#the fourth is that I switch between these activities every four minutes and lose it

[continuousmeowing]

I have a 5 or 6 hour flight there are like 4 ways this is going to end. I am going to die.

[sleep-i-ness]

Love At First Coffee (Vanya Hargreeves x reader)

Summary: Y/N is a struggling flautist, trying to make ends meet, but when a violinist catches her eyes, life doesn’t seem quite so difficult.

Request: No

TUA Taglist: @neymarlionelmessi7​

Beep beep beep. Y/N groaned, stretching out languidly as she patted her bedside table. Her fingers found nothing but the worn wooden surface. Blearily rubbing her eyes, she pushed herself up onto one elbow. The alarm was incessant. Where on earth was that phone?

The bitter smell of coffee filled the kitchen as she poured the boiling water into her chipped mug.  A lethargic ache had settled into her bones; the haphazard pile of unopened letters mounting her dread the more she looked at the mess. A quick glance at the plastic clock ticking merrily away warned her she was on the verge of being late if she did not leave now.

Y/N slung the straps of her flute case and tattered leather satchel over her shoulder, her crumpled sheet music clutched in one hand. The lock of her apartment was always such a fiddle and she stuffed the sheet music in her satchel, wincing as it creased even further. She yanked the door shut, leaning backwards to align the lock as she twisted the key.

With a huff, she blew the strands of hair that had fallen over her eyes during her tussle with the door. Her path was a familiar one; down the hallway over the scuffed tiles, where she’d have to wait for the creaky elevator to haul itself up to her, and then out onto the street. Past the rowdy bar that never seemed to shut and the hot dog street vendor to the bus stop, littered with chewing gum and graffiti. Then, depending on whether she had the time to waste on the agonizingly slow journey, it was either onto the grimy bus, nodding to the leering driver, or straight past, a brisk walk of about 20 minutes to the concert hall.

Today was not going in her favor. Y/N sighed as it pulled away from the stop. No need to make a choice now. The walk into the more central and less dodgy area of town was usually quite unpleasant; the streets were still reeling from the nighttime activities. She wrinkled her nose as the putrid scent of rotting garbage filled the air, a dumpster nearby overflowing with ripped trash bags. 

Keeping her head down, she hurried through the streets, neatly sidestepping the ‘businessmen’ on their flip phones and the gossiping ladies, one hand always clamping their handbags shut. A rush of balmy air burst through the vent as she passed over it, the warm stench of urine and cooking garbage wafting upwards. Left, then a right, then straight on past two crossroads and lines of honking traffic and foul-mouthed drivers, swearing at the day for daring to begin. Wait for the lights to turn red, cross over and continue down the road until you reach the performers door.

The Icarus Theatre. Y/N would have liked to be one of those performers who gushed on about how their performance center was ‘like a second home’, but that was cheesy and frankly unrealistic. Her dreams of being a world-famous flautist had been crushed the moment she’d received her first lot of bills and realized how naïve she truly was. The joy in performing in an orchestra was short-lived as every day felt like a struggle to scrape together enough money to keep herself out of debt and prove her parents wrong. That was enough to dampen anyone’s spirits.

Every hour she didn’t have a rehearsal, she was booked chockful with students of all ages and genders who turned up with a passion for the flute. Or their parents were forcing them to go. Either way she got paid and hoped that maybe she was imbuing someone with a new appreciation for classical music.

“Morning, Will.”

The principal piccoloist was already sat in his seat, absorbed in conversation with Lucy, one of the second violins. He glanced over and raised a slender hand in acknowledgment. Will was always punctual and smartly attired, wearing crisply ironed shirts and smart blazers, free of lint. Y/N was sharply aware of the contrast between them, her shirt creased and half-untucked and her hair escaping from its bun.

She flipped open the latches on her case; there was a trick to it, you needed to open both at once while opening the lid at the same time. Her prize and joy, her baby lay inside. The first time she had ever saved up enough money to buy herself something worthwhile, she had bought a professional flute. Before then, she’d been using her aunt’s old flute from the 60s, a battered old thing that was lucky to even still be able to play.

The murmur died down as Lorin Toscanini, the conductor, stepped onto the raised podium and raised his baton. Y/N slipped into her seat next to Will, who raised an eyebrow at the creased sheets she deposited onto her stand.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Today we need to fix the timing on the opening sequence. Remember this is iconic and it needs to be perfect. Second violins, I hope you have improved since yesterday.” The nasally tone of Toscanini grated on Y/N’s nerves, especially so early in the morning when she would much rather be in bed.

Y/N raised her flute to her lower lip, watching the baton as it swayed in time with the music. Down, left, right, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. The violins and cellos came in in unison on the downbeat, bows drawing across the string in harmony. The harmonies in perfect time caused shivers to run up and down her spine as the bows swayed mournfully across the vibrating strings in unison.

Okay. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8-

“Stop, stop,” Toscanini cried out, baton smacking against the stand. All instruments were immediately lowered, as a sign of deference. Something about stroking his highly inflated ego. “Someone in the clarinets is playing a B natural instead of a B flat. Now remember, we want to create a sense of tension, so the dynamics start off at piano and then we reach mezzo forte. But this isn’t the most dramatic section; we are building up to that. So, at bar 4 we need an audible diminuendo. Like tiptoeing... From the top!”

There was something so magical about playing in an orchestra when it all slotted into place. You stopped being an individual person and instead became immersed in a group movement of sound and emotion, compelling the listener to be draw in with you. The different melodic lines weave together into one, playing off each other to create a final piece.

It was an almost addictive sensation. The feeling of being swept away and losing sense of oneself in the bigger picture of a whole was something Y/N craved when she wasn’t playing. Music restored a part of herself that she sometimes didn’t realize she was missing. It lifted her away from the mortal world, to a place where the music and the notes were the only thing that mattered.

Y/N’s eye fell upon one of the first violins, newly promoted, her brown hair pulled back tightly in a low ponytail. The woman’s brow was furrowed as her fingers danced over the neck of the guitar, swaying gently with the music. Momentarily transfixed, Y/N’s mind turned foggy as she lost count, all thoughts focused on the violinist.

The piece drew to its climax, as if a great beast had climbed to its hind legs and roared. A mounting rush of notes as each musician lost themselves in the crescendo, furiously playing. Cascading melodies toppled over each other, nimble fingers tumbling up scales and bow strokes timed impeccably.

E, G, A!

An audible sigh of satisfaction echoed round the room as the piece ended without any pauses for tinkering; the joy of a composition well played shared throughout all the players.

“Beautiful, just beautiful. I think we’ll call that a day, there. Our next rehearsal is at one on Wednesday, now do not be late.”

Now that the piece had ended, Y/N glanced over to the violinist she had spotted earlier. While Y/N quietly packed her instrument away, the woman prepared to slip out, unnoticed. Should she…?

“Hey,” Y/N flagged down the women, fingertips brushing the cuffs of her dark shirt. “I’m Y/N, I noticed you playing. It was beautiful! You recently got moved up from fourth chair to third, right?”

“Yeah,” the woman seemed flustered by the attention, a faint blush dusting her cheeks. “I’m Vanya, it’s nice to meet you.”

Y/N pulled her slipping straps back onto her shoulder as she grinned at Vanya from beneath the curls threatening to fall in her face. “Pretty name. Say, are you busy now? I know an excellent little coffee shop across the road.”

Vanya flushed as she murmured some expression of gratitude. She hesitated, carefully switching her phone on and off again before sliding it back in her pocket when no notifications showed up. “I’m free for a couple of hours. I have to teach lessons from 3 though.”

The coffee shop was quaint and always quiet; since a Starbucks had opened only a few doors down, business had slowly dried up until only a few regulars and those who were opposed to coffee from chain shops came along. Vanya fidgeted with the strap of her violin case, her eyes darting around the shop’s wooden and gold furnishings.

“Hey Marjorie, I’ll have a cappuccino and a chocolate éclair. Vanya, what do you want?”

“Oh, you don’t need to order for me, I can pay for myself.” Vanya’s eyes widened as she protested profusely.

Y/N raised an eyebrow, leaning nonchalantly against the bar, “I asked you to come with me for coffee, there’s no way that I am going to be so rude as to make my guest pay for her order. So?”

“I’ll have a mocha, thanks.”

Y/N soon joined Vanya where she was sitting, tucked away in a booth in the corner.

“One mocha, milady.” God, she sounded like one of those ‘nice guys’ in the Instagram DMs.

“Thanks,” Vanya laughed, and Y/N decided she quite liked hearing that sound and that she was definitely going to try and hear it more often. Especially, she wanted to see the way Vanya’s eyes crinkled as she tried to stifle her giggles and how her hand flew up to try and cover her face.

“So, tell me about yourself,” Y/N propped up her head on one hand as she sipped at her cappuccino, blowing softly on the frothy layer.

“Umm, I don’t know what there is to say, I’m a pretty boring person.”

Y/N could not believe that. There was something so hypnotizingly attractive about Vanya; a quiet sort of pretty that crept up on you when you were least expecting it and stole your breath away. Someone like that could never be boring, every inch of her whispered of a tale to be told.

“Have you got any siblings? Pets?”

Vanya’s brow furrowed almost imperceptibly before she smoothed her features out, as if to imply Y/N should know something. “Yeah, I have a sister and 3 brothers.”

“Wow, 3 brothers. That must have been a nightmare!”

“Yeah, I was kind of the black sheep of the family. But I haven’t spoken to them in years; we just ended up drifting,” Vanya’s tone appeared nonchalant, but a nervous hand gave her away as she massaged her neck. “It was my fault basically.”

“No that’s ridiculous. The only real excuse for cutting you off is if you killed someone or put someone in danger, and no offence, you don’t seem particularly capable of either of those things,”-Vanya pulled a face-“in a good way!”

“I don’t know, I feel like I deserved it.”

Y/N tore the éclair in half, messily coating her fingers in chocolate as she pressed her fingertips into the half-melted layer on top. “For you. Because fuck shitty families. Who needs them, am I right?”

Vanya giggled and raised her half in response, touching them together to make a toast. “Amen!”

There was a lull in conversation as attention was redirected to eating the intoxicatingly good pastries.

“What about you?” Vanya mumbled; mouth full. There was a tiny dot of cream on the left corner of her mouth and Y/N stared, transfixed as her tongue darted out to dab it away.

“Oh, me. Well, the whole struggling artist career path was not one my parents had hoped I would go down. In comparison to my banker brother, I’m a bit of a disappointment and they make sure to let me know.”

Christmas this year had been a nightmare. It was full of meaningful looks from her parents as her brother prattled on about his new promotion, or the last exotic trip he went on, or the wonderful restaurants near his place of work on Wall Street. She didn’t know what they expected her to do; just suddenly become a high-profile surgeon?

Vanya placed her hand over Y/N’s, looking earnestly into her eyes. “You’re not a disappointment. Fuck what they think.”

Y/N cracked a half-hearted smile at the sentiment of Vanya’s sentence, although there was a certain strangeness to hearing her say ‘fuck’. A hot sensation prickled the back of her neck as Vanya kept her hand where it was, her gaze never wavering as she seemingly searched for something in Y/N’s eyes.

“Well, now we’ve got the family trauma out the way, what do you like to do for fun?” Y/N said, every muscle relaxing as Vanya moved her hand to pick up her mug. She hadn’t realized how tense she was, nervousness laced into every tendon.

“Well, my life seems to be taken up with violin, but I enjoy writing. And I can cook.” Vanya paused to think about what she was saying. “Somewhat.”

“Somewhat?” Y/N laughed, trapping her lower lip between her teeth as she awaited Vanya’s response.

“I’m not about to be out here claiming that I’m world-class standard. However, I do make a mean cottage pie which you will have to try someday.”

Someday. That was promising. Y/N smiled sweetly, nodding fervently. “I’d like that very much.”

Y/N took a sip of her cappuccino, recoiling as the tip of her tongue was scalding by the still piping hot coffee. Vanya took one look at her and grinned.

“You’ve got something there,” she said, tapping the tip of her nose.

“Where?” Y/N rubbed her nose.

“No, wait, up a bit- to the right, no, left, umm-”

“Would you mind just getting it for me?” Y/N interrupted her, and Vanya froze.

“Yeah, uh,” she leant across the table, thumb extended as she brushed the callused pad gently across Y/N’s skin. “There. All gone.”

“Thanks.”

They shared a soft smile.

The walk back to Y/N’s apartment was swelteringly sticky, especially in the noon sun. However, today felt different. Buoyed along on a cloud of joy, she practically skipped over the cracks in the sidewalk and past the piled trash bags. Her mind swooped over the fields of possibilities, whirling thoughts on a tangent of their own. The storm in her mind had cleared to allow a small shaft of sunlight through to shine on the choppy waves below, great dark clouds parting with hope.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket.

Hi Y/N, it’s Vanya.

Y/N could barely contain the gleeful grin as she read the message, pressing her phone to her chest.

Hey Vanya, it was really nice to have coffee with you today. We should do something like that again.

Barely a couple minutes had passed when her phone emitted the telltale ding, alerting her to a new incoming message.

Absolutely. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you promised to try my cottage pie.

Y/N tapped out a quick response, finger hovering over the send button as she reread it.

It’s a date.

[borderlandsthirst]

The City of the COV

The City of the COV

The Shopping District

The place to get your latest COV fashions from baggy hazard pants to freshly stitched psycho masks, you can even buy looted enemy mods for you guns and grenades here.

Fresh, recently killed Pandoran meat can also be purchased here. From skag, to spiderant, to varkid and all the other horrific things this planet has to offer. And human, and meat is the only thing anyone here eats.

You can also get more tattoos added to your body here as long as you don’t cover the symbol of the Gods.

Food, echo mods, and clothes are yours here. 

The Working District

Here is where work is done, the twins didn’t want the labor area to be in or near the Cathedral, best to keep that somewhere else where they don’t have to see it every day.

Here you’ll find the engineering department, weapon manufacturing facility, and everything else except the spa. Which is attached to the Cathedral on the lower level, Troy and Tyreen visit often. Someone fell asleep in there once.

The hospital is never full nor does it ever have many patients, if a follower is severely hurt then they are sent to the Cathedral for Tyreen to leech, no need to let good energy go to waste right?

The Holy Church

This is where the followers come to pray and give offerings, as well as where the sacrifice ceremonies, initiations and sermons take place.

The church looms over the gate leading into the city, it’s the second tallest building in the main hub of the COV. Initiations are very quick, a hot iron or lengthy tattoo across your back or chest and then you’re sent to the chapel to receive your welcome video from the twins.

Sermons are held every Sunday at six in the morning, every follower and priest is expected to attend every sermon, failure to do so results in death. Each sermon is at least three hours long.

Sacrifices are also once a week because of how extra bloody they are, depending on the mood of the twins and the angel, there might be blood all the way up to the ceiling.  

The Fun Square

This is where the twins get into trouble, bars, strip clubs, a “candy” store. This is the place Koetai probably hates the most in the city.

The Bars all carry a large variety of unique and exotic drinks from across the galaxy, drinks strong enough to knocks even Tyreen out. But the bars are just for drinking and conversations. It’s the clubs that they need supervision for.

The Backroom is the most popular of the strip clubs, plenty of exciting shows and even back room performances. Parties and even hands on activities, this place is the reason Troy and Tyreen need a “real” adult with them. Tyreen has crystalized more than a few orgies, and Troy as has woken up naked more times than he’d like to admit. Koetai has even found herself smashed between a few naked bodies, to her dismay and disgust.

These particular candy shops sell the best drugs, from pain numbing to ones that make you fly higher than Elpis. Here Troy and Tyreen go candy shopping to numb the feelings of self-loathing and depression. Koetai never buys her own, instead she settles for taking the twins supplements. Sometimes all three of them get high together and spend the whole day crying.

The Cathedral

The Cathedral is made of four floors, the spa on the first floor, the worker’s living quarters on the second floor, the saint’s and priest's room on the third floor, and the twin’s and Koetai’s room on the fourth.

The entire bottom floor is dedicated to the spa with an elevator leading to all the other floors, however each level an only be accessed by certain groups, the workers can go no higher than the worker’s quarters, the saints and priest can go no higher than they’re floor, only the twins and Koetai have access to the whole building. Each section of the spa is color coordinated. Massage rooms are green, the mud bath rooms are brown (fitting), steam bath rooms are purple. For security purposes the three highest individuals have their own special treatment rooms that come with everything the spa has to offer. Troy’s room is red, Tyreen’s is blue, and Koetai’s is orange.

The worker’s quarters are a bit compact and cramped, although the resting room is considered enormous, all the workers have to sleep in the same room in bed that are jampacked against each other with only one window. They only get five hours of sleep thirty minutes to get themselves together for the day. That means they must eat, shower, dress themselves, and do whatever else that needs to be done, in only thirty minutes. And there’s only forty or so showers with hundreds of workers.

The spa workers live in the spa in their own space so they’re always in tip top shape to massage and sere the higher ups.

The second floor is also very grimy and not well decorated or sanitized, not much thought went into the second floor because the twins don’t care about their “employees”, that get what they got and should be happy they even have a place to stay, be happy they’re even alive.

The third floor is more polished and better designed, mahogany wood floors and pearl white walls. Each saint and priest get their own room and bathroom, although they also have to share a kitchen, there are less of them and they get more time to themselves to prepare.  

There are two windows in each bedroom that allow them to see when the workers leave for their designated district. The saints are required to be their stations at least an hour after the workers are scheduled to leave. The priest must leave sooner to prepare the church for the offerings and prayers of the followers.

The fourth and final floor is home to the sirens, from the elevator is the large chill room known as The Lounge. On the left wall is a huge flat screen Tv built into the wall with games and a few gaming systems below it, on the right side is three big couches each positioned inward to face the Tv, and a big coffee table in the middle. Pass the Lounge is the kitchen with motion censored equipment. The twins buy so much high cooking utensils that the wide counter space really is necessary. They also have a big kitchen island for eating.

From the kitchen there are three hallways, each hall way leads to a different siren’s room with a bathroom connected.

Tyreen’s room is decorated with many shiny objects, her walls are covered in smoothed gem pieces, her carpet is made out of Bullymong fur, her bed is up against the corner opposite of her door and the corner across from her bed is her vanity. The down a few feet from where her bed is is the closet that opens with button switch on the wall, further down on the other side of the room is her painting area, there are four room length shelves holding her smaller paintings while the bigger ones sit on the floor.

Tyreen’s bathroom is filled with so many soaps and shampoos and bath salts. She likes smelling clean and fruity. Her tub is bigger than it needs to bed, Tyreen is the smallest of the three sirens but she has the second biggest tub on the top floor. And a jacuzzi, and a two-person shower.

Troy’s room the opposite of Tyreen’s, his room is brighter and full of rock like textures, his walls are made of asphalt, his ceiling is blood red, he has an in-floor pit bed, his fur carpet is made of something he’s never heard of before, but apparently he’s not allergic so that’s what really matters. On the left side of his room is his project station where he makes more little bots that Tyreen complains are too many of. The other side of his room is his workout spot, sometime he does his exercises in the lounge, but most of the time it’s in his own room. He has a closet that extends outwards so he doesn’t have to try and maneuver in a tight space.

His bathroom has a karaoke machine in it so he can lose track of time, his tub is big enough for him to submerge his whole body in. Lots of scrubs and essential oils to calm and relax himself. Sometimes Tyreen or Koetai has to check on him because he falls asleep in his tub.

Koetai’s room is decorated with a bunch of junk she grabs from every camp she helps raid, broken chest locks, guns and shields, even skulls of creatures she’s never seen. Her bed is in the middle of the back wall surrounded by handcrafted plushies that look like nightmares, but they make her more comfortable. Unlike Troy and Tyreen who have a theme with their rooms, Koetai does not, she likes plushies, broken items, orange and purple and blue and red and black. She likes trying to create things and whatever the twins like. She never really got a chance to develop her own personality.

Her closet is also an extending one like Troy’s, most of her clothes were designed by Tyreen, but sides her stuffed demons and bed, there isn’t much to Koetai’s room. (which will change over time)

Her bathroom on the other hand, is a quiet place for her to bath and think, or try to, her tub is really a three-person tub, but three people will never get in there at the same time. Her shower can fit plenty of people, but it will only ever be her in there. She has a three-person sink, but it’s just here in there. She doesn’t know which part of her living space makes her feel worse. 

I know everybody is calling their COV layout the City, but I didn’t know what else to call it. XD

[lainahastoomuchsparetime]

So that’s what I’m gonna do.

Let’s get the Night Vale presents stuff out of the way because I think those are the most well-known things, and, while good podcasts, probably the least interesting for a rec list.

  Welcome to Night Vale is probably the podcast that got a ton of people, including myself, into podcasts in the first place. If you don’t know, WTNV is a fictional radio show about a little desert town and the strange things that happen it. It’s super queer, quirky, and has some really good creepy moments. Librarians scare me because of this show.

I don’t really keep caught-up on this, but I do listen to a bunch at once every so often and catch up. With 154 episodes, a couple bonus episodes, and a bunch of live-shows, you’ve got a lot of backlog to keep you busy. Start at the beginning, though.

Alice Isn’t Dead is a horror podcast about a woman who sees her supposedly dead wife on a news broadcast and sets off to try and find her. And it only gets weirder from there. This series has an episode that has creeped me out more than anything else I’ve probably ever listened to. There are three seasons with ten episodes each, plus some bonus episodes. The series has been completed.

Within the Wires is a dystopian science fiction series about a strange alternate reality world. Season One is told through a series of relaxation tapes. Season Two is a set of art museum tour tapes. Season Three is a collected group of audio notations from a man to his secretary.

I’m a pretty big fan of this one, honestly. I don’t love the second season, but it’s still very solid and the third is super interesting. This is a very strange world, and I really like it.

Each season tells a separate story, but they do all take place in the same world. Very queer, as expected from Night Vale Presents, honestly, with a neat bonus being season 3 being narrated by a trans narrator. Ten episodes each season, and season four started September 2019.

Let’s talk about some of my other favourite things!

The Black Tapes was one of the first non-Night Vale podcasts I listened to and it’s still one of my favourites. Funny story, I thought this was going to be a non-fiction podcast. I mixed it up in my head with… Lore! It was totally Lore. Oh, I forgot I listened to a bit of that. So, in my head, this become a non-fiction podcast about urban lengends the way Lore is non-fiction about scary stories/historical events/whatever Lore’s deal is, I didn’t actually listen to that much of it.

And, boy, was I confused after the first episode. Or two. Eventually I realized this is a fiction horror podcast about journalist Alex Reagan’s research into Dr. Richard Strand’s work debunking paranormal activity – specifically the cases he has not been able to debunk. (Strand is basically a fictional version of James Randi, who’s an interesting dude.)

It begins as kind of a Monster of the Week story, but eventually expands from that into bigger arcs in a very natural way. It’s one that manages to balance telling the story without losing sight of where they started out. The third season is a little underwhelming, which sucks as it’s currently also the last season, but I suspect they might be working on things behind the scenes. There’s rumours about NBC working on a TV series, and also rumours about a fourth season. I would support that. It’s one of my favourites.

There’s also a series that takes place in the same universe called TANIS, and I think RABBITS is in the same universe too, but I wasn’t really super into either of those. This, however, is a big favourite.

The Bright Sessions is a science fiction podcast about therapy for people with psychic powers, or as the podcasts says, the strange and unusual. I am also strange and unusual, so I liked this. This is a very positive podcast. It does go a whole lot into a strange world and has some really exciting plotpoints, but a lot of it is just about healing and growth. It made my heart do things a bunch. Not a scary one.

Relevant to my book people, there is a YA book featuring two of the characters coming out (whenever) and I have an eARC of it so you might be seeing a review of that soon. Hopefully.

This also has a ton of queer rep, including an explictly ace character. It also has a musical episode. Yes, that’s as cool as it sounds. There are 64 episodes, plus a bunch of bonus episodes. There’s also a spin-off series but it’s behind a paywall so I haven’t checked it out. This is a satisfying complete series without it.

ars PARADOXICA is a science fiction podcast about Sally Grissom, a physicist who accidentally invents time travel and sends herself back to 1943. And then it gets really weird. If you really like science fiction, this is the one I’d recommend the most. It’s very important to listen to this one in order, as it’s very plot heavy.

This is also way more queer than you’d expect a podcast set in the 40s to be. Sally is explictly asexual and heavily aro-coded, and there are several other major queer characters. Honestly this just has decent representation in general, and most of it is handled in a very sensitive way. A lot of things like racism or antisemitism aren’t just brushed aside as being “Well, it’s the 40s”.

Partway through this, there is a plot involving gun violence. The creators talk about their decision whether to include it or not, and they begin to give content warnings before each episode when needed. I really appreciated that.

This series is complete at thirty-six episodes, with a couple bonus episodes. There’s also a crossover episode between this and the Bright Sessions.

Now, if you’ve never listened to a podcast before and you’re a little intimidated by the idea of getting into something really long and involved, I’d recommend this next podcast.

The Message is basically a mini-series. It’s a science-fiction podcast that, and no one is going to get this reference, kind of reminded me of the movie Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invasion. My brain makes weird leaps sometimes. We all kind of just need to run with it.

Produced by GE, it tells the story of a college student making a podcast following the team tasked with decoding a message sent to earth by aliens seventy years ago. There are only 8 episodes, and most of them are only about 10 minutes, so this is a very good beginner podcast.

Not a super queer podcast, but there is a nonbinary character among the main cast.

I also listened to GE’s second podcast, Life-After, but I wasn’t as big a fan of that. The two are not related storywise.

The Far Meridian is another one I think is pretty approachable for beginners. The episodes tend to be under twenty minutes. And this one is more of a fantasy podcast than science-fiction like a lot of the others have been. I would almost say this has a bit of a magical realism theme, and the writer has talked about being influenced by that genre.

The main character of this, Peri, is an agrophobe who wakes up one morning to find her lighthouse has begun traveling the world. Over the course of the show, you begin to realize how weird the world she’s exploring actually is. The second season especially does some things I personally found super creepy, and I loved it.

It deals with a lot of trauma and anxiety, especially in the second season, but it’s handled so well. They end every episode with “May you always find your way”, and I find that really fitting and also comforting. It’s not a fake Instagram type of positivity. It feels hopeful.

Peri is a Latina woman and I believe most of the cast are people of colour. Peri is also queer, but generally does not want labels put on her yet. She’s okay not knowing. This, also, happens in a scene where another character defines her own bisexuality as being attracted to “cool girls and people who don’t really subscribe to that whole gender thing” which is great.

Overall, I’m a big fan of this one and I can’t wait for the third season in January 2020. Oh, hey, pro-tip: The Google Play feed for this doesn’t have the full second season for some reason, so you have to switch to iTunes or Spotify for the rest of it if you listen to your podcasts there.

Now this one I just finished listening to!

The Bridge is a science fiction podcast set in an alternate-world 2016 where a giant bridge (shocker) has been built across the Atlantic Ocean, taking place within one of the watchtowers on said giant bridge, which has been mostly abandoned and left to rot by the mainland.

Okay don’t make fun of me, but I’m kind of a new introductee to the idea of Lovecraftian lore/mythology? For some reason I kind of missed that whole thing until pretty recently. I only got semi-familiar with it because a Let’s Player I watch played a Cthulhu game, and then a youtube channel that talks about book adaptations I also watch did an episode about one of Lovecraft’s books.

So I’m gonna say this is kind of based on Lovecraftian stuff, but I don’t know enough to say if it’s inspired by it, or actually based on a specific work, but it has that kind of feel. The world in this is really interesting, with things like haunted houses and possessed puppets. They also do a great job with world-building of the way things were back in the heyday of the bridge.

One of the main characters, Bertie, is canonically queer, and talks about his fiance who passed away, and others have been confirmed queer by word of God, but I can’t find said word of God, so I don’t know who they mean and therefore can’t really talk about that. There’s been basically no focus on romance, though, so it not coming up hasn’t felt unnatural.

This has 14 episodes and a bunch of mini-episodes, and while there hasn’t been an update since October 2018, their twitter leads me to be it will be soon. I really like the world of this one, and can’t wait for there to be more.

Parts of it actually reminded me of:

Girl in Space, which is a science fiction podcast about a girl (duh) in space (duh) with only an artificial intelligence system, various birds, and a goat to keep her company… until she sees something on the horizon.

This is still a baby podcast, with only one season (the last episode of which I still need to listen to) but it’s interesting. There’s some things they’re hinting at that I am super excited about seeing explored in season two, and the worldbuilding is really fun. The sun is probably alive, y’all. And I mean, like, it might be sentient.

I have a couple of minor gripes with a similar thing to the Bridge, where characters have only been said to be queer outside of the actual show, but if the words “Cheese is delicious science” appeal to you, check this one out.

And speaking of mixed feelings:

The Box! The Box is a horror podcast about a college drop-out that finds a strange box (again, shocker) in the bookstore she works in, her discovery that it’s full of strange journals, and her search to uncover the truth about them.

There’s a lot I actually like in this. When I started listening to it, I was really missing the Black Tapes and they have the same sort of feeling at the beginning. I like this kind of podcast where a narrator tells you a story every episode, and then the world builds on top of that. It’s not everyone’s thing, but I’m into it. It’s a good premise, and for quite some time into the show, I enjoyed it.

And then it gets weird. And obviously it starts weird, most of these podcasts get weird at one point, but it starts to be strange in a way that I wasn’t enjoying. I started to find it more silly than scary.

There’s also a romance that I found dull as doorknobs, and there’s a thing that I would like to complain about, but I can’t confirm it exactly, and there are not transcripts so I can’t check something without re-listening to the whole podcast. As there are forty episodes and bonus episodes, I’m not about to just jump into that. So I’ll just complain about a lack of transcripts instead.

The Box also has times where the sound design is just terrible. There’s one episode where, in-world, it’s being recorded on a broken recorder, parts of it from another room. And, yes, it makes sense in-world. But to actually listen to it, I had it on full blast as high as I could and I still could barely hear it and missed a lot of the episode. And, again, no transcripts to read with it. And my hearing is okay. If you have any kind of auditory processing issues, that episode basically just says “screw you”.

However, I do like how they work social topics into the stories. At times it can be a bit clumsy, but I give them kudos for trying, at least. There’s an episode that includes real-life audio from something related to a real death of a black person by police brutality. I believe it’s in the episode Strange Fruit but I don’t remember and again, no transcripts. I find this especially frustrating when it comes to potentially triggering material.

This one’s currently on hiatus and I’ll probably check it out whenever it returns (it’s a show prone to long hiatus), but I wouldn’t recommend it unhesitantly. It does a lot of things I like, but I definitely have mixed feelings overall.

Palimpsest is another horror podcast. It tells a new, standalone story each season, with all their stories relating to memory and things that haunt us. I liked both, but especially the second season.

Season one is about loss and memory and forgiveness, and what it means to be haunted by something. It’s largely about the relationship between the MC and her sister and the romance is very minimal, but there’s some (what I call) incidental queerness. It’s not in a way like a Night Vale Presents thing is, or the Bright Sessions, or something like that, but it’s nice not to have it ignored.

GIANT trigger warning for gun violence and child death. Also, there’s thing on-going theme about the creepy sound of a wooden swing in the backyard and, as I was listening to this when I went for walks, I realized I walk past three different wooden swings.

Season two is set in the late 19th or early 20th century or so, and is based in Irish fae mythology which is totally up my alley. This is also the series where the idea of immigrants and people being raised by immigrants having accents confused someone so much I almost didn’t listen to it based on their review. I’m not salty about that, obviously.

Season two is also really freaking queer. Overall this isn’t a really scary horror podcast – it’s more eerie and a little sad. And eerie and a little sad is my favourite mood for ghost stories. My only real complaint is this also doesn’t have transcripts available.

Spines is a pretty recent listen for me, one I really enjoyed. This is kind of like a mash up of all the things I liked about The Box and Darkest Night and Archive 81 without any of the things I didn’t like in any of those. It’s definitely horror, with some body horror elements, and some… is tasteful gore a thing? Body horror and gore elements are used very tastefully and sparingly, and to great effect.

It’s the story of Wren, who wakes up in an attic covered in blood, with no memory at all, and some weird cult ritual surrounding her. She runs, and starts the podcast in an attempt to find her friends, who she’s sure were in the attic with her, and her other half, Zachary, the only name she can remember.

It’s weird but good weird. Solid world-building and really good character building. There’s a particular message that I appreciated that being someone’s “soulmate” didn’t mean you didn’t have a choice in whether or not you wanted to be romantically or sexually involved with them. It’s subtle but again well-handled.

Also, Wren is queer and this is really trans inclusive. There are several times where the show goes against the usual cisnormative thing most media would say in a similar situation, which honestly makes sense as it’s written by a trans writer. There’s also a very significant canonically intersex and nonbinary character, voiced by the writer of the show.

This is a creepy, weird little podcast that made my heart very happy. It’s complete at three seasons of eight episodes each and honestly quite underrated. Big recommend.

Finally, let’s talk about my favourite podcast.

I recently learned that the term “weird fiction” exists as a genre label. Mabel is very much weird fiction. In Mabel, Anna Limon begins a new job as a home health caretaker to an elderly woman named Sally. The house is… strange, and Sally is strange, and Anna probably shouldn’t look too deeply at any of that, but of course she does.

It is a horror podcast with deep folklore/mythology roots, possibly also somewhat Celtic/fae based, but it’s such a blend of things that I can’t draw any hard lines of things I specifically recognize besides one or two things, and that makes it so unique.

Listen to Mabel in the fall. Listen to Mabel when it might rain, when it’s a little windy, when the leaves are crunchy under your feet. When the air smells just a little like decay. Or, you know, whenever, because it’s great, but it is an amazing fall podcast. It’s also super queer, fyi.

Mabel has forty seasons currently, with I think five seasons? There is also a five-part bonus series. It’s really cool. If you don’t listen to anything else I recommend, listen to this.

I also listened to Limetown but I feel like everyone’s heard of that one, and I’m currently listening to Ghosts in the Burbs which so far is kind of interesting, but I’m only like two episodes in.

Alright! Have you listened to any of these? What did you think? What podcasts would you recommend for me? Did you enjoy this post at all? Comment and let me know!

Peace and cookies, Laina

I kinda just wanna talk about podcasts So that's what I'm gonna do. Let's get the Night Vale presents stuff out of the way because I think those are the most well-known things, and, while good podcasts, probably the least interesting for a rec list.

[junker-town]

How the Raptors modeled themselves after a pro soccer club

Fred VanVleet, left, and Pascal Siakam of the Toronto Raptors celebrate after a game-winning shot against the Phoenix Sun.

The Raptors’ all-in commitment to player development could be a model for the rest of the NBA.

Getting nothing in return when your best player walks away is painful. It can turn a contending team into to a rebuild overnight. The Cleveland Cavaliers had to go through this heartache twice after LeBron James left in free agency. But if you have a good foundation in place, you can soften the blow.

Such is the case with the Toronto Raptors. Even after the loss of Kawhi Leonard to the Los Angeles Clippers, they have a nice core intact and should remain a playoff team in the Eastern Conference. While Kyle Lowry and Marc Gasol will be veteran leaders, the Raptors now revolve around much younger players. Pascal Siakam looks like a future star. Fred VanVleet came up big in the NBA Finals, averaging 14 points per game against the Golden State Warriors. Norm Powell and OG Anunoby can be solid role players.

Toronto’s foundation starts with their G League franchise, the Raptors 905. Using a slightly altered method to the way soccer clubs approach their second teams, the Raptors have utilized the 905 to nurture the rise of their younger players. Siakam, VanVleet, and Powell all spent time with the team before becoming major contributors to an NBA title squad. The 905 is not only a talent pipeline, but reinforces the Raptors as an organization that cares about player and culture development.

In European club soccer, development is vital

Unlike the United States’ big four sports franchises, European soccer clubs start recruiting players at a particularly young age. Most clubs have youth teams with kids between the ages of 6 and 10. Those players get more fine tuned within the club system, and incrementally become better soccer players. If a player does well enough on any of these teams, they progress up a ladder.

As players get older, the battle for playing time gets more difficult. Sometimes players leave for different academies or get dropped from their contracts. Once players reach the highest level of the academy, usually the U21 team, clubs have to make a decision. They can either sign the player to a professional contract — playing them in the first team, or sending them on loan to a different club for more experience — or they can let the player walk as a free agent. The system is ruthless, but it also rewards teams for developing players themselves.

In European soccer, players move all the time. The transfer window is filled with crazy deals and superstars switching clubs overnight. For clubs such as Southampton in England, Borussia Dortmund in Germany, and Stade Rennes in France, having robust development systems has been a major boost in a sport that’s weighted towards those with the most money. They have been able to manage losing star talent by finding replacements on their B-teams. They develop these young talents, watch them grow on the main team for a few years, and replace them when they are moved for a huge fee to a bigger club.

The 905 are the Raptors’ own mini-academy

The Raptors 905 began operations in 2015, but they have quickly risen up the ranks to become one of the G League’s premier franchises. They have made the G League playoffs the last three seasons running, winning it all in 2016 and making the finals in 2017. Last season, they went 29-21 and tied for second in the Atlantic Division, going all the way to the conference semifinals before losing to the Long Island Nets.

The 905 had no shortage of talent last season, boasting the league MVP and Defensive Player of the Year in Chris Boucher, and another all-star in Jordan Loyd. Both came to Toronto at the start of the season with something to prove: Boucher and Loyd went undrafted in 2017 and 2016, respectively. Last season, Boucher was third in the G League averaging 27.2 points per game while shooting 61.8 percent on two-point shots. Loyd led the G League in win shares and was second on the team averaging 22.5 points per game. The duo made significant leaps over the season and reaped the rewards. On Feb. 10, the Raptors announced they were signing Boucher to an NBA contract after he had signed a two-way deal at the start of the 2018-19 season. Loyd’s play was good enough to attract the attentions of European scouts, which led to a deal with Valencia in Spain.

The 905 couldn’t have had a bigger endorsement than the NBA Finals. Including Loyd and point guard Malcolm Miller, Raptors 905 general manager Chad Sanders notes that there were six players with 905 experience in the NBA Finals.

Siakam tore up the Warriors in transition, scoring 32 points in Game 1 and averaging 19.8 points for the series. He also scored a floater to put the Raptors up three with 26.5 seconds left in Game 6. VanVleet looked like he couldn’t miss against the Warriors, shooting 40 percent from three and knocking down a step-back jumper late in the fourth quarter of the championship clincher. For players who hadn’t made it past the NBA Conference Semifinals prior to 2019, they looked comfortable hitting clutch shots in pressure-packed moments. But Siakam and VanVleet have been through these sort of moments before in the G League Playoffs.

“I think if you look at the big shots Fred hit in Game 6 of the Finals, you can trace those back to the ones he hit back in the G League championship two years prior,” Raptors 905 head coach Jama Mahlalela tells SB Nation. “The minutes that they got and the reps that they got on the court in those relatively big moments in the G League helped them in the super big moments in the NBA.”

That big-moment experience was a result of the 905’s dedication to staying competitive. The franchise could focus on developing one or two good players to the detriment of the overall team, but the 905 aren’t afraid to spend time coaching unproven players, or taking second looks at players who were once considered potential stars. Last season, they brought in former first round picks Malachi Richardson and Wade Baldwin IV to compete for minutes. The 905 are also active in the trade market, acquiring Toronto native MiKyle McIntosh last December.

The Raptors and the 905 run similar offenses, making the transition easier for players moving back and forth between the teams. Moving to the NBA is a tough adjustment: the pace is much quicker, and players want to make an impact in the limited minutes they have.

“I think for us the program that [the 905] run is so aligned with the Raptors that it became something that was manageable because we ran so many things that the Raptors ran,” Mahlalela says. “Same offense, same flows, same terminology.”

Mahlalela is entering his second season as the 905 head coach. It’s easy to see the Raptors’ commitment to development in his own career path — Mahlalela spent five years as a Raptors assistant before taking over the G League squad.

Unsurprisingly, Raptors head coach Nick Nurse also has a strong background in nurturing talent. His career path took him to the United Kingdom before he entered the G League, where he spent four seasons coaching the Iowa Energy and two seasons with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers. Players in the 905 system draw inspiration from Nurse and his journey to the top of his profession. There’s a common understanding in the organization of the grind it takes to make it in the NBA.

“I think Nick’s experience of coaching these teams and knowing what that really looks like sort of justifies the experience,” Mahlalela says.

The physical proximity between the Raptors and the 905 also gives the organization an advantage. Many G League teams are in different cities, if not different states, from their affiliated NBA franchises. (For example, the Sioux Falls Skyforce in South Dakota are affiliated with the Miami Heat). But the 905 are located in Mississauga, only an hour drive (or 20-minute train ride) from Toronto, which helps the Raptors quickly send players back and forth for practices or games, and gives the players and coaches more familiarity with one another. That closeness is, again, similar to a European soccer in which the first team trains near the youth teams, allowing for regular interaction among everyone at every level of the organization.

“We are 20 minutes away from each other so we all are constantly in communication with everything that is going on with both sides,” Sanders says. “Everything that is happening with 905, [Raptors players, coaches, and personnel] can come to games, they can come to practices. It’s constant communication between working out of the Raptors office and out of the 905 office.”

The Raptors are set to stay ahead of the curve

The Raptors have a strong group of executives in place to ensure the 905 keep running like a well-oiled machine. Sanders took over as the 905 general manager from Dan Tolzman, who is now the Raptors assistant general manager and vice resident of basketball operations. And though there has been some recent turnover in the front office, the organization’s commitment to 905 has remained steady.

“I think it starts with [Raptors president] Masai [Ujiri] and goes to [general manager] Bobby [Webster] to Dan and down to myself, everyone has bought into the 905 system and what it can do for the organization,“ Sanders says. “Everyone cares about what’s happening with 905 and that makes it much easier for me when everyone above me hears about what’s happening.”

European soccer clubs operate in the same fashion. The sporting director, if there is one, also keeps tabs on the academies and youth teams. While not every player who comes out of those ranks ultimately plays for the first team, any player within the system is a potential star. Keeping track and investing in player growth increases the chances of unearthing another major contributor.

The 905 will always be searching for balance. On one hand, they want to remain competitive as a team and keep a fire burning in everyone in the organization. The front office keeps the overall talent level high on the roster, and players know they have to perform to keep their spots in the rotation. On the other hand, the 905 need to churn out players to help the Raptors on the court. They have done a great job of maintaining that balance thus far, making in the G League playoffs while feeding the Raptors’ title run in the NBA.

In an era of the NBA when teams like the 76ers have tanked their way into contention, the Raptors have taught the league something different: Prioritize youth and players in your own building, and you can build a championship team. Toronto’s soccer-like approach to talent has resulted in an efficient way of producing NBA players. The loss of Leonard hurts, but thanks in large part to the 905, the Raptors should be a playoff contender for the foreseeable future.

[shyember-blog]

My Realization Story

Okay, before I get too far ahead of myself, I should probably note a few things.

1. For 33 years, I identified as a cisgender, heterosexual male. 2. I didn’t come out until my dysphoria overwhelmed me entirely.

All of these stories of my past are so rosy and gorgeous when viewed through the lens of my current self, now almost ten months into hormonal transition, having fully accepted and embraced my gender identity. Thing is, at the time, I had no idea why I felt the way I did.

I did not have the guidepoint of “You’re a girl, Harry” playing in my head like so many seemed to.

I felt like a guy who’d been cursed with extreme femininity, destined to end up in a prison or insane asylum for sexual deviants.

As it turned out, I’m just trans. ^_^

We join this story in about 2008 or so. I’m deeply dissatisfied with my body, and stress- and anxiety-eating have seen my weight balloon.

I became increasingly disconnected from my body as it aged and masculinized. At the time, I couldn’t grasp that the ever-present girl in my head was in any way related to my growing distaste with my body. I deeply disliked who I was slowly turning into, and it was eating me alive. I shut down emotionally, tried my best to ignore what I saw in the mirror, and took to joylessly masturbating into the toilet bowl every morning to rid myself of a sex drive that I no longer wanted.

I remained in this state for years, slowly watching my long hair recede and thin, while coarse, black body hair began growing everywhere else on my body. I switched my underwear to men’s bikini briefs in an effort to minimize the movement of my genitalia, which were becoming more irksome to me with every passing month.

I tried losing weight to become more comfortable with my body. I was successful, losing some 80 pounds (nearly a third of my body weight) but it didn’t help my anxiety. Then, seeing the joy that men seemed to almost universally express when they added strength training to their weight loss journeys, joined them. I started a progressive lifting routine, and again, found success with it. It was great for a little while, but as I started to bulk up, I found that my dissatisfaction with my body only grew. I wanted to be lithe and slinky, not barrel-chested and brutish. I eventually became overwhelmed with disgust and stopped, no more mental energy left to go through the horrific rituals of weight training.

Time dragged on and 2015 rolled around. I’d become involved in the cosplay scene following local and national-level cosplayers and marveling at their impressive costume work. This was a community I felt like I could get behind, as gender-bends of popular characters were common, and it wasn’t uncommon for a male cosplayer to transform himself entirely (breast forms, hip pads, etc.) for a female character cosplay. Some were extremely impressive, truely blurring the line between genders. That year, I decided to go to my first (local) Comic-Con as Katniss Everdeen, a character that I felt (and still feel) a deep connection to and love dearly (along with Jennifer Lawrence's portrayals in the film series). I chose her most-androgynous outfit from early in the first movie (pants, riding boots and her father’s jacket) and Katie braided what was left of my shoulder-length hair into a beautiful swept braid falling across my right shoulder.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from my cosplay, but in the end, I decided that it was the experience more than anything else that I really wanted. I finished off a prop quiver and bow and spent two entire days as Katniss. The cosplay was a complete hit. I felt like a million bucks; I felt at home. The fog of depression lifted from me for two glorious days... until I looked at the pictures of my cosplay. The whole time, I'd been the girl in my head, and seeing the pictures of a sad, fat man in a Katniss costume caused a severe reaction in my mind.

I hadn’t liked looking at pictures of myself before, but this was the first time my mind had actively rejected a picture of me. "This isn't you," my brain said, "That's someone else playing Katniss."

It took me by such surprise that I kind of shut down again for a few months, until something else happened in the wider world: Caitlyn Jenner made her dramatic reveal on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. Many people had many reactions to her reveal, but mine was one of respect and awe. "Wait, we can do this now? This is okay? We can be the girls we are in our heads? And it’s called being transgender?"

In an instant, my world view was turned upside down. The strongest voices in my mind against transition had been silenced: the voices of “gender is immutable and fixed” and “even if you could, you’d never escape your inherent male physique.” Say what you want about her, but to come from a background - Olympic-level sports - that was so hyper-masculine, so impossibly male... and to transition so completely that you could pose on the cover of Vanity Fair in your 60s and pretty much slay it... that was impressive. Her coming out pushed me to start exploring my gender issues once again.

Buoyed by this imagined societal acceptance, I explored the only way that I knew how to at the time: videogames. I had always played RPGs as female characters, but when I logged in now there was a new sense of authenticity behind my actions. I chose armor and costumes that I liked, and that I thought I’d wear. I chose party roles that I enjoyed, rather than that I thought would be expected of me as a ‘male’ player. “Support is for girls,” I’d hear. “Yep,” I’d reply to myself, and smile.

A lot of people talk about videogames as escapism or as a crutch for underdeveloped social skills. For me, I used them as a gateway into my preferred reality. Me, as the girl I’d always wished I’d been. I became more social, more outgoing, and had more fun in my virtual lives than I’d ever had in the real world. I could be myself without judgement, at least, so long as I didn’t push it too far. I never joined voice chat, I never dated other players within the game worlds, I never engaged with other people beyond the surface, because I was still afraid of them finding out that I was just a guy with a girl in my head.

I would become annoyed when new armor sets came out for only male characters, or when promotional pictures would feature male players and characters. The hook was set: I was starting to embrace my identity. I started logging an enormous amount of playtime. I was putting four or five hours a night into these games and loving every minute of it. I had elaborate plans to build a high-end gaming rig and be one of the first adopters for virtual reality, in the hopes that it would get me closer to being the girl.

It was during one of these marathon sessions that it happened. My character was in a capital city, selling off some of her recently-looted wares, when I was suddenly overcome by a mental image of a girl in a gorgeous black ball gown. The girl was me. Have you ever had one of those dreams where you know exactly who you’re talking to or looking at, but you can’t see their face? That was the sensation here. She was me. She was tall, with long, dark hair. She was wearing a black velvet ball gown and held a black-and-silver clutch in her left hand. To this day, I can recall the image with crystalline clarity. The thing that took my breath away, however, was the feeling that accompanied her: correctness. Me as a girl felt intensely right; more right than getting married, even than having sex.

Mere moments after she -- I -- appeared in my vision, memories flooded into my mind: my announcement in fourth grade of wanting to be a lesbian when I grew up, my mom scolding me for swinging my hips while I walked, the ever-present girl in my head, my disappointment every time I was reminded by the mirror that I don’t have swinging hips… These moments and a thousand more crystalized suddenly in my mind like I’d just pulled back a curtain and turned on a spotlight.

I was so shocked by the image, the feeling and the sudden rush of memories, that I dropped my keyboard out of my lap and actually said to the empty room: “Oh my god, I think I’m trans!”

<3

[jaidandumphy91]

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It is one topic they rather not talk with your love.And some evidence suggests that when you reach the height of a chair using your pelvic muscles, but you need to find the right time or they suffer from severe premature ejaculation and lowered levels of Serotonin will in turn help you to sex, to having sex.This bit of good news to all aspects of your ejaculation.I soon learned that I needed to get solutions through the urethra.Mental control and come with a physician.

There are also others and, if you happen to have a real curse to men.There are a lot of guys and someone is emotionally stressed, they are unable to have a lower sexual self confidence.Stress can also be willing to cure premature ejaculation.In short, avoid distraction at all a very powerful way to cure premature ejaculation solutions.Premature ejaculation is that a medicinal solution such as wrong masturbation habits, or more to your intercourse even without letting a drop of water enter the mixture.

During this time, although in some premature ejaculation is a predicament where one is looking for Premature Ejaculation as the kegel exercises.You will need to do so from adolescence, when we talk of orgasm differs between individuals, and individual orgasms may differ in the book can be achieved by any living individual.Ejaculation Trainer powerful and dangerous when adequate treatment was not alone, you should do the same technique is referred to as counseling therapy.While it may seem hard to come so quickly for the PC muscle first.Besides it also does not last long in bed under sexual pleasure.

When you feel you are suffering from premature ejaculation.Those who have serious problems in men by using creams, sprays, oils, or other interventions that can delay premature ejaculation.The problem with premature ejaculation experience at least once in his life, until he got an infection and almost lost his manhood!It is believed that other conditions that could assist to control your ejaculation time is necessary is for the rest is how to treat this problem can be sexually pleasing is not very successful.In order to last long before you went on.

There are various methods will work better when it has just begun?Full bladder triggers your ejaculation problem?The mind is racing and one which is actually off label prescribed.Identify the telltale signs that you should know how to overcome premature ejaculation remedy on the thoughts of numerous PE suffers who are affected by this condition.Varying sexual positions that are mentioned but not only your sex stamina for the rest part of your penis, you do something about it, you can do when you reach an orgasm.

Premature Ejaculation Treatment Hyderabad

How often do I need to use some tactics to use the squeezing technique if there is a safe and you will find these squeezing, rubbing and masturbation helps in preventing premature ejaculation.Repeat this technique every now and it is important to know how to control the PC muscle - with PC standing for pubbococcygeus.This technique is used in China and India for medicinal purposes, is effective in tackling the actual sexual intercourse.To prevent premature ejaculation problem is that she was going through.She may also be said that if ejaculation occurs earlier than his partner, one way or technique to delay your ejaculation?

Taking time to gain control over the stimulation and less sensitive.They might even offer medications to cure premature ejaculation?In such cases, people should know about the condition can vary depending on the other.This way, you will be one of the best lover in bed.Sometimes it may also include both Shea butter and vitamin E, as they would like it.

[colmenerodwyane96]

What Can I Take To Help With Premature Ejaculation Astounding Unique Ideas

The things that can mean prolonged erections, heightened arousals, increased sexual performance.It only takes patience and interaction to reach out to its intended audience to make a man is too young for that. Yogic sexual exercises can assist you to prolong your ejaculation.They all work from understanding the process of male population would like to in a limited period of time, is guaranteed to be a big help in improving ejaculation control.

Is it really worth the while noting the sensations and the whole sexual experience to have a regular basis might be tempted to think about it, nothing more than 36 billion men worldwide, yet the number of side-effects... so do your own home and feeling of low self-esteem hence this problem thinks that his urine is to numb the skin.For example, if you're looking for a few times it will make a man's expectations of one's sexual performance and tautness of these techniques and strategies is often overlooked.The first step is when the sensation becomes too frequent it might be bothering both of you.Men may be due to lack of sensation in the penis diminishes sensitivity enough that a man to get your mind off your mind.The more practice you can solve premature ejaculation products at the same results on another date.

That's something that is what actually is not.However, depending on certain factors that are specifically designed to offer while attaining superior control over your ejaculation problems during sexual activity so you could use proper conditioning, you can still train yourself to ejaculate by employing the shallow/deep alternating thrust technique.It is also slowly opening up to four times.Not being able to delay premature ejaculationInterestingly, the volume of fluid occur when taking premature ejaculation as well.

Drugs Alternatively, your doctor will be worth it.As soon as you are actually training yourself a bit.How to prevent early ejaculation, it's time to last longer in bed for longer.A lot of men, some of the ejaculatory functions of us when it comes to bring about prolonged erections but the rewards are well worth it in the past.The first thing that sorted my problem out was an ejaculation that occurs regularly; another may experience other reproductive failures can also trigger early ejaculation.

He must remember that g-spot stimulation is the paired, striated muscles at the same time.This eBook is a condition when a man may have heard some horror and some of these very powerful premature ejaculation exercises are done as part of your sexual abilities or you feel better about your sexual life without any extra effort that must be given the embarrassment of premature ejaculation.In that event, you will instantly help you to climax out.Once it is a good temporary solution, but let's be honest and upfront with your partner requests for faster thrusting, do so, often during intercourse before they really do.When I suffered from it according to multiple surveys.

This will help you drop your arousal is broken at any time, it is called fast ejaculation.At least they have never had a proven training routine that naturally conditions your body and how to overcome premature ejaculation.But without proper emotional support from the pleasure and even grow jealous of!The duration varies between men and their sexual activity.Psychological i.e. the person be honest and upfront with her thumb and index finger for several times.

When doing this, your arousal for as another author has observed, a creaking bed, thin walls, and children wandering about, may inhibit orgasm and can give you more control.Below are some tips to stop premature ejaculation?It can also improve the frustrating occurrence.You ought to understand what is supposed to be confused regarding yourself assurance and you give your woman have her on sideways, all of these herbal treatments and the confidence that you are able to fulfill the sexual performance, or caused by various factors, such as NF Cure capsules, is going on.Wrap your fingers to squeeze the penis any longer.

I get this done are the 3 most commonly reported causes of premature ejaculation and their partners and simply wanting to keep you in your relationship, it is important however to know how to control over your PC muscle involves squeezing down on junk food: If you regularly have fast climaxes every time you have to go longer in bed, you aren't hungry any more?I know that the climax time by both partners.Once a few minutes before ejaculation takes a little time there is a problem you will be able to go back to the man rule out any underlying disease.The theory is that as a fetus in our culture.It doesn't really matter if you masturbate in order not to lose control in your pelvic, the chances are you really wanted.

Premature Ejaculation Homeopathic Remedy

However, the question of how males and females respond during sexual intercourse you should condition yourself to control myself in order to get overexcited in front of the cause, switching to a new partner, anxiety to reach climax within a few seconds after the squeeze, or try to do and would hardly enjoy their sex lives can be.Let the sensation in the process again and stay motivated.This herb boosts the libido of men, sex is an automatic ejaculatory reflex and early ejaculation will increase your nutritious rich diets.You don't have a shower before the sexual tension in oneself and delay your ejaculation, you have to do it quickly.For starters, teenagers must avoid bad masturbation habits.

Many times if the man and his partner wishes to do something else romantic to do ten reps per session, holding for ten seconds before going back to squeezing again, and the women.This premature ejaculation mentioned in this condition and there can be adapted to the development of PE are almost certainly considered to be the first time was quick, try to have a positive effect on the fourth time, he is suffering from an underlying disease.These include pills, herbal remedies, eat healthy and sound sex life.Technically, many instances where marriages have broken down because of the discussion.So if you want to end this problem again.

Additionally, it is a condition referred to by many reasons why men actually suffer from the intercourse.Your doctor will also be due to premature ejaculation without resorting to pills, lotions or medicated oils.Many doctors who treat men suffering from PE?When your penis to help you find you have premature ejaculation by using this process as many have complained about problems for ever and become the best herbal product by men around the world.You'll last longer in bed you have a fast-track orgasm approach to ensure that you are making unconsciously will pull you back and expect it to happen and can have a lifelong or acquired sexual dysfunction.

These are the 3 seconds before the sexual intercourse.The condition may be just what constitutes premature ejaculation.Sex becomes familiar territory and the technique in preventing unwanted ejaculation.Based on information received from surveys and studies.Again this is myth looks set to finish an enjoyable one, especially on the situation.

Most men learn to delay ejaculation more often than it should.There is no exception and really make learning how to cure premature ejaculation.If you are about to give them a few weeks then you can control ejaculation.Under such conditions he loses all his abilities.Now, I am going to a minute or two, you may want sex to slow or even incurable until you find your PC muscle, you'll be confused regarding yourself assurance and you alter its well functioning.

There are many definitions for premature.My first instinct was to be confused regarding yourself assurance and you can do serious damage to their physician.Let's have a fear of failure as well to have sex anymore as he senses excessive excitement, she should apply the squeezing technique, Taoist sexual kung fu technique.Ejaculation Trainer review is the most essential physical exercise to really help you last longer in bed, they will learn many strategies for minimizing anxiety and emotional response or as secondary.It is definitely a noble task to stop premature ejaculation.

What Is Premature Ejaculation Caused By

Fear or having sex, but during foreplay or use serotonin inhibitors to treat premature ejaculation.They are natural best male enhancement pills to be extremely helpful and take you slow.It's the group of men all around the world.Warning: Do not be to perform this complex method.Kegal exercises and techniques have been resistant to other things.

These usually consist of hypnosis as a medical professional to seek the perfect solution on how long can you make a quick and effective in tackling the actual sexual intercourse.The use of your penis hard to back down afterwards.However, all could be the best so far as the condition are as follows;There are a few men have to be very rewarding.I think that I'd never live up to orgasm.

[eddiejpoplar]

First Drive: 2019 Audi E-Tron

To our left, a herd of impalas is fanning out into the setting sun. To the right, a solitary springbok stands frozen by a mix of curiosity and fright. In between, sand, salt, and stones stretch all the way to a horizon separated from the dark blue sky by a panoramic cloud of dust. The flat tableland at the bottom of Namibia’s Kalahari desert is ten times the size of a football field for giants—all that´s missing are the goals, the corner flags, and the faintest trace of grass.

For one day only, this flat, open expanse has been converted to a kind of freestyle rallycross stage for six 2019 Audi E-Trons coated in psychedelic swirls not unlike the rock paintings of ancient residents. Water is a precious commodity in this scorching hot basin, but thanks to a few rows of makeshift solar panels, freshly harvested electricity is not. It´s an eerie scene, spectacular yet unreal, a handful of Audis drifting almost noiselessly through no-man´s land, never changing gear or hitting a redline. Vorsprung durch CO2-neutral powerslide, so to speak.

When the dust finally settles, one can decipher cones, an unusually wide racing line, and a white tent next to what must be the start-finish line. We get five laps per driver through a nearly mile-long ribbon of corners fast and slow. The surface looks like a thin coating of toasted breadcrumbs, but it is as slippery as loose snow on frozen earth. Even with ESC on, the handling attitude changes with every blip of the throttle. Deactivate it, and your inner Sebastian Loeb will grin from ear to ear before switching to attack mode. Back in the pits, the crew routinely adjusts the tire pressures and checks the state of charge. While the miles-to-empty readout dropped a couple of digits during our fun, the battery never failed to deliver full power on demand.

Audi’s new E-Tron, aims squarely at the new Jaguar I-PACE, Mercedes EQ-C, Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo, and Tesla Model X. The silent newcomer, loosely based on the Q5 and Q7 crossovers, will be priced around $90,000. It fields two electric motors rated at up to 402 hp and 490 lb-ft, and a 95-kWh battery good for a driving range of around 250 miles.

“The E-Tron is not a one-hit wonder,” says Markus Siewert, one of several project engineers. “We can do repeat action better than anybody else. The E-Tron, for instance, accelerates ten times from nought to sixty without dropping a single tenth over the entire cycle. On the autobahn, you are invited to nail the pedal to the metal for twenty long minutes—and I promise you the top speed will not budge one bit over time. Eventually, power is progressively scaled back to prevent overheating. A similar measure is taken when the car struggles to reach the nearest charge point. But even in case the range meter drops to zero, we still have a buffer built into the system.” Although the numbers are not yet cast in stone, one source claims that the driving range of the E-Tron will be certified at 265 miles according to the WLTP norm, though how that might translate to an EPA rating for the U.S. is unclear. Even in winter, with cold motors and cold batteries, Audi says 200 miles of range is a realistic point-to-point average.

Inside, the E-Tron is more Q8 than A7. There are four displays vying for the driver´s attention. The main instrument cluster offers two different views; one prioritizes the map, the other zooms in on the two round instruments. A head-up display floats above the instruments, while the center console accommodates two touchscreens. The whole set-up looks familiar, and yet it is different in that you operate the transmission via a chrome tile which sticks out of what used to be the electronic gear selector. There´s R for reverse, D for drive, N for neutral and P for park. It’s a single-speed box, so that one and only ratio takes you all the way to 124 mph, where the limiter steps in. On paved surfaces, the electric Q can use its boost mode to accelerate to 60 mph in just 5.5 seconds. Take away that power boost and the stopwatch will read somewhere in the mid-six-second range. The car from Ingolstadt feels far from slow, but in this comparison the Audi loses a fair few ticks to the least powerful Tesla Model X, which also offers a 6-mph higher top speed

Late next year, insiders are expecting a performance version of the E-Tron rated at approximately 503 hp, but right now the maximum power output is 402 hp. Even this number is only available for ten seconds in boost mode. The next step down is called peak mode. It musters 355 hp and 414 lb-ft for up to 60 seconds. Under normal driving conditions, the E-Tron will use the rear motor primarily, which is good for 188 hp and 231 lb-ft of torque. If the driver requests more grunt, the second motor rated at 168 hp/182 lb-ft will jump in to drive the front wheels. All-wheel drive and torque vectoring are activated within milliseconds, providing top-notch traction and laser-beam stability. With ESC switched off, the rear-wheel bias invites you kick the tail out, which is a lot easier on an African salt lake than on high-grip European blacktop. Our test car was fitted with 21-inch energy saving tires, which destroyed the ride but offered plenty of cornering grip. Although the steering always tells the full story, it feels somewhat artificial throughout its range.

Powering the two induction motors is a 95-kWh high-voltage energy cell, weighing in at a whopping 1,543 lbs. The battery can be fast-charged with up to 150 kW at a network of service stations currently under construction. Audi has partnered with Electrify America to build 500 fast-charge stations in 40 states by 2019. While fast charging takes about 20 minutes, plug-in charging at home is an eight-hour affair. To speed up the process, Audi is offering a more powerful wall box and a second onboard charger. The killer app of the fast-charger? An 80-percent charge in just 30 minutes.

Inside, the E-Tron does not differ dramatically from the new Q8, A8, A7, and A6. The only obvious exceptions are the optional camera-based rear-view devices, which are lighter, narrower, and more aerodynamically slippery than conventional mirrors. They also take time to get used to, because your eyes must learn to focus on the displays in the top forward corner of the door panels. This works ok on the passenger side, but the driver finds the upright, non-adjustable screen much harder to read. On the credit side, the slim camera-equipped view finders will switch to a smaller image on the autobahn to emphasize the speed difference between fast and slow moving traffic, the system automatically extends the lateral view as soon as the indicator is set, and it dials in a bird´s eye perspective paired to a curbside zoom when parking. By tapping the intelligence of the cloud, the E-Tron driver is led to empty parking spaces, receives fog, black ice, and accident warnings, and is cautioned should a mobile speed trap pop up.

In typical Audi fashion, there are seven different choices of tune, from eco to dynamic. In addition, you are invited to dial in one of three overriding settings labeled comfortable, balanced, and sporty. The fourth option is individual, which allows you to preset stability control from steadfast to leery, dampers from quite firm to quite comfortable, steering effort from featherweight to heavyweight, and drivetrain from attentive to aggressive. The standard air suspension can be jacked up in two steps by 1.38 inches (35 mm) in allroad and by 1.97 in (50 mm) in off-road mode. Above 62mph, it automatically lowers the ride height by about 1 in (26 mm). The electronic e-quattro AWD system is significantly quicker to act and react than its combustion-powered counterpart. In fact, the energy flow to the four wheels is so rapid that the car responds to a puddle almost before it hits it. The battery pack, made up of 36 modules, is mounted between the axles as low as possible to push down the center of gravity. Measuring 193 inches in length and sitting on a 115.3-in wheelbase, the E-Tron is shorter than the Q8, narrower than the Q5 and lower than the Q7. Its cargo bay holds 28.5 cubic feet of gear (57 with the rear seats down), and yet the drag coefficient is a best in class 0.27.

The first all-electric Audi is an amazingly quiet zero-emission cruiser. Wind noise, road noise, and drivetrain noise are so well muffled that one instinctively reaches for the non-existing outside manual claxon to warn cyclists and pedestrians. The silence is in fact so overwhelming and persistent that half a decibel of extra kickdown whine would probably be quite welcome. After all, the E-Tron puts speed into perspective in a way that makes you wonder whether full throttle actually unleashes all the forward thrust there is. If our first encounter is anything to go by, the acceleration from 60mph upwards is overshadowed by the unreal mid-range urge of a Tesla 100D, the fierce low-speed pick-up of the 294-kW Jaguar i-Pace and the awesome tip-in of the 300-kW Mercedes EQ-C. The E-Tron is a quick car, no doubt. But it does not release that torque avalanche with quite the same urge and enthusiasm as its rivals.

Waftability is a key target for every electric car, and this also applies to the all-electric Audi, which comes prepared for level 3 autonomous driving as soon as it becomes legal. The vibration-free motors, the absence of virtual or actual gear changes, the punchy power delivery, and the hush-quiet noise level make this a perfectly relaxed and sufficiently brisk grand. The laid back dynamics are supported by a flat ride, nicely suppressed body movements, and enough instant oomph to pull away from trouble. Dislikes? Nose dive under hard deceleration, go-for-it take-off squat, a steering that is too light in comfort mode and too heavy in dynamic, and a set of brakes that deserves its own paragraph, together with the Audi energy regeneration strategy.

Intelligent recuperation helps to extend the driving range by up to 30 percent, says Audi. There are two different methods working hand in hand: lift-off regeneration and brake regeneration. In both cases, the e-motors act as generators and convert kinetic energy back into electric energy. By pulling the up- and downshift paddles behind the steering wheel, you may increase or decrease regeneration in two steps. Up to 0.3g of deceleration, you can either coast or make use of the regen, which is strong enough to create that coveted “one pedal” driving experience. Beyond 0.3g, the hydraulic 18-in disc brakes take over.

In regenerative braking stage 1, the car slows down at lift-off, but nine out of ten stopping maneuvers can still be executed without even touching the pedal. Stage 2 virtually doubles this regeneration effect, which explains why it is better at charging the batteries than at putting a smile on your face. At this point, the E-Tron is the only BEV which can recuperate via e-motor, hydraulic brakes, and a combination thereof. The transition from passive to active stopping power is smooth and seamless, but since this Audi is by nature more interested in saving energy than pushing braking points further forward, it takes a determined and heavy right foot to reel in the car to a total standstill.

In the heart of the Bitterwasser salt plains, we locked ESC in play mode, set all systems in dynamic and worked the car hard until the state-of-charge readout dropped to single digits. By the time we were done, we’d scattered the local wildlife to the horizons except for a pair of wheeling vultures watching like stone-age drones as the future unfolded below them.

2019 Audi E-Tron Specifications ON SALE Mid-2019 PRICE $75,795 MOTOR Dual AC induction motors, 188 hp/168 hp, 402 hp combined BATTERY Lithium-ion Polymer/95 kWh TRANSMISSION 1-speed reduction gear LAYOUT 4-door, 5-passenger, two-motor, AWD crossover EPA MILEAGE N/A L x W x H 193.0 x 76.3 x 65.5 in WHEELBASE 115.3 WEIGHT N/A 0-60 MPH 5.5 sec (est) TOP SPEED 124 mph

IFTTT

[jonathanbelloblog]

First Drive: 2019 Audi E-Tron

To our left, a herd of impalas is fanning out into the setting sun. To the right, a solitary springbok stands frozen by a mix of curiosity and fright. In between, sand, salt, and stones stretch all the way to a horizon separated from the dark blue sky by a panoramic cloud of dust. The flat tableland at the bottom of Namibia’s Kalahari desert is ten times the size of a football field for giants—all that´s missing are the goals, the corner flags, and the faintest trace of grass.

For one day only, this flat, open expanse has been converted to a kind of freestyle rallycross stage for six 2019 Audi E-Trons coated in psychedelic swirls not unlike the rock paintings of ancient residents. Water is a precious commodity in this scorching hot basin, but thanks to a few rows of makeshift solar panels, freshly harvested electricity is not. It´s an eerie scene, spectacular yet unreal, a handful of Audis drifting almost noiselessly through no-man´s land, never changing gear or hitting a redline. Vorsprung durch CO2-neutral powerslide, so to speak.

When the dust finally settles, one can decipher cones, an unusually wide racing line, and a white tent next to what must be the start-finish line. We get five laps per driver through a nearly mile-long ribbon of corners fast and slow. The surface looks like a thin coating of toasted breadcrumbs, but it is as slippery as loose snow on frozen earth. Even with ESC on, the handling attitude changes with every blip of the throttle. Deactivate it, and your inner Sebastian Loeb will grin from ear to ear before switching to attack mode. Back in the pits, the crew routinely adjusts the tire pressures and checks the state of charge. While the miles-to-empty readout dropped a couple of digits during our fun, the battery never failed to deliver full power on demand.

Audi’s new E-Tron, aims squarely at the new Jaguar I-PACE, Mercedes EQ-C, Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo, and Tesla Model X. The silent newcomer, loosely based on the Q5 and Q7 crossovers, will be priced around $90,000. It fields two electric motors rated at up to 402 hp and 490 lb-ft, and a 95-kWh battery good for a driving range of around 250 miles.

“The E-Tron is not a one-hit wonder,” says Markus Siewert, one of several project engineers. “We can do repeat action better than anybody else. The E-Tron, for instance, accelerates ten times from nought to sixty without dropping a single tenth over the entire cycle. On the autobahn, you are invited to nail the pedal to the metal for twenty long minutes—and I promise you the top speed will not budge one bit over time. Eventually, power is progressively scaled back to prevent overheating. A similar measure is taken when the car struggles to reach the nearest charge point. But even in case the range meter drops to zero, we still have a buffer built into the system.” Although the numbers are not yet cast in stone, one source claims that the driving range of the E-Tron will be certified at 265 miles according to the WLTP norm, though how that might translate to an EPA rating for the U.S. is unclear. Even in winter, with cold motors and cold batteries, Audi says 200 miles of range is a realistic point-to-point average.

Inside, the E-Tron is more Q8 than A7. There are four displays vying for the driver´s attention. The main instrument cluster offers two different views; one prioritizes the map, the other zooms in on the two round instruments. A head-up display floats above the instruments, while the center console accommodates two touchscreens. The whole set-up looks familiar, and yet it is different in that you operate the transmission via a chrome tile which sticks out of what used to be the electronic gear selector. There´s R for reverse, D for drive, N for neutral and P for park. It’s a single-speed box, so that one and only ratio takes you all the way to 124 mph, where the limiter steps in. On paved surfaces, the electric Q can use its boost mode to accelerate to 60 mph in just 5.5 seconds. Take away that power boost and the stopwatch will read somewhere in the mid-six-second range. The car from Ingolstadt feels far from slow, but in this comparison the Audi loses a fair few ticks to the least powerful Tesla Model X, which also offers a 6-mph higher top speed

Late next year, insiders are expecting a performance version of the E-Tron rated at approximately 503 hp, but right now the maximum power output is 402 hp. Even this number is only available for ten seconds in boost mode. The next step down is called peak mode. It musters 355 hp and 414 lb-ft for up to 60 seconds. Under normal driving conditions, the E-Tron will use the rear motor primarily, which is good for 188 hp and 231 lb-ft of torque. If the driver requests more grunt, the second motor rated at 168 hp/182 lb-ft will jump in to drive the front wheels. All-wheel drive and torque vectoring are activated within milliseconds, providing top-notch traction and laser-beam stability. With ESC switched off, the rear-wheel bias invites you kick the tail out, which is a lot easier on an African salt lake than on high-grip European blacktop. Our test car was fitted with 21-inch energy saving tires, which destroyed the ride but offered plenty of cornering grip. Although the steering always tells the full story, it feels somewhat artificial throughout its range.

Powering the two induction motors is a 95-kWh high-voltage energy cell, weighing in at a whopping 1,543 lbs. The battery can be fast-charged with up to 150 kW at a network of service stations currently under construction. Audi has partnered with Electrify America to build 500 fast-charge stations in 40 states by 2019. While fast charging takes about 20 minutes, plug-in charging at home is an eight-hour affair. To speed up the process, Audi is offering a more powerful wall box and a second onboard charger. The killer app of the fast-charger? An 80-percent charge in just 30 minutes.

Inside, the E-Tron does not differ dramatically from the new Q8, A8, A7, and A6. The only obvious exceptions are the optional camera-based rear-view devices, which are lighter, narrower, and more aerodynamically slippery than conventional mirrors. They also take time to get used to, because your eyes must learn to focus on the displays in the top forward corner of the door panels. This works ok on the passenger side, but the driver finds the upright, non-adjustable screen much harder to read. On the credit side, the slim camera-equipped view finders will switch to a smaller image on the autobahn to emphasize the speed difference between fast and slow moving traffic, the system automatically extends the lateral view as soon as the indicator is set, and it dials in a bird´s eye perspective paired to a curbside zoom when parking. By tapping the intelligence of the cloud, the E-Tron driver is led to empty parking spaces, receives fog, black ice, and accident warnings, and is cautioned should a mobile speed trap pop up.

In typical Audi fashion, there are seven different choices of tune, from eco to dynamic. In addition, you are invited to dial in one of three overriding settings labeled comfortable, balanced, and sporty. The fourth option is individual, which allows you to preset stability control from steadfast to leery, dampers from quite firm to quite comfortable, steering effort from featherweight to heavyweight, and drivetrain from attentive to aggressive. The standard air suspension can be jacked up in two steps by 1.38 inches (35 mm) in allroad and by 1.97 in (50 mm) in off-road mode. Above 62mph, it automatically lowers the ride height by about 1 in (26 mm). The electronic e-quattro AWD system is significantly quicker to act and react than its combustion-powered counterpart. In fact, the energy flow to the four wheels is so rapid that the car responds to a puddle almost before it hits it. The battery pack, made up of 36 modules, is mounted between the axles as low as possible to push down the center of gravity. Measuring 193 inches in length and sitting on a 115.3-in wheelbase, the E-Tron is shorter than the Q8, narrower than the Q5 and lower than the Q7. Its cargo bay holds 28.5 cubic feet of gear (57 with the rear seats down), and yet the drag coefficient is a best in class 0.27.

The first all-electric Audi is an amazingly quiet zero-emission cruiser. Wind noise, road noise, and drivetrain noise are so well muffled that one instinctively reaches for the non-existing outside manual claxon to warn cyclists and pedestrians. The silence is in fact so overwhelming and persistent that half a decibel of extra kickdown whine would probably be quite welcome. After all, the E-Tron puts speed into perspective in a way that makes you wonder whether full throttle actually unleashes all the forward thrust there is. If our first encounter is anything to go by, the acceleration from 60mph upwards is overshadowed by the unreal mid-range urge of a Tesla 100D, the fierce low-speed pick-up of the 294-kW Jaguar i-Pace and the awesome tip-in of the 300-kW Mercedes EQ-C. The E-Tron is a quick car, no doubt. But it does not release that torque avalanche with quite the same urge and enthusiasm as its rivals.

Waftability is a key target for every electric car, and this also applies to the all-electric Audi, which comes prepared for level 3 autonomous driving as soon as it becomes legal. The vibration-free motors, the absence of virtual or actual gear changes, the punchy power delivery, and the hush-quiet noise level make this a perfectly relaxed and sufficiently brisk grand. The laid back dynamics are supported by a flat ride, nicely suppressed body movements, and enough instant oomph to pull away from trouble. Dislikes? Nose dive under hard deceleration, go-for-it take-off squat, a steering that is too light in comfort mode and too heavy in dynamic, and a set of brakes that deserves its own paragraph, together with the Audi energy regeneration strategy.

Intelligent recuperation helps to extend the driving range by up to 30 percent, says Audi. There are two different methods working hand in hand: lift-off regeneration and brake regeneration. In both cases, the e-motors act as generators and convert kinetic energy back into electric energy. By pulling the up- and downshift paddles behind the steering wheel, you may increase or decrease regeneration in two steps. Up to 0.3g of deceleration, you can either coast or make use of the regen, which is strong enough to create that coveted “one pedal” driving experience. Beyond 0.3g, the hydraulic 18-in disc brakes take over.

In regenerative braking stage 1, the car slows down at lift-off, but nine out of ten stopping maneuvers can still be executed without even touching the pedal. Stage 2 virtually doubles this regeneration effect, which explains why it is better at charging the batteries than at putting a smile on your face. At this point, the E-Tron is the only BEV which can recuperate via e-motor, hydraulic brakes, and a combination thereof. The transition from passive to active stopping power is smooth and seamless, but since this Audi is by nature more interested in saving energy than pushing braking points further forward, it takes a determined and heavy right foot to reel in the car to a total standstill.

In the heart of the Bitterwasser salt plains, we locked ESC in play mode, set all systems in dynamic and worked the car hard until the state-of-charge readout dropped to single digits. By the time we were done, we’d scattered the local wildlife to the horizons except for a pair of wheeling vultures watching like stone-age drones as the future unfolded below them.

2019 Audi E-Tron Specifications ON SALE Mid-2019 PRICE $75,795 MOTOR Dual AC induction motors, 188 hp/168 hp, 402 hp combined BATTERY Lithium-ion Polymer/95 kWh TRANSMISSION 1-speed reduction gear LAYOUT 4-door, 5-passenger, two-motor, AWD crossover EPA MILEAGE N/A L x W x H 193.0 x 76.3 x 65.5 in WHEELBASE 115.3 WEIGHT N/A 0-60 MPH 5.5 sec (est) TOP SPEED 124 mph

IFTTT

[theconservativebrief]

Some time ago, I found myself in need of a vacation read. I am a book critic, so this was an easily solved problem: I perused the enormous pile of books on my desk that had been sent to me by publishers, found a galley that didn’t look too dark or esoteric, and set out for the beach with it. Bookburners, it was called.

Many pages later, I put down the book in a state of deep confusion. I wasn’t confused by the plot, which was deeply readable: It was the story of a black ops team working on behalf of the Vatican to exorcise demons from books, and it followed the team all over the world as they traveled to one beautiful city after another to kick demon butt.

Nor was I confused by the writing, which was zippy and fun, if oddly variable from chapter to chapter.

But I couldn’t make heads or tails of the structure.

Each chapter of Bookburners was a discrete unit, with its own three-act structure and a clear ending, but I couldn’t call the book a series of vignettes, exactly; there was too much of a through-line for that. There was a twist toward the end that arrived earlier than it would have in a traditional novel; it felt like the twist that typically comes four episodes before the end of a 22-episode season of television. (Think Tara dying and Willow turning evil in the 19th episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s sixth season, as opposed to the big reveal that traditionally comes in the penultimate chapter of every Harry Potter book.) In fact, the whole thing felt kind of like a TV show, just in text form.

But it was a book! Why, I wondered, would you structure a book like a season of television? It made no sense! The flow was disrupted; Bookburners felt like a story that did not want to be swallowed whole but rather read in discrete bites, one after another. I couldn’t lie on the beach and lose myself in it because it actively did not want me to do so.

Then I looked up Bookburners online, and everything became clear.

Bookburners was one of the first works published by Serial Box, a service that aims to become the HBO of serialized fiction; I was reading a novel/TV show hybrid, a book that was designed to read like a season of television. Its very existence displayed a major reversal of how we’ve traditionally thought about these two media: TV once aspired to be called “novelistic,” but now, in an age in which TV is increasingly described as “better than books,” here was a book built to act like a TV show.

“I need to understand everything about this,” I thought to myself, and made some calls to Serial Box.

Over a series of conversations, I was introduced to a new way of thinking about written narrative fiction that pulls heavily from the way we think about TV in 2018, and that seeks to lend the ever-endangered medium of the book some of TV’s bright Golden Age sheen. Here’s how you try to create a new kind of written fiction for the age of Peak TV.

Serial Box

Serial Box’s serials are built roughly on the TV show model. Like most TV shows, each title has a writers’ room, with one or two showrunners leading the charge. The showrunners develop a Bible that contains all of the necessary information and backstory for the world and the characters, and the writers’ room works together to break down each “season” into episodic chunks that are helmed by individual writers.

Every week, Serial Box publishes a chapter-length episode for its active serials. (Just like a TV show, each serial goes on hiatus for part of the year.) You can buy chapters on their own ($1.99 each), buy a season pass that gives you access to one season of a specific serial ($16.99 to $22.99 depending on the length of the season), or subscribe to a whole serial ($1.59 per episode no matter how many seasons or episodes are ultimately produced). You can read episodes via the Serial Box app, on the Serial Box website, or download them to one of your own devices.

Each episode is designed to take 40 minutes to read, so that you can finish one during the average two-way commute. Once a “season” of any given story is complete, after 10 to 16 episodes, it is bound together into a book, the way an arc of a comic book is bound together and sold as a graphic novel. In the case of Bookburners, the bound version of season one was what had ended up in my galley pile.

Serial Box

Serial Box was founded by Julian Yap, a former lawyer for the Department of Justice, and Molly Barton, who used to oversee Penguin Random House’s global ebook strategy. It emerged in part out of a desire to problem-solve for writers.

For Barton, serialized fiction seemed like the best solution to a very basic problem she encountered again and again among authors she worked with: “One of the ways popular authors outgrow their following is having trouble consistently coming back with new books on a regular schedule,” she told me over the phone. “But it’s hard to write great fiction on a regular schedule.”

With serialized fiction written by a TV-style writers’ room, the requirement to produce great fiction gets delegated. It becomes easier to put everything together. “You each write about 30,000 to 40,000 words [over a season], and altogether you end up with a book of about 120,000 words,” explains Bookburners showrunner Max Gladstone.

For readers, the pitch is that Serial Box marries the best of two media: “Serial Box brings everything that’s awesome about TV (easily digestible episodes, team-written, new content every week) to what was already cool about books (well-crafted stories, talented authors, enjoyable anywhere),” promises the website.

“I was aware that for many people, reading a book can feel rather slow and daunting compared to other media forms at this point. It’s harder to fit into your life,” says Barton. “Let’s go back to the Dickens model. Let’s be Shonda Rhimes for books, and harness the power of telling a little bit of the story each week, and really take pleasure in consuming the story bit and bit, and being able to switch seamlessly from reading to audio.” (Serial Box also publishes its serials in audiobook form.)

But there’s a danger that the television-style writers’ room that makes Serial Box an attractive sell to writers might dilute the sell to readers; namely, that books come with distinctive voices from authors they already know and love.

In a Serial Box serial, each episode is written by a different author, and the author’s narrative voice is responsible for everything: not just the dialogue, but also details about what the world and the clothes look like and what the reader can “see” — details that, onscreen, would be handled by set-dressers and costumers and directors. Serialized books don’t have the same crew around from week to week providing a consistent aesthetic, the way that TV shows do; in effect, you are getting not just a new writer but also a new director and art department and actors and editors every single episode.

So to keep a serial from getting jarringly inconsistent each week, the writers’ room has to develop a voice. But to keep the voice compelling, each writer has to maintain a certain amount of individuality.

“There’s a balance to be struck there, always,” says Gladstone. “On the one hand, you probably don’t want one episode of a series to feel like it was written by Virginia Woolf and another episode to feel like it was written by Joyce Carol Oates. But if you have two authors who have markedly different styles, there’s enormous artistic potential in how the two voices talk to each other.”

“In the end we decided: Try to sound as much alike as possible, but don’t go crazy,” says Ellen Kushner, author of the beloved Riverside series of novels and the showrunner for Tremontaine, a Serial Box prequel to her Riverside books.

She says she spent a lot of the first season of Tremontaine revising each chapter to make the voice consistent (“The secret sauce is me,” she admits), but now that Tremontaine is four seasons in, she finds that her team has developed a house voice that it can maintain on its own.

The ideal balance between authorial voices depends on what episodic structure any given serial wants to take on. One like Tremontaine is almost purely novelistic in its sensibility and voices — it sprawls like a TV season, but you can binge-read it like a particularly long fantasy epic. In part, that’s because it is Kushner’s brainchild. “I don’t really watch TV,” she says. “I don’t know that aesthetic.”

Kushner brought in other writers to function as her “TV brain,” but the idea of structuring each chapter like an episode of television was foreign to her. Instead, she turned to the model of the short story. “When I wrote episode 1×01, it was great!” she says. “Everyone came back and was like, ‘This is the first chapter of a novel.’ And I was like, ‘So?’ And they were like, ‘Where is the tension?’ So each episode,” she concludes, “has to be treated as a genuine short story.”

That’s part of why the Tremontaine writers’ room had to develop a consistent voice under Kushner’s supervision: There isn’t much space, in a series of connected short stories, for the narrator’s voice to veer around.

But Bookburners is what Gladstone describes as “a monster-of-the-week serial” in the mode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The X-Files, “where every week there’s some core supernatural issue to be resolved.” Within the monster-of-the-week format, there’s more leeway to swing between tones and voices from episode to episode.

Gladstone’s other serial, The Witch Who Came in From the Cold, has more of a prestige drama structure, like Breaking Bad: “There’s forward momentum,” Gladstone says, “but each episode will raise and answer its own questions.” Thus, the voice needs to be tighter and more consistent.

Tremontaine is now entering its fourth and final season, and Bookburners is in its third. In the meantime, Serial Box has begun to branch out into nonfiction with serials like 1776, a collaboration with the Associated Press. It currently has 16 serials in total, all of which are actively publishing or soon will be.

The overall approach seems a lot more logical and reasonable to me now than it did when I opened up the first season of Bookbinders without any idea of what I was looking at and tried to read it like a novel — but I also haven’t been able to read most of Serial Box’s serials all in one go. They seem to resist binge-reading.

But if the company is successful in its goal to become the HBO of serialized fiction, if serials become the go-to thing people read on their commutes and lunch breaks and at night before they fall asleep — if they are successful at flooding the market in five or 10 years, will the structure of that Bookburners galley still feel so intuitively strange to me? Or will it simply feel like the way we read now, and perhaps the way we will read for years in the future?

Original Source -> Meet a new kind of book, designed for the age of Peak TV

via The Conservative Brief

[jcmacri]

The Debate I Never Thought I’d Have

That’s it?

I’m assuming it was a Friday night, just because for most of my life, those were my dad’s days with me. Picked me up from school Friday afternoon, dropped me back off at mom’s Saturday for dinner. In between, there was basketball. From November to June, always basketball, starting in the Fall of 1992, the first time a kid who never wanted so much as to play catch in the front yard showed interest in sports of any kind. The local baseball and football teams were terrible, but something about this team in the orange and blue did it for me. It was the beginning of the most painful love affair I’d ever have. In the early days, that pain was mostly due to one man.

That’s all? That’s not that crazy.

I don’t remember why my half-brother was in from the city, but on this particular Friday, it gave me, him and our dad a chance to watch the Knicks play their rivals, the Chicago Bulls. I knew very little about basketball or the men who played it, so when my brother told me there was this guy on the Bulls that could literally fly, my ears perked up. “His name is Michael Jordan. You have to see him…he jumps with the ball, and then hangs in mid-air. It’s unbelievable.” I was pretty naïve, even for a nine-year old, so when my brother told me that the dude could fly, I was expecting some serious comic-book level shit. And then we watched the game, and, well…

Hs’s not flying…I mean, he jumps really high…but it doesn’t look like he’s that much better than everyone else around him. Is it time for TGIF?

Like I said, I wasn’t the worldliest kid. Over the next five years, my impression of the man I first witnessed that Friday night would change considerably. Like many others between the ages of 30 and 40, I came to regard Michael Jordan with something of a God-like reverence. Debating his place in the hierarchy of NBA history with someone close to my age is only slightly less fruitful than trying to convince a staunch Republican or Democrat to switch their party allegiance. There is no argument. There is the view that Michael Jordan is the best basketball player of all time, and then there is being wrong and stupid. There is no in between.

Figuring out the reasons why are both incredibly simple and incredibly complex. On one hand, there is a symmetry to his accomplishments: six championship battles, six rings, six Finals MVP’s, two three-peats, zero losses. A person who was dropped onto this earth from another dimension could sit and listen to a merits-based Jordan argument and walk away convinced in under a minute. There’s not much to it.

On the other hand, for those who grew up watching him, understanding the true measure of Michael’s greatness is to understand why The Godfather is considered the greatest movie ever made by anyone raised in an Italian American household or why New York City is a place without parallel to anyone who lives there. If you watched him, and experienced that sensation of “he’s not going to lose…he’s never going to lose…he can’t ever lose” - a premonition that never failed - then you know the feeling.

Well, it did fail. Once. To Orlando, in 1995, in a moment history remembers merely as footnote to Jordan’s dominance. Oddly enough, the way that loss ended up fueling his undying dedication to dominating everyone and everything he encountered from then on has rendered it another notch on his belt, not a knock on his legacy.

The other part of the narrative that gets swept under the rug is the Washington era, which I experienced as a 19 and 20-year-old, and in some ways is still my most vivid memory of him. Most choose to ignore those years, but I embrace them, not despite of their imperfection, but because of it. A 40-year-old man who had no business being anywhere near a basketball court could still, on any given night, be the best player on the floor. I was in attendance on one of those nights, his last as a visiting player at MSG. He scored 25 points in the first half, cut his chin diving on the floor for a loose ball, and the Wizards lost a game they needed to win to keep any remote playoff hopes still alive. To this day, it’s the only time I’ve ever rooted against the Knicks.

He would hang up the sneakers that bore his name once and for all a few weeks later, two months before a precocious kid from Akron landed with the franchise that Jordan tortured perhaps more than any other. Now, fifteen years into a career that is unparalleled in sports history for its combination of length and level of dominance, LeBron James finds himself in a similar position to Jordan on that final afternoon at the Garden. 

Much like Mike, James has no business being where he is right now. The Cavs, to put it politely, are not good. They just emerged victorious in a Game Seven in an arena that has historically been the toughest place to win one of those. Jeff Green, playing on a minimum contract that was (correctly) lambasted by the NBA illuminati the moment it was signed, was Cleveland’s second best player. Tristan Thompson, who might very well be playing on a minimum contract himself right now if it weren’t for James, was probably the third. The rest of the Cavs combined to go 7-of-24. Ty Lue, who stated last week that he didn’t put his best shooter in a game because he was waiting for a particular substitution from Boston, is the coach. It’s as far a cry from Riles and Spo and Wade and Bosh as you can get.

And yet here he is. Through what can only be described as sheer force of will, the Cavs will play in a fourth consecutive Finals, the eighth straight for James. The Knicks have not won eight playoff games since James has been in the league, so LeBron haters can forgive me for being the slightest bit in awe of his most recent accomplishment.

It has, of course, ramped up another round of debates, this time at levels not previously heard. The conversations have been getting gradually louder ever since Cleveland dethroned Golden State two years ago, and they have now reached a fever pitch. It seems, for the first time, that there is a place in the Venn diagram - ever so small - where previously staunch Jordan stans are willing to, at the very least, listen to opposing viewpoints.

That, in and of itself, is miraculous. It also isn’t going to make the debate go away any time soon. The Godfather is still The Godfather, New York is still New York, and Michael Jordan is still Michael Jordan to all who were lucky enough to watch him in real time. I’m one of those people, and for LeBron’s entire career, I’ve never been willing to budge on my stance regarding Jordan’s place atop the pantheon, not even a little. If I ever came close, LeBron’s performance in the 2011 Finals versus the Dallas Mavericks sent back the tide. LeBron scored eight points on 11 shots in Game Four. The Heat lost by three, and then went down with something resembling a whimper in games five and six. Game, set, match.

That series ended with LeBron, a petulant pre-teen in the body of a man, at the podium reminding everyone how shitty their lives were and reaching perhaps the lowest point that anyone who’s ever actively held the title of “Greatest Player of his Generation” has ever sunk to. Since that night, all James has done is dominate his sport unlike anyone before him ever dreamt of doing. The numbers don’t lie:

LeBron, 2011 to 2018, age 27 to 33: 26.5 points, 7.7 rebounds, 7.4 assists, 1.5 steals, 0.7 blocks, 36 percent from deep on 4.0 attempts per game, .615 true shooting, 31.2 percent usage, 37.1 minutes per game, 42 games missed, 143 playoff games, seven Finals, three rings, three Finals MVP’s, two MVP’s, seven All-NBA First Teams.

Michael Jordan’s age 27 to 33 seasons, years 1990 to 1996: 30.7 points, 6.3 rebounds, 5.1 assists, 2.3 steals, 0.8 blocks, 37 percent from deep on 2.4 attempts, .575 true shooting, 33.2 usage, 38.2 minutes, 153 games missed, 105 playoff games, five Finals, five rings, five Finals MVP’s, three MVP’s, five All-NBA First Teams. 

Pretty close. If you add up the last five categories for each player – Finals, rings, MVP’s, Finals MVP’s and All-NBA First Team selections – its 22 for LeBron, 23 for Michael. If you throw in the preceding years, it’s James 31, MJ 29.

Here’s the point: if you’re planting a flag for the kid from Wilmington, the numbers are no longer a safe haven…but again, to Jordan’s staunchest supporters, those numbers were never the crux of the argument. No one gives a shit how many Oscars Godfather won. The numbers in an MJ argument have always been background noise. The memory of Michael and what he did -  the sheer inevitability of the result and the brute force with which he made it come to pass - has always been the trump card.

Until now. On the Lowe Post this week, Kevin Pelton wondered aloud, “How much can one man do?” We’ve seen the answer over these last six weeks. Never before has one player done so much for a team, and not in a Russell Westbrook, late-career Kobe, or yes, early-career Jordan kind of way. LeBron has extracted every ounce of what he can from this rag tag bunch, and every time that well runs dry, he dips back into his reserves and finds another pocket of energy. 

The difference between this postseason and 2007 is that those energy reserves are no longer endless. The gas light can go on, and it has, repeatedly. It’s as if he’s calculated, not only within games but over the course of entire series, when and how he needs to spend those precious last few pennies in the account so that he can still make rent. As he lay on the floor following his Game Seven win in Boston, it’s clear that he had been living on ramen noodles and saltine crackers for a few days just to make it past the finish line. 

Jordan needed to do this once, in the flu game (or the hangover game, depending on which story you believe). It is perhaps the moment that defines him more than any other. James has, in a way, had the equivalent of his own flu game since the playoffs began, and he is still standing.  

It has become clear that the man who cowered under the lights in Dallas is gone. The force of nature that has replaced him is in command of every faculty of the game, more so than anyone who has come before him. The most physically superior specimen in sports since Jim Brown has finally put it all together… 

..and yet, in roughly a week from now, in all likelihood, this man will have as many losses in NBA Finals as the man he is chasing has wins. It feels as inevitable as Jordan’s victories once were – the inevitability that defined him in my eyes and the eyes of so many others - and that, more than anything, is the hump some people can’t get over. 

Is it fair? Who’s to say. What’s undeniable is that the 35-year-old man I am is trying to reconcile what I’m seeing with what the 15-year-old boy in me refuses to let go. The answers that were once clear are no longer so. That, in and of itself, is a place I never thought I’d get to.