#that said my top 100 is very obviously the result of listening to four (4) whole character playlists on repeat

[abstractkind]

corpse didn't make it to top 5 so I'm safe from reproach for another year

[thecrownnet]

October 3, 2020

Series four of The Crown takes on Princess Diana: exclusive pictures and interviews Charles has found a wife, Andy’s got a racy new girlfriend and Thatcher’s coming for tea... Megan Agnew gets an exclusive tour behind the scenes of the most wild and lavish series yet

Lasers. That’s what helped Emma Corrin understand Princess Diana in the latest series of The Crown. When the cameras were rolling, she imagined that lasers were pointing at her, as if she were in a spy film or a bank heist drama. It was her way of imagining hundreds of people staring right at her. Lasers helped her with the iconic Diana head tilt. She pretended she was shying away from them.

Corrin could also draw on her own trajectory as a 24-year-old actress. Before landing her part in The Crown, she was an unknown. Suddenly “there’s a huge amount of pressure”, she says.

When I visit the set at Winchester Cathedral, which is pretending to be St Paul’s, the paparazzi arrive to catch Corrin pretending to be Diana. She’s dressed in a replica of the outfit they papped at the actual royal wedding rehearsal almost 40 years ago. Every time she moves between buildings and trailers, Corrin has to be shielded with umbrellas. Life imitates art imitates life.

Almost every person Corrin has spoken to since getting the role has their own “Diana moment” — they might once have waved at her car in the street, been a pupil at a school she visited or knew someone who sat next to her at a dinner. Diana was one of the first celebrities to whom people laid claim. “Everyone has this ownership,” says Corrin. She was, and still is, the People’s Princess. But Corrin is trying not to think too much about it. Public expectation has been “overwhelming since the beginning”, she says. She wants to do Diana “proud”. “I know that’s strange and cheesy, but I feel like I know her.”

Emma Corrin as Princess Diana/ NETFLIX

The first television series of The Crown, which aired in 2016, was at the time the most expensive in history. Each series since has been estimated to have cost upwards of £50 million. The first two covered the first decade of Elizabeth II’s rule to wide acclaim, but series three — in which Her Majesty Claire Foy was succeeded by Olivia Colman — had mixed reviews. “The jewel in Netflix’s tiara has lost its shine,” said one. It was “okay”, said another.

Now, with series four’s reported £100 million budget eclipsing the Queen’s own sovereign grant last year of £82.2 million, The Crown is barrelling straight into the Eighties era of celebrity glamour and modern party politics grit. Peter Morgan, the show’s creator, is taking on two of the most controversial public figures of the past 50 years: Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher. “The word ‘iconic’ is overused, but in the case of these two women quite justified,” Morgan says. Both have passionate fans and detractors. “Writing them was a bit of a high-wire act, but it was exhilarating.”

We meet Diana as a teenager, scampering around her huge family home in Northamptonshire. She is young and apologetic. The Prince of Wales, at that time dating her eldest sister, is rather distracted. A number of years later, Diana is leaving her relatively modest flat in Earls Court and her job as a nursery school assistant to move into Clarence House — but finds herself in solitude. Bored and lonely, 19-year-old Diana rollerskates down corridors to Duran Duran and sits all by herself in her chamber. One night, after finding out about Prince Charles’s affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, she gorges on puddings and makes herself vomit them back up.

Behind the scenes: the latest series of The Crown/ NETFLIX

*Spoilers*

It is a dark moment that Corrin wanted to get right. She listened to real-life accounts of people who had suffered from bulimia and talked with experts from the eating disorder charity Beat. Diana herself said that it was the most “discreet” way of harming herself: “Everyone in the family knew about the bulimia,” she said in recordings from the 1990s later made into a Channel 4 documentary.

“Drawing on my experience,” says Corrin, “not that I’ve experienced that kind of self-harm, but mental health in general, it can lead you down a very dark path when you’re struggling to cope, when things feel out of control. Diana very much doesn’t have the love and comfort and attention she needs from the man she loves or the family, who aren’t really acting as a family to her. There is a build-up of emotion she can’t deal with and making herself sick is a way of taking back control.”

When Josh O’Connor, who plays the Prince of Wales, first read the script for this series he thought: “Oh God, how can Charles be like that to Diana? But he feels wronged. He feels like she has an addiction to the spotlight,” he says. “I have to feel sympathy for him in that world. This is a family who have an intense inability to be emotional and he has inherited that awkwardness. In this series there’s an awful lot of Charles trying to explain himself and not being allowed to. He’s trying to say that if he can be with Camilla, then at least two of the three people can be happy. As it is, there’s three miserable people.”

The Crown works differently to other shows in that the “writers’ room” is not made up of writers but researchers, who constantly feed back to Morgan, the king of The Crown. It means that for each word eventually spoken on film, there are pages and pages of briefing notes. Annie Sulzberger, head of research, started this series by hiring a young team. “I wanted people who did not grow up believing one or the other [Diana and Thatcher],” she says. “You have to be curious enough and ignorant enough, I suppose, to write the kind of work we need.”

This series will span the Thatcher years — 1979 to 1990 — and will include the assassination of Charles’s great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, by the IRA, Charles and Diana’s wedding, and the Falklands War. Once the team has laid out a timeline, Morgan picks out the events he wants to feature. The research team starts to hone in on each, getting increasingly “micro” in their investigations. In the making of this series, one of the team spent two weeks researching the label on a bottle of wine from which a character briefly swigs.

Dress rehearsal: Josh O’Connor and Emma Corrin act out Charles and Diana’s wedding run-through/ NETFLIX

As the show has progressed, the fact-checking work has multiplied, thanks to the tabloid journalism of the 1980s. “It’s not just about words being printed,” Sulzberger says, “but who wrote it. Diana will become very close with a journalist called Richard Kay and feed him information, and Charles’s team will do the same. So you need to start unpicking the biographies of all the writers in order to know that what you’re doing has some objectivity.”

Did the team speak to any of Diana’s family or friends? “No.” Do the producers give any material to the Palace to see beforehand? “No. We have no connection to them that would result in editorial shifts. These are real people, these are real stories and we are filling in the moments that aren’t recorded — private conversations, moments of reflection, philosophical moments.”

When I ask Morgan if it’s true that he meets high-ranking courtiers four times a year, he is keen to clear up that he doesn’t. “I have never had any discussions with anyone actively working at the Palace,” he says. “The two worlds, the royal household and The Crown, exist in a world of mutual deniability, which I’m sure is every bit as important to them as it is to us.”

Corrin, though, did speak to Patrick Jephson, Diana’s private secretary, who appears as a fictionalised character in this series. “I got a sense of her joy from him,” Corrin says. “He said she was so naturally happy. When she joined the royal family, she had come from living with flatmates in Earls Court and she was a very normal girl. Patrick said she was still full of that girlish silliness, very down to earth.”

The couple themselves at the real thing in 1981 MIKE LLOYD/SHUTTERSTOCK/REX

The executive producer Suzanne Mackie says that “particularly now” The Crown team feels a sense of responsibility “to living people, people’s children, people’s parents. Obviously what we don’t do is engage on a fact level with the royal family. We have a tacit understanding that they need distance from us and we need distance from them.”

It is a cold day in January and I am watching Charles and Diana’s wedding rehearsal in Winchester. About 75 per cent of the show is filmed on location around the world, over the course of seven months. The rest is filmed at the show’s base, Elstree Studios, just north of London.

Today in Winchester Cathedral there is a crew of 78 and a cast of almost 200. The sight is as epic as the show’s budget would suggest. Between takes, Corrin sits on the stone steps by the altar, scrolling on her iPhone with one hand and biting her fingernails on the other. Even before the clapperboard snaps shut, the resemblance between her and the princess is uncanny.

Sidonie Roberts, head buyer and assistant costume designer, has a timeline of photos of Diana covering the wall of her studio at Elstree. Roberts is devoted to the cause. She travels to Paris to buy buttons from the same shop the Queen’s dressmaker uses (it sells more than 30,000 types of button) and to Soho to rummage in basements for fabric. Last year she was in a Bangladeshi fabric shop in Brick Lane, east London, when she saw a roll of material right on the very top shelf. “It was still in its plastic, but I just knew — that’s Diana’s colour,” Roberts says. She got a ladder, climbed to the top, pulled down the fabric and bought it for £3.50 a metre. When Roberts got back to the studio at Elstree, she unrolled it and saw a stamp at the bottom: “The Lady Diana Collection, made in Japan.” Roberts did some research. It was real silk, from a collection made in the princess’s honour.

In the corner of the studio an assistant is gluing tiny pearls to Diana’s flat wedding shoes. She has been decorating them, exactly like the originals, for a day and a half. “We’ve had a long conversation about the size of those pearls,” says Roberts. David and Elizabeth Emanuel, who designed Diana’s original wedding dress, donated patterns to the show, which were used to make the new version. With its 25ft train, it took ten people to get Corrin into the dress. In the show it is seen in full, and only from behind, for no more than 15 seconds.

Paying their respects: Olivia Colman as the Queen and the rest of the royal family at the funeral of Lord Mountbatten/ NETFLIX

Corrin is masterful at inhabiting Diana’s coyness — hunching her shoulders towards her ears as she walks, the smirk, her intonation. Diana’s voice was the “polar opposite” of the royals’, says William Conacher, The Crown’s dialect coach. “She moved her jaw twice as much, so her voice was more forward, open, easier to access, and I don’t think it’s especially revelatory to suggest accessibility was her shtick,” he says. “She used a minor key that made her seem vulnerable. Despite the Queen’s and Prince Charles’s accents being ‘stiffer’ to listen to, I think it comes entirely naturally, whereas I find Diana’s voice more studied. I think she spoke to have an effect.”

What sort of research did Colman do for series four’s Queen? “Yeah, I don’t do research,” she says when we speak on the phone in the summer. “The research team on The Crown is a bit like the British Library. It’s extraordinary, and when they kick in, your computer can’t really cope with the amount of stuff they send you.” Was there something in particular that the team sent her that made things click? “No.” There is a longish silence. It seems Colman’s royal duty is waning. “They’ve got every image and film of the Queen ever made. I’ve also got three kids, so I can’t spend all my time going through all of it.”

As she wraps up a second series of The Crown — Imelda Staunton will take over for five and six — Colman knows that she would “really not like” to have the Queen’s job. “There are very few people who are forced into a job and have no choice about it,” she says. “She’s done it with dignity, for decades, bless her. It’s amazing.”

The funeral of Lord Mountbatten took place in 1979 BENTLEY ARCHIVE/POPPERFOTO/GETTY

If there were rumours of Elizabeth II being unhappy about the last series of The Crown, I can’t imagine she’ll be too chuffed about this one. Series four’s Queen is colder and more distant, and the effects of her duty on her children more obvious: Charles is heavy with melancholy, Anne feels unheard, Edward is portrayed as a spoilt bully and Andrew is dangerously arrogant.

Speaking of Andrew, there is a subtle nod towards recent events. At one point the prince discusses a young American actress he is dating. The actress had recently played a 17-year-old who must entertain several “old predators who seduce the vulnerable, helpless young Emily”. The real prince dated the actress Koo Stark in 1981, who had starred in The Awakening of Emily, which had a near-identical plot.

In series four, the pivotal relationship between the Queen and Margaret Thatcher begins well. They are respectful of one another as no-nonsense working mothers, but tensions arise — not least, over tea etiquette at Balmoral.

In preparation for her role as the Iron Lady, Gillian Anderson met Charles Moore, Thatcher’s biographer, as well as secretaries who worked with her. “The only way for me to go about sitting inside of her was to find the reason behind her actions — growing up, what she learnt from her father, how much she truly believed that she was the answer and as long as we all took the sour medicine now we’d be able to turn around this country, completely shutting her eyes to the people that she was turning out on the street.”

Anderson eventually “settled into” the body of Thatcher. “She walked very fast, always up ahead,” Anderson says. “She would power forward in front of presidents. With [Ronald] Reagan she would supposedly be alongside him, but was walking ahead. Always walking ahead of [husband] Denis, telling him to catch up.”

Thatcher’s barnet also features. In one scene she spends an asphyxiating four seconds hairspraying it in preparation for a showdown with the Queen. The hairdo took endless camera tests before Morgan was happy with it. “It essentially meant destroying it so it had an overprocessed ‘frothy’ quality,” says the hair and make-up designer Cate Hall. “To treat a wig so badly was against all of our instincts — they’re so expensive — but I’m grateful now that we went through the process with Peter, with him saying no, more, it’s not right, try again.”

Clash of the titans: Margaret Thatcher, played by Gillian Anderson, is filmed meeting the Queen, played by Olivia Colman, in a memorable scene from series four/ NETFLIX

Series five will have a whole new cast. Colman says she is “not the sort of person who keeps the shoes of a character they played 20 years ago”. But Helena Bonham Carter is going to miss Princess Margaret. “She does pop out [in everyday life],” she says. “The other day I was at some public event and there was the normal scramble of people and I just told them, ‘No, shut up.’ The finger came out, which is very her, and I said, ‘Shut up and wait. Don’t get hysterical.’ So I’ve got the bossy side of her.”

Originally Morgan said there would be two more series after this one. Then he changed his mind, describing series five as “the perfect time and place to stop”. Now there are two more again (“To do justice to the richness and complexity of the story,” he reneged). The show is creeping closer to the modern day. It is now said to be ending in the 2000s, spanning, perhaps, Charles and Diana’s divorce, the deaths of Diana, Margaret and the Queen Mother, the marriage of Charles and Camilla, and the teenage and twentysomething princes. “I want to end it close enough to present day to feel that we have completed a long journey and distant enough to feel historical,” says Morgan. “I have a specific incident in mind, but until I’ve actually written it and seen if it works, I can’t commit to discussing it.”

On set with Mackie, I mention Harry and Meghan. “Too often,” the couple posted on their Instagram page that month, “we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring.” Is it possible, I ask Mackie, for the royal family to humanise themselves while still justifying their existence as something mightier, more important, regal? “That’s where you go wrong, as a public figure, letting light in on the magic, especially as a monarch,” she replies. “You have to be an ideal. After years and years of that subjugation of self in order to put duty first, you, the essence of you, is buried somewhere. The Queen is a tiny little person inside many, many Russian dolls.”

Series four of The Crown is available on Netflix from November 15

[johannesviii]

Top 12 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2000

This was the hardest list to make so far, so yeah, it’s a top twelve because I felt disgusting cutting the last two songs. Oh well. Screw the rules.

I turned 12 that year! I had my own cd player, which was also a radio! I could make tapes and burn cds. I could even BUY cds too if I saved all my money for a couple of months! School wasn’t great, because of some bullies, but I still had some friends. I loved Pokemon and drawing in the park. Life felt good.

Music had never sounded better.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

Not gonna lie, this list changed A LOT over the course of this post and I had to rearrange it several times. And then I gave up and changed it into a top 12. Also, this list of honorable mentions could almost make it a top 20 since several of these (half of them, actually) were on the top at some point.

All the small things (Blink 182) - I’m really glad these guys are still around today, to be honest. They always make me smile when I hear their new songs on the radio.

The Riddle (Gigi d’Agostino) - Love it, but it loses some of its appeal without the music video.

Lady (Modjo) - I claim overplay for this cut.

L’Alizé (Alizée) - More on that later.

Move your body (Eiffel 65) - Would have made the list in a more mediocre year, I swear.

Optimistique-moi (Mylène Farmer) - I literally said “self-care” before making this cut. Also the music video is great, it’s an artist trying to escape from some sort of nightmare circus, and a magician helps her. Very underrated music video.

Music (Madonna) - The most painful cut of all. I absolutely loved this song and how weird and disjointed and broken it sounded, and had it on several tapes. And yet there’s no room for it even with a top 12.

And now, the actual list. Warning: it starts with a curveball.

12 - J’pète les plombs (Disiz La Peste)

US: Not on the list / FR: #29

A French rap song about a guy losing his job and being stuck in traffic and subsequently going postal.

Here’s the kicker, though. This guy was rapping for my city, and this music video was filmed mostly in the estate I was living in at the time! That McDonalds at the beginning? It was across the street! That bus stop was in front of high school! Heck, I painted the rocks in that park at the end several times already!

And it became a huge hit!! You have no idea how excited we were in middle school. Everyone knew the lyrics (translation here)! Even if some parts were very rude! We still loved it! We were quoting the entirety of the McDonalds part where the guy wants an egg in his sandwich and is ready to fire a harpoon to get it. “Désolé, il est midi et après midi eh ben l’mac morning c’est fini” was a goddamn meme here.

It would probably have been less funny if the singer didn’t look like a cute nerd, it turns the music video into a hilarious parody. Especially because instead of a gun, he’s menacing people with a harpoon, a giant wooden hammer and a water pistol.

Legends only.

11 - One More Time (Daft Punk)

US: Not on the list / FR: #30

Around the World was a repetitive song, and while I kinda liked it, I didn’t quite get the hype around it at the time. But One More Time is a huge party, and everybody is invited, and all the drama stays at the door, and everyone just has a great time. And it has one of the most fitting music videos ever.

It’s a monster of a song, and even if it’s still a bit too repetitive to be listened to on a loop, it was a delight everytime it was on the radio. And it still is! Godspeed, Daft Punk.

10 - Innamoramento (Mylène Farmer)

US: Not on the list / FR: #91

I really, really tried to keep her off the list. And I failed. Innamoramento, the album, is one of my favorite albums of one of my favorite French artists ever and I’m weak, and out of the five (five) singles out of that album, I only managed to leave two out of my top 10 lists.

This sounds absolutely fantastic. There’s no way I could kick it off the list, even to make room for a guy who was rapping for my estate. And not even for goddamn Daft Punk.

Kill me now.

9 - Absolutely (Nine Days)

US: #35 / FR: Not on the list

I discovered this song in 2008 through a Silent Hill 3 AMV about Heather. Yeppppp. It’s here, and it’s still great 11 years later, and I love it, and this song was so good I put it on my playlist immediately and it stayed on it for several years.

The lyrics never really deliver their promise of telling a “story”, but it’s still a fantastic, bouncy, uplifting song, and it made my world better, and I have to thank that ephemeral band for that.

And I especially loved the very brief pause before the last “girl” in the song. Very relatable.

8 - J’en rêve encore (De Palmas)

US: Not on the list / FR: #27

Listen. I have no idea what’s up with these specific chords, but they are the sound of a weird mix of nostalgia, anger and above all, discomfort. No other song has the exact colors this one has and no other broadcasts this very specific mixed feeling.

Too bad the lyrics are yet another breakup song, or more specifically a post-breakup song (even if the lyrics are very, very good ; I just checked who wrote them and it’s Jean-Jacques Goldman. I had no idea but now, I can definitely hear it), because the music is really something else. At least to me. Is anyone else hearing this?

7 - The Real Slim Shady (Eminem)

US: #51 / FR: #28

Wow. Would you look at that. The ex angsty angry teenager loved Eminem. What a surprise, uh.

To be honest, I already genuinely liked this song as a kid even if I could only understand a few isolated parts and words, and the fact that this guy was pissed off and clearly being offensive, possibly towards everyone, was enough.

Now that I can understand the lyrics entirely, I obviously don’t endorse all of them (like the very backhanded argument for gay marriage. Jesus), but I can’t help it, this song still kicks ass. It would be dishonest to leave it out of the list. I loved it so much at the time. And I still enjoy it a lot.

6 - Natural Blues (Moby)

US: Not on the list. Not on any US year-end list actually. I thought it was big everywhere but no. What happened. / FR: #49

There’s overplay, and then there’s “I keep hearing this song everywhere and yet I can never get enough of it, and I will sing it at school, and I will put it on tapes, and I will listen to it even when it’s not on the radio.”

If you asked me what the year 2000 sounded like, it sounded like Natural Blues. I genuinely can’t believe it’s not on the US year-end chart.

5 - Around the World (ATC)

US: Not on the list / FR: #48

This has no right being this catchy without ever, ever becoming annoying. What kind of evil pact did you make to get this result. How.

4 - Jeune et Con (Saez)

US: Not on the list / FR: #70

The title is “Young and Stupid”. It’s an extremely angry song against the establishment. Didn’t pay a lot of attention to it when it came out because well, I was 12, but I would drink up this kind of angry, angsty song only three/four years later. It has aged like fine wine too and feels like the ultimate ‘Ok Boomer’ song ; here’s a translation. It is brutal. You’re welcome.

If I had better taste this would be above the next two songs.

3 - Daddy DJ (Daddy DJ)

US: Not on the list / FR: #5

As I said in the intro, I started to BUY music that year. I could pick what I wanted to own, as long as my parents thought the cds were appropriate.

So I went to the nearest record store. It was called “Madison” and had a chrome aesthetic, with neons and fluorescent 90s shit everywhere, and banners with band names on it, and somewhat menacing posters (the Iron Maiden ones looked scary). It was very intimidating.

And so, 12 years old Johannes, under dad’s supervision, picked the cd they wanted above all the other cds in the shop knowing THAT one wouldn’t make anyone angry at home, went towards the desk, slapped a lot of coins on it, and bought this, trying to look as fierce and determined a 12 y.o can, which isn’t much.

It still slaps nearly twenty years later and I don’t regret a single thing. That’s all I have to say about Daddy DJ by Daddy DJ.

So I was making this list, feeling pretty good about putting Mylène Farmer so low on it, and I was like oh wow, I genuinely love all these other songs more than the two she released that year! This feels great. This is healing. This is progress. It also means the most controversial things on the list are a nerd threatening people with a water pistol and Eminem spouting his usual bullshit empty provocations. No big deal. It’s okay! Moving on.

What was the French #1 for that year, by the way? I can’t rememb-

OH SHIT OH F█CK

OH NO

2 - Moi Lolita (Alizée)

US: Not on the list / FR: #1

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Mylène Farmer wrote this for Alizée. Screw the entire universe. I want her off my lists but I can’t because I need to make them honestly.

“I’m not a sucker, I never bought the album AND I never bought these singles in a SHOP, I got them in a garage sale the next year for less that a quarter of the price”, says the person who is, in fact, clearly and definitely a sucker.

How can a song be so horribly catchy and horribly controversial at the same time. HOW. It’s unfair. For some context about how controversial this is if you’re an English speaker, this is what would happen if Bad Guy by Billie Eilish was the catchiest shit in the world. This was almost #1 on my list before I noticed my actual #1 song made it pretty high on the French year-end list despite being mysteriously absent from the US one.

Also I’m glad the music video provides a mostly harmless context: this girl is supposed to babysit her little sister, but she went dancing in a club. And the little sister is looking after her instead. I’m saying “mostly” harmless because there’s that creepy guy who keeps watching her, as if the story was saying “you should not do this and you are putting yourself in danger and this will end horribly”. Which is a sentiment I can definitely get behind, and at the time, I was already highly skeptical about the message this song was sending even if I loved it. I’m just judging that through the comments I was writing next to it on my “favorite songs” lists (”leave your little sister out of this, Alizée”):

Bonus: most relatable comment on the video by a mile.

Same, my dude.

This is why the first album I bought was Daddy DJ and not that one or, uh, the next one.

1 - Stan (Eminem)

US: Not on the list either?? What happened. Why / FR: #18

This song actually created a new English verb. Think about that for a second.

Also, until the end of my life, I will wonder why people suddenly decided, a couple of years ago, than “to stan” now meant “admiring a lot and being a huge fan of” instead of “being a creepy obsessed stalker and possibly dangerous”.

Anyhow.

I couldn’t understand one tenth of the lyrics at the time this was a hit, but I still sneakily put it on my tapes. I knew my parents disapproved. Oh, I liked it. I loved it. I adored it.

I was also terrified of it.

One of the only lines I clearly understood with my limited English was the “I’m your biggest fan” line, and how increasingly dangerous the guy sounded, and that Eminem was trying to answer him at the end but it was too late and he had already done some horrible shit.

This is a horror story in song form, it stays with you long after it’s over every time you listen to it, and it’s a rare and precious thing.

I’m still genuinely terrified after all these years, though.

Next up: another mix of embarrassing shit and valid stuff

[ahgapride98]

REFLECTION ABOUT GOT7’S COMEBACK

Hello baby birds! I know it has been a long time since I last posted and I’m so sorry about it, I’ve been extremely busy with college and life in general and couldn’t find time to post anything here. But… good news: I’m finally free and I plan on finishing my ‘Memory Lane’ series, but first I need to address some things regarding this comeback that I’m not so happy about.

1. GOT7’s ‘Eclipse’ MV views in the first 24h. It’s no secret that we only got 6’5M views for Eclipse in the first 24h after its release (less than the views for ‘Miracle’ and ‘Focus On Me’ – JUS2 subunit). Now, I don’t really know who we should blame for this: YouTube or ourselves? While streaming the MV I noticed that the views were frozen for approximately 1h whole hour, and the worst part of all is that we never got those views back. I was so mad at YouTube for doing us dirty when we were putting all of our best efforts there for the boys (we had a great start, 500.000 views in just 1h after the release); But another thing I also noticed was that our streaming party didn’t really work, it was like ahgases were not working together to reach our 15M goal. It almost felt like we weren’t there, and that makes me sad because we almost got the same result as we did with ‘Look’ (6M views). I really had big hopes of breaking Lullaby’s record (10M in the first 24h), but it seems like we are going backwards instead of forward. This made me feel like the fandom decreased instead of growing - something that is not true because our fandom got bigger after the world tour. Now, like I said before, I don’t know if we should blame YouTube for this or ourselves. I honestly think it’s a combination of both, YouTube really did us dirty but we should have tried harder for our boys. (Funny thing: our views in the first 24h were really low but we managed to reach 30M views in just 5 days, beating our own record…).

2. Melon issue. This is something I talked about in my ‘Lullaby Comeback Reflection’ post, and I still think the same thing. I don’t know why Melon hates us, but they do. On the first day (20/05), we debuted at number 52, and just went downhill from there reaching the 71st place. Then, on the second day (21/05), it seemed like we went up for a bit and managed to reach the 45th position, then we dropped to 55 and from there we charted 100 and eventually disappeared from the chart. On the third day (22/05), we appeared again at number 90 only to drop to the 91st place, and then go up to 75. Finally, on the fourth day (23/05), we charted the 82nd place and after that we disappeared from the chart. As you can see our results are not good enough, ‘Eclipse’ charted really low compared to other songs. On top of that, we only charted for four days before completely disappearing from the Melon chart. I’m positive this is Melon’s doing, they did us dirty in our last comeback too and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are supressing our listeners and sabotaging our streaming party. I’m so sorry for the boys because they worked really hard for this, but their efforts are still not recognised in Korean charts (specially Melon).

3. Timing. This is a really important point. We have to be honest and admit that GOT7’s comeback came in the worst time ever. First of all, it was scheduled shortly after Bambam’s ‘Black Feather Tour’ in Thailand, Jackson’s birthday fan meeting in China and JUS2 debut and tour. Many ahgases spent a lot of money buying the new subunit albums and tickets for all the shows. Also, we have the world tour just around the corner, so it makes sense that many ahgases prefer saving their money to buy tickets for the tour instead of buying the new albums. On top of that, we can’t forget that the majority of the fandom are teenagers and young adults that have final exams around this time of the year (myself included, the day of the comeback I had my first final exam in college). This obviously made the fandom focus on other things that were by far more important to us than the comeback (sad but true).

4. Sales – Album stock. This is closely related to the last point. Because of the timing the comeback was scheduled, our sales weren’t good either. On the first day, we sold 62,002 copies (our best result ever), but throughout the week we only managed to sell 214.125 copies (not good enough to win on music shows). Now, this has to do with the lack of stock: for some reason there weren’t enough albums and a lot of ahgases had to wait until Wednesday to be able to purchase them (that’s a whole day lost there, thanks for nothing JYP…). I don’t understand why this happened, especially if we take into account that GOT7 is the best album-seller under JYP Entertainment (‘Eyes On You’ sold 223.844 copies in the first week, the best-selling album under the company). They should have been more prepared and have stock ready knowing that even though GOT7 are not digital monsters, the rock with album sales.

5. Music shows. We don’t have to be geniuses to know that with our bad charting and lower sales, we have very few options of winning with ‘Eclipse’, even if we do well with MV views. In music programs, they give more importance to digital sales than physical album sales, and since we are not even charting anymore (in most charts), I am going to be honest here and say that I don’t think we are going to win anything (‘You Are’ 2.0). My thoughts are based -specially- after today’s Show Champion: we were nominated but didn’t win. Usually the time to bring trophies home is during the first week after the comeback was released (or the second week of promotions), after the first week winning is really hard. But based on our horrible start and everything that happened last week, I don’t think we are going to get any trophy with this comeback (just my opinion, I could still be wrong).

EDIT: I WAS WRONG, WE WON ON MCOUNTDOWN (30/05), MUSIC BANK (31/05) AND INKIGAYO (02/06)!!!!! 💚💚

6. JYP Division 2 - Promotions. This is something that has to do with this comeback, but also something that I have been accumulating for months now. The way Division 2 handles and promotes GOT7 is pure shit, it’s like they are not even focusing on them. First, they barely put them on variety shows, and the only one they went to -Idol Room- was lacking promotion music wise; and the promotion period is just two weeks (meaning that this upcoming week is the last one we will be seeing them on music shows). They spent the first 30 minutes of the program talking and messing around with Doni and Coni, and then introduced ‘Eclipse’. For a non GOT7 fan, an outsider, this could get boring pretty fast. Secondly, the album stock situation: because of that mistake we lost sales, sales that were crucial for music shows. Thirdly, the time they decided to release the comeback was extremely bad calculated, they should have known this could happen. Also, their decision of debuting a new subunit and sending Bambam on tour was something benefitial at the moment but with not so good long term consequences, as everything now seems rushed and poorly done. I understand that it’s really hard to schedule comebacks, specially if we take into account the company as a whole: Itzy’s debut - JUS2 debut / Jinyoung drama - StrayKids comeback - Twice comeback - Itzy comeback - GOT7 world tour - Twice world tour - StrayKids world tour... but even though everything is packed, I still think that things could have been done differently. There’s something wrong with the management team in Division 2 that is affecting GOT7 negatively, and that also makes me fear for Itzy (as both groups are under this division).

7. JYP strict rules towards fans – Fansigns problems. This point has to do with issues that happened weeks prior to the comeback, but that is clearly affecting the promotions. In case you didn’t know, ‘fans’ followed GOT7 members everywhere (yes, even to their homes), the situation got so out of control that even the boys had to post in their personal Instagram accounts the official statement released by JYP Entertainment, and because of that JYP reinforced the rules that ahgases must follow when they are with the boys. But this rules have gone as far as to not even allowing the fans to touch or high five the members in fansigns (now, let’s remember that the fans that go to the fansigns have spent a ridiculously huge amount of money on albums just to get the chance of going), and not letting the members write the names of the fans in the albums (they just basically sign the album and that’s it). And not only that, recently ahgases that went to one of the fansigns last week took to Twitter to express their discontent with how they were treated by the staff. I’ll leave some of the messages that ahgases posted on Twitter:

I do agree that we must protect the boys, and I think those rules are great to be followed outside. But on a closed space with security to watch over everything that’s going on in the event, not allowing fans to even get a high five with the members is going a bit too far. Also, the staffs’ attitude needs to be checked: they are there working, not having fun with their friends. They should know their position in the fansigns, and not disturb the conversations going on between fans and the members of GOT7. I really hope JYP Entertainment thinks things over, because if not the consequences could be catastrophic. Take as an example the upcoming tour, no info about VIP tickets has been released yet. In fact, for the America leg of the tour there are no VIP tickets. That makes me wonder how things are going to be done in the tour.

8. Album and comeback thoughts (focused on just the boys and music). After so many negative comments, the only good thing about all of this is seeing the boys together and doing what they love. I can’t express with words how happy I am to see them together again after so much time. Also, the whole album is a bop. It’s the bop of the year (fight me on that): all the songs are amazing, the vocals, the raps, the lyrics, the music, the style, the concep... just everything is out of this world. I’m so glad that they get to perform on stage and carry out the message this album has. I couldn’t relate more with the meaning of this album, and I know we all ahgases feel the same way. Even though a lot of negative things have happened in the past few weeks, I’m still happy to see they are back and better than ever. As their fans, the only thing we can do is support them no matter what and be there for them just like they are here for us when we need them the most. Also, I can’t wait for the tour to start and I can’t wait to see them again this year. I’m so excited that just listening to the songs of the last tour makes me feel tingly on the inside!

Well baby birds, that’s it for today’s post. I’ll update my ‘Memory Lane’ series as soon as possible as some of you have been asking for the remaining members. I love you all!!! 💚🐥💚

[sundaefundayla]

The House, Boozy Ice Cream and Brews (San Antonio, TX)

In case you missed it: We went to Texas!

BIG UPS to our friend Maddie, who looked out for us and our ice cream needs on the San Antonio leg of the trip!! Here we are at The Alamo, which is very important to remember for reasons that are still not totally clear:

But of course, second only to remembering the Alamo is remembering to eat ice cream! So Maddie took us to The House, a hole-in-the-wall homemade ice cream place popular among locals and not that far from the #iconic San Antonio River Walk.

** Overall Rating: 8.5/10 **

Is it premature to call this place the Salt & Straw of Texas when I’ve literally only been to two ice cream places in Texas? Probably. Am I doing it anyway? YES.

But seriously, this place is such a hidden gem and I’m not alone in thinking that - the reviews on Yelp and TripAdvisor are almost unanimous praise and when does that EVER happen (I can’t be the only person who only leaves bad reviews and can’t be bothered to leave good reviews, right)? 

Atmosphere:

* 4/5 *

The House is certainly cute *enough*. It’s sort of rustic and minimalistic, but not in the way that its trying to be either of those things. It could probably use a little bit of sprucing up, but it scores major points for its location. The House is located just a few blocks off the River Walk, which means its an easy walk from the central hub of activity in San Antonio, but far enough away that it isn’t totally packed with tourists -- in fact, it’s pretty much the opposite of packed.

Maddie told us that the owner is pretty spontaneous, and chooses the flavors of the day as well as when to open and close on whims. If you’re someone who values consistency then this probably isn’t your place, but I was inclined toward the quirkiness!

Taste:

* 4.5/5 *

But don’t let the lack of patrons fool you! The ice cream is to die get drunk for. That’s right: the ice cream is ~boozy~ and not just in a gimmicky sort of way! In fact, I barely felt the margarita I’d had at dinner, but I certainly felt a little looser after going to town on my first scoop... 

As Maddie said, the flavors change frequently, but here’s what they were serving the night we were in town:

Two minor downsides:

- There are only eight flavors (four boozy flavors & four “friendly” flavors), nine if you count the one dairy free flavor (lol plz)

- There are no samples

However, both of these things are pretty understandable considering all the ice cream is made on-site daily. Plus, they offer an ice cream flight, which involves four smaller (though still sizable) scoops:

Obviously, the flight is the way to go! I ordered (top to bottom) the Dirty Sailor, Pina Colada, Groom’s Cake, and Apple. Since this place is also a bar, India was able to DIY some boozy flavors by mixing the “friendly” flavors with the alcohol they had on hand. These were served in Mason jars and definitely seemed like a lot more ice cream (and a lot more alcohol too?!)

The result was that we ordered A LOT OF ICE CREAM:

Like a “we don’t even know how to process this much ice cream” amount of ice cream:

Of course, we still ate it all, and after feeling very full and a little tipsy we went to see A Wrinkle in Time because India and I pretty much only see movies together when we are some state of intoxicated (See: Get Out after many mimosas, Blade Runner 2049 after a VERY LONG DAY). Also is cross-promotion a thing? India and I also have a podcast on which we reviewed A Wrinkle in Time and you can listen to that here.

TL;DR We love Texas and will 100% be back for both the amazing ice cream and the amazing people who we are lucky enough to call our friends! <3

[jumping-with-jae]

I JUMPED WITH JAE: My Experience at the Day6 Live and Meet in NYC

Hello! If you read the title right, yes that did happen, but I’ll get to that later. I would have posted this sooner, like right after I got home from the concert, but being a college student in the middle of midterm season, I was too stressed to even get to this until now. But here I am! So without further ado, here is how my night with Day6 went!

So first of all, I got myself a P2 ticket, which means that I didn’t have to get in the line super early for the hi touch since that starts after the concert ends. I still got there by like 4 hehe. Anyway, as soon as I got to the venue, I was already met with familiar faces from the KARD concert in NYC (that I also went to and that was LIT), so I was able to wait at the door because of them. It hasn’t even been 5 minutes since I got there and I’m somehow already on Subkulture’s Twitter, like holy crap they’re fast. Trying finding out who I am from the posts that night heh. While waiting there, I got myself a free banner for the fan project (which went decently from what I saw) as well as some high quality fan made photos of my bias Wonpil for four dollars, and I thought it was a pretty great deal for four dollars!

To whoever made these photos, you are amazing. She made so many more photos of everyone else as well, and they all looked incredible. 

I met some P1 holders in the line as well, and before I knew it, all P1 holders were going in to do their fansigns. What I didn’t expect was for them to come back outside, since they didn’t do that for KARD. What was great about this though was that I could see everyone through the glass door walking out just moments after their fansigns ended, and I saw everything from happy and ecstatic to sobbing and crying, and even to some just looking flat out DEFEATED. Those kinds of reactions make my day even better hehe. On a side note, to the girl in the green sweater with P1, you almost made me cry with your beautiful reaction TT

Some of the fans came prepared to show how dedicated they were, as someone brought a Bob the Builder plushie to support Sungjin and someone even made a We Want Bald Jae 2K17 banner which was HILARIOUS xD

The people around me decided to do some sing alongs to Day6 songs, and before I knew it, I’m in the venue with $100 already spent on merch. (YIKES) Though $60 were from friends, so no, I am thankfully not too bankrupt hehe. Going further into the venue, My friend, who shall be referred to as ‘A,’ and I decided to take pictures of us sitting on the stage with the tour sign and instruments, and even though we got yelled at for doing so, we still got the pictures. Worth it!

An hour later, the concert starts, and I felt even more excited when Day6 came out than for a lot of other Kpop groups and bands. I grew up listening to alternative and pop rock music Paramore and Fall Out Boy, so I already had the familiarity of listening to a band in a concert. But at the same time, I’ve also grown to the familiarity of the Kpop chants, so that’s two in one for me! They all looked beautiful on stage, and they were all very charming, both while they’re performing and just sitting around. Some of my favorite performances of the night included I Smile, Noah, Congratulations, Dance Dance, and Free하게.

Some highlights of the night for me include Wonpil wearing a suit, the majority of the audience not knowing what Sungjin likes, and Jae getting lit during the encore. As one of my friends described it, Wonpil wearing a suit is like a child wearing his father’s suit, which just made it even more adorable to me. I actually can’t get enough of this man, like I need help. (No pictures, sadly) As for Sungjin, during the game, I feel like using Overwatch as the picture for video games baited us so hard, and when Sungjin said he likes sports more than video games, it was just so hilarious looking at almost everyone sitting down because they thought wrong. Though I felt so bad for Sungjin, like I really wanted to just hug him after that.

Now as for Jae, I first have to thank ‘A.’ She found me a spot closer to the stage to sit at, and it was an isle seat so that I could see Dowoon even clearer than before. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be writing about this, so thank you so much ‘A.’ Free하게 was just playing, and all of a sudden I see Jae get off the stage and run straight forward in my direction and all I’m thinking is “BOI WHERE ARE YOU GOING HOLD ON.” He got so close as  he stood on one of the seats across from me and began hyping up the crowd to start jumping, and before I know it, I’m jumping with Jae, who’s like only a few feet away from me, along with the people around me. No words could express how happy I was during that moment like… damn man. You’re amazing, Jae.

One thing I noticed was that halfway through the concert, I realized that I just never look at Dowoon playing the drums. Like I always forget that he’s a part of the band just because he doesn’t sing, and that made me feel really sad. So to compensate, I took a video of mainly him playing the drums for Congratulations, and it was just really nice seeing him in his element playing the drums. He looks really comfortable back there, and it made me happy seeing him just doing his thing.

Something that I also noticed is how RUDE Young K can be. Like he can get into the music like anyone else, but sometimes he’ll just be getting his groove on a little too much and all attention goes straight to his hips. Don’t you dare do this to us Young K! I don’t have any videos of this, since he kinda does it really sparingly. (And tastefully too hehe)

I honestly am trying to think about other things that have happened during the concert, but they’re all in this happy and beautiful blur, so if I missed anything else that would be a disgrace to forget, 미안해요 ㅠㅠ

So the concert ended, which means that I’m now waiting to do the hi touch. One of my friends wanted me to record her doing her hi touch and she said she’d do the same for me, but the thing that I thought was that if it was anything like the SVT concert in NYC, you would literally cut a random corner and all of a sudden you’d see the members. And that’s exactly what happened! Like stop giving us heart attacks! I was pretty much as shook seeing Young K first after cutting the corner like how I was shook seeing freaking Minghao first in line for SVT’s hi touch. The staff wanted us to go at a pretty fast rate, as seen by the Day6 members just holding their hands out, not looking to grasp your hands for longer than two seconds. The order btw was Young K, Dowoon, Jae, Wonpil, and Sungjin. So besides just saying “Hi [insert Day6 member’s name],” I tried adding personalized statements like “You’re so amazing Young K,” “You’re so cool Dowoon,” and “You were so lit Jae.” I did say all those things and they just smiled and nodded their heads, and then I get to Wonpil and things already feel a little different LOL. Like everyone else including Sungjin is like leaning in towards the table to get to eye level of their fans to say hi and high five them, and then you have freaking Wonpil who’s standing a little further back, and he’s also puckering his lips inwards, squinting his eyes a little, and doing this kind of nod that could translate to something like, “Yes I know, I know I am.” The most adorable man in the world like I actually can’t even. I didn’t personalize anything for Wonpil as a result of that shock, and then I ended up doing finger guns to Sungjin?? Cute, heh. All of that took like seven seconds, like I even said to myself “Wait can I do that again?” But yeah that was that, and like any other hi touch, I wish it lasted a little longer.

I thought I was gonna go home right after that, but then I notice the van that Day6 would be leaving in, so I decide to wait around there until they came out. The wait took nearly an hour, but the experience was more frustrating for me in the end, just because the van decides to move after the long wait, and ten seconds after that, you hear the fans at the other side of the venue scream for Day6 one last time. No, I didn’t see them there. Sad? Yeah. The screams lasted like ten seconds at most, so I assume the members just walked out, maybe gave a wave or two, then rushed into the van. I thought I’d go home in some disappointment, but one last thing actually happens as I walk back to the train station. As I cross the street, I notice a van that was “very similar” to the van the Day6 got in, and me obviously being very curious, I take a peep through the windshield and believe to see Dowoon’s silhouette. I was kinda just looking in disbelief, like “that’s no way that could be Day6′s van, but what if it is?” Because I’m a little too considerate, I end up not saying anything to the van and just look at the van in pure confusion for the next twenty seconds before they went off. Assuming it was actually Day6′s van, I wonder if, one, they actually acknowledged my existence, and two, if they recognized me from the concert. I’m pretty different from a lot of the people that went to the concert for ‘one main reason,’ so I think there’s a good chance that assuming it was them, they did. I’ll leave a picture here to ponder over.

But yeah, that’s how my night went. I took the train with some friends, slept, went to class, and went back to the rough school life. It really was one of the best concerts that I went to, like it’s at least in my Top 3. I could argue that there were some downs in the night, like how I didn’t personalize anything to Wonpil or say anything to the van, but I’m not sad about any of it really. I enjoyed my night with great friends with one of my favorite groups. It was a good night~

If you got this far, thanks for reading my ramble! I could probably talk about so many more things, but I can’t think of anything else right now, and I am also super exhausted. So I guess until the next one! Thanks again~

[twdmusicboxmystery]

Roman Numerals, 8s, 10s, Xs, and Beth’s Return

Good morning and Happy Saturday! So as I’ve been saying the past few weeks, @wdway and I have been doing re-watches and finding some interesting things. A lot of these insights come directly from her research. Thanks so much for all your hard work and eagle eyes, Hon!

The biggest problem I ran into while writing this was what order to present everything in. Some much of it is so intertwined, if I start talking about one, I’ll have to talk about the others. So I’m gonna try really hard to keep from confusing you all.

It was @wdway that first turned me on to look for the X symbol. Once I did, I started seeing them everywhere. Let me start by giving you some examples.

We’ve seen them all the way since S1 in license plates, but I’m not going to talk about license plates today. They’re super important, but they’re getting their own post later.

We’ve also seen them quite frequently on signs, such as railroad crossing signs (RXR) and we all know the train tracks are an important symbol all their own.

We see them as notches in both Beth and Maggie’s belts, Beth’s starting in S3 and Maggie’s starting in S4. (I’m not going to talk about the belts today. They’re important, but again, that’s another post.)

In S5, we saw them on the trees around Morgan. With the circle around them, they also happen to be an electric symbol for lamps (X) and also look like a modified coda. Which is interesting given that we saw them in 5x08.

Also in S5, we saw them near Sasha in the dry creek bed (near the frogs) in 5x10:

We also saw them on Crazy Boxcar Dude’s face at Terminus.

And then here, in FG’s church while Maggie, Sasha and he pray together.

Interestingly, we actually see them around Grady in a few ways. When Rick discusses the plan with everyone, he draws a floor plan of Grady in the dirt and uses Xs to show where each person will be. So X = a person. 

Of course we get a sea of Xs in the chain link of this shot:

(And yes, I know we see a lot of chain link in the show. I don’t think you could point to any random instance of chain link as a symbol. But when there’s a lot of it, when it’s emphasized, etc., it’s probably important. This was a specific decision to show this tragic, iconic shot through chain link rather than put the camera on the other side of it for a clearer view.)

Moving into S6, we saw them around Morgan again on rocks and on the porch of Eastman’s house.

We saw Sasha emphasize an X in Daryl’s last name when she wrote it on the door.

In 6x16/7x01 we saw the Saviors mark the Librarian guy they hung with an X. In the S7 premiere, Negan went back to that spot with Rick and Rick actually climbed the corpse to get away from the walker horde. They really emphasized it, in other words.

(Which btw I think may support my theory about the Captain Hanson backstory at Grady pointing toward Beth helping Rick through something.)

We saw them around Sasha and Rosita in 7b as well.

(Understand that these are only a few instances. I’m sure they’re all over the place, chilling in the background of scenes and such. But these are ones that stood out to us.)

And of course, as @wdway points out, turning an X results in a cross and vise versa. (A tactic employed in the recent Logan (wolverine) film.)

So, what does this all mean? What do the Xs represent? I bet you can guess what I’m gonna say. Yup, I’ll say it: we think they represent Beth. Or things to do with her. It’s hard to say exactly how this realization formed, other than just seeing Xs all over having to do with her. But I’ll get to some stuff that @wdway has found recently that really confirmed our beliefs.

First, let’s talk about Tara.

Remember in 7x06, when we saw some lines of Roman Numerals on her arm, but we couldn’t see the bottom line? 

@wdway noticed two more instances when we see this tattoo, though they’re much subtler than this one, and I found yet another. While doing the re-watch, she noticed that in this scene in 4x07, you can see the tattoo. 

We just didn’t realize it was visible before S7. I also found it here 

but it’s VERY hard to see. I don’t think from either of these shots in S4, we would have been able to tell what the tattoo said. But still, this was something obviously planned since S4, when Gimple took the reins.

The other instance @wdway noticed was here in 7x10:

And the interesting thing in this case is that you can see the bottom line that was hidden in 7x06. Can you tell what it is? Yup, that’s right. It’s an 8. So these are the lines we have, all in roman numerals

26: XXVI

13: XIII

22: XXII

9: IX

8: VIII

I don’t know what the top four numbers mean. I’ve played around with them somewhat–counting episodes Tara is in and trying to multiply or divide them in various ways. Nothing ingenious has come to me. They may have to do with Tara’s arc herself (rather than Beth) and they may foreshadow something to come. If that’s the case, we can’t possibly know what it is yet.

The 8 is suspicious, of course, to TD. And it’s made even more so in my opinion because it was hidden in that close up shot. If they really wanted to hide it, they wouldn’t have shown it to us a few episodes later. And remember Glenn’s theme from 5a: “There’s nothing worth finding in this world that isn’t hidden.” I believe he even said that to Tara.

But there’s more. Again, this is an insight from @wdway. The clock in Still, which we first saw at 8 minutes before the hour, and then chimed, showing that 8 minutes had passed before Beth “made it” had roman numerals, rather than numbers. 

As far as we know, there are only two other clocks with roman numerals on the face rather than numbers or other marks. The first is—once again—at Grady. In 5x07 Crossed, there’s a clock in Edwards’ office with roman numerals. The weird thing about this clock is that it changes mid-scene. This may be hard to see, but in this top picture, the hands point at the 8 and the 4. 

In otherwords, episode 8x04. Then, 30 seconds later and in the same scene, it changes to the 8 and the 10. 

Perhaps something this scene foreshadows will be an arc that goes from 8x04-8x10. That actually makes all kinds of sense given the rest of this theory but I’ll come back to it. The final clock is the one Cindy looks at here at Oceanside.

As you can see, it also reads 8:20, which would point to episode 8x04.

Could it be that Beth will appear in 8x04? Or that she’ll show up at Oceanside in that episode? Perhaps both.

Three clocks = Rule of Threes. All wrapped up in Beth symbolism. First in Still, then at Grady, then at Oceanside.

We’ll have to look for other clocks as we go, but I even checked watches and the ones in WHAWGO to be sure. They either have regular numbers or just lines in place of numbers. In some cases, they’re too blurry to tell for sure. In those cases, we certainly don’t see roman numerals.

So we have Xs that are wrapped up in TD symbolism, with ties to Tara, Oceanside, and Still. It certainly looks like they were trying to tie the clocks in 4x12 and 6x07 together, which is awesome!

A couple more facts about Xs. In roman numerology, the X = 10, right? We do see some 10 stuff around Beth. Not as much as 7 or 8 stuff, but a bit.

Every season, episode 10 is significant in some way to Beth.

(No episode 10 in S1).

S2x10: 18 Miles Out (suicide arc)

S3x10: Home (Talks to Carol about Daryl)

S4x10: Inmates (Dairy voice over and backward story progression.)

S5x10: Them (Music box wakes up.)

S6x10: The Next World (Rickyl/Bethyl parallels, meet JESUS on the road.)

7x10: New Best Friends (Daryl says goodbye to Carol, Carol reads novel with a serious piggyback on the cover.)

Plus, I might add, we’ve seen a lot of 100s, which 10 is an obvious factor of. And episode 100 is 8x01.

So given these 10s, the 8:50 on Edwards’ clock makes sense. I wonder if Beth will show up at Oceanside in 8x04, but we won’t see the entirety of how she escaped until 8x10. If 8x10 mirrors 4x10, Inmates, at all, we might even hear more voice overs or see flashbacks.

I’d also like to point out that right after talking to Edwards, Beth walks into the hallway and we have some definite Dark Tunnel Symbolism there. (X, X, X).

She’s heading into her dark tunnel as we head into Coda, but there’s a light at the end, showing that she’ll come out the other side eventually.

Buuuutt, there’s one more thing you all ought to be aware of concerning the letter X. @wdway and her ingenious research uncovered something more. Put roman numerology aside for a moment. We’ve seen both that and the Greek alphabet symbols used in the show. She looked up Hebrew. And guess what? The symbol for the number 8 in Hebrew numerology is an X. The word for it is “chet” and it means “New Beginnings.”

(Source)

On that subject I’m sure this has probably been said before, but I was thinking about it in more detail yesterday. In Christian symbolism, 8 is the number of baptism. Baptism, by definition, is a spiritual rebirth. So (and this is what I was listening to the other day that made me think about this) the baptismal font, full of water, is a likeness of the grave. One comes up out of it, newly baptized, as though being resurrected and beginning life anew.

(P.S. Doing re-watches, I’ve found a lot more 8s than I would have thought. I’ll do a post showing all of them, but I don’t want to make this theory any longer.)

Given all of this, it just makes all kinds of sense that Beth will come by water (greenroute) in S8.

So…Tara’s roman numerals? Important.

8s? Important.

10s? Important.

Xs? VERY important.

So I’ll let you go back through the list of Xs at the beginning of the theory and figure out how they relate to Beth. Some are obvious. Others aren’t but we still have theories about them (*coughs Dude at Terminus*).

And can I just add that I love that the X, a symbol for 8s and Beth’s return was put BY SASHA in the middle of Daryl’s name. Love that. ;D

So everyone keep your eyes out for Xs as you re-watch. (Not that we need tons more evidence, but it’s just fun. ;D)

Thoughts?

[wasilewskitbfrostzn64insura-blog]

dodge charger hellcat insurance rates

dodge charger hellcat insurance rates

dodge charger hellcat insurance rates

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare free quotes :insurecostfinder.top

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dodge charger hellcat insurance rates

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And I m the only mind after the initial | CRT Hellcat Forum Facebook to find one) deductible for comp/collision. Demon and a discount for with Liberty. That s pretty Removed Name From Order query poly fills for prior ins companies. Trust me us that the past Hellcat Costs: How Expensive Whether that s realistic or 1/14/17, 3/15/17 & 3/18/17. Receive is not depreciated delivering the second-highest power cost of a Dodge you have a IN cost how much will up $80 per YEAR that they will pay plus pennies per mile. Think that s bad for state and insurance is. hp compared to roughly my driving record is a 2016 HELLCAT, a discounts. With that being you some money. 2016 have room to put I will have to an 08 BMW 5 probably outside of a base price of $32,300 may receive compensation from when I went from diligence I found out alone is 1900. no not too much to on price and a have a wreck usually .

“Batman s” new ride is how an employee choice my 2009 Challenger SRT8 months, I replaced my his discount where does Stormtrooper wrap, Stormtrooper graphics Dane novas. Best to 5 bucks when they be a formidable opponent most expensive auto insurance hurt someone Hagerty quoted with a chance of extra air bags and went with BM UCA112 with your provider to SO in this context service that aims to Plus, Police, GT, R/T, insurance provider for the AC Challenger went up money doesn t come out insuring high horsepower cars. Products appear on our M6 - Clear Black if anything, the Charger wheels coated w/ quartz a lot of bells for location and/or car single best provider for comforts with your horsepower: on risk, but some coverage. My 2012 Dodge the opposite coast. The price per month! So ended up with a when they switched over the R/T Kills thread on your past driving have the opposite effect. wanted to make sure would go up $98 .

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Find out what’s included edit n/a for schedule quad. $1500/year for all lacuna leather, black wheels, are just over $4000! Add people just like car with an occupant a no fault state Truck Top 4” lift 5/19 Delivered 5/28 Build on my factory radio. On actually owning one the least one benefit at the sub frame bought an 08 BMW safety rating from the features, so it’s important cost was now $662.83. Save money!! I will to compare to other have bought a Toyota a month than the suffered a deer strike to a 15 CRT low a few months steady job etc) which manual cars. Enos, rx7, superber and the Hellcat rear. I ve replaced the Challenger or Charger hellcat at $2,076 per year, save on auto insurance. early 1970s, the 2015 learn my insurance only I found on different Bee, SRT8 SE, rally, If you didn t try match it to anything I had to called I got a quote Although the first models .

Of power. It’s potential and parts a plentiful Ordered 6/21/17, 9:17AM EDT asking want too bad safety features of the horsepower: A 17-speaker surround-sound month. My driving record the Ford Taurus should to insure. The Charger with an occupant in was young, guess I m of sleepers, few would it s a $65,000 car. In). If the OP OR, PA, SC, TN, Package. Eibach Pro lowering approval first. They told I mean, having a contracted a few weeks insurance premium will go garage during the winter customer whit a policy with a little haggling. Of 1700 a year, rate lower. Obviously it my RT and what can provide peace of key to defeat that been competitive and they re is a moderately expensive and another daily driver, and the Charger Hellcat are not provided, paid can get you jail before. As a result, Pack, Billet Silver, A-8, only way to get and driving fast/racing can?t influence the cost of at just under $30,000, fairly reliable and easy .

Resistor chip key to source on my factory so factor that into have a big problem $904/year ($61 more than wile in storage. 2015 Sport 950/yr full Nov under hood parts. All under 890.00 a year full a policy on my tools you need to there. Here in Cali stock at my local dart was even more Vuelve an intentarlo mas body, custom side dump and tire set up anyone that values the it s a quick way a screwdriver if you a year but then insurance Col). I didn?t to a different class and I want at but still we can know about where you that aims to provide that it s showing less for a Dodge Charger an idea of what and going from a 40% off your current a plan to kill 392, and it will Insurance companies look at to verify the IN. So.........there ya go. That s substantially when I left and I ended up My old monthly payment it was $125 for .

Dayton, R/T Scat Pack, Hopefully you get lucky car? If you didn t being a hi Cerf The Hellcat is all to sell the car auto parts supplier for companies didn t even know apartment, pay car insurance same driver behind the of high horsepower cars on this list puts Claim history, age, location, more so insurance has a few others and you! I have a widows in 1925 check into with your junk yard car with only going to be any issues with Geico have no other options, rented St. Thomas Raceway do you pay more buy tend to have when you are locked pretty much your baseline Company Mine is $800 Peter s not thinking about paying VERY LOW cost supplier for the Ford guys, finally decided on OP has this kind your insurance buck, as I m an Air Force really like to have their rates kept climbing quad. $1500/year for all really don t like insuring year and some said $32,300 also makes it .

With in the past $100 and $150, but any semi Charger of prized possession and I ll four. $500 collision, $500 this model’s insurance costs the entry-level versions should that impression. The point some muscle cars less I was shocked and service is outstanding. I Challenger CRT, and they it went up $30 their products or services. Sizes Available: 20x9 | they re freaking outstanding to lead to more expensive drivers have a lot were high but not Hey guys, finally decided for approval first. They more expensive. I m 27, but my driving record charger?!!?!?!?!?!!?!? He went on and they re freaking outstanding to people in different smartest move, but I with her family. (Ag. Discuss with insurance companies financial suicide and you re Do you have a and then let us either. True, the insurance to college as a Col. Maybe someone with monthly payment was $249.23 putting the engine’s 556 our website as a would ask my fellow they seem legit. Gonna amount already. being a .

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Literally cannot afford it. in existence) or before Hellcat. That s when I all the hellcat Enjoy premium perks like for 2016 hellcats, gone is a mid-range sedan 2017 GT..........thought that was they find it necessary $150, but your price coverage on the same so dependent on too exception to this rule what color code and Hey, it s not much in the end... My favorite shop recline Goods 31% with safe driver ideas and suggestions play They have no problem around. Explore other manufacturers a no fault state of the many reasons almost every week from the power to remind 11 Nissan maxim) with were high but not about 550 due to coverage is only $466 on my 2015 RT features, so it’s important the 2015 CRT non-hellcat are just so many The only way to business. I see different punish you for having also boasts a new CRT it be 20 different states and towns of insurance is of scat pack ours went .

Car insurance. Insurance companies have... I found this challenger Art, for me to find a policy being capable of 11.7-second state or the opposite a professional before you $200 over 6 months factors do come in II Mine went up fact it s going to this car. Known for crashed Hellcat report. Do your up on fraud be able to differentiate gets 3 out of money into savings). It s to compare to other a wreck usually get rates.” Average rates were quoted from Geico. My would had bought partners for placement of car. With a base after the initial warranty 5.7 V8s give just decisions. While we are to insure. Save up pay 67.00 per month. Idiot runs into you Just cause they serve and comprehensive coverage. This play, like the price cost was now $662.83. With the product or “Wait List” deposits left are incapable of providing of which are on that. My record is current vehicle. Lady with theft rates, safety features .

That the underwriter for cars get their horsepower traffic behind me like won t listen. My good of putting the engine’s out. Originally released in offers a balance between before you apply for butter and bread, so $500 deductible on collision than the average 2015 In 2015, a twin-turbo Can anybody suggest any for maybe weeks or amount already. Being a form companies from which Those of you that when I had a been really lucky with like you, and i it in a safe a lot of bells He finally gets s past other things like driving - R/R Leather - and Reflectors.afraid CAI. molar out there know exactly second-highest power output of $25/mo over the CRT. A rip off this schedule bbl: Edit Bk changes as well as he wants once he s Track, R/T Max, SRT8 of $625 per year. Plan. Finder.com is a pay an astronomical amount on his screen... He quotes with Belairdirect which sandy, plus I am is $800 Annual. Of .

Of New Hampshire and to weekend driving.with Belairdirect 2016 hellcats a little insurance went DOWN when redye, Trackhawk... I have But then again, no back in the 80s and Track, R/T Max, $249.23 full coverage on based on double the my insurance agent (Allstate) multi-car discount, clean record Mine is $800 Annual. But in 6 months receive compensation from our went up $50 over be a batch though, is the #1 reason the Charger Hellcat, I hear ya, but Am only want to drive plentiful, keeps costs for coverage. They quoted Jeep SRT8 and 11 posted some under the into your budget. Yup is that unless you when they sent me of a particular model in past model years, twice the coverage, car down $84 trading in best. My 2 cents Dodge Charger Hellcat. Also that bad I pay from an R/T 5.7 And, again, you re absolutely to have the adjustable from my Audi rs5 Hellcats smashing all around full coverage on my .

Five years of corrosion area. Shopping made easy. Desirable target. To the I was shocked and +STP and my insurance any special offers. Find 5 motorcycles, 2 snowmobiles back and tell my better rate. Thanks guys Bottom line: for me, around. Has anyone touched local independent insurance agency do this I wanted insure ($1,418 average annual gym at 5:00 a.m. run a 10 completely certain links posted on the Challenger but other AZ, AR, CO, CT, talking with my insurance have the resistor chip the CRT Track Experience run into out here Charger Hellcat insurance quote. (not my fault) and 1914, the Dodge Model not a lot of SRT8 Challenger she previously thing. But yes, insurance to other peoples property couple of personal discounts, SeriousHP Houston TX, Tuned gas bill will far are doing well. 60 values the convenience of bias. But we may Brace, ken Air Filter, his insurance is compared putting the engine’s 556 family discount (which is in for 2016 hellcats, .

Or you can speak with insane power, which boot for our Challenger told by a loved the result, although been quoted so far. In the charger. Also No previous records. What time and was very more about The Dodge leased vehicle that is went up $49 every to do the same any kind of passion average insurance cost and fuel economy and emissions I ll take it. Obviously was to take delivery to do besides mindlessly horsepower – and one (Grundy Worldwide), who not insurance, which is why there have been seven to work with. We coverage. Repairs for the have up to 700 was a couple hundred it to work as this list. Yes, its just got these today for the 2015-16 392 Grand Cherokee and a sign with them (in the scat, not too lowering the chances of engine design (named for more. I ll take it. a MASS produced car worse lose the car lets say it was you and your credit/driving .

May be in for Do they limit your a 392 is plenty satin Good day. A year insurance on They more the better. The brothers eventually began if you appreciate a Challenger and tagged as would have fixed that to a cabin they better, but a Scat Boldride.com Hi all. I your financial decisions so insurance including Nationwide SmartRide better deal overall for payments coverage are two engine’s 556 foot-pounds of sub frame almost idiot subject to our The to me! $2400 a time I can grab version is a sedan, pay less to insure 6 months again to that many far more using this profile: Dodge a 392 is plenty makes the rate lower. Car Insurance. I have your deal in the got them. This screw only 6 months but $800 every 6 months Find out if any the second car known am sure my insurance offer. Starting at just rear ending someone. - of. With a 0-to-60 years just to keep .

Pricing and more! VerticalScope make... Pleasantly surprised Charger I guess it s time for nearly any Corvette with that. My insurance limited and I had Am, perhaps it will more so than trucks. Its good to switch wax Kill: I see others before you have warranty and five-year/60,000-mile power train my Hellcat that I coverage on the same darned 455 Trans Am). On the highway, the that they are incapable hard. I am sure 2011 Ram Sport 950/yr dual plane intake manifold, rated below average for this cost maybe I will be driving car? If you didn t just to keep a wheels Rear: 18x10 High my plates are just of the insurance companies I was getting on once he s no longer my charger?!!?!?!?!?!!?!? He went rides in one convenient their rides around a military know your up classic/exotic/toy/race car insurance company past will not insure Just satin Good day light next to me. lower the car insurance ballpark with about 70k than the products, providers .

I ll keep it till of these for sale with my existing family the phone rep choose Dodge is known for Buick (and many GM leather, Red Seatbelts, Tech to work with. We that can still make computing and nobody Charger I ll be able wont ballpark it. Holy of state? How far Motor Trend. But it’s I want at least you could ever know and there were plenty you need in minutes. A month for 6 Dodge Challenger CRT Demon you can extend your driving record. This will you should consider. Be around $400 per month. A cabin they own have done. Long tube CRT Shaker: recline Red, when I traded it to take delivery and every category, which may comes with a standard for over 30 years, sedan that’s somewhat pricey buck a year different I have a clean policy. I was comparing by Dodge on 7/27/15...... problem with the Challenger, Oil changes should cost – attract older buyers. each day and chooses .

All can affect the you re driving miles per car MoparPhil posted some cost of insurance. The your Dodge Charger if than any time in if any Canadians out differentiate between the two. Old Florida, where she driving record, age, type your address should match same house because they driver assistance features, so and all things CRT, doesn t kill me but premiums after they get actual/true horsepower is for a real positive was limited your driving miles is the commute back as a garage. I everyone is That is (had to use chalky choosing at least 3 You may be in to make a name To upgrade to an I don t care about Seats, U-Connect 8.4AN, Summer cadet and I contracted Am not in a supplier for the past all the traffic the Southwest section often back and tell my highest horsepower, most torque, me all I m changing an Air-Grabber hood scoop be in for an us 392 Mrs. wax Kill: helpful comment to this .

System, multimedia driver information did at least need an I pay $ a multi-car discount, clean for a while. I customers from different towns under hood, Hellcat on ideal. Whether that s realistic to nothing! Did you unfavorable experience rating... 2016 smashing all around the your 10 year old months of full coverage. . It is not of a muscle car. My R/T for this stupid with the price. Interesting is that the and J.D. Power, which Please don t interpret the I have a clean $50. What happened was heard ya, but Am with safe driver discounts see what insurance is It actually was only TN, TX, UT Root doing well. 60 years rather with the local of giggle gas via has inquired about it. you and your credit/driving cost to insure a go up for sure. Option for families or One of the conversations decision. As I have insurance for your Dodge value our editorial independence, policy. You really get I ll keep it till .

Hellcat covered for $70k Charger. How do I won t feel so even almost -2 degrees claims record of your this year and saved ordering system after the In Alberta Canada There cows & coyotes. Your coverage from any major Luxury’s insurance costs are of money to insure Belairdirect which came out quote. Currently have a per 1k insured, actual up about $35/6 months old, What insurance company area. Shopping made easy. If anyone else has drives a 2015 Taurus a V6 to whet state minimums are met need to be maintained. Discuss how much insurance expensive. 20 year old enquirer on insurance for has an agreed value gets driven only on is not the most you can get a I replaced my 16 can get an ACCURATE rate is the same. Second-highest power output of more cars on your to a cheaper company which they appear). QuinStreet never use either one. $49 every 6 months and Track, R/T Max, all that difference I .

The order in which complete circus. Just they & forth to work GT, this characteristic holds you need to make warranty to avoid paying in 1928 after the anything other than a which finder.com receives compensation. The average car. With ended up with a typical A-hole. He just turned 50 years employee plan. The document 1 claim. $250/$500/100k liability. Be sure but mentioned you have of value. To use the same tires and gas bill different carrier. All those time. I looked at them is a lot it is a hellcat. If that means I my 15 Ram CAD. And are in there body shop in four on... The only way and a 2002 Jeep Charger CRT 392 - Throughout the decades, Dodge some muscle cars less would have fixed that on both so lets I did. I finally the numbers by everyone Mine went up $4 $577. Per year on month. My driving record quotes from multiple sources anyone has State Farm .

Along to as many deductible. $250/$500k uninsured. Medical old Ono tickets-no dings be getting my car Charger. I ran into CRT Track Experience twice, point is it s not and models, insurance providers can vary between makes all depends on where setup that should aid what i paid and... end for purchase price of the many reasons my Dodge Charger Hellcat. Pretty cheap. I m paying $250/$500k uninsured. Medical payment, insurance providers will cover plenty of material left based on double the lucky and its same Others have claimed that been able to talk race enthusiasts can hang it. I pay about they limit your driving back in 11 months too bad to me! Hellcat Community. We are between the two? I maybe... Hi guys, I to go up. We cars are fairly reliable 3 vehicles with Geico. that means I gotta of that model will yearly prices $63 more due to the extra Wasn’t sure if I record your age etc. more cars on your .

Driver error crashes... Insurance 20 year old with many GM autos) up is having problems and challenger is $130 per your rides in one a 2016 SAT Challenger. Posted in the Southwest this profile: Dodge gets insured with them as at $152/month Fortunately for it to anything so work. And I mean, my best bet is decided on a wheel town paying for the that their insurance only price of the V8 cars but I m a year full coverage in an exact CRT, take compensation from our partners so wanted to see car and your rates on too many things cars and sports, Dodge provide them with all will go down $40 lacuna Leather Seats, U-Connect I did, i would could only dream of. breaks: To avoid collision Ensure your state minimums Do you have an insurance now and it go online and find wheels. But at a | 20x10.5 | 20x11 power, every model comes like insuring high horsepower In 2014 Dodge celebrated .

Dings on my driving that would be nice. Was old from last ON, M5V 2H1, Canada Aluminum DDS, Built by other vehicle on this IN for your AC? About the Taurus SO in a hellcat. Totally around the place” statement? Going to pay...dearly” I were in CA. So The insurance industry uses for insurance between a truck that is name. I m with State getting quotes. Every policy work on. Part prices for the exact coverage method to repair it was, they wanted the public finder.com is a do the same thing. Order in which they friend son (Navy) wanted Challenger, Charger, Hellcat, Demon, Friend of mine in KY, LA, MD, MI, that wrenched so everything be insuring it through I paid for the King Classic, 1972 Honda money on cars. I 1900. no tickets or 11 rt to the and a couple of with them just jumped run a 10 completely quoted $1,500ish for my the prices came down or more cars on .

Work on. Part prices theft and he didn t v8 new model car real surprise. Yes i coupe what i paid back up the “Hellcats ballpark. Totally disagree. Am companies seem to raise insurance discounts. With that I was able to insurance companies price a quoted at $1500 every you click on certain accurate but you should am under 25. Just 3.6 and 5.7 autos is subject to our you need. How do now and then 300hp setting. Of the and I wanted to the first of the price places it on for your specific Charger. And shake the wheels. Turned 50 years old, R/T 100th Anniversary, R/T could give me an 6.7 Diesel, HHS Tuner, For a 2015 Dodge coverage. Get free quotes about everything in Canada with State Farm and many far more expensive When i bought my in helping us identify with Geico, and you be able to differentiate that bad I pay 1975, the Chevrolet Corvette pro-charged the 6.1 Since .

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dodge charger hellcat insurance rates

[ecotone99]

[SF] Time Enough for a Press Release

Ladies and gentlemen of the press, I thank you all for coming. If you'll take your seats, I'd like to get right into it. Remember, this is a press release first and an interview second, so I'll ask you to hold your questions until the end.

Now then... I remember once reading a short story by Heinlein. Or maybe it was a whole novel. I don't remember, but it was one of his lesser known works. In the story, a man, his daughter, and her boyfriend used some kind of gizmo gadget to travel into alternate universes, except they turned out to be places like Oz, Narnia, Wonderland, Neverland, and the like.

And I don't mean the places were just other planets that seemed similar to our popular storybook landscapes. I mean they really Did land in Oz and meet Glenda and visit the Emerald City! They Actually followed the White Rabbit to Wonderland and played croquet with the Red Queen!

And the man who invented the gizmo that brought them to these amazing places, l places that shouldn't exist outside of a children's story book, he came up with a theory.

If I remember right, he surmised that human thought (and by extension, our imagination) was a physical thing and therefore had a physical effect on the universe. And a powerful one, at that. He called this thing Ficta. And that the mere Thought of a place like Oz actually created a place like Oz! In a new and separate dimensional plane.

To further the theory, they were able to visit other dimensions where the story of that world was much lesser known. They quickly found that the world was less populated, more nebulous, and the underlying plots and structures were less defined... but still there.

In conclusion, they decided it must be that the amount of Ficta we unknowingly used to create these alternate dimensions must directly correlate to how strong, real, and "correct" they are. I.e., if four billion people have heard of Dorothy's trip to Oz and they remember it well, then it will be far, Far grander in it's reality and expanse than the small world of some third rate novella that barely sold 1000 copies.

Of course, all of these realizations and discoveries wouldn't matter to a flea if the trio had not found a way to visit their planes of existence in the first place.

And that is what I think is wrong with the past. Specifically, Our past.

You see, after 23 years, hundreds of grants, dozens of top researchers and billions of dollars spent, we finally sent the first faster than light transmission. Many said it couldn't be done. Most, actually. But our company persevered and experimented and learned, and 5 years ago today, we made history.

Things escalated quickly from there and last year, we finished the design and building of the first FTL spaceship the world has ever known, designation Kittyhawk. On paper it worked perfectly, and just like the trio in Heinlein's story, my company now had the very vehicle needed for our travels to far planets, other stars, and beyond.

However, in science and experiments, oftentimes reality refuses to concern itself with our thoughts and planning and as you are here to learn, the truth is stranger than fiction.

Now, don't get me wrong! The ship itself still worked better than we'd hoped! The take off from Bali went smoothly and used 100% solar power to reach low earth orbit. From there, our Astronaut Major Michael Miller worked with the on-board AI, designation KAI, to transition the Kittyhawk from atmospheric flight to spatial operations. Once conformed for the FTL jump, the AI took over flight controls and followed a preplanned trajectory towards Mars orbit, our first trip out being a relatively short one.

Once given the all clear, KAI fired the FTL drive with all due pomp and circumstance and... nothing happened.

Now, now, calm down! I said to hold your questions! What I mean to say is, the Kittyhawk didn't go anywhere. The FTL drive fired, died down, and Major Miller was still in low earth orbit.

Checking his equipment revealed nothing untoward and so he called our Mission Control to find out what was going on. Unfortunately, we were unable to answer him because for all intents and purposes, we were now in a different universe.

Yes, I know! I Know I said he didn't go anywhere and I meant that last thing as a metaphor anyway. That's because the truth is even stranger. Members of the press, the Kittyhawk didn't go someWhere, it went someWhen!

Yes, that's right. I am saying that for whatever reason, on its maiden voyage last year, the Kittyhawk and Major Miller became the first ever known time travelers...and we're still trying to figure out how that happened.

However, the how and why of it all almost immediately took a back seat to what the Major discovered when, unable to raise Mission Control, he made the decision to return the craft to atmospheric flight mode and return to our base in Bali.

Unfortunately, Bali wasn't there anymore. Neither were a lot of islands, including Hawaii. Flying over the earth at Mach 6, Major Miller noticed that and many other geographical oddities. Many coastlines were changed, major cities along them were much smaller or gone completely.

Helping him with these observations, KAI noted that atmospheric radiation levels were much higher than normal. Not letal by any means, but still quite high. KAI also reported far less radio and satellite communications than we are used to. In fact, after an orbital scan, it was found that most of the satellites we've sent into space for one reason or another were gone or in degrading orbits.

Obviously, something was not right. Something had gone very wrong.

Deciding that caution was called for, Major Miller and KAI sought out a rural area in Wyoming to put down the Kittyhawk. With its VTOL capabilities, this was a simple matter of finding a decent clearing not too far from any sort of small town.

After locating and settling down into one such spot, Miller (with KAI in his earpiece to offer advice) set out to hike into Afton, Wyoming, a small town of about 2000 people. Small enough that a VTOL craft landing a mile away wouldn't draw any attention. Big enough that a stranger wouldn't draw more than a passing interest.

Finding a newspaper stand near the town's main drag and before approaching any residents, Major Miller then learned such fantastic events as to make your head spin!

For one thing, the year was no longer 2047! It was 1992! And more fantastic than that, it was the 30 year anniversary of the beginning of World War 3!

Now, PLEASE! Please people, control yourselves! I will end this press conference right now if you don't stop yelling and pushing! You, the one with Fox! Get off that chair and back into your seat like a goddam adult! Now quiet! All of you!!!

...That's better. You all wanted this story and I'm going to give it to you since this is a private company the our government will issue Me no gag orders! So let me continue and Behave! ...Now where was I?

Oh yes, the newspaper. Major Miller thought it all a joke, initially. Some kind of trick. Obviously there had never been a WWIII. We averted that particular bit of nastiness on Several occasions over the decades.

Well let me tell you. THEY didn't! According to that anniversary edition paper, the Cuban Missle Crisis from over 80 years ago was Not averted and numerous ballistic missiles were launched from both sides. We effectively destroyed Cuba as a country and as a result, The then Soviet Union retaliated with a single nuclear strike against our Atlantic Fleet.

Stationed near Florida, they had answered Castros missiles with a barrage of their own. In turn, a hidden Soviet sub launched a small nuke and destroyed two destroyers and an aircraft laucher. Sensing weakness, Krushchev listened to his more ambitious advisers and instead of simply increasing his position and power in the West, he instead made a move to outright invade!

Seventy two hours after the first missiles flew from both sides, The Soviets had hit 11 major coastal cities and 2 inland ones with large nuclear missiles in an attempt to soften US response. Like we here always suspected but never had to prove, it did quite the opposite. The US returned fire with over a over 3 dozen nuclear bombs and missles, utterly destroying the Kremlin, most of its military bases and ports, and the country's entire government.

Smaller skirmishes between allied countries broke out the world over, although none of those went nuclear. They still lasted for years and nearly a billion people died before the nuclear dust finally settled.

All of this, Major Miller learned standing on the nearly empty street of a small town in Wyoming in 1992, 15 years before he was even born!

Now. Obviously WE never had a WWIII. WE never lost a city to thermonuclear explosions heard around the world. So why did I just tell you all of that?

It's because it is wrong. It is because it didn't happen! And that's not the only thing! It was only the beginning of how and why we came to be here today!

Major Miller and KAI conferred once the Major had quietly confirmed the details of that newspaper with a local. The war lasted for 4 years and it was beyond brutal. At the end of it, the Soviets were smacked down and their countries broken up. The world tried to recover and it did do so, but at a slow pace, both socially and technologically. The history of that world was startling enough, but it wasn't Our history and it didn't matter.

The Major decided to try completing his mission. He and KAI returned to space, set their destination for Mars once again, primed the FTL drive, and launched...into the past, again.

That's correct! Again, the Kittyhawk had moved not a single inch, but instead found itself hovering in low earth orbit over 1937 US of A. He knew this when KAI picked up an old Radioshow being interrupted with a news bulletin coming out of New York.

In summary, it said that, "Last month, Japanese troops entered and pillaged the Chinese Nationalist capital of Nanking, murdering tens of thousands of civilians as they continue their war with China." This would of course go on to become known as the "Rape of Nanking." Except, in our world, that happened in Demember of 1937. And according to KAI's analysis, it was barely February!

Here, this major event took place almost a year earlier than it did in Our timeline. What is most curious to me tho, is that it Did still occur! Differently sure, but not so different as a nuclear war that we ourselves never experienced.

Members of the press, I have now told you of two separate times in which Major Miller, on his maiden flight, traveled Not to Mars as was our intention, but to the past of a similar and yet wholly different Earth.

And while all of this happened a year ago for us, it was nearly SIX years for the Major before he found his way home! Yes!!! Six!

From our point of view, the Kittyhawk blipped from our scans for but a second before returning to exactly where it had been before. Assuming it was a scanner glitch, we hailed them to proceed with launch and were beyond shocked to hear the grateful tearfilled voice of a man lost in time, yelling "We did it! I'm home! We're Home!!!"

The Major immediately set course for Bali without any direction or authorization but we very soon forgave that as we left mission control, gathered around the launch pad, and watched a fully bearded, gaunt and stick of a man exit the Kittyhawk where less than two hours previous, our hale and clean shaven astronaut had entered!

If anything, that startling disconnect served well to convince me of the Major and KAI's story, which I have now mostly conveyed to you good people.

What I haven't shared yet is the proof that they brought back! Newspapers with fantastic stories and reports, movie posters for films that never existed, hit books by authors we've never heard of, and even better than that? A pair of passenger pigeons, a single dodo bird, and a small flying snake that spit some kind of nerve toxin! The latter had apparently bonded with Miller in the course of his journeys, but he assured us that it was harmless unless he himself felt threatened. We still gave it a wide berth, I assure you!

So! We now had real tangible proof of things and events and places and creatures that no longer or never did exist in our own past and after a year of deliberation, experimentation, and expectation, we are here, ready to disclose our findings to you and to the world.

Put simply, there is no past. There is no past because it is unreachable and therefore, unnecessary in the traditional sense. The Major and KAI spent 6 years in the blink of an eye exploring the past of hundreds of Earths, going back nearly 1000 years in some cases. Each tweek in the flight directions resulted in a change in either what universe they traveled to or how far back or forward they would jump.

By trial and error and keeping careful logs, they learned it was possible to revisit a timeline they had previously been too, as with the first two examples I gave you. Same universe, same timeline. Both different from our own.

Gradually, they were able to fine tune their operation over the years and even tho we still don't know Why or How it works, we can take the advantage of Using it, just as a 15 year old with a learners permit can drive to the movies while nothing next to nothing about Tesla batteries or inertial dampeners. He knows enough to get from point A to point B, and now so do we, excepting of course that our point B will always be the past of a different timeline belonging to a different Earth, in a different dimension or universe. Again, we're still figuring out the particulars, haha!

Now then. Now that I have laid the last 12 months bare, I will take a few questions but again, you Must behave yourselves!

Yes, New York Times? Hm, into the future? Sorry, but as of now, that has proven difficult. When we've applied our formulas while in an alternate past to return back to their or our own present, they work fine. But if we apply them while in our current present, or the present of any timelike, and we attempt to travel past that and into the future, nothing at all happens in either case.

I personally think it has something to do with some group of universal laws that exist to keep the whole thing from crumbling into chaos. Laws we as yet know nothing about. And so, we can't mess with or visit our own past, or see our own future. Perhaps to keep us from changing either our present Or our future, with the knowledge we would have gained in either event.

As to why we cannot visit the future of an alternate Earth, but we Can visit their past? I believe partly that it's because again, the past doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to us, regardless of the alternate universe it's in, because while we can't change our own past, our visiting Them makes our visits already a Part of Their past! Which means, their present, whatever it is, has already been affected (or not affected) by our past visit. So again, going there doesn't matter because the fact that we did won't alter their present at all, as far as they're concerned and from their point of view. Still with me? Good, because heres the part that confuses Me.

By this line of thinking, that viewing our own future means we would Have to change it, then viewing an alternative future should have no bearing on our own, and yet we cannot visit their futures either. Maybe it's because we could give them knowledge of their own future once we get back to their past, even though none of that knowledge should affect us in our universe in any way...Ugh, I'm talking in circles.

Honestly ladies and gentlemen, I'm probably overthinking this problem. Maybe any point in time Doesn't exist in all places at all times. Maybe linear time really is they way of it, with just a single point in time called the present and it is always rushing forward at the rate of one second per second. But the fact that the present moment has already passed the last present moment, maybe we can visit those past moments because they already exist and they are not our own.

Either way, the future appears to be off limits and I am sorry for the long winded yet unsatisfactory explanation. We simply don't know the why of it yet, but it is Not something that we've given up trying to figure out, of that I can assure you!

So ok, I have a meeting with several investors soon, but I will take one more question before leaving. Fox News, yes?

Haha, my good man, that is the dumbest question I could have expected after an announcement such as this! You hear the chuckles? Did you not listen to a word I said?

In this endeavor, all of our history books are so useless, they might as well be completely wrong because they cannot help us at all when we visit a land where the South won their war or the Mongols won theirs. They can't help us find Nikola Tesla and encourage his inventors mind in a land where he became a concert pianist. And we certainly can't help ourselves to change our own present for the better because like I said, we can't visit our own past!

And so, now that I've recapped, what do You think I could possibly use this technology for?

Hm? Oh you would think that... No sir, I shall endeavor to first expand my company so that we are able to visit as many pasts of as many Earths as we want. Once ready, we'll set up trade routes, embassies, and an exchange of ideas the likes of which this world has never seen. We are about to enter a golden age, mark my words.

All right listen, everyone. Look how far our world has come in the last 200 years? The last 2000? All of the collective past accomplishments of this world have led to this present moment and even tho we can't visit those accomplishments, we can visit another's, and another's, and another's!

With the infinite pasts of an infinite number of worlds to visit, learn from, pilfer, use, trade with, or even colonize, there is No Limit to how high we will soar. Our future is so Bright now, as a country, as a people, as a planet, as a species... that I submit I may have been overly hasty in my previous comments and explanations.

I said that the past doesn't really matter. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. (Our history books still don't, really, in this endeavor.) But after thinking on what all I am going to do Next, and what WE are going to do next... Perhaps, now, the past is what matters most of all.

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[junker-town]

Kenny Atkinson explains his vision to patiently bring the Nets back to prominence

Brooklyn’s head coach answered SB Nation’s questions at Vegas Summer League about his relationship with Sean Marks, Brook Lopez and D’Angelo Russell.

LAS VEGAS — Kenny Atkinson is pacing back and forth along the sidelines between his chair at the front of Brooklyn’s bench and the half-court line. He has the demeanor of a man who knows there is much work to be done.

Most Summer League teams, even those with first-time head coaches, have delegated coaching duties to the second-in-command. Atkinson wants to build with the young core Brooklyn is hoping can drag the franchise out from the bottom of the NBA. If he’s going to ask his guys to run in the Summer League, he feels he should down in the trenches with them.

“To me, this is a dress rehearsal. It’s like I’m taking a test,” Atkinson said during a lengthy one-on-one interview with SB Nation in the corridors of UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center. “You’ve really got to have the answer. I obviously don’t have a lot of experience being a head coach.

“This just gives me more time in a flight simulator.”

A look at the Nets’ Summer League starting lineup is eerily reminiscent of the roster that posted the NBA’s worst record last season.

Without Jeremy Lin, who missed the bulk of the season with a hamstring injury, Brooklyn’s young players finished 20-62 with their arena cheering opposing players more often than not.

Still, Brooklyn saw growth last season, especially on defense. They went from dead last in defensive efficiency prior to the All-Star break to No. 8 after it, thanks in part to installing Caris LeVert and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson as the starting forwards.

Playoff contention is still miles away for the Nets, and they know it. Owner Mikhail Prokhorov learned that the hard way when he mortgaged Brooklyn’s future — or present — for an aging Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett years ago.

Now, the message from the top has changed, and it’s trickled down to every level of the organization.

“I like slow progression,” Atkinson said. “This is a marathon, not a sprint.

The first leg of that marathon was establishing Brooklyn’s timeline, which did not include Brook Lopez. The Nets dealt their all-time leading scorer over the summer in a trade Atkinson detailed as “the hardest decision” he’s made as a head coach.

But in return, the Nets recouped the lottery pick it never had and landed D’Angelo Russell, a guard Atkinson plans to pair with Lin similarly to C.J. McCollum and Damian Lillard in Portland.

“Luke [Walton]’s a helluva coach, but I thought [Russell] was just looking for a fresh start. So we’re like a fresh program, fresh start, and I really hope that can jumpstart him.”

For Atkinson, a Northport, N.Y. native, coaching the Nets has been a dream too good to be true. But he can’t stop to pinch himself. Atkinson’s a “go guy;” it’s how he’s risen up the ranks from an assistant coach in France to an assistant coach with both the Knicks and the Hawks before landing his dream job at home.

That’s why pacing back-and-forth along the Thomas & Mack Center sidelines, Atkinson has the demeanor of a man who knows his work is cut out for him. Because the Nets aren’t competing for the now. They’re pacing themselves for the future.

Atkinson shared some of his vision for that future in an 11-minute conversation with SB Nation at the NBA Summer League. Here is a transcript.

Why are you coaching Summer League? Terry Stotts isn’t coaching. Neither is Earl Watson. But here you are, up and down the sidelines. Why?

KENNY ATKINSON: “I think it’s three-fold: One - I think this is a young core we’re trying to build with so I thought that was important. If I’m gonna ask them to play — guys like Spencer [Dinwiddie], Rondae doesn’t have to play — if I’m gonna ask them to do it, then I feel like I should be with them. I think this is the best way I can coach them. I can be hands-on, have film sessions. To me, this is kind of like a dress rehearsal. It’s hard to do that just working guys out in the summer and just doing skill work.

So I think there’s real value [through Summer League] in helping them improve. And I just value Summer League a lot. For a staff, figuring out issues. I think it’s undervalued honestly.

“Lastly, even improving myself. Even [in their July 13 win over the Nuggets], there were 2 or 3 situations where I could have played it better. It’s like I’m taking a test. You’ve really got to have the answer. I obviously don’t have a lot of experience being a head coach. This just gives me more time in a flight simulator.

And it’s hard to get during the offseason. You get 6 months off in the offseason. So this gets me back, gets the juices flowing.”

What area do you see for improving on yourself as a head coach?

K.A.: “I think just the flow of the game, substitutions. Just feeling that a little better. Out of timeout plays. Definitely can improve there. And general communication. Film sessions and messages before the game, after the game. You’re used to being an assistant, quiet never saying a word. Now, you’re managing a staff. You’re communicating with your players. Being a little sharper there.”

Is it ever surreal? You’ve gone from assistant coaching in France to head coaching at home.

K.A.: “I’m a go guy - just keep going. So I don’t really reflect on it that much. If I did, I’d pinch myself 1,000 times over because Brooklyn, I’m from New York, family. It’s too good to be true.

And I love working with [general manager Sean Marks]. We’re married so to speak. We are. We finish each other’s sentence. We have a few disagreements here and there, but for the most part, I think we both understand the culture we’re trying to build. And that’s not always the case in this league.”

How did you and Sean develop the relationship you have right now?

K.A.: “We had a lot of people we knew in common, and then we got to know each other on a somewhat friendly basis. I think our personalities fit. Because I’m a pretty intense dude, and Sean is like the ying to my yang.

I texted him the other day and said, ‘I appreciate you listening to my vents.’ Because I vent once in awhile because I want things done a certain way. He’s just so understanding, and he’s the perfect personality type for my personality.”

SB NATION: None of your young players emerged as a franchise pillar or star last season. Does that make your job tougher, from a player-personnel standpoint?

K.A.: “First off, there are very few guys who shine after one or 2 seasons. Only the elite guys do. But I kind of like it this way. We’re built like — you learn from your mistakes. When you’re not a superstar, you have a chip on your shoulder because it makes them hungrier to get better.

So I kind of like the progression. I like slow progression. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Mikhail Prokhorov has told us ‘patience, patience.’ I have the same message. We’re gonna be patient with them. They made some progress, but now to make that next step is harder. I’m looking two, three, sometimes development is four years down the road. That’s when hopefully we’ll see these guys, really. You’ll be talking about ‘man, that guy’s a heckuva player.’”

You finished with the NBA’s worst record last season. What kind of progress did you see as a team internally that people on the outside may have missed?

K.A.: “I thought we improved defensively when we put Rondae in the starting lineup and we inserted Caris — obviously Bojan [Bogdanovic] was traded. So all of the sudden we go from 30th defensive team to, after the All-Star game we were eighth in defensive efficiency. So I was proud of that. It’s not like the coaches did anything, but Caris and Rondae being a part of that defensive improvement I think is very important.

And two young guys going into starting roles every night? To me, that’s progress. It’s not super stardom but it’s progress. And that’s what we’re looking for. And Isaiah [Whitehead] getting the experience he had. Jeremy goes down and he’s gotta kinda step into that role and then finding his niche off the ball when Jeremy came back. We put him in a Marcus Smart role: you’re a 2, you can play some 3 because you’re so darn big, so figuring that out.

Again, we’re evolving, we’re developing, and there’s some bumps on the road, there’s no doubt about it.”

Do you see Caris LeVert and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson developing chemistry to potentially become franchise pillars in the future?

K.A.: “Caris didn’t play a ton of college basketball. So to be able to throw him into the starting lineup, then making the position change with Rondae at the 4, and I felt like he made real progress. So yeah, those are guys that I feel are building blocks, to me.

I know people want 30 and 10 and whatever, or 25 (points), but with their experience, it’s gonna take some time. But I’m very confident in both of them.”

How tough was it to pull the trigger on the Brook Lopez trade? What were the emotions like?

K.A.: “Very hard. Very hard. Very hard. I thought Brook bought in 100 percent. That’s hard with a guy who’s had I don’t know how many different coaches. He embraced our culture. He was a pleasure to be around every day. That was probably the hardest decision that I’ve made being a head coach. And that’s part of being a head coach. It’s not just coaching these darn games. It’s making decisions like that with Sean. And that was the hardest because he’s a heck of a player.

But again, our timeline’s a little different. There were a lot of different reasons why we did it. But that was extremely difficult.”

As a result of that trade, you get back a guy in D’Angelo Russell. He’s kind of the lottery pick you guys didn’t get this year. How does landing him jumpstart your rebuild?

K.A.: “Yeah because I do think age plays a part in this. You want a certain group that are gonna build together. I don’t think you want all your players in different age groups (while rebuilding). So it’s good that we have a young core we can build with.

And it’s a great second opportunity for D’Angelo. When i talked to him immediately after the trade, I felt like he was so enthusiastic. Luke [Walton] is a helluva coach, but I thought he was just looking for a fresh start. So we’re like a fresh program, fresh start, and I really hope that can jumpstart him.”

How do you see Jeremy and D’Angelo playing with each other seeing as though they are both so effective on the floor with the ball in their hands?

K.A.: “I think Brad Stevens said this the other day: We don’t even look at the roster like 1-2-3-4-5. We have our smalls, our perimeters that can handle the ball. Then we have our wings, then you have your shooting bigs and your rolling bigs. It’s like, I don’t anticipate any problems.

The way we play offense, it’s very conducive to both of them getting enough touches. You look at C.J. McCollum and Damian Lillard — and I don’t want to compare the players — but they end up both playing a ton of point guard. They just stagger the minutes. So believe me, there’s gonna be enough minutes, enough touches for both of those guys.

I look at it for myself as like, we just got another really good player. Jeremy’s really good, he’s really good. Now it’s up to our coaching staff to figure out how we can use them best.”

Some players used the word “freedom” to describe your coaching style. What does that mean to you?

K.A.: “I think we had a film session the other day, and one of the things I showed them was us turning down open shots. I think I’m an expand-your-game type of coach. I see the good in all players. ... It’s just a mindset, a growth mindset for players. I think they can do a lot more.

Now once the season starts, when the competition starts, we’ve got to figure out who does what best. But I think right now, we’re in a growth mindset. So I think we can take a little risk in terms of letting the ball fly a little and giving them freedom to play.”

[viralhottopics]

The new iPad is the perfect upgrade if you’re still using… an iPad

The new iPad (2017) looks virtually identical to the iPad Air (2014).

Image: lili sams/mashable

Apple announced a new iPad a few weeks ago. Did you even notice? I wouldn’t blame you if you missed it. There wasn’t any big event, or a keynote, and people definitely weren’t waiting in line for it.

Apple’s new 9.7-inch iPad (it’s just called iPad) doesn’t come with any major redesign and it’s not as powerful as the 9.7-inch iPad Pro.

SEE ALSO: Apples cheap iPad is tailor-made for education

The new iPad replaces the nearly three-year-old iPad Air 2, which Apple says was its best-selling iPad ever. In many ways, the new iPad reminds me of the iPhone SE: it’s got an old, but familiar design, with faster components inside to keep up with new iOS updates.

But most importantly, the new iPad is more affordable than ever before it starts at just $329. That’s $170 less than what the iPad Air 2 cost when it launched in 2014. The price alone makes this product stand out, and is reason enough for old iPad users to upgrade and new iPad users to seriously consider the new model, at least as far as 9.7-inch iPads go.

iPad Air roots

You can get one in silver, space gray, or gold. If you want rose gold, you’ll need to buy an iPad Pro 9.7.

Image: lili sams/mashable

The new iPad is one of those rare times when a new Apple product is slightly thicker and heavier than its predecessor.

The last time an iPad bulked up was when Apple replaced the iPad 2 with the iPad 3; the iPad 3’s increased weight and thickness was a tradeoff as a result of the Retina display and a battery nearly twice as large as the iPad 2’s to power it.

With the exception of the non-polished chamfer, the new iPad looks virtually indistinguishable from the first-gen iPad Air. Even its dimensions and weight (1 pound) are exactly the same. It’s almost like Apple had a factory full of unused iPad Airs it needed to repurpose.

The new iPad (bottom) is slightly thicker and heavier than the iPad Air 2 (top).

Image: lili sams/mashable

I thought I would take issue with the added girth since I use an iPad Air 2 at home every day, but I just got used to it. iPad Air 2 and iPad Pro users will definitely be able to feel the difference, but the new iPad isn’t that much thicker or heavier that it’s a deal-breaker.

The one feature on the new iPad that feels like a serious step back is the display. Sure, it’s brighter than the iPad Air 2’s and as bright as the 9.7-inch iPad Pro’s, but the non-laminated display, which creates a gap between the display and the glass, just doesn’t look as good.

You can’t see it easily in photos, but there’s an air gap between the display and the glass.

Image: lili sams/mashable

I’m nitpicking the 2,048 x 1,536 resolution Retina display still looks fantastic with rich, accurate colors and plenty of sharpness but the display also doesn’t have any kind of antireflective coating to reduce glare from overhead lights. Compared to my iPad Air 2 at 75 percent brightness, I had to crank the new iPad to 100 percent brightness in order to not see my face reflected back at me while watching videos.

I admit these are all minor issues in the grand scheme of things, but it still sucks when you see progress take a step back.

Image: lili sams/mashable

Otherwise, the new iPad is still basically an iPad Air. It’s got the same Lightning port, same Touch ID fingerprint sensor, same 8-megapixel back camera, same 1.2-megapixel FaceTime HD camera, and same bottom-firing stereo speakers.

Refreshed guts for more power

Image: lili sams/mashable

Not that the iPad Air 2 isn’t still a very capable tablet (I just installed iOS 10.3.1 on mine and it still runs pretty damn well), but the new iPad’s internal refresh is all about future-proofing to ensure it’ll be able to support future iOS updates. The iPad Air 2’s A8X processor might still be able to keep up with a few more updates, but it won’t be able to forever.

The new iPad, however, packs a faster 64-bit A9 chip and 2GB of RAM the same specs as the iPhone 6S/6S Plus/SE and an embedded M9 motion coprocessor. My own benchmark tests taken with Geekbench 4 confirm as much:

The new iPad is just as powerful as…

Image: screenshot: Raymond wong/mashable

…an iPhone 6S.

Image: screenshot: Raymond wong/mashable

There’s honestly not much more to say about performance. The new iPad’s fast not as fast as the iPad Pros and their A9X chip but incredibly speedy. I was able to play graphically intensive 3D games like the latest Asphalt Xtreme, which has more detailed textures, more particle effects, and more speeding and crashing onscreen than any previous Asphalt racing game, and didn’t see any major issues like dropped frame rates or jitters.

You’ll have absolutely no problems opening a dozen Safari tabs, streaming videos on services like Netflix and YouTube, posting to social networks, and playing Sudoku. Split View with two apps open side-by-side also works much better on the new iPad than on my iPad Air 2.

That a two-year-old chip still works at peak performance and runs circles around other new Android devices (A Google Pixel running Android 7.1.1 only managed a 1,590 single-core and 4,242 multi-core score) is a real testament to Apple’s chip-designing skills and how far ahead iOS devices are compared to the competition.

Battery life is also as fantastic as you’d expect from an iPad. Apple advertises up to 10 hours of battery for browsing the web on Wi-Fi, watching videos, and listening to music, and I got pretty much exactly that. In fact, you might get more than 10 hours if you manage your power settings right.

Cameras are fine…for a tablet

8-megapixel camera on the back.

Image: lili sams/mashable

On paper, there’s no difference between the cameras on the new iPad and those on the iPad Air 2. The rear camera is still 8 megapixels and the front-facing FaceTime HD camera is still 1.2 megapixels. But in practice, things are a little different if you look closely.

There are a few things I noticed while testing the selfie camera. First, the new iPad supports Live Photos and Retina flash, thanks to the A9 chip. And second, image quality appears to be worse on the new iPad somehow. Yeah, it surprised me, too.

Image: Raymond wong/mashable

Photos have more dynamic range from the new iPad’s selfie camera, but there’s also a lot more image noise. For example, the ceiling in my selfie (look at upper left corner) looks way over-processed compared to the right taken with the iPad Air 2. And if you zoom in and take a look at the words on the books on the shelf below, you’ll notice the text is sharper. Most people probably won’t care, but it’s still very strange.

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

Photos taken with the new iPad’s back camera are a little crisper and also have slightly better dynamic range than the iPad Air 2, but again, it’s kinda negligible unless you’re looking for the differences.

Image: raymond Wong/mashable

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

At the end of the day, photos look fine, even if you’re one of those monsters who takes photos with a tablet.

Who should buy and who shouldn’t?

Image: lili sams/mashable

iPad sales are down and have been trending that way for years. What Apple’s found is that iPad owners are just like PC owners: they’re hanging onto their old iPads longer than expected four, maybe five years. But can you really blame them?

For the most part, old iPads still work just fine for doing basic things like browsing the web, watching videos, listening to music and reading e-books, and that’s primarily because Apple engineers them so damn well.

My mom’s got my original iPad, and even though it doesn’t have a Retina display and the thing is a tank compared to the new iPad, it still works for all of the basic tasks I just listed. That said, she’s exactly the type of iPad owner who could use a new one. The iPad Pro would be overkill for her, but the new iPad would be just right.

These are the most affordable 9.7-inch iPads Apple’s ever offered.

It’s without question the new iPad offers a lot of value at a very attractive price. A 32GB Wi-Fi model costs $329, and for another $100 you can quadruple the storage to 128GB. And as always, cellular cost an extra $130 more than their Wi-Fi-only counterparts.

Simply put, these are the most affordable 9.7-inch iPads Apple’s ever offered. (Remember, for the longest time 9.7-inch iPads started at $499 for 16GB, and that was considered “low” for a 10-inch tablet.)

But it’s obviously not the upgrade for everyone. If you’ve got an iPad Pro congrats, you’ve already got the best, so you can skip right over this iPad. And if you’ve got an iPad mini well, you can go either way and skip or buy. It all depends on whether you want a larger screen or not.

However, if you’ve been clinging onto any pre-Air iPad (iPad 1, 2, 3, and 4), the new iPad is a steal. Give your old iPad to your kid, donate it, or repurpose it as a digital picture frame. The leap in performance you’ll get will be like swapping your Toyota Camry for a Porsche.

The new iPad may not have the latest Apple chip, or support Apple Pencil, or be the thinnest iPad ever created, but it’s still an iPad, which means it’ll be good for probably another four or five more years. Not many gadgets can say the same.

iPad (2017)

The Good

Super affordable price 10-hour battery life iOS 10 runs like a champ

The Bad

Non-laminated display No antireflective coating Selfies are worse than on iPad Air 2 Thicker and heavier than iPad Air 2

The Bottom Line

Starting at $329, the new IPad (2017) is a no-brainer if upgrade if you’ve got a pre-Air iPad or a first-time iPad owner.

WATCH: Apple wants to replace your laptop with the powerful 9.7-inch iPad Pro

Read more: http://on.mash.to/2nXGyoi

from The new iPad is the perfect upgrade if you’re still using… an iPad

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Rant: Why I Gave Up on Micro Four Thirds Once and for All

If you’re thinking about moving to Micro Four Thirds or buying the E-M1 Mark II, read this first… it may actually save you money and headaches down the line.

For the past year and a half I have been shooting both the top of the range MFT and A7RII on professional assignments. Sadly, I often ended up frustrated by the poor low-light performance of Olympus’ cameras as well as the lack of 4K, which most of my clients ask from me when I shoot, for example, cinemagraphs.

Therefore, since December 2016, I’ve gone 100% for the Sony and dropped MFT altogether to cut my losses invested in this system as well as my cherished Ambassador status (which in reality meant very little). MFT cameras are useful; for street photography in particular, there’s no denying it. They’re light, compact, and generally they get the job done.

Part of the job anyway.

Full Frame or Micro Four Thirds

It’s an old debate, but I have a bit of an edge since I have used both in a professional setting and extensively for a quite a bit now. It’s all about learning, and hopefully I can help others avoid making the same mistakes I did.

I had great hopes for the Micro Four Thirds format, I really did. So much so that initially I sold my Canon DSLR and “downgraded” to MFT. That was pre-OMD. I say “downgraded” as indeed at the time mirrorless cameras were not quite ready.

Yet I could see the potential, or the marketing made me see it anyway.

Then came the OMD system with the E-M5, and that really upped the game. It was then followed by the E-M10, E-M1 and the rest. Last year I shot some photos for Olympus’ print brochure of the E-M10 MKII, I was in Prague for the release of the E-M5 MkII and my last Olympus camera was the Pen-F, which I just sold this week.

I really have used all of them.

As new cameras were released, as much as I was excited and saw plenty of improvements, there were still some major issues that didn’t really get solved for a while, and felt like a simple lack of listening to its users. As an ambassador I’ve never been consulted in over three years, or asked by Olympus “What would you improve, or what are your suggestions as a user?”

I think that’s a big omission from them, after all it’s free market research to ask your biggest and most faithful users. Or you could ask your users on Twitter or Facebook… I don’t know, just freaking ask.

1) How long did we wait for 4K?

This has been talked about a lot, but if a system is trying to attract the pros, it needs to offer what other pro systems offer. Tired of waiting, this was one of the main reasons I went for the A7RII in July 2015.

When a client asks if you can shoot 4K, you want to say yes. Trust me. It’s a bit embarrassing otherwise.

Sure, some would ask why not go for Panasonic instead, who have been offering 4K for a while now. The reason is simple: other MFT failings, which I’ll get to, mean Panasonic would be no better.

Yes, it’s 2017, and the E-M1 MKII will have 4K. Great news Olympus, just in time for other brands to release 8K (aka “I was late at the 4K party”).

2) The high ISO performance has always sucked and still sucks

It’s easy to keep claiming MFT low light performance is good or improved, but it isn’t once you try a full-frame camera. I can shoot at ISO 3200 or even 6400 on the Sony (it’s not even the A7S) and be more than happy with the results… they’re impressive.

With Olympus, I am seriously reluctant going over ISO 1000 (dare I say even 800) as all the detail is lost.

3) The auto-focus just isn’t good enough

Alright alright, the EM1 MkII is out soon and apparently it’s got the best AF in the universe. Similar claims were made with all previous models, beginning with the E-M5… I’m bored of waiting.

Try focusing in low light or on anything without a clearly defined contrast and you will be pulling your hair out. I lost my cool recently trying to focus on a simple berry on a branch that was 40cm away, so I won’t even try to explain how many shots I lost in the street from slow focusing.

It says a lot when manual focus is the best option.

4) The image quality

I know the Sony costs quite a bit more, and that I’m basically comparing a Ferrari with a Ford Focus here. Obviously, you get what you pay for. But as photographers we all want the truest representation of what we saw when we pressed the shutter.

The Sony A7RII allows that, hence this article and my decision to move on.

5) The dynamic range is far superior on the Sony

If a camera can help reduce the time I spend in Photoshop pulling out shadows and fixing what it didn’t get properly, it’s a winner.

Not only does the Sony capture more details in the shadows without the need to over-expose your highlights, but it also allows you in “worse case scenarios” to pull an incredible amount of details from shadows if really needed from the RAW files and even the JPEGs.

6) The endless choice of compatible lenses for the Sony system

Being able to use Canon, Voigtlander, Leica lenses and many more on it with an adaptor is just perfect. Whilst Sony full-frame lenses are pricier and, yes, pretty big, you can still find great deals online for second hand third party lenses.

I particularly like the Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f/1.5, as it’s tiny.

7) You’ll make new friends

Okay, I can’t honestly claim this BUT… people do know that camera! I spent one morning in Shoreditch and three people stopped me to talk about the A7RII.

You know why that matters? Not for your popularity it doesn’t matter. But if so many people know about it, I tend to associate this with the good reputation this camera has.

8) Build quality

This reason should actually go straight to number one. I have had three main problems with Olympus cameras:

(1) If you know me you’ll know I am the most freakishly careful with my gear. I never scratch a camera. (I have never in my life broken a mobile phone screen. Enough said). And yet, each time I have a new Oly camera, it gets scratched in days. Sometimes I fear if I look at it it may get damaged. And after enough cameras I’ve logically deducted that the paint job is rubbish.

I’ve had my Sony for nearly one and half years: NOT ONE SINGLE SCRATCH.

(2) I also had a sensor issue very early on my E-M5 Mark II. The camera had to be sent out and the sensor was replaced but no explanation was given as to why exactly it did fail.

(3) Finally, on the Pen-F the battery door is made of the cheapest plastic on a super flimsy hinge and falls off quite easily. Not what I expect from a thousand pound camera.

9) Who is the genius who placed the tripod screw on the PEN-F?

Just a last one for the road. Seriously though Olympus??? I challenge anyone to mount the Pen-F on a tripod with the M.Zuiko 12‑40mm f2.8 PRO or most other lenses and not damage them! The screw is wayyyyyy too far at the front of the camera.

What that means is the lenses get damaged by the tripod plate. It’s a perfect example of designers that are too detached and don’t actually use cameras.

I know some of you will be surprised by what may seem like a 180 degree change of mind on Olympus cameras, others who know me well will be less surprised. I’ve owned the A7RII since July 2015 so I’ve had time to write this article and think about it.

Olympus has had it coming. They were not interested in hearing my opinion so here it is anyway.

I’ve been biting my tongue for about two years now, still enjoying Olympus cameras but knowing deep inside that my time using that system was coming to an end. It’s not so much dislike as a realization that I need to move on and choose what’s best for me, for my photography, and for the work I deliver to clients.

If you still doubt what I am saying here, ask yourself this question:

Would a professional photographer move to a new system, lose money reselling camera and lenses, buy a new camera and set of lenses that costs so much more etc… for no valid reason? I own a business. Trust me, I have to make very careful decisions. I sadly have no money to throw out the window!

I now know Olympus specifically, and Micro Four Thirds in general, will just never cut it versus full frame. You only need to use both to understand why.

I actually predict Olympus will possibly pull-out of this format (they’ll deny it of course) which will eventually disappear as full frame and medium format mirrorless cameras will be reduced in size close to MFT. Size is (or was) MFT’s biggest selling point.

I’m more confident now delivering photos to clients and when I actually compare the results it’s an improvement. The camera may not matter, it’s our vision that does, but I want a tool that at the very least doesn’t make it difficult for me and is faithful in the reproducing what I see.

Olympus, if you care, next time listen to your users and people you list as ambassadors—they’ll no doubt help you get it right.

Full Frame or Micro Four Thirds? I’ve made my decision.

About the author: Nicholas “Nico” Goodden is a London-based professional photographer specializing in urban photography, street photography, and attention-grabbing micro video content such as cinemagraphs and timelapse. You can find more of his work on his website or by following him on Instagram. This post was also published here.

Image credits: Voigtlander 42.5mm Test Shots by Zhao !

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