#through being involved w them. or like just speculation about the internal workings of a group that even if you could correct anonymously

[recreationaldivorce]

i really don't think you should be promoting organisations from other countries on social media unless you have direct ties to them. like people unfamiliar with the context will just end up sharing stuff that's pretty contentious with the local left and they just have no idea. for some stuff e.g. the swp in britain, yes some quick online searching will bring you up to speed, but for some other stuff the issues w various orgs mostly just spread by word of mouth. and while im happy to say that eg a certain org is known for being transphobic, some of the issues we have with orgs can't just be shared on our public social media on a website that doesn't respect privacy like tumblr, bc to explain them means to reveal (& therefore reveal to the state if we're posting on tumblr) our involvement/past involvement with them as political organisers.

[rebornologist]

Hi, I just read your college headcanon thing and I'm just wondering if you have any about what Reborn, viper, Collenelo & Lal and Skull are doing during this! Or of them during their college years!!

Literally any excuse to write about Mammon, I will take... these will likely be shorter because I'll do a bit of both! ♡ Thank you for suggesting arcobaleno content I am so so in love w them all xx

♡ The Arcobaleno in University*:･ﾟ✧

*kinda

༚✧⁺˳₊˚‿︵‿︵‿୨୧ · ˳ · ♡ · ˳ · ୨୧‿︵‿︵‿˚₊˳⁺✧༚

As for while the main cast (Tsuna & co.) are trudging through their years in uni, Reborn has grown a considerable amount, and has kind of let Tsuna on a longer kitestring than before; He still offers his absolutely unhinged tutoring services, and threatens Tsuna that if he doesn't sit down and study to do well in college, he is doomed to having no skills outside of being the 10th generation Vongola family boss lolol

Mammon literally doesn't have to worry about anyone in uni lolol I don't think they're close to anyone who would go to university, maybe Fran but they genuinely could care less about how his studies are going; Maybe if Fran was an accounting/econ major and Mammon considered him a good asset for accumulating wealth.... but we all know Fran's an art or language student or some shit so there's no way in hell

Colonnello goes to all of the sports events to cheer on Yamamoto and Ryohei and literally everyone else; Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if he was a PE instructor or decides to be a kinesiology/athletics/nutrition related instructor at some point, he's got time...

Lal doesn't feel as much obligation towards watching over Tsuna & co. anymore at this point, but she gives them shit about their studies sometimes whenever they do see her; Duuuude maybe Colonnello's a prof somewhere and she's the mysterious hot person that visits him during his breaks a little too often and the students are definitely speculating LOL (ColoLal is literally the "prof who overshares" and "brick wall prof" ship dynamic and I love them for it)

Skull is pretty involved with Enma and the Simon bbies in uni!! He goes to any of their sporting events or extracurriculars that they want him to witness bahahaha; Aside from that though, university was never his thing..

Now, as for a little... ♡ College Arcobaleno AU *:･ﾟ✧

♡ Reborn

That is the face of an evil evil business major idc; Something like international business or dareisay a double major into political science as well..

He's so intimidating but also like tall and handsome and such a head turner when he struts around campus; He dresses well and he knows it, always experimenting with fashion and is the definition of hottie walking to his next class in a timely manner, with his expensive ass fair trade organic small batch coffee in hand

Would probably be a frat boy at some point in his college career, he's terrifying and notorious for being brutal with incoming members (hazing isn't fun, y'all); He thinks it's all in good fun though hmmmm.. evil

He somehow has so much time it's like he has infinite time he's that friend that's taking all these classes and balancing work and clubs and socializing, nobody knows how he does it; He's secretly running on basically no sleep, just pure survival instinct

He's in a lot of clubs, his favorite is the costume making or fashion club, he's not the best with sewing, but he loves the people there and they love him as well; He's their bestie and model of choice and he has a good eye for design

He has a creative knack and it's his destressing outlet but he tends to ignore it, why are youuu doing polisci of all things, hardass :\

And of course his favorite class was the one solely about coffee (the fact that those exist @ my school is wild but so so wonderful)

♡ Esper Mammon

Literally why would Mammon be in university it's expensive???

In the case that higher education is not exorbitantly priced and Mammon is attending such an institution..

They literally have purple hair and pronouns BAHAHAH They're absolutely styling on everyone in class all the time, but in a dark brooding and emo way

Says the bare minimum and does just what they need to pass their classes, spare time is spent grinding their side hustles for moneyyy

They're pretty quiet and generally keep to themselves, but won't hesitate to speak to people when spoken to or interacted with

Mammon studies econ or something like that because eughh money money money, but they also have a soft spot for studying certain animals

They got closer to Reborn because they were in the same herpetology course, and had some heated debates over whether the frog or the lizard was superior; They study together sometimes, people think they're dating but they're literally just two hot people sitting next to each other reading up on caecilian life cycles

Mammon definitely has kind of a weird room, with pink lights set up for exotic plants they got really into taking care of at some point, some frogs in a tank somewhere, it's also quite dim in there for no good reason

♡ Colonnello

Gym rat

University is but an extra expensive gym membership to him

He's the type to bring coffee or snacks in to a friend's class, sneaking in through the back with that stupid little grin

Yeah, he knows the effect he has on people, his eyes pierce through hearts brooo it's insane

People assume he's involved with Lal and kind of back off, they probably founded a little paintballing club and a majority of their initial recruitments were just people who thought they were hot and came up to them

He studies something super niche like kinesthetics or whatever goes into physical therapy; He's fascinated by the works of the body and actually is so sweet for wanting to use his experience to help others live their best lives

He volunteers at the raptor center because I said so and that's where he met his best bird friend Falco; He also goes birdwatching at the crack ass of dawn, the perfect time for him to start his morning run before going to the gym or something ashdhsjdf idk how people do this shit broe

Him and Reborn have friend groups that somehow merged and they hated each other's guts since the moment they met each other, they probably fought at some point idk and then became like rival besties LOL the kind where they compete with each other in a not so serious way to keep themselves motivated

Reborn admittedly loves paintballing with him <3

♡ Lal Mirch

Not a gym rat

Either has a double major or minor in women's studies, she's too much of a baddie to not; She's a physics/engineering student though, if not something else hot and sexy like biochem or chemeng...

A substantial number of people in her classes have the hots for her because of the skewed sex ratio in stem especially engineering college life Lal is the hottest bitch on campus

She's got blue light glasses (nerd) and usually shows up to class right on time with sweatpants and a tank top, maybe a zip-up hoodie (my bets are that it's Colonnello's hehe) if there's a breeze outside

She's probably yet another busybody that somehow has time for everything; College level volleyball or softball, probably, and probably some internships on top of her classes

Lal gets along surprisingly well with Mammon, they both begrudgingly respect each other's interest in insects

She definitely started getting tattoos in her college years, she wasn't allowed to even think of them before that, but she knew that once she got out into the world on her own she would adorn herself with so much wearable art

She's got mad rbf to the point where other students are intimidated to even speak to her, sometimes even intimidating to instructors

She's usually in a neutral or even decent mood though, she's quite blunt and straightforward with things, but she's so kind and helpful to anyone who dares to ask her for help

♡ Skull

Why is he even here he doesn't know why he's here

He's here because there are hot girls on campus who look at him when he pulls up on his motorcycle, that is all

Imagine his surprise when he realizes he has to do work to stay in uni, not just hang out and be hot and get girls

College was his peak and his prime for getting his hair cut and dyed spontaneously, getting a million new piercings, etc.; A good amount of these body modifications are done with friends or by friends

He's punk af and loves going to yard shows, maybe house parties

Frat people love him because he has the most insane party tricks, being basically invincible

I like imagining that Colonnello and Skull have lived together at some point and Colonnello has a stockpile of energy drinks; Skull makes great use of that stockpile as well when he's furiously guzzling those electrolytes the morning after to fight off his hangovers (oh Skull my dear it doesn’t work that way lol)

His handwriting is so messy yo whenever he bothers to actually take notes, he'll look back on them and he isn't even 100% sure what he wrote orz

This man cannot cook for his life and became the errand boy just getting groceries for the house so that his dear roommates can make dinner LOL He doesn't mind though :)

Everything that I write about Mammon is sooo friggin self-indulgent, and this is my worst offense. I love reptiles and insects and they do too now I don't make the rules :) Also I literally have a crush on Lal don't come for me if she was @ my uni I'd propose on the spot move aside 'Nello

[asherjhemmings]

( MATTHEW DADDARIO + CISMALE ) —  Have you seen ASHER HEMMINGS ? This TWENTY-EIGHT year old is a MUSIC PRODUCER who resides in BROOKLYN. HE has been living in NYC for TEN YEARS, and is known to be OUTGOING and ALLURING, but can also be ARROGANT and SELF SERVING, if you cross them.  People tend to associate them with SCATTERED SHEET MUSIC ON A MARBLE FLOOR and GOLDEN BAR CARTS LITTERED WITH EXPENSIVE LIQUOR. — ( haley, 21, she/her, triggers: eating disorders & self harm, est )

hello all !! i’m haley and i’ve been roleplaying since i was like eleven but i just came back to tumblr rp a year ago and that just so happened to be with my baby asher, so happy anniversary to him being a muse <3

i’ve boiled his bio down into some bullet points because it used to be so fuckin long and i’m sure nobody read it so here it is condensed into just the basics

basics:

name: asher julien hemmings

nicknames: ash, aj

age: 28

hometown: cambridge, ma

currently living: brooklyn, ny

education: high school diploma, degree in music production from nyu

birthday: april 13th

zodiac: aries

sexual orientation: bisexual

tattoos: ** doesn’t have a neck tattoo like alec in shadow hunters lol but he has mad tattoos, two full sleeves

aesthetic: pinterest

before nyc (tw: alcoholism, abuse, prison)

asher was what some holier than would call a miracle or what other would more harshly call an accidental pregnancy. 

his father owned a low-life club in the city, known for mistreating employees and sneaky business behind the scene. some speculated that the operation of the club was to simple launder drug money, however that is a far different story. 

his mother began working at the club around her twenty-seventh birthday and took on a position as an exotic dancer. she never quite had a set career path, often working odd jobs until it lead her to the intimidating world of stripping.

asher’s father took a liking to her, in the same way he took a liking to most females that got hired at the establishment whether it be a guest or an employee. however, unlike the other, he got her pregnant.

their relationship was toxic from the beginning. seeing as the relationship was forced for the sake of their child, they didn’t get along great. cops were constantly called to their apartment during 2am screaming matches, a lot of nights spent with one of them on the couch. but it wasn’t bad enough for one of them to leave, but it wasn’t good enough for one of them to say i love you.

asher was born on a rainy day in the spring and came into the world with a smile on his face. the nurses even joked he looked like a young frank sinatra with the way he slyly smirked. 

but the smile didn’t always stay on his face. as he grew up, he saw the repercussions of staying with someone out of convenience rather than love. while his mother fell in love with him and hand crafted her maternal instincts to excellency, his father developed a love for whisky and coming home late from work. 

despite what they once thought, a child didn’t fix things. in his father’s worsening condition, he began to get violent. it started off aggressively verbal until it matured into a far more physical act. at first it was just asher’s mother taking the brunt of the abuse. but as asher began to get older, it wasn’t uncommon for him to a victim on the lashing too. 

it wasn’t until child protective services got involved after asher in seventh grade came to school with bruises that anyone was even aware of what he was enduring. asher’s father was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for domestic abuse & parental negligence.

the abuse had made asher timid moreso than it made him aggressive. so when he and his mother moved in with his grandparents, he was hesitant around his grandfather at first. his grandfather tried to form a relationship with him doing everything from playing board games to watching television or going mini-golfing.  nothing seemed to be able to break through asher’s timid exterior.

this was until one day his grandfather caught him plucking at the keys on their grand piano and offered to teach a young asher how to play. music was the first thing they truly bonded over and within a year, asher was playing better than most people can in a lifetime. 

once moving in with his grandparents, his mother wasn’t around much. she was always with her latest boyfriend or with her friends. asher didn’t mind though, he enjoyed cooking with his grandmother or strumming a guitar with his grandfather.

in high school, asher became a punk. he strived in all social groups due to his charisma. he excelled with the music kids, got in with the burnouts, even was cool enough to hang around with the popular kids. teachers loved him despite not being the best student. it was impossible to hate him.

his music teacher wrote him his letter of recommendation to study at nyu. he never saw himself going to college but he was excited to reinvent himself.

in nyc (tw: alcoholism)

during his years at nyu, asher began to reinvent himself. he was no long timid or the least bit shy. he was suave and slick, getting along with almost everyone he came into contact with.

unfortunately when some many people love you, after a while, it begins to get to your head.  it was no surprise to people when asher began to get arrogant and cocky about his musical abilities. but one thing he had to fake confidence with was who he was as a person.

asher didn’t like himself, hence why new york was such a turning point for him. deep down, he believed he didn’t deserve love or his success. but when he started getting praise for his music producing abilites all of that changed.

classmates were intimidated by him and professors were undoubtedly impressed with the way in which he could perfect a beat or make a hit simply experimenting. asher liked the attention, lived for the applause he’d get at the end of a presentation. the love others had for him inflated his ego but also drove him to success.

after graduating at twenty-two, asher moved to an apartment in brooklyn and immediately began interning at a record label. he didn’t necessarily like what he was doing, truly believing that he was too good to be there most days.

but even as an intern he excelled and at the age of twenty-five, he bought his own music production company that houses over twenty studio spaces for artists to record. 

in three years, not much has changed. except his bank account has quadrupled, he’s moved from a shoebox to a villa.. oh, and he’s developed a bit of a drinking problem.

drinking started off a social thing for asher. a few beers at a college party here and there seemed to be the beginning of it. then it was shots, and then getting black out at parties and not remembering much of anything. being surrounded by famous artists in his career only made this habit worse. he was drinking to wake up in the morning, in the studio, before bed and repeat. 

nobody knows much about his blossoming alcoholism but it’s quickly beginning to fester and consume him. but he’s pretty good at hiding behind the tortured artist facade.  

personality:

asher is the epitome of smiling and rolling your eyes in the same instance. he’s charming and goofy in the same line and doesn’t miss a beat.

super flirty. will flirt w u. and ur friend. and ur friend’s significant other. that’s just how he is. 

loves verbal sparring, the certified king of it

why is he always smoking a cigarette? nobody knows

can be an asshole, will most likely get you to yell at him and then laugh and tell you that you’re the one being ridiculous 

Indecisive af

a ride or die for his friends, literally would kill for a buddy

wanted connections:

ex girlfriend or boyfriend: asher’s been in nyc for ten years so he’s definitely tried to get serious ab someone by now. their relationship was for sure super toxic. let’s plot.

college roommate: someone who went to nyu and has watched asher’s success absolutely blow up. someone who pulled him drunk out of parties and threw him their dorm’s cold shower. give me disappointed friends vibes or a strained relationship !! anything !!

half-brother:  as far as asher knows, he’s an only child. his father was an alcoholic who often had affairs with the girls who worked at his clubs in boston or were in the city on business. it is no surprise that something came from his late night rendezvous. asher’s not the warmest person, especially when it comes to his negligent father. will anything come of the brothers sharing the city streets? or will they simply turn a cold shoulder to one another? 

assistant: asher is a famous music producer with his own recording studio in manhattan. he and his personal assistant spend a lot of time together. this connection is pretty open ended so asher could be their mentor if they’re musically inclined but they could also be confidants, best friends, frenemies, potential love interest, fwb, up to you!!

ride or die: this man needs to have some friends who put him in his place plz, he’s a whole ass disaster

music friends: self explanatory 

fwb/ex-flings: this man is so flirty if he hasn’t messed around w u he’s messed around w someone u know. give me angst. give me missed connections. give me unrequited. give me friendzone. give me anything. 

[unluckyxse7en-moving]

Can I ask a question? I have been wondering stuff about myself and in the panel where it says "before 'me' disappeared." it stuck out to me. I've never had a good grip on who I am and figured I had to build it. Idk hat that is. Nor do I expect you to answer that. My question is, could you explain it more?

Yes, absolutely, you’re totally welcome to ask! and idk how well I can explain it but I’ll do my best based on my current personal understanding and experience! obligatory disclaimer, many systems have unique experiences and it’s not always consistent or cut and dry from system to system, but if something about this does hit home I encourage you to look into researching it more as you feel comfortable! Also a heads up, I’m going to probably overexplain terms and concepts since I’m not sure what you do know, plus if someone else reading this isn’t familiar I figure that may help them too, so bear with me! ^^ (this got incredibly long and incredibly personal, I hope that’s ok! We’ve found hearing about personal experiences from others always helped give us a way to compare our experience better in ways that medical definitions don’t help with, so we got detailed in hopes it’ll be helpful to someone. heads up, there’s some references to feelings of unreality.)

Gonna try to put this under a cut since it got so long, let’s hope tumblr cooperates!

So admittedly, I was intrigued when you sent this line in, because while I’ve reread this comic a couple times before posting it, I didn’t remember writing a line exactly like that. As it turns out, the writing was meant to say “when ‘He’ disappeared” but it’s really oddly unclear whether it’s an H or an M at first glance compared to the rest of the script? If I’m honest I actually prefer your interpretation better, especially because the ambiguity lends more to the comic’s meaning in retrospect. I’m not gonna say something like ‘oh one of my alters must’ve done that on purpose’ because back then our handwriting was just an inconsistent mess in general and the most involvement we could probably credit to the alters was just one person tried to write that H in their handwriting when someone else was supposed to be writing it. But I thought that was an interesting case of serendipity so I couldn’t help pointing it out lmao 

 That said, I think your reading actually makes just as much sense in the context of the comic, and is a phenomenon I think I can readily explain that I have had a little experience with. Currently, my system setup is a little bit like an archeological dig. The alters that have surfaced the most, who have been the ones in charge of actions/words/emotional responses/etc, aka ‘fronted’, are all the ones who have formed in more recent years. The ones from years past are further back, and harder to access because we’ve developed a protective setup where the newer alters act as barricades to keep the older ones from being more exposed to trauma, or anything else they can’t handle. At its core, that’s what the function of a system is - to develop other alters who can handle situations more vulnerable parts can’t - but not all systems are built with an onion-layer setup like mine either, so just keep that in mind.

That said, since I’m built with an onion-layer setup, that means most of my system experience is based upon those older alters being shielded and walled up. When you add enough layers, we can’t dig them out again and for us that’s where most of our ‘disappearance’ comes in that we know of.  There’s another phenomenon that could cause the ‘disappearance’ effect but we’ll touch on that in a moment. In our case, we just eventually feel so distanced from who “I” was supposed to be, whoever that is. Very few of the ones who have been out in recent months are from older times. We’ve had a small handful who are from our high school years (we’re 25 now), and maybe caught a glimpse of alters older than that once or twice. We very rarely remember much of the time from that far back, and what we do remember feels incredibly detached. Almost more like we saw it in a first person pov movie rather than actually been there. We’ve gone through name changes a couple times by now, and I highly suspect that those name changes are further reflective of our archeological layers and who we decided to try to model our collective behavior around, to try to seem like one whole person. 

“Erika” was a girl who behaved one way. “Erin” was someone who behaved another way. and “Cleo” has been our current blueprint for who we’re supposed to be on the outside when being incognito. And what’s interesting is that you mentioned feeling like you had to ‘build’ yourself, because while it’s not so precise or in our control, we’ve approached it much the same way. For each name change it was like different models. out with the old model and in with the new, now introducing Cleo v2.0, with these personality patches and old bugs fixed. Around the time we changed to Erin, we had firmly decided we wanted to put our ‘old self’ behind us and improve ourselves. We had come out of toxic experiences eyes open, and we were terrified of reflecting that internalized toxicity outward. So we took ourselves to the metaphorical workshop, and spent many many years scrutinizing who ‘Erika’ was under a microscope for our faults, our flaws, what made us work that way, so that we could iron out the kinks when introducing ‘Erin’. As we took ‘Erin’ for test runs in college, we would find different flaws and faults that needed fixing, so once we’d accumulated a comprehensive list of those we took Erin in for workshopping and shortly after we dropped out of college, out came Cleo. Our entire life experience from the outside has been a long-running fixer-upper project, and for a while we were proud of ourselves to see the long strides in improvements we’d made upon “myself”, for being so quick to see our flaws and find ways to manage them. 

But what was really happening under the hood was, we weren’t actually changing as an individual, cohesive person.  We were adapting and forming new alters, or at the very least reassigning them based on who handled what better - so if we had become sick of our short temper, we swapped that alter out so that what normally caused them to respond, would instead elicit someone less volatile and slower to anger. If one of us froze up at the sight of blood, they would be swapped out of the front for someone who had no problems with it. This is why we ended up onion-layering ultimately, to lower the risk of the other alters being in front at poorly timed moments.

So tl;dr for us, a lot of our ‘Disappearance’ of our selves was us trading them out or hiding them away, and most likely encouraging a state of alter dormancy - when alters become inactive for long periods of time. (for some of us we describe it like sleeping - I think it tires us out on a physical level if one alter is active too long, it probably works certain parts of the brain more depending on the alter, but that’s all speculation.)

Backtracking a little - there is another experience that would cause a more definite and permanent ‘Disappearance’ effect. We haven’t experienced it since coming out as a system to ourselves. But we’re pretty sure we experienced it once, or twice, way back when. It’s formally known as Fusion. Fusion is what happens when two or more alters end up “physically” (for lack of a better word) merging together. They cannot separate, and they become an entirely different alter. The new alter often has some elements of their components in terms of personality traits and memories, but also isn’t a complete merging of everything. Memories and emotional attachments can often get lost in the process. This is where the other Disappearance can occur.

We know it happened to us at least once. Somewhere around middle or high school, for no apparent reason, we had developed an acute awareness and fear of Amnesia, and the identity death that would inevitably come with it. We were always scared, what if we hit our head and lost our memory? What would we remember, if anything? Would we get it back? Media always dramatizes amnesia, where amnesiac characters have some twinge, some spark, where they get drawn to things super important to them from before the memory loss. Would that happen to us? What if it didn’t? What if we never remembered the things that mattered so dearly to us? Would we even be the same person anymore?

If you compare that to the concept of fusion, it’s almost uncomfortably spot on. But we had no idea about systems or fusion back then. Which can only mean we had experienced a fusion, and somehow that caused a disturbance in the system that led to that latent fear to hang over our heads, along with the constant feelings of unreality and dreaming that followed us all through high school.

But somewhere along the line, just as suddenly as that fear developed, it just. Dissipated. It’s still a terrifying concept for us. But we no longer obsess over it like we did back then. We also suspect that’s probably related to another fusion of sorts. We have no clue who they were, or who they are now though. 

So to tie it all back in, in the comic the ‘Me/He’ disappearing would be parallel to an alter going dormant, or possibly fusing. The characters the protagonist and Tormenter are built around were originally part of a storyline of two separate identities that ended up ‘fusing’ to form a different whole, and while I can’t say the comic is faithful to the scientific or actual experience in a system, since I didn’t know about it at the time, I’m pretty sure it was based on what I had picked up on in my subconscious, so that’s the implications there, inaccurate representation though they may be.  I have heard from a few sources that fusion is often the result of a necessary function, to help protect or help an alter that can no longer function or cope the way they have been by creating a new alter that can cope better, so with this understanding, and the direction of the comic, it makes a sort of sense. 

These are my thoughts in regards to your question about ‘disappearance’ in the context of the comic based on my personal experiences, I hope it helped! Feel free to ask more or send in followup questions or statements, hopefully now that I’ve given a lot of context I won’t be quite so long-winded haha

[cherry6759]

Bungou Stray Dogs Questionnaire!

Thanks to @nsisbest385 , of course, I'm doing this.

Rules: Complete all the questions you want, expand and explain your answers as much as you want, and have fun!

If you can, tag some people you want to join in on the fun!

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What ability would you have in the BSD universe? (What would it be called? What's its purpose? How does it work?)

Little did Dino know that I already have one ready for this question.

The Puzzle Murderer:

The ability to understand and create "perfect" closed room murders; the ability allows the user to see how to make the most viable closed room and the hardest to crack with the available materials they have. Not only can the ability allow the user to see an almost perfect closed room murder, but also to make it the most extravagant, flamboyant murder ever. The less resources, observational skills and creativity the user has, the easier it is to understand the trick. Every murder it comes up with is solvable, if the person pays attention. It can also be used in writing, as long as the local, persons involved and situation is specified enough.

It has to follow this rules:

1- The "reader"/those who are observing the crime being solved by the detective must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described.

2- No willful tricks or deceptions may be placed on the "reader" other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself.

3- The detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the culprit.

4- The culprit must be determined by logical deductions—not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession.

5- The crime must have a detective in it; and a detective is not a detective unless he detects. His function is to gather clues that will eventually lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter; and if the detective does not reach his conclusions through an analysis of those clues, he "isn't allowed" to solve the case. He is physically stopped by the ability, and can't say the answer to the crime.

6- There has to be a corpse.

7- The problem of the crime must be solved by strictly naturalistic means. Such methods for learning the truth as slate-writing, ouija-boards, mind-reading, spiritualistic se'ances, crystal-gazing, and the like, are taboo.

8- There must be only one detective—that is, "one protagonist of deduction", the one who solves the case.

9- The culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a more or less prominent part in the story—that is, a person with whom the "reader" is familiar and in whom he takes an interest.

10- There must be but one culprit, no matter how many murders are committed. The culprit may, of course, have a minor helper or co-plotter; but the entire onus must rest on one pair of shoulders.

11- Secret societies, camorras, mafias, etc., have no place in the crime. A fascinating and truly beautiful murder is irremediably spoiled by any such wholesale culpability.

12- The method of murder, and the means of detecting it, must be rational and scientific. That is to say, pseudo-science and purely imaginative and speculative devices are not to be tolerated in the crime.

13- The truth of the problem must at all times be apparent.

14- It must never turn out to be an accident or a suicide.

15- The motives for all crimes the abilities create should be personal. International plottings and war politics belong in a different category—in secret-service tales, for instance.

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If you could claim someone's ability in BSD, whose ability would you want?

Ayatsuji's ability, Another; Tsujimura's ability, Yesterday's Shadow Tag; Ango's ability, Discourse on Decadence or Poe's ability, Black Cat in the Rue Morgue. One of those, alright? I'm terrible with deciding,,,,

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What group/organization would you join? (ex. Guild, Port Mafia, Armed Detectives' Agency, Rats, etc.)

Armed Detective Agency or Guild, though I would like to be on the Port Mafia and the Special Abilities Department,,,,, mostly because saving people and helping others is one of the things I want to do the most, but the Guild is also interesting and I want to? I'm sorry, I'm terrible with explaining ;w;

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Which BSD character do you identify with the most?

Tsujimura, personality-wise. Insecure, determined girl who gets angry easily and wants to keep everyone alive? That's basically me! And also, Kunikida, Ango and Ayatsuji—not as much as Mizuki, but I do identify with them a lot.

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Who are your top five favourite BSD characters?

1- Tsujimura and Ayatsuji, in the same level

2- Ango and Ranpo, in the same level

3- Twain

4- Kunikida

5- Oguri

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Are there any authors that you'd want to bring into the BSD universe that hasn't arrived yet? Or do you have OCs?

...I have too many OCs. I'll list them.

The Society: Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy L. Sayers, S. S. Van Dine, Ryukishi07, Tsugumi Ohba, Leslie Charteris, Frederic Dannay, Manfred Bennington Lee, Gosho Aoyama, Carolyn Wells, E. W. Hornung, Maurice Leblanc and Erle Stanley Gardner.

The Letter: Gonçalves de Magalhães, José de Alencar, Álvares de Azevedo, Aluísio Azevedo, Machado de Assis (now a female), Olavo Bilac, Monteiro Lobato, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Vinicius de Moraes.

Port Mafia: Georges Simenon, Fumiko Enchi, Inabune Tazawa, Seichou Matsumoto, Elizabeth Delafontaine.

Armed Detective Agency: Rachel Delafontaine (based on one of Ranpo's books).

The Order of the Clock Tower: Lewis Carroll, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens.

No organization: Eleanor Delafontaine, Lawrence Delafontaine, Edward Delafontaine, Charlotte, Edgar (all based on books, not writers).

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Favourite Scene(s)?

Ranpo and Poe talking about their first encounter. That and Ayatsuji exposing the first criminal in Gaiden, when Tsujimura entered the chapel and kicked the guy. That was great.

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Favourite Quotes from the Authors/Characters?

"Mystery fiction is, at its core, a kind of intellectual game. An exciting game of reasoning in the form of a novel. A game between the reader and the great detective, or the reader and the author. Nothing more or less than that."

— Ayatsuji Yukito.

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Who would you want to bring to life to be your best friend? Waifu/Husbando?

Tsujimura. No questions, just Tsujimura.

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How has Bungou Stray Dogs changed you as a person? Did you learn anything from it?

I learned too much with it,,,,, I can't really explain, but I think I grew up a lot with Bungou. It's what made me be more like myself. Damn, Dino, why all the hard questions? Wjdjakdkadkkajd

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So, now me is tagging people.

@midwinter-stars @homeforstraydogs @irinyaclockworker @awkward-arthur-rimbaud

Not tagging Dino because he did it already.

[taww]

First Take Review: Audiovector SR 1 Avantgarde Arreté by MGD

@miy-taww​: Marty kindly agreed to take initial delivery of my Audiovector speakers and do the dirty work of breaking them in. They’ve just landed in my listening room and I’ll be picking up the next phase of the review.

The Basics: The SR 1 Avantgarde Arreté loudspeaker from Audiovector is the top dog of the SR 1 model line; it retails for $5,200 in standard matte white or black, or for a $1,000 up-charge it can be ordered in a number of attractive gloss finishes. This 2-way, 8 ohm monitor from Denmark has the fit and finish that one might expect from a European luxury product. 

The arching side panels keep internal surfaces from being parallel, thereby minimizing in-cabinet reflections. Each speaker weighs approximately 18 lbs and stands about 14” tall. These are true bookshelf sized speakers, but I wouldn’t use them that way unless I was forced to by a small room or a complaining mate. The mid-bass driver, custom made for Audiovector by Scan-Speak, is a 6” carbon-composite design with what I would call an oversized magnet. The tweeter, and this is where things start getting really good, is an AMT of Audiovector design that kicks in at around 2,900 Hz and goes all the way up to 51,000 Hz. That last figure is not a typo - it goes that high. There are two ports on the truncated back panel, one a bass reflex port, the other to transmit the back wave of the AMT tweeter, like a dipole. Efficiency comes in at 87.5 dB, which, by todays standards, is on the low side; not a good thing for some tube amps. Fortunately, the load is an easy one.

Use and Listening: I’ve never had a speaker so easy to set up properly in the room. You almost have to go out of your way to get it to sound bad or lumpy. Only one placement caveat: Don’t place it too close to a back wall. The amount of bass coming from the lower port is almost scary and if you get too close to a back wall you risk highly uneven or one note bass. 

ESS AMT 1 speaker featuring Heil tweeters, circa 1973

The tweeter, at first glance, looks liked a folded ribbon, which, as a species, sound bright and sometimes crunchy due to poor power handling characteristics and mechanical resonances. Folded ribbons are ordinarily very directional, particularly in the vertical. Not this tweeter - it’s an Air Motion Transformer. Remember Heil loudspeakers from the 1970s? Yes, it’s a tweeter based on the Heil driver, or Air Motion Transformer. It’s a great performer extending the treble to the ozone with excellent power handling capability and far flung dispersion. It will not lock your head in a vise. The woofer is of similar quality, capable of hitting 40 Hz on the down side; doing so with energy and verve, nothing weak wristed about this woofer throughout its entire frequency range.

Almost everyone likes to listen to their music at ear bleed levels once in a while. I’ve been known to on more than one occasion, but loud by itself isn’t satisfying. This somewhat diminutive speaker has the get up and go of a 427 Ford Cobra for that day when louder is good and just what you need. I do not know of a similarly sized 2-way that will get as loud as quickly while staying clean, clean, clean. For purposes of illustration, and in honor of @miy-taww, our resident EE and classical violinist of considerable merit, I’ll discuss a very fine recording entitled “Conversations” by Bélanger & Bisson. This duet is comprised of a single piano and cello, with intermittent female vocal. Camilio and XLO International were responsible for the sonic quality of the recording, a job well done methinks. While there is plenty in terms of intimacy and presence for each instrument, it doesn’t come at the expense of just the right amount of room ambiance which is necessary for a proper perspective on the original performance. The modern day equivalent of the old Sheffield recordings featuring Lincoln Mayorga and Amanda McBroom.

So, I’m at home a few nights ago, and the sudden urge to wake up the neighbors struck. I zeroed in on track 8 and the big Steinway Concert Grand came up fortissimo; I wondered how far the Little Danes could be pushed before I did something permanent to them? No worries. These speakers lit up the nether reaches of my listening room far more realistically than any 2-way bookshelf had a right to, surpassing many 3-ways at providing full on reality in my 13’ x 24’ listening space. No thinning of timbres, no system induced compression, so full of harmonics as well as attack. And when the female vocal checked in, delicacy and breathiness. The hybrid 1st and 2nd order crossover was no doubt a part of the experience as it served to seemingly free up the drivers from the cabinet and the room itself. Speaking of cabinets, this one is super silent (it’s made of hardwoods!). Did I tell you that I loved the highs from the AMT? Super extended, never excessive. Complex performances are translated, sorted through and expressed as a musical event right before you.

I started writing about audio back in 1989 and this is one of the finest 2-way bookshelves I’ve ever heard. I’ve always been a 1st order fan with some tolerance for second order designs (such as Merlin). The biggest problem with B&W 801 loudspeakers back in the day were the horrendous 4th order crossovers. Listening to a Bud Fried design with a series 1st order made the B&W sound broken. The low order crossover used with the Audiovector woofer allows it to breathe like a first order in the mids and bass, while getting the Air Motion Transformer (2nd order, 2,900 Hz) out of harms way before it goes too low. 

My lone nit with this design involves what I hear as some really low level (i.e. close to noise floor) omission around the crossover point. It’s not really noticeable until some of the “emotion” and “picture like” quality brought out so well by pure 1st order design such as the old Audio Concepts Sapphire are sought after. It’s not a lot, very little actually, but if I were to guess, I’d say there were times when the music was almost too clean at crossover. But, I am speculating and I’ll let Marc figure this one out completely in his coverage.

Still, I really like this speaker a lot.

[exploringsocialinformatics]

Post #3: A Lovely Impossible Dream

I wrote this post based on the article “The Pill That Costs $9000 in US Sells for $70 in India,” which I chose because I just have a lot of feelings about access to healthcare, especially considering it’s such a hot topic in the US at the moment. I took the general idea of disparate access to medication between various countries and went on a bit of a globalist screed.

There should be a global, regulated, human rights-focused manufacturer of generic, necessary medications.

I should go ahead and say this is wildly speculative and probably (almost definitely—like, somewhere between 99.999% and 150%) impossible, but I truly believe we should dream as high as possible to at least get closer to a better world, so bear with me as I weave this pie in the sky dream of a global community of people not dying from easily preventable diseases.

The United States’ pharmaceutical industry is a nightmare. Based on the article from The Times of India, India’s is certainly better—if by “better,” we mean, “better for the people who need medication,” which would be the ideal focus (Nagarajan). But putting any price on life-saving medication that’s already cheap to manufacture is in and of itself a telling statement on the value we place on our global citizens, especially when the medication could be manufactured outside of a competitive industry and provided at a fraction of the cost.

Or there could be virtually no cost if it could be sponsored entirely by the governments of the world or through the same foreign aid given out via the United Nations—in fact, based just on the impact that the United States has already had on global health, it’s easy to imagine that supplying more cost effective medication would only make it easier for us to give as much if not more than we have in year prior. After all, as it was addressed in a Stanford Medical article, these donations rarely cost more than 1% of the US’s GDP (Bendavid). Imagine if that medication was already being produced via a global pharmaceutical manufacturer and they didn’t have to go through the complications of mixing public and private interests to go about distributing this aid.

Free medication for the whole world is admittedly something that probably wakes wealthy industry executives up in the night, sweating and terrified, and I’ll touch on how that could hold it back in moment, but as I said: pie in the sky.

In The Globalization of the Pharmaceutical Industry, J.L. Valverde addresses several aspects of global pharmaceutical policy that would need to be the focus if we were to better bring together the pharmaceutical industries from different nations for the greater good, including the involvement of international organizations such as the World Health Organization and The Global Fund—who, according to him, have “facilitated the immense improvement in access to HIV/AIDS treatment over the last 15 years” (22) among many other accomplishments.

Imagine if we could use existing organizations like the WHO to establish generic pharmaceutical manufacturing that is equitable to all who seek their help—or, at least, to use their focus on policy to create a new organization. Not only would this make a huge impact on health specifically but it would be a global method: we’re in this together. When we’re facing huge issues like climate change that will require multiple countries to work together (Zavis 2015) to literally save the world, working together to save our people—treating all people of all countries like our people regardless of where you live—is a significant, improbable, beautiful step in the right direction.

Are there significant issues with implementing a global policy like this? Absolutely—there will always be significant issues when you are attempting to disrupt a power as big as the pharmaceutical industry, and my lack of in-depth experience in both pharmaceutical policy and global economies is holding back a full investment in my own argument. The scope and depth of this argument are difficult to determine and certainly not something that could be covered in a blog post. If I’m speculating, though—and as I said, wildly—I can address the issues essentially as well as I can the greater possibilities.

The biggest issue that I would point to in terms of what would hold this idea, good or bad, back is the fact that the pharmaceutical industry in the US has consistently donated the most to campaigns for congressional seats than any other lobby (Evers-Hillstrom 2019), which affords a lot of power to a significant portion of the global industry to influence lawmakers. In terms of criticism, though, a central argument is that something that takes away that much power from the people who have developed those medications would be a violation of their rights. This article from The Globalist is from 2000 but it had the most concise description of this argument framed against the concept of a government manufacturer that I could find, saying, “Locally produced drugs would, of course, be much less expensive than those produced in the United States [referring to African countries manufacturing their own drugs]. But to U.S. trade authorities and drug companies, this represents a gross abuse of U.S. intellectual property rights” (“Medical Socialism”).

I don’t want to completely dismiss the idea of intellectual property rights, nor do I completely want to dismiss similar arguments like the idea that it would keep industry leaders (the people who own the patents that constrict smaller companies from competing but also the people who are consistently developing important medications) from continuing to innovate and explore new possibilities. While, based on the profits they make, I am skeptical something like someone else producing a limited array of generic medication (probably based on the WHO’s “Essential Medications List,” though it is admittedly long [2020]) would hold them back that much, there’s no denying that this would have an impact on the economy surrounding the pharmaceutical industry and the economy as a whole. And, again, I can’t successfully argue what that impact would be because this idea is untested but it’s a potential red flag against it.

An argument that’s a little more grounded in reality and certainly more achievable is to have government-manufactured generic medication on a national or even state/province level in countries where this is possible. There are at least two significant proposals that have come out of the United States in the last few months supporting this concept. Elizabeth Warren sponsored a bill in late 2019 that would create an Office of Drug Manufacturing under the Department of Health and Human Services, saying, “The solution here is not to replace markets, but to fix them. The Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act will introduce more competition into the prescription drug market, and bring down prices for consumers” (Warren 2019).

More recently, just last month in January of 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom of California has proposed similar legislation, described as, “part of a multi-prong effort that includes strengthening the state’s public option for health insurance and increasing drug pricing transparency” (Lin).

The concept of governments individually manufacturing their own generic medication to take place within the pharmaceutical marketplace is incredibly progressive and also infinitely more sellable than a global manufacturer—especially one giving out medication for free. The first can fit relatively easily within the pharmaceutical industry as we know it while the latter would. . .probably require a dramatic global transition of moral priorities, which is not something that’s likely to be achieved. Like I said, though, we may as well dream big. Coming from my own perspective, the very fact that we have pharmaceutical industries at all represents a degree of moral deficit. But if we start within the bigger framework that the health of the world as a whole—especially that of struggling, marginalized people who already lack access to proper healthcare—is the most important factor when thinking about healthcare and pharmaceutical production, maybe we’ll at least get nudged in the right direction even if my own wild starry-eyed globalist dream is out of reach.

 Resources

Bendavid, E. (2019, May 16). Foreign aid for public health bolsters America's 'soft power'. Retrieved from https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2019/05/foreign-aid-for-public-health-bolsters-americas-soft-power.html

The Globalist. (2000, July 10). Medical Socialism. Retrieved from https://www.theglobalist.com/medical-socialism/

Lin, J., & Aguilera, E. (2020, January 11). Gov. Gavin Newsom to propose that California manufacture its own generic drugs. Retrieved from https://calmatters.org/health/2020/01/gavin-newsom-to-propose-california-manufacture-state-generic-drugs/

Nagarajan, R. (2016, February 7). The pill that costs $9,000 in US sells for $70 in India - Times of India. Retrieved from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health-news/The-pill-that-costs-9000-in-US-sells-for-70-in-India/articleshow/50887471.cms

Valverde, J. L. (2016). The Globalization of the Pharmaceutical Industry. Retrieved from https://www.ifpma.org/resource-centre/the-globalization-of-the-pharmaceutical-industry/

Warren, Elizabeth. (2019, December 20). Schakowsky, Warren Reintroduce Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act, Legislation to Radically Reduce Drug Prices through Public Manufacturing of Prescription Drugs. Retrieved from https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/schakowsky-warren-reintroduce-affordable-drug-manufacturing-act-legislation-to-radically-reduce-drug-prices-through-public-manufacturing-of-prescription-drugs

World Health Organization. (2020, February 3). WHO Model Lists of Essential Medicines. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/medicines/publications/essentialmedicines/en/

Zavis, A., Megerian, C., & Yardley, W. (2015, December 12). Nearly 200 nations join together to fight climate change in historic Paris agreement. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-climate-talks-20151212-story.html

[aion-rsa]

Author Tochi Onyebuchi Brings Anime-Inspired Giant Robots to Nigeria in War Girls

https://ift.tt/324kkoQ

We talked to speculative fiction author Tochi Onyebuchi about novellas War Girls and Riot Baby.

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Tochi Onyebuchi brings a keen eye for world-building and momentum-filled action scenes to his young adult novels. From the Pokémon-like Beasts Made of Night duology to the upcoming fantasy novella Riot Baby, he’s making waves. At NYCC 2019, we sat down to talk to him about pop culture influences, the process of building a novel, and how he wants to push back against Western perceptions of African countries. 

Riot Baby will be available from Tor.com in January 2020. War Girls comes out on Oct. 15 from Penguin Random House.

Den of Geek: Your latest book, War Girls, is a post-apocalyptic story involving both catastrophic change and nuclear war. What draws you to writing apocalypse while the real world feels so apocalyptic? 

Tochi Onyebuchi: Part of it is coping! Part of it is trying to imagine my way through crisis. Because the thing about climate change, or at least the discussion as it is happening now, has been very much dominated by Western voices. It has been very much focused on climate change in parts of the U.S., for instance. Or efforts to combat climate change in Western Europe. Whereas a lot of the really averse effects of climate change will most viscerally be felt on the African continent. 

We’re already seeing it. You see the desertification of the Sahara. And that is pushing people on the lower end, particularly nomadic tribes, further down into densely populated countries. And so you see all this unrest that’s happening right now in northern Nigeria, because you have pastoral Fulani tribes that are being pushed down into farmland that is already populated by people. So all of a sudden there are these new clashes over land rights that would not necessarily have happened were it not for climate change. 

There are islands in the Pacific that are sinking. That won’t be here in 12 years or 20 years. So I was very interested in what people in those places would consider with regards to climate change. So that was why it was particularly interesting to think about issues of climate change and post-nuclear disaster in Nigeria. 

Tell us about the two sisters at the heart of the book. What made their story compelling? 

They both carry aspects of my mother. War Girls very much has its genesis in stories that I would hear from her of her time as an internally displaced person in the Biafran war, the Nigerian civil war, that waged in Nigeria from 1967 to 1970. She was either just finishing or just getting ready to start kindergarten at the outbreak of the war. She was a child living through this! That in many ways was the genesis of the book.

I wanted to also write in a way about a lot of the other civil conflicts that raged throughout African countries in the 1990s and early 2000s and mid 2000s, and that’s where the issue of child soldiers comes in. Child soldiers weren’t necessarily prevalent in the Nigerian civil war in the 60s and 1970, but in a lot of the later conflicts in the 90s and the 2000s you saw prevalence of the instances in which adolescents and teenagers would be drawn into the conflict and faced to fight, forced to kill. I think particularly of the story of Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala, which was made into an extraordinary movie starring Idris Elba. It’s that sort of thing. 

How do you deal with that afterwards, too? As a society, but also as the person who did those things. Because there is an after. There will be an after. What does that look like? Those are very fascinating questions to me. 

War Girls is set in an alternate Nigeria. What kind of research or experiences lead to the way you portrayed it? 

While I did a lot of research on Nigeria, particularly the Biafran war, I also wanted to do a lot of research on other African countries. But one thing I wanted to make sure of was I wanted to write a specifically Nigerian story. And part of that entailed researching both conflicts and histories of other African countries.

One thing that I wanted to do also was make sure this wasn’t a doom-and-gloom, ‘everything is horrible in Africa’ story. Because a lot of the popular perception of Africa is it’s this entire uniform place that’s universally afflicted by starvation and civil war. It’s the picture of the kid with flies on their face and the bloated stomach from malnutrition. But there are 50-plus countries in Africa, many of whom have exponentially more ethnic identities in them. There are over 200 tribes in Nigeria alone. So that speaks to the diversity on every scale, whether it’s economic, social, tribal, what have you. It speaks to the overwhelming diversity of the continent. And that was something I wanted to get at.

So, in researching other countries and other traditions, it became easier for me to pick bits from other cultures but use them specifically, and not just have them be this background of ‘African traditions’ and what not thrown into the story. It was very important to me that the story was specific, the references were specific, the geography was specific. That is a lot of what drove the research that I did. 

War Girls is marketed as Black Panther inspired. Tell me more about this connection and about what pop culture influences you.  

One of the reasons Black Panther was so important, particularly to War Girls, is that it provided a reference point for a lot of people that might not have been familiar with a lot of the things that are going on in that book. War Girls is very much more inspired by Gundam Wing. I’m a huge, huge Gundam fan, so this book is very much a love letter to Gundam. When I pitched it to my agent, it was ‘Gundam in Nigeria.’ 

But at the same time I recognize that there’s a maybe somewhat limited fandom for Gundam. I feel like in the United States more people would recognize Black Panther. One of the beautiful things about it was that people could see Black Panther and have a reference point for this depiction of Africa as technological advanced. That, I think, was new to a lot of people. To see an Africa that maintains fidelity to certain traditions, and had high speed rail. That had hover cars. That had spaceships and what not. But also had specific music and dance traditions and fashion sense. 

So, in crafting a society that had all those things, it’s easier for people to understand. 

What is the idea at the core of Riot Baby, your upcoming novella? 

Riot Baby is the story of Ella and Kev, two siblings that grow up in the shadow of the L.A. Uprising in the 90s. Their story takes them from South Central, to Harlem, to Riker’s, and back to the Watts, and they have to deal with institutional racism and police violence and issues surrounding mass incarceration, while slowly discovering superpowers. 

What have you learned about writing in the course of publishing four novels? 

I’ve gotten much better at my act threes! [Note: Some of the audio in this section was disrupted. The author goes on to discuss gaining sensitivity to the quality of his own writing.]

You can write something and you can feel that it’s right, even though you may not necessarily be able to articulate all the ways in which you feel it’s right, or why this particular choice is the correct one. You can direct the plot a certain way and feel you’ve made absolutely the right choice without necessarily knowing why. Developing that intuition after having internalized so much of the craft is very important. That’s an aspect of writing I’ve grown in. 

What is your process like? Do you outline? 

It often differs by book, and also by the relationship with whichever editor I’m working with at the time. Riot Baby came together in part out of disparate pieces of existing work, and then when it coalesced it grew more of itself. There wasn’t necessarily an outline involved in that. It started with writing pieces of it and the spine of the narrative came together. Then, the rest was a result of growing it out.

Whereas with War Girls it was very schematic. I had the idea, I had a bucket of particular images in my head I wanted to figure out how to dramatize. Out of that came the outline, which of course changed shape over the course of the drafting. So I had the initial outline and then a revised outline. Then I started drafting, and events changed as I was writing. 

Would you say to an aspiring writing that process matters? Do you need to write a certain way, or do different ways work for different people?

Whatever works, works. I think that’s the way to go. There is the temptation to fall prey to a lot of the dogma early on, particularly when you’re trying to figure yourself out with regards to voice, process, how to make this writing thing work. 

We hear people say write every day. But that’s not feasible for a lot of people. Whether it’s their school schedule, whether it’s child care, whether they have a particular job that doesn’t allow for that. People are dealing with different realities, so writing every day isn’t necessarily universally applicable. 

The only thing I feel confident in terms of advice to aspiring writers is to love writing. Whether it’s the act of putting sentences together, playing with that, or whether it’s the larger discipline of storytelling, certain aspects of that—if that gets your heart racing, if that gives you the same feeling as when you see your crush from across the room, that’ll get you so far in this. Because there’s so much nonsense you have to deal with in this, and so much conflicting advice. If at the end of the day you love doing this thing, hold on to that. That’s why you do this.

You can find out more about Tochi Onyebuchi here.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Interview Megan Crouse

Books

Oct 10, 2019

from Books https://ift.tt/2q3NW7P

[pittrarebooks]

Shakespeare and Angling

Written by Cassie Frank, graduate student employee

The Special Collections Department is featuring articles written by our student staff in conjunction with our current exhibit, The Compleat Angler:  And Other Meditations on the Art and Philosophy of Fishing, 15th Century to the Present, which is currently located in Hillman Library, Third Floor, Room 363, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh.

Fig. 1. Frontispiece. From: Shakespeare, William. 1904. Mr. William Shakespear’s Comedies, Histories and Tragedies: Faithfully Reproduced in Facsimile from the Edition of 1685. London: Methuen & Co.

Fishing is an occupation that has persisted since the beginning of civilization. Today, similar to when the vocation originated, people engage in it both for acquiring food and for sport.  While there is abundant literature available on the subject today, the earliest mentions of angling as a serious endeavor came during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  These accounts, though few in number, were highly detailed, leading scholars to believe that angling was a popular activity at that time.  Therefore, there has been much speculation about whether or not Shakespeare, one of the most recognizable figures of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was an angler.  Though he never explicitly stated that he was an angler, textual clues in his plays indicate that he may have been familiar with the sport.

During Shakespeare’s lifetime, fishing was a necessary industry in the English economy.  To the monarchy, a strong fishing industry represented both England’s international honor and the ability to fund its navy (Sgroi 2003, 2).  In order to maintain the influx of money spent on fishing, the monarchy enforced a statute on fishing regulations in 1563 containing a provision for a “political Lent,” which required that English citizens eat only fish on Wednesdays, in addition to the already existing religious fish days of Fridays and Saturdays (6-7).  While this unpopular policy was overturned in 1585 (11), it shows just how routine the institution of fishing was in everyday English life. Shakespeare, having been born in 1564, the year after the statute went into effect, would have grown up on a regular diet of fish thanks to these mandatory fish days.  Though he, like most other citizens, probably disliked the policy itself, he would have become accustomed to the presence of fish in his daily life. 

Fig. 2. “The Kingdome of England.” From: Speed, John. 1676. The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine. London: Thomas Bassett and Richard Chiswell.

On top of the economic importance of fishing in Shakespeare’s England, the practice was also beginning to permeate the social strata of the country as a gentlemen’s recreation.  Several works on the subject were published in England that likely influenced Shakespeare’s attitude towards the practice. The earliest of these was Dame Juliana Berners’ classic 1496 work, Fysshynge wyth an Angle.  Other significant works included The Arte of Angling, written by an unnamed author in 1577, and John Dennys’ Secretes of Angling, published in 1613 (Bentley 1958).  These works portrayed angling as a spiritual endeavor rather than an artless sport and were influential for anglers all over Europe.  Before his death in 1616, it is likely that Shakespeare read, or at least knew about, all of these important works.

However, while fishing was not an unusual hobby for an Englishman to take up, Elizabethan writers often mocked it as being a waste of time and out of fashion (Bower 1902, 205; Ellacombe 1883, 43).  Other writers, such as Edmund Spenser and William Browne, hardly even mentioned fishing at all in their works (Ellacombe 1883, 46).  As Bower (1902) points out, though, Shakespeare included fishing references in his plays on purpose.  This was not to mock the practice, as his contemporaries had, but rather to express what he enjoyed about it (205).  Knowing this, it becomes apparent that Shakespeare was so fond of fishing in his personal life that he felt inclined to include it in his writing.

Fig. 3. Frontispiece. From: Ellacombe, Henry Nicholson. 1883. Shakespeare as an Angler. London: Elliot Stock.

Throughout his plays, Shakespeare made many references to fish and fishing.  Many of these references are metaphorical, with fishing being a device through which to ascribe meaning to something in his story. He masterfully chose allusions based on his knowledge of traits typically attributed to particular fish in popular culture.  His ability to harness those associations allowed him to describe his characters on multiple levels.  For example, the carp was known to be a tricky fish, which made it all the more satisfying to catch.  In a scene in Hamlet where Polonius was talking about tricking some acquaintances, he claimed, “Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth” (Shakespeare 2005 cited in Spates 2013, 1).  Through this allusion, Shakespeare was able to tell his audience just how difficult it would be to trick Polonius’ acquaintances and how pleased he would be when he successfully did so (Spates 2013, 1-2).  Another example of Shakespeare’s fishing references can be found in Anthony and Cleopatra, when Shakespeare used the trickery involved in catching fish as a metaphor for Cleopatra seducing Anthony.  In the play, Cleopatra said, “My musick playing far off, I will betray tawny-fine fishes, my bended hook shall pierce their slimie jaws: and, as I draw them up, I’le think every one an Anthony, and say, ah, ha; y’are caught” (Shakespear 1904, 145).  The complexity of reeling in a fish is similar to the careful steps Cleopatra took to seduce Anthony, so Shakespeare successfully conveyed his meaning with this fishing reference.

Fig. 4. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra, 41 B.C. 1885, Oil on panel, 25.75 x 36 in. Private Collection. Available from: Wikimedia Commons (accessed June 13, 2017).

Besides these types of fish metaphors, Shakespeare’s plays are also filled with concrete descriptions of fishing techniques.  While still making sense in the context of the story, these lines show an understanding of the practical aspects of fishing.  In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff said, “They would melt me out of my fat, drop by drop, and liquor Fishmens boots with me” (Shakespear 1904, 51).  Falstaff’s statement shows that Shakespeare understood the process that went into preparing boots for use in fishing. Shakespeare’s use of technical descriptions such as this indicates that he had first-hand knowledge of the art; if he was describing something he did not understand, he would have used much more general phrases and explanations (Ellacombe 1883, 25). Therefore, it is evident that fishing was a frequent recreation of his.

By studying Shakespeare’s life and works, it is possible to find clues about the part fishing played in his life.  First, the English focus on the fishing industry during his early years meant that he would have been used to having fish in his life, a habit that likely followed him into adulthood.  Additionally, as one of the few Elizabethan writers to include fishing references in his works with no indication of mocking the vocation, he took a subtle stance in support of angling.  Furthermore, his in-text fishing references attest to his having intimate knowledge of the practice, indicating that he was not only a supporter, but a participant. While none of these clues alone can prove that Shakespeare was an angler, together they suggest that he enjoyed fishing and did indeed consider himself an angler.

For more information on the exhibit:

Works Cited

Bentley, Gerald Eades, ed. 1958. The Arte of Angling: 1577. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Bower, Ralph Lytton. 1902. “An Early Seventeenth Century Angler.” The Sewanee Review 10 (2): 199-206. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27530485.

Ellacombe, Henry Nicholson. 1883. Shakespeare as an Angler. London: Elliot Stock.

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra, 41 B.C. 1885, Oil on panel, 25.75 x 36 in. Private Collection. Available from: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_Lawrence_Alma-Tadema_-_The_Meeting_of_Antony_and_Cleopatra.jpg (accessed June 13, 2017).

Sgroi, Rosemary C. L. 2003. “Piscatorial Politics Revisited: The Language of Economic Debate and the Evolution of Fishing Policy in Elizabethan England.” Albion 35 (1): 1-24. go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=upitt_main&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA105850683&sid=summon&asid=23cb0ee73e3121b0250fe4ff53c385c5.

Shakespeare, William. 1904. Mr. William Shakespear’s Comedies, Histories and Tragedies: Faithfully Reproduced in Facsimile from the Edition of 1685. London: Methuen & Co.

Shakespeare, William. 2005. The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works. 2nd ed. Edited by John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor, and Stanley Wells. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Print. Cited in Spates, William Henry. 2013. “Shakespeare, Walton, and the “Carp of Truth.” ANQ 26 (1): 1-4. doi: 10.1080/0895769X.2013.749152.

Spates, William Henry. 2013. “Shakespeare, Walton, and the “Carp of Truth.” ANQ 26 (1): 1-4. doi: 10.1080/0895769X.2013.749152.

[dottenator]

@hussie

Respectfully....

WHAT THE FUCK

One little note before I begin my serious thoughts: Hussie how could you kill the Mayor? It absolutely pales in comparison to everyting else, but come on dude.

I'm gonna try to work out my frustrations in the order I read these, meat and then candy, so....

Meat

How dare you do this to Dirk.

That's the thing which keeps sticking to me, honestly. They won! The game is over, Dirk has friends who love him, why this?? Why is Dirk destined to go completely nuts and do such horrible and awful things, ciolating the mental autonomy of everyone he supposedly cares about? Jake and Jane's feelings in the earlier parts of the epilogue, before the meddling becomes so overt, are significantly more creepy and invasive once it becomes clear that Dirk is making them think like this. The way they break down with his influence removed is horrifying. Dirk is such a fantastic character and I'm supposed to accept that he never grows out of thinking he can control everyone? That I'm not allowed an epilogue in which he calms the fuck down and lets himself not be in charge? I don't care at this point of that's considered wish fulfillment, give him a HAPPY ENDING for once. Not this bullshit. I'm not even gonna call that ~~Ultimate Self~~ thing by the name of the character I love. He doesn't deserve this.

Rose and Kanaya were our one good thing, and then this?? Dirk fucks with Rose's autonomy and fragile mental state to trick her away from her wife forever? The Rosemary wedding was the best thing about the original snapchat epilogue. The two of them are perfect for each other, they were happy god damn it, and I don't like any brand of storytelling that decides to split up the immortal god lesbians for pointless egotistical drama. Kanaya's fury and grief when she's allowed control over her own thoughts again is the most terrifying thing, because it really shows just how far from their understood, canon selves they really were in this epilogue. (The use of the word canon is really touchy to me after All This, but atm it's the best way to describe "the characterization we all know and love from previously established sources")

Everyone died beating English. Sure, why not. All the ghosts, Vriska, the teen kids, John everyone. It makes me unbelievably sad to imagine any of them dying (maybe not the ghosts), but with all the rest of this steaming pile of bullshit characterization I'm almost numb to it. Terezi is refreshingly real, still herself and completely believable, but when she gets back to Earth C she just. Doesn't talk to anyone? Doesn't get in touch with John or Karkat, doesn't tell anyone at all that John is dead? Why??? I'm baffled here. There's no closure to anything about Terezi here, except her personal emotions on Vriska, and who knows how valid that catharsis is with the fucking mind control narrative device everywhere. Also, fuck Hussie for making me read anyone claiming that John isn't important, or relevant, or an incredible and unique character. Was the Candy postscript supposed to imply she ended up with Dirk and Rose?? Why??? What the fuck is even going on here?????

Dave and Karkat were usually a balm to the whole bullshit, but like everything else they too are tainted by the overwhelming lack of consent in this whole epilogue. Do I think Dave and Karkat are a cute couple who should be together? Yeah. Do I think it should happen like that? Fuck no!!! They're both clearly uncomfortable with the whole situation, it all feels like an incredible violation of privacy and consent, and then right at the end it implies that Karkat isn't comfortable with how it happened and is oushing Dave away because of it! Like, fuck!!! This isn't what anyone wanted to happen! Let them figure themselves out on their own terms, with no weird narrative devices pushing them into it. Who cares how long it takes, they're all immortal!!!!!

Roxy is a cornerstone honestly. The narrative can't touch him, and I love him for it. Good for him. I really don't have anything to say on Roxy in meat, he's just fine, due largely to his immunity to the narrative bullshit.

Jane.......... I'm not sure. The bits from her point of view (though it's really unclear how much is her and how much is the narrative's influence) paint her as having some kind of reason for her troll-related policies, but really? There's no excuse for them. What the FUCK, Jane. Why does her entire future have to be molded by the influence of Condy? Can't we have a future without uncomfortable Trump parallels and the assertation that a beloved character is an asshole who wants to quash the rights of an entire species? Please Hussie I'm so tired.

Jake just makes me sad tbh. Don't have a lot to say on him. The narrative has been abusing him since Act 6 started, and the new narrative doesn't let up. Give this boy a break, I'm begging you.

In conclusion on Meat:

The parts where the muse is in charge, or where the narrative steps back and allows the characters to be themselves, are amazing. Fuck everything else, and fuck Hussie for making me read it. I'm too mad to think straight.

Candy

How dare you do this, to any of them?

The first heartbreak of Candy is Roxy/Calliope. John/Roxy is a sweet enough ship, but at what cost? They were so happy together, amd even John repeatedly points out in his internal monologue that it doesn't feel right to break them up. His conversation with Dave about sexuality and love is incredible, and up to chapter 14 the Roxy and Callir issue seemed to be the only sticking point in a much happier version

Then Dirk dies, and really? Really??? Fuck you. Fuck you for making me read that Dirk Strider would choose to end his own life when he realizes that he can no longer <i>control the minds of his friends and family</i>. That's fucked up in a million different directions. Fuck you.

Every songle thing Gamzee does makes me feel physically unclean. Is this supposed ti be a parody of poorly written fix-it fanfiction? A deconstruction of redemption arcs as a concept? It wasn't needed! Homestuck has redemption arcs already, Vriska and (Vriska) in particular bandied the idea around and deconstructed it fairly well, all of John's retcon powers were a fix-it fic, was ANY OF THIS BULLSHIT necessary??? It's a disgrace to the person Gamzee was before he went insane, and to everyone forced to read through his awful, awful dialogue.

Roxy was difficult to read in this epilogue, coming straight out of meat where Roxy was confident in himself and hid place in the world, then on to this Roxy who felt subtly wrong right up until her final conversation with John when we get her point of view on everything that's happened. Still mad about the Straight Married Babies Ever After, but Roxy at least is still #real, and I can respect her and her choices. (Except the ones involving Gamzee and funerals. I acknowledge that being weird about funerals is a known Roxy trait, but come on. Really??)

John feels like the point of view character again in Candy. He's the only one who seems to notice that something isn't quite right, his conversations with Terezi are incredible when they aren't slapping me in the face with the not-so-subtle wrongness of this universe, and his reconciliations with Roxy and Jake at the end are beautiful. I love that he at least tried to help little Tavros, no matter how it turned out, because he's a good fucking person!

Jake is a mixed bag. Am I happy with how he's treated in the first three quarters of the epilogue? Oh FUCK no. An I happy that he finally gets to be free by the end and be his own fucking person for once in his life? Absolutely. Give the boy some agency, and some GOD DAMN PANTS.

Jade honestly doesn't..... Do much? Either plot-wose or for me emotionally. She isn't in the epilogue much except as an obstacle for Davekat, which is really rude to everyone involved. I barely remember a time when I shipped DaveJade, and I don't think I ever shipped JadeKat, but after Meat I'd really hoped that that triad could work itself out. They had the potential to really be happy. Then it didn't, and she's never going to know why her husband didn't come back from investigating that strange building, unless she followed and found his corpse, dead for no apparent reason and not capable of being revived. I'm not sure which is worse. At least one of those has some kind of closure.

Karkat I actually really like in Candy. He stands up for himself, apparently finds love with Meenah, founds a moderately successful rebellion. Good For Him.

Dave is a clusterfuck of emotions, as always. Am I happy about his relationship with Jade? Not really, it seems by the end like he forced himself into it, thinking it was the right thing to do more than actually wanting it. Am I happy he got to meet and talk to Obama? Absolutely, though there is then the whole can of worms which is the canon Condy backstory. Not even touching that. After the speculation in Meat I'm thrilled to find out Obama did in fact god tier and escape the destruction of the universe. Dave is gay, he loves/loved Karkat, he's off to be the ~~Ultimate~~ version of himself and save the multiverse in the Meat postscript. Good For Him. (Also I can't be the only one who thinks Obama meant he and Dirk Fucked. Did that really happen? Did I dream that up??)

Rose and Kanaya were good too. Am I thrilled they found and raised Vriska 2.0? No. Am I happy they got to grow older together, immortal lesbian gods who are deeply in love? 10 million percent yes. Rose thanking John for the happy times with her family moved me. It didn't make it all worth it, but it helped soothe the burn this epilogue left on my soul.

Aside: I'm glad all the dead trolls are here? They're not double dead, this universe is somehow inside the black hole I guess (?), the generic dead (and Meenah and (Vriska)) get to do other shit too. Meenah/Karkat is sweet, Vriska got to kill Gamzee once and for all, I'm okay with that sequence of events.

Aradia and Sollux showing up made my day, I'm not gonna lie. They're great and hilarious. Alt!Callie's explanation of how a narrator's motives can shape a story helped me come to terms with Meat, as well as being just a fantastic bit of meta discussion.

That really just leaves Jane........

I'm not happy. Sweet baker girl is a tyrannical and genocidal despot?? No thanks. Abusive, xenophobic, asshole Jane, basically new Condy with a twist, is not something I'n gonna accept. The only time I sympathized with her at all was when her father died, and that was more for his sake than anything else. (Side note: where the fuck was he in Meat??)

In conclusion on Candy:

I don't know how anything could be as bad as Meat, but this is. Somehow. The light parts were lighter, but everything had a fundamental wrongness to it, and I couldn't be satisfied with any of it. At least Callie said none of it is canon, and she only stuck around to kill English once and for all and fix the narrative of Meat.

In Conclusion

Hussie, come out and fight me you COWARD.

[backstorywithdanalewis]

QAnon Conspiracy podcast link https://www.buzzsprout.com/1016881/4783994

jason blazakis: (00:00) It's exploded, unfortunately, via social media and it has inspired individuals to carry out acts of violence. dana lewis - host : (00:13) Hi everyone. And welcome to our 20th edition of backstory. I'm your host, Dana Lewis. This backstory is about a right w dana lewis - host : (00:13) ing conspiracy group that got started online. It's called QNR. There is nothing funny about paranoid conspiracy theories winging their way across the internet. They influence people to think things like COVID-19 is a virus created by the so-called dark state in America to remove president Trump from the white house or Democrats like Hillary Clinton or part of a child sex ring, torturing children. There may be hundreds of thousands of Q Anon followers, including the guy who recently drove his truck with weapons through the Gates of Rido hole prime minister Trudeau's residence in Ottawa, Canada, and in 2016, a man armed with a rifle, stormed comet ping pong pizza in Washington, believing the Democrats were running a child sex ring there. And then there was the case of a man who murdered a reputed mafia boss on Staten Island, who now says in court, he was a follower of Q Anon. And if you look closely, you will see Q posters and t-shirts at Trump rallies. Speaker 1: (01:25) A curious theme popped up at the president's campaign style rally last night signs t-shirts stating we are Q or Q Anon. Speaker 2: (01:34) Some even think Trump is Q and he seems to speak to his disciples. Yeah, Speaker 3: (01:40) This represents what store, what store mr. President, dana lewis - host : (02:08) Dangerous stuff. So here we are in an election year and the FBI identifies conspiracy theories as potential domestic terrorism threats, specifically citing Q Anon, a group that believes there is a deep state working against president Trump. The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories, very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve into a modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts. And that's why on this edition of backstory, we are doing a Q story because there are people running for Congress who are followers of Q Anon. I kid you not like Marjorie Taylor green, a Georgia Republican, unknown : (02:54) You know, about the Q movement. Are you familiar with what that is? I Speaker 4: (03:00) Am familiar with that. So I'm very familiar with it though. Do you think he was a bad thing or, or is it just sort of, I mean, what's your opinion, honestly, everything that I've heard of Q I hope that I hope that this is real Speaker 5: (03:13) Then Lauren bull bird who just won the GOP nomination in Colorado's third district. Speaker 4: (03:19) The other thing that Q says, and this is the stuff that we don't, we just don't want to think about. Um, and many Americans don't want to know about, but Q is saying that they participate in pedophilia and spirit cooking and spirit cooking. They had that spirit cooking dinner. That was something else that came out in those. Um, John Podesta, WikiLeaks email re release. Remember that Q is trying to tell people on these forums unfortune, and he's trying to tell people the truth. dana lewis - host : (03:50) So to understand whether Q Anon is a cult or a new religion or a widespread mental disorder, this Jason Blazakis written a piece for the Soufan intelligence group on QAnon. And he joins me now from California. How are you Jason? I'm doing well. Um, Dana, it's, it's good to be here. I'm on your show. The Q in the Anon, meaning the Anon is anonymous and who the heck is a cute, yeah, that's a, that's a, it's a great question. Even the people who call themselves a nons are essentially followers of Kew. Don't really know they have a, there's a lot of speculation ranging from president Donald J. Trump could be Q, um, John F K a, um, um, Kennedy jr. Um, didn't really die in a plane accident. He could be cute. Um, he could be a guy and, um, the government with a military intelligence background with, uh, accused security clearance, which means, you know, when you have Q clearance and the governments, you have nuclear, um, access secrets, uh, it could be any number of individuals. jason blazakis: (05:02) Um, you know, who could be que, um, you know, I have my own theory, my own theory, which hasn't really been written about. And I, I may write something on it later is that it's, it's part of a large disinformation campaign, um, organized by a state to stir up trouble. Um, and, and the way that Q communicates, um, certainly has led to a lot of individuals becoming adherence to, uh, this, this movement, a state, a state, I have some concern that it could be part of a state disinformation effort. And if you look at the timing of the creation of cue, um, it was created, um, in essentially the first queue and non post was in 2017. Um, not that long after, um, president Trump's election, less than a year after it. And, and, uh, the focus of, of Q is to ensure that, uh, president president Trump stays in power as he does battle against a deep state network of individuals who are trying to use SERP his power. dana lewis - host : (06:05) And you're going to tell me it's another Russia conspiracy? jason blazakis: (06:08) I wouldn't go there yet. Um, but I do have some concerns that at a minimum, at a minimum, um, there are States like Russia who may be amplifying the messages of the individuals who feel that they are Q Anon followers or adherence, um, making it look like it's a movement larger than it really is. Um, but one thing I hope to do, and I wear many hats. I work at the Soufan center as you introduced me, Dana as a research fellow, but I also am a professor at the Middlebury Institute of international studies in Monterey, California is we're going to start studying the syntax of the messages related to, um, Q Anon, um, when Q and nom posts a new message. Um, it's called a huge drop. Um, generally, um, in the past he has posted in, um, various, uh, uh, freedom boards, like four Chan, eight Chan, eight Kuhn, and then study sort of the, that transition in terms of language, um, how it's evolved, um, to get any kind of insights as to whether or not, um, the syntax could be traced back, um, with Stickley, um, perhaps to another country, maybe this is an individual, um, that's publishing, um, in writing that that is not really using, um, English or does not have English as a first language. Speaker 5: (07:21) So this is one hypothesis I have that I'm really interested in exploring here. Um, dana lewis - host : (07:28) Why Jason, are you taking your time because you're a serious analyst to write about this group and why am I taking my time? Cause I think I'm a serious correspondent to broadcast something about them. Speaker 5: (07:39) I mean, they have suddenly been held Speaker 6: (07:44) With serious regard by a lot of different agencies, including the FBI. Speaker 5: (07:48) Yeah, absolutely. So I guess a little background about myself. I have been in the federal government for 20 years, I guess Q a non folks will automatically say, whatever I have to say is, is null and void because of a significant trust they have with individuals who worked in the federal bureaucracy. You're another one of the deep state. Yeah. They said, yeah. And I left the DC deep state. So maybe that makes me a little bit better than those who remained in. Right. But I worked in the counterterrorism Bureau at the state department studying terrorists. Um, you know, whether it's ISIS, Al Qaeda, um, understanding who the individuals are within these networks. So the U S government could sanction them. Um, and to sanction individual or organization, you have to study them deeply. Um, so I've always been interested in extremist movements. Um, you know, 10 and a half years, I was following counter related issues, primarily focusing on, um, uh, Salafi jihadist groups. jason blazakis: (08:40) But in 2016, the British government actually made a decision to designate a white supremacist group called national action. And it was from that point forward, I started looking at the more of the radical right, mill you in which Q Anon certainly sits. Um, I've become more in Q Anon. Um, given that background, um, more recently over the last couple years, um, because it's attracted a very wide following, um, it's exploded unfortunately, um, via social media. Um, and it has inspired individuals to carry out, um, acts of violence. Um, one was the situation in New York where an individual killed a mafia boss, um, because, uh, he felt that he needed to do justice. Um, by carrying out that attack against the mafia bus, you had a situation and, um, the Hoover dam area in Arizona where a Q Anon follower, um, parked his vehicle and blocked the bridge, um, and he was armed. jason blazakis: (09:37) And then you, the more recent incident showing next to a non has gone overseas, where you had an individual who was consuming, um, to a non content, um, and people could argue, um, other experts say, well, he wasn't that actively involved in Q Anon. He only had a few posts. Um, but that individual carried out, um, a ramming, um, attack against the prime minister of Canada premise or Trudeau's house in Rideau. Um, and thankfully, um, he was stopped. He couldn't do harm. Um, he was well armed, um, but 30 minutes before he actually did that attack, um, where he worked on Instagram, he reposts that one of the conspiracy theories that, um, QNR has put forward before talking about so-called event two Oh one, talking about a pandemic, talking about COVID and how all of this is being created by essentially, um, a deep state, what bill Gates in cahoots. Speaker 5: (10:31) Right. So, um, for me, I'm running to blink my eyes fester and fester Jason, as we get lost in the mud here with this, but I mean, they're pretty incredible events. And then there was one with pizza gate, right? He's one of the highest profile one. What would you absolutely. So pizza gate, um, predated Q Anon, but a lot of people point to pizza gate as being sort of the, the father of the, the Q Anon, um, conspiracy and, and pizza. Gate's really important to understand in the context of Q Anon, because what Q Anon about is about as a conspiracy theory directly relates to the pizza gate conspiracy. So you had, um, an individual who was within the, um, um, uh, Hillary Clinton campaign who had essentially, um, his emails hacked. Um, his emails were published on WikiLeaks and 2016. Um, and in those emails, he's talking to the owner of a Washington DC pizzeria called comet ping pong. And in those, um, exchanges, um, there are discussions between the proprietor of comment thing, pop pizza, and, um, the campaign, um, individual Podesta, um, within the Clinton campaign. And they're talking about pizza, they're talking about toppings and there are conspiracy theorists looked and examined this language and felt that somehow that's code words for children, um, who are being exploited by adults essentially, um, Speaker 6: (12:06) That they believed that Hillary Clinton was deep in bold. Then Democrats were deep involved in holding children hostage and pedophiles and be assaulted. And that allegedly this, this man came to believe that that was taking place in the basement of the pizza store. Speaker 5: (12:23) Correct. So they're, they're the, the, the final thinking was essentially as in, at punk pizza, there is a basement where children are being held. There are part of a, um, you know, being captive part of a pedophilia ring run by, um, people like Hillary Clinton and Podesta, um, in this man from North Carolina was reading all this online and all of this was being discussed online and it felt he that take it upon himself morally to do something about that. So he traveled from Carolina to Washington, DC, armed [inaudible], um, started shooting, um, went downstairs to the basement, um, and didn't see any children. Um, there were no children there. Um, it was clearly, um, false information, Speaker 6: (13:04) Got his weapon, as I understand it kind of with the revelation of, Oh gosh, this actually isn't taking place. Right. But exactly the fact is that people like that on the internet come to believe some of these wild conspiracy things from Q a Speaker 5: (13:20) Oh, absolutely. People read this, not just individuals who are associated with pizza gate, which predated Q and on, but afterwards you had individuals who actually have taken action. And this is part of the reason why the FBI and the Phoenix field office, um, Q and on to be a domestic terrorism threat. Um, and I, I think for good reason, because individuals, particularly during a pandemic when people are trapped at home, um, they're reading information online about all these conspiracies. They feel helpless. And if they have some kind of secret understanding, um, which maybe these conspiracies, um, give them that they have some kind of secret understanding about this, like conspiracy has happening by the deep state, they could do something about it, um, because they now are empowered and they can take power back from these two are running the world, Speaker 6: (14:08) Be clear, Q Anon says there isn't really a pandemic. It's a concern. Well, I shouldn't say that they say it's a conspiracy created by the left, by the Democrats against president Trump. Speaker 5: (14:21) So you have individuals most certainly, um, uh, based on my research, a preponderance of individuals who are adherence or say that they believe Q Anon, um, guidance that believe that there is a plan demic. There was even a movie made by Q and non followers, um, called pandemic that said this was a stage by the new world order and people like George Soros, um, to essentially, um, you know, take power, um, and to eliminate eMoney enemies. Um, but in terms of the, the actual Q and on, um, the individual who posts, um, Q drops as they're called, um, essentially posts on the various boards, he's under like little coded messages from yeah. Coded messages that Anon, um, adherence, decode. He said that COVID-19 was real. Um, but it was a good thing be prepared for it. Um, and I think the thinking behind that as many decoders believe is that either Genesis for the beginning of what a non calls, the great awakening, many Speaker 6: (15:24) People are going to get this great awakening. And we're talking about a few dozen people on the internet, are you, Speaker 5: (15:30) And I know it's impossible to tell, but, you know, take a guess just it in the tens of thousands, or is it, I think, I think we're at least in the tens of thousands now, there's, um, you know, individuals who are essentially what they call it like red pilled, um, people who have seen the light, um, they see that there is first and foremost, a deep state that exists that is trying to, um, work as a secret cabal, um, to, uh, you serve the president, president Trump, who is essentially the white Knight of this, this movement. Um, and on the second part of this thinking is that if this great awakening occurs, once you see and become enlightened, um, there's going to be a battle for the soul of, of, of America. And you have to do something about it. And is there potentially an armed battle? Speaker 5: (16:18) Um, I look at Qanan as a cult, um, and cults, particularly Paul step leave. And apocalyptical like thinking, um, you know, things like a great awakening where there could be a battle between good and evil, um, you know, white hats versus black hats in the context of how [inaudible] describes them. Um, white hats being essentially the Q Anon followers, um, within the government who are doing battle against the black hats who are, um, sickness and part of this deep state conspiracy. Um, whenever you had to think about the world and Manichaean terms like human on puts forward, there is this definite risk of, of turning to a via apocalyptical like scenario. And if president Trump were to say lose, or it looks like he will lose, my fear is that you have to, and on adherence who may try to take, um, you know, matters in their own hands and carry out acts of violence to try to stop the, the, from the state to make sure the great awakening occurs or to stop those who are trying to stop the great awakening, Speaker 6: (17:16) Like the guy who went into the pizza store, they have been convinced, and they've been consuming this stuff Speaker 5: (17:23) They'll believe that this wasn't a fair election, but in fact it was something done by the deep state and they have, they have got to stand up maybe with weapons and fight it. Absolutely. And, and even, um, Q post on COVID-19, he said, um, this is going to be used by the Democrats to create COVID-19, to create mass hysteria. Um, and it's all of an eye towards the election. So Hugh himself is talking about COVID-19 in the, of the election, how Democrats could use it as essentially a bulwark against president Trump, um, and therefore making the election look illegal. And at the same time, you have the rhetoric of the president, of course, saying that, um, the, the president poll numbers aren't as bad as they're saying. Um, but if you have say male and voting, um, which would be a responsible thing to do during COVID-19, um, that that's somehow cast as a dispersion upon the possible results of the election. So I think the president himself unfortunately, has played in the hands of some of these two non followers by saying that the election itself is already perhaps not credible because of COVID-19. And because of the ideas behind Malin voting, which he said will lead to fraud. And if there's fraud related to the election, then president Trump loses because of fraud. That's going to be very upsetting to Q a non followers. Speaker 6: (18:37) So Jason, does the president unknowingly unwittingly plate Q a non followers, or do you think that he is aware of QA, Speaker 5: (18:48) Um, and actually dropped some Speaker 6: (18:51) Things that may benefit him in, in with certain things? Speaker 5: (18:55) Well, I'll tell you, Q Anon thinks the president is messaging secretly to them. Um, I have no evidence that the president believes that he somehow was secretly messaging to Q Anon, but if there were a couple of tweets, right, one was quarry, we had over a hundred team. The other one used something about with his friends in the UK who supported the UK and the queen, and saw that in Q Anon is a coated drunk. No, absolutely the Q and M people that see how you use quarantine and how you made us a hand gesture that looked like a queue. Um, but he has indeed retweet it. Um, Q Anon followers over a hundred plus times. I think last night I read through, um, media was maybe up to 145 times, um, Donald Trump jr. Eric Trump have tweeted and retweeted memes, um, and, um, other Q and non follower rhetoric before. So they're, they're, I think they're, they're not doing it because necessarily there are two and on followers, or believe in Q I think they're not just being careful with our social media feeds and then two and non followers, you know, being the conspiracy serious, they are read something into it. I'm like the president is signaling something special to us. Um, Speaker 6: (20:08) I understand that though, that sounds pretty sinister to me. Speaker 5: (20:12) They have retweeted tweets from Q and non followers and the president, I'm not Q and himself, but QNR followers adherence people on social media who believe in Q, um, and, and the president has retweeted them. Um, so, you know, he probably doesn't know that he's retreating Q and non followers. Um, I don't think he's being necessarily careful about what he retweets. Um, clearly he has a, uh, a capacity to, to retweet many things, um, later, which he has removed or deleted his own tweets, um, or his campaign team or the waste house have disassociated from those tweets. Or they've said that that's not really what he was meaning. Um, so I, I don't think tensional on purpose, um, by the press. I think it's unintentional, but the, the problem is because he's not careful about what he says over social media. It is really riling up these individuals who are not followers and then believe essentially in bolsters. The theory is that somehow president Trump is, um, perhaps to himself or trying to motivate, um, to a non people to support him in some fashion. And there is a political element to this too, beyond the Trump's. Um, you know, there are, um, last count, there was a journalist who said that there was more than 66 Q and non followers running for various state and federal offices. So you have this normalization that's occurring with Q Anon as well. And that makes it really dangerous. How many more than 60? Speaker 6: (21:45) I mean, I'm shocked by that. And I, I was reading in the Atlantic and they, by the way, they didn't call it a cult. They call it a new religion, Speaker 5: (21:55) The kind of religion. Yeah. There's religious overtones to it. Absolutely. They think it'll be adopted current at least Speaker 6: (22:02) 35 current or former congressional candidates have embraced Q according to an online tally, but a nonprofit media matters. Speaker 5: (22:12) Yeah. Yeah. And I think that same journalist who has continued to study this as they put it at 66 and there's another 30 plus who, um, are running for office right now, um, many, uh, lost already. Um, but people who were running to be become members of Congress. And I think there was one member, um, potentially, um, one individual that may get elected, um, out of Georgia memory serves, I forget her name off the top of my head, but you may actually end with a scenario where you have, um, a que non follower in Congress. Um, and that's the danger of, of this movement, um, that somehow it becomes more normalized. Um, a lot of people call it a fringe movement, but slowly, um, you have more and more people reading, um, consuming, watching videos like planned DEMEC who actually believe what's being written, um, and then may become followers themselves, or somehow by virtue of passing along this video to other people in their Facebook group, um, it becomes more of a normal thing. Speaker 5: (23:11) Um, and, and that's really dangerous storing a pandemic. You're taking it very seriously. Oh, absolutely. Um, you know, there are people who, who are trapped. Like I said, who are, we are living in uncertain times? Um, when you feel uncertain, you feel powerless. Um, conspiracy theories have resonance in ways in which can motivate individuals to join the movement or at worst, um, you know, become, um, an entity or individual who carries out violence on behalf of a moon because of something they saw online. Um, you know, pedophilia is a terrible thing. Um, and if people actually believe some of the things going on, like the most recent conspiracy theory put forward by Q Anon that somehow Wayfair the furniture company was selling essentially, um, material. Um, and, and, um, for really high prices, $13,000 for a stack of cabinets, um, people are saying, well, um, that's some part of a ring of, of children being sold by, by Wayfair, which was completely wrong. And, but it took off on social media and had an impact on Wayfair and they had to respond. So, um, you see this danger, if you actually think a child's in danger, um, you want to do something about it. And if you believe that conspiracy, um, you may actually do something about it and there was no, there, there, and that's the challenge with, with Q and on, and, and the threat it poses, please, Louisiana, Speaker 6: (24:34) Like wildfire through the internet, um, over, over several years now. Right. So now you, um, from, from Reddit to Facebook, to Twitter, Twitter now has taken down some 7,000 accounts, um, linked to Q Anon. Do you think that that's a good idea? Is it going to do anything or is this just sort of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted? Speaker 5: (25:00) Um, I think unfortunately it's more the latter, but I will say it was a good decision, um, to take down, um, in authentic, um, Twitter accounts and handles associated with the Q and M movement. And I think, um, in addition to taking down those 7,000 and removing them outright, um, probably I think I read 150,000 we're, we're limited in some way as well. That's a positive action Reddit, um, was the first out there in 2018 to take action against Q Anon. Um, particularly those that were, uh, putting out conspiracies on the subreddit board known as our conspiracy board. Um, and then you have YouTube actually I noticed about three or four weeks ago, and this could be happening much longer than that, but [inaudible] videos now have underneath of them a box that says like, this is a far right conspiracy, um, which it is, and it's good. Speaker 5: (25:49) They have that fact checking box. And then I think we probably both read that Facebook may be taking a decision soon, um, to remove to a non-related, um, groups as well, um, to non is all over Facebook, um, private groups and public groups in the context, from my perspective, these are good decisions because these are mainstream social media platforms that touch so many more people than say four Chan, um, eight Chan or eight Q and ever have. Um, so you're, you're I think, inherently making their reach, um, less impactful by taking those actions. My fear is though, um, it's, it's a little too late, um, and they may migrate to another service, uh, and, and the, the, the conspiracy will continue on and particularly problematic is the fact that they may have a member of Congress or people on state assemblies in the United States who are, um, politicians who could be advocating things, um, from a policy perspective that are problematic. Speaker 5: (26:44) Um, so yeah, I think again, barn door, um, was closed after a horse left. Like you said, Dana. Well, I mean, that's always been the intelligence debate with, uh, terrorism. Do you, do you allow these things to kind of bubble at the surface so that you can monitor them or do you pull them off and push these people underground? And it makes it much more difficult to get after some of the more extremists that, that may be contemplating violence. Yeah. Now that is the dilemma. You remove them from open source platforms in which you could observe them. And they go to the encrypted communications in which they're more difficult to track that is, that is the dilemma. From my perspective, I'd rather have fewer individuals as part of a movement, um, and have a more difficult time monitoring them. Um, you know, you still can go into those encrypted apps. Speaker 5: (27:40) You can break the encryption, you can insert an individual who pretends to be part of a group and it gets bad at, um, online and can still, you know, infiltrate that encrypted network. Right. Um, in, in that chat group where if it's telegram that joined that telegram group. So there are still law enforcement tools, um, time honor, that can infiltrate in groups that are more secretive in nature. Um, from my perspective, I'd rather just have them fewer have fewer recruits and members in adherence. And I think that's why I think the actions taken by Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, um, Silicon Valley writ large like Reddit's action in 2018. It's very important because it can limit the, the number of individuals who are consuming this information. I just want to also add tech talk has unfortunately become another Avenue in which the pizza gate conspiracy, which a lot of people thought was dead in 2016, had a second life because it took off, um, and tick tock again. Speaker 5: (28:34) And then tick talk actually made a decision to, I think, remove the hashtag, um, pizza gate, um, remove some of the other Q Anon hashtags. And that's really important because tech talk is now sort of the viral social media platform. And it seems like they're taking early action against that, um, proliferation over their platform, which is a good thing. Jason Blazek is with the Soufan center, mind blowing stuff, and really intriguing. And thank you so much for taking the time to kind of lay this out for me. No, my pleasure Dana is a pleasure to be with you and to be with your listeners in may Speaker 2: (29:13) Follower of Q Anon was arrested in New York, attempting to assassinate democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, a woman from Illinois armed with a dozen knives. When Trump tweets about the dark state, he feeds conspiracy theories that are not harmless Spiricin theories and their close cousin, fake news are socially destructive and dangerous, especially for those with mental illnesses. You and I will no be hearing more about Q and even if we don't care to I'm Dana Lewis, thanks for listening. Please subscribe to backstory and share it. We need your support to make this grow, and we'll talk to you again soon. [inaudible].

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Winds of Change: Thoughts on what looks to be a busy week for the Flyers

Dave Hakstol may have coached his last game as a Flyers coach – we won’t know for sure until tomorrow, but it sure seems like it – and if he has, there’ll be a press conference and General Manager Chuck Fletcher, flanked on one side by Flyers President Paul Holmgren and on the other by Comcast Spectacor Chairman and CEO Dave Scott, will feed the world one cliche after another about why a new voice was needed.

But what if Fletcher doesn’t necessarily believe what he’s about to tell you? What if internally, inside the hockey operations side of this organization, people truly believe that Dave Hakstol is a good coach?

What if this coaching change is really more about optics and pressure from above to hit a home run?

What if?

“That’s a great question,” one Flyers source said to me last night. “And I can’t tell you you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

That’s because Scott has been interested in pursuing Joel Quenneville almost since the minute he was fired by the Chicago Blackhawks last month.

And why not? Quenneville won three Stanley Cups in six seasons with the Blackhawks. The guy has a great track record and one that would certainly bring an instant infusion of interest and excitement to an apathetic fan base.

It was one of those conversations, though, that didn’t go well with former GM Ron Hextall.

So, Hextall was fired. For far many more reasons than this, but this was certainly on the list.

With the addition of Fletcher, Scott agreed to give him time to evaluate what he has on the roster and the coaching staff. But that willingness to be patient has dried up rapidly.

When the team looks as bad as it has in the past four games – all losses – and has fallen into last place by themselves in the Eastern Conference, and is tied for the third-worst record in the league, it can lead to a lot of public angst and make a bigwig like Scott concerned about the perception of his team.

But the Flyers are 2-4-2 since firing Hextall. It’s not good, but it’s not pathetic. There have been many worse eight game stretches than those in which you register six points.

And is six games enough time to give Fletcher to make all the evaluations he needs? Maybe, maybe not.

But the reality is, keeping the fanbase happy is also part of the business, and even if internally among hockey people there is a belief that Hakstol is still the right coach for this team despite all the outside noise, the people who sign the checks sometimes feel they have to consider more than just what the hockey people advise.

Personally, I have never been a huge fan of Hakstol as a coach. If you go back and read many of my posts from last season, you will see that I would have made a change at coach last season.

However, once I was given real insight into what was going on behind the scenes during Hextall’s tenure, even I felt like Hakstol probably deserved a chance to redeem this team post-Hextall.

Frankly, I would have been, and still would be O.K. with letting him coach the rest of the season.

But that’s likely because I don’t see this team as one that’s good enough to make the playoffs this season. After all, they’re eight points out of third place in the Metropolitan Division and 10 points out of a wild card spot. They would need to go on an extended hot run to make up those differences AND hold on to a playoff spot.

That’s very unlikely to happen folks.

But the problem is Scott and to an extent Holmgren already told us at Hextall’s firing that the impetus for the organization is to “win now.”

That might have been delusional on the part of Scott, because I never really felt Holmgren believed it was possible as the team was currently constructed – which is why he was chaffed with Hextall.

But Scott’s influences are not all rooted in actual hockey. Sure, he leans on Holmgren and now Fletcher to give him an update on the team’s progress, but really, his decisions are driven by the business side of things. When 12-15% of tickets out are not coming back through the door with regularity, that bothers him. When television ratings are down, even slightly, that bothers him.

And to be fair to Scott, that should bother him. The business side is what matters most, ultimately, to a corporate owner.

But sometimes corporate decisions are being made for wrong-headed reasons.

It’s like when an immensely popular television show is cancelled on one network and picked up by another. Why was it cancelled? Business decisions. Money talks baby, even if it wasn’t the smartest call.

So, Hakstol really doesn’t have a chance here.

And Scott REALLY wants to pursue Quenneville. Not because he’s necessarily the right coach for this group, but rather because that hiring would be viewed as hitting it out of the park by the public and might put some more butts in seats.

But how different from Hakstol really is Quenneville? At least from how he handles his personnel?

More after the jump:

If coach Q is going to be the guy as is very widely rumored, well, he's very much a vet-oriented coach at this point except for truly stellar young players who "play like vets". So if you want a "play the young guys through the growing pains" type, they'd need to look elsewhere.

— Bill Meltzer (@billmeltzer) December 16, 2018

Bill is spot on with this. Quenneville is at a point in his coaching career where he expects to go into a situation where he has to coach to win now, not to develop young players.

“This is where things get tough for Chuck,” another Flyers source told me yesterday. “If he’s going to make a change at coach, he would want to do it with a guy he really wants and believes is a good fit for the team right now, not a guy he has to settle for who might not be the best fit.”

The source went on to say Fletcher doesn’t dislike Quenneville. He added that Fletcher has a lot of respect for Quenneville and thinks he’s a great coach.

“But is he the right guy for this team at this time,” the source asked me back rhetorically.

My thought is that if Fletcher was really going to have it his way with a coaching change, he would want a guy he is familiar with who has a track record of working well with younger players.

Mike Yeo, who he hired in Minnesota, would more fit that bill.

But would Yeo move the needle in the city?

Nope. And that’s why Fletcher may have walked into a position where his hands are tied on this matter.

Listen to the highly respected Chris Johnston, a reporter for SportsNet in Canada and how he explains what might be coming:

oops, link: Headlines: @Sportsnet https://t.co/kKU5S50pXT

— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) December 16, 2018

The key sentence is this: “With the Flyers wrapping up their road trip in Vancouver, it could be one where Chuck Fletcher is forced to make a change.”

I’ve been in Johnston’s position before. Where you are told something and asked not to report it, but given permission to speculate on it.

Heck, I just went through this with the whole Hextall firing. I explained it in detail on our Snow the Goalie podcast (link at the bottom of the story).

But the way he phrases it – “forced to make a change” – that tells you Fletcher was probably comfortable waiting here, but the urgency is coming from somewhere else (read: Scott).

And if Quenneville is hired as the new coach, the fan base will be instantly thrilled. And he is a good coach, no doubt, so they can be happy.

But nothing will make this team better until there are changes made to the roster.

I take you back to 2006-07, the year widely considered to be the worst in Flyers history. Ken Hitchock was their coach, and he was fired. Bob Clarke resigned as GM. Holmgren came in and took the team with the worst record in the league, and in the span of 18 months turned them into an Eastern Conference finalist.

What did he do:

Turned Freddy Meyer into Alexei Zhitnik in December and then flipped Zhitnik for Braydon Coburn two months later.

Traded an injured Peter Forsberg to Nashville for Scottie Upshall and a first round pick and then returned that pick to Nashville in a later trade to get the negotiating rights to pending free agents Scott Hartnell and Kimmo Timonen, and then signed both of them.

Traded a future draft pick for a starting goalie in Martin Biron.

Traded Joni Pitkanen, Geoff Sanderson and a draft pick for Joffrey Lupul and Jason Smith

Signed Danny Briere as a free agent.

Five moves. One big name player (Forsberg), A few future draft picks, a once-promising player (Pitkanen), a couple of depth players (Meyer/Zhitnik and Sanderson) and eight players were added to a roster that already included Simon Gagne, Mike Knuble, Mike Richards, Jeff Carter, and R.J. Umberger.

So, it can be turned around quickly.

If I had to pick a “quintet” from the current team that I would use to plan for a quick turnaround, it would be Claude Giroux, Sean Couturier, Ivan Provorov, Travis Sanheim and Travis Konencny.

That’s not to say that I would get rid of everyone else, or that anyone else on the list above is completely untouchable. Nolan Patrick is still 20 years old, and although he’s been a disappointment so far, he’s still got major upside. Jake Voracek is a veteran talent who can be the right fit if the rest of the roster makes sense, but I recognize he would bring value if you traded him.

And other players could still fit – they don’t all need to go.

But, what if you traded for a goalie with a little term left on his contract? What if you added a veteran defenseman with a palatable contract? What if you picked up another young forward who can be part of a new core next season and beyond?

What if Wayne Simmonds could be part of a package with the Toronto Maple Leafs that would bring back Kasperi Kapanen?

What if Shayne Gostisbehere was the Joni Pitkanen that netted you two quality veteran players?

What if, after hiring Quenneville, a deal involving good prospects/draft picks could be swung with Chicago that would bring Corey Crawford and Duncan Keith?

What if there were someone out there willing to trade for James van Riemsdyk, since he would likely be a better fit somewhere else than he is right now?

These are the changes that Fletcher has to be considering. These are the roster changes that need to start now, regardless of who the coach is – whether its Hakstol, Quenneville, Yeo or someone else.

The first trade that led to the renaissance the next season that Holmgren made back in 2006 (not counting a small deal for Todd Fedoruk in November) occurred on Dec. 16 when Meyer and a third rounder were traded to the Islanders for Zhitnik.

Today is Dec. 16. The time is now to start this roster upgrade.

If Scott wanted to fire Hakstol, he should have done it with Hextall. Putting Fletcher in this position is not a good look for the organization.

Frankly, Scott should let Fletcher leave well enough alone with the coach for now, reshape the roster the way he likes it, and then replace the coach after the deadline, or the end of the season.

Because, no matter what Scott has said, this team is in no position to “win now” as it is currently constructed.

But let the construction change and then see what happens.

Although it sounds like they aren’t going to do it that way.

For more Flyers coverage, be sure to check out our pregame and intermission shows before and during home games via Facebook Live on the Crossing Broad Facebook page and Periscope via Anthony’s Twitter account. Also, listen to our Flyers podcast Snow the Goalie ([iTunes] [Google Play] [Stitcher] [RSS]), leave a 5 star review, and follow us on Twitter:@AntSanPhilly @JoyOnBroad

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[mikemortgage]

Sorry Toronto: For Amazon HQ2 watchers, it’s Northern Virginia that checks the most boxes

SEATTLE — Amazon won’t say a word about where it plans to put its much-hyped second headquarters. Officials in the 20 cities and regions named as finalists say that they don’t know anything — and that even if they did, they wouldn’t share it publicly.

But that hasn’t stopped investors, economic officials and developers from trying to reverse engineer the HQ2 search, to understand what a company seen as embodying the future wants and needs, and what local governments should do to be part of that future.

The growing consensus is that the place that checks the most boxes is Northern Virginia. In online betting forums, it has the best odds of landing the project. Analysts at Citi recently said most investors they spoke with also expected HQ2 to end up in the Washington area, noting that Northern Virginia is home to Amazon’s cloud computing division’s “largest and fastest-growing office outside of Seattle.”

Toronto will know by the end of the year whether it’s the home of Amazon HQ2

Intel, Microsoft announce plans to expand in Toronto’s white-hot tech sector

Markham, city just north of Toronto, starts selling itself as the next home of Amazon’s HQ2

Many have gone a step further, suggesting that Crystal City, an older office area being revitalized just across the Potomac River from Washington, offers the best site. Its upsides: good transit, diverse residents, a friendly business climate and a single developer with a big chunk of land.

“There are a lot of merits to a lot of these places, but at the end of the day, all of the signs are pointing to Crystal City,” said Amy Liu, director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. “I’m just going to say it.”

With few details from Amazon and the 20 finalist areas, experts have been left to study the economic and social fundamentals of a region and search for hints wherever they can find them. The potential prize is huge, with US$5 billion in investment and up to 50,000 high-paying jobs, according to the company.

The Crystal City neighbourhood of Arlington, Va.

Amazon says it will announce its decision by the end of the year. Other areas that are regularly named as strong contenders include Chicago, Atlanta and Austin, Texas. Washington and the Maryland suburbs are also finalists.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive, already owns the biggest newspaper and the largest mansion in Washington, and his ties to the city have long been a reason that the region tops most lists predicting HQ2’s result. It doesn’t hurt, either, that choosing the area would put Amazon in the backyard of lawmakers just as talk about the company’s labor practices and potential antitrust regulation is picking up.

The interest in the area rose a few weeks ago when Bezos headlined an event at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. More than 1,000 executives, ambassadors and politicians gathered in a ballroom and flocked around him, pressing in to take selfies and shake hands.

When the formal program began, Bezos was soon asked the obvious: Where would he be opening HQ2? The crowd cheered and whistled at the question, posed with more than a hint that the headquarters should be right there in the region, then playfully booed as Bezos demurred.

“Be nice,” Bezos, the world’s richest person, pleaded with a laugh.

Northern Virginia is widely considered to have a leg up on its neighbours for some practical reasons. Virginia is seen as more business-friendly, with low regulation and taxes, according to an annual ranking from Chief Executive magazine that’s popular with site selectors. Maryland offered Amazon more than US$5 billion in taxpayer incentives, but Virginia has not disclosed its package. Washington also has a 13-story limit on most buildings.

And while Washington and Maryland are reliably Democratic, Virginia is more of a swing state, giving Amazon potential champions from both parties.

“If you had your headquarters in a city and were responsible for tens of thousands of jobs, you could be seen as a good corporate citizen,” said Richard Florida, a professor at the University of Toronto who has followed Amazon’s urban development for more than two decades.

The Crystal City neighbourhood of Arlington, Va., Oct. 1, 2018. Many investors and officials believe Amazon sees Northern Virginia as the best fit for a second headquarters site.

The headquarters search centres on Amazon’s seemingly insatiable appetite to hire enough of the talent it needs. To do so, the company says, it needs to be somewhere with a strong talent pipeline and the urban attributes, like public transportation and culture, that attract other employees to move.

“People want to be where there is vibrancy at the street level,” said Jodie McLean, chief executive of Edens, a developer who has worked around the region and is involved with Washington’s bid.

The region is home to one of the most educated workforces in the country. Amazon already has a growing presence, with more than 2,500 employees in corporate and technical roles, like lobbyists in Washington and engineers at data centres in the Virginia suburbs serving government contracts.

Nearby Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport has strong domestic connections, while Dulles International Airport links up globally. And the Metro rail network is one of the busiest in the country. After Amazon announced the headquarters search, lawmakers in the region approved $500 million in annual maintenance spending for the interstate Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which oversees the subways.

Crystal City is about as close to Washington as possible while still being in Virginia. It’s one Metro stop away from National Airport, and just a few stops across the Potomac River from Washington.

“It is a dense, up-and-coming, mixed-used area that has a lot of opportunity for more development,” Liu said.

Other locations in Northern Virginia fit many of Amazon’s requirements. But they’re more suburban, and being in the middle of Seattle has become a central part of Amazon’s identity.

One question that looms over Crystal City, and Northern Virginia more broadly, is whether it is hip enough for the employees Amazon wants to attract. Crystal City is a jumble of mostly outdated, low-slung offices built decades ago for defense contractors, and a smattering of retail outlets. That has left it with a high vacancy rate, around 20 per cent, according to JLL, a commercial real estate brokerage.

Much of the South Lake Union neighbourhood in Seattle was also a civic no-man’s-land, filled with auto body repair shops and parking lots, before Amazon moved there. Some leases in Amazon’s buildings require restaurants to stay open on weekends and through dinner hours — what Amazon called an “18-hour district” — but nearby cafes are often quiet after the happy hour rush subsides.

Crystal City offers another parallel to Amazon’s Seattle headquarters: Much of the land is owned by a single developer, which makes it easier to plan and build in a quick and cohesive way. Until recently, Amazon relied heavily on the investment firm of the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who died Monday, to build its Seattle campus.

JBG Smith, a publicly traded investment trust, owns large swaths of Crystal City, and its chief executive, Matt Kelly, spoke before Bezos at the Economic Club, fueling yet another round of speculation among HQ2 watchers.

“Everybody is talking about Crystal City,�� said Stephen S. Fuller, a leading regional economist at George Mason University. “The fit is good.”

JBG Smith isn’t commenting on Amazon, though in recent months it has hired a public relations agency to respond to HQ2 queries. In its latest investor filing, it said, “Our focus is to put our best foot forward, expect nothing and hope for the best.”

JBG Smith has big plans for Crystal City and has already signed Alamo Drafthouse, the movie theatre chain, to anchor a new retail district. It’s working with the local government to convert a highway that bisects the area into a more pleasant, tree-lined boulevard.

“Some of the dreaming that is going on is just waiting for an accelerant, and that’s what I think Amazon would be,” Fuller said.

Among some in the region’s real estate crowd, it has become almost a joke that Bezos should buy JBG Smith outright.

“If you are an opportunist, it looks like this would be of interest,” Fuller said. “And clearly Amazon has been opportunistic in their whole history.”

Amazon may not have the patience and trust that Northern Virginia can be transformed, especially when Washington already is so rich, right across the Potomac.

“The District has magnificent neighborhoods and magnificent urbanity,” Florida said.

Like everyone who guesses where HQ2 may land, he added a big caveat. “I’m not in Jeff Bezos’ mind,” he said.

The New York Times

from Financial Post https://ift.tt/2SddNDz via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

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Why ISIS, Obama and John Kerry Don’t Want You To Hear This Leaked Audio

We Are Change

On September 30th, 2016 the New York Times quietly released a leaked audio recording of Secretary of State John Kerry meeting with multiple factions within Syria. The revelation of the audio is that Obama knowingly armed jihadists in the area to overthrow Assad and destabilize the Middle East.

The new audio confirms the claim that incoming National Security Advisor and former DIA director Michael Flynn has made publicly for quite some time, saying arming ISIS was “a willful Washington decision.”

Then there are others within the pentagon who leaked a report that said the same that the U.S. supported and backed “moderate rebels” to overthrow Assad other ex-intelligence officials backed the report.

These claims shed light on the 2012 presidential order that authorized U.S. support for “moderate rebels.”

2012: WASHINGTON, Aug 1 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, U.S. sources familiar with the matter said.

Obama’s order, approved earlier this year and known as an intelligence “finding,” broadly permits the CIA and other U.S. agencies to provide support that could help the rebels oust Assad.

With the recent release of audio of John Kerry admitting it, we finally have some verifiable proof direct from the bull’s mouth – the U.S. knowingly armed terrorists.

“I’ve argued for use of force. I stood up. I’m the guy who stood up and announced we’re going to attack Assad because of the weapons, and then you know things evolved into a different process.” 

Kerry further admitted that NATO allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia were financing ISIS. This explosive revelation was also exposed by journalist Serena Shim, who tracked NGO trucks going in and out of the Turkish border. For more on that check out our two interviews with Serena Shim’s mother, one on audio, and another text based.

Another now widely known fact thanks to Wikileaks is that the Turkish President Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak and family bought and sold ISIS oil through Powertrans, a Turkish energy company. Another dot to connect is something Zerohedge outed in 2013 – Bilal Erdogan using his ships in Syria.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has even talked about Turkey’s involvement with ISIS oil in 2015 when Turkey shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber.

Paul Vallely, a retired Major General of the U.S. Army also alleged Turkey’s responsibility in creating ISIS.

Turkey and Ukraine were also the two countries that helped facilitate the false flag attack on Syria, the chemical warfare attack that a source sent me leaked emails about then went viral and were posted everywhere within days including on the Dailymail and Yahoo.

Pulitzer prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh also pinned the Sarin gas crime on Washington’s proxies, and the rebels themselves threatened the West that they would expose what really happened if they were not given more advanced weaponry within one month – more on that in a minute, but first some background on what Kerry said in the audio.

@I_am_Phoenixa @SeraphimNero @ghostofoplib @aLLcLipsbrO Remember when I had that USB that had proof of a Syria #Falseflag w/ emails? #LOL.

— AKilluminati (@An0nKn0wledge) October 8, 2014

“The problem is that, you know, you get, quote, ‘enforcers’ in there and then everybody ups the ante, right? Russia puts in more, Iran puts in more; Hezbollah is there more, and and Saudi Arabia and Turkey put all their surrogate money in, and you all are destroyed.” Kerry, said in the leaked audio.

He also admitted that the U.S. is financing and training Hezbollah. In fact, major banks got caught knowingly funding Hezbollah. In 2012, a Senate report alleged that HSBC helped fund terrorists, Iran, and Mexican drug cartels – allowing them to launder money. A whistle-blower, Everett Stern, CEO of Tactical Rabbit, alleged similar claims, saying that banks like HSBC not only know, but have admitted to doing business with companies that finance terrorists. More on the way they finance terrorist later.

“Hezbollah are not plotting against us (the United States)”, and that, “Hezbollah are being targeted by the opposition who we (the US) are arming and training,” Kerry, said.

Then there is the video by Storm Clouds Gathering investigating who armed and trained ISIS titled “The Covert Origins of ISIS.“

In that video, Storm Clouds Gathering exposed a video of a FSA (Free Syrian Army) commander Abd Al-Baset Tawila with direct ties to Al-Nusra aka Al-Qaeda.

In the video, Commander Tawila threatens the international community demanding they give the FSA anti-tank/aircraft weapons and admits that the FSA has ties to the radical extremist Al-Nusra group that is labeled as a terrorist organization by the west.

“Regarding the factions that the West wants to classify as terrorist organizations – the Nusra Front – we believe that we can conduct a dialogue with them.

Interviewer: About what?

Abd Al-Baset Tawila: About the shape of the future state, about the possibility of establishing a state that will suit everybody. We should cooperate and conduct a dialogue. It is no secret that we have ties with everybody, even the brothers in the Nusra Front, and we cooperate in many places.”

Tawila is then questioned further ” Can you specify who [prevents you from getting these weapons]?,” the interviewer asks.

“Uncle Sam,” he replies. (FULL TRANSCRIPT)

Interviewer: Who set this timetable?

Abd Al-Baset Tawila: The superpowers.

Interviewer: They set a timetable for the revolution?

Abd Al-Baset Tawila: Yes.

Interviewer: So what you are saying is that these countries want to control the timing of the victory of the revolution or the toppling of the regime?

Abd Al-Baset Tawila: Yes.

Interviewer: What is their aim?

Abd Al-Baset Tawila: Various agendas and schemes. I do not know all the details of these schemes, but I can tell you that it is difficult for us to overcome the timetable set for the revolution. Let me give you some evidence. The weapons and ammunition that the FSA receives do not include anti-aircraft or anti-tank weapons. We are unable to confront these [tanks and aircraft] here.

If we had received the quantity and type of ammunition we needed in the battlefield from the outset of the revolution, this regime would not have lasted more than a month or two.

Interviewer: Can you specify who [prevents you from getting these weapons]?

Abd Al-Baset Tawila: Uncle Sam.

Kerry’s off the record conversation was with two dozen ‘Syrian civilians’, all from U.S. backed opposition-linked NGO’s in education and medical groups working in ‘rebel-held’ areas in Syria. This opposition included ‘rescue workers,’ ambassadors from the White Helmets, a pseudo-NGO which serves as Washington and London’s primary PR front in pursuit of a “No Fly Zone” in Syria.

The leader of the White Helmets, Raed Salah, was denied entry into the U.S. at Washington’s Dulles International Airport and deported, due to “extremist connections” while on his way to receive a humanitarian relief award at a gala dinner hosted by USAID. When someone intervened on his travel ban was it John McCain or John Kerry?

Even more evidence on the subject is the infamous picture of John McCain with the FSA in 2012, seen below. The only problem with this photo is that it’s now known that the picture if real was (1) with ISIS press officer Abu Mosa who was killed in August 2014,  and (2) if Mosa was there, the speculation that the other person in the photo was ISIS leader Abu Al-Baghdadi – pictured in the back left of the photo – may also be true.

When one of John McCain’s staffer’s laptop was hacked by the Ukranian CyberBerkut group, an ISIS beheading video was exposed as being staged.

Many experts called several videos of ISIS staged, saying that the lighting doesn’t add up and looks like a studio. They even alleged that James Foley’s video was a fake, not saying that he wasn’t murdered but that the execution didn’t happen on camera.

6 Reasons Why James Foley Beheading Video Could be Fake

Is ISIS Beheading Video Of 21 Egyptian Christians Fake? Film Experts Argue ‘Yes’

However, McCain himself denies these allegations of the hack and picture in a press release and claims that the photos are doctored and the hack is fake. The original photo is below so let’s trace its origin using photo forensics.

According to photo forensics the photo above did touch photoshop, foreseeable in its metadata. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the photo is fake – it just means that it did touch photoshop. Photos touch photoshop for a number of reasons including lighting.  Take note, there are two other photos of McCain with al-Baghdadi in a room of people – if this is a photo hoax it is a very sophisticated one.

However even if the above photo is a fake photoshop, as McCain asserts in his press release, the new Kerry audio leak confirms that the U.S. did indeed support the rise of ISIS to ultimately destabilize the Middle East.

Washington, D.C. ­– U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) today released the following statement on a new conspiracy theory spread online by Russian Internet trolls:

“Vladimir Putin’s army of Internet trolls has come up with another nutty conspiracy theory to try to attack me for standing strong against Russian aggression in Ukraine. Their latest crazy allegation is that they hacked into one of my staffers’ laptops during a recent trip to Ukraine and discovered video evidence that I staged ISIS beheading videos in a TV studio.

“This is just the latest lie spewing daily from the Kremlin’s well-funded Internet propaganda operation, as was recently exposed by The New York Times Magazine. I have little doubt that last year’s widely debunked allegation that I met with ISIL in Syria – including crudely doctored photos depicting me with ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – originated in Russia. Just last week, these same Russian propagandists attacked Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), a strong supporter of a free Ukraine, by forging a letter from him purportedly trying to tell the Ukrainian prime minister how to run his government.

“Whether it means being sanctioned by Vladimir Putin or the target of his wild conspiracy theories, I will always be proud to stand up for freedom and human rights for the Russian people and against Putin’s deadly aggression in Ukraine.”

As four-star U.S. General Wesley Clark said back in, 2007, there was an insider plan to overthrow and invade seven countries within five years, and that plot has failed but was clearly carried out to a large extent. Now John Kerry has confirmed what we have already known – the U.S. military action and support for “moderate rebels” Syria wasn’t about helping the Syrian people – it was about regime change and overthrowing Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad. But did we really need John Kerry to admit it? Another U.S. General Retired Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney has also previously come out alleging that, “the U.S. helped build ISIS by backing the wrong types of people.”

In 2015, Yousaf al-Salafia a Pakistani ISIS commander was captured and confessed to receiving funds routed through the U.S. to recruit militants to fight in the Syrian civil war.

An unconfirmed report, also from 2015, claims an Israeli General captured in Iraq confessed to an Israel-Isis Coalition.

On the U.S. side of things, how was all this accomplished? For that answer, we turn to the Panama Papers and a whistle-blower, Lt. Scott Bennett, who alleges the U.S. used 19,000 offshore Swiss bank accounts to fund terrorist organizations in his report Shell Game. The Panama Papers leak revealed the CIA was using offshore Panama accounts to fund gun running – code named Operation Goldfinger. Further, the CIA was running arms smuggling teams in Benghazi when the consulate was attacked. Just like with Operation Fast Furious another gun smuggling operation in Mexico where the weapons made their way into the U.S. The weapons they smuggled into Libya probably made their way into the hands of Al-Qaeda in Syria so that’s just further weapons that were given to terrorist. That we can not account for.

Reuters had reported in 2012 that the FSA’s command was dominated by Islamic extremists, and the New York Times had reported that same year that the majority of the weapons that Washington were sending into Syria was ending up in the hands Jihadists. For two years the U.S. government knew that this was happening, but they kept doing it. Then in June of 2014 the Telegraph reported Al-Nusra merged with ISIS at the border between Iraq and Syria.

One solution to all of this proposed by Hawaii Democrat Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is literally called the “Stop Arming Terrorists Act.” Now let’s see who objects.

  The post Why ISIS, Obama and John Kerry Don’t Want You To Hear This Leaked Audio appeared first on We Are Change.

from We Are Change http://wearechange.org/isis-obama-john-kerry-dont-want-hear-leaked-audio/