#supreme tweeter

[tommk-archive]

tom mckay scenes from the youtube web series supreme tweeter (2015)!

bonus! i'm now cross posting on twitter as @tommk_archive! feel free to check it out!

[artcalledcinema]

Expectorant I watch WhiteZombie’s Blood, Milk and Sky I’m taken back to 1981’s Kill and Kill Again For I was born in 74’ Thee expectancy (You’re a joke in back rooms) After being not your Rally kissed Simple question ‘In the likes but don’t quote it’s been a 2 days’ you are prepared (paired) [here and now] to be your predecessor if the wholly Good-ish designed {as a replacement} have have I boggled You A man at such cognitive amplitude Should read through this designed test Provided by shoestrings To entangle You Don J Trump I’ve made you jump now answer Thee only Questioning In a Vice President If I die? Your heart and mind (loosely souled) Dodged a BASIC FIRST QUESTION Dear President turn (third world) Snatch up and disappear “Sir, he picked his Vice as a faithfully following weak link@LynchPin FearFactory in multitudes of following <he needs people behind him in cameras> Help soothes his ego All narcissism” Still with me Oh hoo rahh EXPECTORANT Or instructed enticed ;WordsbyMM; Reading into me Oh orange split into Open airwaves We all love a push up To digestion Who doesn’t in this damn Ecological weather The tornadoes Hurricanes Brush drag-ments A razor for real blood Or theatrics Halo Hi-lo Hello Expecting expectorant’s From the Young VOTING and not for(e) Trump Rump T, all on his ass he believes in only himself {as long as you back him} Still playing @He’s reading along@ I’m lying flat not laughing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I could X, that formerly tweeter-ed Also stay along for Ad Vert ;)Isements;) From |wh| our locally introverts /here on thee island/ A I Wouldn’t In for Real Present Expectancy I Hope Not Trumped-Not I’m so O Positive In the Democrats Trump volunteer, I ask you Explain shift of parties after CivilWars times? I didn’t want to pressure you, Donald J Trump Ex (convicted) Former President A loud announcement $ y i u, we know with a good quality of pounds$$$, or gems$ (We) yo me and you can turn this thing around for you, i curb pock me up i can like cd changerflip it around all gore you or (sorry McC) was speaking make a difference for you just call me im social too i can Help, errko(aka) Waiting Sir Fore your calling into our phone line I only have one I can turn your election In your favor Please subscribe My results are sound I have behind the Moon The whole Universe at my disposal Or deposited into Supreme courts Heat wise, lowering standards (Behind closed doors, McCain said, fuck him & and talking of you) the doctor grabbed knowledge At the next rally Drop do twenty push ups Or show Video Swinging a golf club All children and adults They all know of palming pussy Palmed pussy In that Ex Former President Expectorant from me WordsbyMM MMybsDrow You clamming a wall with useless knowledge and paid by Campaign Fuck off Never wit ya Sucka I wouldn’t let you suck my (Dic|<) Remember Should I bring it back (Where was it seen thee Trump obscene) (Where was it seen thee Trump obscene) (Where was it seen thee Trump obscene) On national T V Trump Vance T V Trump Vance God’s in the TV Or On Probably simply easier To miss ***if you die, will the Country be less then or greater!***

That’s the Question????? ???? ????

To simple in broad minds!!

Tell U S man, Trump

Answer

Answer this Question?

[artcalledmusica]

Expectorant I watch WhiteZombie’s Blood, Milk and Sky I’m taken back to 1981’s Kill and Kill Again For I was born in 74’ Thee expectancy (You’re a joke in back rooms) After being not your Rally kissed Simple question ‘In the likes but don’t quote it’s been a 2 days’ you are prepared (paired) [here and now] to be your predecessor if the wholly Good-ish designed {as a replacement} have have I boggled You A man at such cognitive amplitude Should read through this designed test Provided by shoestrings To entangle You Don J Trump I’ve made you jump now answer Thee only Questioning In a Vice President If I die? Your heart and mind (loosely souled) Dodged a BASIC FIRST QUESTION Dear President turn (third world) Snatch up and disappear “Sir, he picked his Vice as a faithfully following weak link@LynchPin FearFactory in multitudes of following <he needs people behind him in cameras> Help soothes his ego All narcissism” Still with me Oh hoo rahh EXPECTORANT Or instructed enticed ;WordsbyMM; Reading into me Oh orange split into Open airwaves We all love a push up To digestion Who doesn’t in this damn Ecological weather The tornadoes Hurricanes Brush drag-ments A razor for real blood Or theatrics Halo Hi-lo Hello Expecting expectorant’s From the Young VOTING and not for(e) Trump Rump T, all on his ass he believes in only himself {as long as you back him} Still playing @He’s reading along@ I’m lying flat not laughing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I could X, that formerly tweeter-ed Also stay along for Ad Vert ;)Isements;) From |wh| our locally introverts /here on thee island/ A I Wouldn’t In for Real Present Expectancy I Hope Not Trumped-Not I’m so O Positive In the Democrats Trump volunteer, I ask you Explain shift of parties after CivilWars times? I didn’t want to pressure you, Donald J Trump Ex (convicted) Former President A loud announcement $ y i u, we know with a good quality of pounds$$$, or gems$ (We) yo me and you can turn this thing around for you, i curb pock me up i can like cd changerflip it around all gore you or (sorry McC) was speaking make a difference for you just call me im social too i can Help, errko(aka) Waiting Sir Fore your calling into our phone line I only have one I can turn your election In your favor Please subscribe My results are sound I have behind the Moon The whole Universe at my disposal Or deposited into Supreme courts Heat wise, lowering standards (Behind closed doors, McCain said, fuck him & and talking of you) the doctor grabbed knowledge At the next rally Drop do twenty push ups Or show Video Swinging a golf club All children and adults They all know of palming pussy Palmed pussy In that Ex Former President Expectorant from me WordsbyMM MMybsDrow You clamming a wall with useless knowledge and paid by Campaign Fuck off Never wit ya Sucka I wouldn’t let you suck my (Dic|<) Remember Should I bring it back (Where was it seen thee Trump obscene) (Where was it seen thee Trump obscene) (Where was it seen thee Trump obscene) On national T V Trump Vance T V Trump Vance God’s in the TV Or On Probably simply easier To miss

But God forbid if !!!!!!

Another bullet hits your mind, the question was is He fit?

To replace you!

Nothing to do with ego!

Answer Trump!

We are U S in waiting!

Please Sir?

You piss oh golden and shite in

My Ex Former President (Convicted)

Numerous walls looking over the Fence!

You and He

Trump Vance

X I’ve tweeted or X-ed

How’s it called I’m adding to this one

Now only on Tumblr

T M V

M T V

V T M

T V M

The so ones & on’s

We captured together (ahh the added)

[artcalledoddities]

Expectorant I watch WhiteZombie’s Blood, Milk and Sky I’m taken back to 1981’s Kill and Kill Again For I was born in 74’ Thee expectancy (You’re a joke in back rooms) After being not your Rally kissed Simple question ‘In the likes but don’t quote it’s been a 2 days’ you are prepared (paired) [here and now] to be your predecessor if the wholly Good-ish designed {as a replacement} have have I boggled You A man at such cognitive amplitude Should read through this designed test Provided by shoestrings To entangle You Don J Trump I’ve made you jump now answer Thee only Questioning In a Vice President If I die? Your heart and mind (loosely souled) Dodged a BASIC FIRST QUESTION Dear President turn (third world) Snatch up and disappear “Sir, he picked his Vice as a faithfully following weak link@LynchPin FearFactory in multitudes of following <he needs people behind him in cameras> Help soothes his ego All narcissism” Still with me Oh hoo rahh EXPECTORANT Or instructed enticed ;WordsbyMM; Reading into me Oh orange split into Open airwaves We all love a push up To digestion Who doesn’t in this damn Ecological weather The tornadoes Hurricanes Brush drag-ments A razor for real blood Or theatrics Halo Hi-lo Hello Expecting expectorant’s From the Young VOTING and not for(e) Trump Rump T, all on his ass he believes in only himself {as long as you back him} Still playing @He’s reading along@ I’m lying flat not laughing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I could X, that formerly tweeter-ed Also stay along for Ad Vert ;)Isements;) From |wh| our locally introverts /here on thee island/ A I Wouldn’t In for Real Present Expectancy I Hope Not Trumped-Not I’m so O Positive In the Democrats Trump volunteer, I ask you Explain shift of parties after CivilWars times? I didn’t want to pressure you, Donald J Trump Ex (convicted) Former President A loud announcement $ y i u, we know with a good quality of pounds$$$, or gems$ (We) yo me and you can turn this thing around for you, i curb pock me up i can like cd changerflip it around all gore you or (sorry McC) was speaking make a difference for you just call me im social too i can Help, errko(aka) Waiting Sir Fore your calling into our phone line I only have one I can turn your election In your favor Please subscribe My results are sound I have behind the Moon The whole Universe at my disposal Or deposited into Supreme courts Heat wise, lowering standards (Behind closed doors, McCain said, fuck him & and talking of you) the doctor grabbed knowledge At the next rally Drop do twenty push ups Or show Video Swinging a golf club All children and adults They all know of palming pussy Palmed pussy In that Ex Former President Expectorant from me WordsbyMM MMybsDrow You clamming a wall with useless knowledge and paid by Campaign Fuck off Never wit ya Sucka I wouldn’t let you suck my (Dic|<) Remember Should I bring it back (Where was it seen thee Trump obscene) (Where was it seen thee Trump obscene) (Where was it seen thee Trump obscene) On national T V Trump Vance T V Trump Vance God’s in the TV Or On Probably simply easier To miss Sir air error!

[gemtvusa]

Sony X93L Mini LED 4K Ultra HD TV BRAVIA XR Smart Google TV XR65X93L- 2023 Model

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Intense brightness. Outstanding contrast.

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[cheshirekatzan]

@sillyroundkatie (instagram/twitter) / @cheshirekatzan (tumblr) Been trying to practice keeping the likeness of someone whilst also managing different expressions (particularly open mouths). Really excited for Counterpart to come out soon, Harry Lloyd's character seems a riot he does not want to be in the show 😂

[samueldays]

Journalism delenda est, continued

If Fox News really were the right-wing hate-machine that Democrats love to imagine, Fox could spin off a channel with a name like Blacks Behaving Badly, which would be simply continuous coverage of murders and rapes committed by blacks.

Blacks Behaving Badly could easily get 24-hour material of constantly new crimes by giving merely an hour to each black murder or black rape, because blacks commit those crimes about hourly in America. (Compare the way left-wing press is still bleating about Emmett Till.) The information on BBB would all be true, of course, and the channel would be dedicated to covering some matters and not others, which is inevitable because every TV channel has to make some decisions about what to include of the millions of events that happen every day.

It would still be a wicked, shit-stirring, hate-inciting, no good, very bad, racebait channel with a chronic shortage of redeeming features, whose selective coverage would be obviously malicious.

I bring up this hypothetical construct as a point of comparison for the wicked bit of shit-stirring racebait and so forth that recently came out of Reuters in real life: a special report on how U.S. leaders have slaveholding ancestors. Chronic shortage of redeeming features.

Shoddy's line pretty much sums it up, but let's look at the special report a bit more.

In a special bit of adding insult to injury, it violates usability guidelines by hijacking scroll commands (mousewheel, arrow keys, etc) before we get to the main content. Here is the page as it looks when it first loads:

And here is the page as it looks after I hit the Page Down key:

These self-important theater kids made a fucking unskippable opening cutscene out of a fucking webpage. The Down arrow key does nothing here. The Page Down key pressed a second time merely advances the gradually revealing text by two lines, while changing the image's highlight. Page Down should skip me past the fucking image-video-hybrid-animation and move me down the page.

Then we get to the content. I shall excerpt and quote full paragraphs here.

More than 100 U.S. leaders – lawmakers, presidents, governors and justices – have slaveholding ancestors, a Reuters examination found. Few are willing to talk about their ties to America's “original sin”

Everyone Has Slaveholding Ancestors.

I can forgive the tweeter for being space-constrained and having to drop terms that can be inferred from context. The text in the full report (not headline), a page down, has no such excuse. Perhaps you say "it's obvious what they mean from context", but I assure you, it is not in fact obvious and the clarification further down is not the obvious one.

Many lawmakers need look no further than their own family histories to find a much more personal connection to slavery in America, a brutal system of oppression that resulted in the deadliest conflict in U.S. history.

Second deadliest, unless something very odd happened with WW2 since last time I checked. (Perhaps they're using a special metric like "deaths on American soil", I imagine.)

In researching the genealogies of America’s political elite, a Reuters examination found that a fifth of the nation’s congressmen, living presidents, Supreme Court justices and governors are direct descendants of ancestors who enslaved Black people.

And here's a clarification of "slaveholding ancestors", three fucking pages into the special report: ancestors who enslaved the Reverentially Capitalized Race. Doesn't count if they enslaved Persons of Pallor.

Except that paragraph is still wrong, descriptively and normatively. We'll see further down in the report that it's not counting the Africans who enslaved other Africans, such as Ayuba Suleiman Diallo. Or the extensive history of Islamic slavery, which via Andalusian intermarriage to the Spanish royal family and from there to the American colonies, results in a great many more descendants of people who enslaved persons-of-the-favored-race. Reuters put a great deal of work into studying a subject it frequently contradicts itself about the bounds of.

In addition, President Joe Biden and every living former U.S. president – except Donald Trump – are direct descendants of slaveholders: Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and – through his white mother’s side – Barack Obama. Trump’s ancestors came to America after slavery was abolished.

This is racebait, journalism delenda est, everyone who wrote this should be banned from public communication.

Two of the nine sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices – Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch – also have direct ancestors who enslaved people.

Everyone has direct ancestors who enslaved people.

I am going to keep harping on this for as long as Reuters keeps playing fast and loose with words. This special report online does not have the space constraints of a physical newspaper, nor does it have the time constraints of having to report on urgent news with a deadline tomorrow. It is written by supposedly professional wordsmiths with alleged editors and so-called fact-checkers. It has the leisure to get things right. It's welcome to use shorthand after getting things right (and preferably noting the shorthand), but Reuters has not gotten it right yet and will continue to contradict itself.

South Carolina, where the Civil War began, illustrates the familial ties between the American political elite and the nation’s history of slavery. Every member of the state’s nine-person delegation to the last Congress has an ancestral link. The state’s two Black members of Congress – Senator and Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott and Representative James Clyburn, a powerful Democrat – have forebears who were enslaved. Each of the seven white lawmakers who served in the 117th Congress is a direct descendant of a slaveholder, Reuters found. So too is the state’s Republican governor, Henry McMaster.

I assure you that everyone involved here has forebears who were enslaved and is the direct descendant of a slaveholder. If you're going to contrast the two, get the specifics right.

This is racebait, journalism delenda est, everyone who wrote this should be banned from public communication and have a finger cut off as a continual reminder of their sins.

There's a bunch of specific people and degree of relation listed. I'll skip past them to see where Reuters is fucking around again.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll for this report suggests that a politician’s links to slavery might sway some voters. In a national survey, almost a quarter of respondents – 23% – said knowing that a candidate’s ancestors enslaved people would make them less likely to vote for that candidate. That number rose to 31% among respondents who identified as Democrats, and 35% among Black respondents. What’s unclear is how significant the topic is compared to race relations more broadly or other hot-button issues such as abortion.

Bold mine, Reuters really cannot keep this straight, this does not match their previous special report statements, and it also doesn't match the wording that was actually used in the poll. The poll respondents weren't given this whole special report for implicit context when they were asked:

“Would knowing that a political candidate’s ancestors or family members owned slaves in America make you more or less likely to vote for them?”

Journalism

Delenda

Est.

[kontextmaschine]

Thinking about the media environment

30 years ago if the president nominated a Supreme Court Justice that week's Newsweek would have bits about her basically manufacturing consensus that this person and their history and perspective now mattered

15 years ago I would've been reading the Volokh Conspiracy as a group of professionals – with distinct bias and interests such that their writing became informationally denser with regular reading – had for months in advance mulled over who it could be, giving a foundational introduction to most of the possibilities

Today I see it mentioned in tweets that're mostly trying to advance some greater agenda I have to pay long-term attention to the tweeter or at least their milieu to grok while actually still leaving the first-order effects of that particular jurist fairly opaque

[shimmies]

2021 Fic Year in Review

Eeep thank you for the tag @goodiecornbread!!! 😍😍

Total number of completed works this year:

Schitt's Creek: 15 (Plus another 5 art-only crossposts to AO3)

Schitt's Creek RPF: 8

Total word count: 82068 (I added all this up myself before realizing there was a statistics page RIP)

Fandoms I’ve written in this year: Schitt's Creek & Schitt's Creek RPF

Did you write more/less fic than you thought you would this year, or about what you expected? Hmm, this was my first full year of writing so I guess I went at about the pace I expected? Although seeing it all at the end of the year now it seems like a LOT!

What’s your favorite story you wrote this year? Ooh! Definitely Lie With Me And Just Forget The World that I wrote for tropefest! I am such a sucker for Chasing Cars and high school AUs and I'm super proud of the ending.

Did you take any writing risks this year? To me and my low self esteem posting literally anything feels like a risk, but RPF especially. In the bigger SC (show) fandom it seems like you get the majority of kudos at the beginning and a few trickling in after the first few days, but with RPF (again, my perception) kudos kinda slowly accumulate over time (or does everyone there hate me???). So I'll check on an RPF story after a day and have like, 2 kudos and 100 hits. But you'll have to pry Dan/Noah from my cold, lifeless hands when I die.

Most popular story you wrote this year? Nobody asked for this level of detail but I'm giving it to you anyway:

SC with most kudos/hits/subscriptions: Canadian Roads

SC with most comment threads: 25 (which actually has the fewest kudos & hits 😕)

RPF with most hits/comments/subscriptions: at a curve in the road

RPF with most kudos: Love in London

Most fun fic to write: My silly epistolary/tweeters fics, Rail Me, Daddy and I'm With Stupid ➡

Biggest disappointment: So, "disappointment" seems a bit extreme but I was really hoping to get more hits on 25. I worked so, SO hard on all the code and connecting all the storylines together and I really thought it would be one of my standout works. I don't want to sound ungrateful or anything because I did get so many truly lovely comments and reblogs and bingo recs but I gotta say it was a little sad to see it at the very bottom of my stats page. But those who did read it were SO supportive and for you I am thankful! 😍💜

Biggest surprise: Probably you're everything that feels like home to me. I honestly thought this would get lost in the chaos of Passions & Pastimes, especially being a short G-rated story with a subject (photography) that I didn't expect much interest in. But it ended up being my third most popular fic this year!

ALSO! I got some cards through the holiday card exchange complimenting my artwork and writing! And holy shit is that the best feeling ever!!

Do You Have any fanfic/podfic goals for the new year? Umm, mostly to make friends? Haha. I am supremely terrible at not just meeting people but also maintaining friendships so we'll see how that goes. Will a friendly person adopt this socially anxious introvert?

I also have a WIP that I'm super excited about that's shaping up to be a pretty long multi-chapter fic, and I've written like, two of those in my lifetime.

If you haven't done this yet...I am tagging @treluna4 @hullomoon @sweatersinthesummer @neelyo67. And seriously, anyone who sees this who wants to participate, just go for it!

[grandhotelabyss]

But between them, the development of journalism and of movies/TV made this particular function of the novel obsolete. If you want a chronicle of society, why not a transparent one? And if you want a social drama, somewhere between anthropology and gossip, it’s more fun with live actors. 

Moreover, the pop-to-high cycle of cultural forms is so far a perennial feature of modern arts. Opera isn’t the exception, but the rule. When’s the last time you went to dance to some jazz in a speakeasy? Rap, rock, and comic books are just about high art now. Political philosophy is currently written by bloggers—which is to say that the humble blog, about which there were moral panics in 2005, is now equal to the venerated treatise. And whatever trash moves the masses in the present—what the kids are doing on TikTok or wherever—will probably evolve into something that wends its way into the gallery and onto the syllabus too. Both sides of the transaction occasionally irritate me—on the one hand, I sometimes ask, must we put all this trash into the curriculum? on the other hand, I have been to known to observe that comic books, damn it, were more fun when they were trashy—but the alternative is stagnation, is it not? Another 1000 years of Madonna-and-Child?

And there are advantages as well as disadvantages to finding your favored art form on the high-unpopular end of the axis. I don’t discount the danger of losing touch with the vernacular, of becoming merely academic. Still, though you lose the mass audience, if your ambitions encompass an alteration in political and social conditions, the elite audience may in the end prove more powerful. (Pragmatically, I mean, whatever the democrat might prefer as a matter of ethics.) And it leaves a wider margin to experiment. “Popular art” suggests mass chaos, but it’s often enough controlled by the blunt order of an economic calculus as stultifying as anything in academe.

I’m wary of prescriptions and manifestoes, but I think the novel now is most useful not when it expands Balzac-style to cover the whole of society, but when it contracts and concretizes, offers dense rather than diffuse images of existential or ethical dilemmas, and, in our disembodied world, recalls us to the sensory, the sensuous. There are more reliable places to find social facts—that’s nonfiction—and easy entertainment—that’s “TV” in all its permutations. Let the novel, by contrast, be a passionate provocation to thought and intense feeling.      

Finally, these discussions always run aground on the particulars. Our Tweeter’s examples are all from the 19th century; the ship of the social novel as high art sailed with Henry James, however. Middlebrow remnants from Dreiser to Franzen remained, but, again, journalism and TV easily fulfills their function. Even in Balzac, not that I’ve read a ton of him, the exposition—the journalism—is sometimes livelier than the drama. Do you know what I remember most fondly from Lost Illusions? The little history of printing toward the beginning.

And at least two of Judah’s own examples of the social novel don’t even fit. Austen’s novels are “challengeless stories of modern interiority.” She understood them that way herself—“the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush”—and critics have long complained about it, Edward Said most famously among recent writers. Her living heir—even when he writes about detectives, clones, dragons, and robots—is the supremely interior Kazuo Ishiguro, who is also, for whatever it’s worth, a very popular novelist. (The public doesn’t care about interiority?) And then there’s Dostoevsky, prophet of irrationalism in all its varieties, son of Poe and father of Kafka—or, in the Borgesian-Bloomian reversal of influence’s temporality, son of Kafka and father of Poe—who was not concerned with “society” but with everything it suppresses and represses. I admire all the names on Judah’s list, but only Dostoevsky and Austen look over my shoulder when I write a novel.

[whiterosebrian]

Heritage

I oppose Folkism. I understand Folkism to represent a very ugly parody of the pre-Christian religions that neopagans have been working to revive. I understand neopagan paths to be open. When the old gods call Black or Asian followers, we should let those people answer the gods’ calls.

The reason why I made those statements up-front is that I’m about to delve into a topic whose discussion will require much nuance. I’ve made an effort to write this in such a way as to keep my intentions consistently clear. However, there could still be a possibility of taking many of the following statements out of context, whether by Folkists wanting validation, mainstream people who don’t know much about neopaganism, or Christian-Right propagandists. I’m about to discuss old spiritual heritages of people of European descent.

I may need to touch upon what Folkism is before going on with that discussion. Folkism, in the most basic sense, is the notion that certain old European practices and religions are the sole provinces of their associated cultural groups, whether Celtic or Slavic or, most notoriously, Germanic. It derives from the Volkisch movement which purported to revive Germanic traditions and the people’s connections to their lands. The Thule Society, in particular, laid the groundwork for Nazism. The Nazi regime retained the occultic influences—though I should note they weren’t the dominant strain and the party rose to power by appealing first and foremost to Christian culture (which is yet another historical fact that raises hard questions of what Christianity looks like in the real world).

Today’s adherents of Folkism exploit the discourse around cultural appropriation, though in a mendacious and vulgarized form. Sometimes well-meaning allies do unintentionally vulgarize said discourse as well. One part of appropriation is swiping elements of other people’s cultures willy-nilly—though there are two other key aspects that should be kept in mind. First is the fact that elements of cultures are often taken with little acknowledgement of or gratitude towards the originators. More importantly, there is a context of colonization, marginalization, and erasure.

Even if you haven’t followed me for a while or read my journal entries before, you may be aware of the elements of Asian, African, Native American, and even Jewish spiritualities within the New Age movement. It’s quite clear that a number of people, disenchanted with historic Christian culture for any number of reasons (including extremely serious ones), look elsewhere to find genuine spirituality. Actually, those trends were also present in Europe during the peak of modern imperialism in the nineteenth century, evidently influencing today’s New Age movement.

To my understanding, Buddhists and Hindus are very willing to share elements of their spiritualties—but too often those elements are half-understood, ripped out of context, and watered down anyway. Native Americans have seen their spiritual practices outlawed until fairly recently, which is why they resent those practices being commercialized or taught outside the proper contexts. The Jewish people have faced persecution for many centuries and similarly seen their mysticism suppressed—and they resent mangled or incomplete versions of Kabbalah floating around metaphysical circles.

You may recall the interest that I actually once had in Kabbalah. I did genuinely want to learn from the Jewish people. I had abandoned Catholicism and wanted to learn from its Jewish roots (though I probably underestimated how far Christianity deviated). I was actually ready to start delving more deeply into Kabbalah after reading introductory texts of admittedly varying degrees of quality. I was under the mistaken impression that Kabbalah was now being opened up (though in fact Kabbalah is still considered a closed practice, due mainly to requiring an intensive grounding in Jewish scripture and practice). However, some Jewish users on Tumblr and PillowFort convinced me to rethink my interest. I soon decided that Judaism in general wasn’t for me, much less Jewish mysticism. I didn’t think I could even devote myself to the religious law (however different movements within Judaism interpreted it).

I also had some interest in my own Northern European heritage. That is part of what led me to examine Heathenry in more detail. What finally led me to devote myself to the Heathen path was animism, or a relationship with nature as well as the spirits within and the very powers of life. Sometimes, spiritual practitioners of color heartily exhort white seekers to look into their own ethnic heritages to find their own gods, medicines, rites, and modalities. What ultimately prompted this essay is a video from a healer who goes by “heart of Hamsa” on Instagram; they (I’m using the apparent preferred pronoun) are of Vietnamese and French descent.

They speak of the need for greater respect towards and gratitude for Asian practices. They speak of how they delved into their own heritage. They touch upon the distinctions among cultures and peoples—most certainly not in any exclusionary or purist sense, but in the sense of deepened understanding and appreciation. They speak of a need to give back to the peoples who inspire us, especially in light of colonization, with Vietnam as a prominent example that they cite.

Hamsa goes on to speak of white people who are ashamed or fragile (often understandably, giving rise to the “white guilt” that neo-Nazis maliciously mock) and chase after what they view exotic and foreign, only to fail to do justice to reiki and ayahuasca and the like. They essentially ask people to restart by looking into their own ancestors and uncovering histories. They exhort viewers to set roots and share their own inheritances before looking outside, much less making smorgasbords. Basically, Hamsa asks people to remember who they are and be themselves first and foremost.

How does that apply to a man of Northern European descent born on a land that was stolen from indigenous people? Occasional tweeters will remark that white people have no culture except for banal capitalism and arrogant colonization. Irish, Italian, and German immigrants eventually assimilated into the hegemonic American culture after facing their share of prejudice (my father’s family actually used to be named Koch before becoming Cook during the First World War). The old Christendom may have initially been a union of different Christianized peoples, but at some point (I can’t say exactly when) it became a more-or-less homogenized bloc of Christian colonizers. If even the Irish faced domination at the hands of Englishmen, the Christian European powers were sure to dominate other peoples in worse ways.

Hamsa does speak of “blood” and “bloodline”, which admittedly can raise hackles for good reason. Folkish neopagans also speak of “blood” as in “blood and soil”. Obviously, as you can see from the above context, Hamsa is using “blood” in a subtly though crucially different way. Perhaps, then, Folkism is a distortion of a truth—that truth being a rootedness in personal bloodline and heritage. The kind of “meta-genetics” that people like Stephen McNallen and Stephen Flowers promote is indeed Nazi-leaning bunk—otherwise, learning about the pre-Christian past would not be so difficult or involve so much ambiguity and guesswork. I can accept that white supremacy has influenced the pagan revival to some extent, particularly in its early stages. Did the original Volkisch movement deal with the trauma of enforced Christianization (and the later rise of an increasingly ruthless capitalism) in a very unhealthy way? I don’t have enough historical education to really answer that.

In any case, I’m very pleased to see neopagans seriously work on disentangling that influence. Improved historical scholarship in recent times has been a blessing. Perhaps European-Americans who take the time to learn from such scholarship as well as experienced practitioners might find many boons. It’s possible that the old gods of Northern Europe called me back into their embrace. Indeed, as I began to seriously consider training myself to be a magician working with Odin and Freya, I began to get a sense of a homecoming. My Scandinavian, German blood, and Anglo-Saxon bloodlines ultimately aren’t major factors, but they still are factors in a homecoming. While figuring out a spiritual path, I increasingly wanted to work with divine power as a magician—it turned out that I wouldn’t do so through Kabbalah but through animistic Heathenry.

The question of what a settler is supposed to do among the many settler communities on a continent stolen from its original inhabitants remains. I most certainly have a responsibility to those who lack what privileges I have. I hope to find stronger opportunities to aid the indigenous communities, especially those within the Great Lakes, the region of Turtle Island where I live. For that matter, I hope to find stronger opportunities to aid other communities.

In general, I understand a need to participate in the work of decolonization in some manner. I understand a need to take part in breaking down what has become whiteness. Those who think that they are being broad-minded in taking from so many cultures (and I would have also thought so even a few years ago), it seems, unintentionally contribute to colonization and white privilege. Maybe I will start learning from other peoples after gaining a very firm grounding in a revived Germanic magic, though maybe they will tell me to keep up with that. There are indeed many different paths for people to take to the divine. Some of them are closed (or at least require formal initiation) for very good reasons. Kabbalists and Jewish mages deny that Judaism is for everyone—they might speak of other gods who call to their peoples while the presence of the supreme Godhead remains with the gentiles. People like Hamsa speak of honoring and reinvigorating diversity among the human shards of divinity within today’s world. Thus, demagogues who fearmonger over the One World Religion for the New World Order show themselves to be paranoid fools. There certainly isn’t a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world!

I will take my time in building relations with Freya and Odin, contemplating the runes, training myself to connect to Yggdrasil, and looking forward to meeting elves and various ancestors who have walked my path before. I hope to be of great service as a Germanic magician among the Great Lakes. I also wish to gradually build up stories of diverse people seeking truth, goodness, beauty, joy, and spirituality as a novelist (and possible comic artist). I struggle with lethargy and a troubled heart, but I do believe that I have a calling. You are all welcome to support me and, perhaps better, find your own mystic paths.

[annalegg]

5 Most popular computer speaker audio equipment reviews.

The computer is very versatile these days and gets compatible with whatever technologically advanced tools or equipment you want to use. One of the most commonly used is audio equipment. When you want to have the best online experience it is essential to have supreme quality audio equipment to enjoy playing games, streaming videos online, or just browse through the web. Thus, some of the options that may result to be the most outstanding ones from all the other option available in the market are:

Harman Kardon Soundsticks III 2.1 Channel Multimedia Speaker System with Subwoofer

This see-through design of the speaker allows you to hear the speaker while it is working. This speaker is compatible with other devices as well other than the computers. The buttons are touch ones such as that of mute and volume control ones. The bass performance is excellent with an amplifier output power of 10W RMS per channel. 

Logitech Z623 400 Watt Home Speaker System

These are reasonably proved the best for the price range it comes for. The volume won’t distort when the volume is kept high. It can be plugged into three devices. The two speakers and the subwoofer is priced at $120.

 Audioengine HD3 Powered Bookshelf Speakers (Pair)

Audioengine HD3 has built-in power amplifiers that can be connected wirelessly. However, Bluetooth is not always reliable. It also has dual analog audio inputs. The price is set at $350, which is too much priced as compared to other lower-cost computer speakers. It has silk tweeters and custom woofers for better sound. 

Edifier Exclaim Bi-Amped 2.0 Speaker System

It is reasonably priced at around $100. The uniquely designed speakers are compatible and small enough to fit on any desk. The speaker set includes two 1” midrange tweeters, a 3” woofer, and a 3” passive bass radiator.

Edifier R1280T Powered Bookshelf Speakers

The Edifier R1280T Powered Bookshelf Speakers offers two auxiliary inputs with a remote to control the sound. The price range is around $100. This sleek wood finish design comes with a two-year warranty. 

JBL Professional 305P MkII Next-Generation 5-Inch 2-Way Powered Studio Monitor

These are priced at $130 per speaker. As per the audio equipment reviews, JBL Professional 305P MkII creates a solid sound, has an image control waveguide, has assured with the reliability tests, and has a deep pedigree. Even though the price is high but these don’t provide wireless connectivity. 

Various options are available in the market. Many brands and models are competing to find the best place in the list of the topmost selling ones. Thus, the secret to getting the best option from all the available varieties, you need to make a checklist that suits your personal experience list. Match the specifications of the speakers accordingly and then opt for purchasing it. Look for various audio equipment reviews to match the experts’ opinion with yours. 

[alwaysscreechingbasement]

This is why you need to vote in the runoffs, Georgia. “Had Democrats seized the Senate, they could have faced this problem head-on. The most obvious solution was to expand the court, adding seats to dilute the conservative bloc’s dominance. Democrats could have also explored 18-year term limits for justices and jurisdiction-stripping to stop them from striking down progressive measures. Without the Senate, by contrast, the Biden administration and blue states will have to explore more perilous options if SCOTUS boxes them in at every turn. The president could deploy departmentalism, arguing he has independent authority to interpret the Constitution that no court can overrule. Blue states could revive interposition, purporting to nullify court orders with which they disagree. But these are dangerous theories that have, in the past, edged the United States toward disunion. There’s little chance Democrats would be daring enough to test them out, even if the judiciary continues its scorched-earth campaign against democracy. Which means McConnell was right: The jurisprudence of Trumpism will outlast Trump by decades. Because this catastrophe will unfold more slowly than the typical political disaster, it might be tempting to ignore. There is a natural, sane impulse to be relieved at the prospect of life not in thrall to an erratic, vicious tweeter in chief. There is a natural, sane impulse to believe that life in the Obama era, when Mitch McConnell proudly stymied every legislative endeavor, wasn’t that bad compared with the existential mayhem of the past four years. But the Obama era didn’t include a judicial branch hand-picked for its youth and its radicalism, for a decidedly nonjudicial “own the libs” vibe, for a willingness to press the machinery of the courts into service of the singular goal of humiliating, belittling, and diminishing a President Joe Biden. We’re about to learn what that kind of judiciary is prepared to do and say to ensure that Biden is, as McConnell once pledged of Barack Obama, a one-term president. And it will take far longer than one presidential term to undo the damage. This was why McConnell was willing to seat justices and judges up to the last minute, in lieu of legislating COVID relief. It’s why so many conservatives were in an oddly gleeful mood on Wednesday even as it became clear that Trump is losing. As soon as he takes the oath in January, Biden will face a new kind of gridlock, a cold war with the judiciary that will get hot fast. The GOP will challenge every move he makes, then accuse him of intransigence and partisan obstinance during the 2022 midterms, blaming the country’s woes on his inaction. Like so many Democrats before him, Biden will spend his presidency battling with Republicans. But his most powerful foes cannot be voted out of office.“

[taww]

First Take Review: Audiovector SR 6 Avantgarde Arreté Speakers

As previously chronicled, a move to a new residence last year challenged my undying devotion to 2-way monitor speakers. Though I had two great ones at my disposal - the Silverline SR17 Supreme and Audiovector SR 1 Avantgarde Arreté - asking these relatively compact speakers to fill a large living space with the weight and scale of a symphony orchestra was unreasonable. I needed something that could move more air, but far too many big speakers I’ve heard sound slow, discombobulated or opaque vs. a quality 2-way. Enter the Audiovector SR 6 Avantgarde Arreté (USD $25,000), which confidently assured me of no such compromises during an audition at Audiovision SF. After a bit of listening to some alternatives and the requisite spousal approval, I traded in the SR 1’s and placed an order for a pair of SR 6 AA in piano black with the intention of keeping these as my long-term reference speakers. I’ve logged about 3 months with them and while they’re still taking their sweet time to break in, it’s time to gut check: are they turning out to be everything I had hoped they would be?

Related Reading

Quick Take: Audiovector R 3 Arreté & SR 6 Avantgarde Arreté

Breaking in a Big Speaker: Week 2 with the Audiovector SR 6

Acoustically Treating Side Reflections: Even Better and Not as Hard as You Think

Design & Setup

IMO this is a gorgeous speaker that looks impressive in a room without being dominating - sleek and elegant, with pleasing proportions and a beautiful finish. While our room is a good size, it is an all-purpose living space for my wife and me plus our two large-ish dogs, and there was no way audiophile speakers with a large footprint or funky aesthetics would ever set foot in our home. The Audiovector was a relatively easy sell to my wife and there have been zero groans or offhand remarks about its size or appearance, which makes it an unmitigated success. The magnetically-attached grills are wonderfully crafted, muting the technical look of the baffle during more casual listening, snapping on and off with precision and sticking together for easy storage. The sound isn't bad with them on either - fractionally less open and bright, which is actually kind of nice for background music.

Full-range speakers can be tricky to position to balance bass response with soundstaging, but in my room I’ve found the SR 6 AA to be very easygoing. Thanks to a combination of front-firing ports, bottom-firing compound woofer and careful bass alignment, they work remarkably well close to the wall. I currently have them with just 50cm (20”) of clearance behind them, and I have yet to pick up on any port noises. Yes, the soundstage would be even deeper if I pulled them out further, but it’s still quite satisfactory and the bass is nicely filled out without any boom whatsoever. As with the SR 1 Avantgarde Arretés, I find the sweet spot to be a bit narrow - sound is good off-axis, but you really need to be centered precisely for the image and soundstage to lock in. This is in contrast to traditional 2-way monitors from e.g. Silverline Audio or Role Audio that disappear in your room with little effort and are fairly forgiving of listening position.

Sensitivity is specified at 92.5dB/watt @ 8 ohms, quite good for a dynamic speaker. Sensitivity ratings can be deceiving (measurement methods are not rigorously standardized) but the SR 6 AA certainly puts out noticeably more sound per watt than the 90.5dB-rated Silverline SR17. I haven't seen an impedance plot or minimum impedance spec but it seems pretty easy to drive, with all of my amps sounding open and unstrained. With pop or orchestral material at moderately high volume levels I could get the bias meter on the Pass Labs XA30.5 to wiggle the tiniest bit, indicating the peaks were surpassing the 30-watt Class A bias range, but just barely. While the speakers can clearly take a lot more power (I would have loved to have the 300wpc Bryston 4B Cubed around), a quality amp of moderate power rating (e.g. 50 watts) but enough current to feed the 4 drivers should have no trouble. The Pass sounded great, I love the 55-watt Valvet A4 Mk.II monoblocks on them, and right now the 50-watt Gryphon Essence is singing away.

The Sound

Listening to the SR 6 AA strikes me as the audio equivalent of stepping into something like a big smooth Mercedes S-class, only to find it as lithe and responsive behind the wheel as a Lotus Elise. But step on the accelerator, and sure enough you will hear and feel the grunt of a big bi-turbo V-12. And most of all, it’s fun. Like a car that beckons you to drive it, there’s an aliveness and energy to the SR 6 that compels you to listen to as much music as possible. I could listen to record after record all day and night and never stop.

Coming back to less-fanciful analogies, I love how the SR 6 has all the coherence, focus and speed of the best 2-way monitors, then adds low-frequency power and dynamic ease without any sort of compromise that I can discern. At first I was a bit concerned with the 350Hz crossover point between midrange and woofer - right in the D to A string range of the violin - but I honestly can not hear it at all. The compound bass system also seamlessly integrates from 80Hz down, and all I hear is a very continuous presentation with consistent speed, articulation and tonality. This is extremely rare in my experience - many big, expensive and elaborate speakers have had some sort of discontinuity that bugged me. 

Coming back to the 2-way comparison, I am missing absolutely nothing about my previous monitor speakers. The SR 6 has even more midrange focus and resolving power than its excellent little sibling, the SR 1 Avantgarde Arreté, while sounding less dry and analytical. Much of this can be attributed to the fullness of the lower midrange which puts more meat on the bones of everything. It’s not overtly warm, but has just the slightest bit of extra juice to give pop tunes great bounce and string sections lovely lyricism. My wife noted that orchestral melodies sounded particularly mellifluous and alluring.

This brings me to another point: the SR 6 simultaneously strikes me as tremendously transparent, neutral and precise, but also possessing character. It's very hard for me to describe it any one way because the common sonic labels - warm, analytical, fast, full, forward, laid-back, smooth, sharp - just won't stick. Depending on the associated gear, setup and recording, any of those above descriptors could be applied to a very subtle degree, but switch up the source material and a different set of adjectives come to mind. Going to another abstract analogy, it reminds me of a delicious mineral water - so clean and crisp and pure, but not totally flavorless. The SR 6 is never bland to my ears; sure, a bad recording still won't sound great, but the presentation never falls flat. It has a fun and engaging take on music, perhaps due to just a hair of judicious boost somewhere in the midrange, that isn't dead-on neutral, but subtle and musically consonant. This is what I find most fascinating about Audiovector's tuning vs. other ultra high-end marques such as Magico or YG Acoustics, which can be breathtakingly transparent to the point of sounding flavorless, and incredibly demanding of source material. In those special moments with the right setup and recording they certainly could scale to greater heights of realism than the SR 6, but the Audiovector just sounds consistently natural and satisfying to me.

A few words on what this speaker is not. While it certainly qualifies as full-range, it does not have an overtly “big” sound. You won’t get the same sort of easy, larger-than-life presentation that a large-woofered speaker in a more classic mold (think a big old JBL with 15” woofers, or a top-end model from PBN or Legacy Audio) will give you. If you want Louis Armstrong to sound like he's sitting in your lap, or you’re trying to reproduce a club environment in your living room, there are better speakers for that. Bass extension is deep and powerful, but the quality of the bass that stands out is that it’s always focused - pitch, timing and weight are precise and balanced. It will convincingly represent a symphony orchestra, and the throbbing bass line of Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy will have you bouncing in your seat, but it’s not shake-your-walls, send-you-into-intestinal-distress kind of bass. It is easily the most detailed and revealing speaker I have had in my room, but it is never hyped-up, instead laying the music out for you to inspect at your discretion. The superb Audiovector AMT tweeter has a lot to do with this - it is free of the typical resonant modes of most dome tweeters and has resolving power well above the audible range, with none of the peakiness of metal domes that can go from vivid to fatiguing over time. There are designs with more natural warmth, that can make a female vocal sound more magically in-the-room and human - Silverline and GamuT are two superb marques that come to mind - but they might not be as neutral and versatile across many genres of music.

The Audiovector is much more precise and adaptable than speakers which blow you away with a particular aspect of their performance. It is the sort of sound that may not stand out as much in 3 minute sound bites at an audio show or dealer, but is more accurate and satisfying in the long term. And I appreciate how it effortlessly fills my open space with sound, but never overpowers it. This is a remarkably lifestyle-friendly speaker by high-end standards and I could see it working very well in a more modestly-sized room, though if you have a small room you are probably better off saving some money on the R 3 Arreté and putting the funds towards upstream gear.

The Take

As you can probably guess, I'm liking the Audiovector SR 6 Avantgarde Arreté a whole lot. A big speaker is always a risky proposition - you never know if it'll work in your room, reproducing a wider range of frequencies means more things to critique and potentially bug you, and of course there's the financial outlay. But so far, other than the need for extended break-in time, there have been zero frustrations and only delights in my experience.

As I write this, I'm listening to a lovely record of Bruckner 9 by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with Daniele Gatti (Qobuz 24/96, Tidal MQA) at moderate volume. And I honestly have nothing to observe or say about the speakers because it just sounds good and right and I'm enjoying the performance. It's a total system effort of course, with contributions from PS Audio, Furutech, Audience and the transcendental Gryphon Essence pre + power amp, but as a music lover first and foremost I can think of no higher compliment for the Audiovector SR 6 Avantgarde Arreté.

[harry-lloyd]

“It’s been a gentle start to the day,” Harry Lloyd says with a smile, speaking at a subdued volume while his six-month-old baby naps in the other room. We’re chatting on a Saturday afternoon, and Lloyd’s tousled hair is silhouetted against the sunlight streaming through the hotel room windows. It’s a warm day in Los Angeles, a stark contrast to the subzero chill that he braved for last month’s photo shoot in New York.

On screen, the English actor’s piercing gaze bespeaks a calculating persona, an agenda beneath the charm. Offscreen, there’s an unguarded, guileless ease to Lloyd’s manner—he’s thoughtful and genuinely engaged in the questions posed to him.

Lloyd is perhaps best-known for his portrayal of the unscrupulous, throne-obsessed Viserys Targaryen in HBO’s Game of Thrones. Since his character’s macabre demise, the 35-year-old has been plenty busy. Among other screen and stage projects, Lloyd played the classmate and confidante to Eddie Redmayne’s Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything; a brilliant (and womanizing) novelist in The Wife (Lloyd mentions that he’s thrilled for Glenn Close’s Oscar nomination); and an intelligence officer, opposite J.K. Simmons, in the Starz original series Counterpart. His latest undertaking—the reason he’s in LA—is the Marvel comics-based series, Legion. For the third and final season of the FX show, Lloyd will play the role of David Haller’s father and X-Men leader, Professor Charles Xavier. (In so doing, he joins the ranks of Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy, who portrayed Professor X in the film series.)

Our conversation starts with Counterpart, the sci-fi/espionage thriller. A Cold War experiment in East Germany has splintered the timeline, and two formerly identical worlds now exist in an uneasy and rapidly unraveling détente. Each character in the show has an “other” self—a counterpart on the other side—and crossovers between the two dimensions wreak geopolitical havoc. There are slick diplomats, hapless bureaucrats, a contract assassin—and at the center is Peter Quayle, the director of Strategy in the Office of Interchange, a sort of United Nations-meets-MI6 outfit.

The morally obtuse Quayle is not exactly a sympathetic figure, but Lloyd embodies the character with a subtlety that allows the vulnerability to seep through the cracks in the bravado. As Quayle’s carefully-calibrated life crumbles, you feel for him—a national security strategist who’s in way over his head, blind to the fact that his own wife is a mole. Those pale, elegant hands are not meant to be dirtied fumbling about dim halls and holding rooms—and that’s not even getting into the subplots within the plot twists.

Lloyd’s enthusiasm for the project is clear. He calls Counterpart one of the favorite things he’s ever worked on, and credits Justin Marks, the creator of the show: “The writing is excellent, which attracts really good actors.” Among the sterling cast is, of course, J.K. Simmons, who plays two Howard Silks—the placid paper-pusher, Howard “Alpha,” in dimension one; and the cocksure clandestine operative, Howard “Prime,” in dimension two.

“I was very scared of him originally,” Lloyd admits with a laugh when I ask about his experience working with Simmons, who garnered an Oscar for his portrayal of a ruthless music instructor in Whiplash. “But he [Simmons] has been so welcoming and makes you feel at ease. I’ve learned so much from him—and we have a lot of fun.”

The scenes with Quayle Alpha and Howard Prime are often tense, even claustrophobic, not just because they take place in dark cars and cramped rooms, but because we sense the stranglehold of identity—the underlying question of just how much of one’s self is the product of choice versus circumstance. If you put John le Carré and Jorge Luis Borges in the same room, they might come up with something like this—forking paths that diverge and converge, labyrinths of spies and alter egos.

Lloyd describes Quayle Alpha and Howard Prime as an “unhappy couple, both caught in this lie, who must rely on each other even though neither likes or respects the other.” On the flip side, Lloyd continues, “Quayle Prime and Howard Alpha have a completely different relationship” such that playing his character’s “other” feels “like a completely different job.”

There’s a cerebral, granular detail to Lloyd’s musings when I ask about the characters, fictional or real, that he draws from in portraying the two Quayles.

He explains that while on break between filming the Berlin and LA portions of season two, he and Justin Marks discussed the aesthetics of Alien 3. Marks envisioned Echo, the interrogation facility in dimension two, as a “penal colony, rather than a hospital or prison. The relationships between the inmates and officers draw on that” psychological dynamic.

In conveying Quayle’s “slightly unhinged” persona, Lloyd takes cues from other classics: Billy Bibbit from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a “somewhat childish figure who looks up to McMurphy,” and Dennis Hopper’s character in Apocalypse Now, who harbors a manic obsession with Marlon Brando’s Kurtz. Lloyd incorporates elements of these characters in Quayle Prime’s dynamic with Yanek, a warden at Echo—there’s an “evangelical fervor, where you sense [the character’s] loss of contact with reality.”

Season two of the show delves deeper into the deceit, paranoia, and existential quandaries inherent in navigating and manipulating two worlds. (It seems no coincidence that the writers chose Alexander Pope as the name of the character who trains sleeper agents—a little learning is a dangerous thing.) I ask Lloyd about the techniques he uses to keep his Alpha and Prime personas from getting jumbled.

“In terms of playing two parts for the first time, I’m lucky in that Quayle Prime exists solely in the Echo location, so we were able to do all that filming in a couple of weeks over the summer,” Lloyd tells me. “This season, we started filming in Berlin and ended in LA, so having a new location, new set,” helped keep the two characters separate.

Lloyd can’t discuss more details from season two without risking plot spoilers, so we pivot to other projects. I mention the internet speculation over whether Viserys Targaryen makes a comeback in the next season of Game of Thrones. “Really?” Lloyd replies with a mix of curiosity and incredulity. “That death seemed pretty final to me—I’m not sure how he comes back from that.”

I explain that the Reddit murmurings refer more to flashback scenes, and then ask Lloyd about filming his character’s grisly exit.

“That was pretty much the last scene I filmed on that show, and I remember that day very well,” Lloyd says—the amusement is pronounced in his voice. “It was freezing cold. We shot quite early in the morning, and I had to act drunk. Doing that so early in the day can go horribly wrong,” he explains, as you don’t want to overact it. But with a death scene like that, where the would-be king is “crowned” as molten gold is poured over his head, Lloyd could really let loose with the screaming—a finale that’s seared into fans’ minds.

Lloyd draws out nuances in his characters through deep-dives into their back stories. When filming the Game of Thrones pilot, he kept George R.R. Martin’s books under his chair for ease of consultation. As the filming continued, though, Lloyd wanted to get beyond Daenerys Targaryen’s narration of Viserys as the “brute—the petulant, unkind older brother.”

In Lloyd’s view, that perspective discounts the whole of Targaryen history: “This character feels the weight of his family on his shoulders. He’s had a terrible childhood; his parents are dead. He has no family apart from a little sister who doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation. He carries these scars, and by re-writing the narrative as the ‘Chronicles of Viserys Targaryen,’ we start to see how Viserys justifies his cruelty.”

Lloyd pauses briefly, mulling over this re-framing: “That’s the job of an actor—to give your character a mouthpiece” and guide the audience as to where our sympathies should lie.

“It’s a great time to be an actor,” Lloyd continues. “I’m lucky to be working with people I’ve admired for years, and to arrange projects [in a way that allows me] to explore different avenues. I hope it stays like this—there are so many more stories to tell.”

Our conversation drifts to more meta territory—how technological evolution continues to reshape the way we consume and relate to art and storytelling. Lloyd is democratic in his engagement with cultural mediums—he enjoys audio books and made-for-radio plays, and he’s fascinated by the future of VR. He loves the stage and recently played the lead role in The Good Canary, John Malkovich’s London directorial debut. Lloyd has also been on the other side of the camera, writing and directing “Supreme Tweeter.” The short web series, made in 2015, is premised on a cheeky concept that came to his co-creator (and now wife), Jayne Hong, in a dream: What if North Korea’s Kim Jong-un suddenly follows you on Twitter—what absurdity might ensue and what are the implications of treating your identity as a commodity, a “brand”? (I point out that this satirical take on social media as propaganda was an eerily prescient concept, given our current Tweeter-in-Chief—a topic that Lloyd diplomatically sidesteps.)

With streaming services supplanting cable and the proliferation of social media content, it’s a challenge, says Lloyd, “to hold erratic attention spans for more than a moment.” Among the tech-driven transformations that he references is how long-form television shows like Counterpart, with intricate plot lines and character arcs, are replacing the novel as a way of enjoying long-form stories. He also observes that interactive video games are looking more like films, with complex narratives and attention to visual detail and cinematic soundtracks, and vice versa—there are online films that contain a choose-your-own-adventure component with multiple plot lines. These various forms of entertainment may all be converging, Lloyd hypothesizes, as “new audiences have a desperate thirst for full immersion.”

For all these innovations, though, Lloyd jokingly refers to himself as a “fuddy-duddy” who loves to read books and has a record player back home in London. That doesn’t rule out throwback video games, though—for Christmas, Marks gave him a miniature version of the original Nintendo system, preloaded with all the old NES games. His favorite? “Super Mario 3, where Mario gets to wear the raccoon tail.” And continuing the theme of constant evolution, Lloyd points out that players now design new levels for these old games, which everyone can then upload to their own handheld consoles.

For now, though, there’s not much by way of free time. Lloyd is a new dad, and it’s entirely endearing how his tone and manner warm to the point of giddiness when discussing fatherhood. “Long story short, it’s phenomenal, beyond description,” he says. “There’s definitely a lot to learn,” but he’s enjoying the daily agenda, which includes “a lot of singing and chatting and mimicry” with the baby—spending time “staring at each other, making each other laugh, communicating in this pre-language way, just getting to know each other.”

As for audiences just getting to know Lloyd, the depth and versatility he brings to screen and stage promise many more dimensions beyond Quayle’s Alpha and Prime selves to be explored. Lloyd doesn’t rule out anything when it comes to collaborations and characters—as he puts it, “the more you give, the more you get out of the experience.” And more of Harry Lloyd is a very good thing.

[cheshirekatzan]

Drew Harry Lloyd for instagram, with a little dragon pal 🐉 @sillyroundkatie

I draw him all the time honestly, but this was the first one I was willing to show the world (hopefully it looks like him!)