

Still, technology continues to evolve, and the internet of 2019 is not the desktop computer based internet of 1999. Twenty years later, it’s become a wireless internet that’s expanded to include very powerful handheld devices which can do everything every, “electronic,” device of the 1980s did, and much more... all in a thing that fits in your shirt pocket.

This changes the game going into the 2020s, as smart phones settle into their final form factor... and slowly begin to assume their ultimate role as the, “mission brain,” for an individual’s life.

In the 2020s, my phone will not just bluetooth to my watch, and be the thing I bank and shop with, as it is today. It will talk to my car, if I still own a car. It will talk to my house, if I own a house. It will talk to my smart glasses, overlaying my view of the world with augmented reality. It will be even talk to me... and work with me to solve any problem I might have... from finding a dog walker, to complex legal and financial issues.

From a political perspective... it will represent me in polls... the way today’s smart phone and land line phones have never done. And it will register me to vote, remind me when to do it three weeks early, and clear my schedule, and get me a ride if necessary... meaning voter turnout will be far higher than ever before among the younger demographics... from 18 to 55... or GenZ up to GenX... with aging Boomers still sitting on Facebook at their desktops, paying their bills with paper checks unable to understand why even primaries and midterms are largely decided by the time they show up in their walkers to vote straight Republican down the ticket, like what’s worked in their favor for many decades.

The bigger picture here, if you zoom back... is that, with the form factor of smart phones having been worked out in the twenty-teens, the big advances in the 2020s will be in the AI those devices have.

And that coming level of AI, will allow individuals to continuously circumvent any roadblocks the corporate and political behemoths of old try to lay down for us... from bureaucratic red tape and voter suppression, to monopolization of media and markets, to censorship and the moderation of free speech.

I know all of that sounds idyllic and Utopian... and loudly echoes the original view of what the internet was gonna do for humanity, back in the 1990s... but much of what we have today would have seemed overly-futuristic and impossible just twenty years ago.

I’m sure there will still be a dark political backdrop to deal with, as today’s upsurge of racism and fascism around the world struggles to stay relevant.

And the effects of climate change through the 2020s will be another big source of darkness and drama like we are only beginning to see at the end of the teens... which will trigger major transformations in the way we all live.

Homes will get smaller and more efficient. Car ownership will dive to new lows. Families will get smaller, and suburban sprawl will ebb backward, creating, “ghost subdivisions,” haunted by the spirits of Karen and Craig.

They will follow the trend of today’s abandoned shopping malls, which will also only get worse.

Meanwhile, weed will come to be legalized nationally... as it is already doing state by state, leading to an eventual end to the War on Drugs, and much of the gang violence related to drug trafficking... as well as an influx of tax money, even before we’ve figured out how to tax the rich at a fair rate.

The 2020s will not be without their tumult and tribulations, but I believe that on the whole, compared to the twenty-teens, they will be a lot less crazy, and a lot more hopeful.

Time traveler traffic... also... won’t be nearly as heavy.... which will ease the craziness considerably.

As for aliens?... well... Trump might just get his Space Force so... they will probably be taking the brunt of the trolling from the aliens, rather than the Air Force... for whatever that’s worth.

Time for bed.

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sempiternalsandpitturtle · 6 years ago

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Marketing 101: Everything you need to know

If you’ve found your way to our blog chances are you work in marketing or you want some help with your marketing. But whether you’re an experienced marketer or a rookie we hope you’ll find something useful in this post.

This is our marketing 101 – an introduction to marketing. We’ve got a lot to cover so here’s a quick summary of what you’ll find if you keep reading:

CHAPTER ONE: A brief history of marketing

Okay, let’s not get carried away. We’re not starting with sponsored cave paintings. But we’ll take a look at some of the principles of marketing and how marketing has changed over the past 20 years.

CHAPTER TWO: Building a marketing team

Next we’ll get into the different skills you’ll want access to in order to run effective marketing campaigns. To make this a little more interesting we’ve staffed your marketing department from the cast of the Avengers. We’ll also look at in-house versus outsourcing. And we’ll highlight some of the bear traps to avoid when working with third parties.

CHAPTER THREE: Marketing tactics and strategies

The third and final section will take a whistlestop tour through the most popular marketing tactics and strategies. We’ll cover content creation, SEO, social media marketing and email. And also run through the different challenges and opportunities at each stage of the marketing funnel.

“Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.” Mark Twain

CHAPTER ONE: A brief history of marketing

via GIPHY

It’s hard to imagine a marketing campaign today that doesn’t involve one or both of Google and Facebook. Marketing though is as old as the hills. But we’ll save the marketing trends of ancient Rome for another blog post. Here we’ll stick to the more recent history.

First, let’s define what we mean by marketing. The Oxford English Dictionary defines marketing like this:

“The action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.”

HubSpot, the marketing automation platform, has a more in-depth definition, which we prefer:

“Marketing is the process of getting people interested in your company’s product or service. This happens through market research, analysis, and understanding your ideal customer’s interests. Marketing pertains to all aspects of a business, including product development, distribution methods, sales, and advertising.”

And if you didn’t like either of those, here are no fewer than 72 definitions of marketing. Something for everyone in there.

Like David Packard (the “P” in HP) said: “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department”. It’s not a bolt-on or an after-throught. At least, it shouldn’t be. Marketing is something that should be woven into the fabric of an organisation.

Philip Kotler, regarded by many as the father of modern marketing, describes marketing as “the art of creating genuine customer value”. Professor Kotler has published close to 60 books on marketing since the 1970s. Something he’s written and spoken about extensively is the different marketing orientations that have captured the attention of marketers and business leaders over the years. As this is the history chapter let’s dive into that.

Marketing philosophies, concepts and orientations

There are a whole bunch of models and frameworks for analysing different approaches to marketing through the decades. We’re going with a popular one: the five marketing concepts as set out by Graeme Drummond and John Ensor (descriptions are our own):

The Production Concept: This stack ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap approach emerged during the industrial revolution. The idea is that supply creates its own demand. Companies should focus on scale and efficiency, because what consumers want is easily-available, affordable products. The priority for marketing is raising awareness. There is still plenty of evidence of this approach in practice today.

The Product Concept: This one is in many ways a reaction to the Production Concept. Rather than price and availability the focus here is quality. Companies build their strategy and marketing campaigns around their product’s quality, performance and features.

The Selling Concept: We could sum up this one as: “churn and burn”. The idea is to aggressively chase down every deal and prioritise short-term sales numbers over everything else.

The Marketing Concept: This orientation treats the customers a little less like sheep and instead puts them at the heart of the strategy. The Marketing Concept is about understanding what the customer wants. And then creating a marketing plan that speaks to those needs more effectively than your competition.

The Societal Concept: This final orientation builds on the Marketing Concept. The needs of the customer are still paramount. But it also considers the wider impact of the organisation’s activities on the environment, community and natural resources.

Marketing in the digital age

You don’t have to work in marketing to be aware that the internet has been a huge disruptor in the marketing space. The internet has changed how people work, shop, entertain themselves and interact with one another. No industry has escaped the internet’s winds of change, but few have felt them as keenly as marketing.

Let’s take a look at where marketing dollars have been doing over the past 20 years. Back in 1999, we were all worrying about the Millennium Bug, the Backstreet Boys were number one and “The Matrix” had just come out. Marketing looked very different.

Fewer than 300 million people had access to the internet. As a result, television, print and outdoor advertising gobbled up the lion’s share of marketing budgets.

Fast forward to 2019 and we still have the Backstreet Boys. But the global internet population has exploded to 4.3 billion, according to Internet World Stats. This is what happened to ad spend over that period, courtesy of Zenith Media, an ad agency.

You can see that online ads have now eclipsed other channels. Outdoor was the first to go in 2005, followed a year later by radio. Print, which has lost the most market share to digital, went in 2013. Television spend has been growing, driven by a renaissance in content quality. But even that was overtaken by online spend in 2016. Zenith predicts that 2019 internet ad spend will top USD $274 billion.

But these headline numbers don’t tell the real story. This is really about the two companies we mentioned in our introduction. Two companies the Backstreet Boys wouldn’t even have heard of when they were working on the lyrics to “I Want It That Way”.

Facebook first. Last year, the world’s largest social media network made USD $55 billion from advertising. That’s around a fifth of global online ad spend, but really it’s small potatoes. According to its parent company, Alphabet, our favourite search engine, Google, raked in more than USD $116 billion in 2018 from its ad products.

CHAPTER TWO: Building a marketing team

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Okay, we admit “how [insert product or service] is like [insert pop culture reference]” content is a massive cliche. But they went to a lot of effort with Avengers: Endgame (it cost USD $400 million) and you won’t hear about much else over the next couple of weeks. So, we’re doing it. Marketers, assemble!!

Web Design and UX: Tony Stark/Iron Man

As the man himself said in the first Avengers movie: “I just pay for everything and design everything, make everyone look cooler.” Most web designers don’t have to pick up the tab. But they are essential when it comes to getting your marketing reality to match your vision.

What you’re looking for here is a techie who doesn’t just know how to build what you want but can also bring their own UX knowledge to your marketing campaigns. Tony has a bit of an ego that needs managing, but all the best hires do.

Analytics: David Banner/Hulk

Miss your numbers and he’ll turn green and demolish the office. But that’s a small price to pay in order to have your biggest brain crunching the numbers. Analytics are crucial to successful marketing. From understanding what your data is telling you to making the case for more budget.

You want someone who’s comfortable, not just with Google Analytics, but also whatever social media pages and third party tracking tools you’re using.

Creative: Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow

If you don’t have any actual super powers you have to get creative. Not the most tenuous link you’ll see in this month’s Endgame-inspired marketing blog deluge.

Ms Romonoff will add flair and the imagination you need to set your marketing campaigns apart from the competition. She’ll be able to turn her hand to design and video or find people who can. And she’ll come up with original and compelling ideas for packaging, presenting and promoting your key messages.

Writing: Thor

“Families can be tough. Before my father died, he told me I had a half-sister … that he imprisoned in Hell. Then she returned home, and stabbed me in the eye, so … I had to kill her. It’s life, isn’t it, I guess. I feel your pain.”

The God of Thunder has a way with words and got most of the best lines in “Avengers: Infinity War”, so look no further for your writer.

With such a premium on original content – and lots of it – you’ll always have plenty for your writer or writers to do. From turning out blogs and crafting new landing pages to snappy ad copy and engaging emails with clickable subject lines.

Editor: Clint Barton/Hawkeye

A poor man’s Jason Bourne, maybe. But he has an eye for detail. So, Clint Barton is your first choice for editor. It will be the editor’s job to ensure your campaigns fit the brief and that your brand guidelines are properly observed at all times.

Strategy and Project Management: Steve Rogers/Captain America

Experience is a vital element on any team. And how often do you get the chance to hire someone from America’s greatest generation?

Cap is a shoo-in for the strategy and project management role. You need someone who commands respect at all levels within the organisation. A stickler for doing things properly and ensuring deadlines are met, with military-grade strategic nous. His old school values and work ethic will get your projects delivered on time and on brief.

Outsourcing your marketing

Two problems with hiring the Avengers. First they don’t exist. And second they cost half a billion dollars per campaign.

Let’s assume you staff your marketing team with real humans. How do you decide what and when to outsource to third parties? We wrote a blog article on how content marketing agencies can be more effective than in-house teams. And as a content marketing agency, we obviously have a vested interest and natural bias.

So, rather than feather our own nest or recycle January’s blog article let’s take a look at some of the potential pitfalls of outsourcing parts of your marketing activity. Here are our top five based on our experience of helping clients pick up the pieces after bad agency experiences:

Losing access to Google Analytics, Google Ads or social media pages: Among the most damaging situations we’ve been asked to help out with are when clients have lost access to their data, social media profiles or even their whole site because a relationship with a third party has ended badly. You should outsource to get extra pairs of hands and bigger brains. Never to hand off responsibility for your company’s key assets.

Blackhat tactics to secure short-term results: Marketing is a competitive space and clients often ask for guaranteed results. So you can’t blame some agencies for giving them what they ask for. However, big promises often lead to disappointment or worse. Worse being short-term results delivered by nefarious methods that blow back on the client a few months later.

Technology lock-ins: There are lots of third party tools – free and paid – that can make a material difference to your marketing campaigns. But make sure you’re involved in deciding which tools to use. These choices matter and can have long-term consequences for your business. Maybe they lock you in to ongoing payments or tie you to a particular supplier for a lengthy period.

Outsourcing of knowledge: We quoted David Packard earlier in this post when we were talking about the importance of extending marketing beyond the marketing team. Marketing shouldn’t be siloed inside your organisation and it definitely shouldn’t be siloed outside of it. Agencies should add value both in terms of what they can do for you but also what they can teach you. Knowledge is something you always want to keep in-house.

Brand disconnect: A big challenge for agencies when stacking up against in-house teams is that they don’t get the chance to live and breathe the company culture every day. They are hired help and they work on multiple client accounts. As the client, you need to be aware of this risk from the outset and compensate by really engaging with the briefing and feedback process.

CHAPTER THREE: Marketing tactics and strategies

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In this chapter we’ll look at the marketing funnel and some of the popular tactics you’ll no doubt be familiar with for finding, engaging and nurturing leads.

The marketing funnel takes lots of different forms. Google it and you’ll see plenty of variations but also a common theme. Here is one of our favourites courtesy of Medium.com:

We like this one for its simplicity. You have three types of prospects:

In “Awareness”, it’s people who don’t know your brand or your products. Or don’t know that you can solve their problem.

In “Consideration”, people have engaged with you in some way already, but they’re not ready to buy for whatever reason (not the right time, haven’t been convinced yet).

And in “Action” they’ve reached decision time and it’s between you and the competition.

The challenges and opportunities for marketers change as people move down the funnel. But this sort of broad segmentation can be an extremely useful way to stress test your marketing campaign. Do you have content, a promotional strategy and a conversion goal for each funnel stage?

In our experience, brands often neglect the middle of the funnel, especially when it comes to setting a conversion goal. If website visitors – for example – have just two choices: leave or buy, you’re missing out on a massive lead generation and nurture opportunity.

So, let’s assume you’re sold on the marketing funnel idea and now you need some tactics and cool ideas to tackle each stage. Well, look no further. Here’s an intro, a top tip and a useful link for content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, email marketing and web design.

Content marketing basics

Content marketing is about creating valuable and relevant content that drives useful actions on the part of your target audience. You can use content marketing at every stage of the sales funnel from awareness with SEO-friendly blogs, to capturing mid-funnel leads with gated ebooks, to closing deals with compelling and well-targeted offer emails.

Top tip: Don’t rely on your creative skills to deliver ROI. Content needs to be promoted to get seen by the right people. As Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, said: “Before you create any more ‘great content’ figure out how you’re going to market it first.”

Useful link: How does content marketing work?

SEO basics

In Chapter One we highlighted the huge share of global online ad spend held by Google. The reason for this is that Google owns consumer intent. It knows what we want, when we want it because we tell it (5.2 billion times so far today). This makes ranking for the right search terms hugely valuable to any business. SEO is a longer-term play and less certain than PPC, but the ROI when you get it right is hard to beat.

Top tip: When it comes to ranking pages, the site is often more important than the content. So, it pays to pick your battles when competing for popular keywords. As Moz founder Rand Fishkin put it: “Without any domain authority or page authority it’s almost impossible to rank for competitive terms.”

Useful link: Content marketing and SEO: A Speed Date

Social media marketing basics

If your audience isn’t Googling, there’s a good chance they’re on social media. On average we spend 142 minutes a day checking, scrolling, posting and liking, according to Global Web Index, a consumer profiling company. And we do most of it on the same networks. In fact, four of the six biggest social media sites by users are owned by Facebook (Facebook, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram). The second biggest is owned by Google (YouTube).

That means social media marketing is really about going where your audience is. A generation ago marketers bought ad space in newspapers that their target demographic read every morning over breakfast. Now, newspapers don’t have the eyeballs. It’s a social media app on a smartphone.

Top tip: For brands, social media sites are advertising platforms. But just like television and radio, the ad content needs to fit the medium. So take advantage of the free tools and helpful ideas that social media sites offer to create really compelling ad content for your marketing campaigns.

Useful link: The importance of compelling content in social media success

Email marketing basics

Email is the oldest digital marketing tactic. Even the Backstreet Boys with their dial-up modems back in 1999 got marketing emails. But just like Captain America, old doesn’t mean obsolete. And thanks to marketing automation, email is enjoying something of a renaissance.

When you’re chasing people at the middle and bottom of your marketing funnel, few tactics are more effective than a properly-targeted email campaign. And if you use marketing automation software, you can massively ramp up the scale and level of personalisation that your emails offer.

Top tip: If email is a big part of your marketing strategy, don’t forget to feed the hopper. You always need a plan for capturing more email addresses, whether that’s pop-up subscription forms, interactive quizzes or gated ebooks.

Useful link: Your complete guide to successful drip email campaigns

Web design basics

Okay, so you can’t afford Tony Stark and no guarantee he knows about UX anyway. But web design has become an essential part of your marketing mix. People are increasingly hostile to slow, clunky online experiences. They want their interactions with brands to be smooth and fast on whichever device they use.

What this means is that your otherwise perfect marketing plan can hit a wall if your web design sucks. Maybe your form is difficult to fill in on mobile or the clever animated banner takes forever to load. You need someone with the web design and UX skills to put that right before it kills your conversion rate.

Top tip: Don’t underestimate the importance of mobile. We often hear that mobile doesn’t matter because most of the traffic is on desktops. That doesn’t mean people don’t want to access your site on a mobile, it means they can’t. People have multiple interactions with your brand these days, more and more of those will be on a mobile device, even if the purchase is on a desktop or in a store.

Useful link: 60 UX Tips Whitepaper

from http://bit.ly/2KUEcql

#content marketing

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fashiontrendin-blog · 7 years ago

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Britney Spears' Greatest Cultural Contribution Is Her Instagram Account

http://fashion-trendin.com/britney-spears-greatest-cultural-contribution-is-her-instagram-account/

Britney Spears' Greatest Cultural Contribution Is Her Instagram Account

In smoky eye makeup and a fuzzy blue bathrobe, retired pop princess Britney Spears belts Frank Sinatra lyrics into her iPhone camera and, as a result, into the broader cyber universe. “I want to be a part of it / New York, New York,” she coos in a video posted to Instagram earlier this year, punctuated by an extra helping of vibrato and a filter that not only douses the performance in a cascade of golden stars but digitally endows Spears with a pair of furry ears and the voice of a drunken baby chipmunk.

“Who doesn’t love Sinatra??” the caption reads.

“Hear, hear!” more than 1.6 million followers implied with the tap of a “like.”

Spears’ lovably erratic Ol’ Blue Eyes impression is not an anomaly. After conquering the world of pop music and enduring a paparazzi-chronicled meltdown in 2007, she has reemerged over a decade later as an unapologetic social media superuser. Her Instagram in particular, a hodgepodge of corny jokes, earnest mantras and inexplicably hypnotic selfie videos, functions like a repository of all the things that make the internet good.

Of course, I am eternally grateful for all of the sonic gems Britney Jean Spears has gifted us followers. (My first concert was Spears in her hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana; I frequently attempt the choreography to “I’m a Slave 4U” when I reach peak drunk and still tear up while listening to “Everytime.”) But when it comes to Spears’ most influential, unusual and profound cultural contribution, I have to point to her multifaceted, sincere and utterly confounding Instagram feed.

I mean it. Spears’ Instagram is rife with the kind of unfiltered millennial soul-searching that can seem overproduced or unapproachable in the hands of, say, Kim Kardashian or Beyoncé. To her 18 million Instagram subscribers, Spears is certainly still the superhuman we’ve come to love, a master of metamorphosis who’s traversed the classic phases of womanhood ― Mickey Mouse Club starlet, precious schoolgirl, snake-wielding sexpot, fame-tainted “trainwreck” and, finally, Vegas icon ― in the early-internet public eye. But now, online and selfie-savvy, Spears is also a mother, patriot, Nietzschean scholar, Christian, yogi, food critic, Hillary Clinton stan, painter, tomboy and girly girl) ― all in one constantly updated feed.

Her social media persona is so enchanting because it complicates, rather than calcifies, fans’ understanding of a star.

Spears’ ability to provoke a pure sense of bewilderment and fascination is a rare feat amid an infinite feed of influencers. In one post, she’s the basic-as-hell girl next door, posting inspirational quotes like “keep the ones that heard you when you never said a word” and milquetoast jokes like “just let me shop & no one gets hurt.” But then there are the posts that don’t fit the mold, like the minion memes, elephant pics, black-and-white images of “antique children” and trippy New Age artwork.

And of course, the true showstoppers: videos of Spears herself strutting, twirling, pouting and teasing. The clips somehow feel spontaneous, even DIY, although they’re clearly cut from many takes featuring multiple costume changes.

Therein lies the allure: Spears does little to cover up the effort behind her montages. Rejecting concerted nonchalance in favor of unapologetic effort, she showcases a sincerity so exposed it becomes vulnerability. For someone who’s been so thoroughly shaped and tormented by a greedy public, Spears’ radical openness feels especially fearless.

I brought up my obsession with Spears’ Instagram in a recent email exchange with culture writer Mallika Rao (also a former HuffPost colleague), who’s written about the mysteries of self-representation online. Spears’ social media sagacity, she agreed, stems in part from her total disregard of self-conscious curation, which allows her to jump from posting calculus equations to providing bikini thirst traps in the blink of an eye.

“Instagram is a brand management tool, even among people branded as ‘creative’ or ‘iconoclastic,’” Rao wrote to me. “Britney does not seem to care for brand management. She uses Instagram as kids once used home videos, to work out fantasies for an imaginary viewer. Her primary beneficiary ― her perfect viewer ― seems to be herself.”

One of the most iconic of Spears’ Instagram posts, uploaded in October 2017, is a video of the multidisciplinary artist painting flowers and swirls on a canvas outside a Versailles-esque mansion I can only assume is her home. “Sometimes you just gotta play!!!!!! 🤓😜💋💅🏻👩‍🎨🎨👯👗👛👒👠🦄🦋🐠🌹💥💥” the caption says.

There are so many things to love about this video: That Mozart’s “Turkish March” is playing in the background; that Spears, perched with one leg on a stool like a flamingo, starts out wearing a men’s button-down shirt over her white pushup sports bra and workout shorts before the vid jump-cuts to an outfit change with a kimono robe; the way she purses her lips in a pensive yet flattering pout before each blessed stroke.

Above all, Spears exhibits almost no artifice while presenting her Art to the masses. Again, it’s not that she’s not trying in her presentation, but that she’s clearly trying so hard. The evidence of her effort is written all over the post, its deliberate staging ringing truer than forced authenticity. The video, described by Glamour as “delightfully bizarre,” quickly went viral, and the Spears original painting ended up selling for $10,000. (For more Spears painting content, check out this equally primo gem.)

Since she was a teen, Spears has lived her life on a stage, perhaps preparing her for our post-Insta reality, in which privacy is a right we’ve all gleefully abandoned. In her book Trainwreck, Sady Doyle describes the impossible tightrope Spears was forced to walk in the prime of her fame. To avoid public scorn, she had to be “virgin and pin-up, wide-eyed innocent and worldly temptress, icon of cool and conservative Christian role model, she would always have to be both and neither, everything and nothing.”

It’s no surprise that this unimaginable pressure made Spears crumble. And as Doyle put it, her suffering became a form of entertainment, plastered across Us Weekly and TMZ. As a result, Spears’ life between 2008 and 2016 was governed by a court-approved conservatorship, meaning her father, sister and lawyer were in charge of her personal and financial decisions.

After staying out of the spotlight and rebuilding her life and self, Spears appeared on Instagram not as a symbol of desirable femininity or calamitous adulthood but as a real, weird person with interests and a sense of humor and a passion for strutting down the catwalk. For Spears, a public figure who was asked to embody the contradictory values of sanctioned womanhood from an extremely young age, this newfound freedom appears intoxicating.

“People are obsessed with Britney’s Instagram because it offers some glimpses of hope,” critic Alicia Eler, author of The Selfie Generation wrote to HuffPost.

As Rao put it: “We re-meet someone we thought we knew until she left in a haze of mystery,” she told me of Spears, “turning into herself and turning notions of fame on their head.”

In yet another classic Britney post, the singer stands alone in her cavernous living room wearing a little black dress and belts “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You” using the same affected tone she’s rocked since she was a teen. No one is in the room for the performance, save for whoever is moving the camera around Spears for the full 360-degree view the video affords. Unapologetically, she got all dressed up to perform for Britney, and Britney alone.

“I’ve always wanted to do a performance like this,” the caption reads, “singing in a pretty little black dress, with a simple 360, one take shot! I figured since it was my birthday, why not go for it?! So boom 💥 When the clock struck 12:00, I did it!!!”

For us non-famous normies, social media can offer a space to pretend that things worked out differently. On the platform, friends become followers, not unlike fans; documentation of the most mundane activities suddenly warrants attention and praise. We can use digital space to curate and perform the platonic versions of ourselves.

Spears, who grew up famous and in the spotlight, uses Instagram to do the opposite.

In the words of Spears herself, “Sometimes you just gotta play!!!!!! 🤓😜💋💅🏻👩‍🎨🎨👯👗👛👒👠🦄🦋🐠🌹💥💥.”

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brandsmagazinepakistan-blog · 7 years ago

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Brands Magazine

http://monthlybrands.com.pk/midst-dust-diplomacy/

From the midst of Dust and Diplomacy

America’s greatest inventor, Thomas Edison once stated: “The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are: first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.” Perhaps no other quote better explains the journey of the Bahria University Model United Nations’ team leaders better who have persevered to create the reputable platform that BUMUN is today.

Back in 2012, when the MUN culture was not very popular at Bahria University, a group of ambitious students decided to defy all odds, test their luck and bring this platform home. As they say, anything that’s worthy is never easy to achieve.

The founders dug the ground and laid the foundations of BUMUN with whatever rusty tools they had. Starting from scratch, they had to look for like-minded people and jump over the biggest hurdle, convincing the University officials to allow the event to happen.

After taking on every possible set back as a challenge, Abdul Majid Awan and his team of rebels — Ambreen, Anas , Husam, Maria, and Yusra — were able to launch the first edition of BUMUN. Since then, every passing year, the family keeps growing, and BUMUN became bigger and better.

With the desire to improve and perfect the dream of organizing the ideal MUN, Labib Chauhan (successor to Abdul Majid Awan) could not simply stay limited within any boundaries, hence BUMUN needed to expand from a 92-delegate initiation to a conference with over 500 delegates in 2016.

The ever growing legacy has turned into a more professional and well-ordered conference. Whereas, most MUNs are often known by their socials, quality debates have always been a priority for the team at BUMUN, thus establishing a reputable status in the MUN circuit of the city.

Honestly, BUMUN has come a long way from 2012 when it first started; from a bunch of kids literally just running around trying to get approvals and attract delegates to where it is today, a proper platform that liberates the youth in a world that confines them. Talk about some serious teamwork guys.

So while each and every one of us so vainly puts up our displays or Instagram posts that are over laden with hashtags saying #bumunday1 #qawalinight #adaytoremember #bestexperience, let’s also take a moment to appreciate those who put in all the effort to ensure that Bahria University is not left behind when it comes to all the glory that comes with attending a MUN. After all these people put in their time, energy, money and efforts into a bleak prospect and turned it into a major success.

Now, at this point, when you’ve heard about BUMUN’s journey, and you must be thinking to ask me that why came the sudden need for a history lesson.

Ideally, I would reply by quoting Virginia Wolff, “I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past,” but that is not the approach I intend to take. After subtly accomplishing the “unintended”, I would like to declare that BUMUN IS BACK!

Over the years BUMUN has successfully turned itself into a well-defined paradigm of excellence. This year will be no different. Having returned with a whole new concept of “Together, peace is reality”, BUMUN aims to make the three day conference as fun, interactive and enjoyable as possible.

It warmly welcomes students with no MUNning experience from all over the city to meet new people and develop public speaking skills.

Like every year, students from all over the city will pour in at Bahria University Karachi Campus to simulate United Nations committees such as the General Assembly and Security Council.

Like all Model UN conferences, BUMUN 2018 is designed to teach students about international politics, the United Nations, arbitration, negotiation and conflict resolution.

At the three-day conference, students will gain an understanding of international issues and events, as well as insight into the United Nations and international diplomacy.

The new BUMUN team, which struggles with concepts such as urgency, has been working tirelessly to meet this year’s expectations. From running around the city, making arrangements to staying in late to see them through, the team is all geared up to deliver an exceptional MUN this spring.

BUMUN’18 will be big and unique with 8 committees simulated, the countries represented, a fair topic on the agenda, and the delegates in attendance.

Conflict resolution being the key feature of BUMUN, I would like to clear that Thomas Edison was referring to perseverance when he said stick-to-itiveness, but most of you won’t know that since you stopped somewhere around “back in 2012”.

Similarly, during the painstakingly long, tedious speeches and ceremonies, delegates and team members sit through, pondering more often than not, “uff tauba, such long speeches”, undermining the colossal amount of hard-work that was put in order to ensure that Bahria has its own prestigious and recognizable MUN. So the next time one of the cofounders or president go a little over board with their speeches, put aside your phones (only after you’re done reading this blog) and instead of yawning or having a glazed expression, listen, appreciate, clap, hell even give a standing ovation.

So to those who are reading this, skimming through this and especially those who jumped to the end like our generation jumps to conclusions, I invite you all to Bahria University Karachi Campus on 2nd-4th March 2018. If you’re lucky, you might be inspired to become ambitious too. 8 committees, 3 social events, 1 BUMUN’18; register for the conference and bring the change you wish to see.

Facebook: bumunkarachi

Snapchat: bumunkarachi

Instagram: bumunofficial

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tricityrevivals · 7 years ago

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Blog Chapter 2.1: The Journey Continues..

Exactly one year ago I wrote our first of now twelve blogs: “Chapter 1.0-The Journey Begins..” and it’s crazy to look back and read that blog and see where we were at that point in time, and remembering our mindset. This year has gone by so fast and it’s been filled with twists and turns along the way. I don’t even really know where to start with this one. Here’s our newest blog as our journey continues with a glance into the past and upcoming year of Tri-City Revivals.

We admittedly didnt know much about A business starting off. Where there’s a will there’s always a way. We knew how to make money selling things, and we translated that into “lets open a business doing this”. It’s pretty funny and crazy to think back and just say hey we can do this based off of that idea, but we took a shot, and it paid off.

The amount of knowledge we’ve learned this year is insane. Neither of us were really interested in college or schoolwork because the subject matter wasn’t of interest to us, but when we are interested in something we become geniuses. We still have a lot to learn, there’s always room to learn more and more each day. I can say absolutely we can school the majority of people double our age on picks about a bunch of items. They just look at us with the “wtf” look. How do these kids know all this stuff?

A year later we have an amazing instagram following, a tremendous website, an inventory of items that fly off the shelves, and an a pick list that’s double sided upcoming.

Our instagram community has been amazing. From making sales and interactions with all our followers to getting feedback it’s been a very powerful tool for us. There’s no magical social media potion we use, but it’s more of a place to display the work we put in and image of us. The majority of that credit goes to Luke and his keen eye and photography skills. I know the work we put in, but I just don’t know how to translate that into a photograph for our viewers, he does. Our followers have went from 0 to 3,000+ in 1 year. It speaks volumes, and we appreciate every single person who at least gives us the opportunity to see what we are about.

Our website gets compliments from everyone who visits. Our view of what we wanted was completed by NJ Tech Team. Specifically Vin and Jess. Since we graduated High School with both of them, they knew us, our personality, and also listened to what our vision was. They worked their magic, and gave us exactly what we wanted. We could not have been any happier with the way things turned out. Looking forward to this year, expect our website to take it up a notch. We don’t want to give anything away so stayed tuned. Its going to be much more interactive for those visiting the site.

As far as picks- we’re expanding our search. There’s still plenty in our area but we’ve been traveling up and down the East Coast as a test run recently, and expect that to go full throttle in the new year. People are finding us now, as opposed to us finding them. Word is spreading quick on Tricity Revivals and we couldn’t be any more stoked about it. They’re finding us several different ways- from friends of friends, or seeing us at shows/sales, or finding our business card in a local eaterie. That ones always funny.

“Hey I saw your card at this bagel shop and figured I’d give you a call because I have some stuff you may be interested in”

Trust me its not always this simple but it has happened before more than once.

One thing that really sticks out in my mind this year: We had so much fun. All too often you hear about the dreads and sighs of going to work and its really unfortunate. I mean we had a blast-just looking back and remembering certain moments could still crack me up. I couldn’t even count on two hands how many times we were doubled over laughing throughout this year in all the different situations we were put in. We’re friends first, business partners second. We’ve spent a lot of time together throughout our lives but this past year it was more than ever. I can’t wait to do it again next year.

We’re excited about what the next year may bring. I think we’ve exceeded everybody’s expectations except our own really. There’s no one else doing this the way we are. There’s no business plan we can mimic off of, or no monthly subscription payments to be accepted. No latest and greatest equipment we can buy to make our jobs easier. I think we’ve dealt with those circumstances pretty well, and have thought up pretty much any idea thats associated with us or how we do business all on our own. Whether it’s a minor change or a major one, we’re always the ones bringing that to the table and we can only hope it shows to our audience.

There’s always more work to do and more knowledge to learn. With anything new in life you need that grace period to learn the ropes and make adjustments. I feel like that was this year. Neither of us knew what to expect, but we figured it out pretty quickly. We’ve experimented with different methods and formulas. Some worked, others didn’t. Either way we kept pushing forward. There will always be mistakes but you have to capitalize on them.

There weren’t many mistakes this year but we are far from perfect. I won’t even call it a mistake I’d call it a lesson learned. To name one:

We overestimated the value of a bunch of items on one of our first picks in the beginning of the year. The items were great and we just thought we could sell them for a lot more than we bought them for. It was a mixture of our error and the seller being greedy or delusional. He was a lifetime collector and he knew there was no money for us to make on the items but he continued to sell them to us for over retail and promised someone would pay the moon for these things. Lesson learned. We’re human. You live and you learn. It obviously didn’t break us and made us look at things a little differently going forward. It has never, and will never happen again.

No need to harp on that in this blog. Just trying to give a glimpse showing it hasn’t been neat and dandy all year.

It’s hard to write a blog and find compliments for yourself and your business, especially when our mindset is that we can always be better, but I have to say we made it a year and we’re gaining more and more momentum with each day, each pick, and each restoration job.

Speaking on restoration- Most people don’t realize this is one of our services, and just see us as pickers. We did get our start restoring free furniture but we can do much more than that, and have restored some great items this past year. Especially when we have our full Tri-City Team with us. Let’s be clear we’d rather not touch the item at all. It’s only original once! I’d say instead of calling it Restoration we deal more (and enjoy more) of doing Rust-orations. It’s the biggest trend in this game right now, and its exploding. It’s basically restoring something so that its in working order, but the outter part is untouched or touched up very slightly. It still gives that original look. As I said, its only original once. People dont want something that looked like it did brand new in 1950. They want something that looks like it was made brand new in 1950 and survived to 2018. We love it and couldn’t agree more.

What to expect of 2018?

I honestly don’t know what 2018 is going to bring for us. I know we’ve had conversations saying we feel like we’re coasting a little bit at times. Admittedly, as we always say and think, we can be doing more, but if this is coasting than watch out if we’re going 110%. There’s a lot of things upcoming that we have to be excited for. We have a lot of really interesting and enormous opportunities that are ahead of us coming from all different ways. Some may work out, others may not, but it’s going to be an exciting time either way and I’m pumped to see how everything plays out. The relationships we’ve built throughout the past year will continue to hopefully form a stronger bond. All I can say is, I feel bad for the other side of those relationships if they choose to forget us, because eventually you’re going to remember the name.

As our best friend and Tri-City Team Member always says, “You guys are playing chess, everyone else is playing checkers”. We’re two steps ahead already even though it may not seem that way. We’ve always got a plan.

Besides that, we are excited at the thought of finding new items this year. We’ve sold over 400 different items this year approximately. Every single one of those items we found in a barn, attic, garage, or home. We’ve shipped items all over the United States and Internationally as well. People will stop in from time to time at Tricity Headquarters and its always the same question

“Where the hell is all your stuff?”

“Gone. Sold”

Every single item we found we learned the background on, educated ourselves, and that’s where the knowledge I was talking about previously comes into play. Every item we shipped to someone who appreciated that piece which makes it all the more special. Everyone isn’t out there getting dirty and looking in barns or attics for it, but they will spend their hard earned cash on it. That speaks volumes to us.

As long as time on earth continues, there is always going to be a market for vintage or antique items. Years go by, people don’t like the new stuff being made, so they go with something vintage. Or they just have great memories of something they had in their past and it’s not being made or sold anymore, whether it be decor or a functional piece. I wouldn’t say its a fad or a trend. This has been going on for much longer than we have been doing it, but the key is that now it’s in the spotlight. Not everyone can do this. I know plenty of people that do the same thing as us but they can’t sell an item to save their life. You can have a storefront, a big name, and a following but that doesn’t make you successful. Your reputation and work ethic will lead you to success. You have to put in the work, test out the market, learn the history, and be smart with your decisions. As long as we keep doing that Our Journey Will Continue.

Lastly, and on a side note: We want to thank everyone who took the time to help us out this past year. Family, Friends, and Relatives who were supportive from the beginning when all of this was just an idea. Spouse’s and our Fur Children who sometimes get put on hold when we are leaving you in the dust running out of the house for a pick or on our phones negotiating a deal or finalizing business opportunities-It doesn’t go unnoticed, and we cannot thank you enough for dealing with us. Even something as small as you giving us a like, or a follow, or a call, or bought something from us you have all had a hand in where we are at today. Thank You! God Bless! We look forward to sharing 2018 with you!

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spynotebook · 8 years ago

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We’ve run our 11 Best Single Issues Of The Year. Well now, Rich Johnston and the Bleeding Cool writers (not Jude) give you 11 collections and graphic novels to reflect on as we say good riddance to 2016 and welcome 2017 with nervous worry.

Eliot Cole

Doctor Who: A Matter Of Life And Death by George Mann, Emma Vieceli and Hi-Fi.

I don’t have quite as much to say here as I did in my “lack of words” on A-Force #4, but I find this Eighth Doctor collection just the lovely example of (a) comics and (b) what could’ve been with the best of all the doctors. George Mann’s stories are each self contained, following the fantastic journey of Josie, and how she becomes part of Eight’s life. Each story was a book, and was self contained, but lends well to the whole. I wrote 3 sentences on George Mann’s awesome plotting (and such), and having a good take on 8 but they amounted to that word, “awesome.” Emma Vieceli’s trademarked panelling design compel you through this beautifully, I could genuinely read pencils of this quality on anything. Ms. Vieceli is surely meant for the greatest of things. Do yourself a favour and check out Titan’s Eighth Doctor Collection.

Jeremy Konrad

The Fix Vol.1-Where Beagles Dare by Nick Spencer, Lieber, Ryan Hill, and Nic J Shaw

I actually was starting to feel a little burnt out by Image this year. Quite a few of their series were blending together and felt to be covering quite a bit of the same ground. That all changed when I picked up The Fix. This series, with its dry, sarcastic humor and panels that you have to study to catch every little gag in the details very quickly became one of my favorites. And I mean, Pretzels. How can you not love a dog like Pretzels??? Every issue gets better and better, and hopefully it runs for a very long time.

Hannah Means-Shannon

Aleister & Adolf by Douglas Rushkoff, Michael Avon Oeming, and Nate Piekos

This book has been an outlier on many press radars, but it’s one of those densely crafted, significant works that hopefully will be the gift that keeps on giving, showing comic creators and fans what new directions in the medium can be taken. Written by powerhouse social critic Douglas Rushkoff and drawn by the endlessly original Michael Avon Oeming the book tracks a fictional account of Aleister Crowley’s media wars with Adolf Hitler based on a few key historical facts. It follows the life of a young military reporter assigned to Crowley through the course of “sigil” developments, like the swastika by the Nazis and V for Victory by Churchill in the war over human minds during WWII. Rushkoff’s characterization, research, and narrative framing devices, combined with Oeming’s emotive and often highly symbolic artwork make sure this book has something significant to say about the ongoing role of symbolism and propaganda in the way we see the world around us. It might just remind you of the dangers and the positive powers of belief and focus to influence any struggle, even on an international level. Aleister & Adolf may be about the second World War, but it’s highly relevant to our times and makes for a thought-provoking, and at times disturbing, read.

Joe Glass

The Wicked + The Divine Deluxe Hardcover by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matthew Wilson and Clayton Cowles.

I mean, just look at it.

Let’s not even go into the story or anything yet, just take in this huge, black, hot foiled beauty! You can read comics on your train to work looking like you’re reading out of some mystic grimoire of mystery!

Plus, it contains Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matthew Wilson and Clayton Cowles’ incredible series of pop stars as gods and the hard price of fame (it kinda kills you in the end, which 2016 proved in force really, didn’t it?). Collecting the first two story arcs, plus loads of behind the scenes materials and a good chunk of Gillen’s breakdowns of the book, it makes for the absolute best purchase for fans of the series.

And it just looks sexy as hell on a book shelf!

Abdulkareem Baba Aminu

Huck by Mark Millar and Rafael Albuquerque.

Surprising myself, and after a great deal of thought, I have picked Huck Vol. 1 by Mark Millar and Rafael Albuquerque as the best graphic novel/collection for 2016. I started reading the monthly issues, up to the second, and I somehow fell off. But I did know I’d catch up on the trade when it gets released. And boy was I glad I waited. The story, collected, had a pace that was missing during its monthly run, and the character development proved to be near-perfect. Early comparisons to Superman did no justice to the story of a small town resident who’s revealed to have some truly awesome powers, of course with disastrous results. The art – oh, boy the art – is beautiful, aided by perfect colours and it sets the tone the right way. There’s almost a Spielberg-ian sense of wonder and adventure to the tale, enough to make me ignore the irritation that is an editing error which portrayed a factual kidnapping of schoolgirls by insurgents as having happened in East Africa, when the stated Sambisa Forest is in Nigeria, in West Africa. You could say it was personal for me. That aside – and I truly enjoy most of the Millarworld books – Huck is my absolute favorite.

Marilyn Weiss

Nameless City by Faith Erin Hicks

I was so excited for this graphic novel to be released, it was easily one of the highlights of my reading this year. We meet Kaidu, a recent arrival to the Nameless City, and son of the latest ruling clan, Dao. As he trains to become a warrior, his adventurous nature drives him into the city, where he meets up with the lovable, street wise Rat. Hicks did an amazing job creating a detailed world that I would love to explore and get lost in. I can tell that there are so many stories hiding within the city, just waiting to be told. I would gladly hand this book to any fan of comics, be they young or old. The sequel, The Stone Heart will be out in April 2017.

Rich Johnston

Patience by Dan Clowes

I’m a sucker for a post-modern time travel story. See my love for least year’s There’s No Time Like The Present by Paul Rainey. And Dan Clowes gives us actual plottage with Patience. A story of rags to – well not exactly riches, but a different state of being, as the newly pregnant young Patience is murdered, a series of events that destroys her partner, Jack. It’s his attempts to “put right what once went wrong” and the calamitous consequences of his actions, digging his own grave – or Patience’s – deeper and deeper that drive this book forward. Or backwards. Which means you’ll have to reread it the moment you finish for that Sixth Sense experience. But for all that it’s the attitude of Jack, the anti-Hollywood hero that sets this apart, refusing to follow the obvious tropes or experiencing triumphs – or disasters as he may be expected to.

And the devil is always in the details. Clowes has always had a style that grabs the eye, gives it direction and pulls it forward, the narrator grip in full effect. Here every object in every panel could have serious significance that you will need that second – or third reading to pick up on it.

Toward a Hot Jew by Miriam Libicki

You know those overnight sensations who have been working hard at the craft for decades? That’s Miriam Libicki. In something that resembles the missing link between Marjane Satrapi and Joe Sacco, her autobiographical work exploring her Jewish identity, attractiveness and the reaction of those around her, whether as a Israeli soldier or a professor of art, this collection of a decade’s work jumps from illustrated essay to comic book panels, exploring the medium, the tools to create the work and express inner neurosis as beautifully – and as ugly – as possible.

Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash by Dave McKean

Art about art – Dave McKean creating a comic about war artist Paul Nash, and how that artist turned the worst extremes of humanity into art that illuminated the mind. And then how it affected the young Dave McKean, and how his work has existed in relation to that of Paul’s. This is a giant standing on the shoulder of another giant and between them they can see so much about us. An incredibly moving masterpiece, and stands alongside McKean’s Cages, as an exploration of the effect of art on both the viewer and the artist themselves. Psychologically complex and using the very strictures of comic book panels, speech, character positions to demonstrate so much of what we are.

Rolling Blackouts by Sarah Glidden

Another example of comic book journalism, Sarah Glidden takes a trip to the Middle East with an eye on America’s influence on the region, travelling through Syria, Iraq and Turkey. But its also an examination of journalism itself, as Sarah is accompanying two “proper journalists” as they look at the effect of the Iraq War and of its refugees, so it also becomes a procedural for the profession as well – especially when they are joined by a friend and a US soldier who served in Iraq. And it suddenly gets a whole lot more awkward. Something that is made more palatable by Sarah’s soft watercolors, a different look than we might have otherwise expected.

Everyone has a story to tell. It turns out that’s as much true of the journalists as it is those they report on.

Clean Room Vol 1: Immaculate Conception by Gail Simone, Jon Davis-Hunt and Quinton Winter.

For some reason I never find The Walking Dead comic as gross as I do the TV show. I occasionally wondered if that was a creative choice of the limitations of the medium? Well, Clean Room answered that. It really is something very nasty indeed. Writer Gail Simone has rarely been given the chance to operate at this level. And she choosing the tack of making the people far scarier than the Entities that are meant to be threatening them, in terms of the moral choices they hold. Jon Davis-Hunt’s choices of style are also a surprise, eschewing the darkness for something brighter, more visible and cleaner. This is horror with the strip lighting turned up and refusing to blink.

It also takes suicide head on, as something fuelling the survivors, and as psychological as that is, the comic is never afraid to shlock-horror out, embracing that aspect rather than being embarrassed about it. It’s the combination of both approaches that elevates this title above the norm and makes it something special. And the way it buolds from issue only helps the trade paperback – even if you are denied the pain of waiting from month to month for cliffhangers to resolve.

Buy this for the Scientologist in your life. And then get Gail Simone to write Crossed.

Bleeding Cool’s 11 Favourite Graphic Novels/Collections Of 2016

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