#the man is prolific

[marlo-noni]

10 more Liu Yuning songs I love!

This is part 3. Here are part 1 and part 2.

New Year's Song (过年的歌), 2020 Why it's good: it's so cute, happy, and festive! You may hear it in your local Asian supermarket around Lunar New Year, because it's fairly popular. The video is adorable too. I love his bandmates, A-Zhuo and Da Fei, in their costumes - Da Fei is the god of wealth (I think), and A-Zhuo looks like some longevity god? My knowledge of Chinese mythology and deities is lacking.

2. Adore (十分喜欢), 2019 Why it's good: so soft and romantic! This feels like your boyfriend, Liu Yuning, is singing a love song directly to you. It was also written by Penny Tai, who Liu Yuning would later team up with on season 3 (2021) of the variety show Our Song.

3. Obviously (明明), 2019 Why it's good: just very catchy, especially the chorus. It's the first song on his 2019 album Ten (十), and it's a good choice for that, because it hooks you in.

4. Light Years Away (光年之外), 2018 cover of a G.E.M. song for the variety show Golden Melody 2 Why it's good: this was his first music variety show performance, only 2 months after he blew up online in June 2018. He said on livestream that preparing for this was super stressful, and his vocal coach (or maybe a producer? I can't remember) was having a conniption the night before. But he knocked it out of the park! I also listened to the original G.E.M. song just now, and it's got a completely different energy. Liu Yuning totally did his own thing with it. Thanks to @thefeastandthefast for sharing this performance, and the story, with me.

5. Azure (这蔚蓝), 2024 performance on the variety show Melody Journey Why it's good: I love that chorus, with the "yi dian yi dian yi dian yi dian yi dian" ("bit by bit by bit") in it. Liu Yuning also recently talked about this performance on livestream, and how this song was out of his comfort zone, so he was incredibly nervous. Again, he knocks it out of the park.

6. Adventurer (探险家), 2018 promo song for the film Alpha Why it's good: someone once asked Tumblr OG Liu Yuning fan @heymeowmao for some recommendations of songs where Liu Yuning rocks out, and this was on the list. And yeah, I think this might be his most rocking song - the only contender I can think of is his recent performance of Chi Luo Luo with Da Zhang Wei on season 6 of Our Song. But that's for another post (if I end up doing a list of fave collabs). For now, enjoy Liu Yuning at his most rock 'n' roll!

7. A Good Guy (挺好个人呐), 2020 promo song for the film My People, My Homeland Why it's good: just quirky as hell! I haven't seen the film this was promoting, but I assume it's a retro thing, because this is a total disco throwback. The heroic voice Liu Yuning uses in it is super fun as well. I'm just glad he decided to do such a silly song.

8. Fireworks and Stars (烟火星辰), 2021 OST opening theme for You Are My Glory Why it's good: sappy-as-hell theme song for the drama where two of China's prettiest people, Dilraba and Yang Yang, get it on. Liu Yuning has done a zillion cheesy love song OSTs, but this one sticks with me for some reason. It's got the same songwriter as his OST for Love Between Fairy and Devil (寻一个你) and that Melody Journey song I love so much, Falling (掉), so I think maybe it's just this songwriter's style that I like.

9. A Good Year (一个好年), 2023 Why it's good: this is Liu Yuning's much lesser-known Lunar New Year song. It's much sweeter, more nostalgic, and less energetic than the other one, but I think I've listened to this one more. It just feels uplifting and warm in the middle of the January/February gloom here in Vancouver.

10. Fall in Love, 2022 Why it's good: I can't believe I almost forgot this one! I've listened to it so many times that it's not in my regular rotation these days. This is his danciest poppiest song. It was originally going to be the lead single on his 2nd album, but since that album still hasn't come out (here's hoping for January 2025!), he said it's officially not new enough to be on there anymore. Anyway, this song is fun as hell!

[wheresurboytonighthelookslikeenj]

its always funny when i remember hamilton was a big deal because i know about it rationally like i was into it as well. but so many people in the doctor who tag knowing jonathan groff primarily as king george still amuses me because he is in so many other things

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

And remember kids, the next time someone tells you, "George R. R. Martin wouldn't make Jon Snow the typical fantasy hero because that's cliche".....

Oh yes he would!

One viewer wants to know what character would you play (on the show)? GRRM: If I could magically clap my hands and become a different person, it would be cool to play Jon Snow who's much more of the classic hero. Everybody wants to be the classic hero! ABC Interview, 2014

GRRM: And the character I’d want to be? Well who wouldn’t want to be Jon Snow — the brooding, Byronic, romantic hero whom all the girls love. Meduza Interview, 2017

In fact he already has ☺️

[missanthropicprinciple]

Terry-Thomas | selected filmography + PSAs | 1936-1966

Once in a Million 1936

It's Love Again 1936

For Freedom 1940

Under Your Hat 1940

If You Don't Save Paper (PSA) 1948

Copy Book Please (PSA) 1948

A Date with a Dream 1948

The Brass Monkey 1948

Helter Skelter 1949

Melody Club 1949

What's Cooking? (PSA) 1951

Private's Progress 1956

The Green Man 1956

Brothers in Law 1956

Lucky Jim 1957

The Naked Truth 1957

Blue Murder at St Trinian's 1957

Happy Is the Bride 1958

Too Many Crooks 1959

Carlton-Browne of the F.O. 1959

I'm All Right Jack 1959

School for Scoundrels 1960

Make Mine Mink 1960

A Matter of WHO 1961

Bachelor Flat 1962

Kill or Cure 1962

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World 1963

How to Murder Your Wife 1965

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines 1965

La Grande Vadrouille 1966

[fafayayarhen]

cw: suggestive violence themes + blood

ruh roh prussia seems to be in a bit of a bind

sketch dump for tonight as was thinking thoughts back to the yandere spain idea that's still floating in my head so finally i could put the pen to paper

there's more to the sketch which i'll post later once i clean it up a little so for now have this ✨

[youji-burgers]

the girlies who are just now finding out their boyfriends of multiple years are crypto-republicans who voted for trump are literally insane to me?? i make a man do a book report before i let him hit. i make him do a powerpoint soures cited mla style on the ride home.

[realitys-ex]

Now, Everyone can agree that the Fullmetal Alchemist Manga is a banger (I assume both animes are too, but I haven't watched 'em so no comment).

What a bunch of people don't know is that the artist/writer Hiromu Arakawa has written 2 other original works (one is complete the other is ongoing.

Silver Spoon: About a kid from Tokyo who, to get away from the demands of his parents/the stress of academia, attends a Farming School in the middle of nowhere where he is p.much the only one without a farming background. Hilarity, character development, etc. ensues.

Daemons of the Shadow Realm: A dude is raised in a mountain village, farming, hunting. etc. Until one day a fucking helicopter comes out of nowhere, his village is 50% slaughtered, turns out that the village existed for the sole purpose of breeding him and his sister, and it is not the 1400s anymore. Oh and Demons are a thing. Violence, humour, character development, etc. ensue. (This one is ongoing)

Now they are both 10/10, and I highly reccomend reading them both But that is not the point of this post.

She has drawn hundreds, if not thousands of faces at this point, so it is no surprise that you will see some repeats between the mangas.

BUT DO YOU KNOW HOW JARRING IT IS TO SEE EITHER INCARNATION OF GREED, HIS CREW, OR ROY FUCKING MUSTANG HANGING OUT IN A SCHOOL TALKING ABOUT COW BREEDS?

REALLY FUCKING JARRING! (somewhat less jarring to see them in tactical gear murdering people, or speaking with demons, cause that feels slightly in character)

Anyway, that aside, if you liked her worldbuilding, realism, in depth characters, approach to romance, etc. I do really reccomend them both.

(She also did another one entitled 'The Heroic Legend of Arslan' but as I haven't read it yet and it is a collaboration, I didn't mention it above)

[columboscreens]

[coochiequeens]

I've posted many times about how surrogacy exploits women but there's also the fertility industry exploiting people despretate for bio kids and how they don’t care about the future impact on the resulting kids.

Netflix's 'Man With 1000 Kids' puts a spotlight on the lack of international regulations for sperm donors

July 9, 2024, 6:00 PM EDT

By Elizabeth Chuck

A Netflix docuseries has put a spotlight on the unregulated world of sperm donation, particularly the lack of stopgap measures that might prevent donors who have been banned by one country from simply going elsewhere to donate more.

Released earlier this month, “The Man With 1000 Kids” explores the fallout from the case of serial sperm donor Jonathan Meijer, a Dutch man who fathered children around the globe via donations to sperm banks, as well as through private meetings he reportedly held directly with prospective mothers. The Dutch Society for Obstetrics and Gynecology prohibited him from donating sperm in the Netherlands in 2017, but he continued to donate to other countries afterward.

The result of Meijer’s actions is there are hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of half-siblings who may not realize they are related to one another. Their risk of accidental inbreeding is real: In 2021, The New York Times reported some of Meijer’s offspring had come across one another on the dating app Tinder.

"Once, I swiped on a sister and she swiped right on me at the same time,” said a half-brother, Jordy Willekens, who lives in the Netherlands. “I have a very trained eye by now.”

Experts and advocates for donor-conceived people say Meijer’s story is not an outlier. 

“There’s nothing keeping donors from donating anywhere. If a donor is banned in their home country, they just go somewhere else,” said Wendy Kramer, director of the Donor Sibling Registry, which she co-founded in 2000 with her son, Ryan, who was donor-conceived. The worldwide matching site has connected more than 26,000 half-siblings and donors so far, and Kramer said some people have found over 200 matches.

“There’s no regulation. There’s no oversight,” Kramer added.

There’s nothing keeping donors from donating anywhere. If a donor is banned in their home country, they just go somewhere else,” said Wendy Kramer, director of the Donor Sibling Registry, which she co-founded in 2000 with her son, Ryan, who was donor-conceived. The worldwide matching site has connected more than 26,000 half-siblings and donors so far, and Kramer said some people have found over 200 matches.

Without any sort of global tracking system, donors who have been banned in one country are easily able to keep donating in other countries, said Jody Madeira, a professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law who is writing a book about fertility fraud by doctors and serial donors. 

“They shouldn’t donate. They promise not to. But ‘shouldn’t’ doesn’t mean ‘can’t,’” she said. “And there’s no lightning bolt that’s going to come down because there’s no international registry.”

Countries have rules for the number of offspring sperm donors can produce, though many are recommendations rather than laws. In the Netherlands, nonbinding guidelines limit clinic donors to 25 children. In the U.S., guidelines from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine suggest a cap of 25 children per donor in a population of 800,000. Norway limits donors to eight children, Spain limits them to six children, and Sweden limits them to 12 children across six families.

In an email, Meijer criticized such regulations, writing that in his experience as a donor for 17 years, “one of the trends I see is that countries with the highest government regulations for donors, creates a serious shortage of qualified donors.”

Meijer called himself “one of the best donors you can wish for” in videos on his YouTube channel and says the Netflix documentary, which he declined to participate in, is full of lies.

He also argued that he did nothing wrong by donating internationally.

“You have to realize that I follow the guidelines of the international sperm banks,” Meijer said in a YouTube video posted Thursday. “They don’t inform their recipients, the people that order the sperm from their stock — they will never inform the parents about the amount of offspring that they have created with the same one donor.”

“So you might say, ‘You had to inform the parents correctly about a number.’ But I was following international guidelines,” he added.

Two large international sperm banks that Meijer mentioned in his video, California Cryobank and Denmark-based Cryos International, did not respond to questions about their screening processes for accepting sperm donations. 

Cryos International says on its website that its donors cannot donate to any other sperm bank. In 2021, then-CEO Peter Reeslev told the New York Times that all Cryos donors are made aware of the exclusivity clause.

“Donors sign and commit in contractual terms to not donate in any other tissue establishments than Cryos before and undertake not to donate sperm to other sperm banks/tissue centers in the future as well,” he said.

On its website, California Cryobank says potential donors are rigorously screened, with less than 1% of applicants qualifying to become donors. It lists a number of accreditations and licenses it says it has, including from the American Association of Tissue Banks, which performs on-site inspections, and the Food and Drug Administration, which has rules about quarantining sperm donations and testing them.

But those rules do not address the number of offspring a donor can have or what happens when one country tells a donor to stop donating.

While no efforts are underway to create a worldwide registry of sperm donors, Colorado will implement a law next year that states that it forbids anonymous sperm or egg donations, meaning when donor-conceived people turn 18, banks and clinics will provide contact information for their donors to them.

The law also caps the number of families that can use a single donor and requires sperm and egg agencies to make a “good faith effort” keep permanent, up-to-date medical records on donors.

It is the first law of its kind in the U.S. Australia and a number of European countries already prohibit anonymous sperm and egg donations, giving donor-conceived people access to more information about their identities and family histories. 

But some advocates say that even with the new Colorado law, there is still no oversight mandating accurate record-keeping on the number of children born from any single donor, especially since other states won’t be keeping count.

“There’s no entity keeping track of the number of kids for one donor, and nothing changes with that. Sperm banks and egg clinics will continue to have no accurate accounting of the children born to any one donor,” Kramer said. “The conversation doesn’t make sense until you have accurate record-keeping.”

It also doesn't help with the problem of sperm donations from a single donor in multiple countries. Kramer said that the discovery of half-siblings always comes with a slew of emotions for donor-conceived people but that it can be especially fraught when the newfound relative is in a different country.

"Oftentimes these people are so excited to have found each other, and they want to meet, but distance is prohibitive because of cost and time,” she said.

Language barriers can also make it harder to communicate important information.

“It’s really important to know your family health history, and also medical updates,” Kramer said. “Are you healthy? Do you have any genetic concerns? Because this can help with screenings and preventative medicine.”

Erin Jackson, founder of We Are Donor Conceived, a support group and online resource community that has about 3,600 members on Facebook, lives in California and was donor-conceived in Canada. She has found nine or so half-siblings and suspects she could have 100 or more she does not know about yet.

“I was born in the suburbs of Toronto, and I moved to San Diego,” she said. “I know that if I’m going to find more siblings, they’ll probably be in Canada. And there’s a sadness that comes from knowing I’m, like, a $600 flight away from any of them. It’s really not easy to just pop over and integrate myself into their lives, even if we both want that.”

As for Meijer’s voluminous number of sperm donations, Jackson said she was “disturbed but not surprised.”

“There just aren’t legal protections that would stop someone from doing this,” she said.

“There’s a lot of psychological damage that comes out of this type of situation,” she added. “I can’t imagine being one of this guy’s children.”

[yunmeng-jiang]

workin on my first scum villain fic!!

[schizononagesimus]

🎶 they tried to make me go to rehab and i said PLEASE PLEASE HOLY FUCK I FEEL SO BAD WILL NOBODY HELP ME I CANT STOP WHY DOESNT ANYBODY NOTICE HOW BAD IT IS PLEASE HELP

[tmarshconnors]

"Truth is as terrible as death but harder to find."

Philip Kindred Dick, often referred to by his initials PKD, was an American science fiction writer. He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. 

Born: 16 December 1928, Chicago, Illinois, United States

Died: 2 March 1982, Santa Ana, California, United States

Influential Works: Philip K. Dick's impact on science fiction is profound, with several of his works adapted into popular films. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" served as the basis for the iconic film "Blade Runner," directed by Ridley Scott. The movie's success helped cement Dick's reputation in mainstream culture.

Personal Struggles: Dick faced numerous personal challenges throughout his life, including financial difficulties and mental health issues. His struggles with mental health and experiences with hallucinations and visions heavily influenced his writing, contributing to the surreal and introspective nature of many of his works.

Prolific Output: Despite his personal challenges, Dick maintained a remarkably prolific writing career. He wrote 44 novels and over 100 short stories during his lifetime. His ability to produce imaginative and thought-provoking content at such a high volume is a testament to his dedication to the craft of writing.

Philosophical Themes: Dick's works often explore philosophical and metaphysical themes, challenging the boundaries of reality and identity. Questions about what is real, the nature of consciousness, and the impact of technology on humanity are recurring motifs in his stories, reflecting his deep interest in these subjects.

Posthumous Recognition: While he faced financial struggles during his lifetime, Philip K. Dick gained increased recognition after his death. His influence on science fiction literature and the exploration of complex philosophical ideas have earned him a lasting legacy. The Philip K. Dick Award, established in 1982, is given annually to outstanding science fiction works in paperback original format, honoring his contributions to the genre.

[miraluking-respectfully]

man while i'm on my felix kick it fucking sucks that they keep not knowing what the FUCK to do with this character when he's actually very strongly characterized. i went off about this last night but like, underutilized aspect of felix: he's like, a really good leader?? and i'm not talking an uber-inspiring protagonist-type leader like the PC; i'm talking an extremely functional organizer of people that you especially need in a military context. it's kind of hard to clock at first if you're not paying attention, especially because you're introduced to him while he's desperately trying to stave off a mutiny; but considering he's on a shithole iceball with a group of restless 18-to-25-year-old recruits who, as far as they're concerned, are trying to kill an immortal enemy, the fact that only one of them winds up ultimately raising a hand against him is impressive. he boosts morale, he makes good tactical calls on his own while not being too proud to take assistance, he metes out swift discipline without being needlessly punitive. and when the squad splits up, people keep in touch with him!!!

like, felix is extremely good at his job, and that aspect of him kind of deepens the tragedy of his permanent stagnation in rank when you compare him to other soldier comps like Rusk or even early-game Jorgan. i'm not a fan of fictional or real militaries but this character's skillset as an officer has been a repeatedly underutilized resource narratively & it makes me want to eat glass

[bmpmp3]

why does everything i get really into always end up being so god damn niche. by the year 2035 i am going to be blogging exclusively about the interpersonal relationships between the pillbugs and snails hiding underneath the bricks lining the flowerbeds in my parent's garden.

[unmarkedhelicopter]

Is this me being insane because I’m currently reading Blood Meridian, or do you think Kojima has read McCarthy and was inspired when he made mgsv…..

[karinyosa]

you haven't connected shit / i've connected them / etc etc

[ID: watching another movie about gore vidal and iuehriuefhiweuh so when he talks about his time at exeter and early life stuff it's revealed that his name was eugene at birth. there's a clip of him being asked if he'd had any "great love affair" in his life although like the first half of the question seems to be sort of cut off so idk what the context is. but anyway he starts talking about his classmate at exeter who he compares to a twin because "all that i was not, he was, and all that he was not, i was, and the two of us would've been pretty good had we been rolled into one" and describes him as a "sunny, non-political athlete". after he was killed at iwo jima, his mother sent gore his letters, which he describes as being uncharacteristically bitter. i'm not gonna like boldly claim that asp is based on this but the parallel STARTLED me. he describes it as "schoolboy stuff, in a boy's school, where such things happen" so i take that to mean that this dynamic just happened sometimes. plus i'm pretty sure asp is written BECAUSE stuff like that happened. but again. STARTLED form the moment they said he was born eugene i was like hold on hold on hodld holdn on. roll that back for me. enjoy that info. end ID.]