#the government in los angeles has let its people down

[ladysophiebeckett]

like yeah, i hate the media coverage for la fires vs valleys inland but that doesn't mean we should lack empathy for the hundreds and thousands of people who just lost their home due to a entire county and state that is not prepared for disasters like this. los angeles is not made up of only 'rich people'. its people fm all walks of life. entire neighborhoods are gone. homes with years and years of belongings are gone. photos, clothes, documents, even the most sentimental knickknack that money will not be able to ever replace. it's sad. it's devastating. stop being fucking dicks about it.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Microsoft pinky swears that THIS TIME they’ll make security a priority

One June 20, I'm live onstage in LOS ANGELES for a recording of the GO FACT YOURSELF podcast. On June 21, I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On June 22, I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel and a keynote at the LOCUS AWARDS.

As the old saying goes, "When someone tells you who they are and you get fooled again, shame on you." That goes double for Microsoft, especially when it comes to security promises.

Microsoft is, was, always has been, and always will be a rotten company. At every turn, throughout their history, they have learned the wrong lessons, over and over again.

That starts from the very earliest days, when the company was still called "Micro-Soft." Young Bill Gates was given a sweetheart deal to supply the operating system for IBM's PC, thanks to his mother's connection. The nepo-baby enlisted his pal, Paul Allen (whom he'd later rip off for billions) and together, they bought someone else's OS (and took credit for creating it – AKA, the "Musk gambit").

Microsoft then proceeded to make a fortune by monopolizing the OS market through illegal, collusive arrangements with the PC clone industry – an industry that only existed because they could source third-party PC ROMs from Phoenix:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ibm-pc-compatible-how-adversarial-interoperability-saved-pcs-monopolization

Bill Gates didn't become one of the richest people on earth simply by emerging from a lucky orifice; he also owed his success to vigorous antitrust enforcement. The IBM PC was the company's first major initiative after it was targeted by the DOJ for a 12-year antitrust enforcement action. IBM tapped its vast monopoly profits to fight the DOJ, spending more on outside counsel to fight the DOJ antitrust division than the DOJ spent on all its antitrust lawyers, every year, for 12 years.

IBM's delaying tactic paid off. When Reagan took the White House, he let IBM off the hook. But the company was still seriously scarred by its ordeal, and when the PC project kicked off, the company kept the OS separate from the hardware (one of the DOJ's major issues with IBM's previous behavior was its vertical monopoly on hardware and software). IBM didn't hire Gates and Allen to provide it with DOS because it was incapable of writing a PC operating system: they did it to keep the DOJ from kicking down their door again.

The post-antitrust, gunshy IBM kept delivering dividends for Microsoft. When IBM turned a blind eye to the cloned PC-ROM and allowed companies like Compaq, Dell and Gateway to compete directly with Big Blue, this produced a whole cohort of customers for Microsoft – customers Microsoft could play off on each other, ensuring that every PC sold generated income for Microsoft, creating a wide moat around the OS business that kept other OS vendors out of the market. Why invest in making an OS when every hardware company already had an exclusive arrangement with Microsoft?

The IBM PC story teaches us two things: stronger antitrust enforcement spurs innovation and opens markets for scrappy startups to grow to big, important firms; as do weaker IP protections.

Microsoft learned the opposite: monopolies are wildly profitable; expansive IP protects monopolies; you can violate antitrust laws so long as you have enough monopoly profits rolling in to outspend the government until a Republican bootlicker takes the White House (Microsoft's antitrust ordeal ended after GW Bush stole the 2000 election and dropped the charges against them). Microsoft embodies the idea that you either die a rebel hero or live long enough to become the evil emperor you dethroned.

From the first, Microsoft has pursued three goals:

Get too big to fail;

Get too big to jail;

Get too big to care.

It has succeeded on all three counts. Much of Microsoft's enduring power comes from succeeded IBM as the company that mediocre IT managers can safely buy from without being blamed for the poor quality of Microsoft's products: "Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" is 2024's answer to "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."

Microsoft's secret sauce is impunity. The PC companies that bundle Windows with their hardware are held blameless for the glaring defects in Windows. The IT managers who buy company-wide Windows licenses are likewise insulated from the rage of the workers who have to use Windows and other Microsoft products.

Microsoft doesn't have to care if you hate it because, for the most part, it's not selling to you. It's selling to a few decision-makers who can be wined and dined and flattered. And since we all have to use its products, developers have to target its platform if they want to sell us their software.

This rarified position has afforded Microsoft enormous freedom to roll out harebrained "features" that made things briefly attractive for some group of developers it was hoping to tempt into its sticky-trap. Remember when it put a Turing-complete scripting environment into Microsoft Office and unleashed a plague of macro viruses that wiped out years worth of work for entire businesses?

https://web.archive.org/web/20060325224147/http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/newsinfo/collateral.aspx?cid=33338

It wasn't just Office; Microsoft's operating systems have harbored festering swamps of godawful defects that were weaponized by trolls, script kiddies, and nation-states:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EternalBlue

Microsoft blamed everyone except themselves for these defects, claiming that their poor code quality was no worse than others, insisting that the bulging arsenal of Windows-specific malware was the result of being the juiciest target and thus the subject of the most malicious attention.

Even if you take them at their word here, that's still no excuse. Microsoft didn't slip and accidentally become an operating system monopolist. They relentlessly, deliberately, illegally pursued the goal of extinguishing every OS except their own. It's completely foreseeable that this dominance would make their products the subject of continuous attacks.

There's an implicit bargain that every monopolist makes: allow me to dominate my market and I will be a benevolent dictator who spends his windfall profits on maintaining product quality and security. Indeed, if we permit "wasteful competition" to erode the margins of operating system vendors, who will have a surplus sufficient to meet the security investment demands of the digital world?

But monopolists always violate this bargain. When faced with the decision to either invest in quality and security, or hand billions of dollars to their shareholders, they'll always take the latter. Why wouldn't they? Once they have a monopoly, they don't have to worry about losing customers to a competitor, so why invest in customer satisfaction? That's how Google can piss away $80b on a stock buyback and fire 12,000 technical employees at the same time as its flagship search product (with a 90% market-share) is turning into an unusable pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Microsoft reneged on this bargain from day one, and they never stopped. When the company moved Office to the cloud, it added an "analytics" suite that lets bosses spy on and stack-rank their employees ("Sorry, fella, Office365 says you're the slowest typist in the company, so you're fired"). Microsoft will also sell you internal data on the Office365 usage of your industry competitors (they'll sell your data to your competitors, too, natch). But most of all, Microsoft harvest, analyzes and sells this data for its own purposes:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

Leave aside how creepy, gross and exploitative this is – it's also incredibly reckless. Microsoft is creating a two-way conduit into the majority of the world's businesses that insider threats, security services and hackers can exploit to spy on and wreck Microsoft's customers' business. You don't get more "too big to care" than this.

Or at least, not until now. Microsoft recently announced a product called "Recall" that would record every keystroke, click and screen element, nominally in the name of helping you figure out what you've done and either do it again, or go back and fix it. The problem here is that anyone who gains access to your system – your boss, a spy, a cop, a Microsoft insider, a stalker, an abusive partner or a hacker – now has access to everything, on a platter. Naturally, this system – which Microsoft billed as ultra-secure – was wildly insecure and after a series of blockbuster exploits, the company was forced to hit pause on the rollout:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/microsoft-delays-data-scraping-recall-feature-again-commits-to-public-beta-test/

For years, Microsoft waged a war on the single most important security practice in software development: transparency. This is the company that branded the GPL Free Software license a "virus" and called open source "a cancer." The company argued that allowing public scrutiny of code would be a disaster because bad guys would spot and weaponize defects.

This is "security through obscurity" and it's an idea that was discredited nearly 500 years ago with the advent of the scientific method. The crux of that method: we are so good at bullshiting ourselves into thinking that our experiment was successful that the only way to make sure we know anything is to tell our enemies what we think we've proved so they can try to tear us down.

Or, as Bruce Schneier puts it: "Anyone can design a security system that you yourself can't think of a way of breaking. That doesn't mean it works, it just means that it works against people stupider than you."

And yet, Microsoft – whose made more widely and consequentially exploited software than anyone else in the history of the human race – claimed that free and open code was insecure, and spent millions on deceptive PR campaigns intended to discredit the scientific method in favor of a kind of software alchemy, in which every coder toils in secret, assuring themselves that drinking mercury is the secret to eternal life.

Access to source code isn't sufficient to make software secure – nothing about access to code guarantees that anyone will review that code and repair its defects. Indeed, there've been some high profile examples of "supply chain attacks" in the free/open source software world:

https://www.securityweek.com/supply-chain-attack-major-linux-distributions-impacted-by-xz-utils-backdoor/

But there's no good argument that this code would have been more secure if it had been harder for the good guys to spot its bugs. When it comes to secure code, transparency is an essential, but it's not a sufficency.

The architects of that campaign are genuinely awful people, and yet they're revered as heroes by Microsoft's current leadership. There's Steve "Linux Is Cancer" Ballmer, star of Propublica's IRS Files, where he is shown to be the king of "tax loss harvesting":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego

And also the most prominent example of the disgusting tax cheats practiced by rich sports-team owners:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#economic-substance-doctrine

Microsoft may give lip service to open source these days (mostly through buying, stripmining and enclosing Github) but Ballmer's legacy lives on within the company, through its wildly illegal tax-evasion tactics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/13/pour-encoragez-les-autres/#micros-tilde-one

But Ballmer is an angel compared to his boss, Bill Gates, last seen some paragraphs above, stealing the credit for MS DOS from Tim Paterson and billions of dollars from his co-founder Paul Allen. Gates is an odious creep who made billions through corrupt tech industry practices, then used them to wield influence over the world's politics and policy. The Gates Foundation (and Gates personally) invented vaccine apartheid, helped kill access to AIDS vaccines in Sub-Saharan Africa, then repeated the trick to keep covid vaccines out of reach of the Global South:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#gates-foundation

The Gates Foundation wants us to think of it as malaria-fighting heroes, but they're also the leaders of the war against public education, and have been key to the replacement of public schools with charter schools, where the poorest kids in America serve as experimental subjects for the failed pet theories of billionaire dilettantes:

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/millionaire-driven-education-reform-has-failed-heres-what-works

(On a personal level, Gates is also a serial sexual abuser who harassed multiple subordinates into having sexual affairs with him:)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/technology/microsoft-sexual-harassment-policy-review.html

The management culture of Microsoft started rotten and never improved. It's a company with corruption and monopoly in its blood, a firm that would always rather build market power to insulate itself from the consequences of making defective products than actually make good products. This is true of every division, from cloud computing:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/28/other-peoples-computers/#clouded-over

To gaming:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/27/convicted-monopolist/#microsquish

No one should ever trust Microsoft to do anything that benefits anyone except Microsoft. One of the low points in the otherwise wonderful surge of tech worker labor organizing was when the Communications Workers of America endorsed Microsoft's acquisition of Activision because Microsoft promised not to union-bust Activision employees. They lied:

https://80.lv/articles/qa-workers-contracted-by-microsoft-say-they-were-fired-for-trying-to-unionize/

Repeatedly:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/activision-fired-staff-using-strong-language-about-remote-work-policy-union-2023-03-01/

Why wouldn't they lie? They've never faced any consequences for lying in the past. Remember: the secret to Microsoft's billions is impunity.

Which brings me to Solarwinds. Solarwinds is an enterprise management tool that allows IT managers to see, patch and control the computers they oversee. Foreign spies hacked Solarwinds and accessed a variety of US federal agencies, including National Nuclear Security Administration (who oversee nuclear weapons stockpiles), the NIH, and the Treasury Department.

When the Solarwinds story broke, Microsoft strenuously denied that the Solarwinds hack relied on exploiting defects in Microsoft software. They said this to everyone: the press, the Pentagon, and Congress.

This was a lie. As Renee Dudley and Doris Burke reported for Propublica, the Solarwinds attack relied on defects in the SAML authentication system that Microsoft's own senior security staff had identified and repeatedly warned management about. Microsoft's leadership ignored these warnings, buried the research, prohibited anyone from warning Microsoft customers, and sidelined Andrew Harris, the researcher who discovered the defect:

https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-solarwinds-golden-saml-data-breach-russian-hackers

The single most consequential cyberattack on the US government was only possible because Microsoft decided not to fix a profound and dangerous bug in its code, and declined to warn anyone who relied on this defective software.

Yesterday, Microsoft president Brad Smith testified about this to Congress, and promised that the company would henceforth prioritize security over gimmicks like AI:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/microsoft-in-damage-control-mode-says-it-will-prioritize-security-over-ai/

Despite all the reasons to mistrust this promise, the company is hoping Congress will believe it. More importantly, it's hoping that the Pentagon will believe it, because the Pentagon is about to award billions in free no-bid military contract profits to Microsoft:

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/17/pentagon-weighs-microsoft-licensing-upgrades

You know what? I bet they'll sell this lie. It won't be the first time they've convinced Serious People in charge of billions of dollars and/or lives to ignore that all-important maxim, "When someone tells you who they are and you get fooled again, shame on you."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/14/patch-tuesday/#fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again

[feelingbluepolitics]

What a Willy Wonka moment The Los Angeles Times is having, except Veruca Salt, now named Nika Soon-Shiong, already won the lottery in this lousy re-write.

So screw working-class Charlie, his sandwich generation family, and his grandparents, who all need full-time home care.

Dr. Soon-Shiong, biotech billionaire and newspaper owner: "Our editorial board has prepared a detailed endorsement of Kamala Harris for this most important election."

A gasp of displeasure from Nika: " NO, Daddy! NO! Harris didn't stop the war in Gaza when I wanted! We can't endorse HER!"

"But darling, not endorsing her is endorsing Donald Trump! In the LA Times!"

"I don't care!", screams Nika. I'm being VERY MORAL! AND I'M REALLY PROUD OF THAT!"

"But darling, in this American democracy, our Vice President doesn't stop another country's wars. A Vice President doesn't have that power! At least," added Daddy, "not yet. Who knows what will happen if Trump and Vance get power... Can't you just let us endorse Harris, and do our part to get her elected, and then put lots of pressure on her? It's not like Trump would care what people want, you know."

"DADDY!," says Nika. "Don't you love me anymore?"

"Of COURSE, DARLING! I love every little thought you have SO MUCH MORE THAN I LOVE THIS COUNTRY! But you know, there's lots of Israeli people who don't want this terrible war to continue, but their country got taken over by a hard right government that will never listen to its people. You know, I'm just thinking...".

Nika folds her arms and taps her foot.

Daddy adds hastily, "And dearest darling, don't you care about American women losing rights and dying for lack of reproductive health care? About the increase in both mother and infant mortality already? Or what about common sense gun control, so that guns won't continue to be the cause of most deaths of American children? Sweetie," he adds, cajoling, "what about climate change? You know, Trump wants to drill, drill, drill! Children EVERYWHERE will die of starvation and disease, and wars will break out planet-wide over scarce habitable lands. You used to care about that, too!"

"I don't care! I'm very progressive, Daddy! You know that! I'm so progressive I don't care if Trump wins! Or Putin and the other vicious autocrats. I have my morals! How often have I had the chance to say 'genocide' a LOT, with unassailable self-righteousness? You wouldnt try to take that away from me, would you, Daddy? "

"No!" Daddy says hastily. "This is terrible, what's happening in Gaza! Of course decent people want it to end! Although, really, um, this isn't the first genocide...I mean, and all wars slaughter children, you know...And, gosh, there's rarely been peace ever in that part of the world, since 1967! Or before that, too! Isn't it maybe better, just overall, you know, if America doesn't become an absolute force of ignorance and evil under Trump...?"

"Daddy. You are not doing what I want when I want you to. You know how I feel about that."

"Niki, darling, don't say that! Of course our paper won't endorse the not-fascist candidate!" He picks up the phone, mumbling to himself. "Well, we might get some nice tax cuts. Or, not get shut down right away under Trump." But Niki is watching, so he just shrugs. It's his paper, he can do what she wants to.

[ultramaga]

Watch "POV Film hates straight, white, males!" on YouTube

Jewish Leftists were astonished that Leftism stabbed them in the back, but Leftism has always been a racist hate movement.

It's just that its primary target is, well, whites, and especially white men.

But they are not quite as vulnerable. They can shoot back.

Leftists are murderers, but mostly by proxy. They talk others into bloodshed, or force government to declare wars for others to die in.

They stay safe, using their sex and/or self imposed disabilities as a shield against ever having to fight themselves. They call for Hamas to kill the Jews, but have you notice that none volunteer themselves?

The precursors to Leftists, the communists and fascists, volunteered to fight for their beliefs. Leftists are, however, natural cowards. If they can't push a government to force normal people to kill for them, leftists are mostly helpless. They need unarmed opposition to rob, rape and ravage.

Koreans networked to defend each other. They refused to fight alone, to be dependent on police, to let themselves be victims.

So i urge Jews and Asians and Blacks and Whites and every other decent person to arm themselves, to train, and, importantly, to build bridges.

When the Leftists come for your family, don't fight alone. Have a community of like minded people to help repel the foe. Christian, Jew, Hindu and Muslim, all must work together against them, or they will stab us all in the backs.

Never trust a Leftist to be anything but what their foul nature dictates. Learn from history - or die, bewildered, as the 'progressive' pushes you into the showers.

[molsons112000]

Illinois and Arizona are the two toughest states in the united states against Drinking and driving!!!

Arizona goes one farther than Illinois. They will close down the establishment that over-served the driver!!!!! So, Arizona is the toughest state for drunk driving....

We also had to do mandatory courses as a bartender or a server, and anyone running an establishment that serves alcohol. You had to get training on how to identify somebody who was intoxicated. They also made it mandatory that you have your food sanitary education...

I don't know how some of these places even stay open in illinois.....

As it says here in los angeles county, it has been highly effective in grading restaurants by sanitation level.... And those that don't make the cut are closed down....

MLive.com

August 1, 2011 · https://www.mlive.com

Some states grade restaurants based on health inspections

Studies have shown grading systems in spots such as Los Angeles County have helped reduce serious foodborne illness hospitalizations. But

Illinois is one of the top five states for regulating its citizens...

Top Five Most Regulated States by Number of Restrictions (2022)

California – 403,774.

New York – 298,804.

New Jersey – 286,933.

Illinois – 279,147.

Texas – 273,106.

Jul 27, 2023

https://ascend.thentia.com

What are the least and most regulated states in America?

Food safety and restaurant cleanliness should be one of the highest priorities of any state!!!! This also should be a priority of the president of the United States and the U.S. Congress... This is the overall health of the nation, and this includes our military personnel, food, safety for them, and restaurants. Cleanliness is vital... Especially since all these prosecutors and law enforcement eat out, they can't risk people that they punish doing crimes against them like poisoning. Their food is doing something nasty as spitting in their food.... Truly, they're at great risk, and they don't even think about it. But I pointed out the restaurant where the guy cut himself and the restaurant didn't know he had HIV. And he wasn't taking medication. To suppress h I v and so he bled into the food on purpose so he could infect the law enforcement officer... Remember when they sent the poison leather to Congress and remember when the gentleman I went up to the congressional baseball game and started shooting at all of them... This goes around globally... Remember the priest in France who got his head cut off? So people in leadership, they're very vulnerable if they don't enforce the laws strictly..... 🤔 So let me point out how many members of government across the world have been assassinated, and remember all those police officers in the Middle East being assassinated, and their families being killed as well... Yes, law enforcement in the middle east, a terrorist, targeted them, cutting off their heads and killing all their family...



FDA (.gov)

August 1, 2024 · https://www.fda.gov

State Retail and Food Service Codes and Regulations by State

Food Sanitation Rules (available in PDF). Oregon, Department of Agriculture Food Safety Division, Food Code (available in PDF). Pennsylvania ...

Missing: toughest ‎| Show results with: toughest



USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (.gov)

https://www.fsis.usda.gov

States With and Without Inspection Programs

Georgia, State has kept Meat Inspection Program, 2-Jan-71 ; Hawaii, 1-Nov-95, 1-Nov-96 ; Idaho, 1-Jul-81, 2-Jan-71 ; Kentucky, 14-Jan-72, 28-Jul-71.



Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org

List of heads of state and government who were ...

The following is a chronological list of notable heads of governments and heads of state deaths that have resulted from assassination 

Here's a list of Christian leaders who have been killed around the world... But below you'll see it from other faiths as well... So the priest in France getting his head cut off should have sent shockwaves through the religious community that they're highly vulnerable.... Jesus was trying to teach those in the religious community as well, and how vulnerable they are... But some reason priest and pastors forget this. Like in indiana, the pastors house was broken into and the thief shot in kilt, the pastor's pregnant wife and killed his unborn child as well.... He didn't care if it was a priest. He broke into the priest house. He was robbing it the wife saw him. He shot and killed her and the unborn child.... So you'd think this would send shockwaves through the religious community, and i'm telling you, excommunication is a very important step into protecting those that are religious figures...

It also protects government officials and those in law enforcement.As well... So you think this is a joke?I am dead serious....

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org

List of Christian martyrs

This is a list of reputed martyrs of Christianity; it includes only notable people with Wikipedia articles. Not all Christian denominations accept



Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org

List of attacks on legislatures

The following is a list of attacks on state or national legislatures. Contents. 1 19th century or earlier; 2 20th century; 3 21st century; 4 See

So as you see here around the world, this has been happening, let's go into bombings of police stations around the world ...

What was the movie Sakario With torres playing the character, he was a prosecutor the cartels captured his wife and daughter and put them into a bath of acid to die.... He was a prosecutor and his family got killed... The bad guys came after his family and killed his family....



AP News

December 12, 2023 · apnews.com

Suicide bomber attacks police station in Pakistan, kills 22

Officials say a suicide bomber has detonated his explosive-laden vehicle at a police station in northwest Pakistan, killing at least three ...



DNI.gov

https://www.dni.gov

Historic Timeline | National Counterterrorism Center

Contains many features across the full range of issues pertaining to international terrorism: terrorist groups, wanted terrorists, and technical pages on ...



BBC

May 14, 2018 · https://www.bbc.com

Surabaya attacks: Family of five bomb Indonesia police ...

Surabaya police HQ comes under attack one day after deadly church bombings in the city.



FBI.gov

https://www.fbi.gov

Weather Underground Bombings

Hours later, another bomb was found at a military induction center in Oakland, California, and safely detonated. A domestic terrorist group called the

Let's go into the history of hijacking of airlines. It's been going on forever.It needs to stop...

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org

List of aircraft hijackings

The following is a list of notable aircraft hijackings. Contents. 1 List of ... May 1, 1961: First U.S. airline flight hijacked to Cuba. A National ...

So you think I'm kidding with excommunication? The church needs to stand app and protect others against evil, and they need to protect governments and law. Enforcement and airlines and all kinds of businesses against evil, they need to stand up against evil, and they need to show them that if you do these crimes, there is no forgiveness. You're screwed that way.They don't think they can do it.And somebody's going to forgive them!!!!!!

[burningexeter]

IDEA THAT'S NOT YET A PITCH:

Tales From The Crypt Presents Body Count

Written & Directed By Frank Darabont

What is it and what's the premise:

A full-on reboot of Tales From The Crypt that if successful both commercially and critically could potentially be the first in a series of Crypt films.

As for the premise itself, we follow a mysterious but brutal and vicious vigilante who shows up in Los Angeles, California and begins cleaning up the streets that are riddled with the most dangerous crime possible that's breaking out. However, throughout all of it we see this man get fatally wounded and violently shot.... yet there's not a scratch on him. He falls off ten story buildings and just gets back up, no bloody, gory mess, no broken bones, nothing. It's then we learn that he's in fact an undead Frankenstein-type super soldier who was brought back to life after he was killed in Afghanistan by the U.S. Government as part of a soldier experiment but he ended up regaining his memories and escaped from their clutches. Now it's his mission to not only rid his home of the crime that affected his life but go back to where he came from, free the other soldiers under the government's control and get revenge on the people that turned him into a monster instead of letting him rest in peace all the while, the head of the experiment and program who has become immoral and corrupted takes matters into his own hands and starts turning himself into what he believes to be "the perfect undying soldier".

Here are the notes/trivia/details that I have on it so far:

• The opening and ending wraparound Cryptkeeper segments are at first, him directing a big-budget action horror film and giving us a tour of the entire studio as we know it than it's him serving as one of the guests at the Academy Awards at the end. While he'll be a redesigned version of it, the Cryptkeeper will still be the same ol' Cryptkeeper that we all know and love with Bill Skarsgard providing the new voice of the Cryptkeeper.

• The main influences for Crypt Presents Body Count are First Blood, Spawn: The Animated Series, Netflix's The Punisher and last but definitely not least Soldier from 1998 with Kurt Russell.

• The concept for this is obviously a new take on the cancelled third Tales From The Crypt film written by both Walter Hill and Adam Rifkin but at the same time with its own distinct changes to make it stand on its own. The big change also obviously changing the settings from El Paso, Texas to Los Angeles, California.

• The movie will obviously be a hard R however what will make it stand-out from other action-horror movies and Tales From The Crypt media is that it has a lot of heart to it that feels genuine with our lead being a tragic anti-hero who not only gave his life and lost all of his closest friends fighting in the war but also had a family that he became estranged from who now see him as a monster.

• Obviously, Walter Hill and Adam Rifkin will get "story by" credits since it's both their original story and script but as a fun little easter egg, a movie that one of the criminals our lead takes down later on is watching just so happens to be Extreme Prejudice directed by Walter Hill.

[psiotechniqa]

Aww that's adorable. You're almost at the point where you can realize that you don't actually have an argue, other than "these people don't like him, that's proof enough for me"

I'm well aware of that particular subreddit. It is a "hate-fandom" subreddit.

Honestly, I would have expected that an erudite individual such as yourself would have had the wherewithall to learn from our past exchange: First you link to wikipedia, now... to a hate-fandom, as proof?

You do realize that this hatedom link is probably the single only other source you could have found on this topic, that is LESS biased than wikipedia?

Good grief, you might as well have found an Iranian government source to "proove" that america is satan. Would make just as much sense.

But lets have a look at the comics you're presenting:

First one: Yes, trans suicide rates are atrociously high. Last I checked they were around 50%. Could it be that Stonetoss is just 'subtly' trying to hint that transitioning doesn't make you less inclined to commit suicide, despite all the claims from various gender-activists?

Makes you think, well... hopefully it should make you think.

Next up: Trans people abusing children.

Let me just google a few headlines for you:

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/police-courts-sa/tiktok-star-rachel-queen-burton-pleads-guilty-to-child-abuse-offences-court-told-victims-family-was-stalked-into-homelessness/news-story/45297f20873f39ceab38ca7edb94ed4c

Its not difficult to google... but regardless, the comic itself: its addressing the slippery slope of permissiveness. I'm all for gay marriage, but then in the second panel its about forcing companies to do things they dont want to (in reference to the "gay cake" lawsuits in the US), then there are the bathroom incidents. Plural.

I'm just going to go out on a limb here, and say that Stonetoss looked what kind of behavior was getting normalized in society, and with the last panel was like "well, they haven't started sacrificing children... yet... I guess that's a punchline"

Then there's the third comic. Back on stonetoss's own website, for another comic about rich people, he links the following from a JEWISH PROFESSOR in the description for the comic:

https://jbuff.com/c060514.htm

Make of that, whatever you want. I don't think it promotes hatred. It's not saying to kill anyone. Put that back into the context of the comic: idiot social justice warriors harping about how its evil rich white men who control the world... and sure, there's a majority represented there - but according that writing by that jewish professor, then jews are overrepresented in the upper class in the west. What he's not addressing is why, and I think its honestly because of a bone-hard work ethic.

Then there's the comic about dogs: Dude, some dog breeds are stupider than others. Your failure to acknowledge that says a lot more about you, than it does about stonetoss. Stonetoss is just spicing it up by poking at that holy cow of drawing a direct comparison to humans.

Black slaves in the US were bred in captivity - they were not selected for intelligence - they were selected for endurance and strength, to work hard and be servile. You dont think that could result in certain "traits" being bred into people? Just like how you can breed dogs for more or less aggression or cuddliness?

Then the last one about muslims: Right. Have you heard or seen the kind of things that Iran regularly says about jews? I can assure you, there are a hilarious amount of muslims out there who very much hate on jews. I've even recently heard of these these HAMAS jokers who really don't like this...

And stonetoss is just making fun of the fact that nobody seems to be calling jew-hating muslims nazis, despite them clearly fitting the bill

So congratulations: You've proven nothing other than your own inability to conduct a proper analysis or source your claims. You are mired in your hatred, and I find that sad.

I would offer to pray for you, but I don't think you'd appreciate the gesture.

courting antisemitism

so i recently decided to take a look at the latest stonetoss comics (probably because i love suffering). and while i was expecting some content on the israel palestine conflict, what i did not expect was how... standard it seemed. well, most of it at least, but i'll get to that in a second.

for context, if you don't know what stonetoss is, it's a (poorly drawn) webcomic known for having radical alt-right views - meaning it's incredibly racist, homophobic, transphobic, islamophobic, antisemitic. all that fun stuff.

so while i was expecting to see bad stuff, one of the first things i saw on the topic of israel was this:

terrible art aside, this comic is making a point that i usually see in left wing circles: that israel is pinkwashing genocide.

curious if there was more like this, i kept looking, and the comic right before that one was this:

again, this makes points that i usually see in left wing circles. that american healthcare is crazy expensive, that canada tells poor people to commit suicide, and that israel is bombing hospitals.

why does stonetoss, this well known alt-right nutjob, now seem to be bringing up left-wing talking points?

curious, i kept going deeper:

well this is... odd. clearly, stonetoss is trying to say that israel is on another level of bad, even worse than russia, iran, and north korea. i can possibly see someone on the left making the argument that the russian invasion of ukraine isn't as bad as what israel is doing in gaza, or that at least north korea isn't invading any other countries, but... iran??? the country that has a police force designed to enforce religious law, and gets away with murdering women who do not properly cover their hair? the country that props up paramilitary groups in countries all over the middle east, including lebanon, yemen, and yes, palestine?? that's completely ridiculous

but, given how much more israel is in the news nowadays than any of these other countries, i could see why someone would buy this

and now, we're starting to get to the crux of what stonetoss is trying to do. when someone sees this, they might be inclined to agree with it. they might begin to think that israel is the worst country on the planet

and that might not seem so bad at first. but the more you hate israel, especially irrationally, the more you feel allowed to dehumanize those who support it. the more you might be willing to agree with this comic, which came out two days prior to the one above

this comic says that jews, as a whole have no desire to exist with other people. it is blatantly antisemitic

i'm sure you could imagine some young leftist who sees the comics above this one and thinks, "this guy makes some good points". and then, when they get to this one, they might realize that this is antisemitism

or, they may not.

and that would start them down the road to becoming an antisemite.

this is what stonetoss and other alt-right nutjobs are hoping to achieve. to take left wing fury at israel, and direct it at jews.

we saw it with those neo-nazis at the palestine rally, and we're seeing it again here.

and if you've found yourself agreeing with what stonetoss has said so far, i would like you to see the last comic stonetoss put out before october 7th:

this horrifically racist comic is in reference to an environmental activist who was murdered by a black man in early october. this blatantly racist garbage is the kind of stuff stonetoss usually puts out.

but as soon as october 7th happened? these were his next two comics:

stonetoss completely changed the comic's tone as soon as the current crisis started. why?

to get as many people as possible to get on board with hating jews.

and i know many of you might be thinking that "well, everyone knows that stonetoss is racist garbage. nobody is going to fall for this"

except, as we saw with the neo-nazis at the rally for palestine, it's not always that obvious who the antisemites are and who is just rallying for peace. they are often a lot better at disguising it than stonetoss is.

AND EVERYONE NEEDS TO BE AWARE OF THAT

EVERYONE, no matter HOW much experience you have, can fall victim to propoganda. EVERYONE needs to be aware of what people around them are saying, and able to pick out hateful rhetoric, because even the stuff that is just kind of toeing the line of what's hateful is still putting your foot in the door

be cautious, everyone. and stomp out hate where you see it.

[newstfionline]

Monday, August 21, 2023

Hope is hard to let go after Maui fire, as odds wane over reuniting with still-missing loved ones (AP) The days of waiting have become harder and harder as the odds grow longer and longer, but Kevin Baclig remains undeterred in his search for his wife and her parents, missing since Aug. 8 when a wildfire engulfed and flattened the Hawaiian town of Lahaina. Six other relatives who lived next door also remain unaccounted for. The remains of 114 people have been found, most of them yet to be identified. Hawaii Gov. Josh Green has said the death toll will likely rise in the days to come as the painstaking search for remains continues in the heaps of rubble and ash in Lahaina. Officials acknowledge they don’t have a firm number on the missing. Many initially listed as unaccounted for have since been located. More than 1,000 federal personnel are on Maui, nearly half of whom are assigned to help in the search for remains, the White House said.

Tropical Storm Hilary (AP) Tropical Storm Hilary drenched Southern California from the coast to inland mountains and deserts Sunday evening, prompting rescues from swollen rivers and forcing some of the nation’s largest school districts to cancel Monday classes. Millions braced for more flooding and mudslides, even as the storm began to weaken. The first tropical storm to hit Southern California in 84 years, Hilary dropped more than half an average year’s worth of rain on some mountain and desert areas, including the desert resort city of Palm Springs, which saw nearly 3 inches of rain by Sunday evening. Forecasters warned of dangerous flash floods across Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, and fire officials rescued 13 people from knee-deep water in a homeless encampment along the rising San Diego River. Meanwhile, rain and debris washed out some roadways and people left their cars stranded in standing water.

Argentina sets grocery price controls for 90 days to tame inflation (Reuters) Argentina’s government announced on Friday a price agreement for supermarkets to limit monthly increases to a maximum of 5% for 90 days as the country tries to tamp down triple-digit inflation as a high-stakes election looms. The move follows other price-freezing initiatives from the government to contain surging annual inflation, which topped 113% in July. Consumer prices are expected to rise further in August after Milei’s shock primary win led to a sharp peso devaluation. On Thursday, the Economy Ministry announced it would freeze fuel prices until October 31 after an agreement with the industry.

If you can’t beat them, eat them: Italians cope with invasion of blue crabs this summer (AP) Italians are fighting an invasion of predatory blue crabs with an attitude borne of centuries of culinary making do: If you can’t beat them, eat them. Fishermen, lobbying groups and environmentalists have sounded the alarm about the risks from a summer surge in the population of the fast-reproducing invasive species. The crabs are devouring stocks of eels, clams and mussels and wreaking havoc on fishing nets. But since the crabs are here to stay, farm lobby group Coldiretti and fishing associations have been behind a series of events this summer trying to introduce a staple of American summertime fare to Italian palates. Witness the menu at one Veneto agriturismo farm-hotel that hosted a Coldiretti event this summer: rosemary crab salad; crab Venetian style (with onion and vinegar sour); and pasta with garlic-tossed crab.

Russia’s Luna-25 smashes into moon in failure (Reuters) Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years failed after its Luna-25 space craft spun out of control and smashed into moon. Russia’s state space corporation, Roskosmos, said it had lost contact with the craft shortly after a problem occurred as the craft was shunted into pre-landing orbit on Saturday. “The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon,” Roskosmos said in a statement. Failure for the prestige mission underscores the decline of Russia’s space power since the glory days of Cold War competition when Moscow was the first to launch a satellite to orbit the Earth—Sputnik 1, in 1957—and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel into space in 1961.

As Ukraine flies through artillery rounds, U.S. races to keep up (Washington Post) The Biden administration’s sprint to supply Ukraine with weapons central to its military success against Russia has yielded a promising acceleration of arms production, including the standard NATO artillery round, output of which is expected soon to reach double its prewar U.S. rate of 14,000 a month. The stakes in the U.S. effort to shake up a sclerotic defense acquisition system are particularly high as Kyiv tries to claw back territory from Russian control in a slow-moving counteroffensive whose fate, U.S. officials now say, hinges on the West’s ability to satisfy Ukraine’s astonishing hunger for artillery ammunition. But industry experts warn of major challenges in sustaining an elevated output of arms and equipment needed not just to aid Ukraine but to ensure the United States’ own security in potential conflicts with Russia or China. Those include overcoming scarcity of key inputs including TNT and maintaining expanded capacity amid fluctuating budgets and uncertainty about future military needs. A year and a half after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, production deals are only gradually being cemented. Of the $44.5 billion the United States has appropriated for manufacturing arms destined for Ukraine or replenishing donated U.S. stocks, the Defense Department to date has finalized contracts to produce weapons costing roughly $18.2 billion, or 40.8 percent of that total.

Zelenskyy vows retaliation for Chernihiv attack that killed seven people and wounded over a hundred (AP) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed Sunday a stern retaliation to the Russian missile strike in the center of the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv that killed seven people and wounded over a hundred others the day before. He named a six-year-old girl, Sofia, as among the dead in the attack and confirmed that the wounded included 15 children. Meanwhile, in Russia, five people were wounded when a Ukrainian drone hit a train station in the city of Kursk, regional Gov. Roman Starovoit said early Sunday. Kursk is the capital of the western region of the same name, which borders Ukraine.

Why is China not rushing to fix its ailing economy? (Reuters) With China at risk of tipping into prolonged stagnation and a spiralling property crisis threatening financial stability, there is growing unease over why its leaders are not rushing to revive the world’s second-largest economy. Even in a country known for opaque and drawn-out decision making, investors, analysts and diplomats are pointing to signs that Beijing seems hesitant to deliver the bold policies needed to prop up an ailing post-COVID recovery. The view of several China watchers is that President Xi Jinping’s focus on national security is restricting and working counter to the economic effort, scaring off the money Beijing says it is seeking to attract. “The core problem this year is that the leadership has given vague, high-level instructions for officials to balance economic development against national security,” said Christopher Beddor, deputy director of China research at Gavekal Dragonomics. “If officials are unsure what the leadership wants them to do, they’re likely to put off any action until they receive more information. The result is policy paralysis, even if that comes at a substantial cost.” Others say the Communist Party’s ingrained hesitancy towards measures that could shift power from the state to the private sector, and a government stacked with Xi’s loyalists, may be stifling the policy debate and stymieing the response.

A Defense Agreement Likely to Deepen Chinese Rancor (NYT) Ever since members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization sprang into action to help Ukraine try to thwart Russia’s invasion last year, China has warned about a similar U.S.-led security alliance forming in Asia that would seek to hobble Beijing’s ambitions and provoke a confrontation. President Biden’s Camp David summit on Friday with the leaders of Japan and South Korea most likely reinforces Beijing’s perception. The talks saw Japan and South Korea put aside their historical animosities to forge a defense pact with the United States aimed at deterring Chinese and North Korean aggression. Mr. Biden, who met with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea, sought to emphasize at a news conference that the summit was not “anti-China.” But Beijing will almost certainly find Mr. Biden’s assertion unpersuasive. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has accused the United States of leading Western countries in the “all-around containment, encirclement and suppression of China.” The Camp David agreement requires the United States, Japan and Korea to hold annual talks, expand joint military exercises, and establish a three-way hotline for crisis communications. In a statement, the countries also criticized China’s “dangerous and aggressive behavior” in the South China Sea and reaffirmed the “importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.” The language on Taiwan, which could be read as a warning to Beijing not to attempt to take the island by force, will most likely rankle Chinese leaders for drawing Japan and South Korea closer into a dispute that has traditionally been restricted to the United States, China and Taiwan.

Syrian War Leaves Lethal Threats Lurking Underfoot (NYT) The two sisters were walking home when they spotted a metal orb about the size of a softball. They didn’t know what it was when they picked it up, but they figured that scrap metal buyers who make the rounds where they live in northwestern Syria might pay about 30 cents for it. It was a live cluster bomblet. “It was gray. It was this big,” one of the sisters, Duaa, 10, said recently, stretching the fingers on her left hand as wide as she could. She recalled how her sister Rawa’a, 11, then handed her the bomb while she was holding their seven-month-old brother, Mitib, on her hip. A second later, it exploded, shattering Duaa’s right hand. Rawa’a lost her left eye, and Mitib’s cheeks still bear scars from the explosion. Syria’s 12-year conflict—now largely at a stalemate—has wrought widespread destruction and killed more than 500,000 people while forcing millions more to flee their homes. And like other modern conflicts, it has left a deadly legacy of unexploded artillery shells, mines and other munitions on farmland, roadsides and in buildings, posing an indiscriminate threat to lives long after the fighting subsides. But cluster munitions, widely banned weapons that break apart in midair and scatter dozens of smaller bomblets over a wide area, are especially deadly.

Emerging economies are pushing to end the dollar’s dominance (AP) Business has vanished at Kingsley Odafe’s clothing shop in Nigeria’s capital, forcing him to lay off three employees. One culprit for his troubles stands out: The U.S. dollar’s strength against the Nigerian currency, the naira, has pushed the price of garments and other foreign goods beyond the reach of local consumers. A bag of imported clothes costs three times what it did two years ago. The price these days is running around 350,000 naira, or $450. Across the developing world, many countries are fed up with America’s dominance of the global financial system—especially the power of the dollar. They will air their grievances next week as the BRICS bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa meet with other emerging market countries in Johannesburg, South Africa. But griping about King Dollar is easier than actually deposing the de facto world currency. The dollar is by far the most-used currency in global business and has shrugged off past challenges to its preeminence. Despite repeated talk of the BRICS countries rolling out their own currency, no concrete proposals have emerged in the run-up to the summit starting Tuesday.

[theliterateape]

Wisdom of the Creatives | From the Archives

By Alan Lake

Long perched upon my living room table is a book gifted to me by an old friend called The War of Art, a play on Sun Tzu’s Art of War—only geared toward the creative process. Glancing through it once again this New Year's Eve, putting it down I resolved to seek more inspiration in my life, which in turn makes me more creative in my own life. “In pursuit of joys untasted,” from Verdi’s La Traviata sums it up nicely.  With this in mind, I thought it might be interesting to ask some of my more creative friends their viewpoint on the subject. Impulsively, phone calls were made and emails were sent to a group of people that make my life richer with their presence—musicians, inventors, photographers, chefs, record producers, authors, filmmakers, scientists and then some. Tasking them to give me a comment/thought/impart wisdom about creativity-their responses are below.

I’ll start:  I love when concept and execution are simultaneous—when I think of something to play and am already doing it. A musical moneyshot. Creativity is like a muscle; the more you use it, the bigger it gets. No guarantees on meeting the muse, but if you keep showing up, after a lifetime, your chances improve. Creative disciplines are similar in that way. Most people draw like a child because that’s when they stop drawing. As a musician and chef, people often ask me about my cooking, which reminds me of my music and parallels it so naturally that I made up my own word to describe it. “Jazzfood:" Solid technique coupled with tasteful improvisation. That would be me.

Stephen Sayadian (aka Rinse Dream) — Filmmaker, creative director, set designer, writer, satirist, surrealist. Besides winning a dance contest at my bar mitzvah, his work includes directing Cafe Flesh, Dr. Caligari and Nightdreams, and production design for the 90s television series Silk Stalkings. Stephen was fêted with a retrospective of his work at the L’ Étrange festival in Paris a few years back. 

"Creativity, n. The essence of life. When it’s over, you're dead."

Jerry Stahl — Novelist, journalist, screenwriter. Stahl’s work includes Permanent Midnight, Perv, A Love Story, I Fatty, Happy Mutant Baby Pills, Alf, thirtysomething, Moonlighting, Twin Peaks, CSI, New York Times, Esquire, Playboy and winner of The Pushcart Prize for fiction. This clip of him from the Moth says it all:

"Creativity is what artists have to keep from blowing strangers' brains out—or their own."

Larry Kopald — Larry has been an Executive Creative Director for some of the world's leading ad agencies, working with Nike to Coke to McDonalds and Mercedes. Today he heads up Kopald/Stranger in Los Angeles, a change agency that helps companies and governments create positive social change while achieving their core objectives. He‘s done environmental communications for the Olympics and the United Nations, serves on the board of the Museum of Broadcasting, is a member of the Television Academy and has been nominated for Grammy and Emmy Awards. In junior high, there were three drummers. Larry and I were two of them. His family owned Dad’s Root Beer here in Chicago and the word “mensch” has a picture of him in the dictionary.

"Wikipedia defines Creativity as 'a phenomenon.' James Michener says it occurs when you 'stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood appear on your forehead.' My guess is most creative people would agree with both of them. Anyone can come up with a creative idea once in awhile, but doing it consistently means drawing blood. It means hours or decades of experimenting, studying what’s already out there in the big world to make sure you’re not replicating and building up such trust in your internal pathway from your head to your heart that you let the car go back and forth on its own. It’s an immensely, intensely personal achievement. Kind of like being all alone on a deserted island and finally reaching that itch in the middle of your back. Ahhhh..." 

Mark Panick — Musician/singer/songwriter from Bonemen of Barumba, Razorhouse and Black Friars Social Club. Here’s a video of his I quite like:  

"My inner 12-year-old is in charge of my creativity. He's not always amenable to company but I try and create an environment he feels comfortable in. Hoping that he'll show up more often than not. The whole fill the well and then disgorge the well allegory works for me. And as long as I am moving my skills forward, the rest seems to fall into place. Having some discipline certainly helps too. 

Victorrio Giustino — Writer, poet, historian, media commentator, radio talk show host knower of all things Chicago. 

"Lord lift the creativity of the child in my heart, head in hands, not be chained by adulthood. The clock of creativity never stops. Don’t let outside forces steal your creative spirt. Season creativity into the soup of life so those that taste it will grow. 

Robert Smyth — Inventor/engineer/developer of power supplies for aircrafts, submarines, missile launchers, M1 tanks and my favorite, a solar powered boat he built in his garage and tested in his pool. When one of the submarines he worked on surfaced at the North Pole and radioed back, “On top of the world,” his reply was “Then steer South." A poignant, decadent, mofo 'tis he.

I think creativity is something born out of an aberrant brain condition, as I notice that the majority of people are not creative They just do what they are taught to do and nothing more.  As an engineer, most of my creative ideas are born from observation and laziness combined.  I see something and sense that there is an easier way to achieve whatever it is. Most of all, to be creative you need to have imagination with no boundaries. 

Hegina Rodrigues — Brazilian outsider artist 

"My quest is to paint intangible feelings- to illustrate the inner distortions of our emotions."

Patrick Leonard — Pianist, songwriter, record producer, childhood pal and suggester of the book that inspired this piece in the first place, The War of Art. Pat has worked with a who’s who of rock 'n' roll that includes Leonard Cohen, Bryan Ferry, Madonna, Elton John, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Jewel and Rod Stewart.  

"When my old friend Alan Lake emailed to ask if I could write a few thoughts on creativity, I suddenly felt less creative and more confused than usual. First, there are questions: Are we born creative? Is creativity a qualitative attribute? Does creativity relate to art and, if so, what does that relationship look like? Is a creative person necessarily an artist? Is art always creative? Is it possible to be ultra creative and not be an artist, or to be an artist without possessing any creativity? When a child is created, are its parents then creative? Is the child art? A photo is snapped on an iPhone and edited to a striking sepia tone on a free app... creativity? Someone downloads music software, then drags and drops their very own selection of loops to a player, hits the spacebar, and music emerges from the computer.  Is this creativity or more like birth, sans the beauty? These are questions that come to mind. 

My personal definition of creativity has become very blurry in the last decade or so, and I don’t expect that it will refocus itself anytime soon. It seems that egalitarian creativity has become a new truth, and it’s sheer folly to expect mankind to redefine the word in the name of justice for at least a hundred years or so. An apology to my fellow man, but we know how we are. This poor old word is failing to mean anything and, though it’s a noble and worthy cause to revive it, the result would inevitably be only as good as our iPhones would provide. Maybe it’s best to wait for the iPhone 6, or what I’m sure will be the even greater, iPhone 7. 

Bottom line: without some creativity your food is bland, your house is boring, your music library came complete with your iPod and your sex life sucks… but your children are still beautiful. What a world."

Bill Bartolotta — Bill is the principal of esam l.l.c., a firm that delivers mighty solutions through multiple mediums. In addition, he keeps awake by doing creative direction/stage design for Tedx Midwest and Chicago Ideas Week and is creative advisor to the Museum of Contemporary Art’s events and entertainment.  He’s also a badass musician.

"5 on creativity—I attempt to say them as me wishing i offer them differently enough to be worthy of someone’s time to read them: 1. Creativity is an urge to express one’s singular understanding of a soul or of a specific incident whether person creature plant mineral or other art is a byproduct of a successful urge delivery. 2. Ion charges for creativity impression aspiration perception conception 3. Assuming creativity—who we are is our best gift to the universe—our best gift from the universe—we may choose who we are—igniting our intention to seek the multitudes within us accepting intuition while listening to the multitudes imagining the possibilities we may evolve to acting upon those which unfold our purpose lead us to understanding ourselves—understanding who we are offers the best of our best gift to the universe—understanding who we are is the best of our gift from the universe—acting on who we are allows us the opportunity to consciously bring our genius to enjoy each and every day which in turn extends joy to all. 4. Method of creativity express do not inform. 5. Secret of creativity good working thoughts exceed the mysteries of faith.

SANDRO — A photographer and filmmaker whose editorial work has been featured in The New Yorker, Time, Forbes, Wired, GQ and Newsweek, and winner of the Saatchi and Saatchi Best New Director Award at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity. Nikon gave him a new camera to test and told him to put it through its paces to see what it could do. Here it is:  http://vimeo.com/36345294 

"Creativity to me is like a heart beat, without it your dead!"

Jon Langford — A Welsh expatriate residing in Chicago, Jon is a musician (Mekons, Waco Brothers) a Bloodshot Records recording artist and a painter. 

"Sometimes great ideas just fall out of the sky, songs appear in a matter of moments fully realized almost like somebody else wrote them but you'd be a fool to sit around waiting for that to happen. The creative process is hard work, a constant and rigorous conversation or physical interaction with the people and ideas in the world around you. Shun all solitary navel gazing. There are always tricks and techniques to get creative muscles to flex and when the juices flow the faucets may not be easy to shut off. Keep a pencil by the side of your bed."

Jonny Stax — Founder and president of Jonny Stax, Inc. His primary interest is supporting people in the creation process of new businesses, art works, social justice campaigns, and educational curriculum. Clients include Chicago Children's Theatre, Test Positive Aware Network, Chicago Department of Public Health and Chicago Public Schools.

"I think it's important to look at the root of creativity, which is creation. The creation process is making something new out of what exists. This happens in every field and not just the arts. I see actions as either creation, execution, or evaluation or making something new, making something happen again, or learning from something that was made."

Don Hall — Storyteller, cultural organizer, events producer, provocateur, podcaster, actor, director.

"Creativity is a habit. The unicorn dust theory of creative thinking is that if you clear your mind and wait, inspiration will come. Which is horseshit and merely fodder for self-help books. There is no new idea on the planet so making the combinations happen as a habitual practice guarantees that eventually you will see inspiration in the constant wash of crap. Diamonds in the rough; needles in the haystack.

Jason Vincent — Executive chef/co-owner Giant, Chicago  

"Creativity can be measured by the life cycle of a cronut. Or, more specifically, by the life cycle of the idea of a cronut. You have a moderately cool idea, the right people say that it's a better than average idea, the masses say that it's brilliant, the universe continues to exist when your next moderately cool idea is moderately cool. My point isn't to hate on cronuts... I'm just saying that creativity is the one drug that you need a host and a partner for.  If you're creative and alone, who gives a shit? You need someone else to tell you that what you've created is amazing or else you won't want to do it again. But, when a few people tell you that what you're doing is great... All the common sense in the world won't help you. No matter how many little angels appear on your shoulder to tell you that "It could be better. It's not your best work. It sucks."  That little fucking devil telling you not to worry about it. What's next? What's new? Creativity is a PR stunt. I'd rather see the forest."

Ian McDonald — Musician, multi instrumentalist, songwriter, producer, founding member of King Crimson and Foreigner. McDonald wrote In the Court of the Crimson King and 21st Century Schizoid Man, both revolutionary for their time. The sax in T. Rex’s Bang a Gong? That’s Ian also. The guy virtually invented a genre of music with a few of his friends. A huge influence on me musically, it’s been an honor to work with and call him friend.

"Creativity is discovery: finding something that wasn’t there before..."

Mike Nagrant — Chicago food writer and critic, contributor to the James Beard award-winning Alinea cookbook.

"Creativity is mostly about discipline, the discipline to sit down, the discipline to think, the discipline to avoid doing stuff other people have done a hundred times. There's not as much genius in creativity as there is the mark of really hard work."

JC Brooks — Lead singer of Bloodshot Records soul band JC Brooks and the Uptown Sounds and a trained actor. Here’s their excellent cover of the Wilco classic I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.

"For me, creativity is a really specific mind-space that it can sometimes be hard to enter. When I'm there, I'm constantly inspired and I can apply my creativity to almost any discipline, but when I'm not, my challenge is trying to find an in-road to it—almost like a self-hypnosis or guided meditation, but it can be tricky and doesn't always take. I guess my biggest challenge sometimes is just being okay with waiting for the state of creativity to settle into/onto (?) me again without pushing too hard to get there. If I really push for it I just get frustrated and pretty-much insure that I won't get there. This all only applies when I'm working alone. When I'm working with a partner or in a group it tends to come more easily."

Subha Das — Associate Professor of Chemistry, Carnegie Mellon University, creator of The Kitchen Chemistry Sessions, a course that uses food and molecular cuisine to teach the concepts of chemistry and science.

"Creativity is the ability to conceive and realize the juxtaposition or combination of disparate things in a new, often unexpected way. The creative concept or act is spontaneous or organic but (I believe) arises from and belies at least a fair amount of mastery over what is traditional or the norm."

John Sinclair — Poet, writer, political activist and Radio Free Amsterdam disk jockey (where he resides). Sinclair managed the MC5 and led the White Panther Party. John Lennon wrote a song about him when he was sent to prison for giving two joints to an undercover cop. 

"I just try to do the best I can with what the spirits give me to work with."

Jason Brock — Award-winning writer, editor, filmmaker, composer, artist.

"In its most essential form, creativity is making the divine out of the mundane. It is taking the fundamental life force of the human spirit and resolving that unfocused energy into something akin to the spiritual. Shamans were often catalysts of this nature in pre-religious contexts. In more organized societies, religion has attempted to channel energy of this nature with decidedly mixed results, often heaping upon the creative impulse the added burdens of castigation and humiliation, lest the individual attempt to take their (rightful) place amongst the gods.

Just as one need not believe in a godhead to live a moral and righteous life, one can be a creative without the insufferable tyranny of an organized gathering of impotents taking umbrage at every word written, every stroke painted, every dish prepared, every frame captured.  

We are the authors of our lives and the masters of the final outcome, not the politicians or religious leaders of the moment. To understand that takes courage, passion, skill, talent and inspiration, otherwise we are all doomed, in the words of Thoreau, to lead "lives of quiet desperation." And then the grave, followed by the unknown.  

Why not take one's life and steer it, rather than listen to the protestations of less valiant persons hiding from the possible?"

Karen Page & Andrew Dornenburg — Authors and winners of two James Beard Awards for The Flavor Bible and Becoming a Chef. Here’s a link to an interview I did with them a few years ago.

"People describe a certain dish as "creative," when what they really mean is "eccentric" or "unusual." Are fruit-flavored caviar-like spheres really creative? We'd argue that true creativity not only expands the boundaries of what came before it, but does so in a way that adds value. 

In summation I think it’s safe to say that a creative’s worldview is different than most. One can do worse than having an imagination with no boundaries or doing the best with what the spirits give you to work with. Lots of golden perspectives here. May they inspire you to create your next masterpiece (or three). And don’t forget to keep a pencil by your bed.

***

Alan Lake is a chef, musician, writer, reprobate and lover of all things beautiful and delicious. Author of The Garlic Manifesto and the soon to be published Home Cookin'. He’s also won numerous awards, professional competitions and distinctions. Friends describe him as talented, tough, comical and egotistical with a mushy center that often smells of garlic. He views his food as he does his music and writing, and has been known to bust a pout if subpar in any way.

[opedguy]

Chinese Spy Balloon Drifts Over U.S.

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Feb. 3, 2023.--Drifting over parts of the United States at 50,000 feet, including over U.S. nuclear silos in Montana, an unidentified Chinese Foreign Object raised red flags in the Pentagon, not buying the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] explanation that the massive object was monitoring weather patterns.  President Joe Biden, 80, was informed Feb. 1, deciding to let the UFO continue what the Chinese government said was an aimless path, concluding that it couldn’t pick up significant intel.  When the so called mammoth balloon, two school buses in length and girth, drifted over Montan’s Malmstrom Air Force Base housing nuclear warheads, 69-year-old Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and 64-year-old Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Miley took notice.  Austin and Miley cautioned Biden about shooting down the spy balloon, fearing the debris field could endanger U.S. citizens.

U.S.-Chinese relations have been at lowest level in decades, cautioning Biden about taking any aggressive action.  Biden infuriated 69-year-old Chinese President Xi Jinping Sept. 23, 2022 saying he would defend Taiwan with U.S. troops in the event China tried to seize the democratic island of 40 million by force.  Secretary of State Antony Blinken, 60, postponed his trip to Beijing, calling Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Li to reschedule.  Chinese officials insisted the airship was a weather balloon, accidentally drifting out of its trajectory due to the Jet Stream. Hard to imagine after flying over Montana heading eastbound, there’s much population to be concerned about should the Pentagon decide to shoot down the balloon.  U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, said the Pentagon wanted to keep communication lines open without shooting down the spy ship.

Talking about the balloon’s limited navigation undermine the fact that the balloon continues to track its way into the Midwest, also home to several military bases.  “The idea that Communist China has a spy balloon headed towards Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri right now—the home of the Stealth Bomber—is absolutely unbelievable,” said Sen. Eric Schmidt (R-Mo.).  “No American should accept this. I don’t,” said Schmidt, encouraging Biden to shoot it down.  Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, refuses to say whether there were any plans to shoot down the Chinese spy ship. Ryder said he didn’t think the balloon posed a threat to U.S. national security.  If the U.S. pulled the same stunt over Beijing, the CCP wouldn’t hesitate one second to shoot it down.  Doing nothing sends a strong message to Beijing about the extent of Biden’s and Pentagon’s hesitancy.

No one believes the CCP explanation of a weather balloon gone adrift because of the Jet Stream.  Traveling from the Peoples Republic of China, the balloon had plenty of random drift to veer away from the U.S. mainland.  China’s account of wind patters AKA the Westerlies was entirely feasible to Dan Jaffe, professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of Washington.  Jaffe doesn’t know the extent of the GPS navigational system on the behemoth spy ship, now heading toward other strategic U.S. military bases.  White House officials are flummoxed over what to do, knowing that diplomatic relations with China are near the breaking point over Taiwan among other things.  White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierred said that “the presence of this balloon in our air space . . . is a clear violation of our sovereignty as well as international law and it is unacceptable this occurred.”

Blinken and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman both protested to a top Chinese embassy official Wednesday, one day before the White House went public with the event.  Blinken and Sherman hoped that the spy ship incident would open up discussions about Taiwan, human rights, China’s claims in the South China Sea, North Korea, Russia’s War in Ukraine, trade policy and climate.  How could Blinken think that the U.S. has leverage on Beijing to discuss anything other than why Beijing sent an unlawful spy ship over the United States?  Whatever other issues exist with Beijing, they’re not going to be salvaged because the U.S. didn’t shoot down the Chinese spy balloon.  China wants the U.S. to stop meddling in its internal affairs especially over Taiwan and what happens in the South China Sea.  Blinken already provoked Beijing over human right abuses.

Failing to shoot down the Chinese spy ship speaks volumes about the current state of diplomacy with Communist China.  Biden brought the two nations to near blows over violating the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, requiring the U.S. to recognize only one China, the one in Beijing, but, more importantly, end the 1954 Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty.  Biden told Xi he would defend Taiwan with U.S. troops.  What kind of world does Blinken live in thinking the Chinese weather balloon has anything to do with the Ukraine War?  Failing to act on the spy ship tells the CCP all they need to know under Biden’s leadership:  That the U.S. is bluffing about military action.  Former President Donald Trump, 76, has said repeatedly that foreign adversaries do not respect Biden.  When it comes to a Chinese spy ship, Biden had only one appropriate option, to shoot down the Unknown Chinese spy ship.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

[ravenkings]

An Open Letter to Peter Thiel

Nick Denton, 05/26/16, gawker.com

Peter Thiel,

Nearly a decade ago, after you had opened up to friends and colleagues, a gay writer for Gawker shared an item with the readers of Valleywag, a section for news and gossip about the rich and powerful of Silicon Valley. “Peter Thiel, the smartest VC in the world, is gay,” wrote Owen Thomas. “More power to him.”

And more power did indeed come to you. Your investments in Facebook and other companies have given you a net worth of more than $2 billion. You have tapped some of that fortune to support gay groups such as HomoCon. It is now clear that gay people are everywhere, not just in industries such as entertainment, but at the pinnacles of Silicon Valley power.

I thought we had all moved on, not realizing that, for someone who aspires to immortality, nine years may not be such a long time as it seems to most of us. Max Levchin, your fellow founder at Paypal, told me back in 2007 you were concerned about the reaction, not in Silicon Valley, but among investors in your hedge fund from less tolerant places such as Saudi Arabia. He also warned of the retribution you would exact if a story was published about your personal life.

Your revenge has been served well, cold and (until now) anonymously. You admit you have been planning the punishment of Gawker and its writers for years, and that you have so far spent $10 million to fund litigation against the company. Charles Harder, the Hollywood plaintiff’s lawyer who has marshaled your legal campaign, is representing not just the wrestler Hulk Hogan on your behalf, but two other subjects of stories in suits against Gawker and its editorial staff.

You told the New York Times that you are motivated by friends who had their lives ruined by Gawker coverage, and that your funding is a “philanthropic” project to help other “victims” of negative stories. Let us run through a few examples so that people can actually read the articles you find so illegitimate, and make their own judgment about their newsworthiness.

Sean Parker, a partner in your Founders Fund and an early backer of Facebook, is one of the friends who was covered extensively on Gawker’s Valleywag. Those stories, some of them by me, helped define the colorful character played by Justin Timberlake in The Social Network, the David Fincher movie about the founding of Facebook. Parker was stung more recently by criticism from his neighbors of the disruption to 10th St. in Manhattan when the street was dug up to get a Fios line to Bacchus House, the famous party venue where Parker had been planning to live. Valleywag covered that story, as well as his lavish and controversial wedding in the redwoods near Big Sur.

Hulk Hogan was the first client represented by Charles Harder in a suit against Gawker. As we now know, the famous wrestler and entertainer sued over snippets of a sex tape apparently in order to shut down reporting of a racist rant against a black man dating his daughter.

Ashley Terrill, also represented by Harder, is suing Gawker for $10 million for defamation. She is a reporter who offered information about the conflict between the founders of two dating apps, Tinder and Bumble, who herself became part of the story after claiming she was being harassed and surveilled by agents of Tinder co-founder Whitney Wolfe.

Shiva Ayyadurai is a Massachusetts entrepreneur who says he invented email—about a decade after email was actually invented. A story on Gizmodo, Gawker’s tech property, said straight out that his claims were false, as did the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Represented also by the lawyer you hired, Ayyadurai is suing Gawker for $35 million for defamation, though not the other news organizations that made the same point.

Peter Thiel—that is, you. Yes, Gawker has often been critical. Our writers have derided your views on female suffrage, mocked the libertarian separatist vision of offshore seasteads free of government interference, and questioned some of the businesses you have backed. There is much more. They don’t find you very likable.

I can see how irritating Gawker would be to you and other figures in the technology industry. For Silicon Valley, the media spotlight is a relatively recent phenomenon. Most executives and venture capitalists are accustomed to dealing with acquiescent trade journalists and a dazzled mainstream media, who will typically play along with embargoes, join in enthusiasm for new products, and hew to the authorized version of a story. They do not have the sophistication, and the thicker skins, of public figures in other older power centers such as New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

And I can see how tempting it would be to use Silicon Valley’s most abundant resource, a vast fortune, against the harsh words of the writers of a small New York media company. We have our devices; you have yours.

Among the million posts published by Gawker and other properties since the company was founded, there have undoubtedly been occasions we overstepped the line. In offsetting the fawning coverage of tech luminaries and others, sometimes our stories swing too far for my taste toward snark.

But this vindictive decade-long campaign is quite out of proportion to the hurt you claim. Your plaintiff’s lawyer, Charles Harder, has sued not just the company, but individual journalists.

A.J. Daulerio, author of the 2012 story on Hulk Hogan, is out of work and unable to pay the $100,000 in punitive damages awarded by the jury. In the Ayyadurai and Terrill complaints, Harder cynically paints author Sam Biddle as an abuser of narcotics, basing this claim on Biddle’s own writing about his struggle with anxiety and depression, and the physician-prescribed medication he takes to treat his mood disorders. John Cook, our executive editor, is accused of negligent hiring and retention.

Peter, this is twisted. Even were you to succeed in bankrupting Gawker Media, the writers you dislike, and me, just think what it will mean.

The world is already uncomfortable with the unaccountable power of the billionaire class, the accumulation of wealth in Silicon Valley, and technology’s influence over the media.

You are a board member of Facebook, which is under congressional investigation after our site Gizmodo reported on the opaque and potentially biased way it decides what news sources are seen by its billions of users.

Now you show yourself as a thin-skinned billionaire who, despite all the success and public recognition that a person could dream of, seethes over criticism and plots behind the scenes to tie up his opponents in litigation he can afford better than they.

You were the basis for the affectless venture capitalist in the HBO show, Silicon Valley; with this diabolical decade-long scheme for revenge, you are redefining yourself as a comic-book villain.

This story will play out in the press and the courts. Both are adversarial forums, in which each side selects facts and quotes to undermine the reputation and credibility of the other. We are confident of our arguments on the newsworthiness of our Hogan story, once it reaches the appeals court. Your main proxy, Hulk Hogan, has his.

We, and those you have sent into battle against us, have been stripped naked, our texts, online chats and finances revealed through the press and the courts; in the next phase, you too will be subject to a dose of transparency. However philanthropic your intention, and careful the planning, the details of your involvement will be gruesome.

I’m going to suggest an alternative approach. The best regulation for speech, in a free society, is more speech. We each claim to respect independent journalism, and liberty. We each have criticisms of the other’s methods and objectives. Now you have revealed yourself, let us have an open and public debate.

[...]

i wish this website spent more time taking the piss out of peter thiel

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week - June 20, 2022

🏳️‍🌈 — Happy Pride Month! Let’s start this week with some great news coming from Tokyo.

1. Tokyo Passes Law to Recognize Same-Sex Partnerships

The Tokyo metropolitan government on Wednesday adopted legislation recognizing same-sex partnerships, which will extend some rights that apply to married heterosexual couples.

It also reflects changing attitudes toward the LGBT community. A poll by the Asahi newspaper last year found that 65 percent of voters nationwide supported same-sex marriage, up from 41 percent in 2015.

Japan is the only country in the G7 largest economies not to recognize same-sex marriages.

2. Extinct ‘fantastic giant tortoise’ found alive on the Galápagos Islands

Believed to be extinct for more than a century, a rare species of giant tortoise is in fact still alive.

Scientists assumed that the chelonoidis phantasticus had died out more than a century ago. The only known specimen was discovered in 1906. But in 2019, Princeton researchers discovered a lone female tortoise on the island that hinted that the species might live on. Last week, they finally proved that the two specimens are related.

3. Groundbreaking treatment for HIV/AIDS developed by research team ‘with just a single vaccine dose’

People with AIDS might soon have the option to be treated with just a single vaccine dose, according to a new study from Tel Aviv University that shows the potential impact of a new and unique AIDS/HIV treatment. The peer-reviewed study was led by Dr. Adi Barzel and PhD student Alessio Nehmad.

The goal of the research team was to genetically engineer type B white blood cells inside the body of a person with AIDS. Once modified, the blood cells would be able to secrete neutralizing antibodies against the HIV virus responsible for AIDS, eradicating it from the patient’s body.

4. Rare sun bears rescued from animal traffickers get health checkup

Heartwarming footage shows how two rare bears that were poached as cubs by animal traffickers were given a thorough health checkup.

“Sun Bears Bopha and Jamran are former victims of the illegal wildlife trade, but found their forever homes at Perth Zoo after being rescued by Free the Bears.”

5. The New York Public Library is giving away 500,000 books for free for keeps

The library is giving away 500,000 books for free to kids, teens and families at all of its branch locations in an effort to help folks build their at-home libraries “and strength the city’s ecosystem of learning,”

All you really have to do to get your hands on some copies is to show up at your neighborhood library and use your card — or sign up for one.

6. Alaska Airlines flight attendant proposes to pilot girlfriend on Pride-themed plane

Veronica Rojas, a flight attendant for Alaska Airlines, surprised her girlfriend with an unforgettable wedding proposal on a flight to Los Angeles. During the flight, Rojas got down on one knee and in true flight attendant-fashion, used the PA system to propose to Moncayo.

7. Disabled teen completes 84-mile trek of Hadrian’s Wall in wheelchair

Plucky youngster Brynn Hauxwell, 17, who has autism, ADHD, severe asthma, and fixed ankle contractures, took on the historic trail on the border between England and Scotland as part of a charity challenge.

The arduous journey saw Brynn and his team traveling around eight to nine miles a day and at times going as slow as one mile an hour. The resilient teen has raised over $13,000 for Ability Shetland, a charity that supports disabled people to unlock their full potential in all areas of life, and which also provided the mountain trike for the expedition.

. . .

That's it for this week. Until next week, You can follow me on twitter. Also, I have a newsletter :)

Subscribe here to receive a collection of wholesome news every week in your inbox :D

[preemshots]

the definitive post of WHERE IN THE WORLD IS JOHNNY SILVERHAND’S BODY?

AKA the post of HERE’S WHY I WANT TO BELIEVE WE ARE GONNA GET JOHNNY’S BODY BACK IN DLC. 

buckle up, gamers. it's time for some lore. this is a very long post. 

warning: this will contain a million spoilers. both for details of multiple game endings, a wee bit of the “where’s johnny” comic, and the cyberpunk RED book. if you want a sparknotes version this is the post for you. my main source here is the cyberpunk RED book as well as as some references to the cyberpunk 2077 world book to cross examine the lore. 

i have no idea if someone has made this post before or what anybody else has been finding in their own lore diving. this is just me documenting my own findings from the sources i’ve been using.

it would be disingenuous not to preface this with the ways in which cyberpunk 2077's telling of the arasaka assault differ from the version told in the TTRPG books. the books =/= the game. pondsmith acknowledges in the intro of RED that this is a bridge between the old cyberpunk world and the new world of cyberpunk 2077. 

we also know that johnny's an unreliable narrator and his memories presented to V are often different than real events. but on top of that we don't know if the reason why many elements are changed is simply CDPR editing/adjusting/condensing the storyline for their own canon, or if it's due to johnny's construct being manipulated by outside influences such as arasaka.

some of the main differences you need to know from cyberpunk RED canon:

in 2023 johnny doesn't bring the nukes to arasaka tower. he's solely there to free alt.

johnny and rogue and their team from the atlantis/the aldecaldos are actually hired by morgan blackhand. 

morgan blackhand is the one who plants the nuke, unbeknownst to many members of the team. 

morgan blackhand promptly disappears after this event and no one knows if he's alive or dead. (claire confirms this fact to jackie and v before the heist in 2077 canon)

johnny's silver cybernetic arm is its own character, separate from himself. it seems to have a mind of its own and johnny interacts with it and/or is influenced by it.

when he, spider murphy, rogue, thompson, shaitan, and a team of los lobos from the aldecaldos (who are there in place of santiago, as he’s busy as the leader of the aldecaldos at this point) are attacked by adam smasher, johnny and his arm actively choose to draw smasher's fire in a deliberately suicidal move. smasher downs him instantly, but the distraction is enough to also save his friends.

spider murphy shoves a mysterious chip in johnny's dying head as they escape that alt had downloaded to her a long time ago.

johnny's body is later "rumoured" to have been retrieved from the rubble by a full-body borg groupie that was a first responder to the ground zero of AHQ and then hidden away in a nearby garage.

here comes the political lore that makes my eyes cross, so hopefully this accurately summarizes it: the 4th corporate war begins to end. arasaka is ultimately blamed by the NUSA government to have nuked themselves in a political move to protect their secrets and promptly banished from the USA. arasaka denies this all the way back to japan, then eventually returns to “liberate” night city in the unification wars.

but what the public doesn't know is that kei, saburo's oldest son, had actually hidden an EVEN BIGGER MORE DEVASTATING NUKE at the bottom of the tower to, well, do exactly what they were being accused of doing, even though blackhand was the one who actually dropped the smaller nuke on them. and luckily the bigger one didn’t go off.

arasaka tries to find their nuke in the rubble so they don't get in even bigger trouble, only to discover that it was moved and hidden away to... surprise! a nearby garage.

to compare with 2077:

in RED: we have no johnny loading the nukes into the elevator. no johnny being carried off the premises. no meeting saburo. no johnny getting soulkilled.

in 2077: there's a parallel moment to RED's version of events right after johnny uploads "liberator" from alt's old cyberdeck with spider's help into the arasaka mainframe in saburo's office. adam smasher comes for him as he's trying to escape, knocking him off the second floor of the atrium into the rock garden below.

visually this is the same atrium we always meet alt in in cyberspace and also where V meets johnny for the first time. hmmm. meaningful, perhaps.

not unlike what happens in RED, johnny unloads a clip into smasher at that point, but from there the scene instantly cuts to him running to the roof attempting to board the AV with rogue, where smasher shoots him down again. it’s possible johnny actually died to smasher in the atrium and we have some fabricated memories going on. 

either way, in 2077, we lose the character beat of johnny dying for his friends, and the current-day general consensus from rogue and others is that he’s perpetually a selfish asshole with ulterior motives. 

and, just to wrap up the politics of it all: morgan blackhand is rumoured to have been secretly hired by the militech-backed NUSA government to help end the 4th corporate war by... you guessed it! nuking arasaka.

HERE'S WHERE JOHNNY'S BODY ENDS UP IN CYBERPUNK RED (SPARKNOTES VERSION):

RED ends with a story called "black dog" set in 2045. black dog is the last song johnny recorded right before the assault on arasaka tower, but the final copy is a bootleg copy of the song and only a fraction.

we're introduced to a fun group of cybernetic-enhanced characters that represent the classes in the TTRPG and based on/designed by real people in collaboration with CDPR.

this group includes trace santiago, santiago's son, who is a media that is curious about the mystery surrounding the circumstances around his father and the arasaka bombing. 

just connecting lore here: if you talk to saul at the aldecaldo camp in 2077, he confirms that santiago was killed for his involvement with johnny and the bombing, something that rogue and johnny reference when they talk about their now-dead crew from the afterlife, and in chippin in, santiago is a friend that johnny lists as someone he had disappointed.

the group sets off to find any info about black dog, and meet up with a full conversion chrome woman named samantha in a garage who is blatantly a johnny silverhand fangirl. trace discovers she has a history with johnny, having rescued him from a studio fire at some point in 2015 and speculates she could have been a groupie also.

she mysteriously has a more complete recording of black dog, though not perfect, and offers to trade it for a service: she wants the group to transport a large crate to a facility in new mexico, asking them not to open it.

shit goes down. evidently everyone in night city wants to kill them for this package once it starts moving. eventually they open it. it's the arasaka nuke that had been hidden and never went off, emblazoned with warnings.

trace inquires about the circumstances surrounding the arasaka assault with an older member of the lobos who had been present with rogue and johnny. the man mentions that it was weird, because morgan blackhand organized the whole thing and then ran off immediately with a mysterious bag that we now know contained the nuke. 

michiko arasaka intercepts the gang, explaining the situation around the bigger nuke, that other factions in arasaka want to utilize it for their own goals (presumably hanako and yorinobu) and her father's legacy, that she feels responsible for. she escorts them to new mexico so that the nuke can be dismantled once and for all.

they meet up with a woman named angel in new mexico that takes the crate from them, at a facility that specializes in nuclear material. she gives the group the full recording of "black dog". the group leaves successful.

this woman is also a johnny silverhand stan. once alone, she calls up samantha, who says, "i promised i would get him to you in the end" and reveals that she had already gutted/dismantled the original nuke and discarded the material into the bay.

angel opens the "nuke" to reveal a hidden cryochamber, and greets the face of the person inside with, "hello, my love."

i mean, holy shit. okay! so that’s DEFINITELY johnny’s body. cool!

now let’s go into all the references to this story in the actual game of cyberpunk 2077 that SUGGEST we are going to pursue this story AND johnny's body since it’s such a HOT FUCKING TOPIC. 

and i know many of the following can just be considered easter eggs. but my personal interpretation of this game is that it has a really delightful way of intentionally glossing over important story details—and not by ONLY putting them in shards (which people tend to dislike because lol reading) but by also hiding them in plain sight, constantly deferring to V's own ignorance, distracting us with shallower, shinier things, encouraging us to actually play as the fool hero of this story. 

so here's the fun list of “””evidence”””:

this one’s a reach, but fun. in the initial arasaka assault flashback in 2023: we can interact with the groupies at kerry's show as johnny. samantha doesn't appear to be present, but the first person and groupie you can encounter in the flashback has a passing resemblance to angel in that she has a cybernetic arm.

in chippin' in, where we go to johnny's "grave" in the oil fields: if we are to take the 2077 retelling of events as truth, the story could instead be pretty easily be changed that samantha procured his body from there.

mike pondsmith, who wrote these stories and created the TTRPG can be heard on the radio narrating various conspiracy theories. and sure, these can just be easter eggs, intended to reference the differences between the TTRPG lore and the game, so take it with a grain of salt:

johnny. bro. tell him it was morgan blackhand

to top it all off, mike also directly references the actual WORSE nuke arasaka had hid in another arasaka conspiracy: 

SPOILERS FOR GAME ENDINGS AHEAD.

in the rogue ending of the game we discover rogue has a son. it's possible her son is trace (edit: nvm NOT LIKELY, since in RED’s black dog story rogue is listed separately from santiago’s mom in conversation) OR possibly one of the other characters. she tells her son to "pull over and look at the stars" or something along those lines. maybe just details, so that screams nomad to me.

rogue also has a photo of herself and johnny with mike pondsmith in her apartment/office in the afterlife. i initially read this as a delightful cameo but it also can mean mike the CHARACTER knew johnny and rogue, and rogue therefore has some kind of relationship to him and these conspiracies on the radio. and why the fuck not make him a full on character? we have a smattering of streamers and personalities already integrated into quests in the game. the creator of all this should be no exception. fuck it! 

rogue and johnny constantly dance around this accusation of her “selling out”. it’s repeated over and over that she and adam smasher worked for "the same people". i'm beginning to wonder if this wasn't meant to imply only arasaka since smasher mysteriously disappeared after the AHQ assault in 2023 and returned to SOMETIMES take jobs from arasaka... but possibly morgan blackhand and/or by extension, the NUSA or any other greater influences. (like nightcorp? we still don’t know where all this shit with nightcorp/the peralezes/sandra dorsett’s discovery about their research into mind control is gonna go) this also doesn’t account for the multiple factions inside arasaka with VERY different motives. 

morgan blackhand and adam smasher are rivals in the TTRPG, a role that appears to be at least partially filled by johnny instead in 2077. in relation to the arasaka factions, it’s worth nothing that smasher specifically works for yorinobu as his bodyguard at the beginning of the game, in part i assume because yorinobu is avoiding working with arasaka security details as he stole the relic and is plotting against his father. he is then promoted to head of security by yorinobu when yorinobu assumes power. 

in the ending as you work your way through arasaka tower with rogue and shaitan and johnny, rogue remarks:

michiko at this point in 2077 is the leader of the more “liberal” faction within arasaka, so it’s possible we’re seeing that while rogue and smasher work for the same people/family, they couldn’t be more different. 

you can also encounter rogue more than once on the phone fighting with wakako, who has apparently crossed her. wakako also seems to have her own ulterior motives and works mainly with the arasaka-backed tyger claws. she notably gives v/takemura the parade security info for “play it safe” without asking for anything in return, enabling hanako’s kidnapping. my theory is that yorinobu intentionally leaked the parade info to her to give away to put hanako in danger or at least continue to destabilize arasaka. 

in the takemura/devil ending of the game, there is a point where violence breaks out at the arasaka board room meeting when yorinobu-allied security open fire on them. one of the only people that survives along with hanako is michiko arasaka, who was at odds with hanako’s decisions, but  very involved in the preceding discussion.

and now for is my favorite detail! in the afterlife AT ALL POINTS IN THE GAME (but it can only really be inspected in the rogue ending when we are allowed behind the bar), we can find a photo of the squad that transported johnny's body from samantha to angel on the shelf below johnny's tequila, of them hanging out in front of the afterlife sign:  

this implies rogue has some relationship with them, and sentimentality, if we're to judge by the placement. she maybe even took the picture. i don't know, it's charming, it could be all easter eggs. who fucking knows.

either way, rogue and these kids both have in common that they worked with or at least interacted with michiko arasaka. 

and you know what my final evidence is? more wishful thinking! black dog plays on the radio in game. we got a full recorded version of it by refused. if not an oversight, i go ahead and take it to mean the final version was finally released to the public by those kids that were looking for it. 

i haven’t the slightest idea how this is gonna wrap up in future DLC. who has johnny’s body now in 2077, decades after it was dropped off in mexico? what is the truth?? where the fuck is morgan blackhand?? from the devil ending, we know that arasaka stole jackie’s body and put his soul into mikoshi, so the idea that they would just toss johnny’s corpse has always been laughable. the “where’s johnny?” promotional comic was even about thompson unsuccessfully trying to find johnny’s body. i know i am biased here but i cannot fathom all this talk about johnny’s body ending off with us NOT finding it, whether it’s just to bury it, shove johnny’s engram back in it, make out with it, or WHATEVER.

if you made it through this slog, congrats. thanks for reading! 

[gothicprep]

Meditations on True Crime: A Very Long Post

In around February of this year, I was researching a potential video related to how true crime media portrays websleuths, contrasted against their efficacy in each specific case. The introduction was a brief primer on the genre’s evolution, beginning with its general association with low-budget LifeTime films, to a hobby with more dignity than that. I remember finding an article talking about Serial, and there was some commentary in there from another large true crime podcast host.

I didn’t think it was particularly useful for my purposes, but it said something to the effect of “true crime as a hobby can help women reconcile the trauma related to being in a world that is so hostile to us.” I rolled my eyes at it. It seemed dishonestly saccharine, like it was giving a sort of post-hoc legitimacy to just enjoying whodunnits. I didn’t think about it again for around seven months after I’d read it.

One of the subjects that I intended to talk about was Elisa Lam’s death and the online reaction to it. The story was adapted into a Netflix series a few months prior, and I was freshly reminded of how poorly it all sat with me. If you aren’t familiar with her name, she disappeared in Los Angeles’s Cecil Hotel in 2013, and her disappearance went viral after the respective police department release footage of her behaving strangely in an elevator. The case attained quick viral status and extensive discussion, due to the nature of the video and the hotel’s morbid history. When her naked body was discovered in a rooftop water tank a few weeks later, speculation exploded. But an autopsy isn’t an immediate followup, and the online sleuths would lose themselves to their imaginations in the time between. Many people wanted the murder solved, but many let their speculation fly off the rails. Shady hotel coverups. Metal musician murderers. Fear of the homeless. Ghosts. Demons. Government tuberculosis research. The gang was all there.

If you weren’t active online back then, it’s difficult to properly convey how huge this all was. Everyone was expecting Elisa to have been murdered. Iron-clad. Beyond the shadow of a doubt. She wasn’t. Her death was ruled an accident. She had a severe case of bipolar disorder and she wasn’t taking her medication. The severity of her illness was also not previously disclosed to the public. The working theory is that she experienced a manic episode with psychotic features, climbed in the tank in this state, to eventually strip out of her clothes in late stage hypothermia and drown there. It’s a horrific and painful way to die. All that’s left of you is water contamination – insult to fatal injury.

People weren’t happy with this, but not out of any sympathy for Elisa. There was palpable rage from many who had been following the case. No, she was definitely murdered. No, her killer needs to be brought to justice. No, this isn’t the real story. I don’t like it. I’m not satisfied. There needs to be an ending better than this.

Tragedy isn’t exactly in the habit of being kind to us.

When news of Gabby Petito’s disappearance was spreading, I noticed a lot of similarities between hers and Elisa’s. A woman in her early 20s vanishes while traveling, under very unusual circumstances. Footage was released during both investigations, which portrayed these women in mentally vulnerable states. The story was viral online. People rifled through Gabby’s instagram in the same way they did with Elisa’s tumblr. Social media detectives established an inappropriate amount of investment. Everyone is sure of a specific outcome. The family deserves answers.

Let’s talk about answers for a second. I’d like you to spitball a comprehensive explanation for this one: how could something like this happen? I’m not looking for a “how” in terms of events or circumstances. In this case, this isn’t a question. It’s a protest of the unfairness of it all. My daughter. My sister. My friend. Someone who meant so much to me. It’s a prayer to a vacant sky. It’s not a question, it’s agony. Nothing shy of resurrection can feel like justice. Even if the case leads to a criminal trial and conviction, it does nothing to fill the void loss burns within us. There is no good answer, because there aren’t answers at all.

Let’s talk about ourselves for a second. I noticed many people draw parallels between what they’d seen on the bodycam footage and their own experience with abusive partners. “This could have been me.” Do you really think this is appropriate? Could have been, would have been – these are statements with hypothetical validity. It has nothing to do with you. To emotionally identify with someone does not evidence anything. You’re here. She’s gone. This isn’t about you. She isn’t in the position where she can co-sign anything you say. If she can’t speak for herself, don’t invoke her.

Let’s talk about true crime for a second. It’s funny how true crime marketed to men has a distinctly different texture than true crime marketed to women. The former seems to involve knocking the perpetrator down a peg. It portrays them as something worth our disgust and ridicule. The latter tends to foster emotional identification with the victim. Podcasts and other media in this category tend to be by women, for women, and generally discuss women. This story is presented as catharsis for women who see themselves as similar to them. This woman is no longer a person, but an idea. And it makes me think of that stupid article quote that I resent myself for not having bookmarked. This is reconciliation. These women, in their passing, can be a motivating factor for us to break up with that one dumbass guy. I’m so happy this was a wakeup call. I’m so happy that this made me think about my own experiences. I’m so happy that this did so much for me. Sure, someone actually died, but what is that when compared to my own self-actualization?

I made a comment on Twitter about how disgusted I was with how people spoke of Gabby in such an evasively self-interested way, and someone who likely was of no relation to her interjected with how the family deserved the truth. Truth? What truth? What peace will grisly details give them? Is there any meaningful difference between knowing your loved one died of murder or collapsed from exposure? Or are you just a nosey person who’s projected an inappropriate emotional dog in this fight? Do you want answers for her family, or for your own curiosity?

I really don’t trust shit like that, nor am I willing to give leniency to people who say such things. I think we’ve been conditioned to relate to dead women in a way that’s completely separate from who they actually were. Alive, they’re deep, multifaceted individuals, with an array of likes, dislikes, quirks, and endless little details. Dead, they’re a concept to serve a purpose. The purpose is generally a form of narrative catharsis. The creep gets thrown in prison. A woman’s abusive partner gets the comeuppance he deserves. The story needs a good ending. The story needs an ending that satisfies me. People aren’t stories. Life is not a novel.

The real trauma of others will never belong to you. This not your therapy tool or plaything. This is real pain that will never be theoretical for plenty of people. Know your place. Keep your distance. Don’t objectify the dead.

[uomo-accattivante]

Great article about Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter - a poker movie that’s not really a poker movie...

Some filmmakers write a hit movie and spend the ensuing years trying to escape its shadow. Paul Schrader never flinched. Forty-five years after his “Taxi Driver” script put him on the map, the writer-director has developed a body of work loaded with alienated anti-heroes compelled to violent and reckless extremes for the sake of a higher calling.

That includes “The Card Counter,” in which Oscar Isaac plays guilt-stricken Abu Ghraib vet William Tell, a man with a gambling addiction compelled to help the revenge-seeking son (Tye Sheridan) of a former colleague. Taking justice into his own hands, Isaac’s William Tell slithers through the Vegas strip in search of questionable salvation, not unlike a certain Vietnam vet named Travis Bickle did from the driver’s seat. As if to cement the comparisons, “The Card Counter” features Martin Scorsese as an executive producer, marking the first time the two men share a credit since 1999’s “Bringing Out the Dead.”

For Schrader, “Taxi Driver” comparisons are inevitable in all his work. “My tendency is to look for interesting occupational metaphors,” Schrader said in a recent interview. “‘Taxi Driver’ hit the bull’s eye of the zeitgeist and it doesn’t die. There’s no way I could’ve planned for that, but it does inform the stories I tell.”

At 75, Schrader continues to churn out movies much like his compatriot Scorsese, albeit on a much smaller scale. “The Card Counter” is the latest illustration of the secularized Christian dogma percolating through his work. “Our society doesn’t like to take responsibility for anything,” he said. “But I come from a culture where you’re responsible for everything. You come into the world soaked with guilt and you just get guiltier.” In his own prickly fashion, Schrader makes movies steeped in empathy for lost souls in search of redemption despite the daunting odds. “We’re all certainly capable of forgiveness,” he said, and chuckled. “Anyone who says otherwise is wrong.”

The “Taxi Driver” dilemma looms large in nearly all of Schrader’s work, from the dazzling high-stakes activism of “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” all the way through Ethan Hawke’s eco-conscious priest in “First Reformed.” While the latter, Oscar-nominated effort brought Schrader new fans, “The Card Counter” is an even more precise distillation of his aesthetic — a moody, philosophical drama about the vanity of the personal crusade.

Schrader, who has labeled his homegrown character studies as “man in the room” dramas, embraces the parallels as usual. “There is this kind of myth that the taxi driver was this friendly, joking kind of guy who was a character actor in movies,” he said. “But the reality is that it’s a very lonely job, and you’re trapped in a box for 60 hours a week.” He saw the same logic with gambling, a wayward profession generally depicted in the movies in the context of escapist romps, rather than the somber rituals that afflict most players. “I thought about the essence of playing cards every day, or sitting in front of a slot machine. It’s kind of zombie-like,” Schrader said. “You see commercials of people in casinos laughing. But it’s a pretty glum place. Today with slots you don’t even have to pull the lever. You just sit there and let the numbers roll.”

The gambling figure led Schrader to the bigger picture of his character’s conundrum. “I was wondering why someone would choose to live in that sort of purgatory,” he said. “He doesn’t want to be alive, but he can’t really be dead, either. What could cause that? It can’t be a simple crime, murder, or a family dispute. It has to be something unforgivable. And that was Abu Ghraib.”

After the fallout of that debacle, William did time in a military prison, and reenters society before the movie begins. That was a world the filmmaker wanted to understand in clearer terms. Though Schrader has received blowback for his controversial Facebook posts in the past, in this case, the platform was an asset: He used it to track down soldiers who had done time in the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, the only military prison in the U.S., to better understand the initial claustrophobic world that Tell endures, as well as the conflict between the justice he’s received and what he deserves. “This man has been punished by his government, set free, and paid his due, but he doesn’t feel that,” Schrader said. “What does he do then? How does he fill his time? That’s how it all began.”

Schrader himself toyed with gambling when he lived in Los Angeles early in his career, but soon gave it up. “I very quickly realized I was only interested in gambling if it was really dangerous and I didn’t want to expose myself to that kind of danger,” he said. Years later, though, the experience helped inform his story. “There is this whole fantasy of gambling movies from ‘The Cincinnati Kid’ to ‘California Split,’” Schrader said. “But poker is all about waiting. People will play 10 to 12 hours a day and two to three times a day, a hand will happen where two players both have chips. Now you’ve got a face-off. But that doesn’t happen very often. Most guys who are there are running the numbers, the probability.”

He envisioned “The Card Counter” as a repudiation of the traditional poker movie, which builds to the giddy release of a final tournament. When that moment arrives in the movie, Schrader takes the movie in a bleak, shocking new direction. “It’s not really a poker movie — that’s a red herring,” he said.

William is immersed in his casino journey when he encounters Cirk (Sheridan), the crazy-eyed son of another Abu Ghraib soldier who committed suicide. Cirk blames the soldiers’ former commander (Willem Dafoe), and hopes to loop William into the plan. Instead, the older man decides to take Cirk under his wing to talk him out of the act, which doesn’t prove so easy. In the process, the gambler forms a curious bond with La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), a gambling agent and pimp whose icy, relentless drive to make the most out of the poker circuit brings William some measure of companionship on his wayward journey.

It should come as no surprise that the “Girls Trip” breakout is nearly unrecognizable in the role of the calculated La Linda, which is also a distinctly Schraderish touch: From his work with Richard Pryor in 1978’s “Blue Collar” all the way through Cedric the Entertainer’s supporting turn in “First Reformed,” Schrader has made a habit of seeking out comedic actors willing to play against type. That’s partly opportunistic on his part. “They’re eager to do it because they want to expand their palette, so you can get them for a price,” Schrader said, chuckling again. “That’s necessary, given the kind of films I make.” But that’s not all: “They will always find a way to be interesting, even when they’re not getting a laugh.”

Which is not to say that the process comes easily to them. Haddish recently told the New York Times that Schrader had to coach her out of speaking in a comedic sing-song. The filmmaker put it in blunter terms. “On the first reading of the script we had, frankly, she wasn’t very good,” he said. “I told her to go back and read every single line without emotion. Then I said, ‘You’re not going to do that in front of the camera, but you can’t hit every line either. So let’s pick five or six lines you can hit where you get a smile or reaction.’ Quickly she got that it was a different rhythm.”

As for Isaac, whose disquieting turn suggests a maniac lingering just beneath the surface, Schrader once again turned to metaphor. “I told him to imagine himself on a rocky coast in the ocean,” Schrader said. “Waves are going to come up and get you all day every day. They’re going to try to batter you. Let them. The waves will go away. You’ll still be there. Don’t compete. In the end, the rocks will win. You have to learn to trust that the way these things are put together has more power than the individual movement.”

William’s routine includes an odd ritual in which he covers all the furniture in his various Vegas hotel rooms with white paper. While the motivation is never explained, Schrader said it stemmed from an experience with production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti on the set of 1982’s “Cat People,” when Schrader realized the man was doing the same thing. “He said, quite simply, ‘I have to live here surrounded by these ugly hotel furnishings,’” Schrader recalled. The concept inspired the new movie’s most compelling visual motif. “Casinos are very ugly places. There are no exceptions,” Schrader said. “Often you aspire to finding pockets of beauty and there weren’t really any here except the only place he could control, which was his hotel rooms, where he could privatize his visions. I came up with this ritual for him to control those visuals.”

At a certain point, Schrader himself couldn’t control the visuals of “The Card Counter” for more prosaic reasons: After an extra tested positive for COVID-19, the production shut down last March, with five days of shooting left, and couldn’t resume until July. Though Schrader initially took to Facebook to fume at his producers, the pause eventually opened up an opportunity to tweak his vision. “I edited the film and put in placeholders for the five or six scenes of consequence that I hadn’t shot,” he said. “I didn’t have a fully finished film but I could screen it for people. Normally you only get that privilege if you have a big-budget film and you’re allowed reshoots.” The early audience included Scorsese, who provided a crucial note. “I asked Marty, ‘What am I missing?’ He said to me that the relationship with Tiffany and Oscar was too thin. So I rewrote those scenes.”

Schrader asked Scorsese to take on the executive producer credit as a favor. “I said, ‘Marty, wouldn’t it be nice to share a card again? I thought it would help sell the film but it would also be a cool thing to do after all these years,’” Schrader said. “Then a couple of weeks later his agent called wanting to work out a deal. What deal? I asked Marty and he said yes. That’s the deal!” Now, the pair are trying to collaborate on a new long-form TV series based on the Bible, though the timing has been delayed by production on Scorsese’s upcoming “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

In the meantime, Schrader has been mulling over the way “Taxi Driver” not only continues to inform his storytelling but the world at large. “Hardly a week goes by that I don’t notice or hear some reference to it,” he said. “But I don’t know how you’d tell such a story today. A number of writers have tried and I don’t think they’ve succeeded because it has to come out of a certain place and time. We have plenty of these incels around, but they’re not as original or revealing as they were 45 years ago when that character came on the scene. I wouldn’t know how to write about it.”

Instead, his next project is a love triangle called “Master Gardener,” which he hopes to shoot in Louisiana before the end of the year. He has several other potential scripts ready to go after that. And while he has expressed trepidation about the future of cinema in the past, he’s not convinced that audiences have given up on it yet. He recalled a conversation he had with Cedric the Entertainer when “First Reformed” made the rounds. “He said off-handedly to me, ‘You know, I didn’t realize there were so many people who liked serious movies,’” Schrader said, and chuckled once more. “Well, yeah, there are.”

“The Card Counter” premieres next week at the Venice Film Festival. Focus Features releases on September 10, 2021.

###

[thesolotomyhan]

narcos méxico: jealousy hc

my first request, kinda nervous but i hope i delivered anon 💕

Warnings: NSFW!

Tags: @fandomnerd16​ , @visintaes​ , @sheeshgivemeabreak​

ok wow is this bitch long, i didnt realize that,  i got carried away lmao,,,  just a friendly heads up :))) and also, I went with them being your ex in both scenarios!

Miguel:

miguel angel would be the obsessive ex, holy shit, he would have eyes everywhere on you,,,

he would get to know your schedule at a day to day basis-

like he would have azul out here keeping him updated about your whereabouts, like what you’ve been doing, who you’ve been seen talking to, weekly, like clockwork,,

but i can lowkey see azul not telling miguel a single fucking hint that you may have been seen talking to some guy-

like azul just wants to have miguel focus on the business in front of them not worrying about you because miguel was the one to drive you out of the relationship,, its his own fault for letting you go, now its on him to gain you back on his own,

wow ok, so i can see this happening when miguel throws a fancy gathering with all those governments and high powered people,, where he would invite you to come celebrate his success in who knows what,,, but he just needs to make sure you come,, he wants to try and rekindle what you had, porque te extraña-

he’ll be nervous like that time before his birthday party in s2 where he was pacing back and forth, anxious to know if pacho was going to show up, yeah that would be him right now,,, asking azul every minute if he for sure knows if youre going to show up otherwise why even throw the party if youre not coming-

i cant- miguel probably wouldnt even go down where the party is,

he’s holing himself up somewhere until azul comes and tells him that you finally showed up-

this man would be so desperate to see you that he doesnt even let azul finish his sentence before he’s already bolting down to look for you,

and as soon as he sees you walking in he would act like all cool all of a sudden, shaking hands with people along the way, smile shining brighter than ever, but damn does that smile not last long once he glances back to you where he sees that you brought a date-

Im dying just imagining the dark look he would have when he sees your date lean in to kiss your cheek, leading you to sit down-

just the way he’ll watch you like a hawk throughout the night, clenching his jaw with the biggest scowl on his face

gripping his drink so hard it looks like he’ll break it any second as he curses under his breath, when he sees your date kiss your hand from across the table-

THE CHALLENGING GAZE HE’LL GIVE YOU WHEN YOU MAKE EYECONTACT HAS ME WEAK-

shaking his head as he starts to get up when you look away,,, like he’s officially done sitting around all night because your his mujer y de nadie mas

just the way he’ll walk up to your table so confidently, acting like this dude doesnt even exist and ask for you to accompany him for an issue he needs your input with,

not sparing one glance to your date before he has his hand wrapped around your arm, dragging you to this empty hallway-

i- the way he’ll trap you against the wall when you protest against his hold as he grabs your jaw tightly so he can look at you directly, both of your faces nearly touching-

“basta, ya,, que traes con ese cabron eh, mija?”

and you’re not about to take his shit just because he got jealous the very second he saw you with someone else after he was the one to push you away-

“Que chingados te importa miguel, tu fuiste el que ya no quiso nada conmigo”

“es que no entiendes, verdad?, me arde verte con otro cabron”-

i-the way he cant help but cut you off when he sees you open your mouth again, ready to shoot another comment at him, just to roughly kiss you, shutting you up,,-

its one of those kisses that have you both almost suffocating each other,, all the built up anger mixing in with both of your love for one another that your both too stubborn to admit,,

fuck, ok the way you dont feel his hand sneak in between your thighs until he unexpectedly already has one of his fingers inside of you-

your muffled whine swallowed by his desperate kisses to keep you quiet as you grip his arm to keep you somewhat stable on your legs-

“Ese pendejo no te puede hacer sentir bien como yo puedo mija.”

just, the way your hips involuntarily begin to move against his hand, biting your lip so hard your almost drawing blood from them as he forces you to keep looking at him, pumping his fingers into you repeatedly, adding his thumb to play with your stimulated clit-

“Imagínate, si ese cabron te ve así, de como nunca serás de el”

wow,ok,  he wont stop until he has your knees buckling, pulling him into you to silence your moans when he makes you cum, i-

him kissing your forehead, telling you he’s taking you home to remind you who you belong to as he leads your wobbling form out, MAKING SURE TO GIVE YOUR DATE A SMUG ASS SMILE WHEN HE LEAVES WITH YOU- lmao i cant

god, him making you look into the mirror as he fucks you as he roams his hands all over your body, telling you that you’ll always belong to him, as your hands grip his hair- ok

celoso miguel would have you on the verge of tears as he pounds you into the bed-

just making you into a blubbering mess, not giving you a single chance to breathe before he’s already thrusting deeply into you again,,

reminding you again and again that no one other than him can have you like this-

making you scream who you belong to all fucking night until he knows you’ll be sore everywhere in the morning- i, wow

Amado:

alright, so i can see amado being the ex that would act like you were just a fun pastime for him when in reality he’s depressed porque te perdio-

I’m imagining this happening very shortly after you two are broken up, because ustedes todavía son pajaritos enamorados

Amado’s stupid ass probably just said something like “your safety is the most important thing to me, that’s why I’m breaking up with you, to keep you safe” type of beat-

but i just know he would be the mf to be like, i need to forget about the love of my life by fucking with other viejas, just trying his best to forget everything about you,,

but you would probably catch wind of this some way,,, and that he’s out here being a mujeriego and acting like nothing ever happened between you two was real so your just like ‘alright, if that’s how its going to be, two can play at this game’-

im H o l l e r in g, i can imagine this scenario where he would take some vieja to a club, maybe a club he used to go with you all the time-the audacity-

he would be out here smiling, buying drinks left and right, all laid back, like a cocky mf,,, hiding his insecurities because he’s egoistic like that, trying but failing to “enjoy” his date because its just not you

thats when just out of curiosity, he would look around the club, entertaining himself,, scanning everyone there and would automatically fucking spot you within seconds,,, except youre not alone :)) your dancing with some guy,-

and that one simple thing, that youre dancing with someone else, someone that’s not him, touching you like that, has him pissed,

like all of a sudden his only focus would be all on you,, as he’s clenching his jaw and bouncing his leg impatiently,, watching you and your date dance,, as he curses under his breath at the scene unfolding before him-

can you imagine tho, if you both lock eyes- con una mirada he’s telling you “are you fucking serious?”

wow, the way he’ll bring his clenched fist to his lips, wanting nothing more than to knock the shit out of the bum of your date, as he stares daggers into him,,-

he would wait until he can corner you alone tho,  not wanting to start any drama-

he would get up so fucking quick when he sees you start to walk over to the bar, esta desesperado el cabron,, not wasting time to grab your arm and drag you somewhere, away from everyones eyes-

youre already angrily trying to pull away from his hold before he grasps both of your arms and holds them in between your bodies, stopping you from pulling away as he pulls your body into his,,

both of your fiery gazes looking into each other-

“Me quieres decir quién es ese hijo de la chingada para ir a matarlo ahorita?”

WOw, the way you test him with a simple look, not answering his question because you know exactly what buttons to push to get him even more irritated than he already is-

THE SEXUAL TENSION-

just, the way the both of you hold your stares, challenging the other to move first, with the only noise being the loud thumping of the music in the background-

he’ll pull your body even more closer to his, your lips almost, almost touching-

“no seas asi, mi reina, por favor,  déjame enseñarte lo que él no puede darte” im not ok omg

he literally feels his heart soar when he sees you slowly nod your head-

ugh, just,, the bottled up emotions would pour out as soon as he gets you home-

it has you both tearing each others clothes off, with those messy kisses where neither of you want to pull back from, as he carries you and drops you on the bed,,

wow, the way he would groan, when he sees you naked on his bed,throbbing for you because he finally has you where you belong,,

god, is this man going to have you manhandle you all night until your begging him to stop-

just, pushing your body down and holding you there when your trying to squirm away from him, orgasm after orgasm,,,

chuckling down at you, telling you your going to take it-

like , its going to be the type of sex that has you almost ripping the whole fucking bedframe off from the overstimulation he’s giving you,

wont stop making you say that your his, forcing you to never look away from him, when he tells you i love you, over and over again-

or the way he’ll pull your head back onto the pillow when you try to bite down on his shoulder when he hits that one spot inside of you repeatedly, just, scolding you that he doesnt want you to hold back on your moans-

the CHOKING KINK, you already know it was coming,, it makes him rock hard when he wraps his hand around your throat while he’s making you scream his name,,,

the bruising grip he’ll have on your hip as he feels your nails leave streaks of red on his back as he’s buried so deep into you-

“Dime, que ese hijo de su rechingada madre nunca compara conmigo, mi amor”

rubbing your pulsating clit just to see the way you roll your eyes back, and dig your nails into his bicep- whispering the most dirtiest things into your ear-

fuck, ok but the way you both look down where you connect, moaning into each other as you watch as his cock disappear inside of you- im not sorry

just- turning you into a shaking and whimpering mess until all you can say and remember is his name by the time he’s done with you-