#the families' different value systems around hockey

[workingforitallthetime]

https://twitter.com/nhl/status/1653860731891208192?s=46

Tbh I’m loving these, looking forward to the Emily Kaplan interview with him

god i miss the emily kaplan/linda cohn podcast! they always got young players to say interesting stuff. here's hoping emily can get something more interesting out of him than this spot.

[confettipizza]

Lunar Recap

How it started. How it’s going. How it ended for the last lunar cycle of 2020.

This lunar cycle began with the New Moon on Jan. 12, 2021 @ 11:01 PM CT (Jan. 13 @ 05:01 UTC). It was the 13th Moon of 2020 according to the lunar calendar. And it ended Feb. 11, 2021, just before the 1st Moon of 2021! Happy Lunar New Year 2021, Year of the Ox!

South Korean Court Orders Japan to Compensate Women Forced into Sex Slavery

Colorado AG Opens Grand Jury Probe of Police Killing of Elijah McClain

Guantánamo Bay Prison Starts 20th Year of Indefinite Detentions

Pfizer to Boost COVID-19 Vaccine Output as WHO Warns of Vaccination Inequality

Lawmakers Catch COVID-19 After Sheltering in Room Where GOP Reps Refused Masks

FBI Warns of “Armed Protests” in All 50 States and at Biden’s Inauguration

Tomorrow is Sun conjunct Pluto. Something that’s been lurking in the shadows bout to jump out. Might be pretty big, but there’s also the individual personal experience of this event and might feel more like an early Full Moon for you.

House to Impeach Trump as GOP Shows Signs of Backing Removal

Well this is dumb. Sun conjunct Pluto?

The $3,000-a-month toilet for the Ivanka Trump/Jared Kushner Secret Service detail

I also remembered/realized how much I really love Anna Sui designs since I was a kid which is pretty random to pop up on my radar, but this woman gets that all I want is sparkly heart shaped objects in lacquered black and flowy hippie dresses

Trump Tells Aides Not to Pay Giuliani’s Legal Fees as Bid to Overturn Election Fails

All I know is talking about dreams and discussing them with others makes you feel better. The tarot angle is there to shed some light on what the dream is actually telling you.

Joe Biden Unveils $1.9 Trillion Coronavirus and Economic Relief Package

ICE’s Acting Director Resigns After Two Weeks on Job

Found out today the woman at the car mechanic I've been faithfully taking my car to for the past two years can speak to the dead and had some messages for me from my dad who passed in October-

Intuitive guided tarot card pull.

Waxing crescent into Aries Monday, January 18, 2021 at 1:06 AM CT Today’s Astro x Tarot forecast valid for the next 24 hours: Feelings are flaring up for you to make a statement, a very zippy move or a quick decision about someone or something.

So long as you remain flexible and agile, whatever you choose to do with them will work to your advantage. If you decide not to impose hyper-agility into your decision making rn, then kudos to you! You’ve gained practice points in self-control experience.

More Than 760,000 Pounds of Hot Pockets Recalled

‘I Answered the Call of My President’: Rioters Say Trump Urged Them On

Raphael Warnock and the Legacy of Racial Tyranny

The Extraordinary Courage of Aleksei Navalny

Whoa, I was like a cycle early on celebrating the lunar new year! I’ve been a month into the future for a week now. My bad! I apologize for any confusion.

I was thinking that the soul's law of attraction is probably pretty unstoppable even concerning partners, so like, if someone didn't love you back then it's not some mistake or human misunderstanding that you or they need to fix.

To find one's soulmate looks something like 2 souls flying towards each other from opposite ends of the galaxy to join their physical selves together in a collision force so brutal you're stuck like that and if that's not what yours looks like then maybe that ain't your soulmate?

All the men going to jail for their poop smearing Capitol rioting have online dating profiles and that’s reason no. 2 I do not date online! Reason no. 1 is ain’t nobody cute on there.

The Witch’s Myth: The true story of the crane husband

Where are your witch stars, Circe and Hekate, located? Their location can explain your relationship to witchcraft. Circe is in my 1st house influencing my outer appearances and Hekate is conjunct Jupiter influencing my domestic style and home to be distinctively witchy.

Sun into Aquarius Tuesday, January 19, 2021 at 2:33 PM CT Here is your Sun into Aquarius forecast effective for the next several weeks of Aquarius season. 

Down to earth and grounded is our most qualified position to receive everything we need and use everything we receive. This is the reality of ourselves, the human condition.

We love reality based reality.

Get ready for reality-grounded White House press briefings

Why do people believe the lies they’re fed? Because those lies are designed to be more palatable than reality. Lies offer a quick easy patch, but what you’ve gotta ask yourself is are those lies actually designed to support the flow of all things into your life?

~* First Quarter Jan. 20 3:02 PM CT (21:02 UTC) *~

Biden and Harris Attend Memorial to Honor 400,000+ COVID-19 Victims in U.S. on Eve of Inauguration

Steve Bannon Among Final Trump Pardons and Commutations

Trump Admin Declares Multiculturalism Is “Not Who America Is” as WH Releases Racist, Revisionist Report

4,000+ Columbia Students Back Largest-Ever Tuition Strike

Today, whatever you’re doing or are wishing to become will be to the benefit of this unifying, love-aligned uprising.

Joe Biden Sworn In as 46th President of the United States, Ending Trump Era

Good inauguration Astro climate this morning feels like. #BidenHarrisInauguration

“What has shaken the U.S. population so badly, this assault on the Capitol yesterday, is really nothing by comparison to what U.S. operations have done in Latin America, in Asia, in Africa, in the Middle East, to other democratic movements and elected governments over the years.”

Progress towards wholeness can’t be made until we own up to the roles we’ve played in the past.

Read the full text of Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem ‘The Hill We Climb’

When did politics get so vibrant and fashionably uplifting? Please and thank you! #Inauguration2021

The two of wands says to review your options, do your research, crunch the numbers, imagine the outcomes, but there’s no need to force making a choice if you don’t have to. Buy yourself some time and let the plans for a resolution find you, not the other way around.

Donald Trump Leaves Office and Washington, D.C., Threatens “We Will Be Back”

Watchdogs Demand Transparency as Corporations Pour Millions into Biden-Harris Inauguration

Senate Dems File Ethics Complaint Against Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley over Jan. 6 Insurrection

Federal Forces Arrest Ex-Marine for Beating Officer with a Hockey Stick During Capitol Riots

It’s Friday and it just feels good to be alive, a socialist and calling Bernie Sanders cute on Inauguration Day week! What a difference a pandemic makes.

Instacart Lays Off 2,000 Workers, Including Group Who Started Company’s First Union

Mars square Jupiter January 23, 2021 @ 1:49 AM CT (7:49 GMT) Someone wants you to know that you are ready to conquer your perceived limits to arrive at expansion in your thoughts, feelings, emotions and understanding today.

Waxing gibbous into Cancer January 25, 2021 @ 12:51 PM CT (18:51 GMT) It’s a supportive Moon for dreaming for mental health and well being. Begin a dream journal or review your latest dreams, reflecting on them for a few minutes today.

You are opening yourself up to an emotional practice that includes care for yourself in ways no one else (besides you and your connection to the Moon) can provide.

And too my Tarot Dream Readings are open if you would like guidance or support on a particular dream. See my pinned tweet for how it works.

When one’s soul is allowed to lead one’s life, working in the dark shadows, the invisible silence, the soul’s manifesting results are way more lasting and way more powerful than egocentric anything.

Good morning, self! A reminder my ego has never done a thing for me my soul can’t do better.

National Guard Deployment at U.S. Capitol Becomes COVID-19 Superspreader Event

Russia Violently Cracks Down on Protesters Calling for Release of Alexei Navalny

Trump Plotted to Oust Acting AG, Use DOJ to Force Georgia to Overturn Election Results

Hunts Point Market Workers in the Bronx Win Wage Increase After Week-Long Strike

This mourning brooch is a mindful way to mark the death of a loved one while paying tribute to the impact it has had on you. Bring back this Victorian trend!

Veteran Talk Show Host Larry King Dies After Hospitalization for COVID-19

Hank Aaron, Who Overcame Racist Barriers to Become Home Run Record-Holder, Dies at 86

We don’t give our bodies or our intuition enough attention and nourishment a lot of the time, so today’s the day we practice finding and sitting quietly with our inner voice.

~* Full Moon Jan. 28 1:17 PM CT (19:17 UTC) *~

House Delivers Article of Impeachment to Senate, Triggering Trump’s Second Trial

Dominion Voting Systems Sues Rudy Giuliani for Lying About 2020 Election

President Biden Increases U.S. Vaccination Goal to 150 Million Shots in 100 Days

President Biden Reverses Trump’s Transgender Military Service Ban

Biden Restores Plan to Feature Abolitionist Harriet Tubman on $20 Bill

Value is further added the more you mint your words with a most whole and complete love. Love is the greatest asset we can let appreciate in our lifetimes.

This Full Moon tomorrow sends a flash point that reminds you to circulate this wealth because it’s the greatest emotional gift we can bestow upon our loved ones, family, friends, neighbors, elders, members of our community, etc.

Venus conjunct Pluto in Capricorn January 28, 2021 @ 10:18 AM CT (16:18 GMT) Going through your day today uncovers a forgotten desire or creative goal. You find yourself asking something like: Remember when I wanted to become a pastry chef?

Although you decided to pursue a different course, take a moment to focus on and honor this memory when it arrives and then release it. What did you become instead and why?

45 Senate Republicans Back Dismissal of Trump Impeachment Trial

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Supported Violence Against Pelosi and Others in 2018 Facebook Posts

Taking the time to recognize and honor your past desires gives the respect these memories deserve and it integrates them into the whole wider scene of the individual, both shadow and light on your path builds confidence in your steps, confidence in yourself.

You are who you are for a reason.

Had no idea how literal this grassroots King of Pentacles card was gonna materialize today, but here it is folks! When a subreddit takes down a hedge fund!

Leader of Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, Was a Government Informer

U.S. Freezes Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia, Reviews Deal with UAE Made Under Trump Admin

Poland Enacts Near-Total Ban on Abortions, Triggering More Protests

Honduras Locks In Total Ban on Abortions, Attacks Marriage Equality

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Confronts Parkland Survivor David Hogg in Newly Resurfaced Video

The stock market this morning: Sh*t! Normal working class people read the market and figured out the game! Time to change the rules again. Let’s write it in ancient Babylonian hieroglyphs this time. They’ll never figure that sh*t out.

A message crucial to promote the awareness of your personal role in the collective will become evident over the next three weeks. You will come to ask yourself, What am I doing with my life?

If you aren’t familiar or comfortable with seeking your inner journey, then the greatest clue I can offer you at the start is to become open to the invisible world within you. How you learn to relate to it is completely personal and uniquely your own

Speaking in more concrete terms the next few weeks may manifest a life event for you where you must apply both logic and feeling in order to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion concerning an interpersonal relationship or the question what am I doing with my life?

This Mercury retrograde should be a cinch, but during it don’t buy tech if you don’t have to. And remember to triple check communication before hitting send. If you arrive at conflict be quick to apologize and say no more until tomorrow 

President Biden Expands Affordable Care Act Enrollment Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

House Speaker Blasts GOP for Assigning Racist Conspiracy Theorist to House Education Committee

Lawmakers Demand Probe into Trading App Robinhood After It Blocked Stock Sales That Hurt Hedge Funds

Pioneering African American Actor Cicely Tyson, Winner of Two Emmys, Dies at 96

Sun in Aquarius square Mars in Taurus February 1, 2021 @ 4:33 AM CT (10:33 GMT) The warrior’s edge has melted away and now you can take the scenic route through a field of wildflowers and mushrooms instead of blasting your way through a hillside of obstacles.

This energy catalyzes a scene that supports growth through varied experiences and it encourages everyone to seek their own way to resolutions, conclusions and understandings that are uniquely their own. Searching out your own way illuminates a strategic aspect of your purpose.

Happy Venus in Aquarius! The idea to refresh your wardrobe, hairstyle or redecorating by public opinion can be too hard to ignore under this influence. Your personal style will be influenced by the collective for the duration.

Burmese Military Stage Coup, Detain Aung San Suu Kyi

FBI Uncovers Evidence Jan. 6 Attack Was Premeditated as More Far-Right Rioters Face Charges

Trump Faces More Businesses-Related Woes as His Legal Team Departs a Week Before Impeachment Trial

It’s only the 21st day of the lunar cycle and already we’ve gone from the end of a rotten presidential era to the people’s revolution of the stock market, ok? And this moon ain’t even finished yet!

~* Last Quarter Feb. 4 11:38 AM CT (17:38 UTC) *~

U.S. Tops 26 Million COVID-19 Vaccine Shots, Surpassing Confirmed Coronavirus Cases

Moon Last Quarter in Scorpio February 4, 2021 @ 11:38 AM CT (17:38 UTC) A time for Descending, settling, closure, receiving compliments for doing a good job. Prime time for tying of loose ends and wrapping up unfinished business.

Democrats Say Trump “Singularly Responsible” for Jan. 6 Insurrection in Impeachment Brief

With consciousness humans are able to transcend the unconscious and reconfigure our relationship to it.

Though we can transcend the unconscious through viewing ourselves objectively, we are still apart of the the unconscious. Those rules still apply to us even as we contemplate their logic.

Jeff Bezos Steps Down as Amazon CEO After Amassing Huge Personal Fortune

Amazon to Pay Contract Drivers $61.7 Million After FTC Probe Finds It Stole Tips to Pay Wages

Republican Leader Won’t Punish Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene over Racist and Violent Rhetoric

Prosecutors Seek Rearrest of Kyle Rittenhouse, Wisconsin Teen Charged with Killing 2 Protesters

Sometimes the right thing to do is protect your one actual valuable thing not by defending it, but closing up all the channels the valuable thing is being attacked from the outside. Sometimes you just gotta block, delete or remove your account and move on with/to what's good.

What if we wake up one day and COVID has disappeared, like poof! It vanished into thin air? Maybe it’s the moon opposed to Uranus that’s got me wishing wild problem solvers would pop up overnight.

Poll Reveals 25% of U.S. Adults Plan to Gather at Super Bowl Watch Parties

VP Harris Casts Tie-Breaking Vote to Move Ahead with Democratic COVID Relief Bill

House Removes Marjorie Taylor Greene from Committees over Violent, Bigoted Rhetoric

Smartmatic Sues Fox News, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell for Election-Related Lies

I unfollowed some lawmakers this morning after feeling second hand anxiety over the handling of their interpersonal conflicts. Realized they were me on IG two years ago and I’ve moved on since. Can relate, but don’t wanna relive, thanks!

I just want to let y’all know that I’m coping w insufficient candle syndrome & will be studying the art & science of candle making to save myself potentially hundreds of thousands of $$ by making my own delicious smelling coconut wax babies in diy terra cotta flower pots.

Wyoming GOP Censures Rep. Liz Cheney for Backing Trump’s Impeachment

Mass Protests Continue in Burma Opposing Military Coup, Removal of Aung San Suu Kyi

You may tell others like it is today, but hopefully this inspires you to check in with yourself and be honest/come clean about something you've been overlooking.

Indian Farmworkers Blockade Roads as Mass Protests Show No Sign of Slowing Down

Black Sheriff’s Deputy in Louisiana Dies by Suicide After Condemning Police Violence and Racism

Amazon Workers in Alabama Begin Historic Vote on Unionization

Second Impeachment Trial of Donald J. Trump Opens in the Senate

Georgia’s Secretary of State to Probe Trump’s Efforts to Overturn 2020 Election

Mercury square Mars February 10, 2021 @ 6:14 AM CT (12:14 UTC) Still talking about talking, it’s also Dark Moon time to shape or let a habit form. This practice can come from breaking free of outdated relationships with yourself or with others in order to spur growth.

Dreamed Jungkook was correcting my pronunciation of Korean last night. I’m sorry! I’ll try harder to take this lesson seriously

Senate Votes to Proceed with Impeachment as Managers Present Harrowing Video of Jan. 6 Insurrection

Gov’t to Send Vaccines to Community Health Centers as U.S. Continues Ramping Up Vaccinations

WHO Team Confirms COVID-19 of Animal Origin; Ghana Shuts Parliament After Outbreak Infects Lawmakers

Journalists Decry Raid on Progressive Indian News Site NewsClick

U.S. to Pursue Extradition of Julian Assange as Press Freedom Groups Warn of Dangerous Precede

Fossil Fuel Pollution Causes One in Five Global Deaths

Four Louisiana Officers Arrested over Police Brutality Cases and Other Misconduct

Two NYT Journalists Exit Paper Following Revelations of Improper Conduct

Venus conjunct Jupiter February 11, 2021 @ 8:59 AM CT (14:59 UTC) Receive the overflow of creativity into your life. Welcome it even if you aren’t sure what to do with it. Write down project ideas if you don’t have the energy to start on them now. You can work on them later.

I'm cool with double masking, but a lot of folks still aren't even doing the one :|

“The Inciter-in-Chief”: Democrats Accuse Trump of Being “Singularly Responsible” for Insurrection

U.S. COVID Death Toll Tops 471,000; Half of All Deaths Occurred Since Nov. 1

Saudi Women’s Rights Activist Loujain al-Hathloul Released After 1,001 Days in Prison

Biden Administration to Continue Trump-Era Policy of Turning Away Asylum Seekers at Southern Border

Sen. Bernie Sanders Grills Neera Tanden, Biden’s Pick to Head OMB

Sen. Bernie Sanders: “According to The Washington Post, since 2014, the Center for American Progress has received roughly $5.5 million from Walmart, a company that pays its workers starvation wages; $900,000 from the Bank of America; $550,000 from JPMorgan Chase; $550,000 from Amazon; $200,000 from Wells Fargo; $800,000 from Facebook; and up to $1.4 million from Google. In other words, CAP has received money from some of the most powerful special interests in our country. How will your relationship with those very powerful special interests impact your decision-making if you are appointed to be the head of OMB?”

Neera Tanden: “Senator, I thank you for that question. It will have zero impact on my — on my decision-making.”

[brightlotusmoon]

"It is a truism that there are people, particularly on social media, with whom one simply cannot reason. Hell, some of them aren’t even actual people, but rather bots whose very existence makes every other interaction suspect. And so we could certainly take worse counsel than to avoid wasting our precious little energies on those who make it clear that they do not share our core values, particularly online, and particularly when the values in question are equality, inclusion, respect, and the most basic, fundamental rights of every human being on the planet.

But I worry. I worry that our wholly understandable refusal to engage with one another will ensure that the bifurcation of us as a people, both as a purposeful political strategy by those in power domestically and as a means for external forces to "sow societal chaos and discord*” becomes permanent. And I worry about what it will do to our ability to evolve, both as individuals and as a society.

I look back on my life and I remember a lot of moments that I’d prefer to forget, and that I hesitate to share. I remember when I was fresh out of college and just starting out in business and one of the senior-most guys on my desk, a man I admired greatly, would make fun of the support staff by saying, “We hire the handicapped; they’re fun to watch.” I remember that I laughed. Not because I thought that I had to to keep my job, not because I felt pressured to do so, but because I thought it was funny.

I remember when the girls were tiny and we bought Katie a doll house, and it came with a family of dolls. I remember that I hadn’t noticed that I’d bought the one with the Black family until I’d brought it home and decided it was a happy mistake. But I also remember that when a guest saw it one day, they laughed and said, “Oh, look, the house came with help,” I chuckled, rolled my eyes, and carried on.

I remember when I screwed something up and thought it was funny to mockingly say, “I”m special. I ride the little bus and wear hockey equipment every day.”

I remember raising inordinate amounts of money, making speeches, pleading for pity, all in the name of finding a “cure” for autism, with no idea that the vast majority of the people for whom I was supposedly fighting desperately needed help and support, but had no desire to fundamentally change who they were.

That was ME. The me that you know, the one who fights like hell for equality and dignity and respect, started out as a person who mocked disability and allowed racial jokes to stand unchallenged in her own home. Who effectively silenced her daughter’s autistic peers. And who desperately needed interaction with people who were light years ahead of me to get me to where I am now. And it scares me, on so many levels, to think of how different my behavior might be had I not had those interactions.

Now I want to be as clear as humanly possible that I don’t mean to imply that we owe our time and energy to anyone, particularly those who deny others’ lived experience or excuse brutality or withhold justice or actively fight against equality. And I want to be even clearer that it is absolutely, positively not the job of the oppressed and marginalized to educate their oppressors and marginalizers. A thousand times no, no, and, just for good measure, hell no. No one is entitled to your labor.

But I do want to take a pause to consider what happens when the vast majority of us, particularly those of us with relative privilege who claim to be allies in the fight, simply stop talking to anyone who isn’t already standing shoulder to shoulder with us. What happens to the folks who might just have taken up the mantle of advocacy had they been exposed to a wider variety of people and perspectives? What happens to the ones who are never challenged to examine their own role in perpetuating the systems that keep us separated in the first place? My behavior changed because I had the opportunity to interact with people outside of the bubble in which casual bigotry and degradation and punching down for a laugh were perfectly acceptable. But what if I hadn’t?

Years ago, I became facebook friends with a particularly radical disabled activist who had taken me to task here on diary a number of times. At the time, a close friend asked what the hell I was thinking bringing them into my inner circle. They said something I’ll never forget: “Aren’t you going to be, like, so uncomfortable knowing that they’re seeing all your personal posts? You’re going to have to watch *everything* you say from now on.”

It wasn’t until I’d heard the thought that had been rattling around in my own head out loud that I’d realized just how important it was to be made uncomfortable. How vital it was to be "aware of everything I was saying.” How desperately so many of us needed - and still need - to widen our circles to let in precisely those about whose lives and opinions and reactions we should deeply care.

We can’t take up every fight, particularly not on social media. But I do hope that at least in our brick and mortar lives, we will keep finding avenues to connect, to talk, to learn, and to grow. Because the absence of connection has proven to be fertile ground for nothing but fear, hate, and further division — and we’ve had enough of those to last a lifetime.

* Full quote: "One of the ICA’s most important conclusions was that Russia’s aggressive interference efforts should be considered ‘the new normal.’ That warning has been borne out, as Russia and its imitators increasingly use information warfare to sow societal chaos and discord.” - Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, Chairman, Senate Intelligence Committee"

-

And now, me:

FYI, one of my mentors is the activist mentioned, Radical Neurodivergent K, who coined the term neurodivergence many years ago, who will indeed take you to task regardless of what your brain is. And it's only been since 2013 that I discovered I was autistic, but in that time I have experienced and listened to so many ways of thinking, I've put them all in a crucible, and I keep trying to explain that just because you know a thing it doesn't mean you have all the knowledge. You always have more to learn. Information changes, expands, updates, increases. It's really easy to be a hypocrite. You need to keep listening to yourself, and you can't just burst in to gatekeep no matter how you feel.

A good example might be: an "Aspie Supremacist" insisting I or other autistic fans can't make an autistic headcanon about a fictional character who displays autistic traits because, according to that gatekeeper, the character doesn't have all the "right" traits, meaning their own traits, because they still retain their Aspergers diagnosis. By itself this is deep internalized ableism, and now it's with the added insult of an outdated diagnosis connected to a eugenics program that makes me extremely uncomfortable. Because Aspergers Syndrome is autism full stop, and functioning labels don't work and are arbitrary. Nobody needs to be that haughty or condescending to another neurotribe member, especially when it comes to expressing very personalized imaginings. That's kind of what Headcanons are about.

Anyway.

[queernuck]

The Tragedy of Humboldt and The Injustice of Tragedy

The tragedy of the Humboldt Broncos is one that is widely known in the hockey world, is a sort of moment that endures more than any other similar tragedy in part because of its magnitude, because of the way in which it is so singular, such an event beyond itself. Indeed, it appears as an event akin to Baudrillard’s concept of 9/11, one that all but excuses any sins on behalf of the Broncos and mythologizes the team, captures them eternally such that they have achieved a status unimaginable for a junior team in their position. A junior team revered by the pros, by the Hockey Hall of Fame, a hockey team out of time. There is little doubting that the story of the Broncos is tragic, but the sentencing of Jaskirat Sidhu is part of what magnifies exactly goes into the cultural baggage surrounding such a tragedy, and how it informs structures of carceral justice along with their ideological basis, along with the means by which hockey culture is structured, repeated, and spread.

The shock of the Broncos was magnified by the fact that they were travelling to a playoff game, that so many of the victims were so young, they looked like other hockey players, they had the same shade of bleach-blonde hair as part of a tradition many young hockey players follow where they bleach their hair during the playoffs. One of the most emblematic photos from the post-crash scene was a snapped DVD of Slap Shot, a movie that itself is emblematic of the culture of hockey. R-rated, with risqué and frankly dated humor, the comedic structure of the film still holds up rather well, especially when taken with the performance of actors like Paul Newman and the roughness of hockey culture more generally. When pictures of the victims began to come out, the sense of tragedy was only magnified by just how familiar they seemed, how it brought in that recognition of the hockey world as a whole, hockey families, ones who knew the experience of travelling state to state town to town province to province in order to have a shot at, one day, making the pros. The familiarity of this lead to an act of remembrance that was echoed across the hockey world, the leaving out of a hockey stick, to symbolize a stick left out in case any of the boys wanted to grab one and play some shinny.

To again refer to Baudrillard and his media analysis, as well as Deleuzian concepts of the event, this was a moment of automotive violence, of bodies colliding with one another in a new singularity, and this was one such arrangement. Sidhu recognized this as well, as part of the trial process he never asked for a plea bargain, levied no defense, and was willing to accept a maximum sentence because of his guilt over the accident, how he felt after killing 29 despite it being in no small part a fault beyond him, a fault that resulted from the situation he was in. As the editorial in the National Post that I refer to points out, he had merely five days of training and three weeks of driving, only one driving on his own, before the day of the crash. The same day, he had needed a farmer’s help to tow his rig out of soft mud he had been mired in while checking his GPS, having to rely on the farmer’s help after the trucking company he was working for ignored his calls. The tarp covering his load had come loose earlier in the day, requiring an adjustment that had come undone a second time, distracting him as he drove into the intersection where his truck crashed into the Broncos’ bus. The very same intersection has since been improved dramatically, in recognition of both this crash and a previous fatal accident at that very same intersection. A combination of lax regulations in Saskatchewan effectively combined such that an inexperienced driver could meet the Broncos’ bus in such a tragic fashion. 

The trial, which eventually gave Sidhu 8 years in prison as a punishment, was marked by 90 different victim statements, many of them scathing and directed at Sidhu on behalf of the Broncos. So much is captured by the tragedy of the Broncos, and this is yet another part of this: the ease of constructing narratives in the case of "victim impact" statements involves playing off of disparities between the prosecution and the convicted, the way in which structures of culpability and liability are conceived of, and the way in which the symbolic weight of a tragedy becomes something beyond itself, including the problems of ableism and white supremacy in the narratives of hockey as a sport. There is no accident that sled hockey is often considered lesser, is considered a secondary sport and moreover is dominated by narratives around the Team USA sled hockey team and the proliferations of veterans on the team: the way that disabled bodies are only acceptable, only considered worthwhile if they have been deployed in service of empire. Accomodations for disability are not seen as worthwhile specifically because bodies are understood as incomplete, and while that consideration is being extended in part to members of the team left disabled, the way that it is conditional, that it is in part reserving a kind of ability-to-appear, becoming-disabled being conditional on tragedy in some sense involves a pessimism that implies the very structure of hockey culture itself: the way it values keeping the appearance of an intact body, the way in which it values perseverance through injury above all else as part of dedication to the team.

In another sense, the way in which it represented an act of singular violence against not only a team, but a white team at that, lead to the impact of such an accident specifically as one interrelated with hockey. There was a sense where the sport itself suffered a loss with the Broncos, and this was in turn repeated through continuous invocation of the Broncos’ memory. The notion of the team has been used to talk about so many things directly in relation to hockey, a refusal to branch out beyond the sport, the way that hockey culture as a whole is seen as dominating certain hegemonies, Canadian identity, and how the means by which Sidhu could be understood as an “Other” rather than an unlucky indictment of a wider array of conditions placed onto a singular person. The punishment, effectively, is merely additive to what is already clear, that it must be placed on the individual in order to avoid recognizing the structure. 

The same has been more widely true in hockey culture recently, with the means by which the firing of Mike Babcock has revealed a wide range of racist, homophobic, and otherwise revolting harassment that extends down to Junior teams, that is pervasive through the sport, that shapes the ideology of teams like the Broncos and the teams that players will eventually go on to play in, at every single level. When looking to the idea of victim statements, as mentioned in the editorial, their steering of justice is fundamentally reactionary because of the way in which it is linked to “Victim Advocacy” not as a genuine framework of advocating for those most victimized by violence, but rather as a kind of enhancing of already-present violence in the legal system, as a kind extrajudicial recapture of attitudes around how victimization must be understood, and moreover how it must be punished. Carceral violence is the only means through which it can be doled out, is the only way that one can meaningfully affect a close in the disparity between the victimized and the victimizer. 

Of course, things are rarely that simple, and the means by which the judicial system uses structures of convenience in order to then decide exactly what kind of justice can be meted out by such a system. The focus of the editorial in question points to much more reckless acts receiving far less dramatic sentences, that far more intentionally violent acts have been given less violence in a judicial sense. However, the means by which this combined a specific series of evocations of certain values, certain ideological fetishes in order to create the kind of denied-individuality as well as the critical reversal into the individual necessary for the creation of the hockey player. 

The continuation of the tragedy into such an event, the way in which this tragedy is arguably continued by the heavy-handed response, the way that an entire apparatus of justice and carceral retention is symbolized (not to mention the close relationship of many hockey players to such apparatuses due to whiteness) through this tragedy makes it such that, when the lives of these players, the victims of the accident, the driver who was woefully unprepared but still pressed into driving by the demands of capital, and how these demands were enacted upon a busful of teenagers, how the dangers of travel were made clear through them, the way they were themselves victimized by a kind of cultural arrangement beyond themselves just as thousands upon thousands of hockey players are, with very few representatives ever made to answer for it, and those chosen often chosen out of convenience. 

[garden-of-succulents]

Ask I got: So with your post on your writing and Kent its like yeah I usually love a lot of your stuff but whenever Ngozi's line about "Kent getting all he wanted and not getting to grow and Jack getting all he feared and growing" I'm just kind of shocked you agree with that cause I mean you know Kent didn't want Jack to OD and I bet losing Jack in anyway was one of Kent's biggest fears.

plus like here the idea of growth ends up being tied to being out or closeted. Jack's maturity and self acceptance ends up being reflected through how open he is, the high point of his arc and growth as a player ended with him coming out to the world. Which unfortunately bounces back and frames Kent as immature and ties that immaturity to being closeted. [SOME BITS TRIMMED FOR LENGTH] And then make him an antagonist and frame all of his interactions with Jack/Bitty and all of his victories as negative just kind of burn my tongue

even more so when fans intentionally or not run with all that framing and end up connecting all of Kent's issues with his choice to be closeted for his career condemn his choice and point to it as evidence of immaturity or lack of self love or warped priorities, when that choice isn't just the norm but literally the only one any NHL player has ever made at this point and a choice millions of us make each and every day for our own safety, success, and happiness.

My reply: People criticizing the link between immaturity and closetedness are really on point, I think. When I was supporting N's comments about "Kent got everything he wanted, and didn't grow, while Jack got what he didn't want, and grew", I didn't know the full content of 3.26, especially the fact that Jack was going to come out on television and that Kent's teammates were going to be pretty LGBT-hostile.

I mean, I do think that Kent is immature, especially in the sense that his social and emotional development is stunted, and that his immaturity is the result of his decision to go into the NHL and be a professional player from age 18, while Jack's relative maturity is the result of his time in rehab and at Samwell. However, I don't think Kent is uniquely immature in the NHL, and his immaturity isn't linked to him being queer—I think, rather, that immaturity is a result of the incredibly toxic masculinity an NHL career demands, and the effects of that toxic masculinity. Jack's unique because his talent, family history, and financial privilege have given him the advantage of being able to fight that toxic masculinity in the way few professional hockey players have been able to.

So, I'm from Alberta. Small town with a hockey rink and not much else. Major oil-producing sector. Grew up around hockey players. I did part of my practicum as a mental health therapist at a university counselling centre in Vancouver where they had a really strong athletics program, and I had hockey players on my caseload. And the hardest thing for me to communicate to people from elsewhere about hockey culture is how relentlessly, insistently hypermasculine it is. Everything you've heard about a "man box", everything from The Mask You Live In or Men's Work or I Don't Want to Talk About It. That's what gets pushed by coaches, by commentators, by everybody—toxic masculinity is how you play. Dominate, suppress your emotions, overcome pain, win at all costs.

I am honestly saying that the entire feeder system for men's professional hockey is fucked up on a very fundamental level. From elementary school-aged kids getting up at 4am for practice and doing hockey every day and having no social lives outside of hockey, to teenagers leaving home before they're developmentally ready to be away from their families, having substance abuse issues at a grossly disprortionate rate to their peers, shortchanging their educations, and earning very little money. The system produces top players by getting them to focus on hockey at the expense of everything else, which includes their social and emotional development.

I'm talking about basic shit like "realizing when you are feeling an emotion and being able to identify what emotion it is". The inability to do this is called alexithymia, and it often comes from growing up in an invalidating environment where your emotions are never recognized, acknowledged, or accommodated. I'm talking about stuff like "not being able to tell someone about your basic wants and needs"—something that is really hard when the least expression of emotion is seen as "weak" or "gay".

So when I say that Kent "hasn't grown" or is "immature", I mean that things went so bad at the Epikegster because these are skills he hasn't developed. When he spits out, "I miss you," it comes out like it's the absolute limit of what he's capable of saying. His entire sales pitch to Jack has been in terms of money, power, and dominance—You'll be on a great team; you'll earn lots of money; you'll be better than before. It's not until he's at the end of his rope that he admits to wanting Jack back because he misses him. And therefore he doesn't see why he's failing at persuasion; he doesn't realize that Jack has an emotional attachment to the Samwell players, that his priorities for joining a team aren't just about prestige and money.

Because here's the thing about toxic masculinity: there are the things Kent really feels and wants, and the things he is allowed to admit he feels and wants according to toxic masculinity.

Acceptable masculine interests according to toxic masculinity:

Money

Power

Violence

Dominance

Competition

Prestige

Sex

Unacceptable masculine interests according to this system:

Emotional intimacy

Intellectual curiosity

Artistic expression

Play

Authenticity

Personal fulfillment

Safety

According to the system, Kent was only allowed to want to be rich, famous, and successful. Those were the only things he could admit to without being lambasted in international press outlets, because hockey media is sooooo fucked up.

Jack's OD emotionally devastated Kent Parson—and he would have been pilloried for letting it show. In that moment, he wasn't expected to feel anything except humble, grateful, and happy. So that's how he acted. Being closeted is such a secondary concern here.

So in some ways "immature" is the wrong word because Kent is an incredibly mature public figure, polished and good at keeping his mouth shut; he's mastered the art of being what he's expected to be, at being what will let him succeed at his chosen profession. It's kind of like how PTSD is a disease, a dysfunctional set of behaviours, in a peaceful, prosperous society, but it's what keeps you alive in a warzone. It's why I don't counsel hockey bros as a chosen profession: I don't respect their athletic and professional achievements enough to work with them every day. I don't think it's worth winning a trophy if you were never home and ruined your marriage and failed to look after your children, and I'm not good at honouring a belief system that says it is worth it.

But I would define "maturity" as the ability to understand your own needs and fulfill them; to live your own reality and express it in a way that satisfies you.

The ways Jack "grew" were when he admitted that something was wrong and accepted convalescence and treatment instead of skating through the pain. When he got to know himself as an intellectual and artistic person as well as an athletic one. When he made space in his life for empathy and play. Because when you see NHL players being criticized on a personal level, what's it for? For having "big personalities", for being "unprofessional" and "unserious", for being "girly". For celebrating too much, dancing too freely, being political, intellectual, for questioning power hierarchies, and for putting their personal welfare ahead of their teams' success.

(Hockey players' compliance to power hierarchies is valued above all things, but that's a different rant)

Jack's moment of maturity wasn't kissing Bitty on the Stanley Cup ice; it was a year earlier, in his own room, when he understood how he felt and acted on it, and communicated it to Bitty, thereby achieving an emotional intimacy that was more important to him than hockey. In that same room, Kent struggled so badly to understand what he wanted and why, and to express it to somebody else, that he backfired in his intended aim, injured his friendship with Jack more deeply than ever, and hurt the person he wanted to express love for.

So the dichotomy of closeted/out is super new in the comic, and super new to analyses of Kent. A lot of what we've been talking about, and the theories we've evolved, have really not been based on 3.26.

And yes, like you, I'm really leery of letting that be a consistent part of the analysis. We don't know why Kent isn't out yet (my personal theory is that it was strategic) and I'm way more willing to say he's immature because of the way that interaction with Jack went to shit, than to say he's immature because he's doing the smart thing and surviving in a homophobic-as-fuck industry.

And, as always, a lot of my fic about Kent is about him developing those things his industry wants to punish him for having--why I write about him escaping to music festivals with queer pagan poets, respecting and supporting female athletes, caring for helpless animals, developing strong aesthetic tastes and artistic hobbies, finding spirituality, fighting back against his hierarchies, admitting his problems, or quitting to raise a baby. Because I want him to develop too. But I think the draft sent him to the desert in more ways than one, and it’s a struggle for him to thrive.

[michelemoore]

Takhuk

September, 2021

Michele Moore V

3 QUESTIONS I AM ASKING MYSELF BEFORE VOTING IN THIS COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY FEDERAL ELECTION

‘The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning’. (Theodor Adorno)

Hello!

I hope this September, 2021 edition of Takhuk finds you well. How was your July/August? A blast? Peaceful? Crazy busy? Difficult?

Mine was a little bit of all of those things. Best blast – taking 4 little boys, ages 2, 4, 7, 9 (grandsons) for a day at the creek on a hot summer day. Preventing child drownings and making sure each kid got their fair share of the best snacks were my primary duties, which came with a few unforgettable moments. My favourite - when the 7 year old asked the 2 year old to spread his hands to demonstrate the size of the fish he had just seen. The 2 year old did exactly what fishers are famous for (his father is a fisher - is it genetic?) He began with his hands about six inches apart, and ended at about two feet. (I’m pretty sure what the 2 year old saw was a minnow.)

I also enjoyed a few peaceful moments on mountain tops and a deliciously relaxing five day stretch camping beside a river under a mountain that glowed with the sunset every night. No forest fire smoke. No rain.

Along with these wonderful interludes, my summer had a weighty dose of crazy busy. Important and unavoidable stuff that comes along in one’s life. The heaviest?  We moved. But, we had to rent until the house we bought became available. So we actually moved twice. We are now gratefully installed in our new home, which was built in 1981 and still has a lot of the original equipment, (including a first generation vintage microwave which doesn’t work but looks so cool I’m wondering if I should keep it in the wall just for decoration). Along with the hours and hours of packing and hauling boxes around, we have also been spending a lot of time talking to renovators. And furnace people. A LOT of time with furnace people. Still don’t know what furnace is best. Any suggestions?

All of the foregoing (except the grandchildren) has little significance in light of the array of truly serious issues we humans are currently grappling with.

Yes, serious issues that need immediate attention. Yet, here we are, facing another federal election. Geesh. Will politicians ever, ever, ever, stop playing political games? Is there a place on this earth anywhere that has freed itself from the yoke of political maneuvering and scheming? Everyone knows why Trudeau called this election. And everyone knows the Conservatives would have done the same thing. It’s a game, of course. A game to win power. Perhaps all politicians should be required to play hockey for a few hours every morning before they head into work. To rid themselves of some of that competitive, power hungry juice that flows in their veins and infects their thinking.

Having once been a politician myself (municipal level), I have seen from the inside what can happen when people get a taste of the power that comes with being elected. It’s dangerous stuff. There are so many well-meaning and truly committed individuals who want to ‘give back’ by serving in government. I was one of those people. I simply had an interest in the political process, I understood the value of supporting and engaging in our political system, which is actually one of the most transparent in the world (yes, it’s true). The value I saw was in being able to protect and if possible improve the democratic process, to ensure honesty in government, to seek fairness in government, and to work with others to find the best possible solutions to a never ending parade of problems that come with being human. As a municipal councillor, our Reeve (like a mayor), sought consensus amongst the elected council, never calling for a vote until we had reached an agreement. Sometimes this Reeve would keep us talking and debating for hours, so determined was he to make us find consensus. The second tray of donuts would be long gone, the eye glass cleaner all used up, our bums gone numb, our backs stiff as petrified wood. But it was worth it. Consensus is a precious thing. A precious thing that helps maintain a productive, positive, and respectful working elected group, which can then honestly and confidently project the reasons for decisions taken.

In my years as a municipal politician, I worked with and met many excellent people in government – both elected and hired. I also met some who were definitely in it for the game, for the showmanship, for the perks. These people rarely had any clear ideas or solutions, they had chosen to go into politics for the power, really. And those perks.

I met people who did not want to hear anyone else’s views of the world. People who did not want to listen to other ways of thinking. Their views, their ways of thinking, were the only valid ones, the only right ones. And they were so convinced of this that their single purpose goal was to impose on others their ideology, because that’s really what it was. Ideology. No point in debating their ideology with those who had different ideas, because those who did not also adhere to this ideology were obviously wrong. Of course as I write this I am thinking of some very specific individuals I came across during my time in politics. I found these kinds of people in riding association meetings, I found them at high level roundtables, I found them in the stock exchange on Bay Street in Toronto at the inaugural meeting of a now well established think tank filled at the time with some of Canada’s high profile ideological loudmouths. So they are literally everywhere.

Promoting an ideology is often expressed as a ‘movement’. I believe this to be deliberately deceptive. I think most of us associate the word ‘movement’ with fundamental rights such as freedom from discrimination, freedom from dictatorship, freedom from persecution. Martin Luther King led a movement. Nellie McClung (women’s right to vote), led a movement. A political ideology is not a movement. It is simply a way of viewing the world, a belief system about how our government should be structured and how our economic system should function.

So all of this is why the following is the first question I am asking myself as I determine who will get my vote: Do I believe the candidate will pursue consensus and is genuinely willing to listen to and consider, openly and respectfully, other points of view? Does the candidate see the inherent value in consensus? Will this person promote the idea of consensus to the leader of their party? Will this candidate seek consensus in their day to day duties? When someone is elected or hired into government, consensus, in the back offices, in committees, in caucus, and ultimately in Parliament, is the best way to achieve a successful, functioning government. Consensus should be the goal whenever possible. It’s a hard thing to achieve, but it is so worth it. Like a family huddle to decide where to go on vacation, or a team meeting to decide which tournaments to enter. Everyone buys in when decisions are made by consensus.

The second question I am asking myself:  Do I believe the candidate recognizes that we must move forward, not backward, in terms of public policy? In other words, is the candidate someone who understands that societies naturally change and evolve, and therefore public policies, too, must evolve? Societies create systems that respond to the times, and then times change, and so then, must systems. Thus, we no longer have feudalism in Europe, or monarchs and serfs. In the western world we no longer have children working in factories. Today, all children have the right to an education, regardless of their roots. There was a time when only the wealthy and privileged had access to education. (We no longer have teachers smoking inside schools either - remember when that was the norm?) We no longer bring foreign workers here to build our infrastructure (thousands of Chinese immigrants build the Canadian Pacific Railroad) and then impose a Head Tax on their relatives – a tax designed to stop family members from being able to come to Canada to join their husbands and fathers (and of course, the government of the day that came up with this way of thanking these workers also hoped the Head Tax would compel those workers to return to China to rejoin their families in what was then a war torn and impoverished place). Today, new immigrants driving taxis, serving up a Timmy’s coffee, cleaning hospital floors and taking care of our elderly do not pay a head tax for their families to join them. Today, we invite immigrants here to help us build and run the country and thank them by giving them the opportunity to become Canadian citizens. 

This seems critical to me. That we elect people who are in touch with and keen observers of changing societies and who will look for ways to accommodate that change while also championing the values that we all share – equality of opportunity, equitable access to the fundamentals of a decent society – healthcare, education, housing, personal security. Peace.

The last question I am asking myself: this time, is it the party or the individual MP in my riding that best connects with the first two questions. We all know that drill. Sometimes the leader is so clearly capable or inept that we vote only on that one point. Sometimes a party’s platform is so repelling to us personally that we choose by elimination. Sometimes platforms and leaders are all coming up the same colour and that’s when we start looking at the candidate in our own riding.

I’m keeping it that simple because my personal opinion on the many issues we face will not matter if we do not elect representatives who are open-minded, respectful, and forward thinking.

As someone with whom I recently had a great political debate said, ‘that’s just my two cents worth’.

‘The measure of a man (or woman) is what he (or she) does with power. Pittacus

 michelemooreveldhoen.com

[daleisgreat]

Dale’s Top 31 Gaming Experiences of 2020

Welcome to the 2021 installment for my ranking top gaming moments and experiences of the previous year, regardless of what year the game was released in! Besides ranking my the games themselves, This encompasses all videogame-adjacent experiences aside such as movies, board games, accessories and hardware related items and possibly more! This will be a lengthy read so I suggest right now inputting ‘Ctrl + D’ to bookmark this page, and/or make use of a handy ‘read later’ app like Pocket. This year’s recommended background reading music is a soundtrack I recently got clued into from the MojoMenace community in the form of the score for Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst you can check out by click or pressing here. If you somehow manage to want more of these behemoth reads, than I will point you to my previous year-end recaps here: 2019 - 2018 - 2017 - 2016 To assist with this read, here are some in-article page anchors to instantly jump around to bookmarks on the rankings! CHAPTERS Part 1 – Rankings 31 through 25 Part 2 – Rankings 24 through 18 Part 3 – Rankings 17 through 12 Part 4 – Rankings 11 through 7 Part 5 – Rankings 6 through 4 Part 6 – Rankings 3 through 1 PART 1 – Rankings 31 through 25 31) The Worst Wrestling Game of all Time! For a project I will detail later on I had to relive the abyss of wrestling games that is WCW Nitro on the N64. It is a port of the PSone version, and it was as awful as I remembered first experiencing it two decades prior. If you want to experience broken controls, insufferable slowdown, and a flatout painful experience of a game, then Nitro is where it is at. Instead of playing the games, I will instead opt to link you to this clip of the PSone version because it has these so-bad-it’s-good FMVs of the wrestlers trash talking on the character select screen.

30) The Remake Frothingly Demanded for Years….Delivered!

I was ecstatic to see the Final Fantasy VII fanbase finally get the modern-gen remake they have been craving for years. I only consider myself a mild fan because I started that game several times, and only progressed shortly past Midgar in my farthest attempt. Through Midgar is what the Remake covers though, and going by all the coverage I have seen, it looks like Square shocked the doubters and nailed it by expanding on that section of the original game with a ton of new content and storylines to flesh out that iconic setting and cast. I played the demo and loved the stunningly overhauled visuals and combat. One day I will play the full game, but for the time being I will be sufficed with my former podcast co-hosts’ cutouts of the cinematics for most of the game. 29) FMV-Camp Returns! A couple years back on a Game Informer stream they jokingly started playing a modern day Sega CD FMV-style choose your own adventure game, Late Shift. It was a throwback to those camply FMV games that dominated the SegaCD. However, this one actually had solid production values and all around acting for an indie release, and the Game Informer crew slowly got into it as it went along. Seeing them navigate through the first chunk of the game inspired me purchase it, and I finally got around to throwing it in this year and is it a breezy game to get through in under three hours. The storyline branches off in all kinds of directions based on your choices, so I played through it twice and got pretty different endings both times in this game that sees an overnight car park clerk getting forced into a heist job against his own will. The developers at Wales Interactive went on to make a couple more games in this FMV style like The Complex, The Shapeshifting Detective and The Bunker, and I feel they are on the right path with how much I got into Late Shift so I wound up putting all three of those other games on my radar!

28) Hey, Watch me Ollie!

The emotional nostalgia burst that poured down upon me within minutes of firing up Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 was insane. Almost instantly within loading up my first two minute run I could tell the game just felt like how I remembered the awesome PSone game I played to death. Having almost all the memorable songs from the soundtracks of the first two games also incredibly helps. I believe it was intentional on the developers to have the very first song to boot up when playing being “Superman.” This near perfect HD remake/update of the first two games erases the poor attempt done on the 360 and PS3 several years prior. This would have ranked much higher if I had a chance to put more time into this. 27) Unexpected Carnage Following up on last year’s entry where I made the retro purchase of the Jaguar, I had one more session with Atari’s “64-bit” feline with my friend Derek. One Jaguar game I was eager to get some two-player co-op in was with its version of Total Carnage. It was the “bigger and better” sequel to Smash TV, another arcade classic I cherished. Never playing the sequel though I was eager to start it up with Derek, but only upon a few minutes in we realized this was a grave mistake due to the Jaguar port being rough around the edges and only limited continues allowed which resulted in us making very little progress. Before Derek left I remembered I owned Midway Arcade Treasures on the 360, which had Total Carnage in its line-up. We popped that in, and mercifully that fun-yet-brutal version of the game allowed infinite continues and we absolutely capitalized on that option and proceeded to knock out a huge chunk of the game. It mixes up the room-style gameplay of Smash TV and opens it up into levels that scroll up like Ikari Warriors and Mercs, but with that same style of over-the-top action. 26) Unleashing Destruction in the Streets and Rings

At the beginning of the year longtime friend Steve and I had a fun night planned catching a minor league hockey game an hour out of town, but of course a blizzard spoiled that for us by closing the highways. Luckily we had a back-up plan of meeting up for a game night that included marching through the entire tag team championship mode of WWF WrestleFest and all of the arcade version of Final Fight. Steve also had the arcade follow-up to Saturday Night Slam Masters that never received a home release in North America in Ring of Destruction that we tore each other apart in. Finally, I demonstrated FirePro Wrestling World to Steve, and we busted out our vintage favorite football game, ESPN NFL 2K5. It was a hell of a game night, and thank goodness for back-up plans! 25) And the Keighley goes to….

The last few years I have been looking forward more and more to the end-of-the-year videogame award show Geoff Keighley puts on. His annual award showcase keeps improving each year, and has a far lower amount of compromises that the decade’s worth of VGAs on Spike had to endure. Each year Geoff keeps getting closer to that sweet balance of acceptance award speeches, game trailers/reviews and special live performances. He stepped up bigtime this year for not having a crowd in attendance, and I was dreading throughout the show for any one of this virtual award nominees to have an audio or video snafu at any moment, but luckily everything worked out. There were some impressive game reveals too with an intriguing teaser for a new Mass Effect game focusing on the original trilogy characters stealing the show. I have seen a notable contingent criticize Geoff for lack of focus on awards, but it seems almost right where it should be. He tried going all awards the first year he had control, but it was overkill and an insanely long show. Sure, there are spots that can use some tweaking, but for the most part The Game Awards I feel are a worthy end-of-year award show for the industry I have been enjoying for the past several years now. PART 2 – Rankings 24 through 18 24) Online Gaming Therapy The pandemic undeniably made 2020 a rut of a year for everyone. I miss meeting up indoors and hanging out with friends and family as much as the next person. I was able to do some alternate social distancing outdoor meet-ups with friends and family during the summer and fall, but North Dakota’s winter put a halt to that. What has significantly helped has been doing more online gaming than I usually do this year in general. I will cite a few more examples as you read on below, but I want to highlight this so I can be thankful to have a perfectly viable way to still game with friends and family during the pandemic. I have played a lot of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! online with my dad and brother this year. I love my game show videogame adaptations, but one quirk I want to point out in the Xbox One version of Jeopardy is that it does not have the option to traditionally input responses, and instead offers three multiple choice responses instead. I would call blasphemy on this, but there has been so many releases of Jeopardy! over the years that it was actually kind of a neat alternative way to play the classic game show……this time! 23) Love for Videogame Coffee Table Books This past year has seen a surge in videogame hardcover tomes that have been an indulgence of mine the past few years. It started with Pat Contri’s “Ultimate Nintendo” line dedicated to reviewing all the games on the NES & SNES. I have Kickstarted two similar anthology books this past year focused on the Dreamcast and Vita. The Dreamcast book is still in production, but I already received the Vita book in the mail, and a quick flip through of it already indicates it is an exhaustive look at the Vita’s library.

There have been a couple other books that are less all-encompassing and focus more on showcasing artwork based on the system with supplemental interviews with developers who worked on it. The two I have on those are based on Sega’s Genesis and Master System consoles. These are perfect coffee table books for friends and family to flip through, and a nice refresher on history to see how others have perceived and rated the games I grew up with. I also took advantage of the recent Humble Bundle charity offering that collected nearly 100 videogame-themed eBooks for around the suggested $35 donation. I need to one day get a viable tablet or eBook reader for all these. Any suggestions? When Pat Contri sent out a tweet last summer seeking additional writers to help with the upcoming N64 book of his Ultimate Nintendo line, I sent in a resume with my credentials and shortly after trading a few emails was welcomed onto the team! It has been a trip and a half revisiting N64 games I have not played in decades or had yet to discover until this project. As of this writing I have at least a couple hundred hours into the N64 games I am covering! That blurb for WCW Nitro to kick this year’s rankings off is just a teaser of what to expect to see in my full review of it in the book. So yeah, this project has been keeping me busy playing a lot of N64 this year, and I cannot wait to see the book in physical form! Be on the lookout on Pat Contri’s online storefront to order the forthcoming N64 book, and to also order the past NES & SNES books! 22) BOOK-SHAKA-LAKA! Reyan Ali’s book I had on pre-order for well over a year about NBA Jam and the creators from Midway did not disappoint. Here is my quick take on it from my Goodreads.com profile review….

NBA Jam by Reyan Ali My rating: 5 of 5 stars I had this book per-ordered for a while. Based on the amount of interviews conducted going into it and combined with it taking four years to compile I had high expectations going in. Ali did not disappoint with a quick, but thorough history on everything that lead up to NBA Jam, its breakthrough success in the arcades, at home and with the NBA players on the road and the many ups and downs with the franchise and publishers at Midway and Acclaim in the years that followed. Interviews from developers and NBA players are featured throughout the book that help paint a picture on every vital aspect of NBA Jam and why it became a hit in arcades and has a lasting impact to this day. The back third of the book touches on the other various iterations of NBA Jam and eventually the downfall of the original creators at Midway. Even being a fan of the game since it first debuted, I came out of this book learning plenty of new facts and insight from the creators and its many fans that I cannot help but give Ali's NBA Jam my highest recommendation. View all my reviews 21) Bite-Sized Gaming

I chose this spot to recognize the smaller indie Xbox One games I would warm up with for about 20-30 minutes before diving into a longer game with. Most, but not all of them were featured on Game Pass. Hyperdot was an intense little puzzler that I was really into until my reflexes were not fast enough for the later stages to keep the dot alive by avoiding all kind of spherical traffic before time expired. Ping Redux tested my billiards/geometry skills in order to get a pixel from one end of the level to the end. Clustertruck I once again put way too much time into this year, but THIS year I felt like I made legitimate progress on my truck platforming skills and have made it into final world of stages and cleared all the bonus winter and Halloween stages! It is addicting and frustrating in all the right ways! Definitely do not skip past this one on Game Pass!

Top Run is the first runner I invested serious time into since Jetpack Joyride. I would say it is still a few notches below that classic runner though because the grind for unlocks here is a bit much, but the neon pixel graphics and head-bopping 80s-synth score keeps me coming back! Finally, Night Call is a fascinating narrative mystery game where you are a taxi driver forced into undercover work to track down suspects for the police by using casual passenger chit-chat as a cover for interrogation. Very cool art style, and diverse range of quirky, deep, mysterious and alarming passengers had me revisiting more for the engaging dialogue and narration choices more than the mystery at large. 20) Hadoken 2020 Welcome to the fighting game section of the rankings, well save for but one other game I shall touch on later. As usual, I played a ton of online fighting games with my longtime online fighting buddy, Chris. We revisited a couple classics in 2020 that we ignored for far too long since our last go around in Tekken 7 and Soul Calibur VI, and it was a lot of fun trying out the season DLC passes for those games I completely forgot I purchased. Both Namco joints are a blast, and I regret not playing more of them during this generation. I got a chance to briefly dabble with a few SNK vintage re-releases in the King of Fighters and Samurai Shodown franchises courtesy of many physical releases from Limited Run Games. I need to make more time to come back to these gems!!! Retro Fighters is an online game accessory company I associate with their specialty retro fight pads, and I got a handful of them this past year-ish for Genesis, Dreamcast and Nintendo 64. I found myself a big fan of all three pads, especially the N64 pad now having a more traditional two-grip feel instead of its….unique…three grip setup from Nintendo. If you are unfamiliar with these guys, definitely give their website a perusal for some excellent retro controllers!

Finally, I want to shout out Street Fighter V receiving its last major update in 2020, the “Champion Edition” that launched its final season of DLC, and saved me a lot of time grinding for in-game currency to unlock all past and future DLC characters and stages! Only had a chance to go to SFV a handful of times in 2020, but they were memorable sessions, and caught on video too! I keep neglecting PS4’s share video and editing software and finally took advantage of it by uploading one of my battles with Chris on my YouTube channel you can check out by click or pressing here. Another night I got together with a bunch of the fine folks from the MojoMenace/SupertheHardest podcast community for an epic SFV night and even though there were a couple of well-tuned SFV vets on there that dominated, we all still had a blast that evening! 19) Driving Games 2020

2020 was a weaker year for variety of racing games played compared to previous years. There were a couple smaller indie games that were part of my rotation with the nearly graphically blinding Music Racer that turns driving into a musical rhythm game and I miraculously did not endure a seizure with. The awesome Outrun-homage, Horizon Chase Turbo, received continued scattered play from me throughout the year. Super Night Riders is a fun little tribute to Hang-On which I nearly 100% its small slate of courses with the exception of a final endurance track which combines all the tracks in one continuous run and if a few collisions are made it is thus impossible to recover from. I revisited that last race far too frequently before ultimately taking a break from it. Rock ‘n Racing DX was a game I repeatedly saw for sale nearly every week on digital stores, but I was weary with it looking like a watered down version of Super Off Road. After finally chancing it off a $2 sale I can now confirm it is a bad controlling version of Super Off Road everyone should avoid and its muted beats definitely do not rock. V-Rally 4 was a free Xbox Games for Gold in 2020 that I had a blast tearing up the virtual dirt tracks with in this rally-sim! Monster Truck racing games continued with the latest Monster Jam game, Steel Titans. Still not a five star driving game by any means, but nowhere near as buggy and a big step-up from Crush It, which I will give credit to experienced driving game developer, Rainbow Studios now being behind the series.

Retrowave on Steam hit all the guilty pleasure 80s neon visuals and synth-wave musical vibes I am a fan of, but its slot/timing based gameplay did not gel with me. I put a little time into Sega Ages branded update of Virtua Racing on Switch. This is easily the best Virtua Racing has ever played and looked, and M2 implemented a slew of quality-of-life features to make this the definitive version of the game. Hot Shots Racing I played a few times off Xbox Game Pass and it tries to capture the early polygonal look and feel of Virtua Racing. Very nice homage that all Virtua Racing fans should seek out! I also played many hours of six N64 racing games for the forthcoming Ultimate Nintendo book so be on the lookout for that with my reviews for both Top Gear Rally games, Top Gear Overdrive, Re-Volt, Rally Challenge 2000 and Big Mountain 2000.

Finally, the racing game I put the most time into in 2020 once again is Wreckfest. I continue to be impresses with developer Bugbear’s support for this title. In 2020 they launched a second season pass that they are still releasing new vehicle add-ons for as of this writing. They also introduced a new Tournament mode that has constantly updated Daily, Weekly and Monthly challenges that earn its own exclusive currency to be used for unlockable cars available across all modes with that accrued currency. The challenges have been fun and have a variety of wacky themes like winter season races going on right now, and options that have lawnmower vehicles launching killer snowballs. My brother and I have been regularly playing it online once or twice a month for the better part of 2020. A feature I find myself taking advantage more for racing games on Xbox One is using the Spotify app for custom soundtracks. I briefly dabbled with it before, but upon discovering the NFSsoundtracks website I have been using it a whole lot more. That website scours YouTube to recreate a plethora of past driving game soundtracks going back to the 8 and 16-bit eras. If a game has a licensed soundtrack, they will comprise a Spotify playlist of all the licensed songs that are available from that soundtrack on Spotify. So far I would say about 75% of each soundtrack is represented on Spotify, and it has helped exponentially reliving favorite scores from Road Rash, Demolition Racer and Burnout Revenge in modern racing games. 18) Retro Game Writing Frenzy

I doubled down on the amount of “Flashback Specials” I produced in 2020 where I celebrate systems on their milestone anniversaries by recapping my favorite games and memories of certain consoles. Some of them were mini-specials where I only had a limited experience with certain systems like the Saturn, PSP and Neo-Geo, while others were for systems I had well over a decade of hands-on experience with and thus many tales to recount which resulted in exhaustive pieces for the NES, PSone, PS2 and Xbox 360. That 360 piece especially did a number on me and went way longer than I anticipated…but I had a lot to say :D 2021 will see a lot of platforms having milestone anniversaries of their American launch, and I doubt I will have time to get to them all, at least with how I have been covering most of them in detail anyways. Part of the fun I have with these specials is busting out each retro system and hooking up and replaying several of my favorites to see if they stand the test of time like Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! and The Punisher on NES, or to spend some time on lost treasures I picked up and barely put anytime into like CastleVania: Rondo of Blood on PSP and both Rad Racer games on NES. Regardless, if you have been sticking with me through these endless pieces, than please accept my many thanks for indulging my memories and stories of my gaming past! PART 3 – Rankings 17 through 12 17) Shmuppreciation 2020

I was honored to curate the selection again for the annual “Shmuppreciation” celebration for the mojomenace.com community! Previous years saw me pick a different shmup each week to scorechase on for the NES and SNES, and for 2020 I thought I lined up things perfectly by picking five shmups (AKA shooters/space shooters) that were all going to be available on the TurboGrafX-Mini that was set to release in mid-March. Well, on March 11th the pandemic was officially declared, and it was already in full effect in Asia by that point where production of the TG16-Mini was scheduled so it was no surprise to see the announcement of a delay for a few months on the mini console. That did not deter the MojoMenace community however and we plugged away with our scheduled lineup. Some of the 2020 lineup I own and have an alright amount of experience with like Blazing Lazers. Others I had little to no experience with like Lords of Thunder, Super Star Solider and Soldier Blade. The surprise hit of the 2020 selections for me was Galaga ‘88/’90. I played my fair share of traditional Galaga over the years and always heard of the TG16 version, but never played it, and it amped up the traditional Galaga gameplay and graphics just enough to make it stand side-by-side with its equals of the day! It was gratifying to see it be a hit with the community and receive the most entries of all the 2020 lineup. 16) A Long Awaited Fourth Rage in the Streets

I have so much nostalgia of the original Streets of Rage trilogy. It was an unexpected surprise to find it available on Game Pass on its day one release. I put about four hours into that game over its first two days, and absolutely treasure those two days with it as I felt my skills organically improving as I picked up on combos and enemy hit patterns. The new graphic style felt like it capture the essence of its past while successfully evolving it to modern day 2D tech standards, and the same can be said for the all-new original soundtrack that lived up to the high pedigree established in the first two games, and then some! I wound up picking up the vinyl for it, and the soundtrack has been in heavy rotation in my playlists ever since. The only downside is after those first two days of playing it, I took a week off before revisiting and almost instantly found myself losing a few steps from where I last left off. It was then I realized if I desire to beat this game, I have to essentially dedicate a couple of days solely to it to where I can “get good” at it and plow through it in a sitting or two. I guess I can tone it down to easy, and if it was not a Streets of Rage game I probably would, but the thing is with how I am playing so far, yeah the game can get tough on the normal default difficulty, but it is a fair challenge, one that nails that delicate balance where I know dedicated practice will pay off in the long run. In the end, that is how I want my Streets of Rage 4 experience to be! 15) Ryo’s Rally Cry

Last year Shenmue III fulfilled my 18-year long anticipation for the latest adventures featuring Ryo Hazuki. In 2020, a series of three DLC packs were unleashed in the early months of the year. I was not expecting anything too extravagant because all three packs were bundled together for $9.99, and compared to season pass story based content in other games that typically go for double-to-triple that, I had a feeling it was going to be more mini-games than anything, and that is essentially what we got. The first DLC focused on Bailu Village with several treasure hunt mini-games hunting down tiny Bailu Chan collectibles, which was no fun at all, and after the first treasure hunt zone I referenced a YouTube video to blitz through the rest. They were worth going through because they unlocked stat boosts for Ryo to use in the several Battle Rally races that gave a final score based on time completed and number of enemies beaten throughout it. Those stat boosts made Ryo faster and stronger, so it was worthwhile to knockout more foes before the finish line, and that part of the DLC proved to be a fun type of challenge. The second DLC was a cruise ship full of casino-themed mini-games and a couple small story quests. To activate it was tricky because you needed to make about 15 minutes of progress in the second half of the game. Luckily, a new game can be started from the back half. The casino games are decent little distractions, and the only highlight of the ship was earning raffle tickets to use on a prize wheel used to unlock several extra slick costumes for Ryo.

The final DLC was a story DLC that is sprinkled throughout the back half of the game. It is a bit of a chore though, and nothing extraordinary. If you remember the Chan signs that use four tea cups arranged in certain patterns, then be prepared for a series of those quests that are only available after completing a few main story missions. It is mostly a lot of backtracking to find a rogue agent, and only leads to a couple simple fights, and the only interesting thing I got out of it was for one part of the several-part series of quests you go undercover on a dinner date with Shenhua with some intentionally campy lines. I would only recommend playing it if you were playing through Shenmue III for the first time and that way the quests seem like an organic series of side quests you stumbled across, because by the time the last part of this DLC was available, I already replayed my way through about 75% of the second half of the main quest that transpires in Niaowu. If you are wondering why Shenmue III is ranking a fair way into my rankings with my middling time with the DLC, well that is because of the astounding Shenmue III-themed releases I picked up from Limited Run Games in 2020. A few months back Limited Run had what felt like a Shenmue appreciation day and released a special edition of the game with all the lackluster DLC on the disc, in addition to bonus collectibles that I usually do not go for, but in this rare exception did. They also put out some absurdly priced vinyl options of the soundtrack. Shenmue III has a mammoth soundtrack, so big it took seven CDs and eight vinyls to cram it in. To get the complete vinyl set, it was for around $200-250, so I opted for the CD set for $50 and a special “best of” two record set for $40. Yeah….did not anticipate blowing nearly the price for a Switch on Shenmue merchandise in one day, but I managed to cut myself off before going too nuts. 14) Vinyl Love 2020 Speaking of that Shenmue III vinyl, this will be a good way to pivot to rank the videogame OST vinyls I procured over 2020. Data Disc released their curated Shenmue II record. It is like the one Data Disc put out for the first game in the series which is a hand-picked selection of songs on one LP. I recently listened to it, and at least Data Disc ensured to maximize their minutes with their selections. Data Disc also did a second printing of another Yu Suzuki classic with the OST for Outrun. Other highlights include a complete set of five records of the Tetris Effect OST from Limited Run Games. Many kudos to Limited Run for including an MP3 download code with their records, and it was much appreciated for that set, and as well for their Streets of Rage 4 score. I have heard mixed reception for the SoR4 OST living up to the lofty bar established from the first two games, but after listening to it many times on my record player and in my car, I can attest for it being a win in the series and is right up there with the first two games. I will give a couple last quick shout outs for the OSTs for The King of Fighters ‘98, Street Fighter III, Quake, Celeste B-Sides and Kentucky Route Zero comprising the remaining LPs I picked up throughout 2020. To this day I continue working out to DDP Yoga 3-4 times a week, and having one of the game vinyls on in the background is the ideal background jams for me while I stretch myself to pieces! 13) Pinball 2020 Longtime readers are familiar with ritual weekly habit of competing in the four table weekly high score challenges in Pinball FX3, and yes I am still continuing that tradition every Saturday morning where I will practice and rank up abilities on one of the four tables that is up in the weekly challenges, and then attempt to best the high score for each of the four tables. It never gets old, and it helps feed my pinball addictions. Props to Zen for their output of Williams tables, and I am about 50/50 for using their “remastered” versions with animated toys and additional graphics on the table, and appreciate the option to press a button to flip to the original design. I still popped in Pinball Arcade on PS4 several times throughout 2020 because I feel those are more accurate-feeling real life physics of those pinball tables, but Zen’s versions are a solid alternative. Plus they added one of my favorite tables, Champion Pub, to the PFX3 roster in 2020, now just give me No Good Gophers and I will rest happy!

In other pinball news, I also continue to throw in the rotation Demon’s Tilt, the awesome homage to Devil’s Crush/Dragon’s Revenge. I cannot get enough of those scintillating TG16 throwback visuals and its metal soundtrack! I only threw in the neon-infused visuals of Hyperspace Pinball off Steam a few times in 2020, and I just wish that game took off more and received some home console conversions. Love the bumpin’ soundtrack, trippy graphics and distinctive boss battles that keep me coming back to it. I need to one day dive into recent pinball/platformer hybrids Yoku’s Island Express and Creature in the Well. I briefly tried out the former, and yet to put time into the latter. Finally, in sad pinball news, the private pinball club I started going to I wrote about in last year’s recap, Fargo Pinball shut its doors last year after failing to sustain business a few months into the pandemic. The owners will still operate about a dozen machines they have on constant rotation at a local brewery however, so there is still somewhat of a local pinball presence to take in. For the two or three times I made it out to Fargo Pinball however, I was in pinball heaven. 12) Handheld Gaming 2020

Last year I wrote about in this section how I made serious headway into Mother 3 on the GBA by the end of 2019. So the first few months I spent wrapping up Mother 3 on my backlit-modded GBA. So that meant I beat it legit with no save states, and a lot of trial and error on boss battles. The only part I did not care for was an underwater maze to navigate through while keeping an eye on oxygen levels, but otherwise I very much enjoyed my time with Mother 3, and mad props to Fangamer’s companion guide for being the quintessential supplemental material to guide me through it. After finishing that, I put a couple hours into the Metroid-esque Scurge: Hive on GBA before throwing in another throwback in the form of GameBoy Color’s Turok 2: Seeds of Evil. A year or two back here I wrote how the first Turok on GameBoy was an old-school style action-platformer that won me over, and the sequel is more of the same, but with slightly more fleshed out levels, now color graphics, and a couple interesting shmup stages for variety! It had some old-school difficulty, so the Retron 5’s save states and cheats and I had to take advantage of in order to power through it!

Currently, I am ever-so-slowly working my way through a fan translated copy of Ace Attorney Investigations 2 on DS. I loved the first game in the series and how they mixed up the gameplay by taking it out of the courtroom and having visual avatars to control and visually maneuver around locations. I am currently on the third case of AAI2, and the translation successfully maintains the whimsical spirit of the Ace Attorney series and has an interesting twist where Miles is now having to side with defense attorneys against his will. I picked up two unique re-released retro handhelds this past year. Firstly, I picked up the Mario Game & Watch that was released to celebrate Super Mario Bros.’s 35th anniversary. Super Mario Bros. is the first game I ever played, and first game I ever finished so it goes without saying that game is quite special to me and having it in this unique handheld form is a saccharine treat! The second old school handheld I had to import from Japan in the form of the Game Gear Micro. For those unaware of this Japan-exclusive, it is a working Game Gear about 10% the proportion of the original model. Sega only made several versions of it in Japan, with each one having only a handful of exclusive games. I went with the one containing the Aleste collection that contains five Game Gear/Master System games in the acclaimed space shooter series, one of which is an all-new game designed with the Game Gear’s limitations in mind in GG Aleste 3. My cramped fingers were somewhat able to play the games on the Micro (make sure to get the magnifier accessory in order marginally make out the visuals), and it is a nice discussion piece, but I think I will put more time into these games in the future with the PS4 copy of Aleste Collection that came with the bundle I ordered from Play Asia. PART 4 – Rankings 11 through 7 11) Podcast Guest Hosting 2020 I guest hosted on three podcasts in 2020. I had what ended up being my final recurring guest slot on the penultimate episode of Your Parents Basement podcast. It was my 13th guest host appearance there, but I made sure to make it a clayyyysic one with our analysis for the dubious action-sports SNES title, Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball. I remember going into that episode initially tepid to start off our discussion for the game by admitting I could not figure out how to shoot the damn ball and had to look up a guide online how to figure it out, but was quickly relieved to hear all three YPB hosts had to do exactly the same! Also, there were some regular segments of the show where we all rate the game on a themed where entertaining shenanigans ensued. YPB has since posted one surprise end of year special since having their main series finale, and here is hoping to see them pop in again for more surprise episodes. I will be forever grateful to them for taking my suggestions at covering games I have been meaning to get out of my backlog for ages like Shadowrun, Metal Gear Solid, Crystalis and Earthbound. Click or press here to check out that YPB episode I guested on in 2020.

I was thrilled to guest host twice on the PSnation Podcast in 2020. While it is a Playstation themed podcast, host Glenn always specializes with healthy doses of retro gaming talk in each episode. In March I joined him in covering the FFVII Remake demo that just hit, and we of course had to inject a ton of retro gaming topics in the agenda too (click or press here to download). In November I came on again to anticipate the future by previewing the imminent launch of the PS5 and celebrate the past by dissecting 20 forgotten facts of the PS2 for its 20th anniversary (click or press here to download). While both podcasts were marathon recording sessions, I do not regret a minute of it as I always have a phenomenal time podcasting with Glenn! He recently announced they will be rebranding PSnation with news to come in the near future after a hell of a 14-year run, and I wish nothing but the best for him and his staff to see what they have in store! On a final note in podcasts, I have been continuing my occasional un-vaulting of select episodes from my long-deceased videogame podcast, On Tap. Throughout 2020, I uploaded about an episode a month to my YouTube channel, often having them coincide with a relevant anniversary or one of my flashback special articles. Some of the ones I uploaded this past year are all several parts of our history of comic book videogames episodes and most of our history of RPG videogames episodes. Also a couple of our movie review episodes where we analyze cult classics like The Wizard, FFVII: Advent Children Complete, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and both Tron films. I made a playlist of the 28 episodes I have un-vaulted as of this writing you can navigate to by click or pressing here. 10) Switching It Up

In early April of 2020, I had penned in a pretty epic vacation I was anticipating for quite some time, but as we all know, by April of 2020 we were a few weeks into the pandemic and those plans quickly went up in smoke along with everything else in the world. It may have been a good thing those plans got cancelled because that same weekend a water pipe burst at my home and that whole weekend was spent cleaning up the aftermath of it. It was a couple days after the fact of that ordeal and I was simply a mess, and needed some form of a pick-me-up. I was holding off on a Switch for three years by this point, and three years was about what I held off on purchasing a Wii U, PS4 and Xbox One, and so I convinced myself to get out of my slump by going out and buying a Switch. It helped big time! The first games I played on it were a couple of different SNES games I played online with my nephew Carter. We first played the original Super Mario Kart, and within seconds of starting a race he blurted out, “Dale this looks old!” He was not a happy camper, but we did manage to have a modicum of fun playing two player co-op in Brawl Brothers and Joe & Mac. Other notable Switch games I put some time into this year are Golf Story, Sega Ages Virtua Racing, Tetris 99 and Super Mario Bros. 35. I love battle royal Tetris and Super Mario Bros.! Golf Story is the ultimate spiritual successor to the beloved Mario Golf games on GBC and GBA. Also, I highly recommend playing with a pro controller in docked mode, and with Hori’s Split Pad Pro in undocked mode. Despite its bulk, I vaster prefer them more than the painfully tiny JoyCons. In 2021 I hope to invest significantly more time into my Switch! I have picked up many retro re-releases recently with their frequent sales that I must try out! 9) Wrestling Games 2020

2020 was a year like no other for me when it came to wrestling games. The first half of the year started off with me only playing FirePro Wrestling World, the first new wrestling game I put serious time into since WWE All-Stars. I played quite a bit of the PS2 and GBA FirePro games, but the thing that hooked me on the PS4 version was downloading hundreds of created wrestlers to replicate my all-era dream roster, and clearing all 50 scenario trials. I got up to the final trial where the goal is to win a match with a 100% fan approval rating. Thing is, in order to replicate, the opponent has to get in just as much offense and back-and-forth near-falls to make it as exciting as a televised match, and by doing that I put myself at great risk to lose…which happened every time. I vow to complete that final trial in 2021! Speaking of WWE All-Stars, I volunteered to review its spiritual successor follow-up, WWE 2K Battlegrounds for my friends over at PSnation. While it has some notable flaws holding it back from matching the fun arcade action of WWE All-Stars, 2K Battlegrounds still has a lot going for it and is at least worth checking out. Click or press here for my full review to get my complete breakdown of WWE 2K Battlegrounds. Finally, as I have mentioned earlier I have been covering a number of wrestling titles for the upcoming N64 book project. As you read above, it was a whole new definition of pain experiencing WCW Nitro all over again, but at least other games held up better than I thought they would. I finally was able to put major time into the four import N64 wrestling games and came out of those with a whole new appreciation of this era of wrestling games. Seriously, AKI’s six wrestling games on the N64 are arguably the best spread of wrestling games in videogame history, and I wish I can expand on it more, but you’ll have to check out the book once it is available for my final word! I promise if you bookmark this page I will edit this page with a link to its online store listing once it is available! 8) Breath of the Wild Progress 2020 Another year gone, and another year where I have yet to finish The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I have good reasons though! I was making headway steady play a couple times a month until about July. I finally conquered the fourth divine beast, and more importantly I finally reached all the towers and unlocked the complete map. I also moseyed around most areas of the map, even the barren Gerudo Desert, I spent a good chunk of this year in to ensure I did not skimp over any cool hidden areas, or Korok seeds…although I am sure I missed quite a few. A major nagging sidequest I put to bed in 2020 was completing the founding of Tarrey Town for Hudson after running countless fetch quests for Link’s former colleague.

The only major thing in the core storyline I need to do is finally make my way through Hyrule Castle to vanquish Ganon….but I have so many other side quests and DLC quests I desire to finish before properly completing the main quest! I made one attempt at completing the Master Sword Trials that have the beneficial reward of doubling the power and durability of the Master Sword, and while it was a brutal endeavor, the challenge felt fair and encouraging of me to put forth the effort to practice and become better like on Eventide Island! I would also like to unlock the Master Cycle Zero for Link, but that set of DLC missions is mammoth, and if I do get around to them, it would likely be after I finish the main quest. Anyways, I was making that routine headway and finishing BotW in 2020 seemed possible, but then I had to step back and put most of my spare game time onto my N64 assignments. I should wrap up my N64 work within the next few months, and plan on diving head-first to pick up where I left off in Breath of the Wild! That motorcycle shall be mine!!! 7) Year of the Mini Consoles I thought I was done buying the “mini” line of classic consoles with pre-programmed games by the end of 2019 after acquiring the Genesis Mini that went along with my NES and SNES Minis! That was not the case though as 2020 saw me add three more to my collection. The Neo-Geo Mini has been out for some time now, but Amazon had huge markdowns on them in 2020 with bundled controllers. For those unfamiliar with it, the unit is designed as a mini-arcade cabinet, but also has ability to plug into a TV via HDMI cable to play the pre-programmed 40 games that way too. It has all the many expected fighting games on there, plus a variety of other genre hits from SNK. I also picked up the Game Gear Micro, but you can see my thoughts on that a few rankings above where I go over my handheld gaming moments of the year.

Finally, I picked up the TurboGrafX Mini, which had to endure a last minute shipping delay by a few months since it was originally scheduled to ship in March right after the pandemic was declared. It is a hell of a collection, with a killer line up of American and Japanese games. Part of me was wishing there was an easter egg to unlock the English translated Sega CD version of Snatcher, but no luck! There is still an unbelievable lineup on here with two Bonk games, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, several classic shmups like Blazing Lazers and Galaga ‘88/’90, one of the Crush pinball games, and so many more! There was a couple I wish would have made the cut like World Court Tennis and Final Lap Twin because of their charming RPG story modes, and at least one of the FirePro Wrestling games, but what is included is still a hell of a package, complete with probably the best UI of any of the mini-consoles that is overflowing with TurboGrafX/PCengine fan service! So many people in America missed out on the small-yet-mighty TG16 library in America, and this is the best way to be introduced to it to the public! CGQ did an awesome launch stream that has footage of most of the included games if you want to know more about the platform!

PART 5 – Rankings 6 through 4 6) The Year of Videogame Documentaries! If there was any upside to all the time spent locked down at home in 2020, it was that it helped everyone catch up on a lot of past and current shows on various streaming services or old school physical media. 2020 saw several videogame themed documentaries release, and not a single one disappointed which is why I am ranking this experience so high. Netflix released a six episode docu-series on pivotal moments in the early decades of videogames, titled High Score. It does not shed much new insights if you are up-to-speed on your videogame history, but if you only have a passing familiarity with the roots of videogames, or have younger members of the family who are curious than this is a good place to start because they have high production values, and fun animated sequences to keep your attention throughout. It does not cover the entire history of games in six episodes, but each episode serves as a nice refresher course on key moments like the rise and fall of Atari, Nintendo revitalizing videogames in America with the NES, the 16-bit Wars, popularity of fighting games in the early 90s, and id Software shaking up the gaming landscape with Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. Next up is videogame YouTuber (and heading up the N64 book I am contributing to) Pat Contri teaming up with Kevin J. James for the documentary, Not for Resale. It has an interesting theme about life as an independent videogame store owner and retro game collecting. It thoroughly covers a wide range of topics from this perspective of videogame retail, and I encourage you to check out my review of the documentary by click or pressing here. Another documentary I reviewed in 2020 for my blog actually first released in 2015, but I somehow never heard of it until 2020. I am talking about Nintendo Quest, and it is all about one man’s journey to collect the entire officially licensed American NES library in one month with only his own funds, and only by visiting stores and collectors in person with no online buying at all. It was quite the ambitious goal, and was a fun journey to watch to see if he could or could not pull it off. Click or press here for my full review.

Next up is Console Wars. I devoured Blake Harris’s novelization of the 16-bit SNES/Genesis rivalry, and was stoked to hear it was going to receive the big budget feature documentary treatment. It took a few years, but it finally released in 2020 as a CBS All Access streaming exclusive. There is no shortage of vintage photos, ads, clips and commercials inserted throughout the interviews and narration that transported me directly back to the early-to-mid 90s! They could not squeeze in everything from the book into 90 minutes, but they still managed to hit a lot of major and minor moments from the 16-bit wars. Despite this being well-documented territory, this was a terrific refresher, and recommended viewing considering the surplus of major and minor players from that era they tracked down to interview. Insert Coin is an exclusive on Alamo’s streaming service, and is the ultimate supplementary piece to Reyan Ali’s book on NBA Jam I mentioned earlier in this list. If you do not have time for the book, make sure to watch this because they track down most of the major players at Midway/Bally/Williams to chronicle the rise and fall of the company, and touch on so many of its arcade hits. Yes, even Revolution X gets an entertaining scene with previously unseen production footage of band members’ voiceover recording sessions. I loved Cruis ‘n USA, and was a little bummed to see the ho-hum treatment of it in the doc, but if you have killer memories of the NBA Jam, Mortal Kombat, Defender, NFL Blitz, Smash TV and so many other Midway arcade classics, then you definitely want to check out Insert Coin! Pretending I’m a Superman: The Tony Hawk Videogame Story is available to buy or rent off YouTube. I have heard many good things about this doc, but I have sadly been neglecting it for many months, which is not right since I was an avid fan of the Tony Hawk games from their heyday, but want to give it props here because I have good faith that it will not disappoint!

That is it for the traditional documentary features I have seen in 2020. For the past couple years I have provided a long list of YouTube links of my favorite gaming-related videos throughout the year. In place of that is a few documentaries I want to highlight here that hit in 2020 from a few YouTube creators. Norm Caruso, AKA The Videogame Historian did not disappoint in 2020 with several new docs/mini-docs, with the two that stood out the most to me being his exhaustive deep dive into Mario Paint and tracking down the original developer to interview for his look on the infamous MS-DOS versions of the early Mega Man games. I also am constantly amazed at the steady stream of shorter and lengthier documentaries No Clip releases on their YouTube channel, and the crapshoot that was 2020 did not slowdown their consistent output. I highly recommend their well-researched videos on the history of two prolific developers – Creative Assembly and Arkane Studios. EA received well earned high marks on their incredible remaster of Command & Conquer early in 2020, and No Clip released a coinciding video with many of the original and remaster developers on un-vaulting original material and digging deep to cram in as much unreleased or barely seen content in as possible.

If you were a child from the mid-80s to the mid-90s, then you undoubtedly remember spending countless hours in school trying to master the original “souls-like” game, Oregon Trail. MinnMax released a comprehensive look at this classroom favorite filled with interview clips from the original programmers on how it came to be, and even tracking down Steve Wozniak for his reflections on this iconic title. Finally, I want to shout out this awesome DIY-spirited documentary celebrating NHL ‘94 that came out in 2020 and went to great lengths to pay homage to that classic hockey game by tracking down the primary head programmer, going to great pains for a very brief interaction with Jaromir Jagr and chronicling the current eSports scene of NHL ‘94.

Sorry for the deluge of recommendations, but that should provide many hours of entertainment and videogame history to last you throughout 2021, and then some! 5) Acquiring my First Console Near Launch Since the Vita! The headline does not lie, the Xbox Series X marked the first console I purchased within the first couple months of a console launch since the Vita! After getting burned on launch window consoles malfunctioning on me with the PS2, 360 and PS3 I instilled a “wait three years after a console launch to buy it so the hardware is likely less faulty” self-imposed policy. I did exactly that with the WiiU, PS4, Xbox One and Switch. I was originally going to do that with the XSX/PS5 also, and I guess the thing that nudged me out of that edict was hearing multiple podcasts, website hardware reviews and YouTube content creators’ analysis of the system’s hardware, UI and overall performance in the opening weeks. The more I heard in the first couple weeks, the more the Xbox Series X sounded right for me. This is primarily because the UI/dashboard is nearly identical compared to the Xbox One, and that I can plug in my external hard drive I have been using for the Xbox One directly into the XSX after I complete my initial setup. After doing that it would be like I was playing on my Xbox One again, but with vastly superior hardware and faster loading times. I got a Samsung 55” Black Friday 4KTV special to finally upgrade into the 4K era and be properly ready for the 4K optimized games. My backlog was so huge that I did not mind the XSX did not have any major first or third party exclusives until two and half months later with the release of The Medium. Enjoying faster load times on games like Wreckfest and Borderlands 3 is more impressive than I thought it would be. I am also by this point well invested into the Xbox Game Pass ecosystem as I have elaborated on in previous year-end articles, and having all first party exclusives coming to Game Pass day one is another deciding factor on why I went with the Xbox Series X first. Now here is hoping this system does not brick on me or I am returning back to my self-enforced waiting policy! 4) Conquering the Lands that Border a Third Time!

Speaking of Borderlands 3, that was a terrific alternate method for me to hang out with my buddy Derek through these quarantine times. Several years back we gradually worked our way through Borderlands 2 over the course of a year, and we started up the third game around Halloween of 2019. It took a little over a year of playing only once or twice a month, but we finally finished the core campaign of Borderlands 3! Most of the gaming press bags on the Borderlands games for its style of humor, but to me it kind of rings familiar to Family Guy. Both franchises throw a lot of gags and jokes at you from all angles, and some of them hit, and some of them miss, and that is fine! Humor is subjective with about half of the jokes jiving with me, and that is A-OK because they all do not need to be LMAO zingers! The addicting co-op gameplay of Borderlands is what keeps me coming back, well that and the perpetual quest of finding all types of fun weaponry and loot I had equipped for far too long (rainbow-explosion grenades being my prime example here). I like the angle of Borderlands 3’s central hub being on a spaceship…even if its design is of the labyrinth nature that I frequently became lost in. The biofuel truck mission was an early favorite of mine and remained a running gag with Derek throughout 2020. The pair of primary antagonists here may not usurp the unforgettable villain that was Handsome Jack, but it was still a fun journey pursuing them and meeting their dad to detail their nature. Right now Derek and I are a good ways through one of the DLC packs for the game, Guns, Love, and Tentacles that is themed around saving the wedding of Wainwright & Hammerlock with the assistance of the mysterious bartender, Mancubus Bloodtooth! It features a refreshing twist on gameplay with longer levels, different vibe of scenery and a more challenging-but-fair difficulty. Needless to say, I am greatly looking forward to marching through the rest of the DLC packs throughout 2021! PART 6 – Rankings 3 through 1 3) Spooky Gaming 2020

You will see soon why my yearly installment for Spooky Gaming ranked so high this year. First off, I kept up my yearly tradition of playing the 360 launch game, Condemned: Criminal Origins on Halloween! I think that is at least three, maybe four Halloweens in a row now! Only made a little over an hour of progress though on a couple sessions due to not as much free time as I hoped and it took a bit more than I presumed to navigate through a couple tricky levels, but I pushed through a couple more chapters and one day promise to finish this! Two new spooky games released right around this past Halloween that were both must-buys for me, but regrettably have yet to start. Pumpkin Jack looked like a fun simple action-platformer with graphics and gameplay quality intentionally designed from the early PS2 days which looked like a fun early 2000s throwback from a couple streams I saw. The second game is the next installment in the “Dark Pictures” anthology, following 2019’s Man of Medan that received a rave recounting from my 2019 rankings! That game is called Little Hope and it has a similar structure to Man of Medan, where it follows a group of travelers stranded after a bus crash who stumble into a nearby mysterious/haunted small town that is full of secrets. I watched one stream of its opening scenes, and was delighted to see the narrative choice-based gameplay returns and will determine how many of the group members will remain alive by the end of the playthrough. I want to play this like I did Man of Medan in one sitting in an evening with Derek & Brooke in the midst of a thunderstorm! That will happen in 2021!!

Finally, the highlight of spooky gaming season was surprisingly returning to Xbox One’s Blair Witch Project. I wrote here last year that I loved its atmospheric setting of looking through the same haunted woods from the movies for a lost child, but I unfortunately got stuck about an hour or two in while searching through the woods for my next objective. The woods were too dark!!! So this past Halloween season I booted up Blair Witch Project with the mindset of not even looking to make any progress and to simply put on the gaming headphones and take in that appropriately dark atmosphere of exploring the spooky woods for about 10 minutes before moving onto Condemned.

Well, something unexpected happened during those 10 minutes and I accidentally stumbled onto my next objective and quickly got absorbed into the narrative and could not put the game down! I loved how the character Ellis gradually starts to get wrapped up into the eventual supernatural surroundings that gradually get implemented and do not ruin that awesome initial eerie setting. The way the camcorder was used for gameplay to solve some puzzles was creative, and using the late-90s Nokia-esque cell phone for storyline bits was an unexpected nostalgia trip. Yeah, some of the use of flashbacks/supernatural enemies can be a little hokey at points, but for the most part it keeps up the suspense and thrills, and it caught me jumping on several occasions while playing with the volume blasting on those headphones. The last level pulls out all the scary, mind-bending stops, and was a ride that I had no idea when it was going to end, and even though the ending was a little middling, the ride on the way to that final destination was awesome and had me gripped in throughout. Blair Witch Project is currently on Xbox Game Pass, and is some ideal late night/Halloween season gaming that I highly recommend to all! 2) FINISH HIM!! Usually I would lump this in with my yearly fighting games recap, but my time with Mortal Kombat 11 rose well above the rest of my time with other fighting games that it climbed out of that group and rose to my #2 gaming moment of the year! For the first half of 2021, I had semi-frequent online sessions with my aforementioned fighting game buddy, Chris! Whenever a new DLC character from the DLC pass released every several weeks, we would usually meet up one of the following weekends and experiment away with the new member of the roster. If I really dug a character, I would then do repeated playthroughs of that character in the Towers of Time in order to unlock more costumes and other gear for that character. That wound up happening with both Joker and Robocop, as I had a ton of fun with both of those characters’ moves and fighting styles.

The announcement of the Aftermath DLC halfway into 2020 totally caught me off guard. It was a new storyline expansion DLC that lasted only a few hours, but continues the same best-in-class production values of fighting game cutscenes that seamlessly transition between fights. Best of all, it brings the DLC characters into the narrative to freshen it up, and is highlighted by Shang Tsung being your uneasy ally/rival throughout which resulted in yet-another killer MK storyline to take in, even if it was a little shorter. Oh yeah, NetherRealm Studios inserted the likeness and voice of the same actor who perfectly portrayed Tsung in the first Mortal Kombat film, Cary Tagawa. My nostalgia for that 1995 movie knows no bounds, so it was a thrill to have Tagawa return to MK11 for the Aftermath storyline. Another movie related surprise was new costume DLC for Sonya, Raiden and Johnny Cage that use the likenesses and voiceovers from their 1995 movie cast counterparts with Bridgette Wilson, Christopher Lambert and Linden Ashby all returning. I am so thrilled to see the games fully embrace the fandom for the 1995 movie, and doubly thrilling is that the new Mortal Kombat film set to release later this year that legit looks kind of promising based on the trailer and general buzz in the movie/gaming press. Another surprise update to MK11 was the inclusion of cross-network play. So that meant I could finally play against my brother on Xbox One! I was skeptical trying it out when my brother and I lined up a day to play that it would be a laggy mess playing on different systems against each other, but we played for about an hour with no problems, and all my costume and gear unlocks carried forward too! Countless thanks for the developers adding this support, and also many props to Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo for making it so to see it start to become a little more common to other online games in general throughout 2020! So yeah, this all added up to me revisiting MK11 more frequently than I thought I would with the nonstop support from NetherRealm Studios in 2020, and thus it more than earned its #2 ranking on my list, and technically my #1 video-game ranking because…. 1) Global Board Game Domination!!

Once or twice a year, dating back nearly 15 years I have met with mostly the same group of friends for marathon sessions of my favorite board game, Risk. That game is notorious for taking anywhere from two-to-five hours to finish in order to take over the world via smart strategy and lucky dice rolls! Every time we play, we bust out pretzels, beers, Chuck Norris shots and end the night playing PS3 Tiger Woods PGA Tour ‘12 until we get sleepy! I always look forward to these nights, and they are kind of like a second Christmas to me because it only happens once or twice a year. As awesome as these are, my technical prowess in Risk strategy and luck in dice rolls leave a lot to be desired over the years, and I am almost always the first or second person eliminated. Regardless of that, I want to give props to Mike, Jim and Paul for the decade plus of priceless Risk memories and moments. A couple years ago Mike moved and my brother Joe has been filling that fourth chair! We have played a couple five player games over the years, but our 2020 night (which luckily emanated about a month before the pandemic hit), saw Jim’s nephew Matt join us for our first five player game in some time. This was Matt’s first game of Risk and thus a learning experience and I had to be the spoiler to ruin his first game and wound up eliminating him first from the game. From there though it was still relatively early as far as the army bonuses goes within an average game of Risk, but a domino effect happened and I was able to capitalize on eliminating Matt and gaining his territories and within about an hour eliminated everyone else on my own!!!! I was in disbelief, and as much as I hate to admit it had somewhat of a brief emotional moment upon winning that game because in our 15-ish years playing, I have only won once before early on and it had to of been at least 10 years since that and I was not use to things going my way, and in that fashion to boot.

The way that game played out resulted in an oddly short-ish two hour game, so we decided to get another round in that night. Now that Matt had his warm-up round in, he had a better grasp of the game and this was a more traditionally close, longer game of Risk where the excitement was in the mobilization of armies and territories in those early rounds and to see who would make the first big attack move in attempts of expanding their territory. Hell yeah, I was all-in on this five hour game of Risk!!! Now as this round unfolded this will be very hard to believe, but I swear I am telling the whole truth that against all odds the same exact thing happened and I eliminated everybody and won the second game as well!!! I am still dismayed thinking about how well that night went for me in Risk, and highly doubt it will happen again! So for me, predominant loser and usually first one out in a game, to full on run the board and eliminate everyone in two consecutive games happens you damn well bet that night is going to be my best gaming related moment of the year!! THANK YOU!!!! I somehow achieved a degree of brevity this year, as last year’s insane best-of list went around 18,000 words, but I was able to….kinda….tighten my word count this year by clocking it at roughly 12,000 words!! My endless thanks for sticking with me all the way through as I recap my favorite (and worst) gaming moments/experiences of the year. Now, to keep up with tradition, after all that perusing and me rambling on for way too long…are you ready for a chuckle or two? Well, then, let none other than John Cena take care of that for you with the following embedded video to close off another best-of list. See you all next year!!!

Previous Year’s Best of Recaps - 2019 - 2018 - 2017 - 2016

[samibetache2000]

How Streaming services and youtube are taking over modern day tv:

I mean when was the last time you turned on your tv, I mean it’s probably on all day every day right but are you watching actual tv and unless your over fifty I think theres a big chance the answer is no.

When I ask someone what they’re watching on there tv there answer is simply Netflix or Youtube or something other streaming platform but what exactly is Netflix and let’s actually take a second to look at its dominance.

Netflix is an American streaming platform founded in 1997 in Scotts valley, California by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph, on this platform there is a enormous library of films, series’s and Netflix original’s.

Its available worldwide bar a few countries due to political reasons, grossing 24.96 billion dollars last year with around 203 million paying users that’s about the entire population of England, France and Germany combined, if we keep it uk focused with the population of 66 million in that figure 15 million have a paid Netflix account averaging 1/4.5 people which is crazy considering that most people share accounts too.

The reason for Netflix’s dominance in my opinion is due to many things, the interface is so easy to navigate giving you genres and recommendations based on previously watched content and also a simple search bar, the variety of content is unmatched from kids to +18 movies and series’s available in a multitude of different languages and also translation and subtitles on almost everything.

And in my opinion the main reason for there success is there Netflix originals as there only available to watch on Netflix, the success of shows such as Stranger Things, 13 reasons why, black mirror, You, Money Heist (La Casa de papel) …. Etc makes a Netflix subscription a must have.

However Netflix although currently unmatched are starting to face stiff competition form the likes of Amazon Prime and Disney+, Amazon prime might sound confusing as Amazon is usually the delivery service and prime being the option for next day delivery however in recent years they begun taking there streaming service seriously also by making amazon exclusive Films and Series’s and securing the rights to hundreds of popular movies and elite shows like Vikings.

Disney+ however is a relatively new streaming service which was only launched 15 months ago and has already amassed a whopping 95 million paid subscribers which is almost half of what Netflix has despite Netflix being 21 years older, and this success is due to the fact everyone loves Disney and is also the parent company of two of the most popular franchises in TV history in Start Wars and Marvel, and they started of right with a Star Wars exclusive in the Mandalorian and now debuted one of three marvel tv shows announced in Wanda Vision on top of that they have every Disney movie ever made which includes some of the biggest movies of all time like Frozen, Home Alone and Cars. If I has to bet on any service dethroning Netflix at the top Disney+ is definitely the one.

The only thing that is really going for “Normal TV” at the moment is live sports as personally for me it’s the only reason I have actual channels, and that probably explains why the TV right for live sports are so expensive, some of the numbers are stupid.

Just from UK based Sky and BT alone pay over three billion pounds a season for rights to showcase there matches and the premier league are believed to actually bank 5.5 billion globally when you include other companies, ESPN pay the NFL 1.9 billion dollars a season for there rights, with ESPN, ABC, and Turner Sports paying 2.7 billion dollars a year for the NBA.

No tv shows or anything else on TV even comes close to these figures and that’s why I think that if it wasn’t for live sports “Normal TV” would be dead.

Even networks like BBC and ITV have realised this starting there own streaming services in BBC iPlayer and ITV HUB respectively showcasing all there programs on there essentially for free however to access the BBC iPlayer you need to have paid the £165 tv license fee however, even a 5 year old can get around by literally just lying when they ask as theres no verification process whatsoever.

The major issue approaching for “Normal TV” is that even Live sports are realising this and are looking into streaming services with many already making the switch, think of WWE despite having multi billion dollar deals with USA network and FOX respectively there main shows are all shown on the WWE network from there pay per views to there documentaries to a library of classic event and matches and guess what its been extremely successful for them and you can’t be surprised, with 1.5 million paid subscribers and an annual revenue in the millions.

UFC are also trying something similar with UFC fight pass broadcasting lots of different fighting promotions and also a library similar to WWE’s where you get historic fights and events and anything fighting related you want to watch really.

However most of the UFC pay per views are actually on another streaming service and probably the most successful sport streaming service in the US in ESPN+ with 11.5 million paid subscribers funny enough also owned by Disney, ESPN+ showcases live UFC PPV events for a discounted price, live Major League Baseball, Major league soccer, National hockey league and much more.

Another thriving sports service is DAZN which is currently the main destination if you’re looking for boxing as its become the main sponsor and partner of Match room Boxing showcasing fights like Anthony Joshua vs Andy Ruiz jr in over 200 countries worldwide, DAZN also shows tons of other sports including Football, Cricket and basketball making it a way more diverse platform then ESPN+ however is lacking the big brand behind it.

This leads to another blow to “Normal TV” as it brings the slow death of PPV, pay per view is a service where a spectator can purchase events to view privately whilst the broadcaster shows the event at the same time to everyone ordering it.

However PPV is dying as it’s always been expensive paying around £40-£90 per event however nowadays that’s no longer the case for example WWE pay per views happen once a month however if you have the WWE Network you watch the PPV for free so instead of paying around £50 for the event, you pay £9.99 for the monthly subscription.

Same thing goes with boxing as most fight are on DAZN or ESPN+ so why would you pay for the PPV instead of $19.99 or $4.99 respectively.

The only ones that really still use the PPV system is The UFC but like I mentioned before with ESPN+ you get a discount, however UFC president Dana White has spoke multiple times about making UFC PPV’s fight pass exclusive.

Now lets move on to the holy grail of them all and that’s YouTube, and why is that you may ask ? Well simply because it’s free you don’t have to pay a penny to watch youtube, well you do sit through a few Add’s here and there however you get the watch all your favourite content for free.

Well I highly doubt it but if you’ve never heard of Youtube, it’s an online video sharing platform owned by google and the second most visited website in the world, its available worldwide bar a few countries again for political reasons with an estimated 2 billion daily users grossing around 15 billion dollars a year Available content includes video clips, TV show clips, music videos, short and documentary films, audio recordings, movie trailers, live streams, video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos.

Basically it has everything you need and more, and the impact it has on this generation is immense you can just pick up a camera talk and upload it and have the Internet do the rest, it helps as its an easy way to exercise freedom of speech by sharing political views.

Kids nowadays don’t re want to watch TV they would rather watch they’re favourite YouTuber, they grow up idolising people like KSI, Pewdiepie, and Ssniperwolf. These you-tubers literally have the power to influence a generation as people who consider themselves fans would do anything for them.

Unfortunately sometimes they take it too far like back in 2019 PewDiePie was battling it out with T-series on youtube for the n*1 subscribed YouTube channel But what happen next can never be expected a terrorist unleashed fire on a mosque killing 50 people and writing subscribe to PewDiePie on the wall, the Terrorist was definitely an Islamophobe but he thought it would be a good idea to help PewDiePie as he knew that this would generate lots of attention and bring lots of light on PewDiePie’s channel.

PewDiePie later condemned his actions describing it as a terrible incident that he prays never happens again and essentially gave up on the battle with T series and stoped the subscribe to PewDiePie meme.

Another incident where fans have got out of hand is with popular YouTuber Roman Atwood where he’s had to deal with a stalker for years and even had to get the FBI involved As the stalker Would threaten him and his family, change there mail address, Hack into the security cameras and take pictures and send them to the family and even call in a false Bomb threat to a family funeral.

However YouTubers still have the power To manipulate and influence certain things by Just shining a light on them they can increase the value and inflate a certain market. And example of this is when YouTuber Logan Paul who has recently been making Pokémon content where he opens 22-year-old packs which are worth a ton of money to try and pack certain rare Pokémon cards and the rarest of them cards is a PSA 10 1st edition base set Charizard and before Logan Paul Was doing the Pokémon stuff a Charizard was worth around $250,000 however now a Charizard is worth around 3 quarters of a $1 million. And all type of Pokémon prices have gone up, he has basically made Pokémon popular again and it seems to be the talk of YouTube.

YouTube, Netflix and all other streaming services have really killed off classic TV And they have way more influence than classical TV ever had and the scary thing is this is just the beginning.

[orbemnews]

Fire chiefs raise the alarm – too few young recruits MEREDITH — Cole Boggis knew he would make his career in the fire service since he was a boy and his father was a member of the Brookline Fire Department. “I was fortunate to grow up in the fire department in my hometown. All the guys were good enough to include me, and got me interested,” Boggis said. At 14, he joined a junior firefighter program in the neighboring town of Hollis, joined Brookline when he turned 18, and came to Meredith as an intern with the Fire Technology program at Lakes Region Community College. He’s now 21 and a member of the Meredith Department, covering the station during day shifts. Over in Franklin, Mike Mussey has been a full-time member of the department for seven months. He’s 23 and said he’s known he wanted to be a firefighter since he was 14, also through a junior program. Mussey grew up in Franklin, and said it’s “fantastic” to be able to serve the people of his hometown. People like Boggis and Mussey are increasingly hard to come by, though. Fire chiefs around the region report  difficulty filling their rosters. They might have once had 10, or even 20, applicants for each open position; now they have two or three, and those who are highly qualified are likely fielding multiple job offers. That’s leading some in the industry to warn that the shortage could soon become critical. “I think everybody knows it, the total amount of firefighters that we have applying statewide, everywhere, it’s much more difficult to hire firefighters now,” said Kirk Beattie, Laconia’s fire chief. “The numbers of them just aren’t out there. And if you factor in that we’re looking for paramedics as well, they are very hard to come by.” If he were fully staffed, Beattie said he would have 40 firefighters on his roster. He currently has 38, and pending retirements will soon drop that to 36. “We are in the process of trying to hire right now, but the total number of applicants is way down,” Beattie said, though he added that, so far, he has been able to land well-qualified candidates. “It would be nice to get back to the days of having 20-30 applicants, instead of 2 or 3.” Chief Michael Foss in Franklin said he has had to change his staffing levels for lack of firefighters. He would like to be able to have a crew of 5 on at all times, but now he has 3 firefighters for each 24-hour shift, with one additional crew member coming on for a 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. shift. Coverage drops back to 3 for the overnight hours. “We are set up well to handle one call at a time,” Foss said. However, about a quarter of their calls occur when the crew is already responding to a prior emergency, which leaves Franklin with a choice. Either try and call in already overworked firefighters on their day off, or rely on Lakes Region Mutual Fire Aid, which will rally help from a neighboring town. Meredith relies on on-call firefighters. It used to be, Meredith Chief Ken Jones said, that the town could handle most moderate incidents with their call firefighters, who work in town and could drop what they were doing to respond to an emergency. “It used to be a 45-man roster years ago,” Jones said, adding that he’s down to around 15 members who will reliably show up when their pagers tone. “We’re struggling. On any call, I don’t know who I’m going to have on that call,” he said. Depending on who shows up, he might not have people trained to attack a house fire from the interior, or operate the necessary equipment. Increasingly, Meredith has to call Mutual Fire Aid for help. “That’s how we are surviving at this time,” Jones said. Gilford uses a hybrid system, with 18 full-time firefighters and an equal number of on-call staff. Steve Carrier, Gilford chief, said his biggest problem is retaining personnel, especially on-call firefighters. “It’s a pretty demanding position to be in,” said Carrier. “You have a full-time job and a family, we’re telling you that you have to come in for training two or three times a month, if you don’t have certification we tell you to go somewhere you can get certification.” When the on-call staff drops out of rotation, Carrier said it’s usually because of the time commitment. They need to stay active in order to retain their skills, but they have to be willing to drop everything and respond when the big calls come in. “The opportunities aren’t there every day for them to be involved,” Carrier said. “I think it’s difficult for some of them to justify spending the time and training.” Deborah Pendergast said the problem has been brewing for years. She’s director of the state’s Fire Standards and Training Department, and said the drop in interest was first seen in smaller, rural departments that rely on call staff. “Now that is trickling to the full-time departments. It is regional, it is not a New Hampshire phenomenon. Overall, if you look at why is that, there are a couple of different things playing into that,” Pendergast said. One of the reasons is a public perception of the service that doesn’t accurately reflect the present reality. To begin a career in the fire service, a candidate would need to get certified as a firefighter, have at least some emergency medicine certification, and a commercial drivers license. Yet, said Pendergast, “The fire service is considered a blue-collar career, a hands-on trade.” That creates a problem. Ambitious young people who aren’t afraid of certification programs might not consider the fire service, but people who expect to be able to walk into a job might be turned off when they realize how much work it is to become a firefighter. Then there’s another perception problem, one which Pendergast confronted herself years ago. Her career started with a CPR class, which led to an EMT program, and when she was doing a ride-along on an ambulance, one of the firefighters suggested she take a firefighting course. She was about 30 at that time, and never thought of herself as a firefighter. That was decades ago, but the picture of a New Hampshire firefighter hasn’t changed too much. “New Hampshire is absolutely not where it needs to be with diversity of fire service,” Pendergast said. Women make up only about 5% of firefighters in the state, she said, a figure well below other states. “If we are only tapping the white males to be in the fire service, we are doing ourselves a disservice,” Pendergast said. She said local firehouses need to invite Girl Scouts, not just Boy Scouts, for tours. Recruiting efforts should take place at softball and field hockey tournaments, not just football games. “If we work hard to tap minorities and females, we can get people who said, ‘I never thought of myself doing that.’” The fire service can break through misconceptions by reviving junior firefighter programs, which were once prolific but have become rarer, Pendergast said, and by encouraging fire-science classes in high schools, which give young people a jump-start on basic training. Beattie, in Laconia, said it will likely take a scattershot approach “There isn’t one answer, I think there’s multiple things,” he said. He pointed to statistics that show significant decrease in active duty military service over the past 30 years – and fire service is a common second act after an honorable discharge. Foss, in Franklin, said some of the decline could be due to changes that have affected the value proposition for someone considering the career. The barrier to entry is now higher, considering the required certifications, while the payoff is farther away. Changes to the state retirement system did away with the possibility of collecting a pension as young as 45 years old. “The increase in age requirement to receive a benefit is a lot higher than it used to be,” Foss said. Jones, in addition to leading Meredith’s Fire Department, is currently serving as head of the NH Association of Fire Chiefs. He said the state recently adjusted the hours required to receive basic firefighting certification by reducing the amount of time spent on wildfire training, with a particular eye at making it easier to become a call firefighter – a frequent first step on the way to a full-time career. More will be necessary, Jones said. If his department is indicative of other call services, the forecast is troubling. Of those 12-15 call members he can rely on to respond to alarms, more than half of them are nearing retirement age. “It’s an issue that’s not going away. Municipalities are going to need to face this and decide what’s the next step,” Jones said, offering the possibility of full-time, regionalized service, though he added that would likely result in longer response times for far-flung neighborhoods. “It’s a question that’s on the horizon and will need to be answered in the near future.” Mussey, beginning his career in Franklin, said he was hooked as soon as he got a look at the career through a fire explorer program. “I found that I enjoyed everything it offered,” he said. He was attracted to the hours, the camaraderie, and the mission. “It’s got a lot to offer. You get to help people during the worst moments of their lives, you get to make connections with your co-workers that you wouldn’t make in other jobs,” Mussey said. Boggis said that it might sound cliche, but it’s true. “I like helping people. I like to be able to interact with different walks of life, and I like being able to put my touch on people’s lives.” Someone with decades in the service, Don Smith, a call firefighter with Meredith, said Mussey and Boggis will find a career doing just what they like to do. Smith said he joined the Meredith department because his father and his younger brother did. Forty-six years later, what keeps him answering the call? “I enjoy helping people,” Smith answered. “I just enjoy firefighting.” Source link Orbem News #Alarm #Chiefs #deborahpendergast #donsmith #Fire #Firefighter #kenjones #kirkbeattie #Meredith #michaelfoss #mikemussey #raise #recruits #Work #young

[currentclimate]

Start A Revolution, in Response To Permafrost Thaw

“Permafrost Thaw Looks Alien: What You Need to Know” Via Climate State, March 16, 2018 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCoo8MA4eI8)

For context, a few short years ago, the melting of the permafrost was seen by scientists as a harbinger of doom, as a marker of abrupt and potentially catastrophic (for humans and the biosphere) climate change.

It’s happening.

This is a major positive feedback that is well underway, with the potential (according to the video, Dr. Charles Miller, NASA JPL), of compounding anthropogenic carbon release by up to 30%.

This is dire news.

Abrupt climate change is underway. We are living through a climate change emergency, right now, before our eyes. We are witnessing a failure of human culture on a critical scale. More than half of Russians believe climate change is a good thing that will improve their lives through economic benefits from a warming climate, as well as the personal benefit of warmer winters. China continues to build coal-fired power plants while at the same time investing heavily in renewables.

Can you say double-speak?

Can you say thought-crime?

Can you say crimes against humanity, against current and future generations, and against the entire biosphere? Yes, all you sunny-siders, the earth will be fine, even with climate change, but every living thing on this planet will suffer, and many will go extinct . . . many have already gone extinct, because of climate change.

Crimes against humanity are codified by the UN in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal court, Article 7, which states: For the purpose of this statute, ‘crime against humanity’ means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.  Scientists have known, for more than 100 years, of the impacts of increasing carbon concentrations in the atmosphere, and we have had a running record of CO2 levels taken from a peak in Mauna Loa, Hawaii, since 1958.  Michael Mann is now famous for creating the “hockey stick” diagram showing the unprecedented rise in carbon concentrations in the atmosphere.  This is not new information. Exxon/Mobile, and other fossil fuel companies, spent vast sums of money researching climate change, and by the 1980’s, even among scientists for the fossil fuel industry, the markers of climate change were clear.  This attack on humanity has been both knowing and widespread.

In contrast to genocide, crimes against humanity do not need to target a specific group, the whole of the population of the planet will suffice to meet this definition. Moreover,  to be convicted of crimes against humanity, specific intent is not necessary, so, even if Exxon/Mobile knew, or the Bush or Clinton or Obama administrations knew about climate change, a specific intent to harm vast numbers of people is not necessary for guilt.  A general knowledge of potential deleterious impacts is enough, so, maybe we can’t blame Clinton for climate change inaction, because even though we knew about climate change during his administration, the coming impacts were not yet clear.

The impacts are clear and present now. There is danger. People are dying, property damaged, and the biosphere compromised because of climate change. This has been clear since at least the Obama administration. I am not partisan. There is plenty of blame to go around and the blame does not center on a single administration or ideology.

It’s not just China or Russia that are the bad guys. Canada continues to develop and invest in tar sands. The US has exited the Paris Accord and rolled back Obama-era regulations on coal.

It’s the whole world, outside of a few indigenous groups who are sounding the alarms.  These groups can imagine a different world, without capitalism, consumerism; living in a real democracy.  These groups are not bent at the knee to the Economy, to Corporations, to growth and expansion of all markets, regardless of the negative human costs, and, sadly, to self-interest.  These indigenous groups can imagine the ways of life, the radical changes to human society, valuing, and functioning, that would have to occur in order to make even a half-assed attempt at effectively combating climate change.

The rest of the world can’t. The rest of the world buries its head in the sand, choosing instead to look the other way, to stay sunny-sided, or stand steady in the faith that fate offers.

Human culture has failed. Human culture has agreed to value comfort, self-interest, denial, and untruth, instead of the requisite virtues for a functioning and sustainable civilization.  There is not a person on this planet that is not aware the climate is not changing. They may deny it, to their dying breath, but they know it’s there, because all you have to do is step outside your front door to see it.

We need a revolution. An immediate revolution.  To save this planet.  This is no joke. This is not hyperbole. This is not partisan. This is not open to interpretation.  We need to start by respecting intelligence, education, and experience.  

We are not all equal, in terms of experience, education, or intelligence. We are equal under the law. We are equal in the eyes of God, if you believe that sort of thing.  Because you are smart, or educated and experienced, does not mean you are better than a street-sweeper, but it does mean, when it comes to things that matter, that you know about and the street-sweeper doesn’t, that you are given credence. For certain, there are things the street-sweeper knows about through experience or education that you do not, and you should offer the street-sweeper the same level of respect and listen.

Science and scientists have been telling us for years, decades, more than a century, that putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will change the climate. Your Uncle Joe, and your representatives in congress, your news media, your president and his cabinet, all these people all over the world have said to themselves -- I know better . . . climate change is not real.

We can argue about the reasons. We can talk about human nature. We can discuss intellectual history. We will surely need to introduce religion, anthropology, sociology, psychology, mythology, and much more, to get at the heart of the reasons. It doesn’t really matter why, it just matters that it's happened, and, now, with abrupt climate change, what the consequences will be and how we will respond.

We need a revolution, but that’s not what is happening. Tribalism is happening. Anger, skepticism, cynicism, they are happening. Brutality is happening.  These are all natural human responses to stress.  They are not surprising. We need a revolution to change this, to change these horrible values, and to push us all beyond denialism into concrete and immediate action.

A revolution.

What better reason to start a revolution than your own family, kin, offspring, and to protect the potential for future generations (this is NOT a given -- “future generations” -- do you understand this?!?! -- the earth has undergone 5 mass extinctions in the past; never at this speed, in case you were about to suggest what’s happening around us is natural)?  

If you need to, think about the polar bears, and the penguins, the Pacific Redwood forests, the salmon and trout in your own streams, which will disappear completely in a much warmer world.  If you need to, think of red tides, toxic algae blooms the size of three states. Think of desertification.  Think of storms the size of continents.

Think whatever you need to get your ass off the couch and into the streets with a sign in your hand, or into your congressperson's office or e-mail or phone. Get your son or daughter or father or brother, sister and uncle and aunt, and tell them we have a climate change emergency and there is no time to waste.

We are witnessing crimes against humanity, against you and me. I know, it’s not about you and me, it’s about all of us, present and future, and it’s about all the living things on this planet. We can’t do it individually; I cannot combat climate change on my own. We need systems and structures of power, government, institutions and infrastructure, to support a project of this kind.  

It’s not your fault you don’t own an electric car. It’s not your fault, you don’t believe me. It’s not your fault, you don’t know anything about climate change, and how dire it already is. It’s not your fault because the systems and structures of power, the institutions we depend upon to protect and guard the public good, the world over, have failed each and every one of us.  We can’t know everything through personal experience and investigation. There is not time for a single person to do this, which is why we have governments and institutions to keep a watchful eye out for all of us, and warn us when necessary, let us know what should be on our radar and what we should learn and pay attention to.  

It’s not your fault you don’t know.

Once you know, if you do not act, then it is your fault. You are culpable. You must look your children and grandchildren in the eyes.  Once you know, you must act, and now you know what you must do, and that is . . . start a revolution.

This is no joke. This is not hyperbole. I am not a radical. I’d much rather sit on my couch. I’d much rather follow my own self-interest.  This is no longer possible, because the environment for which each of us depends for our personal freedom is threatened. Seriously threatened.  People are already dying. There is already a mass refugee crisis, and just like the unprecedented wildfires in the West, nobody mentions climate change in connections with these massive tragedies.

But we all know it’s there. Not a single one of us needs to wait to be told. We know. It’s there.

It’s doesn’t take much to change the world. Think about Rosa Parks. Think about that single act of civil disobedience. Think about the moral outrage that inspired Rosa Parks.

Now, think about climate change, think about yourself, and think about starting a revolution.  That’s what we need, because a miracle is not going to fix this.

“A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation . . . .” Vladimir Lenin, a guy who knew a thing or two about revolutions. 

Now go to it.