#they’ve brought their fire video editors with them

[acrosstobear]

mclaren We like your style, @OscarPiastri 👌

[soulofapatrick]

Lie To Me - Gabriel Luna x Reader

Summary: Y/N does the vanity Fair lie detector test and it gets dragged out of her that she has a raging crush on her co-star Gabriel Luna 

Words: 1.5k

Warning: none

Notes: If you have any Gabriel stories you want me to write please ask, there's not much content on him online so he’s a lot harder to write for him but I'm not gonna stop as he needs the love ❤️

“Is your full name Y/N Y/M/N(s) Thornberry?”

“Yeah that’s correct, pronounced right as well. Props to you.” 

“Are you an actor?” 

“I’m definitely something. An aspiring actor feels more accurate, The Last of Us being my second big role really.” 

“Are you about to take a polygraph exam?” 

“Yup and I’m shitting myself about it! Can I swear? I can swear right?” 

“Why are you nervous?”

“Look at this? I’m hooked up to the machine and neither of you seem to like to smile. Like at all.” 

“We shall start with the category of your career.” 

“Alright, starting big.” 

“Some would say Supernatural was when you really became famous and a fan favourite, do you think you’re the best Winchester?” 

“Oh no, I’d say I’m the least favourite, joining in season-“ 

“She’s lying.” 

“Wait what? I am?” 

“Do you think you’re the best Winchester?”

“No, that would be Dean. I’d say I’m the second best, sorry Jared.” 

“That’s the truth.” 

“Was there a lot of pressure coming into the show so late?” 

“I wouldn’t say pressure as Jared and Jensen made me feel right at home almost immediately. It was scary seeing the fans of the show react to Eleanor being brought in so late and so suddenly but the initial response blew me away and I could ask to be part of a better fandom.” 

“There a lot of fan accounts for Supernatural, do you ever look at any of them?”

“Actually I do, my best friend Pedro and I like to send each other videos and memes we see made of each others characters or if we see any that are really amazing. There are some really good editors out there who really put Nell and Maria in such a beautiful and badass light.”

“Do you have a favourite account?” 

“Yeah actually… Ummm, Pedro and I send a lot to each other from an account called Lunaberry4life with the for being the number 4.” 

“So you play Eleanor Winchester in Supernatural, did you ask to wear flannel?” 

“Did I ask to wear flannels? I love the Winchester flannels and some of them may actually be in my wardrobe at home. The costume crew do such an amazing job with making me feel comfortable in everything I wear as well as capturing the badass nature of Nell.” 

“So you would say you’re a fan of flannels?” 

“For the show and what they represent with the fandom yes but as an everyday item I’m not sure. I’m more of a fan of sweatpants or jeans and a casual tee shirt or sweater.” 

“You were a barista before you became an actress correct?” 

“Yeah, I adore coffee. Can’t live without it really and so I became a barista before I got dragged into the acting world by probably one of my best friends, the lovely Barbara Palvin or as I get to call her: Barbie.” 

“Who would you rather invite to your birthday party? Barbara Palvin or Pedro Pascal?” 

“I wouldn’t have one if I couldn’t invite them both. In their own ways they’ve become very special to me and I couldn’t do it. I don’t have the heart to go without one of them. I’m a little selfish like that, why have one if you can have both?”

“Would you invite me?” 

“Yeah…?”

“She’s lying” 

“So you just finished filming The Last of Us, correct?”

“Yeah, it was a really great experience, being able to meet and act alongside such great actors like Pedro and Bella. Bella is a force to be reckoned with as she has this fire I wish I had when I was her age and I can really see her taking over the world.”

“Who did you enjoy working with the most from the cast?”

“Probably Pedro as he’s just so sweet and sincere. I never expected a man as famous as him to be so humble, he was always able to make us laugh, especially when filming those really intense scenes. That man has a habit of randomly emoting!”

“That’s a lie. Pedro being her favourite, not about Pedro.” 

“Are you lying?”

“No…?” 

“Yes.”

“Who did you enjoy working with the most from the cast?”

“Well I did enjoy spending time with Gabriel Luna, he’s just an all around person and I loved playing his wife. He’s get such an addictive personality and would always manage to help me calm down whenever I got too anxious and I will say those curls are so fucking cute.” 

“When Pedro was in your position he was asked if he thought himself a heartthrob. Do you think Pedro Pascal is a heartthrob?” 

“Yeah, he’s definitely a heartthrob. I mean the world has already declared Pedro as the hottest man and he’s just such a Daddy, ya know?” 

“What about Gabriel Luna?”

“Oh! Umm, well… have you seen him? He’s definitely hot and very underrated. He’s got a very charming southern accent and I don’t know if you’ve noticed the freckles across his gorgeous skin and his eyes seem to be the brightest shade of brown I have ever seen, much like cognac. He might be like eighteen years older than me but he needs more recognition for what he does- oh I’m rambling…” 

“You seem to have thought about this a lot.” 

“I-I wouldn’t say that…”

“She’s lying.” 

“N-no!” 

“Moving on…”  

*

I’m dragging myself from my bed at the knock on my door, having just ended a FaceTime with Pedro who of course had a good tease about my vanity fair lie detector interview. It got released last night and already the fan accounts are blowing up my phone with edits and ships of me and different actors. Pedro called me as soon as he woke up, being a few hours behind me at the moment and first checked on how I was doing before he let himself tease me a little. I hung up on him to call back a second later, him waiting for the call back and a grin on that stupidly cute face as he chuckled. 

The knock at the door gets more persistent as I pad through my apartment, wondering who the fuck it could be. Barbie has keys so it won’t be her as she’d just let herself in with a call of my name to let me know it was her and Pedro is still doing his Mandalorian press tour so it’s definitely not him. 

Flinging the door open I’m greeted by dark curls and warm cognac eyes. Gabriel’s standing in front of me, out of breath and an overnight bag hanging from his shoulder. He’s watching me, eyes scanning my face as I just stare in shock. Gabriel Luna is standing outside my door. He’s at my apartment. How the fuck did he get my address? Oh wait, I know, Pedro probably. That motherfucker. 

“Is it true?” Gabriel’s southern accent rolls off his tongue like warm honey as he steps forwards, into my apartment and I take an instinctive step back, “Y/N, is it true?” 

“I-is what true?” My voice catches in my throat when my back hits my kitchen island, the door being kicked closed before Gabriel’s dropping his bag and stalking towards me, my mouth drying up at his every step. He places his hands either side of my hips, against the edge of the counter as his dark eyes scorch my skin, face dipping down close to mine. 

“Don’t play dumb with me sweet girl.” He coos, voice deep as he dares a glance at my lips and back up. 

“Please.” I whimper, the sound dying on my lips when his crash against mine. It’s sweet and tantalisingly slow as we both relish in the feeling of wanting each other. His hands move from the counter to my hip and my cheek and I’m gripping his shirt to pull him flush against me. I think I might be dreaming still but when his blunt nails dig into my hip I know this is real; he’s here and he’s actually kissing me. He’s intoxicating, the mixture of coffee and cedar wood addictive and I never want to stop but my lungs are burning and we’re pulling apart with a gasp, “Fuck me.” 

“Let me at least take you on a date first.” He mumbles, lips curving into a smile against my neck, stealing a gasped laugh from me as I do the one thing I have always wanted to do: tangle my hands in those perfect curls and tug, testing the waters. The dirtiest moan I have ever heard falls from those cupid bow lips and his cognac eyes darken even more, his voice husky as he growls out, “You keep doing that and I’ll have to skip taking you out on a date and asking you to be my girlfriend.” 

I tug on his soft hair again, groaning out a quiet, “Ask me.” 

“Will you go out with me?” 

“Fuck yes.” 

TAGS: Tag List Form

@iraot @gemimawrites @pedropascalsrealhusband @twopercentmilk @sxnshinebxcky @nelsoomon @urnewghostfriend @sonhee-a​ @dizzyforyou-blog​ @grooveandshit​ @reyas-world @canpillowscry​ @jell0buss-37​ @androgynousgaz​ @not-a-unique-snowflake89​ @kalllistos​ @mediocrewallflow3r​ @certifiedhunter​ @alexis-doggy-76 @thesapphirequeen​

#Gabriel luna#Gabriel luna x reader#Gabriel luna x oc#Gabriel luna fluff#Gabriel luna x you#Gabriel luna smut#Gabriel luna fanfiction#Gabriel luna fanfics#Tommy miller#the last of us#the last of us 2#the last of us x reader#the last of us smut#the last of us fluff#tlou#tlou2#tlou x reader#tlou fluff#tlou x you#tlou x oc

[evilisk]

English Commentary on a Chinese LuaSTG Tutorial Pt 3

This part is about the remaining videos.

= = =

Video 4: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1st411N7Kg?p=4 tl;dr Some bits are unclear but from what I can tell, there are sections about symbols, infinite loops and sound

Content: There's about five parts / sections to this video.

The first part / stretch from 0:00 - 1:29 seems to be about symbols you can use in LuaSTG. If you've read the other posts, you'll know that the subtraction sign can be used to signify negative number, but it can also be used as a subtraction sign in formulas.

The other symbols are exactly as you can see.

+ is addition

*(asterisk) is for multiplication

/ (slash) is for division

Circular brackets are... circular brackets. In case you've forgotten high school maths, it's related to that "order of operations" stuff. I think it's also brought up to establish "this program uses circular brackets and not square brackets (that other programs might use)

I'm not too sure what ^ means, however. Likewise with %. My maths knowledge is pretty rusty... this unironically might be my first application of the topic since finishing high school ;\

I do remember (vaguely) something about percentages really being fractions. Maybe % is related to division in that case? I think ^ also means "to the power of". To the power of what? Dunno, just look it up. I told ya, I don't know maths.

= = =

The second part starts at around 1:57. I actually don't know what's happening in this part, so I'm skipping over it. A gentle reminder that the complicated setup in their example is because they're using the legacy LuaSTG editor. The Sharps editor can replicate the same thing wiht far less hassle using the "Create Simple Bullet Group" node (a node missing from the legacy editor)

= = =

At 03:00 (part 3 of the video) they bring up infinite loops. I'm not gonna make specific commentary on this because this is very basic level stuff. Here's a very useful link that can explain the concept better than I can. It's specifically for Danmakufu but the concept remains exactly the same. tl;dr don't make the game shoot bullets infinitely without pauses in between, and don't make the game wait infinitely either.

= = =

At 4:00 is part 4 of the video. I'm not actually sure what the topic is. I was certain it was about interval (reminder that interval doesn't exist for Repeat nodes in later editors, so it'd be about Wait nodes), but I actually really don't know. I will just comment on interesting stuff in the examples given.

At 4:52, you can see a formulas used in place of a value (i.e. increment 360/15. 360 divided by 15 is 24. If you put in 24 instead of 360/15 you'll get the exact same result).

At 5:40, you can see the Repeat node + Variable being used to determine the bullet spawning position. You have x%384-192 (value/position x on the grid) then 120 (position y on the grid). It looks like this:

(x%384-192,120)

It's basically taking the same concept from the last video (using Repeat + Variable) but instead of applying it to angle, it's being applied to the horizontal position of the bullet).

At 5:55, they use the Repeat with a Variable to increase the velocity / speed of each subsequent bullet in a bullet group. This is an example of another easier feature in the Sharps editor, as the Create Simple Bullet Group node has a Velocity begin + Velocity end feature.

At 6:01 is something interesting. They've placed a Repeat with a Variable instead of a Repeat with a Variable. You have a Bullet node, inside of a Repeat Node, inside another Repeat node. Take a closer look at the Variables; the second Repeat node's variable is ANOTHER variable [i.e. a2's initial value is a1's initial value]

I don't actually know what the tutorial is trying to explain but this process of putting a Repeat within a Repeat seems to be necessary when trying to use a Variable within a Variable. I've actually tried replicating the example with only one Repeat (i.e. use 1 Repeat Node, set Number of Variables to 2, Variables A1 and A2) but this just caused an error.

It seems that if you're going to use a Variable within a Variable, you will need at least two Repeat nodes; one establishing the first variable (A1), and a child node establishing the second variable (A2) that will make use of the first variable.

At 7:05 they go into adding sound. I don't know what else to add, this is pretty simple stuff. The video does conveniently mention which sound effects are the actual "bullet" sound effects (i.e. tan00, tan01, tan02, kira00, kira01 and kira02).

= = =

Video 5: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1st411N7Kg?p=5 tl;dr it's about RNG

They go into some Random Number Generators. This has been covered in Ryann1908's tutorials already; one in his longer tutorial (where he uses the function to mimic Sakuya's Eternal Meek spellcard) and one in his shorter tutorial (when it's been used to randomly pick a color for Marisa's stars shot). I've also mentioned Ran:Sign before; Ran:Sign is probably the least useful of these, because unlike Float or Int, where you can put a minimum and maximum value, Ran:Sign can only generate two values: either a positive 1 or negative 1. There is one parameter that actually benefits from this: throw it into a Bullet's Rotational Velocity parameter and see what happens.

This is all so basic that even the sparse LuaSTG Wiki has info on it.

= = =

Video 6: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1st411N7Kg?p=6 tl;dr The tutorial recreates two attacks from Touhou 7

This one was actually hard to understand until I recreated the pattern for myself. I don't know if this is exactly what is being said, but for the Chen section of the video:

When they're highlighting the slowest bullets, I'm 90% sure it's to say that these are the first bullets to fire. No, you read that right. The slowest bullets are the first bullets generated in the pattern. The secret sauce to this pattern is that each bullet has a higher velocity than the previous one, thanks to the magic that is Repeats and Variables.

When they're highlighting the fastest bullets, I think it's to mention those are the last bullets spawned. This should be true if we apply the logic from the previous section; if each bullet has a higher velocity than the previous one, the last bullets to spawn HAVE to have the highest velocity / be the fastest moving.

When they're highlight a single wave / barrage, I think it's to mention how the repeats work. With the way they've used Repeat, each wave is 15 bullets each, and the waves are fired 6 times (in 6 different angles).

You can recreate this by copying the same setup, just make sure you add a 2 frame Wait as a child of the first Repeat. It should go:

>Repeat 15 times >>Wait 2 frames >>Repeat 6 times >>>Create Simple Bullet

The Youmu recreation is a bit different. The "slowest bullets being the first bullets spawned" are the same. Unlike the "15 bullet barrage fired in 6 angles" with Chen's attack, it's actually "4 bullets fired from 16 angles" which definitely confused me (when I first saw the video, I assumed it was "16 bullets fired in 4 barrages). Note how they use Repeat + Variables again to decide the X and Y coordinates of the pattern.

There's a small section after the Youmu recreation. I do not know what it's explaining.

In the final section of the video, they show off a button that no longer exists in the Sharps editor that used to be in-between Pack Project and Run Project. From the design of the symbol, it seems to have been related to the Stage nodes?

= = =

Video 7: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1st411N7Kg?p=7 tl;dr ...I don't know what this video is about. It also doesn't need a tl;dr since it's only 30 seconds long...

Content: I really couldn't tell you what this video is trying to say. The first part uses some sort of "If Else" node which is something I'm especially out of my depth on. All I know about the "If Else" node is that you can use it to do multi-phase spellcard attacks (like most Stage 6 final spellcard attacks a la Miko or Shinmyoumau).

The rest of the video seems to be about making the Chen recreation more complete. They make two Repeats of Chen attacks (the first repeat is the one we saw before, with Orange bullets; the second repeat has Green bullets and fires in the opposite direction by changing the increment to a -7 instead of a +7). The attack also seems to have more RNG, as a Ran:Float has been added into the formula (a=Ran:Float(0,360), increment 7 -> a1=a, increment 60)

= = =

Video 8: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1st411N7Kg?p=8

tl;dr ...dunno. I think it's about running multiple tasks? It's a shortie. It's also the last tutorial in this series...

Content: The last video is a bit confusing. Considering the example shown at the end, where Mokou is firing two streams of bullets (the green bullets moving in a counter clockwise direction, and the blue swords in a clockwise direction), my guess is that it's about running two separate Repeat + Variable streams of bullets.

I read this in a different tutorial, but you can basically run multiple tasks at the same time. This knowledge can be very helpful if, for example, you ever wanted to make a boss use the Move To / Move By node while also firing bullets. I *think* that they're saying "you can do these two streams at the same time if you run them in different tasks". But I'm not 100% sure that's the case.

And to be honest, I don't think that, if that is what they're saying, that it's necessary. At least it's not for newer versions of LuaSTG. I know for sure that you could run those two streams (purple and cyan) in the same Repeat node if it was the Sharps editor. All you'd have to do is establish two Variables in the Repeat node, then give the separate Bullets / Bullet Group a specific node. Put both bullets as the child of a Repeat node and bam. That's it.

The last thing I'll note is that this video was last made in 2019. So the chances of a continuation seem slim...

= = =

Conclusion

So that was one tutorial down. There are actually three other Chinese tutorials, though this tutorial is the only one that is in a video format. The other tutorials, especially the one about coding in LuaSTG are harder to follow just bc of this difference.

If I get the time, I'll try to do commentaries on the other tutorials. I at the very least, plan to cover ONE of the other Chinese tutorials, since I've been able to follow that specific tutorial very easily (it's this one. It has animated gifs and while it goes into some complicated concepts, it's been more rewarding to follow than the others).

You can find the other Chinese tutorials on the LuaSTG Shoutwiki. Note that while it shows 2 video tutorials, it's actually only 1 (the one we just covered) since the other video tutorial is no longer available on Bilibili

[aion-rsa]

Helstrom: The Comic History of Marvel’s Son of Satan

https://ift.tt/33Vbv3V

On Oct. 16, Hulu will be releasing the latest Marvel tie-in series Helstrom. It’s not so much like one of those upcoming Disney+ MCU shows that feature high-profile superheroes telling stories that will be important to the overall fictional universe. It’s more like Daredevil or Runaways where quality be damned, you’re never going to hear anyone in the movies make anything close to a reference to it, but it counts as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe anyway.

The series is about siblings Daimon Helstrom and Ana Helstrom, who have seemingly normal lives, but oppose demons and evil people on the side. Their mother is institutionalized, which is fairly true to the comics, but their father is also referred to as “a powerful serial killer.”

In the comics, things are a bit grander. Their father isn’t just any serial killer, but a variation of Satan. Marvel has a bunch of guys whose identities are “basically Satan, but not really.” Instead of suits and turtlenecks, the two have comic adventures where they dress like they shopped off the sexy Halloween costume rack at Party City.

Daimon Helstrom (played by Tom Austen) gets both L’s in the comics as Daimon Hellstrom, but also has the rad nickname of Son of Satan. Shockingly, he’s a good guy! Mostly. Even when bare-chested with a glowing pentagram over his torso. Even with a magical pitchfork as his weapon of choice.

Son of Satan and his sister Satana are essentially the Marvel versions of Dante and Vergil from Devil May Cry. Both are half-human/half-devil and they lean on opposite sides of their genetics.

So let’s say you want to get into Hellstrom’s comic book exploits. Well, you’re in luck because we have a list of his main character runs since showing up in 1973.

The Early Spotlight (1973-1975)

Hellstrom made his first appearance in Ghost Rider #1. In the first two issues of that series, Hellstrom was hired as an exorcist to help deal with a missing woman who had been possessed. Interestingly enough, they never gave a clear look at Hellstrom in those two issues other than the demonic birthmark on his chest.

Initially, Hellstrom had a Jekyll and Hyde gimmick to the point that he told the woman’s loved ones to lock him up in a dark room and not let him out no matter what he said. Unlike the supporting characters in Young Frankenstein, the bozos didn’t take that to heart and let Hellstrom’s more maniacal personality Son of Satan loose.

Sidenote: His adventures were originally going to be called “the Mark of Satan” with more emphasis on Satan as the antagonist, but doing comics focused on Satan was deemed a little over-the-line, so they changed it.

Second sidenote: I did not hit her, it’s bullshit, I did not hit her, I DID NOT! Oh hi, Mark of Satan!

Read more

TV

How Helstrom Became One of Marvel Television’s Last Shows Standing

By Alec Bojalad

Son of Satan’s adventures continued into Marvel Spotlight #12-24. It didn’t take long for Marvel to realize that giving him a double-identity was kind of a lame idea and instead had Satan Sr. magically handwave that away and make Son of Satan just one dude. Definitely for the better as he no longer felt so blatantly like Marvel’s answer to Jason Blood/Etrigan.

Hellstrom continued to fight against ghoulish enemies while opposing his father’s ways and dated some generic woman whose name I couldn’t tell you if you paid me a million dollars. It all culminated in a really strong finale issue where Hellstrom fought against and with his sister Satana, but maybe ignore the part where Hellstrom had a dream about the two of them making out.

Striking Out Solo (1975-1977)

Son of Satan had his own self-titled ongoing series that only lasted eight issues. From the beginning, Hellstrom went to Hell to basically tell off his dad as a way to say that this series wouldn’t be about their rivalry. Instead, it was Son of Satan dealing with a bunch of random villains that nobody would ever really remember.

There was one ridiculous enemy named the Possessor (not to be confused with the Elder of the Universe) who wore a mask to hide the fact that he had demon faces where his ears are supposed to be. Too bad he never showed up outside of this series.

It was a trippy outing, but ended before it could find its footing.

Demon Defender (1981-1983)

The Defenders are, of course, the bundle of heroes who don’t quite fit in with the Avengers, Fantastic Four, or X-Men but need people to hang out with. Guys like Hulk, Dr. Strange, Namor, Valkyrie, etc. Son of Satan became a regular ally in the team’s early days, appearing to help out every now and then. Most notably, he was part of a storyline where the Serpent Society kidnapped the Defenders and Clea put together a second team to rescue them, featuring the likes of Son of Satan, Daredevil, and Luke Cage.

Then again, the only thing anyone truly remembers about those issues is a very bizarre and legendary scene of a random guy getting killed by an Elf with a Gun.

As the series reached its 92nd issue, Hellstrom finally joined the team. On one hand, having Son of Satan on the team meant the Defenders had to take on the occult more than usual. On the other hand, Hellstrom soon fell in love with fellow Defender Hellcat, who was regularly dealing with constantly being possessed and turning into a scantily-clad demoness.

When Defenders hit its 100th issue, they did a really climactic storyline where a handful of the various Marvel Devil guys invaded Earth and Son of Satan had to take on Father of Son of Satan for the fate of Earth. The conclusion is rather surprising.

Prince of Lies (1993-1994)

Okay, so Daimon Hellstrom and Patsy Walker have been married for ten years (our time). It’s a fairytale romance where they’ve made a few guest appearances here and there, but have otherwise retired, happily ever after. What could POSSIBLY taint such true love?

90s comics. That’s your answer.

Welcome to Hellstorm: Prince of Lies, a 21-issue ongoing series where every issue looks like a Nine Inch Nails video and they try to see how much lanky nudity they can get away with showing in a Marvel comic. Like, holy crap, there has to be a world record for shadowed-out junk in this series. They even edit in some obvious, hastily-drawn underwear on characters at times as if the editor has realized they’ve gone too far.

It’s a gritty and grimy series that you’d expect from a 90s comic where much of it is written by Warren Ellis and the main character is Satan’s son. Lots of spikes, sharp teeth, long hair, suffering, insanity, and so on. It’s most definitely a product of its time.

Plus it’s called “Hellstorm” instead of “Hellstrom.” Scout’s honor, I didn’t notice the difference until my editor pointed it out.

Maximum Hellstorm (2006-2007)

Ah, Marvel MAX. The days when Marvel decided to give R-rated comics a shot and just threw everything at the wall. Hellstorm: Son of Satan was one of them, going for five issues. By this point, we’re in the mid-00s, so Hellstrom has a more down-to-earth look and is constantly talking to his father on a cellphone and tries so hard not to remind us what he looked like in the 70s and 80s.

But because it’s Marvel MAX, it means that his adventure is filled with lots of curse words, ultra-violence, gross demon boobs, and explicit Jesus imagery you normally wouldn’t see in a comic like this.

While the whole “Hellstrom messes with Egyptian underworld deities” storyline is a bit high concept, it still feels more like the new Hulu show than anything else.

Zombie Slayer (2009)

Speaking of gritty Marvel trends, there’s Marvel Zombies! While the initial Ultimate Fantastic Four storyline and the first two volumes of Marvel Zombies dealt with the happenings of a doomed universe, the next few volumes went slightly more uplifting. After all, sometimes you need to have people to root for who can back it up.

In Marvel Zombies 4, the Black Talon and the Hood (under the influence of Dormammu) try to use the decapitated head of Zombie Deadpool (otherwise known as Headpool) to bring forth the zombie apocalypse in the regular Marvel universe. Yes, we actually have canon stakes this time.

To prevent this, we have the Midnight Sons, made up of Son of Satan, Morbius, Jennifer Kale, Werewolf by Night, and Man-Thing. It’s an incredibly badass group working through an incredibly badass adventure. Too bad the team doesn’t last.

On a similar note, around this time there was a miniseries called the Last Defenders where Son of Satan was a major character. It’s just that by the time the team came together, they were an immediately-forgotten afterthought, so there’s no use in giving it its own entry.

Ghost Riders in the Sky (2009-2010)

Jason Aaron had a really, really, really great run on Ghost Rider. Most definitely read it. It’s pure grindhouse and I love it.

The whole run finished with Ghost Riders: Heaven’s on Fire. This culmination featured Johnny Blaze and Danny Ketch working together against a corrupt angel, the anti-Christ, and a group of villains from earlier in the run teaming up.

At least they have Daimon Hellstrom there to help out. Unfortunately, Hellstrom looks outright goofy with a bald head and Fu-Manchu mustache. The story brings back Jaine, his EXTREME love interest from the 90s series who he ended up with after his relationship with Patsy went very south.

Anyhow, Jason Aaron’s Ghost Rider run. Read it!

Strikeforce (2019-2020)

Much like how X-Men had X-Force as the team that would do the really dirty work, Avengers had a spinoff team called Strikeforce. Made up of Winter Soldier, Angela, Blade, Spider-Woman, Wiccan, and Spectrum, the team soon brought Hellstrom into the fold. Which is just as well, since he was working for Baron Zemo for a little while and really needed to get his head back on straight.

Unfortunately for Hellstrom, 1) he retained his bald look from Heaven’s on Fire and 2) the series didn’t last all that long. Only nine issues, sadly. Eh, it was fun while it lasted.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

At least he’s joining the Savage Avengers next! And they’re giving him his hair back!

The post Helstrom: The Comic History of Marvel’s Son of Satan appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/31dX5KF

[angrylizardjacket]

people change {Vince Neil}

@champagneandspice asked: hey! I adore your writing!!! could u please do a one shot but in the form of an article ? you’d be writing it as if you worked for people magazine or something like that. could u pls write ab the “speculated rumors” ab vince and I dating are true?? u could insert pictures or whatever u like. thank u <3

A/N: 2065 words. I love!! This style!! Of Writing!! also probably not what you were asking for, but i had fun and i hope you do too. i really sort of like this world/reader persona i’ve built?? i even added a few pictures for effect lmao. hope it’s enjoyable. i don’t usually do tags for one-shots but @cosmicsskies and @crazylittlethingcalledobsession asked and im too giddy to refuse.

WHAT THE F*** DO YOU THINK? - Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil and Joan Jett & The Blackhearts newest guitarist Y/N Y/L/N spotted getting cosy after Crüe’s Atlanta show last Saturday? Does this hint at a collaboration between two bands, or is this more personal than professional? [Read more on Page 10...]

“What the f*** do you think?”

If you’re a woman working in or around the rock and roll music scene in the past half a decade, you’ve probably heard these words, or some variation of them, if you’ve come within a ten foot radius of the glam metal juggernauts Mötley Crüe; Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, and their blonde, boyish singer Vince Neil. They’re crass by reputation, however this is unsurprisingly true to life, though if you were interested in reading an expose regarding the number of gigs they’ve done while high, or how many hotel rooms they’ve set fire to, there’s innumerable gossip rags and magazines covering those particular scandals, including at least two Rolling Stone articles in the past two years, and we’re not here to retell old stories. 

When attending their concert in Atlanta last week, which I highly recommend; if given the opportunity, and you enjoy their music, see Mötley Crüe live, they give an almost unparalleled live performance, in my humble opinion as a music journalist of almost a decade, I was fortunately privy to the moment that sparked debate and controversy within the rock music gossip sphere. After the show, while I was made to wait at the stage door, their manager Doc Mcghee was kind enough to invite me to the afterparty. There, at the stage door, restless fans were held at bay, young men in black leather pants, emulating their idols, young women in barely anything at all, there to catch attention and garner the same invitation that I had received, and when the band themselves appear, it’s as if the gates of Hell had opened; the screaming I heard, ladies and gentleman.

First through the doors is Mars, already looking like he needs a shot or a nap, and he dodges more than one bra thrown his way, giving me a longsuffering look as he passes. To be that exhausted by fame is on a level I can’t even begin to comprehend. He’s on the tour bus which will take us to the hotel bar for drinks almost before anyone else is even out of the building.

Next comes what the fans have affectionately dubbed ‘The Terror Twins’, Sixx and Lee, both carrying a beer each, followed by several very pretty women who head to the bus whilst the musicians take the time to say high to their fans, signing various body parts and generally taking the time to interact with the more hardcore of their following who were waiting in the cold night air. They’re enough of a distraction that one might have missed the final band member, Vince Neil, laying uncharacteristically low, and who had actually been preceded by a surprising figure; Y/N Y/L/N, the most recent addition to Joan Jett & The Blackhearts as their rhythm guitarist. 

And this, dear readers, is the moment I decide to write the first gossip piece of my life.

As someone who regularly set fire to the copies of Hollywood Star my then-housemate had been getting delivered to our apartment back when I first began my journalistic career, the idea of writing an article based on speculation about the sexual conduct of celebrities was an idea I rejected out of hand. I’d told myself I had integrity. 

But then my proto-punk loving heart betrayed me, as I recalled Y/L/N’s lyrics from my favourite song of her’s, Sucker Punch, ‘speculate / scream my name / my heart, my love, baby it’s a game / they call me heartless, fancy-free / as if anyone’s meant something to a girl like me’. Y/L/N has been credited as the sole writer for the single, under her band at the time, Nuclear Patricide, who had garnered a cult following that has been credited as an idol for Joan Jett herself. After the Nuclear Patricide’s split in early ‘83, it’s been relative radio silence from the writer and lead guitarist until Joan Jett & The Blackhearts announce her as their newest addition, and she’s been with them for almost two years since.

[ID: Stills from Nuclear Patricide’s music video for Sucker Punch, 1980, known for the appearance of then-break out star Jamie Lee-Curtis. Editor’s Note: Y/L/N did not appear in the music video herself.]

So, upon seeing Y/L/N trying to keep a low profile whilst exiting a gig she clearly was not playing at, without any of her own bandmates to keep her company, I must confess I began to wonder, to speculate about the nature of her relationship with Mötley Crüe. She’s adamantly and publicly denounced romantic relationships in her work and in her public appearances up until her split from her original band, so has anything changed in the past few years?

Back at the hotel, I find myself weaving in amongst groupies and fanboys. My dark jeans and leather jacket act as a camouflage in this den of debauchery; I’ve worn professional clothing to this kind of thing before, and it usually doesn’t go over well; if the band sees a reporter there’s a sense of immediate hostility in what’s meant to be a safe space, relatively speaking, however, I’ve found that blending in, and making it clear I’m not on the offensive makes them drop their guard enough that they’ll give an honest interview. 

At least until a pretty girl walks past.

Neil and Y/L/N are nowhere to be spotted as I finally take a seat with a table that has neither cocaine nor a woman on it, and once I’ve ordered a drink and looked over my notes, someone actually joins me of their own accord. It’s Tommy Lee, who, to my surprise, recognises me from the last time Crüe had played in town. 

He talks about the tour, about how exciting it’s been and how he loves Atlanta, but he’s losing focus very quickly, not surprisingly since his name is being called by other tables every few moments, and there’s a faint dusting of telltale white powder around his nose. He promises ‘see you ‘round’ [sic] and then he’s off again. However, it’s as he leaves that I spot Y/N coming from a room by the back of the bar, and I make my move.

Mars has, as I’ve been told, already retired for the night, Lee is up to his eyes in cocaine, Sixx already has his dick out under his table judging by the look of him, and Neil is surprisingly MIA, so Y/L/N is easy to spot as the odd one out.

Not nearly as f***ed up or strung out as the rest of them, I watch her order a jack and coke, and down the drink mere moments after receiving it, before she turns to me. It takes her barely a second before she correctly identifies me as a reporter. I ask if she remembers meeting me, back in ‘82, she says no, but that she can pick a reporter from a mile away. 

People still fawn over her, pretty girls and pretty boys alike, her aloofness drawing them in, and I’d forgotten how overwhelming it was to be this close to her. She kicks a fanboy and a groupie who are messily groping each other out of a booth and we take their seats.

This is meant to be about Mötley Crüe, and I try to tell her as such, but she just gives me a thin smile.

“Then why did you come find me?”

And she gives me that stare, you know, the one from the cover of Nuclear Patricide’s final album, Treason Is A Girl’s Best Friend. It’s that piercing stare of hers that makes you feel like she knows everything you’ve ever done wrong in your life. 

I ask about her relationship with Mötley Crüe, and to my relief she looks away.

She’s candid about admitting she’s travelling with them, but not touring, right up until I ask her about her relationship with each member of the band specifically.

“Mick’s fun; he’s very talented and easily riled up. They’re all very talented of course, but Mick’s dynamic, [because] of his age and everything, is interesting within the group [sic] and I enjoy watching it all play out. He’s smacked Tommy a few times.” I’m assured that nine times out of ten he deserved it. 

She’s filled with glowing praise for both Sixx and Lee in turn, and even Doc Mcghee, but Neil she is oddly silent about. He’s the first of the band she’d met; he’d seen her play a few times with The Blackhearts and has admitted to enjoying her work in previous interviews when she’s been brought up, as the pair have been spotted together before. Well, she’s been spotted with the band before. Here is where she starts, to my surprise, to get antsy. So the rumours, which I had thought to be incredibly false given her history and general attitude, have more basis than she likes to let on.

And then she gets defensive.

He’s like cocaine; everyone’s doing him, it’s just the industry; no-one’s going to judge her for a fling. She does not appear to take comfort in the sentiment.

“People change.”

I ask her what she means. She refuses to clarify and leaves. Perhaps I pushed too far, but now I feel like a detective, and like I only have one more person I need to talk to. But perhaps I should have eased myself into talking about Y/L/N to Vince himself, but I’ll have to admit, between Y/L/N leaving and finding Neil, I may have done a bit of socialising with Sixx, which I recommend recreationally, and also if you have a high tolerance for most things.

“I don’t think we’re any of your f***ing business.” 

Neil does not mess around, and apparently she’d already spoken to him about our earlier meeting. I leave it be, spend the night enjoying the festivities with Sixx and Lee when I can, leaving just before the sun comes up. 

Some of you may be thinking this is dissatisfying, that you came into this article wanting me to confirm or dismiss the speculated relationship between Vince Neil and Y/N Y/L/N, but I can’t. Neither of them would speak to me, and I can only leave you with a list of things I saw that night, and you can make up your own mind.

- The room Y/L/N had exited from when I first spotted her is the same room Neil left less than five minutes later as we were talking. I went to investigate later; it’s a supply closet.

- After my encounter with Neil, and I’d stayed clear of them, whenever I would spot either of them, the other was almost always within arm’s reach. Make of that what you will.

- He definitely did a line of coke off her thigh at about three in the morning.

- I asked both Sixx and Lee about it. Lee’s response was ‘loud’ with something akin to a knowing smirk, and Sixx’s was ‘he’s a lucky bastard’ and when I ask him to clarify he just says ‘flexible’ and climbs to the next booth over where they’ve been asking him to do a line; I’m not even sure what to make of it, but personally I think it’s pretty damning.

- Readers, they were all over each other, I apologise for throwing my professionalism out the window for a moment, but if I’m being honest I couldn’t look to a secluded corner of the room without there being a 40% chance of seeing Vince and Y/N. It got worse as the night went on. Believe me.

So, while I don’t believe there is set to be a collaboration between Joan Jett and Mötley Crüe, I do come baring good news for those fans who had been speculating regarding Y/L/N’s relationship with the hair metal band’s lead singer. So are they together? Are they dating? Though neither party will publicly state anything, I’ll leave you with my thoughts, my observations, and the oft spoke words of the man himself;

What the f*** do you think?

[sambart93]

Touken Ranbu The Movie [Review]

It’s finally here! It’s finally arrived! We waited so long and it’s finally here! I’m hoping I can see it at least one more time before it stops at the cinema because it is so good!

NON-SPOILER REVIEW Overall: This was amazing! I absolutely adored and loved so many parts of this movie!! I loved the story, I loved the reinterpretation of history, I loved the twists and surprises (there are so many that you don’t expect!), I loved the action, I loved the colouring, I loved the cinematography and the camera shots, I loved seeing their pretty make up and their pretty faces on a big giant screen! They all looked amazing!! My honest to god only complaint is that (1) there is a very obvious voice dub within the first 15 minutes of the movie; (2) some of the editing and transitions between scenes were just not smooth at all. The editing was really rough compared to how amazingly produced everything else is in this movie. A few cuts really pissed me off and some transitions were so jarring. I do have one more complaint but it’s spoilery so I’ll list that below. But everything else was amazing! Cannot wait for the DVD! Rating: 8/10 if only the editing had been better.

SPOILER REVIEW

Story

We are back at Honnouji no Hen trying to stop the Jikansokougun from interfering with it. You know the story if you’ve read the history and/or watched the first stage.

Now to the spoilers...

The TouDan think they’ve finished off the Jikansokougun and go back to the Honmaru, but in fact there was still one left who grabs Oda and takes him to a safe place. When Oda wakes up he has the whole Jikansokougun army within his grasp and one of the commanders ‘Mume’ can talk to him and stays by Oda’s side. The TouDan realise what’s happened and goes back. While there Jiji actually saves and rans away with Oda. Everyone feels betrayed but they continue their mission of keeping and eye on Hideyoshi. Jiji takes Oda to Azuchi where Hideyoshi raids and tries to burn down (as per the correct history) but again the Jikansokougun interfere.

I’ll stop there so you’re not too spoiled if you did carry on to read more.

*

Using the star format as usual so it’s easier and quicker for me to get through reviews. 

General Comments

☆ This was so BEAUTIFULLY SHOT! Some of the shots are so well done and they all looked so damn pretty! They must’ve had a very nice budget for this movie because it’s visually beautiful, the colouring used is beautiful, so many shots are just PERFECT!

☆ I loved the close ups of all the swords! Being able to see their pretty faces  (which had a lot lighter make up than what they wear on stage so their natural beauty shined out more!) so close up was just wonderful ^_^

☆ Also their makeup! I absolutely adored their make up in this!! All of the swords except Nihongo have eyeliner half way across their bottom lashes (yeah this is how good the quality is and how well you can see the makeup and how goddamn observant I am xD). And they all looked SO NICE! 

☆ NIHONGO’S ONSIE for uchiba/Internal Affairs is freaking ADORABLE!!!! It’s a freaking Onsie! A ONSIE! I was losing it!! And he looked so good in it too!! It was this freaking adorable great onsie!! I can’t get over this... I can’t! xD

☆ Jiji has plot armour in this movie too as expected because he’s always givemn bloody plot armour. He REALLY should’ve died in this one. Scientifically and by Touken Game standards he SHOULD have died. But alas ‘we can’t hurt the fan favourite precious Jiji’ oh fuck off, hurry up and kill him already! Fuck sake.

☆ I really liked Fuma’s Honebami. Just like the stages, we didn’t get enough time with him. We didn’t really get to know him. But I think something between His and Mitsuya’s Hone is what I expect Hone to be so I like Movie Hone. BUT, Hone should’ve died too by the way. Just from the dire situation he ends up in, he really should’ve been killed and died. It’s not like we can’t bring these swords back!

☆ I died a little when Uguisumaru said his famous line!

☆ Tomoki as Uguisumaru was perfect JUST as I had predicted! He was great! I loved the looks between Jiji and him where they completely understood each other without having to speak! I absolutely adored how soft his voice was, very nicely matching Ugui’s image. 

☆ Also I did start laughing at one point when I remembered Suzuki and Tomoki had been in YowaPeda together. I just imagined Suzuki’s Arakita and Tomoki’s Makishima dressing up in their sword outfits. Them looking like TouDan but with their Peda character’s personalities just cracked me up SO MUCH!

☆ You can definitely appreciate the amount of LEG shown by Yagen and Fudou in this movie! The camera itself really loved focusing on Yagen’s legs! Many times there are obvious shots that are there JUST for his legs xD and there’s a scene at the honmaru where Fudou goes to sleep and you can see all the muscles in his legs and it’s beautiful ^_^ highly appreciated and thankful for these shots!

☆ I do like movie version of Hasebe. I liked him somewhat in this one. There wasn’t so much forehead acting from Wada in this (thank god) so I liked Hasebe this time around. 

☆ And I guess movie version of Jiji wasn’t as much of a dick as he is in the stage too. I do like Jiji quite a bit in this one too, but he still got that god damn plot armour.

☆ In some shots you can see the knee support around Maki’s right leg - he was still receiving rehabilitation on his knee after his surgery when he stupidly went off to film this.

☆ I am here for the utter and complete tag team of Yagen and Manba! I absolutely adored all their scenes together! I was SO down for this pair up! They were great together!

☆ If you’ve never seen the Eiga Dorobo video, I highly recommend you see it! It’s often shown in movie theatre before the movie starts and it’s gold! (see here) so for Touken Ranbu they made special ones with the cast joining in! They even had the Jikansokougun too! So far there have only been 2 episodes out and a third one should be coming. So for the two different episodes we had the appearance of:

Eiga Dorobo 1: Uguisumaru, Fudou, Hasebe

Eiga Dorobo 2: Honebami, Nihongo, Yagen

☆ Watching the movie, I had this huge moment of ‘fuck, I love Touken Ranbu’, because there are so many versions of it and anyone can make any version they want because the creators of the game gave so much leeway as to how to interpret the swords, the personalities, how they defend history, the lore of the Jikan, there is just so much god damn potential in this series and there’s so many ways and stories you can write with these boys! I just got so happy and proud while watch the movie. We can literally make up whatever shit we want so long as history goes back to normal at the end! It’s GREAT!

☆ However, as already stated above, there were some super dodgy editing in this! I really need to find out who the editor is and send them an email because some of the editing was cringe worthy. We literally had one shot where Jiji walks out but the shot is focused on Jiji’s feet for about 5 seconds while Jiji talks. No shot of Jiji actually talking, no shot of Jiji’s face, just his FEET! HIS FEET! What the hell was that shot of Jiji’s feet at the beginning of the movie?! I’ve watched this movie TWICE and I have absolutely NO idea what the point of that shot was! That was the worst one. 

☆ Other things like in the very first opening scene we are have a VERY OBVIOUS audio dub over one of the guys. Why they dubbed over the man with different lines to what his mouth creates, I don’t know why, but it does not sync up at all and it is very obvious.

☆ And the transition between scenes/days and the cut backs to older stuff in the movie was just very poorly edited too. If a scene ended, it would fade to black and for like 2 seconds there would be nothing, no music, just a black scene and then suddenly a new song would start, it felt VERY stage-y and not like a movie at all! It was cringe worthy and really wasted precious seconds we could’ve spent on the movie. Also we had some ‘flashback’ scenes and the music and sound immediately cut off from Cut 1 -> Cut 2 would be the flashback and be absolutely silent, no music -> go back to Cut 1 and suddenly the music has restarted again. I REALLY didn’t like it! It REALLY pissed me. LET ME FUCKING REEDIT THIS GOD DAMN MOVIE! The post production for most of this movie SUCKED. The editing and the sound mixing SUCKED. Ugh... that person needs firing.

☆ Also, this movie was WAY too short! We get 3 hour long stages from Marv, so why is the movie less than 2 god damn hours?! It’s barely 1 hour 45! Give me more gungi! Give me some comedy! (There is NO comedy in this besides ONE line from Hasebe!) Give me them enjoying time at the god damn honmaru! 

☆ Upon looking back, I realised that they did not show one of the bigger fights at all that happens towards the end of the movie. I really wish they had shown that fight scene rather than having it happen off screen. There was so much potential and so much you could’ve done with that fight scene. You could’ve easily had swords pop up here, there, everywhere and they could’ve done it in a real stylistic way if they didn’t have the time or money to get actual actors. They could’ve just done close up shots of swords’ costumes, or their feet landing next to the Jikan, or show two swords clashing, or a danshi jumping into the fight etc. You could’ve easily ‘brought in’ many swords into that fight scene without actual hiring any actors (especially if certain actors did not have time) and it could’ve been very creative, stylistic and interesting and it would’ve been a big flail for the fans.

☆ Also MAJOR SPOILERS HERE: the ending part with the new sword? Don’t just IGNORE that for fuck sake! Give him and the audience an explanation! Let him speak! Let him have his moment as to what happened to him and where he’s been and what he went through shit! God damn don’t just NOT explain that! Don’t just have him pop up, save the day, say his name and FINISH! What the fuck.

Wow the more I think about this movie, the more dissatisfied I get... okay, last one!

☆ Also Nishii Yukito had SUCH a small role!!! I was hoping he’d have so much more screen time than what he actually got. He has about 1 minute max *so sad*

I DO pin a lot of my complaints and nitpicks on the fact I have a cinematography background; I studied film, I’ve made films, I’ve always watched BTS of making films, I love the process of film making. And I think because of that, that’s why I’m being so particular on HOW it was made and on post-production and how I would’ve made the movie. So if you’re not into the whole film making side of movies then none of these are gunna bother you. If you’re not into this stuff then I really think you’ll enjoy this movie a lot! You will definitely have a good time and be satisfied and enjoy it so much!

Okay now onto:

MAJOR SPOILER TERRITORY COMMENTS

☆ I loved this version of Saru and how he isn’t just a nice guy and isn’t just the idiot that history leads us to believe. In this he’s cold, and mean, and turned against so many people! I loved Saru suddenly going against Hasebe too! It was such a plot twist! He invited Hasebe and Nihongo into his clan but as soon as our swords let down their guard, Saru’s men attacked them and they had to run! It was such a shocking twist! And Hasebe getting shot because of this ambush too was insane!! I know it’s spoiled in the trailer but seeing it happen in that moment! I was not expecting it at all!

☆ Also I am glad I got to see Hasebe actually almost physically harming Jiji, and Manba straight up being like ‘yo I don’t trust you Mika,’ and Yagen siding with Manba! Oh my! It was such a great scene! I loved all the suspicion going on around them and them not exactly wanting to agree or listen to Jiji. Argh! SO GOOD! I was like ‘HIT HIM HASEBE! DO IT!’ and I guess this is another reason why I like Movie Hasebe much more than Stage Hasebe.

 ☆ Seriously! I absolutely loved the teaming up of Yagen and Manba!! And now I want them forever on my team in the game now too! xD

☆ My heart hurt a little when Oda called Jiji ‘Munechika’, I was like ‘YOU HAVE NO RIGHT CALLING HIM BY HIS GIVEN NAME!!’ because clearly Jiji deserves more respect than Oda xD but I think it’s purposely put in so we do feel this way.

☆ I absolutely loved the twist for Oda’s story: he didn’t die at Honnouji, he actually died at Azuchi Castle and only Jiji knows the true hsitory because he was the only one there at the time! Such a great twist! And how Jiji tricked Oda into going to Azuchi, making Oda think he’ll be fine there and making Oda think that they are changing history together! Such a good plot twist! I loved it!

☆ Even though I was spoiled for the new sword, it’s very heavily implied throughout the entire movie. Especially when Akechi uses him in defense again the Jikan, and suddenly the danshi’s (who is clothed in Jikan armour and wear)  eyes turn bright yellow (Jikan’s eyes are all a glowing red). It’s a really good and random reveal!

☆ As Jiji tries to leave Azuchi castle, Honebami meets up with him. But fucking Oda pullings his sword on Hone and pins it at his neck! He tells Jiji to work with him or he’ll kill Hone and Jiji is like ‘I can’t help you, this is how it’s supposed to be’, just, I was like YESSSSSSSSSS!!!! But in the end Oda let’s Hone and Jiji go -__- I’m sorry but Hone SHOULD HAVE been killed there!

☆ One of my favourite lines from the movie is from Jiji (surprisingly) where he says: 守りたいことが増えばっかり。 // Things I want to protect just keep increasing. Which shows just how different of a Jiji we have in this version! He actually fucking emotionally cares in this one!

☆  The very last scene has ALL the Stage swords who have appeared in TouStage up to now were ALL at the Honmaru in this final scene. Except Daihannya & Ookanehira. Those two swords were NOT in this final scene. As for the actors; every one of the TouStage actors, except Hirose Daisuke and Kento, were as their Swords, in their costumes in this final scene. Ichigo and Tsurumaru ARE in this seen but are clearly NOT the actors. They clearly had body doubles / standins in this scene and their faces were out of focus. Also in the final ending credits, these two actors' names were not listed. I was flailing so hard!!! This was a HUGE shocker and I am so happy how many of them were able to come back for this one scene! So this is the scene where the new Saniwa is revealed and we finally got a female Saniwa!!!! I was like ‘YES JUSTICE!!!’ I spent most of the movie like ‘why the fuck is it always a Male Saniwa?!?! Why not hire someone ambiguous like Yuzuki or Toman as the Saniwa?!’. But alas we got our girl at the end!! The very very very last scene is absolutely ADORABLE! The saniwa (she’s like 3 years old) grabs onto the back of Jiji (he’s sitting down and drinking tea) and holds him for a piggyback, he smiles, picks her up and piggybacks her around the honmaru! It’s ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE!! I was in absolutely tears at this scene! Ughhh someone give Suzuki babies!!! I was in a MESS of tears. And the very very very last line is him where he says ‘ Aruji.... the stuff I want to protect just keeps increasing’ arghhhh my heart!! *dead* IT’S SUCH A GOOD ENDING!!!

*

And that’s all! I hope you enjoyed this review and I hope you watch, buy and enjoy the movie!

As stated, I feel like a lot of my complaints come from my cinematic background so general people who just want a good movie are really going to enjoy this!! ^_^  Also if you ever see spelling mistakes, don’t ever hesitate to yell at me! xD

[rauthschild]

Biden Urged To Fire Drone Strikes Against Americans Rejecting Socialism In Record Numbers

By: Sorcha Faal, 

An abbreviated new Security Council (SC) report circulating in the Kremlin today first noting the results of a just released poll conducted by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) showing that 64% of the American people are rejecting socialist leader Joe Biden’s plan to replace their nation’s nuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missiles at a cost of around $264-billion, says this finding comes at the same time these Americans are said to be seething with anger over every new revelation of duplicity they see coming from their socialist leaders—anger now spilling over into the left, as best exampled by AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, who is now slamming Biden for wiping out tens-of-thousands of jobs with executive orders, and who stated: “Killing good union jobs on day one with nothing to replace them is not building back better”—and for what the future holds sees millions of Americans projected to remain jobless as Biden packs the US labor market with foreign workers.

Though not being understood by these Americans is that the mass destruction of jobs is a socialist tactic specifically devised to force a population into becoming dependant upon the state—which is why President Donald Trump had to be eliminated, as during his first 4-months in power he brought his nation to full employment—an elimination that saw these socialist forces stealing this election from President Trump in a plot they’ve just openly admitted to conducting against him—but in whose aftermath of this massive election theft still sees 80 cases winding their way through US federal courts—three of which the US Supreme Court has scheduled for a conference hearing on 19 February--are noteworthy because President Trump has won two-thirds of these cases that have been adjudicated by the courts—and are court wins made explainable when watching the bombshell video “ABSOLUTE TRUTH” that details with evidence how this election was stolen.

With over 10-million Americans having watched the “ABSOLUTE TRUTH” video since its release on Friday, before it can spread any further it now sees being launched against it a massive socialist-leftist propaganda demonization  campaign—best exampled by leftist CNN host Jake Tapper saying that any Trump supporters who question the results of the 2020 election need to be held accountable as “MAGA terrorists”—sees former CIA Counterterror Chief Robert Grenier calling for war against the Trump supporters he brands “domestic insurgents”—and yesterday, after leftist Los Angeles Times opinion editor Virginia Heffernan was aided by her kind Trump supporting neighbors plowing out her snow bound driveway without even being asked, saw her turning on them and writing: “The Trumpites next door to our pandemic getaway, who seem as devoted to the ex-president as you can get without being Q fans, just plowed our driveway without being asked and did a great job…How am I going to resist demands for unity in the face of this act of aggressive niceness?...Of course, on some level, I realize I owe them thanks — and, man, it really looks like the guy back-dragged the driveway like a pro — but how much thanks?...Hezbollah, the Shiite Islamist political party in Lebanon, also gives things away for free”.

This socialist-leftist comparison of Trump supporters to Islamic terror organizations like Hezbollah serves as grim reminder of the Obama-Biden Regime actually targeting for death in drone strikes Americans citizens that had not been charged for committing any crimes—best exampled by these socialist leaders ordering a drone strike to kill American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki because they said he used “inciteful language”—after which these socialist leaders ordered the drone strike death of 16-year-old American citizen Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi for reasons unknown—and in the hours just after President Trump took power, it saw another drone strike previously ordered by the Obama-Biden Regime killing an 8-year-old American citizen girl child—that an enraged President Trump responded to by declaring: “No American Citizen Will Ever Be Targeted Again”—and whose history about should be seared into the minds of every Trump supporter, specifically because leftist MSNBC news host Nicole Wallace is now urging Biden to kill with drone strikes President Trump and all of his supporters.

Further fueling this socialist-leftist bloodlust rage are the articles now appearing showing that their agenda is going down in flames—articles like “Support for Socialism in America Sinks Like a Stone After 2020 Election, Hits Lowest Level in Years According to New Study”, that says: “In a Wednesday news release, the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University revealed only 32 percent of American adults said they preferred socialism to capitalism in the aftermath of the presidential election last fall. In a survey taken in early 2018, that number was 41 percent”—like the article ‘Majority Minority’ America?  Don’t Bet on It , that reveals: “How a Census Bureau error led Democrats to assume they were on the right side of inexorable demographic trends”—and most importantly the article “Woke Capital’s Political Warning”, that warns: “Republican support for big business craters in a new Gallup poll satisfaction with the “size and influence of major corporations” falling 15 points to a mere 26%...The business community may be making a mistake by aggressively antagonizing the very Americans it has long relied on to protect it from government control”.

While watching Biden’s socialist agenda implode, a few hours ago President Trump’s former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley released her powerful “Why Capitalism Wins” message to the American people, in part saying: “An entire generation of American adults are too young to remember the suffering socialism caused during the last century…but…the more we see of capitalism’s rival, socialism, the more proof we have that capitalism is the way we want to go”—and is a powerful message now being joined by beloved American television host Mike Rowe most correctly observing about Biden’s socialist agenda that “The Price Of Safety Is Devastating”—then saw him stating about his fellow citizens: “Eventually, people get bored of being terrified”.  [Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.]

https://rumble.com/vdlez5-mike-lindell-the-full-documentary-absolute-truth-election-fraud-exposed.html

https://www.brighteon.com/752954d6-2d1b-466d-9d30-9431e0646cc1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VjKD_z5Av0&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=PragerU

[herringbookshelf]

Perhaps the best overview of criminalizing hoemlessness in 2019:

Physical assaults and criminalization efforts combined have made 2019 a particularly grim and terrifying year for many Californians struggling to survive without a roof over their head.

Los Angeles experienced a 16% increase in homelessness this year, with a total of 36,000 people now homeless across the city, including 27,000 without shelter. San Francisco’s homeless count surged 17% to more than 8,000 people. There was a 42% increase in San Jose, a 47% increase in Oakland, a 52% increase in Sacramento county and increases in the Central Valley agricultural region and wealthy suburbs of Orange county.

There were patterns across cities: huge numbers of people experiencing homelessness for the first time, evictions and unaffordable rents leading people to the streets, families and seniors increasingly homeless, and higher rates of the homeless not getting shelter.

A List of Horrors

There were at least eight incidents in LA where people threw flammable liquids or makeshift explosives at homeless people or their tents this year, according to authorities and the Los Angeles Times.

A 62-year-old beloved musician’s tent was set on fire in Skid Row in August, killing him in what police say was an intentional killing. That month, two men also allegedly threw a “firework” at an encampment, causing a blaze that grew into a major brush fire just outside of the city. One of the men arrested was the son of a local chamber of commerce president. Police said this fire was intentional. In a separate attack, a molotov cocktail destroyed tents and donations.

In San Francisco, a man was caught on video appearing to dump a bucket of water on a homeless woman and her belongings on the sidewalk in June. Witnesses said it seemed to be a deliberate “attack”.

Three months later, San Franciscans who said they were upset with homeless people in their neighborhood paid to install two-dozen knee-high boulders along a sidewalk in an effort to stop them from living on the streets.

In neighboring Oakland, a resident recently put up an unauthorized concrete barrier in the middle of the street to deter homeless people from parking RVs. A real estate developer taunted homeless people by shouting “free money” at them and offering to pay them to leave their encampment in Oakland.

Residents repeatedly organized against proposed homeless shelters in their neighborhoods, most notably in a wealthy San Francisco area where locals crowdfunded $70,000 to hire an attorney to fight a shelter project.

LA leaders fought to ban people from sleeping on streets and sidewalks throughout the city. In Lancaster, a desert city north of LA, the mayor has pushed a proposal to ban groups that provide food to homeless people and suggested people should buy firearms to protect themselves from violent people on the streets.

Officials in Oakland have proposed a new policy to cite homeless people in parks while some have suggested setting up a shelter in a defunct jail. Law enforcement leaders in Bakersfield in the Central Valley pushed a plan to throw homeless people in jail for misdemeanor offenses. A state taskforce has also suggested a similar system of forcibly placing homeless people into shelters.

Life as a Nuissance

“A lot of it is brought out by this fear of the other as if their homeless neighbors are not neighbors at all, or not even people for that matter,” said TJ Johnston, who is currently staying in shelters in San Francisco and is an editor with Street Sheet, a local homelessness publication. Hearing wealthy residents complain this year was like watching angry online comment sections come to life, he said: “It’s very dehumanizing to be looked upon as a nuisance.”

[attract-mode-collective]

Finally, The ET Video Game That You’ve Been Waiting For

Since there was no proper game culture wrap-up last week (again, sorry about that), along with how I’m filing this at the end of the week instead of the beginning (there’s… stuff happening, so consider this one of the more minor examples), there’s a lot to cover this time around. Including a bunch of happenings from the word of art.

So kicking things off is the latest from Amanda Visel X Michelle Valigura. Much like their Star Wars, Beetlejuice, and Heathers cabinets, here we their ideas of what arcade games based upon ET and Aliens could and should look like. And yeah, playing as Gertie is an approach that could salvage its reputation in the video game sphere, plus I totally want an Alien/Aliens video game starring Newt.

Actually, hasn’t something similar already happened? Sorry, haven’t kept up with the video adaptations; last one I played was for the Jaguar. Anyhow, and unfortunately, both pieces are sold out online. Though… and I’m not 100% certain, but… they’re both at the Thailand Toy Expo, so maybe they brought a few extras with them?

Elsewhere in Asia, Japan to be exact, are not just one but two other notable shows, and both focused on electronic entertainment. First is something you’re probably familiar with, the My Famicase Exhibition, and not just because it’s been around for 13 years. As of this writing, the entire assortment has yet to be shared officially, so you’ll have to turn to Twitter to see the participants boasting their own handiwork.

[UPDATE: 5/7/17] Actually, all the pieces are finally viewable on the Famicase homepage proper. Here are my faves…

��� I particularly love Saturdays’s flavor text: “The gateway opens once a week. Tomorrow I’m going in.”

… You kinda need to see the actual cart in the wild to understand; here’s a pic courtesy of @mandimappy…

And finally...

… It’s maybe pointing out that the artist responsible for the concept above also did a piece for last year’s event as well, which ended up becoming something that’s actually playable! Hope history repeats itself cuz I really want a game about an all cat band with gross lyrics.

Now, the other show is something you may know nothing about, cuz a. the 16 Bit Models Exhibition has only been around for two years and b, was only open for just one day, hence why it’s fallen under many radars.

Admittedly, I found last year’s assortment a bit more up my alley, most due to my affinity for the obscure. Yet I can still appreciate this very realistic take on the Super Mario Bros (btw, am also sorry that I don’t know who’s responsible for what)…

Along with this realistic take on Pauline and Donkey Kong…

Yet the exhibition was a reminder that not every Nintendo game out there has been paid tribute to death, specifically Urban Champion…

The dioramas are easily the best parts of the 16 Bit Models Exhibition. Here’s an equally impressive one, featuring Castlevania…

Though once again, the obscurer the better, so this tribute to Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa gets a thumbs up from me…

Which is the lesser known game: Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa or City Connection? The latter at least was released on the NES at the time. Then again…

Moving onto fashion, UNIQLO recently unveiled an upcoming line based upon Mario and company. As one might expect from UNIQLO, they look quite nice! Here’s the campaign movie from Japan…

The best part is that UNIQLO’s entire line is headed towards the US! Was not expecting that. Alas, certain designs are not available to everyone, and I know more than a few adults who wouldn’t mind that Kirby tee. So here comes YUMMY MART to the rescue…

Somewhat along the same lines is Namco enlisting the talents of PAYNUS, who represents some of the esoteric offerings in the Pac-Store…

The constant reference to pizza is something that’s present in both the PAYNUS designs and Namco’s own in-house efforts…

Meanwhile, back at METEOR, in addition to the latest Famicase exhibit, they’ve also been busy with a collab with THUNDERBOX (which I highlighted just a few weeks ago). And from the looks of miki800.com’s post, MOUNTAIN GRAPHICS is also involved? Talk about a holy trinity…

Whereas the previous combination makes sense, the following is… unexpected. Recently discovered that R23X has teamed up with the The Yetee of all folks to produce a line of shirts showcasing glitched VHS stills. Including one that’s game related (technically two; there’s also a crop top version as well)…

Looks neat and all, but I’m less of a Final Fantasy 7 fan and more of a Wave Race 64 aficionado, and would therefore love to see this on a tee…

I’d also love to get my hands on one of these 100 yen pins that @rgb_club posted a couple weeks back, though no word on when it might be available…

Here’s another thing that’s not for sale, mostly cuz there was only one, which is of this baseball player made to look like a Street Fighter…

Which had the better Spinning Bird Kick; Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li…

Or City Hunter (yup, that’s Jackie Chan; via tenshokyaku)…

Sticking with leggy video game stars, thanks to thevideogameartarchive, we finally have an answer as to whether Link is boxers or briefs…

And sticking with Link for just a bit more, I particularly dig nozovis’s summary of the fun times him and Zelda have in Breath of the Wild…

Along those same lines is a zine that @WPR_haru made that’s filled with all the photos he took, one that I’d love to have a copy of…

Which fan art featuring a character from behind do you prefer; this Breath of the Wild piece by James Kochalka…

Or this Overwatch piece by some unknown artist (if anyone knows, plz let me know)…

Here we have @RAStyle85’s Astro City with a lots of buttons, for playing whatever game that requires that many inputs…

And here we have former Taito graphic designer Atsushi Iwata’s custom-built device, for producing pixel graphics!

Such things were used in other places, like SNK. Here we have a quote from someone who worked there, courtesy of videogamesdensetsu…

“The sprite editor used by artists for a number of SNK fighting games (Art Box) was written for the Neo-Geo, and uses the Neo-Geo as the interface. As in, you would use the joystick and the buttons to draw the sprite. He didn’t believe this when he started there, until one of the higher ups showed him by firing up one of the machines and drawing a kickass sprite of Robert Garcia in like 10 minutes”.

Does the Art Box sound familiar? Well, it should be.

The latest from The Gaming Historian, on the creation of the d-pad, answers the one question I’ve had for ages: if Nintendo was able to patent the control input, how were Sega and others able to get away with something seemingly similar?

Remember the 8bit Harmonica from last week? Well here’s another project involving the Famicom by Ugoita that’s a bit more… random?

This post has gone on for far too long without any Sega. Time to fix that with some gifs of Sonic from Sega Saturn de Hakken!! Tamagotchi Park, which as you may have guessed is a Tamagotchi title in which you can raise Sonic (and sorry, chilli dogs was Sonic’s fave food in the US, though I believe Sonic Generations would later recon that; via pr0jectneedlemouse)…

Though you can also raise other Sega personalities, like Opa Opa and Alex Kidd, plus even a Mega Drive cart (via grooveonfight)?

Super obscure Sega humor doesn’t get more obscure than this folks (note to self: on the next car trip, bring along the soundtrack to Super Hang-On cuz repeated plays of OutRun and Daytona USA tunes can get old after a while; via dnopls)…

I know the following has been shared liked crazy (hell, even NPR posted the damn thing), and for good reason. All I can say is, Pikachu #14, get your sh*t together…

Speaking of Pikachu and his pals, The Pokemon Center released a line of Ditto Gachapon figures that are supa kawaii (via retrogamerblog)…

Though the one piece of plastic I want the most is the also recently unveiled Samus from Metroid Prime figure by Good Smile Company, which looks hella cooler than the previously released Other M Figma…

Am embarrassed to admit that I have no idea where this following screenshot is from, nor the tune that accompanies it, both courtesy of radicalhelmet. If anyone would be kind enough to clue me in, would be supremely appreciated…

I wonder what the cover girl of this issue of Spoon is playing (via sixteen-bit)…

And this week’s recommended reading comes courtesy of mah boi Don Miller, and is actually something that Oliver at Minus World also picked up on, which is a book produced by the creator of LSD: Dream Emulator, among other things, and someone I’ve mentioned quite a few times around these parts. It’s called The Art of Computer Designing: A Black and White Approach and is available via archive.org…

As someone who has always planned on transforming an old iMac into a fish tank, thanks to Phazed, I know have other ideas…

And finally, and I also know that I’ve been saying the same thing over and over again, but Super Attractive Club members will be receiving another round up game culture snapshots, hopefully very soon! Until then, please enjoy this still life courtesy of peazy86…

BTW, peazy86 also does music, plus music videos…

Don’t forget: Attract Mode is now on Medium! There you can subscribe to keep up to date, as well as enjoy some “best of” content you might have missed the first time around, plus be spared of the technical issues that’s starting to overtake Tumblr.

[malaysiankpopfans]

[COVERAGE] EXO Thunders Through the Heat at #EXOrDIUMinMalaysia

KUALA LUMPUR, 18th March 2017 – On March 18th, EXO returned to meet their Malaysian EXO-L’s for their successful EXO Planet #3 – The EXO'rDIUM tour. Based on the huge turnout at Stadium Merdeka and seeing fans willingness to queue under the heavy rain, clearly this is one of the year’s biggest K-pop events in Malaysia!

The first time I watched EXO was for their short set at 2013’s MTV World Stage Live, sharing stages with international acts like Robin Thicke and Far East Movement. Soon, they conquered the world with sold out concerts across the globe, and had their first full concert at Stadium Merdeka in 2016 as part of their EXO PLANET #2: EXO’luXion tour. This time around, it would be the fourth mark they make on Malaysian shores, and we are excited to see what performances they would bring in. It is worth noting that this particular stop is the outdoor venue they would perform at throughout the whole leg of the tour.

Much to the fans’ delight, the rain stopped right before the concert began. At exactly 8PM, the lights dimmed, and the screen played the opening montage, introducing us to the boys and their superpowers. The mixture of realistic cinematography and Roy Lichtenstein’s comic illustration made us feel like we’re watching a Marvel movie. The final narration sent shivers to the spine, as they said that these ‘beings’, or EXO, are finally “here, with us, right now.”

The concert started with a bang: strong guitars and drums boomed across the stadium as their debut track “MAMA” gets a heavy rock remix. The boys did not stop and began their next number Monster, which included a dazzling dance solo by Baekhyun. I found myself completely impressed by the new remix of Wolf, in which the song became more grandiose and heart-thumping. While a few explosions startled the viewers, EXO seemed unfazed and walked through the whole shebang without fear. With fantastic lighting, effects and even pyrotechnics to fire up the whole crowd, it was, like how the kids these days call it, “it’s lit”!

With the fans’ loud cheers and fan chants, the boys acknowledged the increased passion among the Malaysian EXO-L’s, teasing that they are sweating profusely due to the intense passion by Malaysian EXO-L’s, and not the humid weather. All the fans were at the height of their excitement, brandishing the EXO lightstick according to the beat. At this point, I kind of wish that I had one with me and I was not tied down to my seat.

The leader Suho confidently spoke in English as he introduced the members to the crowd, ensuring that language is not a barrier to them. Chen took the chance to charm the crowd with his Malay as his “aku cinta padamu” left the girls swooning. These jabs are even carried into their performances, such as Baekhyun inserting an impressive ad-lib singing of Malaysia. Xiumin even cheekily slid in an “apa khabar” in their “Unfair” performance. With the stage being set up like a living room, they’ve definitely made us all feel at home.

A few weeks before the concert, the announcement of Chinese member Lay’s inability to join this stop might have disappointed some. However, fans roared at the sight of Lay in their video montages, proving that EXO-L’s would support each and every one of them even from afar. The lack of one member, too, did not diminish the quality of the show, as other members showed off their best capabilities. Despite his small stature, Baekhyun’s spark was undeniably bright as he showed great vocal abilities and stage presence, charming fans from all sides. Kai, too, was exceptionally playful tonight, as he excitedly pointed out his new hair colour specially dyed for his fans. His capability to switch from a cute and endearing boy to a seductive performer is an art of its own.

The fanservice became more gravitating as the boys moved to the extended stage, giving more spot light to each and every one of them. It is a crime to deny how good looking they really are. Six years into their career, the boys’ features have become more chiseled and matured, and this is evident in their professionalism too.

I have to commend the sound system for making the songs sound larger than life. “Artificial Love”, an 80s deep house inspired song taken off from their studio album EX'ACT, turned the whole stadium into an open air rave party as the bass thundered across the venue. The boys changed their persona from aggressive performers to a more sensual touch, albeit a little too tantalizing. Their hips’ flexibility definitely did not lie, and Kai’s blindfold dance was all too bewitching.

But that’s not the only type of performance they’re capable to pull – all dressed in white shirts, the boys sat down to play us an acoustic medley of their songs. With Chanyeol handsomely plucking and strumming the guitar, the boys breezed through acoustic renditions of “My Lady”, “My Turn to Cry”, “Moonlight”, and even their funky single “Call Me Baby” gets a chill treatment. Both Kai and Sehun entertained the crowd with a little dance. It would have been a delight if they could slip in a cover of “Belaian Jiwa”, but that’s my unfulfilled wishful thinking.

DO, Baekhyun and Chen belted out their vocal prowess in ballads such as Stronger and What If. It is no doubt that their vocals are top-notched, as they crooned the crowd into a romantic sensation. They took on another look by dressing in elves costumes and being delightful with the song “Heaven”. Hip songs like “Tender Love” and “Love Me Right” got everyone, including the grumpy uncle at the corner of my section, grooving along.

They soon switched it back to bold hits like “Overdose” and “Transformer”. Luckily for us, the hot weather made the boys forego their metallic leather jackets, and performed in their black undershirts. Not that anyone was complaining! The venue transformed into a rave party, as Chanyeol shredded on an electric guitar and decked himself behind a huge golden DJ deck. Lightsaber, the promotion song for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, stayed true to its homage, as it ends with the boys wielding lightsabers.

The next set took me by surprise, as Chanyeol, Xiumin, Sehun and Kai began to rap. Yes, rap. While I had penned EXO down for their hot modern R&B takes, this was an element of surprise that brought the house down. The whole stadium shook with the fans jumping ecstatically to the beat of “Drop That”, as the boys showed off their dance moves.

This date is also special as fans come together to celebrate Xiumin’s birthday. Suho, who was more than ready to join in the celebration, asked the crowd to keep quiet and the lights down low before the birthday boy appears on stage. While waiting, the other boys charmed the crowd by singing snippets of their solo songs, with a cute aegyo from Kai. Once Xiumin appeared, the whole stadium burst into a chorus of birthday song in Korean and English, with fans lifting up their phone screens as part of a fan project. It’s not everyday you get a whole stadium to sing for you!

Once the boys walked out from the stage, drops of rain hit our heads and shoulders. Fans quickly took out their ponchos and umbrellas, and a poncho seller scurried among the crowd to give them a quick shelter. To the fans on the field, it felt like a nuisance, but to EXO, it felt like a relief as they had been jokingly asking for the rain to come throughout the concert so that they would look sexy in their performances. The encore hit off with their critically acclaimed hit, “Growl”, which proved how everlasting it is. No one can resist from jamming to this, as everyone stood up on their chairs, wearing their poncho and danced away. In front of me was a father who held his umbrella open for his daughter, which is a sweet sight.

To say that the concert is enjoyable is an understatement. While the whole show did not have any underlying narrative, sans the opening and closing montage of their superpowers, EXO showed the variety of music that they are capable of, from R&B to rock and even to hip-hop. It also felt great to see how genuine they are in delivering the best for their fans, and to see that regardless of nationality, all EXO-L’s are held closely and dear to them.

Undoubtedly, EXO was the star of the night, beaming from the love and support from Malaysian EXO-L’s.

Photos by Star Planet

Writer: Afi Noor

Editor: Rain

[newstechreviews]

LOS ANGELES — Authorities searched Sunday for a gunman who shot and critically wounded two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who were sitting in their squad car — an apparent ambush that drew a reward for information and an angry response from the president.

The 31-year-old female deputy and 24-year-old male deputy underwent surgery Saturday evening, Sheriff Alex Villanueva said in a late-night news conference. Both graduated from the academy 14 months ago, he said.

“They performed in an admirable fashion in spite of grave adversity,” Villanueva said Sunday during a conversation with local religious leaders. “God bless them, it looks like they’re going to be able to recover.”

He said the wounded female deputy was able to get help for the male deputy by calling in on the police radio despite having been shot.

“They’ve survived the worst,” he added.

The deputies were shot while sitting in their patrol car at a Metro rail station, the sheriff said. Villanueva, whose department has been criticized during recent protests over racial unrest, expressed frustration during his Saturday night briefing over anti-police sentiment as he urged people to pray for the deputies.

“It pisses me off. It dismays me at the same time,” he said.

The department tweeted video of the shooting that shows a person approach the parked patrol car on foot and shoot through the passenger-side window.

“The gunman walked up on the deputies and opened fire without warning or provocation,” the department stated.

An extended version of the video reviewed by the Los Angeles Times shows the shooter running away in the direction he came. He turns a corner out of the frame, past a second figure lingering on the sidewalk, according to the Times. It’s unclear if the second person was involved in the attack. A sheriff’s department spokeswoman declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

Moments after the shooting, the passenger door opens and a deputy stumbles out, hand on head, according to the newspaper. The driver’s-side door opens soon after.

The video sparked a reaction from President Trump who responded on Twitter, “Animals that must be hit hard!”

“This cold-blooded shooting is unconscionable and the perpetrator must be brought to justice,” Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden tweeted. “Violence of any kind is wrong; those who commit it should be caught and punished.”

A handful of protesters gathered outside the hospital where the injured deputies were being treated. The protesters tried to provoke deputies stationed outside and at one point were prevented from entering the emergency room, Bishop Juan Carlos Mendez with the Churches in Action group told the TV station KABC.

“Unacceptable behavior. The hospital should be a sanctuary, we should leave hospitals alone,” he said. Mendez and members of his group gathered nearby in prayer for the wounded deputies.

Although the sheriff’s department tweeted that the protesters were blocking emergency entrances and exits to the hospital, video showed only a handful of men outside, some taking video on their phones.

A radio reporter who was near the protest scene was taken into custody. The sheriff’s department later tweeted that the reporter interfered with the arrest of a male protester.

“The female adult, who was later identified as a member of the press, did not identify herself as press and later admitted she did not have proper press credentials on her person,” the department stated.

After being released, Josie Huang, a reporter for public radio station KPCC, a National Public Radio affiliate, said on Twitter Sunday that she had been covering the sheriff’s news conference when she returned to the hospital after hearing protesters shouting. She was wearing her press pass and called out to deputies that she was press, she said.

One of several videos Huang said she shot moments before her arrest showed two men carrying red, black and green flags and yelling at deputies outside the hospital while a few other people stood by recording on their cellphones.

Huang tweeted that she began walking behind deputies who were following the small group of protesters.

“I was filming an arrest when suddenly deputies shout ‘back up.’ Within seconds, I was getting shoved around. There was nowhere to back up,” Huang said on Twitter. In another video, Huang can be heard shouting “I’m a reporter… I’m with KPCC” as she falls to the ground.

The executive editor of the station, Megan Garvey, expressed outrage over the arrest and said her reporter appeared to be wearing her credentials and had shouted her KPCC affiliation. NPR’s Editorial Director Nancy Barnes said the network was “appalled” by the arrest of a reporter doing her job.

The office of the Los Angeles County Inspector General, which oversees investigations and actions of the Sheriff’s Department, has opened an investigation into the reporter’s arrest.

Meanwhile, the search for the gunman continued. Sheriff’s officials announced a $100,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

Capt. Kent Wegener said Saturday that officers were blanketing the area in search of the suspect seen on the video opening fire with a pistol.

“We have a very, very generic description,” he said.

The incident happened around 7 p.m. a short distance from the Compton sheriff’s station south of downtown Los Angeles.

The U.S. Justice Department would assist sheriff’s investigators with “all federal tools available,” spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said on Twitter.

Protesters have railed against the LA Sheriff’s Department for weeks over recent shootings by deputies, including the killing of a man on a bicycle last month. There was no known connections between the recent shootings and Saturday’s ambush and investigators are “chasing all leads,” Villanueva told the Times.

“Of course, there’s an important conversation going on about policing in this country, but these are folks who put their lives on the line for us, and we will find justice for them,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said on CNN Sunday.

[lodelss]

Soraya Roberts | Longreads | March 2020 |  10 minutes (2,569 words)

“Can I talk to you in private?” No one wants to hear those words. The impulse is to assume you’ve done something egregiously wrong. The expectation is that you are about to be punished. The conviction is so strong that the only good thing about it is that, at least initially, you can suffer without anyone else knowing about it. You might even thank the punisher for coming to you directly, for keeping it between just the two of you. It’s the least someone can do when they are about to theoretically ruin your life.

A lot has been written about privacy online, in terms of information, in terms of being policed. Ecuador is currently rushing to pass a data protection law after a breach affected as many as 20 million people — more than the country’s population. A lot has also been written about callout and cancel culture, about people being targeted and cast off (if only temporarily), their entire history dredged up and subjected to ex post facto judgement; Caroline Flack, the British television presenter who recently committed suicide while being hounded in the press and online amid allegations she had assaulted her on-again, off-again boyfriend, was seen as its latest casualty. But there hasn’t been a lot of talk about the hazier in-between, about interpersonal privacy online, about missteps once dealt with confidentially by a friend or a colleague or a boss, about the discrete errors we make that teach equally discrete lessons so as not to be repeated in public. That’s not how it is anymore, not in a world tied together by social media. Paper trails aren’t just emails anymore; they take in any move you make online, most notably on social media, and the entire internet is your peevish HR rep. We’re all primed — and able — to admonish institutions and individuals: “Because of social media, marginalized people like myself can express ourselves in a way that was not possible before,” Sarah Hagi wrote in Time last year. “That means racist, sexist, and bigoted behavior or remarks don’t fly like they used to.” 

Which is to say that a lot of white people are fucking up, as usual, but now everyone, including white people and people of color, are publicly vilifying them for it as tech’s unicorn herders cash in on the eternal flames. And it’s even worse than in the scarlet letter days: the more attention the worse the punishment, and humiliation online has the capacity for infinite reach. As Sarah John tweeted after one particular incident that left a person hospitalized, “No one knows how to handle cancel culture versus accountability.”

* * *

“Is that blood?” That was my first question after a friend of mine sent me a message with a link to a few tweets by a person I’d never heard of, the editor-in-chief of a small site. The majority of the site’s staff had just resigned, the impetus being a semi-viral tweet, since deleted, of a DM the editor had sent a Twitter chat in 2016: “I was gonna reply to this with ‘nigga say what?’ Then I was like holy shite that’s racist, I can’t say that on twitter.” According to Robert Daniels at the Balder and Dash blog on rogerebert.com, tweeters, mostly white, piled on — some even called the EIC’s workplace demanding they be fired — before the office-wide resignation. Videos embedded in the tweets I saw showed the editor crying through an apology. (Longreads contacted the editor for comment; they’ve asked to remain anonymous for their health and safety.)

Initially I thought the videos were just a mea culpa, but then I saw a flash of red. Though the details are muddied by a scrubbed social media history, the editor appeared to have harmed themselves. Ex-colleagues rushed to their aid, however, and they were eventually hospitalized. If that wasn’t horrible enough, a filmmaker named Jason Lei Howden decided to avenge the EIC. With scant information, apparently, he targeted individuals on Twitter who weren’t involved in the initial pile-on, specifically blaming two people of color for the crisis — Valerie Complex and Dark Sky Lady, who had not in fact bullied anyone but had blogged about Howden. The official Twitter account of Howden’s new film, Guns Akimbo, got mixed up in the targeted attacks, threatening the release of the film.

There are multiple levels to this that I don’t understand. First, why that DM was released; why didn’t the person simply confront the EIC directly? Second, why did the editor’s staff, people who knew them personally, each issue individual public statements about their resignations into an already-growing pile-on? (I don’t so much wonder about the pile-on itself because I know about the online disinhibition effect, about how the less you know a person online, the more you are willing to destroy them.) Third, why the hell did that filmmaker get involved, and without any information? Why did the white man with all the clout attack a nebulous entity he called “woke twitter” — presumably code for “people of color” — and point a finger at specific individuals while also denying their response to one of the most inflammatory words in the English language (didn’t they realize it was an “ironic joke,” he scoffed)? As Daniels wrote, “This became a cycle of blindspots, and a constant blockage of discussing race, suicide, and alliance.” Why, at no point, did anyone stop to think about the actual people involved, about maybe taking this private, to a place where everything wasn’t telegraphed and distorted? 

Paper trails aren’t just emails anymore; they take in any move you make online, most notably on social media, and the entire internet is your peevish HR rep.

I had the same question after the BFI/Thirst Aid Kit controversy. In mid-February, the British Film Institute officially announced the monthlong film series THIRST: Female Desire on Screen, curated by film critic Christina Newland and timed to coincide with the release of her first book, She Found It at the Movies (full disclosure: I was asked to participate, but my pitch was not accepted). The promotional image included an illustration of a woman biting her lip, artwork similar to that of three-year-old podcast Thirst Aid Kit (TAK), a show that covers the intersection of pop culture and thirst. Newland later told The Guardian she wondered about the “optics,” but as a freelancer with no say on the final design, she deferred to the BFI. She had in fact twice approached TAK cohost Nichole Perkins to contribute to her book (the podcast’s other cohost is Bim Adewunmi). Perkins told me in an email that she wanted to, but her work load eventually prevented her. And while TAK did share the book’s preorder link, the BFI ultimately failed to include the podcasters in the film series as speakers, or even just as shout-outs in the publicity notes — doubly odd, given that Adewunmi is London-based. Quote-tweeting the BFI’s announcement and tagging both the institute and Newland, TAK responded, “Wow! This sounds great. Hope our invitation arrives soon!”

The predictable result was a Newland pile-on in which she was accused of erasing black women’s work, followed by a TAK pile-on — though Perkins told me her personal account was “full of support and kindness” — for claiming ownership over a term that preceded them. All three women ended up taking time away from Twitter (which is a sacrifice for journalists whose audience depends on social media) though Newland has since returned. I asked Perkins if she had thought about dealing with the situation privately at first. “I did consider reaching out to Christina before quote-tweeting, yes,” she wrote. “I wonder if she considered reaching out to us, especially after she saw the artwork for the season and admittedly noticed ‘something going on with the optics,’ as she is quoted as saying in The Guardian.” Eventually, the BFI contacted Perkins and Adewunmi and released a statement apologizing “for their erasure from the conversation we are hoping to create from this season” and announcing a change of imagery. They also noted that Newland, as a guest programmer, was not responsible for their marketing mistake, though no reason was given for their omission. “I have no idea why the BFI or Ms Newland didn’t include Thirst Aid Kit in the literature about the Thirst season,” Adewunmi wrote to me. “I was glad, however, to see the institution acknowledge that initial erasure, as well as issue an apology, in their released statement.”

At around the same time, a similar situation was unravelling in the food industry. Rage Baking: The Transformative Power of Flour, Fury, and Women’s Voices, an anthology edited by former Food Network VP Katherine Alford and NPR’s Kathy Gunst, was published in early February. The collection of more than 50 recipes and essays presents baking as “a way to defend, resist, and protest” and was supposedly inspired by the 2016 election. The hashtag #ragebaking was used to promote the book on social media in January, which brought it to the attention of a woman named Tangerine Jones, whose Instagram followers believed the idea had been stolen from her and alerted her — and the rest of the world. Unprompted by Jones, Alford and Gunst DM’d her to say they had learned the term elsewhere and that the book was “a celebration of this movement.” Jones called them out publicly, publishing their DMs in a Medium essay entitled “The Privilege of Rage,” in which she described how she came up with the concept of rage baking — using the #ragebaking hashtag and the ragebaking.com URL — five years ago, as an outlet for racial injustice. “In my kitchen, I was reminded that I wasn’t powerless in the face of f**kery,” she wrote. Jones’s supporters started a pile-on, her article shared by big names like Rebecca Traister, who had contributed to the collection and requested that her contribution be removed from future editions. 

In an abrupt turn of events, the Jones advocates were promptly confronted with advocates of the book, who redirected the pile-on back at Jones for kicking up a fuss. “It is beyond f**ked up that my questioning the authors’ intentions and actions is being framed as detrimental to the success of other black women,” she tweeted. Their silence resounding, the Simon and Schuster imprint ultimately issued a statement that failed to acknowledge their mistake and instead proposed “in the spirit of communal activism” to include Jones in subsequent printings. Unappeased, the baker called out the “apology” she received privately from Alford and Gunst, who told her they were donating a portion of the proceeds to the causes she included in her post (though their public apology didn’t mention that), and asked if she would be interviewed as part of the reprint. “Throwing black women under the bus is part of White Feminist legacy,” Jones tweeted. “That is not the legacy I stand in, nor will I step in that trap.”

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According to Lisa Nakamura, a University of Michigan professor who studies digital media, race, and intersectionality, cancel culture comes from trying to wrest control in a context in which there is little. It’s almost become a running joke the way Twitter protects right-wing zealots while everyone else gets pummeled by them. It follows then that marginalized populations, the worst hit, would attempt to use the platform to reclaim the power they have so often been denied. But as much as social media may sometimes seem like the only place to claim accountability, it is also the worst place to do it. In a Medium post following their Howden hounding, Dark Sky Lady argued that calling out is not bullying, which is true — but the effects on Twitter are often the same. “The goal of bullying is to destroy,” they wrote. “The goal of calling out and criticizing is to improve.” Online, there appears to be no improvement without destruction in every direction, including the destruction of those seeking change. On one end, a group of white people — the EIC, Newland, Alford, Gunst — was destroyed professionally for erring; on the other were the POC — Perkins, Adewunmi, Jones — who were personally destroyed, whose pain was minimized, whose sympathy was expected when they got none. The anger was undoubtedly justified. Less justified was the lack of responsibility for how it was deployed — publicly, disproportionately, with countless people’s hurt revisited on specific individuals, all at once. 

We know how pile-ons work now; it’s no defense to claim good intentions (or lack of bad intentions). There were few gains for either side in any of these cases, with the biggest going to the social media machine that feeds on public shame and provides no solution, gorging on the pain of everyone involved without actually providing constructive way forward, creating an ever-renewing cycle of suffering. A former intern for the ousted EIC tweeted that she understood the impulse to critique cancel culture and support the editor, but noted that “there is something sad about the fact that my boss used a racial slur, and I am not allowed to criticize.”

* * *

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed author Jon Ronson told Maclean’s in 2015 that one of his biggest fears is being defined by one mistake, and that a number of journalists had basically told him, “I live in terror.” I am no exception. Just recently I experienced a comparatively tame callout on Twitter, and even that moderate critique made me drop an entire book project, wonder about a job opportunity that subsequently dissolved, and second-guess every story idea I’ve had since. The situation was somewhat helpful in making me a more considerate person but was exponentially more helpful in making me anxious and in inspiring hateful fantasies about people I had never met. I am 100 percent certain that the first gain would have been made just as successfully had people spoken to me privately and would have saved me from the second part becoming so extreme that I had to leave social media to recalibrate. The overwhelming sense I’m left with is that if I say something that someone doesn’t like, even something justifiable, my detractors will counter with disproportionate force to make whatever point it is they want to make about an issue that’s larger than just me. What kind of discourse is that which mutes from the start, which turns every disagreement into a fight to the death, which provides no opportunity for anyone to learn from their failures? How do we progress with no space to do it?

“I think we need to remember democracy. When somebody transgresses in a democracy, other people give them their points of view, they tell them what they’ve done wrong, there’s a debate, people listen to each other. That’s how democracy should be,” Ronson told Vox five years ago. “Whereas, on social media, it’s not a democracy. Everybody’s agreeing with each other and approving each other, and then, if somebody transgresses, we disproportionately punish them. We tear them apart, and we don’t want to listen to them.” The payment for us is huge — almost as big as the payout for the tech bros who feign impartiality when their priority is clearly capital and nothing else. This is a punitive environment in which we are treating one another like dogs, shoving each other’s noses into the messes we have made. Offline, people are not defined by the errors they make, but by the changes they make when they are confronted with those errors, a kind of long game that contradicts the very definition of Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. The irony of public shaming on social media is that social media itself is the only thing that deserves it.

* * *

Soraya Roberts is a culture columnist at Longreads.

[shirlleycoyle]

The Robots Microsoft Assigned to Do My Job Can’t Do It

The most important skill in journalism is not fucking up, and in early June, MSN’s new programming algorithm fucked up. MSN UK published a story about the British pop duo Little Mix, mistaking one of the duo’s mixed-race singers for the other. It was an error that would have gone unnoticed 99 times out of 100 prior to the installation of AI programming, but trended vigorously because it came just days after the Guardian reported that 50 editors had lost their jobs to make way for this algorithm, which would handle the bulk of MSN’s programming going forward.

I was one of the editors who was let go, and it was bittersweet to see reporters at outlets like this one finally acknowledge the existence of MSN, a behemoth news-redistribution shop that trails only Google sites for total traffic, and is ahead of Facebook—though I never thought there was any mystery about why it was ignored. MSN had long since abandoned creating its own content in favor of licensing news from premium partners at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, et. al. when not receiving it free from smaller operations that act as remoras via affiliate links in articles—a category that includes hundreds, if not thousands, of partners around the globe. If you use MSN at all, it’s likely indirectly, posting articles you found via a search or your default browser homepage:

My job was to create the MSN Money section every morning from these stories and monitor it, a job I called “fantasy newspaper” because of its relation to the pick-and-choose games of fantasy sports. I was good at it. I fucked up the same way the algorithm did when it misidentified the Little Mix member more times than I can count, but I either never got caught or, more likely, caught it myself. One thing about creating a morning news section by yourself for a site that gets more than six billion hits per year (and that’s just MSN Money, in America), is that you tend to be a bit peripatetic; I checked and rechecked my work repeatedly like a news junkie and full-blown digital addict. Imagine a lone old-time phone operator in a room where the ringing never stopped, and that’s pretty much what it felt like. It was a volume business with a skeleton staff, but it kept people—a lot of them—connected to the world, even though I had never really met these people. It was way more of a job than a career; just as smaller news operations feed off Microsoft, so do hundreds of companies and tens of thousands of individuals like myself, all happy enough to cash a check to push news around.

Here is where I’d like to get into salacious details about the politics of our programming, but they’re disappointingly bland. Like any operation of a certain size, MSN professes to be non-partisan but is in fact aggressively non-confrontational, to the point where a single user comment on any of our stories that raised a red flag would be brought to us at once. This is theoretically absurd, given the scale of things, but it happened rarely enough not to be too much of a bother. (By far the best one of these was a multimillionaire yacht owner whose boat had ended up in our photo system saying his ship was a nation unto itself that he did not allow to be photographed, so we needed to remove it.) Occasionally articles deemed too left- or right-wing would come down at the request of an editor, but there was such a deluge of content that you never needed to worry about finding a softer-edged replacement for them. It will not surprise you that virtually everyone I worked with was vaguely center-left, politically, and it will shock you even less that some of the smarmier full-time employees were sure to remind us not to let it affect our coverage. For my part, at least, being in the Money vertical allowed me to run as much left-leaning content as I wanted, given that the entirety of the rest of the section skewed right. I never had to elucidate it like this, though it came up once or twice; I just showed up and worked and that was it as long as no one was embarrassed.

About the only other time I can remember someone citing MSN was when certain outlets objected to the editorial disclaimer we were asked to put on articles that bent toward Scary Opinion, on the grounds that said articles (I believe they were from the Real Gawker family) were not, in fact, opinions, but facts. They were right, of course, but the language and tone of most of their stories precluded us beaming them to virtual Middle America in the first place.

This record of successful blandness, combined with the internal head-slapping after the Little Mix-up, does not bode well for the future—or the present—of news. MSN never got into real hot water for messing up a headline or story, which was a minor miracle but was at least the goal. Now, at a time where context is needed most, MSN is handing the reins from editors to engineers. A Microsoft spokesperson said the contract lapses had nothing to do with the pandemic, and I believe them; Microsoft has haltingly moved toward automation for years, usually in a cycle of job cuts followed by partial rehirings when they realized (as the editors did immediately) that they had bitten off more than they could chew.

This time feels different, though. Based on how far they’ve come down this road, the algorithm will sink or swim on its own, which is to say it’ll probably sink and take down the whole of MSN with it. Maybe that’s overstating things, but MSN is low enough in the Microsoft hierarchy that its existence has felt like it was on the chopping block for years. (This is all ultimately speculation, because I had no idea, after nearly a decade, who makes the decisions there, nor did my boss or talent agency.)

A lot of the friction in the changeover from human to robot involves negotiating the change from the contractor model, which Microsoft and others use to save themselves from paying benefits or severance or providing long-term work assurance, back to the full-time employee model, which takes a bunch of people who are harder to fire and forces them into jobs to which they may or not be suited. The tension in the old model was between the contractors like myself with news backgrounds, who produced the lion’s share of news, and the full-timers with Microsoft backgrounds, who “oversaw” it and did a lot of thinking about whether we should be pivoting to video to slideshows or vice versa that week. There were exceptions on both sides, but this is how it went until July 1, when what the Guardian cheekily called our “algorithmic robot” replacements stepped in, kicking the full-timers down to grunt duty and the contractors out the door, context —in and outside the newsroom—be damned.

That is to say that there are still human eyes on the site, just fewer, and that the people behind those eyes know the writing is on the wall. Even the process of losing my job was impenetrable; my boss couldn’t tell me who made the decision because he simply didn’t know. This is how announcements come at Microsoft: from on high. In that way, the algorithm’s ascent is just part of the natural order of things. If the decision-makers aren’t even identifiably human, why wouldn’t they rather wipe us all out?

The nice part of the job was having access to all the world’s news, though it gave me scant time to read it all, given the constant maintenance MSN Money—just one vertical!—required. Each section—News, Money, Sports, Entertainment, Travel, etc.—was its own fiefdom, as was the Home Page, which was and is the ultimate traffic driver for MSN. Much like the CD business thrived long after you and I stopped buying them, the MSN home page is still big money for legacy media of all shapes and sizes. It is common for popular stories there to get 15 million pageviews and have 15,000 concurrent users, and for super-popular stories to bury those numbers. I produced all these stories, and I still don’t know a person who actively tries to consume them. But someone does.

Who? From what I can tell, old people. The most consistently popular topic we ran in Money, and we did more or less daily, was “At what age you should take Social Security?” I could spend my whole morning agonizing over which Times story to feature (the Big Three old newspapers had strict limits on what we could take), follow it up with a Social Security story from another partner, and bang—the latter would do better numbers, invariably. I largely avoided learning about popular topics in the other verticals, but as Money and Lifestyle were next to each other on the home page, I can tell you the only true rivals to Social Security’s popularity as a topic were Duchesses Catherine and Meghan, about whom it was not possible to program too much.

The Social Security stories are a good example of how some partners gamed the system for the better. Most of them came from the Motley Fool, a financial publication that effectively parcels out stories on the same seven subjects a day, incredibly effectively— think Chipotle for popular retirement and savings topics. On the flip side, the same Motley Fool, along with several similar smaller operations from which we licensed content, was found several years ago to be publishing articles from writers who had been paid to write articles specifically to move stocks in a certain direction. All of the organizations settled, likely because they were all caught dead to rights. Given that these are the exact type of articles we—humans, with knowledge of what makes a piece plausible or not—chose or did not choose to program at MSN Money, I think the problems are about to get much worse.

There are two problems, as I see it. First, I don’t think the algorithm will be able to keep things orderly. So much of the job was about maintenance that, against my better judgment, it reminds me of Hamlet: “Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature possess it merely.” My job was often that of a gardener, and as someone who is now doing quite a bit of actual gardening in unemployment, the difficulty and necessity of it—the effort it takes to produce something worthwhile—is top of mind. The only difference is that I fear things “rank and gross in nature” will not merely possess MSN, but subsume it to the point Microsoft wants its name completely disassociated from it. I hope I’m wrong.

Second, the algorithm won’t really know the game, the way even I didn’t when I started. I can see it now, and if you’ll allow me another analogy I’d compare it to antichess, which is exactly what it sounds like: A game you’re trying to lose. The quirk that makes the game go is that you must take a piece if you are allowed, and as a novice, I quickly learned that this can lead to easy cascades from which there is no escape, far more so than regular chess in that, at least in a proper chess death spiral, you think you have agency over the moves. In antichess there’s none of that: It’s usually a cascade to certain finishes, with the fatal mistake so obvious to be easily perceptible. This feels like that mistake. MSN is up against forces it hasn’t reckoned with, and whoever’s left can only hope they get one more move to fight back, even if it can only all still end one way.

Follow Bryan Joiner on Twitter.

The Robots Microsoft Assigned to Do My Job Can’t Do It syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[android-for-life]

"Meet humanity’s first artists through virtual reality"

Editor’s Note: France’s Chauvet Cave contains some of the world’s oldest prehistoric drawings. It’s so delicate that it’s closed to the public, but thanks to our partner, the Syndicat Mixte de la Grotte Chauvet, you can now step into the world of our ancient ancestors through Google Search’s augmented reality feature as well as virtual reality. One of these ancient ancestors, who has asked to remain anonymous, has time-traveled 36,000 years to share what the cave was like back then. 

We began our journey to the big cave days ago. Today we arrive and settle near the stone arch that spans the river. We light a fire, signalling to our people up near the caves that we’re here. We’ve brought small stone tools with us to sew the arrowheads we use for hunting. Perhaps we’ll be able to trade them.

There’s plenty of moonlight, so once we’ve made camp I venture out, hiking up to the cave’s entrance to greet the others. The children are still awake, playing with their toys but also listening intently to the lions roaring in the distance. There used to be bears living here too, but they’re long gone.

The closer I get to its entrance, the more the dark cave seems to draw me in, so I light a torch and step inside. After a short walk, the fire illuminates where we—and those before us—have left our marks. Here, someone scraped the clay, exposed the limestone and painted their world, long before we arrived. My favorites are the horses—I think one is afraid, another is playing, and a third one, the curious one, has pricked up its ears inquiringly.

Near the familiar mammoth, a new image catches my eye—perhaps some of our young hunters have depicted this lion to celebrate their success.

The fresco is so enormous, it’s impossible to take it all in. I step back to try and comprehend its meaning. There are cave lions, reindeer and stags, all seeming to move in the play of light and shadow. Just a few lines, drawn by practiced hands, and somehow we have a masterpiece.

Then there are the handprints left by those who came before us. I stand on my toes and stretch to match my own hand to the imprints on the cold rock, and suddenly I feel compelled to leave my mark too. I’ve never been chosen as a painter, but I’m alone and feeling daring, so I dip my hand into the red paint that’s been left out, rise back to my toes, and add my handprint to the others on the wall. 

As it dries, I draw back and watch as the animals and the handprints fade into the darkness. Who knows how long they’ve all been here, and how long they’ll remain?

Another note from the editor: if you enjoyed hearing from our anonymous cave ancestor, check out the following images of the cave she described, or find out more in Google Arts & Culture’s latest exhibit “Chauvet: Meet our Ancestors.”

Panoramic view of the a river and mountains

Panoramic view of the Pont d’Arc, a stone arch over the river with the Chauvet Cave mountains in the background. © David Huguet

Phone screen displaying a AR model

When you search for the Chauvet Cave on Google Search, the AR in Search features  let you view and interact with a 3D model of a fresco in the cave. Use your smartphone to place it directly into your own space, to get a sense of scale and detail.

A torch lights up a cave painting_3.jpg

“Chauvet - The Dawn of Art” is a virtual reality experience available on HTC vive that guides visitors through the Chauvet Cave. 

Narrated by Daisy Ridley (English version) or Cécile de France (French version), it shows you 12 stations within the cave. No worries if you don’t have a VR headset - this Youtube 360 video version is equally immersive.

Image of a cave painting with felines

The “alcove of the felines” is the central part of the Horses Fresco, one of the masterpieces of Chauvet Cave. 

© David Huguet

3D model of a Bear Skull.png

This is the 3D model of a bear skull that was placed on a  block of stone in the cave. It was staged deliberately, meant to be seen this way, and has not moved for 36,000 years.

Source : The Official Google Blog via Source information

[wetrumpfeed]

Afternoon MAGAthread: YOUR WEEKLY PRESIDENTIAL RECAP!

HAPPY SATURDAY DEPLORABLES!

This is u/Ivaginaryfriend and im back with all things spicy & dank from the past week! For those that missed any past recaps you can check those out here!

Sunday, March 24th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

President Trump Delivers a Statement Upon Departure

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!

Good Morning, Have A Great Day!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

MAGAthread - AG Barr's Letter Summarizing Mueller Report Findings

r/The_MuellerMeltdown is open for salt mining business!

“Collusion Hoax” just uploaded on President Trump’s YouTube channel

Sebastian Gorka: "The only reason we had the Mueller probe was because Hillary Clinton lost & they had to have the coverup for everything they did to spy on another presidential campaign. This is the biggest political scandal in America history."

Grandmother gets free from home invader, grabs handgun, warns him to leave, then shoots when he advances. Protecting her grandchildren ages 3, 5, & 12. Why do dems want her defenseless?

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Just wanted to give a welcome to all the newbies who have recently seen the light due to the nothing burger that was Russian collusion. TD welcomes you with open arms as long as you are here to MAGA!

SALT MINE THREAD MUELLER REEEEEEEEEEEEEEPORT SHOWS NO COLLUSION AND NO OBSTRUCTION - REDDIT SUICIDE WATCH IS CRANKED UP TO MAXIMUM

Chug, chug, chug...

The absolute state of reddit right now

Alert! Salt overflow. We need more miners! Join the salt mining party at r/The_MuellerMeltdown

Monday, March 25th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

Proclamation on Recognizing the Golan Heights as Part of the State of Israel

President Trump and The Prime Minister of Israel Make Remarks

President Trump Participates in a Bilateral Meeting with the Prime Minister of the State of Israel

President Trump Participates in a Photo Opportunity with the 2018 Stanley Cup Champions

President Trump Meets with Caribbean Leaders at Mar-a-Lago

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

“No matter your ideologies or your loyalties, this is a good day for America. No American conspired to cooperate with Russia in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 election, according to Robert Mueller, and that is good.” @BretBaier @FoxNews

“The Special Counsel did not find that the Trump Campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian Government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump Campaign.”

“Breaking News: Mueller Report Finds No Trump-Russia Conspiracy.” @MSNBC

Video

President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu Deliver Remarks

Today, it was my great honor to welcome Prime Minister @Netanyahu of Israel back to the @WhiteHouse where I signed a Presidential Proclamation recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Read more: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-recognizing-golan-heights-part-state-israel/ …

WSJ: Obama Admin Must Account for ‘Abuse of Surveillance Powers’

(Retweeting Brian McNally) The #Caps won a Stanley Cup so they get to spend the next hour here touring and meeting the President in a private event.

(Retweeting Philip Pritchard) Hanging out in the Roosevelt Room, waiting to head into the oval office. #stanleycup @NHL @WhiteHouse @HockeyHallFame @Capitals 0

A team of great champions!

(Retweeting Scott Abraham) The Stanley Cup and the Caps with President Trump in the Oval Office. What a picture!

(Retweeting Don Jr.) Christmas came early this week.

(Retweeting Tom Fitton) Tom Fitton on @RealDonaldTrump Russia Mueller Probe: 'They've KNOWN There Was NO Collusion" And, by the way, @DevinNunes is one of the most consequential congressmen in a generation...

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

You guys were right

BREAKING: Pence calls for the removal of Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee

Donald Trump: Time to Investigate the Left for ‘Treasonous Things’

We're drowning in salt! Time to send some back to CNN! #SendEmSalt

I'm done with the Left for good.

Pentagon Notifies Congress it has Authorized $1 Billion Transfer to Begin New Border Wall Construction

CREEPY PORN LAWYER FACING 50 YEARS FROM 2 COUNTS OF CA INDICTMENTS. HE STOLE HIS CLIENT’S SETTLEMENT MONEY AND PUT IN PHONY TAX RETURNS TO SCAM A $4M LOAN FROM A BANK. WHAT A FUCKING SCUMBAG!

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Media, Libs, Cucks and Shills BTFO by Netanyahu during press conference with GEOTUS: " I brought you a case of the finest wine. I understand you're not a great wine drinker. But could I give it to your staff? I hope they don't open an investigation on it."

FUCKER TWEETED THIS AN HOUR BEFORE HE WAS ARRESTED. MY SIDES 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Avenatti doesn’t feel so good

Hey @MichaelAvenatti - It looks like you'll be the one spending time behind bars after all. #basta

I'm not a trump supporter, but this is how I imagine all you guys right now lmao

Tuesday, March 26th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

Executive Order on Coordinating National Resilience to Electromagnetic Pulses

Seven Nominations Sent to the Senate

President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate and Appoint Personnel to Key Administration Posts

First Lady Melania Trump Visits Nicklaus Children's Hospital

President Trump Meets with Prime Minister Netanyahu

President Trump Participates in a Senate Republican Policy Lunch

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

The Mainstream Media is under fire and being scorned all over the World as being corrupt and FAKE. For two years they pushed the Russian Collusion Delusion when they always knew there was No Collusion. They truly are the Enemy of the People and the Real Opposition Party!

(Retweeting Tom Fitton) Let’s be clear, neither Mueller, Obama FBI, DOJ, CIA, Deep State, etc ever had good faith basis to pursue @realDonaldTrump on Russia. Russia collusion was a hoax & a criminal abuse, which is why @JudicialWatch will continue to fight for truth in fed court. https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-statement-on-mueller-report/ …

“What we’re seeing on Capitol Hill right now is that the Democrats are walking back any charges of Collusion against the President.” @ByronYork @BillHemmer Should never have been started, a disgrace!

The Republican Party will become “The Party of Healthcare!”

“A Catastrophic Media Failure”

Thank you to the House Republicans for sticking together and the BIG WIN today on the Border. Today’s vote simply reaffirms Congressional Democrats are the party of Open Borders, Drugs and Crime!

“Proclamation on Recognizing the Golan Heights as Part of the State of Israel”

“I think this is probably the most consequential media screwup of the last 25 to 50 years. It is difficult to comprehend or overstate the damage that the media did to the Country, to their own reputation or to the Constitution. An absolute catastrophe” Sean Davis @TuckerCarlson

Video

Video

The Fake News Media has lost tremendous credibility with its corrupt coverage of the illegal Democrat Witch Hunt of your all time favorite duly elected President, me! T.V. ratings of CNN & MSNBC tanked last night after seeing the Mueller Report statement. @FoxNews up BIG!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

REDICULOUS - Jussie Smollett won't be prosecuted on charges he faked attack

Former Michelle Obama aide tried to intervene in Jussie Smollett probe

Cocaine Mitch is silently laughing hysterically

Fair Warning: Trump Campaign Distributes Memo Telling Media To Steer Clear Of Collusion Conspiracy Theorists "At a minimum, if these guests do reappear, you should replay the prior statements and challenge them to provide the evidence which prompted them to make the wild claims in the first place"

Troll level 1,000,000,002.1! Mike Lee's Velocipede Machine Gun Speech

DOUG COLLINS HAS RELEASED GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS'S TESTIMONY. DIG PEDES, DIG!!

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Why is CNN here so early?

⚖️ Jussie Said The Magic Words ⚖️

No words needed.

Good morning to everyone who wasn’t indicted for extortion yesterday.

Mitch McConnell just trolled the Democrats with this video on Twitter

Wednesday, March 27th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

Vice President Pence Participates in a Bilateral Meeting

Memorandum on Federal Housing Finance Reform

President Trump Participates in a Bilateral Meeting

President Trump Presents the Medal of Honor

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

.@GreggJarrett: “Trump-Russia 'collusion' was always a hoax -- and dirtiest political trick in modern US history”

Video

Just met with @SundarPichai, President of @Google, who is obviously doing quite well. He stated strongly that he is totally committed to the U.S. Military, not the Chinese Military.... ... ....Also discussed political fairness and various things that @Google can do for our Country. Meeting ended very well!

We are here today to award America’s highest military honor to a fallen hero who made the supreme sacrifice for our nation – Staff Sergeant Travis Atkins...

(Retweeting Hannity) #HANNITY EXCLUSIVE TONIGHT: One-on-one with @realdonaldtrump — the President’s first interview since Mueller found no collusion! Tune in at 9PM ET!

(Retweeting The White House) Video

(Retweeting Verney & Co.) Video

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

Ben Garrison, Spicy AMA

YOU PATRIOTS ARE TOO MUCH! WELL OVER THREE TONS OF SALT ON ITS WAY BACK TO CNN!!! #SendEmSalt

Chicago PD releases full Jessie Smellit case files. Links in article

Undaunted By the Facts, CNN Continues to Push Collusion Conspiracy Theory

Wikipedia Editors Paid to Protect Political, Tech, and Media Figures

PRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:

WATCH PARTY: Hannity interviews GEOTUS on Fox News at 9PM ET

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

REPORT: An unnamed source familiar with Kim Foxx' thinking told me the reason she dropped charges against Smullett was because his phone records showed over 200 calls and texts from Kamala Harris and DNC operatives. Prove me wrong.

No evidence to support our claims, let’s just form a mob.

Something feels different about Trump. He is scorned. He's fucking pissed. It's one thing to take him head on, it's another to trash his reputation. They tried to destroy him and the son who bears his name. WRONG. FUCKING. MAN. Hell is coming, cucks.

16 felonies .. just disappeared into thin air..

Amen

Thursday, March 28th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

Memorandum on Extension of Deferred Enforced Departure for Liberians

Executive Order on Adjustments of Certain Rates of Pay

President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Appoint Individuals to Key Administration Posts

President Trump Delivers a Statement Upon Departure

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

Will be heading to Grand Rapids, Michigan, tonight for a Big Rally. Will be talking about the many exciting things that are happening to our Country, but also the car companies, & others, that are pouring back into Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North & South Carolina & all over!

The Fake News Media is going Crazy! They are suffering a major “breakdown,” have ZERO credibility or respect, & must be thinking about going legit. I have learned to live with Fake News, which has never been more corrupt than it is right now. Someday, I will tell you the secret!

Mexico is doing NOTHING to help stop the flow of illegal immigrants to our Country. They are all talk and no action. Likewise, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have taken our money for years, and do Nothing. The Dems don’t care, such BAD laws. May close the Southern Border!

FBI & DOJ to review the outrageous Jussie Smollett case in Chicago. It is an embarrassment to our Nation!

Congressman Adam Schiff, who spent two years knowingly and unlawfully lying and leaking, should be forced to resign from Congress!

Wow, ratings for “Morning Joe,” which were really bad in the first place, just “tanked” with the release of the Mueller Report. Likewise, other shows on MSNBC and CNN have gone down by as much as 50%. Just shows, Fake News never wins!

Very important that OPEC increase the flow of Oil. World Markets are fragile, price of Oil getting too high. Thank you!

Video

Video

The Republican Party will become the Party of Great HealthCare! ObamaCare is a disaster, far too expensive and deductibility ridiculously high - virtually unusable! Moving forward in Courts and Legislatively!

We have a National Emergency at our Southern Border. The Dems refuse to do what they know is necessary - amend our immigration laws. Would immediately solve the problem! Mexico, with the strongest immigration laws in the World, refuses to help with illegal immigration & drugs!

On my way to Grand Rapids, Michigan right now. See you all very soon! #MAGA

Beautiful #MAGARally tonight in Grand Rapids, Michigan - thank you, I love you! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!

Massive overflow crowds in Grand Rapids, Michigan tonight. Thank you for joining us tonight! #MAGA

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Working hard, thank you! #MAGA

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

Letter from House Intelligence Committee Republicans calling for Adam Schiff's resignation

Holder gets absolutely rekt by VP Pence!

#RidiculousBullshit

92 percent of illegal immigrant families ignore deportations

Rand Paul announces Amendment to Mueller Report Resolution That Demands Release of Obama’s Communications Concerning Decision to Investigate Trump Campaign.

PRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:

Watch Party: President Donald J. Trump Rally Grand Rapids, MI. 3/28/19

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

!!!SALTY!!! And so it has begun. The first of my 50 lb. bags of salt has already arrived at CNN. Oh, to be a fly on that wall...

Almost to capacity just before 7pm!

JFK IN A TRUMP HAT WILL BE THE BEST THING YOU SEE ALL DAY!

Get em Tom!!!

Friday, March 29th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate and Appoint Individuals to Key Administration Posts

Presidential Permit

President Trump Delivers a Statement Upon Departure

President Trump Delivers Remarks

President Trump Meets with Linda McMahon

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

On this Vietnam War Veterans Day, we celebrate the brave Vietnam Veterans and all of America’s Veterans. Thank you for your service to our great Nation!

This has been an incredible couple of weeks for AMERICA!

The DEMOCRATS have given us the weakest immigration laws anywhere in the World. Mexico has the strongest, & they make more than $100 Billion a year on the U.S. Therefore, CONGRESS MUST CHANGE OUR WEAK IMMIGRATION LAWS NOW, & Mexico must stop illegals from entering the U.S.... ... ....through their country and our Southern Border. Mexico has for many years made a fortune off of the U.S., far greater than Border Costs. If Mexico doesn’t immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States throug our Southern Border, I will be CLOSING..... ... ...the Border, or large sections of the Border, next week. This would be so easy for Mexico to do, but they just take our money and “talk.” Besides, we lose so much money with them, especially when you add in drug trafficking etc.), that the Border closing would be a good thing!

Had the Fed not mistakenly raised interest rates, especially since there is very little inflation, and had they not done the ridiculously timed quantitative tightening, the 3.0% GDP, & Stock Market, would have both been much higher & World Markets would be in a better place!

Robert Mueller was a Hero to the Radical Left Democrats, until he ruled that there was No Collusion with Russia (so ridiculous to even say!). After more than two years since the “insurance policy” statement was made by a dirty cop, I got the answers I wanted, the Truth..... ... ...The problem is, no matter what the Radical Left Democrats get, no matter what we give them, it will never be enough. Just watch, they will Harass & Complain & Resist (the theme of their movement). So maybe we should just take our victory and say NO, we’ve got a Country to run!

So funny that The New York Times & The Washington Post got a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage (100% NEGATIVE and FAKE!) of Collusion with Russia - And there was No Collusion! So, they were either duped or corrupt? In any event, their prizes should be taken away by the Committee!

A huge thanks to @HeatherNauert for serving America at the @StateDept. Great work! I’m proud to have you join the Fulbright board!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

'Get Serious and Stop Rewarding Illegal Immigration,' Border Patrol Agent Says to Congress

UNBELIEVABLE: Dems replace POW/MIA flags with transgender pride flags

Federal judge rules DOJ must hand over Comey memos

WINNING: Florida bar reverses no-hat policy after objections from MAGA hat wearer

U.S. Attorney General Barr to release redacted copy of Mueller report in mid-April

#MeToo: Woman claims Biden kissed her without consent backstage in 2014...."Why is the vice-president of the United States smelling my hair?"

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Doubt many people will see this but just wanted to give my respect for our Vietnam veterans! Thank you for what you did! We greatly appreciate you!

Let's compare Bill Clintons '98 IG Report to Pres. Trump's '19 IG Report.....

My reaction reading r/The Mueller trying to move the goal posts

Fresh Garrison! A Gallery of LOSERS!

He's right behind me isn't he?

Saturday, March 30th:

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

In honor of his past service to our Country, Navy Seal #EddieGallagher will soon be moved to less restrictive confinement while he awaits his day in court. Process should move quickly! @foxandfriends @RepRalphNorman

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

Trump cuts all direct assistance to Northern Triangle countries Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala

I wanted to post this picture in honor of my based 91 year old Mom who is moving to assisted living today. She had a health issue a few months ago and the medicine is effecting her memory now..:( But she still knows who her favorite President is...:)

Former Deputy Asst. Attorney General: Kim Foxx Faces Up to 20 Years in Jail if Convicted of Corruption

Feeding the crocodile hoping it won't eat him first! Link in comments

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Laughs in American

Look at this poor child. She’s one of MANY. Maybe one of them or their parents will speak out. Or maybe they’ll be silent because pedophilia is ok if it defeats DRUMPF.

Neocons in one picture

What did he mean by this?

SO MUCH WINNING, STILL NOT TIRED OF IT!!

With out further ado, some tunes to get you jamming through all this winning:

Ain't No Mountain High Enough

Dreams

Come Together

People Are Strange

Dream On

On Melancholy HIll

MAGA ON PATRIOTS!

submitted by /u/Ivaginaryfriend [link] [comments]

[robgrayofficial]

HAPPY SATURDAY DEPLORABLES!This is u/Ivaginaryfriend and im back with all things spicy & dank from the past week! For those that missed any past recaps you can check those out here!Sunday, March 24th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Trump Delivers a Statement Upon Departure🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!Good Morning, Have A Great Day!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:MAGAthread - AG Barr's Letter Summarizing Mueller Report Findingsr/The_MuellerMeltdown is open for salt mining business!“Collusion Hoax” just uploaded on President Trump’s YouTube channelSebastian Gorka: "The only reason we had the Mueller probe was because Hillary Clinton lost & they had to have the coverup for everything they did to spy on another presidential campaign. This is the biggest political scandal in America history."Grandmother gets free from home invader, grabs handgun, warns him to leave, then shoots when he advances. Protecting her grandchildren ages 3, 5, & 12. Why do dems want her defenseless?🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Just wanted to give a welcome to all the newbies who have recently seen the light due to the nothing burger that was Russian collusion. TD welcomes you with open arms as long as you are here to MAGA!SALT MINE THREAD MUELLER REEEEEEEEEEEEEEPORT SHOWS NO COLLUSION AND NO OBSTRUCTION - REDDIT SUICIDE WATCH IS CRANKED UP TO MAXIMUMChug, chug, chug...The absolute state of reddit right nowAlert! Salt overflow. We need more miners! Join the salt mining party at r/The_MuellerMeltdownMonday, March 25th:TODAY'S ACTION:Proclamation on Recognizing the Golan Heights as Part of the State of IsraelPresident Trump and The Prime Minister of Israel Make RemarksPresident Trump Participates in a Bilateral Meeting with the Prime Minister of the State of IsraelPresident Trump Participates in a Photo Opportunity with the 2018 Stanley Cup ChampionsPresident Trump Meets with Caribbean Leaders at Mar-a-Lago🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:“No matter your ideologies or your loyalties, this is a good day for America. No American conspired to cooperate with Russia in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 election, according to Robert Mueller, and that is good.” @BretBaier @FoxNews“The Special Counsel did not find that the Trump Campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian Government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump Campaign.”“Breaking News: Mueller Report Finds No Trump-Russia Conspiracy.” @MSNBCVideoPresident Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu Deliver RemarksToday, it was my great honor to welcome Prime Minister @Netanyahu of Israel back to the @WhiteHouse where I signed a Presidential Proclamation recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Read more: http://bit.ly/2I18If9 …WSJ: Obama Admin Must Account for ‘Abuse of Surveillance Powers’(Retweeting Brian McNally) The #Caps won a Stanley Cup so they get to spend the next hour here touring and meeting the President in a private event.(Retweeting Philip Pritchard) Hanging out in the Roosevelt Room, waiting to head into the oval office. #stanleycup @NHL @WhiteHouse @HockeyHallFame @Capitals 0A team of great champions!(Retweeting Scott Abraham) The Stanley Cup and the Caps with President Trump in the Oval Office. What a picture!(Retweeting Don Jr.) Christmas came early this week.(Retweeting Tom Fitton) Tom Fitton on @RealDonaldTrump Russia Mueller Probe: 'They've KNOWN There Was NO Collusion" And, by the way, @DevinNunes is one of the most consequential congressmen in a generation...SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:You guys were rightBREAKING: Pence calls for the removal of Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Affairs CommitteeDonald Trump: Time to Investigate the Left for ‘Treasonous Things’We're drowning in salt! Time to send some back to CNN! #SendEmSaltI'm done with the Left for good.Pentagon Notifies Congress it has Authorized $1 Billion Transfer to Begin New Border Wall ConstructionCREEPY PORN LAWYER FACING 50 YEARS FROM 2 COUNTS OF CA INDICTMENTS. HE STOLE HIS CLIENT’S SETTLEMENT MONEY AND PUT IN PHONY TAX RETURNS TO SCAM A $4M LOAN FROM A BANK. WHAT A FUCKING SCUMBAG!🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Media, Libs, Cucks and Shills BTFO by Netanyahu during press conference with GEOTUS: " I brought you a case of the finest wine. I understand you're not a great wine drinker. But could I give it to your staff? I hope they don't open an investigation on it."FUCKER TWEETED THIS AN HOUR BEFORE HE WAS ARRESTED. MY SIDES 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣Avenatti doesn’t feel so goodHey @MichaelAvenatti - It looks like you'll be the one spending time behind bars after all. #bastaI'm not a trump supporter, but this is how I imagine all you guys right now lmaoTuesday, March 26th:TODAY'S ACTION:Executive Order on Coordinating National Resilience to Electromagnetic PulsesSeven Nominations Sent to the SenatePresident Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate and Appoint Personnel to Key Administration PostsFirst Lady Melania Trump Visits Nicklaus Children's HospitalPresident Trump Meets with Prime Minister NetanyahuPresident Trump Participates in a Senate Republican Policy Lunch🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:The Mainstream Media is under fire and being scorned all over the World as being corrupt and FAKE. For two years they pushed the Russian Collusion Delusion when they always knew there was No Collusion. They truly are the Enemy of the People and the Real Opposition Party!(Retweeting Tom Fitton) Let’s be clear, neither Mueller, Obama FBI, DOJ, CIA, Deep State, etc ever had good faith basis to pursue @realDonaldTrump on Russia. Russia collusion was a hoax & a criminal abuse, which is why @JudicialWatch will continue to fight for truth in fed court. http://bit.ly/2uBxYAP …“What we’re seeing on Capitol Hill right now is that the Democrats are walking back any charges of Collusion against the President.” @ByronYork @BillHemmer Should never have been started, a disgrace!The Republican Party will become “The Party of Healthcare!”“A Catastrophic Media Failure”Thank you to the House Republicans for sticking together and the BIG WIN today on the Border. Today’s vote simply reaffirms Congressional Democrats are the party of Open Borders, Drugs and Crime!“Proclamation on Recognizing the Golan Heights as Part of the State of Israel”“I think this is probably the most consequential media screwup of the last 25 to 50 years. It is difficult to comprehend or overstate the damage that the media did to the Country, to their own reputation or to the Constitution. An absolute catastrophe” Sean Davis @TuckerCarlsonVideoVideoThe Fake News Media has lost tremendous credibility with its corrupt coverage of the illegal Democrat Witch Hunt of your all time favorite duly elected President, me! T.V. ratings of CNN & MSNBC tanked last night after seeing the Mueller Report statement. @FoxNews up BIG!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:REDICULOUS - Jussie Smollett won't be prosecuted on charges he faked attackFormer Michelle Obama aide tried to intervene in Jussie Smollett probeCocaine Mitch is silently laughing hystericallyFair Warning: Trump Campaign Distributes Memo Telling Media To Steer Clear Of Collusion Conspiracy Theorists "At a minimum, if these guests do reappear, you should replay the prior statements and challenge them to provide the evidence which prompted them to make the wild claims in the first place"Troll level 1,000,000,002.1! Mike Lee's Velocipede Machine Gun SpeechDOUG COLLINS HAS RELEASED GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS'S TESTIMONY. DIG PEDES, DIG!!🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Why is CNN here so early?⚖️ Jussie Said The Magic Words ⚖️No words needed.Good morning to everyone who wasn’t indicted for extortion yesterday.Mitch McConnell just trolled the Democrats with this video on TwitterWednesday, March 27th:TODAY'S ACTION:Vice President Pence Participates in a Bilateral MeetingMemorandum on Federal Housing Finance ReformPresident Trump Participates in a Bilateral MeetingPresident Trump Presents the Medal of Honor🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:.@GreggJarrett: “Trump-Russia 'collusion' was always a hoax -- and dirtiest political trick in modern US history”VideoJust met with @SundarPichai, President of @Google, who is obviously doing quite well. He stated strongly that he is totally committed to the U.S. Military, not the Chinese Military.... ... ....Also discussed political fairness and various things that @Google can do for our Country. Meeting ended very well!We are here today to award America’s highest military honor to a fallen hero who made the supreme sacrifice for our nation – Staff Sergeant Travis Atkins...(Retweeting Hannity) #HANNITY EXCLUSIVE TONIGHT: One-on-one with @realdonaldtrump — the President’s first interview since Mueller found no collusion! Tune in at 9PM ET!(Retweeting The White House) Video(Retweeting Verney & Co.) VideoSIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Ben Garrison, Spicy AMAYOU PATRIOTS ARE TOO MUCH! WELL OVER THREE TONS OF SALT ON ITS WAY BACK TO CNN!!! #SendEmSaltChicago PD releases full Jessie Smellit case files. Links in articleUndaunted By the Facts, CNN Continues to Push Collusion Conspiracy TheoryWikipedia Editors Paid to Protect Political, Tech, and Media FiguresPRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:WATCH PARTY: Hannity interviews GEOTUS on Fox News at 9PM ET🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:REPORT: An unnamed source familiar with Kim Foxx' thinking told me the reason she dropped charges against Smullett was because his phone records showed over 200 calls and texts from Kamala Harris and DNC operatives. Prove me wrong.No evidence to support our claims, let’s just form a mob.Something feels different about Trump. He is scorned. He's fucking pissed. It's one thing to take him head on, it's another to trash his reputation. They tried to destroy him and the son who bears his name. WRONG. FUCKING. MAN. Hell is coming, cucks.16 felonies .. just disappeared into thin air..AmenThursday, March 28th:TODAY'S ACTION:Memorandum on Extension of Deferred Enforced Departure for LiberiansExecutive Order on Adjustments of Certain Rates of PayPresident Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Appoint Individuals to Key Administration PostsPresident Trump Delivers a Statement Upon Departure🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Will be heading to Grand Rapids, Michigan, tonight for a Big Rally. Will be talking about the many exciting things that are happening to our Country, but also the car companies, & others, that are pouring back into Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North & South Carolina & all over!The Fake News Media is going Crazy! They are suffering a major “breakdown,” have ZERO credibility or respect, & must be thinking about going legit. I have learned to live with Fake News, which has never been more corrupt than it is right now. Someday, I will tell you the secret!Mexico is doing NOTHING to help stop the flow of illegal immigrants to our Country. They are all talk and no action. Likewise, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have taken our money for years, and do Nothing. The Dems don’t care, such BAD laws. May close the Southern Border!FBI & DOJ to review the outrageous Jussie Smollett case in Chicago. It is an embarrassment to our Nation!Congressman Adam Schiff, who spent two years knowingly and unlawfully lying and leaking, should be forced to resign from Congress!Wow, ratings for “Morning Joe,” which were really bad in the first place, just “tanked” with the release of the Mueller Report. Likewise, other shows on MSNBC and CNN have gone down by as much as 50%. Just shows, Fake News never wins!Very important that OPEC increase the flow of Oil. World Markets are fragile, price of Oil getting too high. Thank you!VideoVideoThe Republican Party will become the Party of Great HealthCare! ObamaCare is a disaster, far too expensive and deductibility ridiculously high - virtually unusable! Moving forward in Courts and Legislatively!We have a National Emergency at our Southern Border. The Dems refuse to do what they know is necessary - amend our immigration laws. Would immediately solve the problem! Mexico, with the strongest immigration laws in the World, refuses to help with illegal immigration & drugs!On my way to Grand Rapids, Michigan right now. See you all very soon! #MAGABeautiful #MAGARally tonight in Grand Rapids, Michigan - thank you, I love you! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!Massive overflow crowds in Grand Rapids, Michigan tonight. Thank you for joining us tonight! #MAGAMAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!Working hard, thank you! #MAGASIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Letter from House Intelligence Committee Republicans calling for Adam Schiff's resignationHolder gets absolutely rekt by VP Pence!#RidiculousBullshit92 percent of illegal immigrant families ignore deportationsRand Paul announces Amendment to Mueller Report Resolution That Demands Release of Obama’s Communications Concerning Decision to Investigate Trump Campaign.PRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:Watch Party: President Donald J. Trump Rally Grand Rapids, MI. 3/28/19🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:!!!SALTY!!! And so it has begun. The first of my 50 lb. bags of salt has already arrived at CNN. Oh, to be a fly on that wall...Almost to capacity just before 7pm!JFK IN A TRUMP HAT WILL BE THE BEST THING YOU SEE ALL DAY!Get em Tom!!!Friday, March 29th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate and Appoint Individuals to Key Administration PostsPresidential PermitPresident Trump Delivers a Statement Upon DeparturePresident Trump Delivers RemarksPresident Trump Meets with Linda McMahon🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:On this Vietnam War Veterans Day, we celebrate the brave Vietnam Veterans and all of America’s Veterans. Thank you for your service to our great Nation!This has been an incredible couple of weeks for AMERICA!The DEMOCRATS have given us the weakest immigration laws anywhere in the World. Mexico has the strongest, & they make more than $100 Billion a year on the U.S. Therefore, CONGRESS MUST CHANGE OUR WEAK IMMIGRATION LAWS NOW, & Mexico must stop illegals from entering the U.S.... ... ....through their country and our Southern Border. Mexico has for many years made a fortune off of the U.S., far greater than Border Costs. If Mexico doesn’t immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States throug our Southern Border, I will be CLOSING..... ... ...the Border, or large sections of the Border, next week. This would be so easy for Mexico to do, but they just take our money and “talk.” Besides, we lose so much money with them, especially when you add in drug trafficking etc.), that the Border closing would be a good thing!Had the Fed not mistakenly raised interest rates, especially since there is very little inflation, and had they not done the ridiculously timed quantitative tightening, the 3.0% GDP, & Stock Market, would have both been much higher & World Markets would be in a better place!Robert Mueller was a Hero to the Radical Left Democrats, until he ruled that there was No Collusion with Russia (so ridiculous to even say!). After more than two years since the “insurance policy” statement was made by a dirty cop, I got the answers I wanted, the Truth..... ... ...The problem is, no matter what the Radical Left Democrats get, no matter what we give them, it will never be enough. Just watch, they will Harass & Complain & Resist (the theme of their movement). So maybe we should just take our victory and say NO, we’ve got a Country to run!So funny that The New York Times & The Washington Post got a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage (100% NEGATIVE and FAKE!) of Collusion with Russia - And there was No Collusion! So, they were either duped or corrupt? In any event, their prizes should be taken away by the Committee!A huge thanks to @HeatherNauert for serving America at the @StateDept. Great work! I’m proud to have you join the Fulbright board!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:'Get Serious and Stop Rewarding Illegal Immigration,' Border Patrol Agent Says to CongressUNBELIEVABLE: Dems replace POW/MIA flags with transgender pride flagsFederal judge rules DOJ must hand over Comey memosWINNING: Florida bar reverses no-hat policy after objections from MAGA hat wearerU.S. Attorney General Barr to release redacted copy of Mueller report in mid-April#MeToo: Woman claims Biden kissed her without consent backstage in 2014...."Why is the vice-president of the United States smelling my hair?"🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Doubt many people will see this but just wanted to give my respect for our Vietnam veterans! Thank you for what you did! We greatly appreciate you!Let's compare Bill Clintons '98 IG Report to Pres. Trump's '19 IG Report.....My reaction reading r/The Mueller trying to move the goal postsFresh Garrison! A Gallery of LOSERS!He's right behind me isn't he?Saturday, March 30th:🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:In honor of his past service to our Country, Navy Seal #EddieGallagher will soon be moved to less restrictive confinement while he awaits his day in court. Process should move quickly! @foxandfriends @RepRalphNormanSIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Trump cuts all direct assistance to Northern Triangle countries Honduras, El Salvador, GuatemalaI wanted to post this picture in honor of my based 91 year old Mom who is moving to assisted living today. She had a health issue a few months ago and the medicine is effecting her memory now..:( But she still knows who her favorite President is...:)Former Deputy Asst. Attorney General: Kim Foxx Faces Up to 20 Years in Jail if Convicted of CorruptionFeeding the crocodile hoping it won't eat him first! Link in comments🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Laughs in AmericanLook at this poor child. She’s one of MANY. Maybe one of them or their parents will speak out. Or maybe they’ll be silent because pedophilia is ok if it defeats DRUMPF.Neocons in one pictureWhat did he mean by this?SO MUCH WINNING, STILL NOT TIRED OF IT!!With out further ado, some tunes to get you jamming through all this winning:Ain't No Mountain High EnoughDreamsCome TogetherPeople Are StrangeDream OnOn Melancholy HIllMAGA ON PATRIOTS! #robgray