#the irony of it being hosted of twitter was the best part

[no-design-derby]

Sorry to the guy that submitted Cecil but I am not adding him. He would sweep too quickly. I don't know why everyone likes him so much he's just a guy

[82mitsu]

Previously translated pair names that had been posted to Twitter. However corrections had to be made (misinterpretations & an instance of mistranslation), so this is version 2.

Note: This is the only translated thing I will be posting, I am not off hiatus. I had been meaning to archive this before my hiatus, but I also had to fix some things, which is why there was a delay.

Please consult to this post only regarding pair name translations done by me (82mitsu), any other posts or reposts you might see of this chart is the older version. (Previous version has been deleted, but I'm unaware how far the information had spread.)

If any other corrections need to be made, feel free to contact me and I'll make them as soon as possible.

Below follows an extreme lengthy TL note breaking down some pair names, it's a lot of text, so be warned once you unfold the read more.

A lot of research went into these due to 18TRIPs tendency to mix up words, use Gen-Z slang that hasn’t been picked up by everyone yet (or limited to TikTok) and make up their own words (“Omotenashisto” -> “Hospitalister”). I used dictionaries, searched forum results, looked up how people use these words on social media, went TikTok digging, etc.

I tried my best to localize in a way that should make sense even without added context. I only explained the ones that I thought might needed some more back-up in a cultural sense or because it was a specific JPN thing. Thus, not everything has been explained. However, I hope things are clearer compared to the first version that was posted. For Renga & Yukikaze: For ぽゆぽゆ (poyupoyu) there is no definition or anything for this word, but from context clues and digging through how people used it, I deduced that it means something soft and squishy like a plushie or cheeks, so to say. For Renga & Liguang: かりそめの宿縁 (karisome no shukuen) is a Japanese saying about a fated connection of bond that only lasts for a brief moment, but leaves a deep impact on your life. For Renga & Raito: Party is mispelled in the katakana as “paachii” and not the usual “paatii”. Renga has a tendecy to say English words wrong. While “friends” is spelled the correct way, both words have been “mispelled” to drive the point home. For Renga & Kinari: なぁぜなぁぜ (naaze, naaze) is JPN Gen-Z slang from Tiktok. It’s a statement made as an act for complaining, with a bit of sarcasm and irony thrown in at times. Like, “I said I wanna diet but I ate a big meal anyway! なぁぜなぁぜ” or “I’m an idol but I get more anxious doing improv than performances! なぁぜなぁぜ”. Best way I can describe the usage in this context is Renga is throwing a bit of a self-aware tantrum as to why Kinari would correct him. (As mentioned earlier, he isn’t good at English). I guessed a close equivalent would be “nuh-uh”, since that is a dismissal of someone else’s opinion without actual good reason, even if the other person has a point. For Renga & Netaro: まんまん (manman) means “a lot” but I also believe it’s a reference to meatbuns (nikuman). For Kafka & Yodaka: Hanbei is Takenaka Shigeharu, a Japanese samurai from the Sengoku era. He was known for being Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s strategist. For Liguang & Yodaka: 闘牌伝 (touhaiden) is related to Mahjong stuff. 闘牌伝 seems to be an old timey Mahjong video game with RPG elements. Rekka is a fighting game term, and I will quote the website The Fighting Game Glossary by Infil on this: “A type of special move that has multiple stages, as long as you input more commands to continue the sequence. Not all multi-part specials can be called rekkas though; a rekka tends to have exactly three distinct parts and will move your character forward along the ground with each new input.”  For Akuta & Nanaki: They went to the same kindergarten and were grouped together in the “Oden Class”. Japanese kindergartens, from my understanding from researching, tend to have a name for their class, rather than a number. To give an idea what such names could be, in 2019 the website hyenasclubs hosted a poll of most commonly used names for classes, and the top 3 were “baby chick” (hiyoko), “peach” (momo) and “dandelion” (tanpopo). For Akuta & Muneuji: My take on はっけよい輝矢部屋 (hakkeyoi kaguya heya) is a bit of an elaborate bit joking with Princess Kaguya of the Moon (from Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) because I was wondering why they suddenly opted for Muneuji’s last name instead of first. (I might’ve also just overestimated Kaguya Heya being some joke on Kaguya Hime). Hakkeyoi is what a referee shouts at the start of a sumo wrestling match. For Akuta & Ushio: I think ポジティブに腕押し (positive ni ude oshi) is a take on 暖簾に腕押し (noren ni ude oshi) that means something has no effect or is pointless. Lit. it means “pushing a curtain with one's arm”.    For Akuta & Tao: Akuta Nine is a joke on the baseball movie Gyakkyo Nine which is an adaptation of the manga of the same series, I believe. The movie is referred to as GK9, hence I made it AKT9.  For Akuta & Ryui: The original is OYAxKOBU which comes from 親分子分 (oyabunkobun) meaning “boss and his underlings”. Akuta also calls Ryui by “Oyabun”.

For Kiroku & Nanaki: Weebs who watch highschool anime should be familiar with this, but emergency staircase refers to the hallway stairs in a JPN highschool that are sometimes used as chilling out spots by students. For Kiroku & Chihiro: TuRyStA is the clothing brand they wear. 18TRIP has a various selection of clothing brands, which each character having a preference for one or another. For Kiroku & Yodaka: Zhao Yun, as quoted by Wikipedia, “was a military general who lived during the late Eastern Han dynasty and early Three Kingdoms period of China.” For Ushio & Raito: Some heavy freedom was taken with ���スボムしゅわリスト (basubamu shuwaristo). After considering how to approach it in the most sensical way, I decided to translate it as “bubblist” due the other options being “hand sign list” or “bubble list”. I thought リスト might function as in -ist, like dentist, artist, guitarist. しゅわ comes from しゅわしゅわ which means bubbly. Although bubblist isn’t not that common, it is sometimes referred to entertainers that do bubble performances (in English). And I think it made more sense than “hand sign list” or “bubble list” to say the least. This was also taking in consideration how 18TRIP, as explained in the intro, gets very creative with its language usage. For Raito & Nagi: Mandarin ducks symbolize “soulmates” of some kind in China. In other words, Mandarin Duck Touring is more along the lines of “Motorcycle touring soulmates”. However, I find the mandarin duck reference and interesting pull compared to just “soulmates”, so it was kept as is. For Kinari & Ryui: “Super Darling Gap Inspection” is more along the original lines. “Gap” in Japanese is usually used in the context of when someone acts one way, but unexpectedly, can act a different way. Ex. A very shy person shows they can be super vulgar, that can be considered a “gap” of some kind. In English, people are more familiar with “gap moe”, thus gap moe was used. For Tao & Nagi: Might be a reference to Yokohama’s Zo-no-hana (Elephant Nose) Park. For Toi & Yodaka: The original is more along the lines of, in the most literal sense, “going around raisins circle (of friends).” Toi likes raisins, but Yodaka doesn’t, so Yodaka passes them onto Toi. I’ve turned into on a play on “sharing is caring” since that’s a common concept in English.

[toshootforthestars]

From the essay by Ryan Cooper, posted 16 Nov 2020:

...in Vietnam, there is no raging coronavirus pandemic. Thanks to swift action from the government, that nation squelched its initial outbreak, and has so far successfully contained all subsequent infection clusters before they got out of hand. Its figures at time of writing (which have been confirmed as reliable by outside sources) show a mere 1,283 cases and 35 deaths, and no community transmission for the last 75 days. Life for Vietnamese people has returned to normal, with a few sensible precautions. If their success holds for a few more months until a vaccine can be deployed, Vietnam will have dodged the pandemic nearly perfectly.

Given Vietnam's high population and very high density — it has over 96 million people crammed into an area about the size of New Mexico — numerous long borders, including one with the country where the pandemic started, and relatively impoverished economy, it has turned in arguably the most impressive performance of any country in the world. Most of the other star performers, like Taiwan or New Zealand, are rich islands and hence much easier to isolate from the world (though nearby Thailand has done nearly as well).

Meanwhile in the self-appointed "land of the free," on Sunday the seven-day average of daily COVID-19 deaths was 1,148. The same seven-day average of new cases has increased from about 82,000 on November 1 to over 150,000 on Sunday — numbers that are certainly a large underestimate, because, with very high test positivity rates across much of the country, many cases are being missed. Total recorded deaths in the U.S. are over 250,000, which again is a large under-count. There are many more future deaths already baked in, and infections are mounting exponentially in almost every state. Unless something changes, and fast, the coronavirus pandemic will surpass the Second World War to become the greatest American mass casualty event since the influenza pandemic of 1918.

The bleak irony of American life is our boastful and hyperbolic national conception of liberty has left us as one of the most unfree peoples on the globe. There can be no freedom without government, a lesson currently being inscribed in blood, and stacked up in the mobile morgues that are overflowing with corpses in more cities around the country every day.

As an American, the months since March have felt like living in Airstrip One, the miserable police state formerly known as Britain in George Orwell's 1984. In that time I have seldom left my house for fear of catching the virus, or worse, spreading it to someone who is at risk and killing (or permanently disabling) them. I have not seen my family since October 2019 for the same reason. In a best-case scenario, I will not see them until the middle of next year — something like 2 percent of my entire lifespan, optimistically speaking. It looks like even the occasional outdoor dining I savored as a small bright spot over the summer will be shut down soon, with cases spiking badly in my home city of Philadelphia.

All the political freedoms I supposedly enjoy as an American citizen are useless in the face of this unending tsunami of death and misery. The plain fact is that the average resident of Vietnam — under a repressive dictatorship, let me emphasize — has more freedoms in the places where, for most people, it really counts: the freedom to leave the house, the freedom to see and touch one's family and friends, the freedom to go to a restaurant or a bar or a movie or a concert, and simply the freedom from constant grasping fear of invisible death.

Let me be clear: The point of the comparison here is not to say that authoritarian rule is necessary for containing the virus. On the contrary, part of the reason the virus escaped in the first place was because authoritarian officials in China tried to hide it at first (though they later turned things around, as I will discuss below). And as noted above, Taiwan and New Zealand are democracies and have also done very well. South Korea, Australia, and Japan have struggled somewhat more than Vietnam, but thus far have also kept the virus largely in check. A few European democracies like Finland and Norway have done fairly well, and while most others on that continent are suffering a catastrophic second wave (worse than I predicted, alas), they have recently adopted a second lockdown which is beginning to slow the spread.

The point is that the United States is getting rinsed in providing liberty to its citizens — supposedly the entire point of its existence, according to its founding documents — by a bunch of dictatorial Communists.

The United States, once again, stands virtually alone among nations with its obdurate refusal to do anything about the galloping pandemic at the national level.

Now, part of that is President Trump's singular incompetence. Since surviving the virus — thanks to cutting-edge experimental treatment only he could get at the time — he has progressed from not doing anything about the virus to effectively trying to spread it personally. He held dozens of huge campaign rallies, even after one in June infected hundreds of people. An election night watch party recently became the second super-spreader event hosted at the White House.

Even halting, timid efforts to stop hospitals from being utterly overwhelmed at the state and local level are running into stiff resistance from reactionary lunatics.

Almost every single Republican governor has preemptively refused to follow President-elect Biden's guidance on imposing mask rules, even as their own operatives and elderly representatives fall sick from the virus. New York Governor Cuomo's weeks-late and unenforceable order banning gatherings larger than 10 people inspired a Republican New York City councilman to gleefully announce on Twitter that his Thanksgiving celebrations would have more people than that. The order is an "odious infringement on personal liberty," moaned the libertarian writer Robby Soave at Reason.

In South Dakota, where the hospitals are already full to bursting with new cases still accelerating, the blithely apathetic Governor Kristi Noem insists that masks are a matter of personal choice. Newly elected QAnon nutcase Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.) boasted of refusing to wear a mask during congressional orientation.

In short, while it is a minority movement, the most fervent, dedicated, and effective political mobilization in this country is organized around stopping the government from saving the lives of its citizens.

As I have previously written, the signature American view of liberty emerges from a cramped and extreme version of 19th-century liberal theory. American conservatives and libertarians often assert that one has liberty when the government is not "interfering" with whatever one feels like doing, regardless of circumstance.

[potusofthescotus]

Air Force Number One or Number Two

I had a strange, but not really all that strange, dream last night.

As President Trump waves to his supporters at the top of the boarding stairs to Air Force One, he soils himself. He crouches down to remove his pants, and then his ruined underwear, which he tosses steaming onto the tarmac. He then pulls his pants back up, waves one last time to his supporters, and enters the aircraft.

Madness ensues. Rachel Maddow runs a piece called, "Air Force Number One, or Number Two?" CBS runs round-tables moderated by Anderson Cooper, who struggles to maintain composure as right-wing and left-wing pundits argue about the bodily functions of the sitting president of the United States. Fox News runs a 24-hour news cycle where hosts ask repeatedly, apparently blind to the irony, "Do the Democrats want to control our bodies?"

President Trump, for his own part, holds a presser where he maintains that his actions were nothing out of the ordinary. "It's perfectly natural. I do it. Crooked Hillary does it. Sleepy Joe does it. Obama did it, he left me about thirty presents on the White House lawn. And something the liberal fake news media won't tell you, I have the best bladder control. Just the best. My doctor, smart guy, went to Harvard, he once said about my bladder control..." and so forth. The gang of four weigh in on Twitter to the effect of, "45 has once again shown he's a child trapped in the body of a 74-year old man," which of course earns them several hundred death threats apiece.

In a show of solidarity with the President, or perhaps emboldened by his actions, Trump's supporters begin to emulate his accidents in public. They stop using public amenities, electing instead to soil themselves as they go about their days. Their leavings are deposited, if the town is lucky, in trash receptacles, but more often in the streets and in the parks, or wherever is convenient, really.

Signs are now posted in public places everywhere, with diagrams depicting a red X through a man who leaves his soiled underwear in the bushes, and a green check mark for a woman who decides instead to use a public toilet. Sanitation workers are pissed, but they don't exactly have a strong enough lobby to do anything about it. Meanwhile, business is booming for diaper and underwear manufacturers, who pour their earnings into lobbying the Republicans and Democrats to stonewall any bill that would put an end to, or at least hinder, the literal smear campaign happening across America.

The offenders, of course, maintain that it is their God-given right to leave their piss and shit wherever they please, and anyone who disagrees will be doing so down the barrel of a 42. Cholera outbreaks abound in conservative regions of the country, much to the chagrin of Dr. Fauci, who pleads with Americans to please use a restroom. But cholera, of course, is a liberal hoax. Dr. Fauci receives a few thousand death threats and his security detail is doubled.

Now, if this actually happened, and I don't think anyone would really be too shocked if it did, it would make headlines for a week, or maybe two, before being replaced by something more exciting. That is the environment we are in, and have been in for the last four years.

Vote.

[cmbynreviews]

A complicated affair

Armie Hammer was poised to be a major matinee idol. But he wasn’t prepared for what happened to him on the set of Call Me by Your Name.

Armie Hammer is six-foot-five, a general advantage in life but one that doesn’t serve him well on the dance floor. "When I dance", he told me recently over lunch in West Hollywood, "I think, You’re really shit at this, and everyone around you knows it because you’re the tallest guy on the dance floor and you stick out like a sore thumb".

You can imagine Hammer’s embarrassment, then, when he had to shoot a dance scene for his new movie, the 1980s-set gay romance Call Me by Your Name. It’s a pivotal moment in the film that comes not long after his character, grad student Oliver, has arrived in a small Italian village to assist the professor father of our protagonist, 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet). The secret crush on this interloper that Elio nurses becomes full blown the night he watches Oliver boogie down to "Love My Way", by the Psychedelic Furs: Oliver’s ecstatic, unabashed, and utterly indifferent to the world around him. "And that’s so not me, in any situation", said Hammer. "I was like, ‘This is hell. Can we switch this for more nude scenes, please?’ "

It wasn’t easy, but Hammer finally shed his inhibitions. His moves are just the slightest bit dorky, yet his character’s confidence is irresistible. Just don’t expect Hammer to echo Oliver’s carefree attitude: Ever since a clip of the scene went viral in October, the actor has gone dark on social media. "Anytime I would open up my Twitter, it was just a ton of that", Hammer said with a laugh, referring to the clip, "and I was like, ‘Nope, I can’t have my nose rubbed in this anymore. I’m out!’ "

In person, the 31-year-old Hammer is almost implausibly self-effacing. When I told him that I liked his 2015 caper movie The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and how it was too bad it didn’t do better at the box office, Hammer seized the opportunity to quip at his own expense: "That might be the Armie Hammer effect". It’s true that since Hammer had his breakthrough dual role as the Winklevoss twins in David Fincher’s The Social Network, his follow-up projects – he played the charming prince in Mirror Mirror and the title role in The Lone Ranger – haven’t quite panned out. The irony is that The Social Network was supposed to launch him toward bigger movies, but none of his would-be franchise-starters managed to outgross that film domestically, and they left Hammer increasingly dissatisfied. "All of a sudden, I realized I was being shoehorned into something that was different than what I expected or wanted out of this business", he said. "When you’re sitting in an acting class when you’re young, they tell you about the ideal experience on a project, where you work on a movie that challenges you and draws something out of you. But you don’t get that on big movies".

So Hammer retrenched, working mainly in independent films like Nocturnal Animals and Birth of a Nation. Then director Luca Guadagnino sent Hammer the script for Call Me by Your Name. The offer was to play Oliver, whom the other characters call "la muvi star", a term that is meant both as praise and as a pejorative. In an attempt to dispel his crush, Elio initially dismisses Oliver as a shallow American hunk: He’s afraid to look closer, and isn’t it easier not to? Guadagnino, though, was determined to go deeper with Hammer than any of his directors had. "I think Armie’s a very complex person", said the Italian director, who also made I Am Love and A Bigger Splash. "It’s not just that he’s beautiful-looking. It’s that, plus his inner turmoil, that is fascinating to me".

"Inner turmoil" is not the primary thing people think of when presented with Armie Hammer, who spent his formative years living in the laid-back Cayman Islands and is the great-grandson of a famous oil tycoon. But the self-effacement I had been initially skeptical of is something that comes to Hammer naturally: He is used to being looked at but not really seen, which makes him nervous about revealing an unvarnished side. "There are a lot of things about Oliver that resonated with me, and primarily it was that projection of ease and casualness and comfort that you might not actually be feeling all the time", said Hammer. "My whole life, I’m bluffing my way through it all. And Luca was just like, ‘Nope, that doesn’t work around here’ – which was terrifying".

Hammer is married to TV host Elizabeth Chambers and has two young children, but when production on Call Me by Your Name began in the summer of last year, he left his family behind to move to the Lombardy town of Crema in order to immerse himself in the film’s world. He and Chalamet were two of the few English-speakers for miles and grew to depend on each other as a result, but his bond was even more intense with Guadagnino, who continually challenged Hammer to drop his defenses in a way he never had onscreen.

"I’ve never had such an emotional journey with a director", said Hammer. "I’ve never even considered directors to be emotional people! I don’t even know if I’ve worked with a director who even cared if I was mad at them before. It was more like, ‘Shut up and stand on your mark and do your job.’ "

As Call Me by Your Name goes on, Oliver is willing to reveal more parts of himself to Elio, who becomes his lover. But even before that moment, as with the dance scene, Guadagnino and Hammer searched for opportunities to dig deeper. The André Aciman book that Call Me by Your Name is based on tells the story from the point of view of Elio, who is enchanted with Oliver’s seemingly effortless confidence. Hammer, though, thought much of his character’s personality was performative, a well-practiced routine of smoke and mirrors. Even Oliver’s insouciant habit of ducking out of every scene with a breezy "Later!" had emotional underpinnings: "It’s about getting spooked by this human you’re infatuated with", explained Hammer.

Eventually, Hammer himself became spooked, having plunged into Guadagnino’s process so deeply. "The feeling of operating from that place of passion is really contagious and soul-satiating", he said. "It’s the safest place I’ve ever been in my life – still to this day – when it comes to feeling complete empathy, complete understanding, and complete love, no matter what. But then … he knows if you’re lying. He knows if you’re not being honest, whether in real life or in the performance. And he will not back off".

As the production neared its end, Hammer admits, he became peevish and started to withdraw. "For reasons that could be personal to Armie, I had the feeling that he was pulling away", said Guadagnino. "The movie wasn’t finished, and I had to bring him back". I asked Hammer what had made him behave like that. "Everybody was sort of lashing out because this thing was ending and nobody wanted it to", he said. He hesitated, wary of what to reveal. "Honestly", Hammer said, "I think I had fallen in love with Luca".

"For me to make a movie, it’s really creating a family", said Guadagnino. "Having a very profound familial bond with the people I’m doing the movies with, where you literally and constantly fall in love with all of them. Sometimes, this emotional flow can be very intense. Very! As it was with Armie. And then it can be very complicated".

Hammer had flourished as an actor and as a person under Guadagnino’s guidance and he couldn’t bear to let the project go. Eventually, he would have to, and so would Guadagnino, who was slated to begin his next film, a remake of the horror film Suspiria. Hammer said he became jealous once he felt Guadagnino mentally move on to that film. "I was like, ‘You fucking philanderer! You duplicitous bastard!’ And that made me pull away, and then he did, and it turned into this whole thing".

"That was not my explanation for it", said Guadagnino. "I never, never put Suspiria in front of Call Me by Your Name". Still, he understood Hammer’s passion and reciprocated it. "It’s beautiful when you fall in love with someone and you are restrained in your exploration of that feeling and you sublimate it in making a movie like that", said Guadagnino, who eventually called Hammer to his apartment to hash out his feelings.

"He basically nailed me, nailed me, nailed me", said Hammer. "And I was pretending: ‘No, man, that’s not it at all.’ Like, I couldn’t even be honest about that".

Hammer recommitted himself to the role, and he remembers the mixed feelings he had on his final day of filming. "It was such a powerful experience that in a way, I was thinking, I’m relieved that it’s gonna get mellower", said Hammer. "But also, I thought, I could do this forever".

Though he has recently been shooting the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic On the Basis of Sex in Montreal, Call Me by Your Name has not been far from Hammer’s mind. For one thing, it changed how he approached his career. "Now they’ll be hard-pressed to make me do something I don’t feel passionate about", Hammer said. "To be perfectly honest, for as much as people really seem to enjoy the movie, it pales so much in comparison to the actual process of making it. Other people didn’t get that experience. I did. Watching it feels like reading CliffsNotes of an amazing book. I was there every day, all day, living this thing, so now when I watch it for two hours, it’s just too quick. I wish I could go back to that place".

He has, in some ways. He flew back to Italy recently "just to be in Luca’s apartment and have conversations again". And he also taped the Call Me by Your Name audiobook, an experience that "felt like I got to go back to Crema", Hammer said. "We read it for 20-something hours, but it was just the best 20-something hours of the last couple months, apart from spending time with my family and kids".

Hammer’s performance as Oliver is so indelible that, at first, it’s difficult to imagine him inhabiting neurotic, love-struck Elio for the audiobook. However, the more you listen as Hammer wistfully describes his time on Call Me by Your Name – a transformative experience he will spend the rest of his life attempting to recapture – the more you realize it’s exactly how one might reminisce about a lover long gone. Hammer may play Oliver onscreen, but at heart, he is a secret Elio. "That’s exactly what it feels like!" he admitted. "And I’m still in love".

KYLE BUCHANAN | NEW YORK MAGAZINE | 13 Nov 2017 | (Photo: Amanda Demme)

[xtruss]

Air Conditioning is One of the Greatest Inventions of the 20th Century. It’s Also Killing the 21st

— Danny Crichton | August 28, 2021 | TechCrunch.Com

Image Credits: Inna Maksimenkova / EyeEm / Getty Images

When did indoor air become cold and clean?”

Air conditioning is one of those inventions that have become so ubiquitous, that many in the developed world don’t even realize that less than a century ago, it didn’t exist. Indeed, it wasn’t so long ago that the air inside our buildings and the air outside of them were one and the same, with occupants powerless against their environment.

Eric Dean Wilson, in his just published book, “After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort,” dives deep into the history of this field. It took more than just inventing the air conditioner to make people want to buy it. In fact, whole social classes outright rejected the technology for years. It took hustle, marketing skill, and mass societal change to place air conditioning at the center of our built environment.

Wilson covers that history, but he has a more ambitious agenda: to get us to see how our everyday comforts affect other people. Our choice of frigid cooling emits flagrant quantities of greenhouse gas emissions, placing untold stress on our planet and civilization. Our pursuit of comfort ironically begets us more insecurity and ultimately, less comfort.

It’s a provocative book, and TechCrunch hosted Wilson for a discussion earlier this week on a Twitter Space. If you missed it, here are some selected highlights of our conversation.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Danny Crichton: The framing story throughout the book is about your travels with your friend Sam, who works to collect Freon and destroy it. Why did you choose that narrative arc?

Eric Dean Wilson: Sam at the time was working for this green energy company, and they were trying to find a way to take on green projects that would turn a profit. They had found that they could do this by finding used Freon, specifically what’s called CFC-12. It’s not made anymore, thank goodness, but it was responsible in part for partially destroying the ozone layer, and production of it was banned by the 90s.

But use of it, and buying and selling it on the secondary market, is totally legal. This is sort of a loophole in the legality of this refrigerant, because the United States government and the people who signed the Montreal Protocol thought that when they stopped production of it that it would pretty much get rid of Freon by the year 2000. Well, that didn’t happen, which is kind of a mystery.

So Sam was driving around the United States, finding Freon on the internet, and meeting people (often people who are auto hobbyists or mechanics or something like that) who happened to have stockpiled Freon, and he was buying it from them in order to destroy it for carbon credits on California’s cap-and-trade system. And the interesting thing about this is that he was going to basically the 48 contiguous states, and meeting people that were often global warming deniers who were often hostile to the idea of the refrigerant being destroyed at all, so he often didn’t tell them upfront that he was destroying it.

What was really interesting to me is that, aside from a cast of colorful and strange characters, and sometimes violent characters actually as well, was the fact that sometimes after establishing a business relationship first, he was able to have really frank conversations about global warming with people who were otherwise not very open to it.

In a time in which we’re told that Americans are more divided than ever politically, that we’re not speaking to each other across ideological divides, I thought this was a curious story.

Crichton: And when it comes to greenhouse gases, Freon is among the worst, right?

Wilson: I should be really clear that the main global warming gases are carbon dioxide and methane and some other ones as well. But molecule for molecule, CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) are thousands of times greater at absorbing and retaining heat, meaning that they’re just thousands of times worse for global warming, molecule for molecule. So even though there’s not that many of them in terms of parts per million in the atmosphere, there’s enough to really make a sizable contribution to global warming.

The irony is that the replacements of CFCs — HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons) — for the most part, don’t really do anything to destroy the ozone layer, which is great. But they’re also super global warming gases. So the ozone crisis was solved by replacing CFCs with refrigerant that exacerbated the global warming crisis.

Crichton: Now to get to the heart of the book, you focus on the rise of air conditioning, but you start by giving readers a wide view of what life was like before its invention. Why did you do that?

Wilson: This was a surprise — I did not go into the book thinking that I was going to find this. Before air conditioning really took off in the home, there was a really different sense of what we would call personal comfort, and something that I really argue in the book is that what we’ve come to think of as personal comfort, and specifically, thermal comfort, has changed. What I argue in the book is that it’s really in part a cultural construction.

Now, I want to be really careful that people don’t hear that I’m saying that it’s entirely a construction. Yes, when we get too hot or too cold, then we can die, for sure. But what’s really interesting to me is that there’s a lot of evidence to show that before air conditioning began at the beginning of the twentieth century, people weren’t really hungry for air conditioning.

There was this greater sense that you could deal with the heat. I put that really carefully, because I don’t want to say that they suffered through it. Certainly there were heat waves and summers that got too hot. But there was a real sense that you could manage the heat through analog ways, like sleeping outside, sleeping in parks, or designing buildings that incorporate passive cooling. The thing that really disturbed me was that through the twentieth century, we really kind of forgot all that, because we didn’t need that knowledge anymore because we had air conditioning. So modernist architecture began to kind of ignore the outside conditions, because you could construct whatever conditions you wanted inside.

I think the question that nobody really asked all along is, is this good for everyone? Should we have a homogenized standard of comfort? Nobody really asked that question. And there’s a lot of people that find that the kind of American model of an office or American model of comfort is not comfortable, both in the United States, and in other places.

Crichton: Even beyond a homogenized standard though, you want readers to understand how comfort connects all of us together.

Wilson: I think that one of the pernicious things about the American definition of comfort is that it has been defined as personal comfort. And the reason why I keep using that is because it’s defined as individual comfort. And so what would it mean to think about comfort as being always connected to somebody else, as more ethical that way? Because it’s true.

The truth is that our comfort is related to other people, and vice versa. It’s really asking us to think interdependently, instead of independently, which is how we’re often encouraged to think, and that’s a huge, huge ask. Actually, that’s a huge task and a huge paradigm shift. But I really think if we’re really trying to think ecologically, and not just sustainably, we have to think about how we’re all connected and how these infrastructures, how they influence other people in other parts of the world.

Crichton: Air conditioning didn’t take off right away. In fact, its inventors and customers really had to push hard to get people to want to use it.

Wilson: Air conditioning really got its start in the early twentieth century, in order to control the conditions in factories. I was surprised to find out that air conditioning was used in places to make things hotter, or more humid and slightly hotter in a place like a textile factory, where if it’s not humid enough, cotton threads can break.

Outside the factory, movie theaters were really the first time that thermal comfort was used as a commodity. There were all kinds of other commodifications of comfort, but this was really the first time that the public could go someplace to feel cooler. And the funny thing is is that most movie theaters in the 20s and 30s were freezing cold, they were not what I would call comfortable, because the people who were running them didn’t really understand that air conditioning works best when it’s noticed least, which is a hard sell. In the 20s, though, it was a novelty, and the way that you caught people’s attention on a summer day was to crank the AC up, which felt good for like five minutes, and then it was terribly uncomfortable and you had to shiver through an hour and a half of the rest of the movie.

Crichton: I’m jumping ahead, but what does the future look like as global warming persists and our cooling increases in line with that heat?

Wilson: In so many cooling situations, there are major alternatives, like redesigning our buildings so that they require way less energy and way less cooling. There are really amazing architects who are looking to things like termite mounds, because the colonies that they build sort of have brilliantly engineered rooms with different temperatures.

That said, I was surprised how much our opinion on comfort could change by simply understanding that it could change. I think that we have to make the world of tomorrow desirable, and we can take a nod from the commercial advertising industry. We have to sell this future as one that we actually want, not as something that we’re giving up. And I think the narrative is always like, “Oh, we have to stop doing this, we have to lower this, we have to give this up.” And that’s certainly true. But I think if we understand that as not something that we’re giving up, but actually something that we’re gaining, then it makes it a lot easier. For people, it makes it feel a lot more possible.

— After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort by Eric Dean Wilson. | Simon & Schuster, 2021, 480 pages

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Don’t worry; Don’t hurry; Trust the process

Throughout this pandemic, we have been caught in this dilemma of social distancing from our family, friends, and colleagues. We have been encouraged and mandated in some parts to shelter in place in order to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19. Due to these restrictions, it has prevented you from socializing with friends in your favorite places like restaurants, pubs, and cafes. Instead, we must resort to other means for connecting with friends and loved ones: social media.

We are certainly fortunate in this day and age to have such advanced technology that allows us to use messaging applications on our phones, make video calls to our relatives, and to host video conference meetings with large groups in the comfort of your own living room. Although we must practice social distancing to remain safe and healthy, this should not prevent us from connecting with one another.

1. The Importance of Touch

Connecting socially and intimately is a human need for our health and well-being. Having contact with other human beings is what allows us to thrive as a species. Throughout the ages, there have been numerous psychological studies focusing on the importance of human contact. The absence of physical bonding and attachment as a child, some research claims, may lead to negative emotional development as an adult. Physical touch, studies show, sends a message of safety and trust. It has a calming effect on the cranial and cardiovascular systems. Less cortisol, the stress hormone, is released into the bloodstream when one practices physical touch.

Basic touch also calms an overactive heart providing a sense of ease thereby reducing high heart rates and blood pressure. When touch and connection are absent, one may display more behaviors of worry and hyper-vigilance which is stressful to the heart and brain. Unfortunately, this can lead to other prevalent health issues like heart disease and stroke.

2. Social Isolation

Using the strategy to social distance for some has been especially challenging. They may not have the luxury and privilege to have family and friends around them. Unfortunately, they may feel isolated, lonely, and depressed. Not only is there the lack of physical contact, but community get-togethers have also dwindled. If this is you, perhaps you relied on your job and other social networks to make connections with others. Maybe you are single and live alone so the intimacy you once knew through these opportunities has significantly reduced. If you continue along this trend of not connecting with others, this could create a downward spiral on your psyche. Before this happens, take advantage of the tools we literally have at our fingertips to stay connected.

3. The Digital Connection

If you are fortunate enough to own a smartphone or computer, you may know that there are many ways to stay connected to friends, family, and work. Beyond texting on your mobile device, you can download applications to play games, sing songs, or just talk about your day with others. Use multi-person video chat applications to take yoga classes, have a meeting with your co-workers, or have a virtual cocktail hour with your best buddies. The possibilities are endless.

Even though all of these tactics do not involve physical touch, the result remains positive. The simple fact that you can see your friends on live conference calls and hear their voices triggers the same areas of the brain that affect calm, ease, and trust.  Laughing, singing, and playing games in a virtual chat room can have the same effects as actually being in the same room with your friends. You'll experience joy, happiness, appreciation, and gratitude even while seeing your family on a screen. It is better to have these digital modalities to connect than to have no connection at all.

4. Make A Telephone Call

Even if you're not technologically savvy and do not have the fancy devices like webcams and mobile phones, you can still connect. Pick up the telephone and call friends you haven't spoken to over the years. Chat with your cousins or grandmother that you'll miss seeing at this year's family reunion. Call your dad on Father's Day. Hearing the voice of loved ones can set your mind at ease; you'll feel rest-assured that everyone is doing ok, even if you can't be with them.

Reminisce about times gone by: your college days, the company picnic last summer, taking the grandkids to the water park. Remember the times that made you laugh and enjoy life. These are all feel-good moments that can be re-lived to trigger those same hormonal responses as having in-person contact. Smiling and laughing, even over a video chat, is soothing and comforting to your heart and brain.

5. Reach Out to Your Neighbors

Are you close to your neighbors, but you're practicing social distancing? While staying on your respective porches and yard areas, gather outside to talk over a coffee or lemonade. Maybe there is a neighborhood musician who would gladly perform an outdoor concert for your cup de sac. There are many ways to have safe physical distance and maintain relationships with your neighbors who could also benefit from the social connection.

These are unprecedented times and we need to be creative with how we can remain in contact with our outer circle of colleagues and friends. This is a time to not distance ourselves completely. This would be unhealthy for our psyches and could diminish our wellbeing. This is a time for reuniting with others in unconventional ways. If you're alone and feel isolated, reach out through social media and join a chat group. With the evolution of the internet over the years, it is easy to find others that have similar interests. You may have the opportunity to make new friends from around the world chatting online about crocheting, gaming, baking, golf, photography, etc. In our technical age, we really have no reason to stay disconnected.The irony of this whole situation is that it may bring us closer together as human beings. It has allowed us to step aside from the hectic lives we are so used to. We are staying at home and spending more time with our families. Even if alone, you've been able to take stock on what is really important to you. Reaching out virtually to friends and family has become a priority. There is great value in reuniting with long-lost friends and distant relatives. It will rejuvenate your lonely spirit and enhance your appreciation for human contact.

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Top 10 internet offerings to construct your personal video calling app

With the enhancement in mobile phone technology, webrtc based totally video calling cell apps have obtained large popularity during the last modern years. There are numerous specific chat programs to be had for every iphones and android devices and nevertheless extra keeps growing. Skype, whatsapp, hike, google duo, hangouts, were some of the most famous further to inspirational chat packages which might be every day communique channels for tens of tens of millions of human beings. In one among their surveys approximately video chat usage the npd institution revealed that52 percentage of telephone users aged 18-34 now use their smartphones to make video calls. With this growing fashion and phone for for brand new live chat programs, it is never too past due to make use of the idea of connecting users over a video chat and innovate a brand new commercial enterprise approach round it. With this article, the brihaspati infotech (a professional mobile development group) shares with you the top 10 net services you can use to broaden your personal video calling mobile app in Android Application Development Company Los Angeles. Some webrtc concept webrtc - the essence of those stay chat applications is an open-deliver protocol that is used to establish a p2p connection between  gadgets over a web connection for streaming audio and video facts in real time. The net is complete of diverse publicly to be had open-supply further to licensed internet offerings for setting up stay video chats which utilize webrtc. Builders can leverage the p2p on line connection competencies of those webrtc primarily based net services to expand programs that move audio and video information in actual-time. Pinnacle 10 internet services to construct your personal video calling cell app.

 phrase: this listing isn't curated to sell any stay chat internet provider in any manner, nor those offerings are listed in any particular order of priority. The top 10 choices are based totally on our personal experience with diverse webrtc net services.

1. Agora

top 10 net offerings to assemble your very own video calling app

agora is a powerful actual-time conversation provider provider this is supplying sdks and apis of its services which may be used by the developers to assemble especially sturdy voice and video call chat applications. The carrier has been a desired preference for severa renowned partners at the side of hike, meet. Me, talk space and in its maximum recent partnership, they have got struck a deal with xiaomi as their voip based totally voice and video name generation. Their key usp consists of hd voice and video calling potential that makes use of the voip path to set up a connection amongst devices. Their pricing model is also built around the selection high-quality with voice calls starting as little as $zero. 99 consistent with a thousand minutes and hd video calls >720p being charged at $14. 99 in line with one thousand mins. Top features consists of:

clean to installation with thoroughly documented apis

over eighty information centers around the world

low records latency - as low as zero. 2 seconds

assist for up to 17 participants in a video call

cross-platform guide for local cellular apps as well as web sites. Useful and significantly energetic help group

2. Twilio

pinnacle 10 net services to assemble your private video calling app

with pricing plans beginning as lows as $0. 01 in step with minute, twilio programmable api’s is but another paas service issuer that offers high-quality api to installation text, voice, and video calls. Twilio had accomplished a brilliant artwork on its engagement cloud that gives engagement apis for the whole purchaser adventure. This includes character in addition to organization calling, the capacity to file the calls, show sharing, low latency media routing and plenty of more. Those may be used by developers to increase a substantially interactive video chat applications for any use case. Pinnacle competencies:

nicely documented api’s for voice, video and messaging

exceptionally comfortable

interactive visible builder to format, increase and installation verbal exchange workflows

assist for net browser via an extension to guide pass-platform calling. Competitive pricing

3. Quickblox

pinnacle 10 internet offerings to assemble your very personal video calling app

quickblox utilizes xmpp based totally totally chat connections and gives its offerings which may be metered through utilization of the network (in line with second). Quickblox has come an extended manner in advance of being an underdog and is now a especially expert chat net provider in Android Application Development Company in Los Angeles. Customers can also get get admission to to specific courses for all compatible systems and energetic technical help channels. Pinnacle functions:

exceptional perfect to small and medium-sized industrial organisation. Organization level plans can value as masses as $30000 consistent with year. Provides get right of entry to to middle documents and can be truly custom designed as steady with challenge desires. Chat app can help as a great deal as 1000 enterprise contributors. Beneficial code samples for unique generation that reduce down challenge initialization time. Corporation diploma protection.

4. Sinch

top 10 internet offerings to assemble your very own video calling app

fee-effective can be an irony for the voip primarily based sinch. With video excellent fees as little as $0. 003 in keeping with minute, sinch is one of the maximum less costly video calling sdk solutions within the marketplace. On pinnacle of that, they provide 2500 free calling mins each month. Pushed with the aid of simplicity, they offer characteristic-wealthy but simplistic sdks for ios, android and web applications which can be easy to set up. Their effective sdks have landed them into excessive profile partnerships with - truecaller, tango, uber, and others. Top features:

relatively effective flash voice verification provider (currently utilized by truecaller)

default push notifications

automated call routing based mostly on lowest latency

ninety nine. 90 five% uptime. Very well documented apis

5. Tokbox

 top 10 internet offerings to build your own video calling app

the winner of 2013 “best webrtc device”, tokbox affords some of competencies to wholesome as a whole lot as its opposition. A number of the ones encompass one to as a minimum one and company video calls, show sharing, as well as call recording. With fees beginning from a base rate of $nine. 99 in keeping with month, the offerings are expectedly ordinary. However, it’s pricing makes it a tad costlier for startups. Pinnacle capabilities:

low latency and facilitates inter tool communication

highly relaxed with hipaa and baa compliance. Especially effective conference name capacity

hd name and video recording

6. Gruveo

top 10 web offerings to construct your non-public video calling app

gruveo is on the whole a video name issuer organization that empowers net based video chats with none logins or signups. Customers can truly create a consultation, share the hyperlink and interact in a video chat. This open ended yet securely encrypted communique isn't some thing however a advertising and marketing approach from gruveo to exhibit the competencies of it’s video chat functionalities which can be to be had as full fledged sdk’s for ios, android and the internet. With thousands and heaps of clients around the globe the use of gruveo actually, there can be a good deal much less doubt about its abilties to deal with video chats. Top talents:

bypass platform and device properly applicable

default help for hd exceptional media streaming

seamless organization calling with default help for be a part of name session

manual display screen sharing

marketer’s satisfaction with callers place, referral internet web page and tool facts is proven to the decision receiver.

7. Voxeet

pinnacle 10 net offerings to construct your non-public video calling app

hd video with three-d surround sound on your video calls - when turned into the last time did you listen that? That is what voxeet claims to hold to the desk. Targeted on imparting high excellent audio and video experience in the route of your video calls, voxeet internet offerings have precipitated a prime disruption inside the webrtc industry. Further to this, voxeet presents an entire suit of api’s which could in shape more than one iphone Application Development Company in Los Angeles and a big range of target audience. At the same time as number one video calling prices are as little as $0. 00375 in keeping with minute, voxeet offers a host of add-on services like broadcasting, call recording, speech to textual content transcription and additional.

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5 Reasons You Should Consider Participating in NaNoWriMo

Leaves are changing colors, the air is crisp, and pumpkin spice lattes are available to the masses. Do you know what that means?

NaNoWriMo season is almost upon us!

That’s right – the nonprofit writer’s program National Novel Writing Month, commonly known as NaNoWriMo – is getting closer!

“Wait,” you might be saying, “What exactly does this mean?”

WELL! Allow me to tell you!

National Novel Writing Month is a writing challenge in November with a simple goal: write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days.

NaNo is also far more than that – it’s a community, it’s a way of life, it’s – okay, I’m probably getting ahead of myself. I’m just really passionate about the program – in fact, I even wrote my college admissions essay on the life-changing power of NaNoWriMo!

1. Having a Deadline is Incredibly Motivating!

I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but if you are, then you struggle with procrastination. A lot. If procrastination were a major, I’d have a Ph.D. in the study. Yet every year when NaNoWriMo season rolls around, I find myself eager to write and hit my daily word count goal. I’ll wake up early, go to bed late, and even get my regular work done faster to have more time to write. The NaNoWriMo website also provides you with badges as you hit specific landmarks – your first 25k, writing for 10 days in a row, etc. – which I love to try and collect throughout the month.

2. A Sense of Community!

This is one of my absolute favorite parts on NaNoWriMo – the community! Currently, the site boasts over 370,000 participants between the Young Writer’s Program and the main NaNoWriMo program! Every November, Twitter, Bookstagram, and BookTube is flooded with posts and #WIP updates for WriMos to encourage, inspire, and support one another! The NaNoWriMo website also hosts forums for writers to flock together and form a community. I found some of my best friends through their website and am still heavily involved in local events too!

That’s right – not only is there an online community, but there are also offline ones as well! Most cities host NaNoWriMo events put together by your local Municipal Liaisons – MLs for short. Depending on your location, libraries, coffee shops, and bookstores have been known to hold NaNoWriMo meetings for writers to gather and participate in word wars and chat about your book. It’s a blast!

3. No Time for Doubt!

The basis of NaNoWriMo is writing 50k in 30 days – this means you’re writing 1,667 words every day. If you’re a fast writer, this might be easier for you, but it’s definitely not for me! This will be my fifth year participating in the annual event, yet the word count still catches me every time! When you’re writing so many words per day, you don’t have time to stop and edit what you’ve written! There’s no time for writer’s block! If you want to make it to the finish line and claim sweet, sweet victory, you have to trudge through it one foot – or word – in front of the other. Eventually, the writer’s block or problem-scene will end, and it’ll become smoother sailing once more.

For those of us who struggle with self-doubt or perfectionism, this is also super helpful. I tend to go back and fret over my writing style, “is this too trope-y?”, and all the lovely fears caused by our inner editors. During NaNoWriMo, I have an excuse to say, “Nope! I’ll deal with that in December! For now, just write!”

4. Author Pep Talks!

Look, if you haven’t read the NaNoWriMo author pep talks, you’re sorely missing out. My personal favorite is Lemony Snicket’s, written entirely in satire. I crack up and get inspired every time I read it! If irony isn’t really your cup of tea, they have tons of other pep talks cataloged in their archives, and new ones are sent out during NaNo season!

Here are several of my favorite pep talks given in the past few years:

Brandon Sanderson, Erin Morgenstern, Gail Carson Levine, Holly Black, James Patterson, Jenny Han, John Green, Kate DiCamillo, Maggie Stiefvater, Marie Lu, Marissa Meyer, Meg Cabot, Neil Gaiman, Rainbow Rowell, Scott Westerfeld, Stephanie Perkins, Veronica Roth, and Lindsey Grant.

5. YOU WRITE A FREAKING NOVEL!!

There is absolutely no better feeling in the world than this:

You’ve been writing nonstop for the last 29 days. The end of your novel is in sight – you’ve been through ups and downs with your characters, you’ve cried with them (or because they refuse to stick to your outline), you’ve plowed through writer’s blocks, and you stuck with it for an entire month.

And here it is.

Stare at those words for a moment.

The End.

You’ve written a novel. A NOVEL! It might be terrible – goodness knows some of my NaNoWriMo drafts are so awful that I have to laugh at myself – but you’ve done it. You wrote a novel. You’re a novelist. A writer. An author – published or not, it doesn’t matter. You’re an author to a first draft.

“But Ally…”

“But Ally…I just don’t have the time to write a novel.”

This is by far the most common reason I hear from people for not participating in NaNoWriMo – and who can blame them? Life gets in the way!

I totally understand – but it’s only for thirty days! After the month you can go back to the sanity of having free time – but for NaNo, we buckle down, we prioritize, and we drink our caffeine by the gallon.

The best advice I ever heard for this problem comes from Chris Baty, the founder and former executive director of the program. He’s written three books about NaNoWriMo and started off the whole event in 1999.

Write in the small moments.

Can you wake up twenty minutes earlier? Go to bed ten minutes later? Write during your lunch break? Jot down snippets on the ride home from work? It’s incredible how many small moments you can find when you prioritize your writing and how much they add up!

“But Ally…doesn’t quality matter more than quantity?”

This is definitely the second most common reason I’ve heard for being nervous about participating in NaNo. The naysayers insist that writing so many words in a month creates a chaotic mess of words with no real quality in writing (no, honestly, I’ve heard someone say this).

Yes, I’ll admit – my drafts are a chaotic mess of words. They’re messy, wonderful, sometimes rambly first drafts that absolutely suck – isn’t that beautiful? First drafts are allowed to be terrible. Usually, they aren’t all too bad – there’s enough to go off of for a second draft. Then maybe a third. Then a fourth, and soon enough, you’re well on your way to getting ready to query for an agent.

Don’t believe me? Check out some of these novels that started off as NaNoWriMo projects:

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Wool by Hugh Howey (soon to be a movie!)

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (already a movie starring Robert Patterson and Reese Witherspoon!)

The Beautiful Land by Alan Averill

Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress by Marissa Meyer (all three NaNoWriMo projects went on to become best-selling books!)

That’s a pretty dang successful list right there. I think it speaks for itself – NaNoWriMo clearly doesn’t skimp on quality for quantity.

I hope this blog post has been enough to convince you to start thinking about joining NaNoWriMo! I’ll let you in on a closing secret:

Even if you don’t make it to 50k, you still have more words than you started with!

If you only manage to write 200 words during the month of November – guess what? THat’s still 200 more words than you had before NaNoWriMo! At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter how fast you write or what your word count goals are – it’s that you’re writing. And having fun. And probably losing some of your sanity but that’s beside the point.

I really, really love NaNoWriMo and hope I’ll see you on the website! If you decide to join, feel free to add me as a writing buddy to get started! I’m kineticbugsy on NaNoWriMo’s website and @natureofpages on Twitter, where I screech about word wars and character aesthetics throughout the month.

Go forth and write!

Are you thinking about participating in NaNoWriMo? Are you a veteran NaNo back for another season or a newbie? Tell me about your upcoming project or feel free to drop any questions about the annual event in the comments!

TNOP out!

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Heres Whats Actually Going On With The Oscars And Those Cut Awards

The 91st Academy Awards are making headlines once more — but not because the show is only a few days away. This year, the Academy is in hot water thanks to a controversial programming decision that’s causing a considerable amount of backlash. So much so, that the Oscars may have already nixed the idea.

The Oscars were reportedly set to eliminate four categories from its live broadcast. Awards for Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Live-Action Short, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling would instead be presented during commercial breaks. Needless to say, this wasn’t received well by nominees in those categories, which included craftspeople from films like A Star Is Born, Mary, Queen of Scots, and BlacKkKlansman.

Focus Features

Margot Robbie as Queen Elizabeth in Mary, Queen of Scots

The decision sparked controversy aplenty when word got out, frustrating key industry figures and cinephiles alike. Not to mention, there’s been a modicum of confusing back-and-forth since. We’re here to help set things straight so you know what’s going down at this year’s show with a guide to what’s going on with all this talk about category cutting. Is it happening or what?

Why were the categories being cut in the first place?

It all comes down to editing for time. The decision was all part of a plan, in partnership with ABC, to reduce the lengthy show’s runtime to just three hours. Planning began as early as August 2018, with the Academy working on a new format for the show to keep its bloated length down.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Academy president John Bailey initially sent an email to the group’s members laying out the plan for the 2019 ceremony. He stated that, while the Academy is still “honoring the achievements of all 24 awards,” they would indeed be announcing four categories during commercial breaks, with winners’ speeches airing later in the broadcast.

He noted that the four categories receiving their awards during commercial breaks would be guaranteed a spot during 2020’s broadcast as well. A video demonstration was reportedly shown to recipients of the email, where most of the presentation would be intact, minus each winner’s walk to the stage. The goal was to enhance the “spirit” of each winner’s speech, while also cutting down on time.

Bailey explained further that the Academy would also be streaming the four cut presentations online for fans around the world to enjoy.

“Fans will be able to watch on Oscar.com and on the Academy’s social channels. The live stream is a first for our show, and will help further awareness and promotion of these award categories,” he wrote.

But the decision to omit certain categories did not sit well with everyone. Why would cinematography and film editing, of all the awards up for grabs, be relegated to commercial breaks when they’re essential building blocks of any film project? This was the sentiment most shared. Hair and makeup are integral parts of productions as well — some would argue some of the most important work is done in the makeup chair. For example, would Christian Bale’s Oscar-nominated performance as Dick Cheney be taken as seriously if the actor had not undergone a complete, head-to-toe physical transformation? Similarly, live-action shorts are just as valid as extended-length films.

Annapurna Pictures

Christian Bale as Dick Cheney in Vice

The idea that the show simply needed to be shorter didn’t lessen the anger or disrespect felt by those in the industry, including several Oscar-winning nominees and high-profile celebrities. And thus, the backlash commenced.

How did people respond?

To put it mildly, not well. The industry lit up with frustrated, angry filmmakers and Academy members who felt that the decision was a slight against their livelihood and the industry as a whole. They believed that pushing these four categories to commercial breaks was, in fact, downplaying folks’ achievements, and they swiftly made their anger known.

Alfonso Cuarón, who’s nominated for producing, writing, directing, and handling the cinematography for his film Roma, was one of the decision’s most vocal opponents, especially in both the cinematography and editing departments. Cuarón expressed his displeasure on Twitter.

“In the history of CINEMA, masterpieces have existed without sound, without color, without a story, without actors and without music,” he tweeted. “No one single film has ever existed without CINEMAtography and without editing.”

His good pal and fellow Oscar-winning filmmaker director Guillermo del Toro made a humble suggestion to the Academy, noting that the categories up for omission are “cinema itself.”

Others, like Colin Hanks, sarcastically noted the “irony” of what a lack of cinematography, editing, and hairstyling and makeup would make the ceremony: a live-action short.

Actor and comedian Billy Eichner made light of the situation, showing his displeasure with a joke.

“Just heard the Academy is giving out Best Actress tonight in the parking lot of Rite Aid on Santa Monica and La Brea around 2am. This isn’t right,” he quipped.

Has anything changed since the announcement?

Actually, yes. Following an open letter penned by talent like Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Sandra Bullock, del Toro, Cuarón, Christopher Nolan, and several other A-list cinematographers and directors, it appears the Academy has reversed its controversial decision.

The letter prompted a response from the Academy, including the following statement:

“Unfortunately, as the result of inaccurate reporting and social media posts, there has been a chain of misinformation that has understandably upset many Academy members,” the response read. “We’d like to restate and explain the plans for presenting the awards, as endorsed by the Academy’s Board of Governors.”

The Academy explained that all 24 Oscar categories will indeed be presented on stage in the Dolby Theater and air on the live broadcast. It also noted that the representatives for the four categories had “volunteered” to be included later in the broadest, with time walking to and from the stage edited out of the footage.

So, right — this sounds like there’s no need for cuts anymore, and the show can move forward as originally planned.

What’s happening next?

It appears as though the Oscars are proceeding as usual, as the Academy has now walked back their decision to change up the format.

Since it looks like the proposed cuts aren’t happening this year after all, a possible rotation in the future is a change the Academy is very much still interested in for the next ceremony, hearkening back to the institution’s original email.

That means that if the Academy does go through with its initial plan during next year’s telecast, we’ll likely be hearing some of the same debate — though there’s no way of knowing if the same categories would be on the chopping block.

Warner Bros.

Director-star Bradley Cooper and his leading Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born

“We sincerely believe you will be pleased with the show, and look forward to celebrating a great year in movies with all Academy members and with the rest of the world,” said the Academy of the impending ceremony. Of course, this is only the latest misstep in what’s already been a messy Oscars season, with Kevin Hart’s will-he-or-won’t-he hosting saga and Lady Gaga’s refusal to perform “Shallow” unless all five Best Original Song nominees were given a chance to perform during the telecast (yet another one of the Academy’s reported time-cutting moves that went sour).

The hostless 91st Academy Awards are going down live on ABC on Sunday, February 24 — with all of its award presentations intact. Hopefully.

The post Heres Whats Actually Going On With The Oscars And Those Cut Awards appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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[therewillbesparkles]

best books to understand blockchain

This rule advocates the best blockchain books and that fifty% of your portfolio must be in Bitcoin, 25% in large market cap coins, and the remaining 25% in small market cap coins. CryptosRUs has always taken the place that diversity is energy, therefore the 50/25/25 rule. Bitcoin foreign money comes to take a monopoly place within the cryptocurrency scene. Bitcoin Maximalists believe that the underlying blockchain can also be an important factor to take into account on the time of judging why Bitcoin is the ’best’ cryptocurrency available in the market. In December 2016, I opened a Coinbase account to buy Bitcoin. However, maybe one of the most compelling arguments towards Bitcoin maximalism is that it is a “maximalist” place. There isn't any want for absolutely the position taken by maximalists. There can be the community effect of Bitcoin as a medium of trade and funding. Bitcoin Maximalists are aware of these shortcomings hence the thought for a mixed network with aspect chains was proposed.

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[shutdownld50-blog]

ABOUT LD50'S REACTIONARY TURN

The LD50 gallery in Dalston, London last year ran this series of talks featuring 6 high profile far right reactionary speakers:

#9 Sunday – 7th August 2016– 12pm NICK LAND on Techno-Commercial NRx

#8 Saturday – 6th August 2016 – 6pm MARK CITADEL [as virtual avatar] 'Christianity, Progressivism, and the Occidental Soul' watch here

#7 Saturday – 6th August 2016 – 6pm BRETT STEVENS [as virtual avatar] ‘The Black Pill’ watch here

#6 Sunday – 31st July 2016– 6pm PETER BRIMELOW on Imigration, Ethnicity and Economics listen here

#5 Sunday – 24th July 2016 – 6pm IBEN THRANHOLM on The Sanctuary of Traditionalism in Russia and the West listen here

#4 Saturday – 28th May 2016 – 6pm Dr PETER SAUNDERS ‘Epigenetics and Evolution Theory’ screening: The Monk and the Honeybee (1989) listen here #3 Saturday – 21st May 2016 – 6pm Dr FLORIAN PLATTNER ‘Can we enhance memory?’ screening: TransHumanism ( h+) / Genetic Modification of Life (2010) listen here

#2 Wednesday – 18th May 2016 – 6pm ‘Autoimmunity’ (hosted by Goldsmiths university) watch here

#1 Saturday – 7th May 2016 – 6pm Dr SILVIA CAMPORESI ‘CRISPR Genome Editing Technologies: Which possible futures?’ screening: Gattaca (1997) listen here

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.ld50gallery.com%2Ftalks%2F

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

The talks programme mixes straight up fascists and reactionaries with other innocuous seeming figures with no known right wing affiliation or convictions.

Peter Brimelow is hardcore fascist: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/peter-brimelow

As is Brett Stevens: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2011/07/26/american-blogger-praises-oslo-shooter

Mark Citadel seems to be part of the 'Return of Kings' manosphere blog, so is clearly another reactionary voice. (‘Return Of Kings is a blog for heterosexual, masculine men. [...] men should be masculine and women should be feminine.’ – to quote their own philosophically self-undermining self-description.)

Iben Thranholm is a proponent of racist, anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant, homophobic and misogynist politics. She routinely discourses on the need to resurrect strong ‘european' gender binaries and ‘strong men’ to ‘protect women’ from 'male immigrants' who she presents as a violent sexual threat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaOLgy3YKtA

Nick Land: One can split hairs by saying that Nick Land isn't a white supremacist and is just into eugenic selection for intelligence so we can survive the coming AI singularity. However, a close reading of his recent writing reveals he just doesn't like immigrants and black people. He likes Asians because they are deemed to be smart and polite, and he likes Japanese because they've resisted immigration. Racism is an aura around all his other pronouncements.

The first three named speakers in the talks series – Peter Saunders, Silvia Camporesi, and Florian Plattner – are all reputable scholars. The topic of epigenetics (Saunders’ subject) is a hot button one for the new biological racists, because it shortens timelines over which evolutionary change can potentially happen, meaning that changes in historical time can have significant effects on human populations. This is usually used to argue that evolution within NW European populations has led to the wonders of the Enlightenment and enhanced IQ, while everyone else are just cousin-marrying knuckle draggers who are resistant to democracy because they haven't selected for non kin altruistic behaviour. The fact that HBD (human biodiversity) proponents use and sometimes misuse epigenetics doesn't mean anyone talking about it is necessarily fascist.

Considering the rest of the line up, however, it seems these figures fulfilled a kind of legitimating function for LD50’s project. Openly reactionary speakers could enjoy credibility by association with reputable academics. However innocent, they became tools in what appears to be a conscious and extended attempt to promote extremely reactionary ideas by introducing them, uncritically and indeed enthusiastically, to an art world and art educational context.

The live streams still available on the gallery’s blog testify to LD50’s gushing reception of and advocacy for racist, white supremacist, misogynist and homophobic views. If we can learn one thing from the above, it is the need to stop assuming everything programmed by small or large galleries is at worst ‘exploratory’, ironic or even critical – either an intellectual provocation or contribution to ‘discussion’. This programme appears to have been part of a wider far right push to infiltrate academic institutions, and to normalise and promote extremely reactionary ideas.

THE ART OF ENTRYISM

As well as the talks programme, LD50 also mounted a gallery show, 'Amerika'. Dedicated to the so called alt-right, and featuring wall to wall Pepe memes, kek, 'neoreactionary' esoterica, and misogyny, the same structure of plausible deniability allowed some at least to view the show as a kind of enquiry into a cultural phenomenon rather tha a direct act of political infiltration. Any illusions about the disinterested or critical ambitions of the gallery have been dispelled by the recent public revelation of the gallery's politics. A brief review of the gallery's blog reveals a show brimming with sympathy for affluent white male mass murderers of of women and muslims, but nothing that would pass for actual critique – let alone the visceral disgust this material evokes in those who side not with abstractions ('free speech') but human victims of violent oppression.

A similar standard of fascist entryism is seen in artwork still displayed on the gallery's website: a pseudo-critique of consumerism by replication (look, Taylor Swift!) exuding a will to distinction and superiority, at the same time functions to run fascist ideas (text by Hitler) and symbols (the Afrikaner white supremacist flag) past the un/knowing art consumer:

https://www.ld50gallery.com/exhibitions/

Some further background and analysis from the Horrible Gif blog's piece on the LD50 debacle:

'LD50, a small project space in dalston junction, had some exhibitions of questionable taste and arrangement in recent months. The alt-right exhibit it staged using scavenged parts of the aesthetic and philosophical matter online wasn’t immediately partisan on the surface. It could have been bad satire, it could have been one of those things many adult-child digital artists do where they incorporate the very thing they critique. Obviously the depraved chasm which 4chan and allotments of reddit are located in is morbidly fascinating, to someone who feels they’re on an important media archaeology tip even moreso. Despite the Hitler quotes coupled with anime motifs and other bizarre conflations of alt-right imagery, the show itself didn’t offer a concrete position. This is a commonplace exhibition model that allows “racy” subject matter to be presented with critical immunity, because the art moves to within a viewers praxis. More often this is used with cultural appropriation, where a white artist will extract reference points and framing devices from culture they do not belong to and situate the art itself on the intersection of their gaze, etc etc. So the art is about the white gaze on other culture, that way it removes itself from, at best, being accused of ignoring postcolonial theory or, at worst, just being mildly racist. Very meta though, and you can extract 2000 words from meta quite easily. With the benefit of hindsight plus a screenshot of a private fb conversation, it became obvious the curiosity with the alt-right wasn’t coolly detached in the LD50 show. Given the social media output of LD50 runs along moaning lines about the apolitical nature of net artists and glib rejoinders to political/social occurances, strangely they might have found the blazing political net art they were looking for… just the bad kind of politics. HEY, bad is a construct in art that is irrelevant after postmodernism and pop art, so who is to say it is bad? It’s just neo-reactionary. Sounds like the working title of a group of Final Fantasy rebels. These dodgy politics weren’t always so clear, even in that classic uncertain/ironic way, so it’s possible it was a slippery slope slodden down.

As said in the beginning of this longform rant, the social media microdramas of the art cottage industry aren’t very interesting in themselves beyond the sorry online appearances of calculated hostility and contrived artjoke acumen. But with artist Sophie Jung posting in a public way a ‘call-out’ to a curator of a gallery holding quite dodgy fascist views, the fallout is more interesting than the usual bruised/inflated egos or comment flame wars. The gallery itself has responded by “archiving” the post and all the comments on the main page, as doxing (a strategy of online shaming perfected by the alt-right) bait to sentient pepe memes and twitter eggs. It’s an obfuscatory and aloof reaction, one that shows particular acumen to online psychological skirmishing. Take away the veneer of irony and you see only a few slimy individuals toying with repugnant ideas that most good artists would give no merit, even as illusory discourse.

Is it right to call out someone by posting private convos? Well, check the gallery events and talks - they were pretty public (albeit small and within purposely obfuscating platforms) call outs to those neon genesis authoritarians. A lighter discourse than “is it ok to punch a nazi?” but no less annoying. Of course the answer is yes. Do you argue the inverse that the alt-right should be given platforms? Do you agree with the BBC giving airtime to UKIP but not the Green Party, who have existed for longer/have more members/more elected MPs/have actually run a fucking area of the country? Logic has associations, and while you can spin them away, we fucking see you. The alt-right would legislate for the structural, hidden bureaucratic violence against non-white/foreign people but it is not OK to punch them? They’d happily punch you. It can be so easy if it doesn’t affect you, or to think it wouldn’t, to think that exposing their bullshit is better. Hindenburg thought Hitler wouldn’t be as evil when he finally was given power, the tories seemed to think appeasing the UKIP types was the best way to keep themselves in power. Fuck m9, punch tories AND nazis if you can get away with it. Yeah, if you can back it up, calling people out on something as basic as nazi sympathies is OK. Why did it take so long to be called out on? The alt-right are super zeitgeisty right now and net art dorks are into that because it can be processed into smug “political” diatribe and gestural academica. Things within the art gallery mechanica are afforded un-anchored critical protection at least until the management are revealed to think the muslim ban is fine.'

http://horriblegif.com/post/157189463814/level-drama-50

[nemolian]

The Death of Bon Appétit Is Proof Media Companies Have No Idea What Makes Videos Work

There are a zillion reasons why I have been mourning the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen. The one that hurts most is that the slow, drawn-out death of one of the most joyful YouTube channels on the internet could have easily been prevented.

If you haven’t been keeping up with the drama, the shit first hit the fan on June 8, when writer Tammie Teclemariam tweeted a photo of then Bon Appétit Editor in Chief Adam Rapoport in brownface. What followed was an explosive public reckoning as several staffers—those who appeared in videos, those behind the camera, and some at the magazine proper—recounted stories of racism, tokenism, and unequal pay at Condé Nast, Bon Appétit’s publisher. Rapoport resigned. Condé Nast Vice President Matt Duckor also left after racist and homophobic tweets (from as recently as 2014) were unearthed. (Duckor has been employed by Bon Appétit since 2011.)

The first part of this saga ended with Bon Appétit posting a pledge on its Instagram to “do better” in reckoning with its culture of racism, sexism, homophobia, and harassment, and assured viewers of a future with more “inclusive programming.” Still, BA had effectively gone dark on YouTube—not because of the pandemic, which the crew successfully figured out how to safely shoot videos in spite of, but because staffers refused to appear on camera in solidarity with their underpaid colleagues.

Things were silent for a bit and then on Thursday, three beloved Bon Appétit stars—Priya Krishna, Rick Martinez, and Sohla El-Waylly—announced via their Instagram and Twitter accounts that they would no longer appear in BA videos because, as you might expect, the corporate suits at Condé Nast Entertainment wouldn’t pay them what they deserved. Soon, BA favorites Molly Baz and Gaby Melian also said they would no longer be appearing in videos as a result. Then yesterday, Carla Lalli also announced that she was leaving BA video. That brings the number of staffers who’ve quit making videos up to six.

G/O Media may get a commission

This is a woefully incomplete recap of issues plaguing what was once a wholesome oasis in the endless barrage of bad news and irony-poisoned memes that now make up the internet. It doesn’t take a genius to suss out that Condé Nast Entertainment is killing a hyper-successful video channel because profits are more important than equitable pay. Compensating these staffers fairly isn’t likely to make a huge dent in Condé Nast’s profits, especially when you consider that Bon Appétit had been irrelevant for years before this group of unlikely video stars came along. Perhaps, Condé Nast is more afraid of what else the staffers will ask for. But regardless of why Condé Nast is being so stubborn, something in Lalli’s tweet was a literal shot through the heart for anyone who has ever produced or starred in a video for a media company.

After describing a once-organic process where people got to pitch their ideas freely and videos were often shot by a one-person crew on a small budget, Lalli then traces an all-too-familiar change in process once BA’s videos began to take off. “By that time, video-related revenue was integral to Bon Appétit’s budget, and [Condé Nast Entertainment] relied on algorithms instead of instinct when determining who could appear in videos. Content decisions were largely data-driven. The editorial team had diminishing influence over video strategy,” Lalli claimed. “I felt that the expertise and interests of the hosts was less important to the decision-makers than platform-specific trends.”

Smarter people than I have weighed in on the systemic racism that’s rampant in food media. But I do know something about making videos for media companies with half-baked plans to “pivot to video.”

Videos are a labor of love. It’s common knowledge that TV and movie productions take months, if not years, to plan and execute. For some reason that acknowledgment flies out the window when it comes to digital media. “How hard could it be?” the publishing executive in a bespoke suit muses. A five-minute video should only take, what, four hours to produce, shoot, and edit? Why not pump out two, three, four, five videos a day? And if a “good” video takes that long to produce, why not opt for “easy” videos that we can shove out the door? After all: more videos, more ads, more money. And that’s really what’s driving it all, in case you’ve never been in the rooms where these decisions are made—advertising sold against video content commands a higher rate than traditional web display ads. It’s absolutely that simple.

To anyone who’s ever been involved with making a video, this brand of c-suite thinking is pure comedy. Hosted videos often involve scripts, written by a video producer and sometimes the on-screen talent. They involve pre-production: creating shot lists, buying props, and brainstorming how best to express a concept with whatever resources you’re given. They involve nuts and bolts decisions like lighting, framing, and set-up before anyone ever steps into the studio. When you actually get around to shooting, there’s no such thing as a single take. You film, saying the same things over, and over, and over again until you get what you need, and then, one more time for safety. After that, it can take forever and a year, depending on your internet connection, to upload footage. Video producers are like marathon runners—they sometimes sit hunched over their computers for 18 hours at a time (usually in “editing bays” that are glorified closets) just to get a first cut done. Sometimes, you have to reshoot bits or re-record audio. Sometimes an editor gets picky with second-round edits. In short: a two-day turnaround for a lean crew is speedy, and likely means multiple people have pulled long hours to make it happen. Two videos a day? You’re asking someone to work themselves to death. Because these days, media executives aren’t exactly keen on providing resources or hiring the staff necessary to lighten the load.

This is true of Bon Appétit’s videos, too, and why the refusal to pay people what they’re owed is so infuriating. Make no mistake, as effortless and freewheeling as BA Test Kitchen videos appear, it requires a small army to keep these videos going. That Bon Appétit’s video crew was obviously having fun at the same time? That’s what made their videos so aspirational for the rest of us.

This is what media executives don’t understand. To them, videos are a vehicle for ad dollars, whether readers want them on not. Executives like to think that if they can game the numbers just right, they’ll have impressive figures to show advertisers, and a fistful of Benjamins to line their pockets. They’re not thinking about why anyone would want to watch these videos. As for paying people equitably for their labor—why would they when they can pay a contractor for the same amount of hours and skip paying the healthcare benefits?

Silicon Valley has hyped algorithms to be infallible arbiters of data-driven truth, but anyone who’s been on a bad Tinder date can tell you the limits of that. Data without context isn’t much of anything. Analytics are meant to guide content creation—not define it. Did Condé Nast’s algorithms foretell just how quickly Sohla El-Waylly would capture the heart of BA fans? Not likely. To hear El-Waylly tell it, she was shoved in front of a camera to make BA appear more diverse. That she became as popular as she did was because El-Waylly was delightful to watch and could cook like a motherfucker. Did the algorithms predict that challenging a neurotic pastry chef to make gourmet versions of snack foods would be a hit? Probably not. That sounds a lot like editorial staff shooting the shit and deciding why the hell not? No machine would possibly know a tall weirdo who can barely finish a sentence trying to ferment various foods would be beloved by millions. They watch because Brad Leone is hilarious, and the shady choices that BA’s video editors make are also a hilarious meta-story in and of itself. 

What I’m getting at here is that people are what make videos work. People—given the license and resources to have fun—are the reason why viewers hit the play button. People are the reason why you hit that like and subscribe button. Even as BA grew from a sleeper hit to its own cinematic universe, what kept it successful was that the human element came through in moments congenial, frustrated, heartbroken, petty, and embarrassing. No one watches BA Test Kitchen because they’re fans of Condé Nast, or want to see Condé Nast succeed.

It’s heartbreaking, then, to watch BA’s staff fight to make things right, to see their fans vocally and passionately support them in that fight on every conceivable platform, and know that Condé Nast does not give a fuck. It’s depressing to know that the people who made the BA Test Kitchen magical are not the ones who get to decide its future; that the best most of them can do given the circumstances, is to walk away, knowing their bosses see them as barely more than a rounding error.

It doesn’t have to be like this. The solution is right there in plain sight, for everyone with a pair of working eyes to see. It’s like this because the adults in the room don’t care: They barely understand what they own, and hardly notice when they sign its death certificate.

via:Gizmodo, August 13, 2020 at 11:27AM

[myeclecticcollectorblazeus]

PoolStanding beside an approving Donald Trump at a rally in Kentucky on Monday night, Republican Sen. Rand Paul demanded the media unmask the whistleblower whose report about the president’s alleged abuse of power dealing with Ukraine sparked impeachment proceedings.American news organizations resisted the pressure, but—in a 2019 re-play of “Russia, if you’re listening”—Kremlin-controlled state media promptly jumped on it.Shortly after Sen. Paul tweeted out an article that speculated in considerable detail about the identity of the whistleblower—with a photograph, a name, and details about the purported political history of a CIA professional—Russian state media followed suit. Russian Media Cheers Trump’s Moves in Syria: ‘Putin Won the Lottery!’As if on cue, the Kremlin-controlled heavy hitters—TASS, RT, Rossiya-1—disseminated the same information. But unlike Rand Paul, one of the Russian state media outlets didn’t seem to find the source—Real Clear Investigations—to be particularly impressive, and claimed falsely that the material was published originally by The Washington Post.This was the most egregious, but certainly not the only example of Kremlin-funded media cheerleading for Trump’s fight against impeachment as proceedings against him unfold with growing speed. As a chorus of talking heads on Fox News have picked up on Trump’s talking points, which is predictable—they’ve also been echoed across the pond, albeit with a tinge of irony. “Have you lost your minds that you want to remove our Donald Ivanovych?” asked Vladimir Soloviev, the host of the television show Evening with Vladimir Soloviev. Russian experts, government officials, and prominent talking heads often deride the American president for his Twitter clangor, haphazard approach to foreign policy, clownish lack of decorum, and unfiltered stream of verbalized consciousness. But all the reasons they believe Trump “isn’t a very good president” for America are precisely their reasons for thinking he is so great for Russia.  Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a Russian client whose regime teetered on the brink of collapse only to be saved definitively by Trump’s chaotic approach to the Middle East, recently said that “President Trump is the best type of president for a foe.” The Russians heartily agree. The Trump presidency has been wildly successful for Russia, which is eagerly stepping into every vacuum created by the retreat of the United States on the world stage.“They say Trump is making Russia great. That’s basically accurate,” pointed out Karen Shakhnazarov, CEO of Mosfilm Studio and a prominent fixture on Russian state television. “The chaos brought by Trump into the American system of government is weakening the United States. America is getting weaker and now Russia is taking its place in the Middle East. Suddenly, Russia is starting to seriously penetrate Africa... So when they say that Trump is weakening the United States—yes, he is. And that’s why we love him... The more problems they have, the better it is for us.”Since the current administration is proving to be beneficial for the Kremlin, the Russians are openly contemplating various strategies and conspiracy theories, designed to undermine President Trump’s political opponents. Russian state TV host Dmitry Kiselyov named Joe Biden as “Trump’s most dangerous rival" and urged Trump to “keep digging in Ukraine for the sweetest kompromat of all: Proving that Ukraine—not Russia—interfered in the U.S. elections."Russian conspiracy theories have been reverberating throughout the Trump administration, boosted by Konstantin Kilimnik and Paul Manafort, repeated by President Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. The Russians anticipated an easy victory and the Kremlin-controlled state media pre-emptively rejoiced back in May 2019 when state TV host Evgeny Popov boisterously declared that “Trump already won” and “Ukraine buried Biden as a candidate.” But what was contemplated as a winning strategy backfired spectacularly when Trump bought into that Russian theory. Through Giuliani, Trump pressured Ukraine’s newly elected President Volodymyr Zelensky for dirt on Biden, and—thanks to a whistleblower’s initial report on a highly problematic phone call Trump made to Zelensky in July—a formal impeachment inquiry began.   As the evidence of abuse of power continues to mount, the beleaguered commander in chief is reduced to attacking the messenger. Trump repeatedly demanded that lawmakers and the media reveal the identity of the whistleblower, even though congressional testimony from multiple witnesses now being made public repeatedly and consistently supports the original allegations.Russian experts and analysts are openly hoping that the impeachment proceedings will have a side effect that would greatly benefit the Kremlin: “Impeachment will turn into the hunt for Ukrainians” and cause a serious rift between Kyiv and Washington. RIA Novosti columnist Ivan Danilov writes: “Some witnesses and sources of information, on which the charges against Donald Trump are based (and for which he, in fact, faces impeachment) are ‘Americans of Ukrainian descent’... At the same time, supporters of the current president are already demonstrating a clear willingness to use their background as the proof that they are ‘traitors to America.’ It isn’t as evident now, but after several months of actively promoting the thesis ‘Ukrainians are Clinton’s agents and the enemies of the United States, who are trying to overthrow Trump,’ a significant part of American society and the political elite will want nothing to do with Ukraine or the Ukrainian leadership, nor will they harbor any warm feelings toward the Ukrainian diaspora.”Danilov quotes Fox News, Glenn Beck, and The Federalist to demonstrate that a case against Trump is ultimately going to turn into a case against Ukraine. The possibility of undermining bipartisan support for Ukraine’s fledgling democracy and its ongoing fight against Russian aggression sounds like a wonderful bonus for the Kremlin, especially since—for a change—anti-Ukrainian agitprop is now being made in America.  Although rattled by the prospect of Trump’s impeachment, Russian state media remains optimistic. Olga Skabeeva, the host of 60 Minutes, the most popular news talk show in Russia, predicted: “A Republican majority in the Senate won’t allow the president whom we elected, wonderful Donald Trump, to be sent off. It’s impossible. He has 90 percent support in the Republican Party.” Russian news reports are assuring their audiences that while impeachment is likely, it won’t result in Trump’s removal from office and will have no effect on the presidential elections in 2020. Russian media outlets are forecasting that swing states and the Electoral College will assure yet another victory for Donald Trump, which suits the Kremlin to a “T.”   Trump’s Syria Fiasco Is Part of Putin’s To-Do ListRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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[45news]

PoolStanding beside an approving Donald Trump at a rally in Kentucky on Monday night, Republican Sen. Rand Paul demanded the media unmask the whistleblower whose report about the president’s alleged abuse of power dealing with Ukraine sparked impeachment proceedings.American news organizations resisted the pressure, but—in a 2019 re-play of “Russia, if you’re listening”—Kremlin-controlled state media promptly jumped on it.Shortly after Sen. Paul tweeted out an article that speculated in considerable detail about the identity of the whistleblower—with a photograph, a name, and details about the purported political history of a CIA professional—Russian state media followed suit. Russian Media Cheers Trump’s Moves in Syria: ‘Putin Won the Lottery!’As if on cue, the Kremlin-controlled heavy hitters—TASS, RT, Rossiya-1—disseminated the same information. But unlike Rand Paul, one of the Russian state media outlets didn’t seem to find the source—Real Clear Investigations—to be particularly impressive, and claimed falsely that the material was published originally by The Washington Post.This was the most egregious, but certainly not the only example of Kremlin-funded media cheerleading for Trump’s fight against impeachment as proceedings against him unfold with growing speed. As a chorus of talking heads on Fox News have picked up on Trump’s talking points, which is predictable—they’ve also been echoed across the pond, albeit with a tinge of irony. “Have you lost your minds that you want to remove our Donald Ivanovych?” asked Vladimir Soloviev, the host of the television show Evening with Vladimir Soloviev. Russian experts, government officials, and prominent talking heads often deride the American president for his Twitter clangor, haphazard approach to foreign policy, clownish lack of decorum, and unfiltered stream of verbalized consciousness. But all the reasons they believe Trump “isn’t a very good president” for America are precisely their reasons for thinking he is so great for Russia.  Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a Russian client whose regime teetered on the brink of collapse only to be saved definitively by Trump’s chaotic approach to the Middle East, recently said that “President Trump is the best type of president for a foe.” The Russians heartily agree. The Trump presidency has been wildly successful for Russia, which is eagerly stepping into every vacuum created by the retreat of the United States on the world stage.“They say Trump is making Russia great. That’s basically accurate,” pointed out Karen Shakhnazarov, CEO of Mosfilm Studio and a prominent fixture on Russian state television. “The chaos brought by Trump into the American system of government is weakening the United States. America is getting weaker and now Russia is taking its place in the Middle East. Suddenly, Russia is starting to seriously penetrate Africa... So when they say that Trump is weakening the United States—yes, he is. And that’s why we love him... The more problems they have, the better it is for us.”Since the current administration is proving to be beneficial for the Kremlin, the Russians are openly contemplating various strategies and conspiracy theories, designed to undermine President Trump’s political opponents. Russian state TV host Dmitry Kiselyov named Joe Biden as “Trump’s most dangerous rival" and urged Trump to “keep digging in Ukraine for the sweetest kompromat of all: Proving that Ukraine—not Russia—interfered in the U.S. elections."Russian conspiracy theories have been reverberating throughout the Trump administration, boosted by Konstantin Kilimnik and Paul Manafort, repeated by President Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. The Russians anticipated an easy victory and the Kremlin-controlled state media pre-emptively rejoiced back in May 2019 when state TV host Evgeny Popov boisterously declared that “Trump already won” and “Ukraine buried Biden as a candidate.” But what was contemplated as a winning strategy backfired spectacularly when Trump bought into that Russian theory. Through Giuliani, Trump pressured Ukraine’s newly elected President Volodymyr Zelensky for dirt on Biden, and—thanks to a whistleblower’s initial report on a highly problematic phone call Trump made to Zelensky in July—a formal impeachment inquiry began.   As the evidence of abuse of power continues to mount, the beleaguered commander in chief is reduced to attacking the messenger. Trump repeatedly demanded that lawmakers and the media reveal the identity of the whistleblower, even though congressional testimony from multiple witnesses now being made public repeatedly and consistently supports the original allegations.Russian experts and analysts are openly hoping that the impeachment proceedings will have a side effect that would greatly benefit the Kremlin: “Impeachment will turn into the hunt for Ukrainians” and cause a serious rift between Kyiv and Washington. RIA Novosti columnist Ivan Danilov writes: “Some witnesses and sources of information, on which the charges against Donald Trump are based (and for which he, in fact, faces impeachment) are ‘Americans of Ukrainian descent’... At the same time, supporters of the current president are already demonstrating a clear willingness to use their background as the proof that they are ‘traitors to America.’ It isn’t as evident now, but after several months of actively promoting the thesis ‘Ukrainians are Clinton’s agents and the enemies of the United States, who are trying to overthrow Trump,’ a significant part of American society and the political elite will want nothing to do with Ukraine or the Ukrainian leadership, nor will they harbor any warm feelings toward the Ukrainian diaspora.”Danilov quotes Fox News, Glenn Beck, and The Federalist to demonstrate that a case against Trump is ultimately going to turn into a case against Ukraine. The possibility of undermining bipartisan support for Ukraine’s fledgling democracy and its ongoing fight against Russian aggression sounds like a wonderful bonus for the Kremlin, especially since—for a change—anti-Ukrainian agitprop is now being made in America.  Although rattled by the prospect of Trump’s impeachment, Russian state media remains optimistic. Olga Skabeeva, the host of 60 Minutes, the most popular news talk show in Russia, predicted: “A Republican majority in the Senate won’t allow the president whom we elected, wonderful Donald Trump, to be sent off. It’s impossible. He has 90 percent support in the Republican Party.” Russian news reports are assuring their audiences that while impeachment is likely, it won’t result in Trump’s removal from office and will have no effect on the presidential elections in 2020. Russian media outlets are forecasting that swing states and the Electoral College will assure yet another victory for Donald Trump, which suits the Kremlin to a “T.”   Trump’s Syria Fiasco Is Part of Putin’s To-Do ListRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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[weopenviews]

PoolStanding beside an approving Donald Trump at a rally in Kentucky on Monday night, Republican Sen. Rand Paul demanded the media unmask the whistleblower whose report about the president’s alleged abuse of power dealing with Ukraine sparked impeachment proceedings.American news organizations resisted the pressure, but—in a 2019 re-play of “Russia, if you’re listening”—Kremlin-controlled state media promptly jumped on it.Shortly after Sen. Paul tweeted out an article that speculated in considerable detail about the identity of the whistleblower—with a photograph, a name, and details about the purported political history of a CIA professional—Russian state media followed suit. Russian Media Cheers Trump’s Moves in Syria: ‘Putin Won the Lottery!’As if on cue, the Kremlin-controlled heavy hitters—TASS, RT, Rossiya-1—disseminated the same information. But unlike Rand Paul, one of the Russian state media outlets didn’t seem to find the source—Real Clear Investigations—to be particularly impressive, and claimed falsely that the material was published originally by The Washington Post.This was the most egregious, but certainly not the only example of Kremlin-funded media cheerleading for Trump’s fight against impeachment as proceedings against him unfold with growing speed. As a chorus of talking heads on Fox News have picked up on Trump’s talking points, which is predictable—they’ve also been echoed across the pond, albeit with a tinge of irony. “Have you lost your minds that you want to remove our Donald Ivanovych?” asked Vladimir Soloviev, the host of the television show Evening with Vladimir Soloviev. Russian experts, government officials, and prominent talking heads often deride the American president for his Twitter clangor, haphazard approach to foreign policy, clownish lack of decorum, and unfiltered stream of verbalized consciousness. But all the reasons they believe Trump “isn’t a very good president” for America are precisely their reasons for thinking he is so great for Russia.  Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a Russian client whose regime teetered on the brink of collapse only to be saved definitively by Trump’s chaotic approach to the Middle East, recently said that “President Trump is the best type of president for a foe.” The Russians heartily agree. The Trump presidency has been wildly successful for Russia, which is eagerly stepping into every vacuum created by the retreat of the United States on the world stage.“They say Trump is making Russia great. That’s basically accurate,” pointed out Karen Shakhnazarov, CEO of Mosfilm Studio and a prominent fixture on Russian state television. “The chaos brought by Trump into the American system of government is weakening the United States. America is getting weaker and now Russia is taking its place in the Middle East. Suddenly, Russia is starting to seriously penetrate Africa... So when they say that Trump is weakening the United States—yes, he is. And that’s why we love him... The more problems they have, the better it is for us.”Since the current administration is proving to be beneficial for the Kremlin, the Russians are openly contemplating various strategies and conspiracy theories, designed to undermine President Trump’s political opponents. Russian state TV host Dmitry Kiselyov named Joe Biden as “Trump’s most dangerous rival" and urged Trump to “keep digging in Ukraine for the sweetest kompromat of all: Proving that Ukraine—not Russia—interfered in the U.S. elections."Russian conspiracy theories have been reverberating throughout the Trump administration, boosted by Konstantin Kilimnik and Paul Manafort, repeated by President Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. The Russians anticipated an easy victory and the Kremlin-controlled state media pre-emptively rejoiced back in May 2019 when state TV host Evgeny Popov boisterously declared that “Trump already won” and “Ukraine buried Biden as a candidate.” But what was contemplated as a winning strategy backfired spectacularly when Trump bought into that Russian theory. Through Giuliani, Trump pressured Ukraine’s newly elected President Volodymyr Zelensky for dirt on Biden, and—thanks to a whistleblower’s initial report on a highly problematic phone call Trump made to Zelensky in July—a formal impeachment inquiry began.   As the evidence of abuse of power continues to mount, the beleaguered commander in chief is reduced to attacking the messenger. Trump repeatedly demanded that lawmakers and the media reveal the identity of the whistleblower, even though congressional testimony from multiple witnesses now being made public repeatedly and consistently supports the original allegations.Russian experts and analysts are openly hoping that the impeachment proceedings will have a side effect that would greatly benefit the Kremlin: “Impeachment will turn into the hunt for Ukrainians” and cause a serious rift between Kyiv and Washington. RIA Novosti columnist Ivan Danilov writes: “Some witnesses and sources of information, on which the charges against Donald Trump are based (and for which he, in fact, faces impeachment) are ‘Americans of Ukrainian descent’... At the same time, supporters of the current president are already demonstrating a clear willingness to use their background as the proof that they are ‘traitors to America.’ It isn’t as evident now, but after several months of actively promoting the thesis ‘Ukrainians are Clinton’s agents and the enemies of the United States, who are trying to overthrow Trump,’ a significant part of American society and the political elite will want nothing to do with Ukraine or the Ukrainian leadership, nor will they harbor any warm feelings toward the Ukrainian diaspora.”Danilov quotes Fox News, Glenn Beck, and The Federalist to demonstrate that a case against Trump is ultimately going to turn into a case against Ukraine. The possibility of undermining bipartisan support for Ukraine’s fledgling democracy and its ongoing fight against Russian aggression sounds like a wonderful bonus for the Kremlin, especially since—for a change—anti-Ukrainian agitprop is now being made in America.  Although rattled by the prospect of Trump’s impeachment, Russian state media remains optimistic. Olga Skabeeva, the host of 60 Minutes, the most popular news talk show in Russia, predicted: “A Republican majority in the Senate won’t allow the president whom we elected, wonderful Donald Trump, to be sent off. It’s impossible. He has 90 percent support in the Republican Party.” Russian news reports are assuring their audiences that while impeachment is likely, it won’t result in Trump’s removal from office and will have no effect on the presidential elections in 2020. Russian media outlets are forecasting that swing states and the Electoral College will assure yet another victory for Donald Trump, which suits the Kremlin to a “T.”   Trump’s Syria Fiasco Is Part of Putin’s To-Do ListRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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