#viewing REALITY as another surface similar to the internet or movies

[lichtecht]

every day i am thankful for being blissfully unaware of what is going on with tiktok

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Dear 'Anime Bad' Anon: I Want To Help I pity your situation, so please have a list of weebshit that isn't moeified, or wherein the cutesy art-style serves a greater purpose. (Note: though they won't be soft marshmallow uguuuu, they may still have issues in other ways. Some may have aged badly with regards to how society views or portrays groups or beliefs, some may have upsetting content and dark themes, and some may simply not be to your taste. Note: Anime is a genre, not a monolith, and the disparaging stereotype that it's all cute girls uwuing over their brother s-s-senpai!!! is as much of a disservice as saying all western movies are just vapid cash grab superhero movie sequels with no inegrity or thought put into them. There are indeed a lot of superhero movies, but they're not all identical schlock (megamind vs venom vs kick-ass),  but even more than that, there is a wealth of creative endeavor just beyond the veil of Marvel's cape: just as there are plenty of good anime if you dig past the isekai high school harem wish fulfillment genre that no one wants to keep making but people keep making because it prints money to a very small demographic of the animation equivalent of a mobile game whale thereby allowing this frankly quite-small industry to work on engaging and worthwhile series where the budget permits, Regardless,)

Mushi-shi: -Pros: gorgeous animation, tranquil vibes, episodic stories so you can cram in an episode between classes or on your lunch break. highly recommended by the literal-who typing this out. -Cons: some themes or stories may cause emotional distress, learning to tell apart Urushibara Yuki's characters is a learning curve.

Baccano-Pros: meticulously-researched 20s-and-30s-era mafia violence with a hint of the supernatural, as a treat, told anachronistically with flair and jazz music. practically made to be binge-watched. the novels are finally getting translated into english as well. -Cons: lots of characters to keep track of, fair bit of blood and violence, some scenes or themes may be upsetting, lots of jumping around between different time periods. See Also: Durarara, another series by Ryōgo Narita with a ton of characters and a plot with more threads an overpriced sheet.

Cowboy Bebop-Pros: incredibly well-regarded, space bounty hunters are cool, episodic series that slowly takes on a plot towards the end, fantastic animation, scoring, and even dub work.  -Cons: some scenes or themes may be uncomfortable, some parts have not aged quite so well, the smart doll version of the main character is ugly, you're gonna carry that weight.

Trigun-Pros: starts lighthearted, develops an increasingly investing plot as the series goes along. fictional westerns are cool. this world is made of love and peace -Cons: some scenes or themes may be upsetting, and probably will be. gun violence is naturally present, but that ain't all of it.

Hellsing (standard or Ultimate. or Abridged)Pros: vampires killing nazis. the original adaptation isn't bad, the second adaptation (ultimate) is generally viewed as an improvement. abridged is a youtube parody version that was so popular the voice actors reference it in convention interviews.Cons: a Lot of violence, even trending to the gorey side of things. Uncomfortable Themes Everywhere, but it's a horror-tinged action series about killing nazis, so that's to be expected. 

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood-Pros: while the original anime was quite good, the second iteration is a large improvement. does to alchemy what naruto does to ninjas: It's Basically Battle Magic. the plot starts on a strong note and doesn't let up from there. -Cons: there are distressing scenes and themes that may or may not be tolerable to the viewer. there are moments of cheesecake and even an occasional joke or a moeblob here and there, and it's not all doom and all gloom all the time, but this doesn't detract from the abject horror-despair that comes to permeate this series as it progresses. finally understand why people on the internet respond so negatively to the name 'nina'! 

[Mod: many more recs/reviews under the break, worth reading for those who like more obscure anime and animation]

Grave of the Fireflies-Pros: you will remember how to cry. it's a good reminder that one country's 'triumphs' often come at the expense of another country's people.  -Cons: this movie is incredibly dark, do not watch if you are in a bad headspace. see also: Barefoot Gen, a similar tale but this time from the perspective of an actual survivor from Hiroshima.

Michiko to Hatchin-Pros: an actually diverse cast of characters tangled up in a messy and very humanizing story, interspersed with Shinichiro Watanabe's particular flare for adventure. -Cons: some scenes or themes are very likely to be distressing. can be tricky to find, too.

Mo no no Ke (not the ghibli movie, though it is also quite good.) -Pros: incredibly unique art style and pacing that draws heavily from japanese theatre traditions, every screenshot is wallpaper-worthy. -Cons: may cause motion sickness. it is a psychological horror series, and one that does not need blood, nor gore, to cause visceral emotional response in the viewer. scenes and themes will be distressing- as really, that's the point.

Tokyo Godfathers-Pros: a transwoman, a (self-identified) homeless bum, and a runaway teen girl find a newborn in the baby on christmas. incredibly wholesome, somehow, and grounded in reality, with wonderful animation from the tragically late satoshi kon. -Cons: it is grounded in realism, and sometimes, people are dicks. mild transphobia warning, too, but in-universe- the transwoman herself is portrayed with kindness and allowed to be her own (wonderful!!!) person. still, viewer be mindful.

Kino no Tabi (the first series is my preferred, the second is shinier but lacks emotional impact- in my onion.) -Pros: mostly episodic, very unique series that can be gritty where it counts and kind where it matters. -Cons: some scenes or themes might be disturbing. finding it's not easy, either, and unfortunately, i don't think the novels are being translated right now, either.

Spice and Wolf-Pros: it's mostly about economics. there are shenanigans, a harvest god, and a slowly burgeoning romance, sure, but it's still mostly about economics. -Cons: there are moments of cheesecake and comedy, and moments that may cause distress to the viewer. it may or may not be to your taste.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica-Cons: yeah i know, it's moeblobs.  -Pros: you're gonna watch 'em die, though, in case that may interest you. it's quite a good subversion of the magical girl genre overall. somehow volks hasn't made an MDD of anyone from the series and i will never understand how that didn't happen.

Wolf Children: Ame to Yuki-Pros: watch a family grow together as a newly-single mother does her best to raise her twin children after the tragic loss of their father.  -Cons: keep tissues handy. certain scenes or themes may be uncomfortable.

Lupin III (Red Jacket, Ghibli, and the new 3D animation are all A+) pros: heist comedy elevated to an art form before half (or more!) of the people reading this were born. the english dubbed series that used to air on adult swim is a treat. cons: this franchise started in THE SIXTIES, so naturally, some shit has not aged well. certain series (fujiko mine) are darker than others in themes and material. the 3d movie that released recently is an excellent starting point.

Samurai Champloo-Pros: breakdancing samurai, a fascinating roster of characters, and a superb soundtrack by the tragically passed Nujabes. -Cons: it was made in the weird era of the transition from analog to digital animation and so the /series master/ was animated at a painfully low resolution, so even if there's a bluray out there (I haven't looked,) it will be an upscale, which doesn't always look the best. as well, there are scenes and themes that may make the viewer uncomfortable here and there.

The Works of Studio Ghibli Oh, I'm sorry, Ponyo too suffused with childhood wonder for you? My Neighbor Totoro not depressing enough?  In addition to the infamous Grave of the Fireflies, Studio Ghibli has made a wealth of movies that aren't aimed squarely at the kodomo (children's) sector. -Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind: climate change existential dread, the movie -Castle in the Sky: government obsession with obtaining weapons of mass destruction destroys everything beautiful, the movie -Pom Poko: human-caused deforestation and urbanization is destroying the natural world and all that live in it, the movie -Princess Mononoke: industrialization will be the death of everything beautiful in the world, the movie, with a side of sometimes everyone (and no one) is the villain when everyone is simply trying to survive -Howl's Moving Castle: The Physical Manifestation of Depression is a Liquid Ooze, the Movie, also War Is Bad It's not all depressing, but let it never be said that Hayao Miyazaki was subtle. Whisper of the Heart is a good coming-of-age story, Kiki's Delivery Service is a classic, Tales from Earthsea is divisive among fans of Ursula K. Le Guin but I personally liked it. From one studio alone there is a wealth of opportunities.

And that's really the point. These are just some from the top of my head. There are so very many options outside of the cute-girls-doing-cute-things genre that I couldn't list them all if I was here for a week. Or as Madoka Magica so ruthlessly showcases, even series that appear a certain way on the surface might not be what you bargained for once you look into them! These are all (I think) mostly older, mainstream-appeal series that should be easy to track down, too -- there are all kinds of singular animations like The Diary of Tortov Roddle, crowdfunded experiments like KICK-HEART, Masterpiece World Theatre renditions of classic (western) novels that never get talked about, films like A Silent Voice that confront social issues- and of course, series like Rozen Maiden that helped popularize this very hobby!

There is literally an ocean of content to explore from Japanese creators alone, and it opens up even more if you look into works from other parts of Asia- just look at how popular manwha have become, or Chinese animations like Leafie, a Hen Into the Wild! It's a genre unto itself, with all the breadth of content and inter-industry problems that come with it, and without any of the respect that similar art forms have been granted over the years. The way an entire culture's art form is often disparaged, disregarded, and belittled- and by extension, the way most of Asia's animated endeavors are often rolled up into that reductive dismissal along with anime and manga- is honestly Not Great, and there is absolutely a thread of xenophobia that runs through it. The industry has so very many problems (low wages, poor training, overwork of everyone ever, archaic financial modules, the exclusivity and breadth of merchandising necessary to turn a profit and how it leads to consumer burnout and disconnection over time, and yes, the way minors are portrayed not just in anime, but in Japanese media in general- and how much of that is actually bad (some of it is indeed,) and how much if it is cultural difference (I've heard people call the scene where the family in Totoro bathe together problematic because of the nudity, but I've also only heard people say that from the West)

-- none of the actual problems affecting the people who produce this medium are gonna improve when the general response to "animators frequently have to live at home to survive" is "that's what happens when you're a weeb."  It's 5am and I'm gonna point out the problems in the narrative around how we discuss this genre of entertainment because it's important, damn you! Regardless, thank you for coming to my unasked for and overlong TED talk about animation on a doll collecting drama blog, feel free to call me a pathetic weeb etcetera on your way out- but while you do so, might I suggest you also go watch a choice animated series! My current go-to is Bofuri, which is a cute-girls-doing-cute-things moefied isekai series that I refuse to apologize for watching. Be free. (The battle scenes are great and it captures the feeling of learning to play a new MMO with your friends better than most video-game-based anime I've seen in a long, long time. does anyone even still remember .hack? how about serial experiments lain...?)

~Anonymous

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino, 1992)

This review contains spoilers.

For the past few years, I didn’t spend a lot of time rewatching movies. Quite frankly, the thrill of discovering something new (and the risk that it might not be all that good) outweighed the pleasures of the familiar ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Yet this year, perhaps because it’s been so miserable on the whole, I’ve spent a bit more time revisiting films I’d already seen. In some cases, it was to relive the joy of seeing something I already liked or loved. But in other cases, perhaps because I’d been easier to please on average, I would go back to things I’d felt somewhat at a distance to in the hopes that I would finally be won over. Full Metal Jacket finally clicked with me (seeing it in a different aspect ratio did the trick) and I’ve warmed up to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 as much as I probably ever will. With that in mind, and prompted by a bizarre dream in which I watched it on Netflix in the wee hours of the morning, I ended up waking up stupid early and giving Reservoir Dogs another viewing. (The dream wasn’t terribly interesting, although it did involve me watching the new Scream, which had magically already been completed and was available on Netflix. There was a lot of yellowish, Fincher-esque lighting and Alison Brie got thrown over a railing at one point. As someone who enjoyed the fourth, I was upset by that turn of events, but dreams can be upsetting. In the words of the Shogun Assassin in Shogun Assassin, “bad dreams are only dreams.”)

I don’t think my opinion changed all that much with this viewing. I still feel that it’s one of Tarantino’s weaker films, lacking the confidence and depth of his next few films. I think Tarantino’s career is generally discussed as being split into his earlier, more story-oriented or reality-grounded films and his later, more indulgent genre pastiches, but I think this one lacks the focus that kind of discourse implies. The characters are barely fleshed out and the directorial touches aren’t as purposeful or effective as they would become in his later work. But at the same time, it’s still a stylish and highly entertaining affair, with a great cast giving some very good performances and delivering some punchy, very funny dialogue. It’s pleasures and limitations are obvious and have been better discussed by those more eloquent than me, so I don’t know how deeply I’ll delve into them. (On a side note, I felt a strange pang of nostalgia revisiting this despite it never having been a favourite of mine. It was very big among the internet crowd I first started discussing film with as I first got into the subject, so it’s hard for me to separate those feelings from the actual movie. I got the same feeling watching Boogie Nights a few weeks ago, despite never having seen that film until now.)

But what I did chew over a bit more this time around is how the movie positions the characters’ morality. We know that Tim Roth’s Mr. Orange is the “good guy”, the undercover cop who kills the psychopathic Mr. Blonde played by Michael Madsen. But at the same time he betrays the trust of Harvey Keitel’s Mr. White. Mr. White is sort of a “good guy” too, but foolishly risks his own fate and those of his associates as he bonds with someone who sets him up. Mr. Blonde is a sadistic psychopath but also extremely loyal, having refused to rat out his friends while serving a tough prison term. Steve Buscemi’s Mr. Pink is entirely business-minded and self-interested, but is that really any less honourable than the intentions of those around him? Chris Penn’s Nice Guy Eddie loves his father, Lawrence Tierney’s Joe Cabot, who is the closest thing to a paternal, authoritative presence in the movie, but both are also extremely ruthless, not to mention racist. Tarantino’s relationship with race is complicated (he’s been criticized for his use of the n-word, particularly in a certain scene in Pulp Fiction, and while I do enjoy his performance in that movie, I’m not sure I can defend a certain line of dialogue), but here the characters’ rampant use of racial slurs seems like a clear indicator of their (lack of) character. (These characters also freely use homophobic slurs, but such language was unfortunately a mainstay of macho dialogue at the time and doesn’t seem as pointed a comment on their natures.) Even when Mr. Orange praises the connection he used to get in with the criminals, another character is quick to point out that the connection is ratting out his friends. There’s some moral relativism in my argument here, but the movie invites that line of thought. Reservoir Dogs is about a bunch of lowlife crooks and despite the extent to which we may identify with them, it never lets us forget that.

In that sense, it’s in clear contrast to some of its influences. Ringo Lam’s City on Fire features the same plot but emphasizes the value of brotherhood between the criminals, so that the betrayal there stings extra hard. Tarantino highlights the meaninglessness of such appeals to solidarity. (Bizarrely, Tarantino has denied having seen that other film despite the hard to ignore story similarities. He even dedicated the screenplay to Chow Yun Fat and pulls the image of a dual wielding gunman in sunglasses from that actor’s oeuvre and has made a brand of pulling from his influences, so I’m baffled why he’d deny this one instance.) Jean-Pierre Melville’s work features gangsters in tailoring adhering to strict codes and conducting themselves with honour in dire situations. Tarantino points out the futility of such codes. His next film handles these dynamics even more elegantly. In Pulp Fiction, John Travolta’s character is a villain in one segment and a hero in another, while Samuel L. Jackson’s character reflects on the dishonourable nature of their work and decides to walk away at the end.

Where I think Pulp Fiction succeeds in handling that theme is that it gives us a sense of Jackson and Travolta contemplating (or failing to do so, respectively) their choices and having something resembling actual worldviews (however limited, as in the case of the latter). The characters in Reservoir Dogs in contrast are drawn in shorthand from gangster cliches so that our identification with them is limited. Mr. Orange should be our audience vantage point, but Tarantino fumbles a key scene in which he relates a made-up story to ingratiate himself with the other criminals. It should be about how Mr. Orange wins their trust, which would help make later speculation on his loyalty more dramatically potent, but in choosing to actually depict the proceedings in the story onscreen, Tarantino makes it about the cuts and shot choices he energetically deploys. It’s not a badly directed scene on its own, but the wrong one for the movie. Yet in other scenes, like the opening in the diner, he’s able to elegantly paint character detail while letting us enjoy the surface pleasure of the dialogue. Mr. Pink refuses to tip as an extension of his business-minded nature. Mr. Blonde volunteers to shoot Mr. White, jokingly revealing his bloodthirst. Mr. White takes things too personally (”You shoot me in a dream, you better wake up and apologize”). Joe Cabot struggles to remember a name, implying that his criminal instincts are slipping. The movie shuffles its timeline in the vein of The Killing to draw out these contrasts between the characters and to build to a tense and memorable climax, yet had more of the individual character moments been as deftly handled as this first scene, the film might have landed with me more strongly. That being said, there’s a nonzero chance I’ll come back to this in a few years, hoping it will finally click.

[cavitymagazine]

Haptic Narratives: The Absurdly R EA L Artifacts of Dale Brett / / / [part 2]

[D]: Lately though, most of my influence has come from other forms of media opposed to writing. I have found the more I write, the less I read – at least long form. Music, animated series/films - both Japanese anime and stuff like Adult Swim and internet culture - all of these things come through in my work.

[W]: Music.

[D]: Definitely music. I often try to write with a type of musical style I enjoy in mind. This is, believe it or not, one of the reasons I decided to re-commence writing fiction. I was sick and tired of googling combinations of "vaporwave + fiction + dream" or "shoegaze + literature + drugs" to try and find works that fit a certain aesthetic that did not exist. So why not create them myself? For instance, ambient and to a lesser extent dreampunk, would be the genres I was trying to build on in Faceless in Nippon. With Ultraviolet Torus it is no secret that it is my shoegaze project. As you know with our mall collaboration [cloud mall and maze/mall], this will be vaporwave-heavy in aesthetic and theme. I think these musical styles also take me right back to the original interests that I have garnered from literature: how to feel and express oneself in light of the consumerist dream, how to find meaning in the face of a constant blurring reality. I want to produce words that create a sensory experience. Words to touch your skin, words to make you see refracted colours, words to make you realise life sucks but it's all okay.

[W]: Aesthetics are important to me as well. The depth of the surface. The synthetic, simulacra. I suspect any "honest" portrayal of our day-to-day life, even a so-called "realist" presentation, would be sci-fi, at least in part. The kitchen-sink realism of today would include game realities and all sorts of "tropes" – or what one used to call tropes – of sci-fi. DeLillo’s White Noise is a big work for me, related to some of the consumerist themes. The three layers you refer to are impressive – you've put a lot of thought into where your work comes from, what it's shaped by. I've never thought in those terms really. Although "Pessoan cyberpunk nihilism" as a blurb would have me buying whatever that book is. Abe's The Box Man - I read that in I think 2015 or so. I see Abe's tone in some of your prose. That is a hard tone to tap. It's soft and dislocated. Requires a gentle hand, and a kind of amorphous thought process. In recent years I've taken influence more from video games and commercials and music than anything textual. I assumed your influences now were primarily visual. Graphic novels, anime, bad TV movies - I cull more from kitsch than I do from literature now. Would you tell me a bit about your time in Japan? And how would you describe Faceless in Nippon to a reader who knows literally nothing about it?

[W]: I relate very hard to your not being able to google, say, "vaporwave + dream + fiction" and get a hit. You had to create your hits. I feel the same way. It's like I want "Borges + USA Up All Night" or something similarly niche and not-quite-available-elsewhere. The established subgenres you mention, like dreampunk, are still these largely unexplored parks of the mind. There aren't a whole lot of titles. Do you view Faceless in Nippon as your first book and Ultraviolet Torus as a sophomore effort?

[W]: One aspect of your work that struck me right away is its sensory nature, and its desire to make complex emotions like melancholy or lostness more tangible or tactile.

[Ed.:  racetams with caffeine are ingested.]

[D]: I really like your description – “the depth of the surface.” This really fits what I’m trying to achieve with writing. I try to attain a certain sensory experience with abstract imagery, but endeavor to maintain a somewhat conventional narrative or “everyday” story underneath. For instance, Faceless in Nippon was always meant to mimic the feeling of floating in/on water, gently bobbing through society’s ambient capitalist waters attempting to find a purpose. This incorporeal imagery juxtaposed with the more straightforward vignette format and story arc of a young western male living abroad. With Ultraviolet Torus, the prose and format are more unconventional – it was designed to mimic gemstone/mineral structure and shoegaze music, with the narrative underpinning the imagery taking the form of the rise and fall of a standard relationship. I agree that even a “realist” presentation is somewhat sci-fi these days – it is unavoidable. Our friend, contemporary, and collaborator James Krendel-Clark and I have often spoken about how the only thing left for sci-fi is this almost meta-sci-fi angle, where all the tropes have become so cliché and ingrained that really any attempt at sincere “world building” is futile. It’s better to experiment in syntax and delve into what another contemporary of ours, Nick Greer, likes to call “hyper-genre”. Use the tropes, but explore them linguistically, see what they do for the reader sensorily, opposed to using them as the building blocks to create another mundane genre narrative. I have certainly done that in shorter form through the Concentric Circuits: CODA stuff on Surfaces. I think my sci-fi influence comes through in both Faceless in Nippon and Ultraviolet Torus, certainly in the way that I frame the setting or landscape as a character almost, similar to how Ballard and Gibson craft their prose. I have had a lot of time to think about the aforementioned literary influences. I am slightly OCD too, so I often create these massive lists and Venn diagrams and shit of artists/works with certain styles and aesthetics that overlap. I do like to think of myself as a modern-day Walter Benjamin in the way I compile notes and lists and memories that form the basis of my artistic and existential exploration. I think Benjamin would have had a hell of a time with the notes app of a smart phone.

[D]: Regarding Kobo Abe, you are correct, certainly not an easy tone to master, and one that I definitely have not. My writing is not as sound as a master like Abe, which I think is why I subconsciously fall back on the sci-fi landscape syntax/prose mentioned above and the more colloquial twenty-first century alt-lit style to strive forward in my work. I am still developing though, and hopefully, opposed to just replicating Abe’s tone, one day I will be in a position where people are speaking about a tone entirely of my own that others will use as an influence. Abe is also a good segue into other forms of media that influence written work, as he has often been an inspiration to artist’s in the visual field such as filmmakers and video game creators. It is no secret that he is Hideo Kojima’s favorite author.

[D]: Since re-commencing my fiction-writing, which was at the beginning of 2019, you are accurate in your inference that I have primarily relied on other forms of media to influence my work. I have barely read any novels at all in the last couple of years comparative to the previous decade of reading. I garner much more from music, anime, and internet culture these days. I am glad you brought up the influence of commercials – I think we certainly share an avid interest in exploring the consumerist sphere and its effects on art and society. There are a number of important moments in Faceless in Nippon dealing with commercials, products, stores and their underrated aura. Hell, I even created fictional beverages and advertisements for the book.

[D]: My time in Japan was an incredibly formative experience for me. I really only returned to my home country, Australia, when my wife became pregnant. Otherwise I would probably still be there, cruising around upper-class malls, lower-class malls, drinking massive cans of Asahi on the train, staring at LED signs from concrete overpasses at night interminably. I certainly still yearn for my time there. I did go back to visit friends recently and it was a strange experience, like I could not re-create the feelings of my time there in the past no matter how hard I strived. It became apparent that my yearnings were purely for a time in my life while stationed there, opposed to the setting itself.

[D]: I would describe Faceless in Nippon as a meditative, aqueous travelogue on what it means to exist as a middle-class person in the twenty first century, the entirety of which is set in urban Japan.

[D]: I really admire artists that have an unmistakable aesthetic stamp on their work. Auteurship, if you will. For what it’s worth, I think you are one of the few that has a singular, univocal voice in the online “outsider” lit community or whatever you want to call it. I would like to think mine is the same. That people will read it and go, “Oh fuck, that’s Dale alright.” I have been told before that my work reads like MDMA. I am exceedingly happy with that comparison. I would be pleased if that was how I was known as an artist after my “career” or whatever you want to call it is over. Basically, I want to create things that are uniquely my own, things that have not been attempted before. Another reason I think that you and I gel well together as creatives is that despite our many differences in aesthetics, we are enamored by the depth of so-called low culture and continually mash it together with the supposed “high culture” of literature. 

The "Borges + USA Up All Night" example illustrates this perfectly.

[D]: Both Faceless in Nippon and Ultraviolet Torus will be available at similar times. However, there is no doubt that Faceless is my first book. It is the first thing I started working on when I didn’t know it was going to be what it became. Torus was a more experimental foray into the literary field. I compiled Torus, an exploration of gemstone and dream imagery, between drafts of Faceless. I was particularly taken by crystals, shoegaze, and giddiness over my interactions with some beautiful people on the internet at the time. It proved to be a fruitful break from Faceless rewrites, as not only did I let the novel marinate and become better before publishing it, I also gave birth to another creative treasure.

[D]: Making emotive words tactile, rendering the textually intangible tangible. This is something I want to see extended even further as we continue collaborating on our mall project. I want to delicately wrench the phaser knob on these effects and really see where we can go with our adventures in the literary sensorium.

[W]: I remember you saying you wanted Faceless in Nippon to "feel like floating in water." It made me think of a novel as a kind of sensory deprivation tank, the floating and the effects. Did you think of Ultraviolet Torus as a gem, in the abstract, or was the structuring of it more precisely gemlike? James [Krendel-Clark] and I wrote the rough draft of this Blanchot-bodyhorror, broken-videogame-reality novel called Cenotaph, and much of it deals with irrational spaces and Phildickian pulp. As far as sci-fi goes, the more subjective my take, the more "sci-fi" it seems to become. Just last night I drifted between three realities - one in which I was an unemployed writer living under Covid-19, one in which I destroyed an organic ship/braincraft with a cyber-tank, and another where I trained as a druid mage in a treacherous cursed desert. Of course these last two were games and that doesn't even entail any other branching realities that came about as well with regard to books, narratives, televisual influences, lies we tell ourselves, 5G brain-attacking waves, et al. It's late and I'm stoned and tired but yeah. Nick Greer is a fascinating individual. I didn't know you knew him. We spoke about set theory once. Gödel. I read very little, yeah. Or I should say I don't sit and read a physical book as often as I used to. I read rigorously for a good 20 years. If I'm awake enough to read, I usually would want to spend that time writing, or perhaps gaming. Or dreaming. All of these beats - the fictional beverages and ads and playing metafictionally with products and whatnot - I kind of live for that shit. I do that more and more. And it's not even a critique or any kind of satire of it for me - like the low-rez haze of 1-900 commercials was a fuzzy heaven in a box for me as a kid. The K-Mart cafeteria did possess a unique and strange power. I think we're kind of on the same page here as far as we share a kind of reverence for the artificial, the things rendered meaningless through mass production, and other similar slippery intangibles. There is a wonder here that sets it apart from, say, a satirical/scathing view of consumerist life. God, yeah, your experience in Japan. I think I've experienced similar stuff. I remember a time in 2000 when Boca Raton, Florida, was kind of magical for me. I went there a few years back; it's just any place now. Such a strange thing. And sad too. This is the only kind of interview I'd conduct, one with a writer whose work I think truly good. You might've remarked upon the melancholic allure of vending machines coding out at night. Or something similar. It's that sort of sentiment I recognized straightaway as what I consider tuned-in to a cryptic aesthetic I love. I was relieved to discover your wordcraft was honed – that's usually the big problem for me liking someone's work. One of the big draws for me about your work is the stuff you're able to do that I really dig but am not really suited to pull off myself, such as the MDMA vibe, or the ennui mixed with light, hope, etc. There are a dozen or so singular voices around in the online outsider-lit community/whatever, voices I'd consider distinctive: you, Clark, Elytron Frass, Durban Moffer – a few others.

[W]: Your themes I would say demand nuance and control. We've talked about how our mall project is slow-going because it seems very painstaking, almost like etching or surgery or something. Introspective, in any case. Although I just sort of dismissed reading a second ago, I do believe that a unique body of work is made unique by a dizzying variety of blendered influences. I had that 15-year stretch in the suffering cubes to read pretty much constantly, and haphazardly, as far as selection, in a lot of ways, so my influence map is like really fucking bizarre and extensive, which I think makes my stuff appear unique, when all that is unique about it probably is my little perspective or whatever subjectivity is injected into this array of eclectic influences.

[jjlatourelle-blog]

Dove Box

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.”

Philippians 4:8

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

Matthew 6:23

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.”

Isaiah 9:2

The movie Bird Box has garnered a lot of views and a lot reactions in a short period of time. I enjoyed it but it took some processing for me to understanding what was so arresting about the film. I concluded that Bird Box has dug to the bedrock of a spiritual/psychological truth of our current society.

Every successful horror film does this on some level: the most shallow examples being cautionary tales about teenage lust (like every slasher movie ever made) or the more philosophically minded stories cautioning about consumerism or conformity (every zombie movie ever made).

Then things get spiritual. Dracula and Frankenstein reveal to us the horror of longing for eternal life minus morality. Even the modern It Follows shows us the solipsist horror of easy pleasure when a nemesis with a shifting identity pursues us to literally pleasure us to death. It is when horror movies approach the spiritual that they have their deepest impact. Horror at its best reveals humanity’s instinctive understanding of what would be the worst. More importantly, horror reveals real problems in our society by drawing bitter water from the deepest wells of our psyche.

Back to Bird Box. We start with the main problem in the movie. People see something and it drives them mad. Not mad, but to immediate suicide. This goes beyond the biological/mechanical suicide of The Happening. These people haven’t just had their brain chemistry hijacked. They have seen something powerful enough to corrupt and damn their soul and make their body agree to and participate in the damnation.

It’s eventually revealed that the things people are seeing before they kill themselves are demons: mankind’s first and most formidable foes. This is fitting. One of the Devil’s chief jobs is to accuse. He is also tasked with lying, instilling fear, and destroying. No doubt, if all of these things are being communicated with a look and the look carries spiritual authority, it isn’t a surprise that the one who looks ends his/her life.

On the surface, the movie watcher (we’re not goers anymore, are we?) just accepts the rules of this universe but the rules came from a deeper Jungian place in our collective subconscious. To illustrate: there’s been a sharp split in audience reaction to this movie: those who think it is terrifying and those who don’t get it: the guilty and the damned respectively. The first group knows the language of accusation, of forfeiture of soul, of spiritual torment. They know this on an instinctual level. For them, the terror makes sense. For the damned, they don’t see this disaster coming in the real world, so codifying it in horror makes no sense. They’ll accept the rules but the rules seem dumb.

Back to the bird box. So characters are brought to an apocalypse whereby they’re faced with their tormentors. Seeing their spiritual reality for what it is drives them to immediate despair and they kill themselves as fast as they can. Then come the crazies. Really, they’re not the crazies. They’re nihilists. They embrace their guilt, their despicable nature and thereby celebrate the demonic message. To them, the creatures are angels bringing good news. Nothing matters. Life is meaningless. Worse yet, life had meaning and we all missed it. We are all damned so: why wait? Now they have an excuse to carry weapons and wear leather chaps in public.

Here we reach a central irony in the psychological bedrock of this horror. It’s been done in movies before but the iconography is very potent in this film. Knowledge is what kills. True enlightenment (endarkenment) is to be avoided. Ignorance is what saves. Blindness is what saves you to see for another day.

Now what, in the age of Netflix, in the information age, could justify such an idea? Why would knowing less, seeing less, save us? We’ve got Wikipedia and Zillow, and Facebook. We know a lot and it helps us a lot…doesn’t it? Aren’t we all using the internet to better our lives? Don’t we feel that improvement on a daily basis?

No. You know that’s not true, in the same way you felt the rules of this movie were reasonable rules. Faust knew it too. These demons act as Drone-palantirs: driving us mad or corrupting us on the spot. I’m hinting, but I think I’m hinting because, you reading this already know a thousand reasons why this is true: why this form of horror is birthed from something that is wrong with our actual existence.

We know too much. America is guilty. You are guilty. News is all bad news. The world is getting worse. Everything goes to hell. To take another angle of the problem, we as Westerners are utterly ruined by the cynicism of the stories we now tell ourselves. Romanticism gave way to modernism then post-modernism, and now casual nihilism realized through constant and insatiable novelty.

Nietzche was not an accidental voice to start this piece. The internet is not a crystal palace or a shining city on a hill. It burned the desert beneath us, turned it to glass so that we could see the vast oceans of hell just beneath. Top grossing films and most trafficked internet sites all involve some degree of violence and pornography and those trends are always growing in variety and intensity. We are like Faust in that we have all the knowledge of the world at our fingertips. But just like Faust, we must converse with demons before we get there…if we ever get there.

How many trash articles, gossip columns, porn sites, slasher movies, political scandals, do we consume before learning a new body of knowledge? How many games do we play which we know are addictive before we use these new technologies to enhance and safeguard our human connections, our love, and all that we believe to be beautiful? Our consumption of what is worthless, dark, and hideous has reached critical mass and there is no more bandwidth for our eyes to take in any light. That is the psycho-spiritual reality that Bird Box has tapped into.

To survive and remain human–remain alive–the heroes must close their eyes, turn everything off, shut the doors and trust nothing from the outside. To escape their damnation, they must tear themselves apart: gouging out eyes and cutting off hands. To survive, we know we must do the same. We quit Facebook. We buy farms. We lock our phones away when home. We take up antiquary hobbies. We feel the damnation at the end of the path but we don’t know how to turn around.

Enter the birds. The birds warn the heroes of the presence of demons. In one sense, they are a kind of salvation. They can’t kill the demons but they make a ruckus and seem to discourage the demons from doing their work. They can guide the heroes to continue this regimen of eye gouging so that the heroes can remain blind and safe. And the birds must stay with the heroes for them to be effective. They are not a weapon to be holstered or a potion to be drunk. They must be cared for and kept alive on their own terms.

Christians might see this as a metaphor for the Holy Spirit and that would be apt. Within this interpretation, the Christian’s job is to avert his/her eyes from the sinful temptations of the world and walk the straight and narrow path to salvation (or river to safe haven). Maybe we take on a more Quaker regimen.

And speaking of rivers: they have been symbols of transition, of barrier, of death (maybe death of self-will) of a return to nature, or the Spirit. Walk in the Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. Stay in the river’s current and you won’t be stopped and destroyed by temptation. The forest works in a similar way and accentuates the same themes: a return to a more simple life, a passage to another type of reality. And in the heroine’s passage through the forest, she is faced with a litany of temptations to look, to go back to her old ways of seeing and the immediate damnation it has led to. She must plug her ears and close her eyes to this and press on through the dark unknown. She must remain blind and become permanently blind to the world she has known in order to survive.

Here is where the horror genre gets its power. This is where horror does its job. We know this is what we must do as a society to survive, to thrive, to live, to regain our health and our humanity. We know we must shut our eyes, stumble like idiots, and listen for the true, simple voice (remember, the Holy Spirit shows up first as a dove) that will lead us to salvation.

[mexckk]

MEXC Global Research: From 2D Art to Original Crypto Art, Brief Analysis on the Revolution Brought by NFT to Digital Art

The subject of this article began at the end of March this year when Beeple, the digital artist’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” was sold at Christie’s auction for $69,346 thousand USD. The gavel’s bang triggered a storm across the cryptocurrency circle, traditional art circle, and the media to proclaim, “Such A High Price!”.

One of the animated art pieces named “CROSSROAD” was sold at 3,789.118 ETH, worth about $6.6 million USD at that time.

Many people have questioned how a picture in JPG and PNG format could be auctioned at such a high price one after another? It was remarkable.

On one side, people discussed the ownership of the artworks, a crypto art piece where whoever in possession of the“secret key” of the artwork can exercise the ownership of the particular artwork.

On the other hand, people thought that these “JPG” and “PNG” could be downloaded directly to be viewed anytime, anywhere with a similar viewing effect. So, why pay such a high price to buy “Ownership”?

Another problem is that these online crypto artworks are much less effective than the artworks that can be viewed offline, making it hard to cause the “David Syndrome”.

The three questions are all part of the same issue: Is On-chain Artwork a pseudo demand? This can be viewed from many perspectives.

We have put aside architectural art and statuary art to review the artwork of mankind. From Ancient Greek and Roman art to modern art, from the Renaissance period’s art to modern art, all human history condensed into a three-dimensional or even multi-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface.

It was until people could use electricity, invent lights and movies. In creating contemporary art, artists are no longer limited to creations on two-dimensional planes, through the use of mechanical tools to create three- or more dimensional digital artworks through sound, lights, and electricity.

Beeple’s “Crossroad” is a 10-second animated crypto artwork. It might be difficult for the artists to fully express the “theme” they wanted if put on a two-dimensional surface. This is the most significant difference between digital art and traditional art is the carrying method.

In this case, by comparing digital art and traditional art, both are actually the two parallel universes of virtual and reality. The former has changed how art is carried and enjoyed, so the two types of art will produce two parallel markets.

In this way, NFT’s application in the crypto art field shows prominent importance. Why do we say so?

There are two types of crypto art at present; one is NFT-lizing (Art + NFT) traditional artworks, such as Injective Protocol, the blockchain company bought “Morons” for $95,000 USD from a British graffiti artist named Banksy at Taglialatella gallery in New York. The artwork was burned after NFT-lization later on, then the NFT version of “Morons” was successfully sold at 228.69 ETH.

For this kind of extreme behavior, we can call it the combination of traditional art and NFT. The other type is an original crypto art creation, where the artists create the digital art first and then NFT-lize the art.

For example, we will not make any comments on the artistic level of the artwork “Da Meeting”. The creator may follow the recreation of Angolo Bronzino’s famous work “An Allegory with Venus and Cupid”. (Note: Recreating does not mean imitating. There were many famous paintings and sculptures recreated based on the story of Venus and Cupid.)Fontdona pulled out Venus and Cupid, placed them through Cyberpunk’s perspective, with the weightless astronaut that is moving. Similarly, if it was on a paper or board, the author will not be able to fully express what they want to deliver on such two-dimensional surfaces.Other than Beeple’s “CROSSROAD” and Fontana’s “Da Meeting”, the crypto art websites are full of similar non-“traditional” art paintings. We can define these crypto artworks as original artworks.For original crypto art, their uniqueness and immutability make the ownership matter particularly important. The authenticity identification of traditional artwork requires humane professionalism because the differences in personal experience, level, and tools will form different conclusions, leading to misjudgment. However, the uniqueness, authenticity, and ownership of crypto art must be beyond all doubts.When compared to “Art+NFT”, original crypto art creations will never cause debates on “What is the meaning of On-chain” because original art itself is based on digital art.From the above, we could see that: On-chain art is not necessarily a pseudo demand. However, NFT for native crypto art, the proof of demand is self-evident, and it will certainly bring forth a revolution.Moreover, by comparing traditional art and digital art, crypto art has attributes such as authenticity, uniqueness, and rights, giving the crypto art collections worth and trading value.This makes crypto art more universal than the previous digital art and not limited to a smaller crowd of people. In the past, we use to enjoy the artworks mostly by visiting offline art galleries, and the creator’s income had limitations. With the arrival of crypto art, more artists could sell their work online and generate income as more and more people become interested in crypto art, they can view and buy these unique artworks online.At present, investors and media are focused on the prices of crypto art, not the crypto art itself. However, this does not necessarily mean a bad thing. On the contrary, these “fantastic” prices will greatly improve the willingness of more people to increase their appreciation level of artworks.In addition to what we could see, there are many applications on NFT that we could not see.For example, other than crypto art, there are NFT staking and mining, blockchain games, NFT-based entry tickets, NFT-based sports star cards, including the Metaverse concept that is trending recently.We may not see how NFT’s future will prosper in the areas mentioned above, and it is more difficult to predict whether the other areas can be fruitful. Like the early days of the internet, many people could not predict the internet era today. In the early days of Bitcoin, only a few people have foreseen its future. Before 2019, a lot of people did not expect that ETH would develop into a settlement currency.The internet, monopolized by giants monopolize, has grown involute, but the blockchain technology itself makes the blockchain industry full of more unknowns and possibilities, which is why NFT is so attractive.Note: This article only represents the author’s personal views. It does not represent MEXC Research’s opinion and does not constitute any suggestions for making investments.

[mexcexchangenews]

MEXC Research: From 2D Art to Original Crypto Art, Brief Analysis on the Revolution Brought by NFT to Digital Art

The subject of this article began at the end of March this year when Beeple, the digital artist’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” was sold at Christie’s auction for $69,346 thousand USD. The gavel’s bang triggered a storm across the cryptocurrency circle, traditional art circle, and the media to proclaim, “Such A High Price!”.

One of the animated art pieces named “CROSSROAD” was sold at 3,789.118 ETH, worth about $6.6 million USD at that time.

Many people have questioned how a picture in JPG and PNG format could be auctioned at such a high price one after another? It was remarkable.

On one side, people discussed the ownership of the artworks, a crypto art piece where whoever in possession of the“secret key” of the artwork can exercise the ownership of the particular artwork.

On the other hand, people thought that these “JPG” and “PNG” could be downloaded directly to be viewed anytime, anywhere with a similar viewing effect. So, why pay such a high price to buy “Ownership”?

Another problem is that these online crypto artworks are much less effective than the artworks that can be viewed offline, making it hard to cause the “David Syndrome”.

The three questions are all part of the same issue: Is On-chain Artwork a pseudo demand? This can be viewed from many perspectives.

We have put aside architectural art and statuary art to review the artwork of mankind. From Ancient Greek and Roman art to modern art, from the Renaissance period’s art to modern art, all human history condensed into a three-dimensional or even multi-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface.

It was until people could use electricity, invent lights and movies. In creating contemporary art, artists are no longer limited to creations on two-dimensional planes, through the use of mechanical tools to create three- or more dimensional digital artworks through sound, lights, and electricity.

Beeple’s “Crossroad” is a 10-second animated crypto artwork. It might be difficult for the artists to fully express the “theme” they wanted if put on a two-dimensional surface. This is the most significant difference between digital art and traditional art is the carrying method.

In this case, by comparing digital art and traditional art, both are actually the two parallel universes of virtual and reality. The former has changed how art is carried and enjoyed, so the two types of art will produce two parallel markets.

In this way, NFT’s application in the crypto art field shows prominent importance. Why do we say so?

There are two types of crypto art at present; one is NFT-lizing (Art + NFT) traditional artworks, such as Injective Protocol, the blockchain company bought “Morons” for $95,000 USD from a British graffiti artist named Banksy at Taglialatella gallery in New York. The artwork was burned after NFT-lization later on, then the NFT version of “Morons” was successfully sold at 228.69 ETH.

For this kind of extreme behavior, we can call it the combination of traditional art and NFT. The other type is an original crypto art creation, where the artists create the digital art first and then NFT-lize the art.

For example, we will not make any comments on the artistic level of the artwork “Da Meeting”. The creator may follow the recreation of Angolo Bronzino’s famous work “An Allegory with Venus and Cupid”. (Note: Recreating does not mean imitating. There were many famous paintings and sculptures recreated based on the story of Venus and Cupid.)

Fontdona pulled out Venus and Cupid, placed them through Cyberpunk’s perspective, with the weightless astronaut that is moving. Similarly, if it was on a paper or board, the author will not be able to fully express what they want to deliver on such two-dimensional surfaces.

Other than Beeple’s “CROSSROAD” and Fontana’s “Da Meeting”, the crypto art websites are full of similar non-“traditional” art paintings. We can define these crypto artworks as original artworks.

For original crypto art, their uniqueness and immutability make the ownership matter particularly important. The authenticity identification of traditional artwork requires humane professionalism because the differences in personal experience, level, and tools will form different conclusions, leading to misjudgment. However, the uniqueness, authenticity, and ownership of crypto art must be beyond all doubts.

When compared to “Art+NFT”, original crypto art creations will never cause debates on “What is the meaning of On-chain” because original art itself is based on digital art.

From the above, we could see that: On-chain art is not necessarily a pseudo demand. However, NFT for native crypto art, the proof of demand is self-evident, and it will certainly bring forth a revolution.

Moreover, by comparing traditional art and digital art, crypto art has attributes such as authenticity, uniqueness, and rights, giving the crypto art collections worth and trading value.

This makes crypto art more universal than the previous digital art and not limited to a smaller crowd of people. In the past, we use to enjoy the artworks mostly by visiting offline art galleries, and the creator’s income had limitations. With the arrival of crypto art, more artists could sell their work online and generate income as more and more people become interested in crypto art, they can view and buy these unique artworks online.

At present, investors and media are focused on the prices of crypto art, not the crypto art itself. However, this does not necessarily mean a bad thing. On the contrary, these “fantastic” prices will greatly improve the willingness of more people to increase their appreciation level of artworks.

In addition to what we could see, there are many applications on NFT that we could not see.

For example, other than crypto art, there are NFT staking and mining, blockchain games, NFT-based entry tickets, NFT-based sports star cards, including the Metaverse concept that is trending recently.

We may not see how NFT’s future will prosper in the areas mentioned above, and it is more difficult to predict whether the other areas can be fruitful. Like the early days of the internet, many people could not predict the internet era today. In the early days of Bitcoin, only a few people have foreseen its future. Before 2019, a lot of people did not expect that ETH would develop into a settlement currency.

The internet, monopolized by giants monopolize, has grown involute, but the blockchain technology itself makes the blockchain industry full of more unknowns and possibilities, which is why NFT is so attractive.

Note: This article only represents the author’s personal views. It does not represent MEXC Research’s opinion and does not constitute any suggestions for making investments.

[wholeworldbroken]

PART 1)  Net Neutrality, Hypernormalization, The Dinosaur Who Swindled Natural Selection & Prospered... AND... The Healthy Benefits Of Paranoid Delusional Psychosis.

TV is a dinosaur sinking into the tar. All those once giant networks are scrambling to survive just a little longer in this technological age that left them behind before they noticed. That Netflix model is alot bigger deal than it's given credit for. It's what reshaped HULU until it went legitimate. It's why there's an HBOGO, STARZ, SHOWTIME, etc. app that all outperform their parent networks.

The power of ON-DEMAND blew Amazon up from a more Wal-Marty version of eBay to the titan it is now. Disney is gearing up to yank all Star Wars, Marvel, Indiana Jones, etc. properties from Netflix to add to their own upcoming streaming channel. Even the underdogs that only Netflix could make into giant hits: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, The Defenders and The Punisher (not so much IronFist) are being carted over to the new Disney service without so much as a "thank you for making this possible" to Netflix.

CBS launched theirs earlier this year with the added ammo of the most expensive Star Trek series to date, Discovery, being only available through their site. We'll probably see about 10 new changeovers this coming year. Comcast, Verizon and Slime-Warner know that we'll pay $8 here, $10 there for the convenience of catching all that exclusive content completely at our lesiure, always waiting as soon as we feel like tapping that PLAY button.

So, the dinosaur is slowly inching across the quicksand, dragging its rip-off cable model over to the internet, embracing the technology of the future while still thriving off the scams of the past. Even Youtube, which was kind of a revolution in independent, DIY content creators and previously muted voices now given a somewhat worldwide platform, finding an audience without having to bow to the old media gatekeepers

(the Merv Griffins, Johnny Carsons, Entertainment Tonights, Morning Shows, blah, blah, blah, who were able to get rich off the young, hopefuls kissing the asses of whoever would help them be seen, LONG before any of the actual talent was consistently turning a profit. Completely self -regenerating. You can burn up the lump of coal till it's all disintegrated, but the machine ALWAYS got fresh coal being shoveled in the fire, baby)

... is now flooded with Jimmy Kimmel, SNL, Paramount, Disney studios, which seems like normal that those sketches, clips, movie trailers would end up archived on youtube...

until you consider that youtubers are paid through Google Adsense, and receive a monetary amount per video play featuring ads that are part of the program. The success and general public hunger for these independent creators has multiplied the number of young, self-made millionaires over the last 10 years. So, in come the dinosaurs, dragging that dirty-old-bag of crooked-old-ways with them.

Now you got NBC, uploading individual sketches from SNL, a television show that makes its revenue from tv ads & endorsements, each video cashing in on adsense profits seperately, rivaling the numbers from the original airing of the whole episode. Jimmy Fallon, Dr. Phil... practically EVERYbody is clawing & scratching for that youtube money all the kids were syphoning away from them. Whatever.

Big, ugly business, but still business. Dog eat dog & all that.

But what about commercials? Who the fuck clicks on the new TIDE ad showing up in their youtube feed? SOMEbody, cause it's got, like, a bajillion clicks. Are companies drafting interns to generate views and cash in on adsense? Hey, I'm paranoid, but if stupid old ME thought of it...

So, you seen the new Star Wars trailer? Shit, EACH newer version, starting with the teaser? How many did you see on youtube? ...and when you click that movie COMMERCIAL, like magic, you gotta sit through a goddamn COMMERCIAL before you can watch the COMMERCIAL you voluntarily chose to endure. Shit. I'll be DAMNED if, half the time, the ad that comes up isn't another trailer for another movie, usually from a whole other studio. Think Disney/StarWars minds you got a sneak taste of GrownUps 3 while you were waiting to drool all over a 30-second montage of disjointed scenes arranged to grease the dollar bills out of your wallet come Christmas time? `</pre> They just got paid by Adam Sandler's scam of a company for you to wait out the 5 seconds to click away from his bullshit and get up in them Star Wars guts... several million times... by an unrelated company willing to pay the opponent team for the luxury of dropping a commercial on the front of their commercial... leading to Disney (only an example. This is some across the board shit) making millions off a commercial designed to set up an installment in a franchise that will bring them automatic billions. <pre>` It's Terry Gilliam level absurdity that we've indoctrinated ourselves, as a species, to accept as "successful business practices", as we dream of one day carving our very own little chunk of the abstract money scheme balogna. I don't pretend to have a better, more functional answer than: try to resist as much of the barrage as you can, of huckster salesmen who have studied the best psychological methods of Stockholming your oblivious ass into not only continuing to prop up their pyramid scheme and perpetuating their boss's greedy manipulation of the entire world by way of its set-up-to-fail economic machinations `</pre> but ALSO, to constantly strengthen your faith in the infallible logic of those same machinations with a passion that is prepared to DESTROY any anomalous dissenters, selfish enough to be randomly fertilized and born into their designated gangsign annotated factions dividing up larger, further established, gangsign brandishing nation-states, yet still possessing the ingratious self-serving personality defect of introspection, empathy & existential contemplation. ** incoming** __VOICE__OF__GREAT__MACHINATION__LEADER,__STIFFY__O'FOOFYSKINS______ <pre>` "The enemy is all around and they hate your way of life. They whisper corruption into the ears of our unsuspecting younger generations. They bombard you with an agenda of moral codes & ideals in direct conflict to the ones you were taught. If you love the random patch of land you literally had more of a chance to be born outside of than in `</pre> and you're not some kind of infidel, basking in the luxuries provided by your assigned locale while remaining unwilling to offer up your mortal life to assure its continuation, then you already know that the RIGHT thing to do, the divine purpose you feel pumping through your heart, is stand tall & be ready to hoist your team's flag should it fall. The enemy wants to see you fail so that it can pillage its way to the holy finish line which was divinely entitled to YOU and the rest of the good guys. It preaches demoralizing propaganda designed to weaken your resolve & raise doubt toward your righteous goals. It knows ways to steal the food from your family's table... even steal your established identity and celebrate its wicked victories by splurging on the fruit sewed by YOUR noble labors. This is your preconceived understanding of the truth. There are higher levels of truth that only pertain to you as part of a bigger picture, but you need not concern yourself with such perplexing pokings & proddings into the corners of your manufactured reality. Take comfort in the ebb & flow of a pristine, global bureaucracy that, on the surface, appears to malfunction as a chaotic dumpster fire of social upheaval, random acts of blatantly hateful terrorism and increasingly violent natural disasters reminding each & every one of us that we are vulnerable and the only shelter comes from the sinister embrace of the leaders we ourselves chose to govern us, simply because that is the way the world has worked for much longer than our insignificant participation would justify constructing a new means of stability. Best not to stress over such uncontrollable details. GREEN has always meant GO. RED has always signified a mandatory STOP. ...And that proverbial cheese at the end of the maze, ever taunting the entire roster of teams? It's laced with the affectionate tongue-kiss of cyanide, the ultimate reward for any group that is able to pull ahead of the hordes and slamdunk their Nerf football into the victory bonfire. IT'S MILLER TIME... Because being on the winning team isn't what's important: WHAT COUNTS IS THAT YOUR TEAM DESTROYED AS MUCH OF THE OPPOSITION'S LIFE & LIVELIHOOD AS WAS POSSIBLE." <pre>` Over moral posturings? Over indignant evildoings? In a race to prove to the creator that your team is comprised of his chosen people and is ready to accept the role as His Holy Assassins? Over the truth behind 9/11? Over the ongoing argument concerning the actual SHAPE of the planet & the legitimacy of the very science we thought we understood, but very well may have been meticulously devised to support our indoctrinated "understanding" of a globe-shaped world, hurling through space in a cosmic dance with the star, SOL, spinning on an axis that brings it around 360° every 24 hours and marking the outlines of our 24 hour day... 7 day week... our 12 month year... An indoctrination so effective, most of us never once stop to entertain the notion that, at its essence, the concept of time in this manner, the 7 day work week (uncannily similar to the 7 days required to create the world), the weather defining 12 months adhered to by the Gregorian calendar could very logically, and historically likely, be an immeasurable, blanket imprisonment of individual human perceptions, compressing the infinite possibilities of each reality into a much more predictable & controllable number. Wrangling in those erratic, chaos-prone, possible realities that could ultimately crash the entire capitalist cabal so dependent on limiting the imaginations & therefore, the entire concept of the fabric of reality & the universe across an entire planet's population. Outrageous, right? Borderline psychotic levels of paranoia, layered with simple, obnoxious denial and a shot or 2 of worst-case-scenario gullibility, YEARS worth of nonsensical research into the ravings of like-minded lunatics whose infectious delusions have consistently contributed to the disenfranchisement and downfall of multiple promising, yet dangerously curious intellects dating all the way back to the first significant population booms & those resultant social structures that merely sought to stifle the all too common, human urge to casually rape & kill each other on the slightest of whims. When viewed in THAT light, maybe that original intent wasn't so awful. Maybe somebody just had to think of something, like, QUICK.

WE INTERRUPT THIS LITERATAL ILLUSTRATION OF AN IMPLODING BRAIN'S LAST, DESPERATE GRASP AT UNDERSTANDING TO BRING YOU THIS TEMPORARILY DEBILITATING ANXIETY ATTACK...

[fredboyman]

Painting

From mid to late February I started painting with oils. The very first one is a painting I have done improvising and getting the feel of the different paint and the chemicals to dilute; as a matter of fact this painting is made with much lighter layers of paint compared to what I would then appreciate later on. The outcome shows a figure and some of it is mirrored in front. This an echo of my previous explorations of the ideas of Copy and Paste, and using a digital approach in a different context.

In retrospect I’m realizing how painting has become very much a reflective practice, which allows me to create freely, remixing my own ideas and interests and subject matters. These paintings also function as a diary of my theoretical findings.

The second painting was made in my garden, en plein air. I started with blocking out different areas of the canvas. The idea is to have different settings in the same image, different windows offering a view to a different moment. The oil paint also has open the view to a connection with sculpture, in fact as I started using thicker paint the outcome would feel like a middle ground between sculpture and image. This painting was created from memory and I wanted to mix a domestic setting with a dream state. As a matter of fact, since then most of my paintings have been created from memories or memories of dreams.

 At the time I created this painting, I was reading about Alvin Lucier’s Music for a Solo Performer, in which the artist points out the subjectivity of reality and its experiencing. Reading about this concept has validated my idea of representing personal realities, which are nothing  but a mixture between the real and how it is perceived, and imaginary ones which are again just a remix of experience, usually coming from dream states or similar. I have developed and distilled a disinterest for representing reality for what it is but rather I’m interested in representing a processed reality. In this painting I have made use of elements that are referencing to aspects of my practice like the vase at the centre of the image, similar to a previously made sculpture or the Tv sets in the left bottom corner, expressing my interest in obsolete means of communication.

Following up is a painting I created in the studio as we got back access. In a similar way to the previous painting I created blocks of solid colour to delineate different windows or instances. The inspiration for this painting comes from reading Steve Reich’s Wavelenght (1968), the description of the artist’s idea for a film, where a certain focus is set on the 60 cycle hum of an oscillator. Curiously enough the same day I was using after a long while my own oscilloscope. Reich also mentions “ There’s a man on my floor and he’s dead” , from which comes the title of the painting, R.I.P. My man, which simultaneously is a response to the title of a song, Kill yourself My man, by rapper and Internet personality Viper. This painting is a reference to internet culture as well as to the obsolete technology, explained by other elements represented. I also included a reference to my previous video Operator.

The next painting started as the previous ones, blocking out areas to then act as different planes. However I messed up mixing the paint which became too diluted and I had to clean the canvas and start again. By using oil paint I also learned that it doesn’t matter if something goes wrong, because it’s always possible to start over. This painting identifies a moment when I actively decided to remove as much as possible any sort of facial feature. I initially painted the figure with facial features, but I thought it was too polarizing, so I then decided to scrape them off. This is done to shut the representation from any sort of empathy from the viewer. These are personal closed realities, that don’t want to allow for any identification.

Artists that I resonate with regarding the facelessness of characters include Magritte, De Chirico and Samorì. Magritte faceless characters have been interpreted as a way to hide someone’s real self, representing the impossibility to truly “read” someone’s personality. De Chirico similarly made use of faceless dummies to express the mysterious nature of Metaphysical representations. Generally the lack of facial feature is understood as unsettling and possibly as a threat; when we can’t recognize facial features, the brain triggers a response as feeling unsafe due to the uncanny nature of such representation.

Nicola Samorì, is an Italian artist recognizable for the faceless reinterpretation of Sixteenth century paintings. What appears in his paintings are dark, violent and unsettling figures. The scraping, breaking, and melting of the faces represents the materiality of sacred images. By manipulating these representations the artist removes the illusionistic veil of the sacred image, as well as enhancing the dark nature of religious impositions.

For this painting I chose to represent the elements as flat as possible, intentionally making them look as stickers on a surface. That’s done to explicit the bi-dimensionality of images, however set in contrast with the use of thick paint, resulting in objects applied on a surface. The subject for the painting comes from a memory of me and a friend of mine, around 10 years ago, when would go and rent videotapes from an automatic distributor.

Another artist I’m taking inspiration from is Motohiro Hayakawa. Elements that I’m borrowing and getting influenced from are his use of isometric prospective, the use of motifs and repetition (in the same image or between different images) and the composition presenting diverse situations simultaneously. Also another main element I resonate with is the type of subjects he represents, which borrow themselves from Sci-fi tradition, Japanese B-movies, and comics.

Lastly this is the painting in which I made the informed decision of completely removing the head of characters. I got interested in the concept of decapitation, which is the only certain way of killing any living being. I make use of this representation characteristic to specify that these are not alive characters, but dead representations, a memory of alive only in the past. The reality that is being displayed is necessarily dead, as it is literally only a representation. The subject matter of this painting is the dreadful feeling experienced when in a new  take-away restaurant for the first time, and not knowing what to order. Clearly I’m making use of a comical exaggeration, but it is paired with real fear.

In regard to the comic inspired art I’m also taking influence from the aesthetic of Philip Guston, with his representations full of narrative and characters that are represented boldly, and cartoonish. Within this painting I’m making use of painting devices I have figured out with the previous works, for example the mirrored character, enhanced by a dotted line connecting the two, also a symbol of communication, as well as the positioning of the characters and elements so to allow for a virtual space in between them; overlapping the elements allows for the emergence of space making the image look extended and fuller. Enhancing the fullness of the image is also allowed by thick paint. More and more I got used to apply more paint, which results in a interesting in-between of bi-dimensional and three-dimensional.

[plunder-heaven-and-devour-god]

This fan base never ceases to amaze me. Apparently, no one moved pass their SuperWhoLock mentality.

I loved the film, but I’m still adjusting, that is all I will say about the Last Jedi. 

Having a good or bad reaction to the content does not bar me from critiquing any production experience of a major film franchise. I can admire a film franchise I dont like for its creativity and cast and crew, and I can critique one I do like for where it goes wrong. 

But I have written this as a reaction the internet’s hatred toward’s Rian Johnson, not the film, not his choices, not Lucasfilm’s or Disney’s choices. That is an entirely different subject. This is about the hatred that sprung from the ground like oil out of nowhere. This dirty oil did not exists before December 15th. 

Where to start?

People are pulling up out of context interviews and tweets to make it seem that Rian Johnson was hated by the cast and no one wanted to work with him. I’ve seen every accusation under the sun. If you ask Tumblr, Reddit, IGN, etc, he’s everything from racist to Cthulhu. 

This type of reaction from the internet is predictive and cyclical. 

There was, and still is, a camp of disatisfied star wars fans born in 2015 dedicated to defaming J.J Abrams and The Force Awakens. This was in the wake of the criticism that The Force Awakens was too similar to A New Hope. Coincidence? If you said no, you’re right. 

But back to Rian. 

I want to state here and now that I don’t have a rosy tinted view of the production, I’m not saying everyone warmed quickly to the plot points of The Last Jedi. I want to state that no one, strangely, had a problem with the director. That’s it.

I hope that I can bring up some points that are on record to remind people, that maybe, if not surely, that this criticism is transparent and stupid. 

There was a slow evolution for the actors, like many of the avid star wars fan, to adjust to the change in gear for the franchise. I find it especially amazing that Mark Hamill went out of his way to publicly state his wariness and the disagreements on the script which the late Carrie Fisher collaborated on with Rian Johnson. Hamill came back and said he was wrong and now he is utterly in tune with Rian’s vision. If there were any hard feelings left they wouldn’t have mentioned it on the press tour. This isn’t remotely reminiscent of Chris Hemsworth staring into camera during the 2015 Ultron Press Tour and saying: I had no clue what was going on. 

If Hamill and Johnson hadn’t reconciled you can bet that their original disagreement wouldn’t have made itself known on the Star Wars 40th Anniversary Celebration Stage. If audiences want to counter and say that it was Disney’s plan all along to bolster the image of the Last Jedi, go ahead, it’s a damn good strategy. People disagree in creative circles, and to have one publicly state their agreement is a good thing. 

Carrie Fisher didn’t seem to be the only collaborator. Rian Johnson and John Boyega inform interviewers on separate occasions about how happy they were to work on progressing Finn’s character together. John Boyega took a huge lead in strengthening the character and making him stronger, he even cites rian’s auteurship as the reason for the maneuver room in the franchise. 

Gwendoline Christie also cites Rian’s collaboratory attitude when forging ahead with Phasma’s story. Oddly enough so does Oscar Isaac.

Daisy Ridley speaks about her wariness for the direction of the franchise as well. But she also speaks on how open the director was to input and how much he tried to make everyone feel comfortable. I say this because I saw someone pull up a tweet of Daisy’s reaction to J.J coming back to work on IX. The article states she apparently was delighted and cried with joy at the TFA director’s return. The blog post framed it as a relief and reprieve from Rian’s supposed reign of terror. This sounds very silly because J.J Abrams wasn’t AWOL during pre-production, production and post: He’s the producer. Not even executive producer. Producer. He is also present for writing/directing the third installment in the trilogy. The most important detail left out was that this was a reaction to Colin Trevormorrow who was slated to direct the third installment. I believe he left on creative differences with the Walt Disney corporation and lucasfilm. His vision for the film was not in tune with the direction of the movie. This was also a secondary source article, there was a clear bias in the words spoken by the article. 

Speaking of bias, the internet loves screenshots, so much so that they become subsitutes to whole videos and dialogues. An out of context picture is misleading, for better of worse.

The cast joke about the poker faces during interviews because their NDA comes with a side order of Mickey Mouse Snipers. But yet, bloggers on the internet take screencaps of the interviews mid questions and post them with captions like: They’re hiding their hatred for the director and/or the movie. In reality, they’re in the middle of listening to a question or trying to not react to a spoiler. If any of you have seen anything of the press tour, most of it is the cast trying to keep a straight face and avoid spoilers. And trust me, I watched the entirety of the press tour, I know which moments were screenshotted. 

If this sounds familiar it’s because the internet is predictable. This is beginning to sound a lot like how people tried to frame Adam Driver like some sort of 9/11 bigoted ex-soldier with no respect for his cast mates after TFA. There was divisive crowd who initiated a backlash against him simply because they didnt like the character. Remember half the reason he isn’t in most of the press junkets and press conferences? Half of it is his self proclaimed discomfort at the whole idea of the spotlight. But it isn’t absurd to think the other half is unfounded backlash he receives for his character.

I saw people also quoted one of Adam’s interviews and his feeling on 9/11 and left it at that. The blogger made it seem like he was what all liberals fear. They forgot to mention his exit from the Marines, the creation of his foundation for returning War Vets and reintegration and encouragement through the arts as a way to explore trauma. When I did my gendered violence class we found a Ted Talk with him talking about the toxic masculinity of the US military complex. It’s a great speech and its deeply profound. If you really care about feminist issues and the nature of the military backbone in the United States there is some great reading I can recommend but this is a good start.

I don’t want anyone to mistake my fondness for any of the characters for any biased defense. They are people too, they aren’t perfect, but they aren’t evil incarnate. I’m not opposed to dumping a content creator like a hot potato for violation of ethical rights and questionable conflicts in production. 

This is all to say that Tumblr finds ways to do what all bad journalists do: commence head hunts through clipped interviews, out of context quotes,images, and pseudo liberal pitchfork waving. 

I’m half expecting half the disgruntled fans to be Alicia Silverstone in the Scooby Doo movies. So much of the hatred on the internet feels like Freddie’s dialgue cut together to say: I THINK COOLSVILLE SUCKS.

All for what? For the same reason they don’t like the new movie. They’ll skim the surface for buzz words, absorb misunderstood information, and ignore internal meaning, and cast aside the answers to their questions which are explicitly stated. 

Until I see any facts that actually exist outside the draconian and dogmatic bubble of Tumblr’s bowels I think its safe to say that Rian and the cast are A-Okay with one another. I’m not avoiding being convinced, I just hope people can see HOW SILLY IT ALL SOUNDS.

It seems like we haven’t really progressed from the SuperWhoLock Days? Huh, Tumblr? It just seems to hide behind seemingly more lofty righteous reasons. 

[jaideneiay162-blog]

3 Reasons Your cmcpoker Is Broken (And How to Fix It)

32 Crimson on-line poker is a favourite with players of all abilities and with players from the other side of the globe. The thing is, enjoying on the net isn't a completely new idea. Taking part in Texas HoldEm Poker on the web is often exciting nevertheless it might also be perilous.

™

Possessing a deal with is just not ample to win you the game. If you're associated with Online games, you will not ever have a chance to understand who your adversary is. Your method will be employed each instant, but might quite a little bit dependant on some adjustments You could have to make throughout the activity.

So for anyone who is aiming to generally be the god'' of the game Or perhaps to build right into a Professional which other avid gamers will surface on in cyberspace check out to consider taking part in it a lot more normally. The very fact with the poker scene currently is that the majority players dispose of revenue. On Each individual one of many strains, you Perform in a certain activity it is best to guess a minumum of one coin.

The best technique to explain participating in in a 3D Poker can it be's like that of a complicated poker movie game you can find on match programs similar to a PS3 or an Xbox 360. As an example Poker Stars is greatly viewed as the best internet poker Match web site on earth, but there are actually arguably improved cash-activity Web-sites. one game that has won around lots of people during the last handful of several years is poker.

A third way during which an internet poker Web page may be good for you is in case you enjoy pleasure and want to play much more than one sport without delay. Do you usually observe a great deal of the poker tournaments on the television, if that's the circumstance, check out who's sponsoring different tournaments, currently, it has been located that various distinctive Online poker Sites you are capable to Perform at are hosting them. Wide range in on line poker can easily preserve things pleasurable, or allow you to Identify the sport which you might be most snug with.

Just one table in conventional internet tournaments is sort of a microcosm in just a big multi-desk tournament. There are various sorts of mixed poker game titles. In reality, It is Virtually as very easy to comprehend and Enjoy as common on-line slot video games.

Eventually it may be much better decide on more than 1 web site, needless to say, and register, deposit and Engage in some hands basically to determine which one that you delight in additional. In different sorts, gambling can be operate with materials which have a price, but are not serious revenue idn poker . All Online pokers should bear in mind the randomness of your shuffler is vital.

At CelebPoker you are likely to get to be aware of a lot of poker gamers from throughout the planet, and it truly is a perfect venue for meeting up with your folks where ever They're! One example is, some rooms will provide a large indicator-up reward that will take a substantial amount of time and energy to unlock. Hence the quite initially issue to look for is to discover whether the poker on-line website is a popular 1 that folks are Talking about in the optimistic way.

Another benefit of actively playing Internet on-line may be the increase from the choice of palms you could possibly Perform. Online Poker has become a considerable strike over the past several years, and it seems to generally be like that for time to come. Some poker rooms ensure it is challenging to amass your money out after you've won, and a few deficiency The client help to make visitors sense relaxed.

Gin Rummy is one of the most popular types of rummy. The sport is normally performed by two gamers, each getting ten playing cards. Here's an write-up by David Parlett around the Heritage of Gin Rummy, which was originally revealed on the sport Account web-site.

Note: I are already instructed that among some gamers the name Gin Rummy in truth refers not to to the sport described below, but to the game which known as five hundred Rum on this Web-site.

We would like to thank the next lover web sites for his or her support:

Adda52 Rummy delivers Dwell, multiplayer 13 and 21 Card Indian Rummy on the net and Android telephones and tablets. It truly is owned by Gaussian Networks and was registered in 2012.

The affiliate firm Raketech was Established in 2010 by professional poker players Erik Skarp and Johan Svensson. They obtained Casinofeber.se in 2018 and that is a leading On line casino comparison portal in Sweden. It's now edited by Daniel Stenlok in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The Deck

A person standard deck of fifty two cards is used. Cards in Just about every accommodate rank, from reduced to superior:

Ace two three four 5 6 seven 8 nine ten Jack Queen King.

The playing cards have values as follows:

Encounter playing cards (K,Q,J) ten details

Ace 1 point

Range playing cards are worthy of their place (index) worth.

The Deal

The very first vendor is picked randomly by drawing playing cards within the shuffled pack - the player who attracts the lessen card specials. Subsequently, the vendor could be the loser on the previous hand (but see variants). In a significant video game, both of those gamers really should shuffle, the non-supplier shuffling very last, as well as non-dealer need to then Lower.

Just about every player is dealt 10 cards, separately. The twenty-to start with card is turned withstand begin the discard pile and the rest in the deck is put experience down beside it to kind the stock. The players check out and type their playing cards.

Item of the sport

The article of the sport is to collect a hand where by most or the entire playing cards might be blended into sets and operates and the point value of the remaining unmatched cards is low.

a run or sequence is made of 3 or even more playing cards of the same accommodate in consecutive order, for instance club4, club5, club6 or heart7, heart8, heart9, heart10, heartJ.

a set or team is three or four cards of precisely the same rank, for example diamond7, heart7, spade7.

A card can belong to just one combination at a time - You can't use the identical card as Component of equally a list of equal cards as well as a sequence of consecutive cards concurrently. By way of example When you have diamond7, spade7, heart7, heart8, heart9 you can use the heart7 both to generate a set of three sevens or possibly a heart sequence, but not equally without delay. To variety a set along with a sequence you would want a sixth card - possibly a club7 or even a heart10.

Notice that in Gin Rummy the Ace is often small. A-two-3 is a sound sequence but A-K-Q just isn't.

Enjoy

A standard change contains two parts:

The Attract. You will need to get started by taking 1 card from possibly the very best in the inventory pile or the top card about the discard pile, and adding it to the hand. The discard pile is facial area up, in order to see upfront what you're receiving. The stock is encounter down, Therefore if you decide on to attract in the stock you don't see the card till after you have fully commited you to acquire it. For those who draw from your inventory, you include the cardboard to your hand without having showing it to another gamers.

The Discard To finish your change, just one card should be discarded out of your hand and placed on prime of your discard pile facial area up. In the event you took the very best card through the discard pile, you must discard a unique card - using the best discard and putting a similar card back in exactly the same transform is not permitted. It can be nevertheless legal to discard a card which you took with the discard pile within an before switch.

For the main flip of the hand, the attract is completed inside of a Unique way. Very first, the one that did not offer chooses irrespective of whether to take the turned up-card. In the event the non-vendor declines it, the seller could take the card. If both of those gamers refuse the turned-up card, the non-seller draws the best card from the inventory pile. Whichever player took a card completes their switch by discarding then it is the other participant's flip to Participate in.

Knocking

You can finish the Perform at your flip if, right after drawing a card, you can type adequate of your respective cards into valid combinations: sets and operates. This is often done by discarding a single card deal with down about the discard pile and exposing your full hand, arranging it as significantly as is possible into sets (groups of equal cards) and runs (sequences). Any remaining cards from your hand which are not A part of a legitimate mixture are identified as unmatched playing cards or deadwood. and the overall price of your deadwood need to be 10 points or much less. Ending the Engage in in this manner is recognized as knocking, presumably because it was once signalled from the participant knocking within the desk, although these days it can be normal just to discard deal with down. Knocking with no unmatched playing cards whatsoever is called likely gin, and earns a Particular reward. (Note. Even though most hands that go gin have a few mixtures of 4, 3 and 3 cards, it is feasible and flawlessly legal to go gin with two 5-card sequences.)

A participant who can meet the prerequisite of not more than 10 deadwood can knock on any switch, including the to start with. A participant is rarely compelled to knock if in the position to, but might pick in its place to carry on playing, to try for getting an improved rating.

The opponent from the participant who knocked ought to distribute their playing cards confront-up, arranging them into sets and operates wherever possible. Supplied that the knocker didn't go gin, the opponent is also permitted to lay off any unmatched playing cards through the use of them to extend the sets and runs laid down because of the knocker - by incorporating a fourth card of the same rank to a bunch of three, or even further consecutive playing cards of a similar match to either end of a sequence. (Be aware. Cards can not be laid off on deadwood. One example is if the knocker has a set of twos as deadwood and the opponent has a 3rd two, this cannot be laid off about the twos to create a established.)

If a participant goes gin, the opponent is not really allowed to lay off any cards.

Notice which the knocker isn't allowed to lay off playing cards on the opponent's sets or operates.

The Enjoy also finishes If your inventory pile is lowered to 2 playing cards, along with the participant who took the 3rd past card discards with no knocking. In such cases the hand is cancelled, there's no rating, and the exact same supplier promotions yet again. Some Enjoy that after the participant who took the 3rd very last inventory card discards, another participant can take this discard for the purpose of heading gin or knocking following discarding a distinct card, but when one other participant does neither of these the hand is cancelled.

Scoring

Each and every player counts the overall benefit of their unmatched playing cards. In case the knocker's count is decreased, the knocker scores the difference between The 2 counts.

If your knocker didn't go gin, and also the counts are equivalent, or the knocker's count is larger than that with the opponent, the knocker has long been undercut. In this instance the knocker's opponent scores the difference between the counts moreover a ten issue reward.

A player who goes gin scores a bonus twenty factors, plus the opponent's rely in unmatched cards, if any. A participant who goes gin can by no means be undercut. Regardless of whether another participant has no unmatched cards at all, the person heading gin receives the twenty issue bonus another participant scores practically nothing.

The game carries on with further offers until one player's cumulative score reaches one hundred details or maybe more. This participant then receives an extra bonus of 100 details. When the loser failed to rating anything in the least during the game, then the winner's reward is two hundred details instead of 100.

In addition, Just about every player adds an extra 20 points for each hand they gained. This can be called the line reward or box reward. These more points can't be counted as Section of the 100 needed to acquire the sport.

Once the bonuses have been additional, the player With all the decrease score pays the participant with the upper score an quantity proportional to the distinction between their scores.

Versions

Many publications give the rule the winner of each hand bargains another. Some Perform which the switch to offer alternates.

Some players begin the sport in different ways: the non-dealer gets eleven playing cards along with the dealer ten, and no card is turned up. The non-supplier's very first flip is solely to discard a card, and then the dealer usually takes a normal flip, drawing the discard or within the inventory, and play alternates as usual.

Although the traditional principles prohibit a participant from taking the preceding participant's discard and discarding exactly the same card, it is tough to think of a situation in which It might be advantageous To do that if it were being permitted. The Gin Rummy Association Guidelines do explicitly permit this Perform, even so the participant who originally discarded the card is then not permitted to retake it Until knocking on that change. The sport Colony Principles allow for it in a single unique condition - "action over the 50th card". Every time a participant usually takes the 3rd previous card of the stock and discards without knocking, leaving two cards inside the inventory, the opposite player has just one closing opportunity to go ahead and take discard and knock. During this placement, this identical card may be discarded - if it doesn't boost his hand, the participant simply turns it about within the pile to knock.

Some people Engage in the reward for likely gin is twenty five (rather then twenty) along with the bonus for an undercut is twenty (in lieu of 10). Some Engage in that the reward for an undercut, the bonus for likely gin, as well as box reward for every sport won are all twenty five details.

Some Participate in that In the event the loser didn't rating throughout the whole match, the winner's overall rating is doubled (instead of just doubling the one hundred video game reward to 200).

A collection of variations submitted by audience can be found around the Gin Rummy Variations web page.

Oklahoma Gin

Within this well known variation the value of the original face up card determines the maximum count of unmatched playing cards with which it can be done to knock. Images denote ten as regular. Therefore if a seven is turned up, in order to knock it's essential to decrease your count to 7 or much less.

If the initial confront up card can be a spade, the ultimate rating for that offer (which include any undercut or gin bonus) is doubled.

The concentrate on score for profitable Oklahoma Gin is mostly established at one hundred fifty in lieu of a hundred.

Some Participate in that if an ace is turned up you may only knock if you can go gin.

Some Perform that a participant who undercuts the knocker scores an extra box As well as the undercut bonus. Also a player who goes gin scores two extra boxes. These excess boxes are recorded on the scorepad; they don't count towards winning the sport, but at the end of the game they translate into 20 or twenty five points Each and every, together with the ordinary packing containers for palms received. If the up-card was a spade, you receive two added boxes for an undercut and four additional boxes for likely gin.

Fiddling with 3 or four Players.

When a few folks Enjoy gin rummy, the supplier deals to one other two players but isn't going to just take element in the Perform. The loser of every hand specials the following, which happens to be thus performed in between the winner plus the vendor of the previous hand.

4 men and women can Participate in as two partnerships. In such a case, Just about every player inside a team plays a individual game with among the opposing pair. Players alternate opponents, but remain in precisely the same groups. At the end of Every single hand, if both players over a group won, the workforce scores the entire in their points. If one participant from Every group received, the staff with the higher rating scores the main difference. The very first workforce whose cumulative score reaches one hundred twenty five factors or even more wins.

Other Gin Rummy internet pages

The Gin Rummy Affiliation's Gin Rummy Tournaments web page has information regarding forthcoming Gin Rummy occasions, such as normal Are living tournaments in Las Vegas, and the site includes a summary of The principles Employed in these tournaments.

The Gin Rummy webpages of Rummy-Online games.com give principles Extra resources for many Gin Rummy variants, in addition assessments of Gin Rummy program and online video games.

Quite a few variants of Gin Rummy are described on Howard Fosdick's web page (archive copy).

Gin Rummy procedures also are accessible on the cardboard Games Heaven Website.

An extensive list of guidelines for Gin Rummy in German can be found on Roland Scheicher's Gin Rummy webpage.

Rummy.ch can be a German language web page giving procedures for Gin Rummy and all kinds of other rummy online games, plus strategy content articles and assessments of on line rummy web sites and a forum.

Software program and Servers

Gin Rummy computer software:

Malcolm Bain's common Gin Rummy plan for Home windows is out there from Card Video games Galore.

A shareware Gin Rummy application can be downloaded from Meggiesoft Video games. A cost-free demo Edition is out there.

The gathering HOYLE Card Game titles for Home windows or Mac OS X includes a Gin Rummy program, coupled with a number of other well known card video games.

The Gin Rummy Professional computer application is out there from Recreasoft.

Special K Software package has application to Participate in the game of Gin Rummy. This software program is obtainable at

Most effective Gin Rummy by KuralSoft is often a application for iOS with which you'll be able to Perform Gin Rummy in opposition to a computer opponent.

Games4All has released a absolutely free Gin Rummy app to the Android platform.

Blyts have printed Gin Rummy Free in versions for iOS, Android and World wide web browser.

Servers for playing Gin Rummy on-line:

Gin Rummy League is often a totally free iPhone/iPad application for on the web Gin Rummy.

Activity Colony presents head to head Gin Rummy games and multi-participant tournaments, which can be played free of charge or for income prizes.

Net Gin Rummy, which lets you Participate in versus a computer opponent or which has a human opponent over the Internet, LAN, modem or immediate relationship, is out there from NetIntellGames.

Mystic Island

AOL online games (previously video games.com / Masque publishing) gives Gin Rummy and Oklahoma Gin

Gaming Safari

Ludopoli (Italian language)

PlayOK Online Online games (previously often known as Kurnik)

Globe of Card Video games

Cardzmania

Yimmaw

Gameslush.com provides an online

[sayantandodo]

HelloStar Shout Out Process & Difference between Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.

Augmented and virtual reality have one big thing in common. They both have the remarkable ability to alter our perception of the world. Where they differ, is the perception of our presence. Virtual reality is able to transpose the user. In other words, bring us someplace else. Through closed visors or goggles, VR blocks out the room and puts our presence elsewhere. Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, Google Cardboard, these are names you may have heard about by now. But if you haven’t tried virtual reality since that one arcade in the ’80s, be ready to be blown away by how far it’s come. Virtual reality (VR) immerses people in experiences, often with a lot of expensive technology such as headsets.

Augmented reality, on the other hand, usually starts with a real-life view of something (such as the camera of a mobile phone), and projects or inserts images onto the screen or viewer. Most people’s idea of virtual reality (VR) is heavily coloured by The Matrix, a tremendously popular 1999 movie about a deceptively realistic, virtual-reality future that was so indistinguishable from everyday life that the main characters originally believe that the simulation they’re in is real. Virtual reality is a computer-generated simulation of an alternate world or reality and is primarily used in 3D movies and in video games. Virtual reality creates simulations—meant to shut out the real world and envelope or “immerse” the viewer—using computers and sensory equipment such as headsets and gloves. Apart from games and entertainment, virtual reality has also long been used in training, education, and science. AR combines the physical world with computer-generated virtual elements. These elements are then projected over physical surfaces in reality within people’s field of vision, with the intent of combining the two to enhance one another.

Augmented reality inserts—or lays over—content into the real world using a device such as a smartphone screen or a headset. Whereas virtual reality replaces what people see and experience, augmented reality actually adds to it. Using devices such as HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Google Cardboard, VR covers and replaces users’ field of vision entirely, while AR projects images in front of them in a fixed area. Putting a VR headset over your eyes will leave you blind to the current world, but will expand your senses with experiences within. You might even find yourself on top of Mount Kilimanjaro. The immersion is quite dramatic, with some users reporting feelings of movement as they ascend a staircase or ride a rollercoaster within the virtual environment.

Mixed Reality (MR) is the use of both Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies to create an environment where physical and virtual objects can exist and interact in real-time. Mixed reality is a blend of physical and virtual worlds that includes both real and computer-generated objects. Mixed reality (MR) combines aspects of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). It sometimes called "enhanced" AR since it is similar to AR technology, but provides more physical interaction. Examples of augmented reality experiences include Snapchat lenses and the game Pokemon Go. There is also HelloStar Media who provides Augmented reality personalized video shout out services. When people require personalized video shout out messages HelloStar helps them. The requester can ask for a personalized message and the celebrity send a shout out message within few days.

Virtual reality (VR) implies a complete immersion experience that shuts out the physical world. In a Mixed Reality (MR) experience, which combines elements of both AR and VR, real-world and digital objects interact. At present, Mixed Reality (MR) systems are still being developed and fine-tuned. This technology is still not as widely available as separate VR and AR devices or software, although there are some real-world examples of mixed reality technologies in use today. Mixed reality devices like the Microsoft HoloLens 2 aren’t found everywhere just yet, although, with a steadily increasing number of applications and growing use in certain industrial and commercial fields, they certainly could be in the not-too-distant future. As we’ll see, most of the current use cases of mixed reality technologies are bespoke to a specific task or objective and have different applications within different fields or sectors.

Mixed reality is closer to augmented reality than virtual reality. Like MR, AR uses a real environment. It "augments" reality by overlaying virtual objects on top of it, such as a Snapchat filter. However, the user cannot interact directly with virtual objects. For example, AR has the capability to display a virtual 3D box on a physical table. With MR, the user might be able to pick up and open the box. VR entertainment has been around for decades and because of this, it’s the most acclimatized and most widely available of the three technologies. Augmented reality games and apps are coming out thick and fast since the success of Pokémon Go and there’s little reason to suspect they’ll disappear out anytime soon. But the mixed reality in entertainment is not only reserved for gaming.

AR and VR technology is improving so much that the film and big screen industry are after the vision of incorporating them into their movies. The idea of interactive storytelling which is a mix between a game and movie will open up lots of new doors for mixed reality. An example is the new Netflix series, You vs. Wild with adventure survivalist Bear Grylls, which lets you make decisions and change endings. Mixed reality entertainment is already here with companies like Magic Leap, Lucasfilm, and Industrial Light And Magic all looking to delve into mixed reality entertainment. For example, Magic Leap’s is embracing mixed reality in cinema by using what they call a Dynamic Digitised Lightfield Signal. Magic Leap’s tech projects images directly into the eye, without the need for it to bounce off an object and then head towards the eyes. This tricks the brain into thinking the object is there when in reality, it is a projection.

HelloStar shout out is another example of augmented reality and mixed reality. People who need personalized video messages from celebrities and influencers can send a request soon. The organization HelloStar is a medium between common people and their dream influencer. Whereas virtual reality replaces what people see and experience, augmented reality actually adds to it. Augmented reality uses existing reality and physical objects to trigger computer-generated enhancements over the top of reality, in real-time. As a person see their favourite celebrity on the screen of Television or internet device it is virtual reality. When the celebrity sends a personalized message or tags the fan somewhere it becomes an augmented reality.

The HelloStar team believes that there is a bigger untapped opportunity in India for the shout-out process, considering the craze around celebrities and influencer in India. The main objective behind starting up HelloStar is to shelter influencers in our business. Consuming the time, we want to spawn multiple revenue streams for them. Each influencer or celebrity who is listed on the HelloStar platform will get a satisfying rate. The user can click on their favourite celebrity and make a payment. he or she receives a shoutout within the next seven days. Any Bollywood celebrity who is used to be very close to his or her fans and care for their fans can join us. HelloStar Invites all. The influencers who stands on the platform made by their fans can easily make another source of money income. There are many content creators in local parts of India. Many of them got the golden play button from Youtube also. They feed on millions of Indian subscribers. The most interesting part is that the teenage and youngster public doesn’t miss any of their videos.

The educated young population loves virtual reality. Most of them wait for their beloved show to come in a different way with different content. Augmented Reality lets the user experience the real world, which has been digitally augmented or enhanced in HelloStar Application. Virtual Reality, on the other hand, removes the user from that real-world experience, replacing it with a completely simulated one. VR devices shut out the physical world completely. In other words, HelloStar AR allows influencers to enhance the current environment or situation by enriching the audience's perception through digitally enhanced stimulus. This is a huge distinction from VR which, although it immerses the viewer in a simulated environment, does not give the perception of the real world shifting. Influencers can reach audiences through HelloStar by sending personalized video messages and getting closer to them.

[vagarapida-xyz]

10 Tips For Telling Great Videostories

Today’s audiovisual world is filled with possibilities-- some are discovered in the method programs are revealed; others in the method they are produced. Something needs to make sure-- video will belong of your discussion-- a minimum of if you wish to make a genuine splash. 

   When you desire a sight-and-sound program to promote your business in individual or on the web, what do you ask for? Most likely a “Flash” or a “PowerPoint”. 

   This short article takes a look at the multimedia/video/presentation purchasing procedure and provides 10 factors to consider you require to make to effectively commission-- or produce-- your next significant audiovisual interaction. I hope you will embrace them. 

   PowerPoint? Video? 

   Flash is thought about hip, and PowerPoint is thought about a must. PowerPoint and Flash frequently are simply containers for VIDEO, simply as a VHS tape and a DVD are containers for video. 

   Concept, however not always the ideal specification. 

   When you’ve got a story to inform and it needs sight and noise, take care not to recommend the option too rapidly. One male’s PowerPoint nowadays is another female’s video. When individuals require something to run of their computer system, they’re fast to request “a PowerPoint program” or “among those ‘FLASH’ things.” 

   Do not pick the production technique exclusively on the circulation approach. 

   Simply since you desire your job on the web or on computer system CD-ROM, does not suggest it should not include-- or be-- video. Video is what the huge young boys utilize-- frequently, even in significant documentaries and movie. 

   2. Noise Is the Secret Weapon. 

   What’s the very first thing you keep in mind about “Star Wars”? Dah-dah, da-da-da dahhhh-dahhh! 

   Even in business videos, music plays an exceptionally crucial part. You ‘d be stunned how couple of manufacturers in fact recognize that. 

   An image deserves a thousand words? Music deserves a thousand feelings-- like commitment, belief, trust, interest-- all powerful predictors of efficiency. 

   Sound informs your audience how to feel; how to identify what’s essential; when to respond and how. 

   Yup, the music. And the sound results-- the hum of the light sabers, the drone of the Death Star. Can you think of Star Wars without music? 

   3. Produce for the Environment. 

   Ever see an IMAX movie on house video? Ever see your preferred motion picture on a 4-inch LCD? 

   Commercials played in sports arenas on those huge jumbotrons typically include really little dialog. Who ‘d hear it? You can hardly hear the music. 

   When a video interactions task is planned, the environment in which it will be played is a vital part of choosing the design and strength of production. If your CD-ROM is never ever going to make it past a laptop computer, going out and shooting sweeping panoramas of the countryside might not be required-- however lots of close ups will be. 

   Play to the space. 

   No, obviously not. IMAX films and significant movie (specifically sci-fi and thrillers) are developed for LARGE screens, in spaces where individuals are peaceful and the noise has effect. 

   4. The length of time Should It Be? 

   Should not all videos be brief? There’s genuine time, and viewed time. 

   Audiences aren’t silly. A great story will go beyond time. 

   An uninteresting video goes on permanently. An interesting video ALWAYS appears much shorter than it is, and frequently bears seeing a 2nd time! 

   $1,000 a Minute? $200 per Slide? 

   Video production (in truth, lots of imaginative activities) can not be evaluated totally on the running time. I’ve seen commercial training tapes that ran 90 minutes and earned the manufacturer $2,000. 

   Prices is constantly accountable to a great deal of subjectivity, therefore throughout the years individuals have actually attempted to “measure” the production of multimedia products. A thousand dollars a minute has actually been estimated considering that the late 1960s-- for movie! 

   Should not he have gotten $90,000? Not for pointing an electronic camera at a podium and striking record, and modifying out uncomfortable stops briefly! 

   It is MUCH harder to produce an excellent five-minute video that will stir an audience and get defined outcomes. In some cases, not much more, however other times, 10 times that quantity. 

   6. What Style Should It Be? 

   Your manufacturer requires to believe like a chameleon. And you have a business design and a specified audience. 

   Perhaps you’ve never ever seen American Idol, however that does not make it undesirable with a big part of the population. If you’re not hip on the similarity an audience, trust somebody who is-- your manufacturer, or that DJ-wannabe who can call whatever ever produced by. 

 Jay-Z. 

   On the surface area, interactions designs alter typically. Audiences like what is present and hip-- to them. Various audiences come from various age groups, financial backgrounds, areas; so what is hip to a 22-year-old web designer in Atlanta may not be hip to the 45-year-old engineer in Dallas. 

   Uh, who? 

   7. Can I Have That Tuesday? 

   Just how much time? A properly designed, planned, detailed, prepared, composed, and produced task (currently it sounds long) requires time. Here’s a preparation guide for a normal 10-minute video:. 

   With overlap, overtime, and some genuine sweet talking from you and me to the hard-working personnel, perhaps we can cut that down or work some things in parallel. Permitting adequate time for the job will get you one hell of a program In the long run, when you do it right, it reveals. 

   If it’s your dry cleansing, yes. 

   If it’s the multimedia job or video that is going to encourage 5,000 that scaling down benefits them, well, no. 

 Excellent video takes some time. 

   Compose proposition-- 1 week. 

 Script-- 2-3 weeks. 

 Production preparation-- 2 weeks. 

 Shooting-- 2 weeks. 

 Logging and digitizing tapes-- 1 week. 

 Music choice, voice tracking-- 1 week. 

 Rough cut-- 1-2 weeks. 

 Evaluation time (script, rough cut)-- 1 week (it’s up to you). 

 Last edit and impacts-- 1.5 weeks. 

 Duplication-- 2 weeks. 

   8. Usage Interviews for Believability. 

   Interviews-- with your clients, staff members, providers, even you-- can have a significant effect on the reliability stimulated by your video. 

   This is particularly real for “softer” topics, such as fundraising, popular opinion, HRD business intros, homages, and so on 

   And I do not believe THAT was the function of the video. 

   . Interviews are not what they appear. They appear honest (and are); they appear unscripted (and are); they appear simple to do and a method to avoid scriptwriting (they ARE NOT). 

   Never ever let your manufacturer put words into individuals’s mouths-- an animal expression, a recommendation, a rah-rah declaration-- unless the interviewee developed it openly. There’s no faster method for all of you to look boneheaded. 

   Interviews need research study-- who has the very best stories, mindset, existence. Interviews need screening-- a pre-interview. And they need scripting, if just as a target objective to assist the recruiter frame the ideal concerns. 

   9. Video’s Hidden Value. 

   When management understands they will be utilized just when, they frequently end up being “unneeded.” Staging, projectors, production expenses-- that’s a great deal of cabbage for 500 sales individuals. Could not we include a 2nd entrée at the awards supper? 

   By the method, even WITHOUT a reuse worth, there is absolutely nothing like a rousing video opener at a huge conference to set the tone, redefine a business, start the modification procedure, and construct a roaring fire under your sales group’s butts. The distinction is seen in sales; they have the energy-- AND brand-new video tools to take with them. The increased earnings more than spends for the expense of the video. 

   Numerous “huge” videos and discussions are produced for conferences. They reveal the style, set the phase, present a brand-new item, whatever. 

   Now you can validate the purchase and sleep a bit much easier. 

   Reality is, I concur with your employer-- to the degree that whatever ought to have a repurposing worth. And today’s video does. Strategy it right, compose it right, and in no time your video-- or a minimum of scenes from it-- can be utilized on the internet, on CDs and DVDs, and in your salesmen’s PowerPoint discussions. 

   10. A Good Video Producer Knows Sales. 

   And video promotes psychological connection. Include the psychological punch, and now you’ve got a sale. 

   Video done right is a type of persuasion. It follows all the great guidelines of sales (with some exceptions). 

   And not even if he offered you a job. 

   Those who can offer audiences-- they are couple of and far in between. 

   If a video manufacturer does not understand this, then he’s not a manufacturer-- he’s an artisan operating at some element of our trade. Which is great. 

   Of all, videos need to get audiences stating yes. We need to begin with commonalities and after that develop our case. 

   Video includes reasoning. “If, then, and after that, then ...”. 

   The care and factor to consider that enters into producing your business’s video summary, sales discussion, or financing solicitation is no lesser than the phrasing of a direct-mail advertising piece, the style of your advertising campaign, or the advancement of a business identity. For, undoubtedly, a video discussion becomes your business identity. 

   Utilize these 10 ideas and you’re on your method to possibly the most effective interactions job you’ve ever carried out. That simply may suggest a raise, a corner workplace, or a minimum of a slap on the back. Which’s all excellent.

[theconservativebrief]

In the hours following the Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in August of 2017, a short propaganda film called Don’t Be a Sucker, first produced in 1943 by the US Department of Defense and then re-released in 1947, went viral on the internet. And in the months since, it’s been repeatedly invoked on Twitter as a prescient harbinger of our current reality, 75 years after its creation.

Created as a warning against creeping fascism and racism in the United States, the movie illustrates the divide-and-conquer method employed by German Nazis. When the film was produced, the US had entered the ongoing war in Europe only two years earlier. Originally 20 minutes long, it was created by the Army Signal Corps to raise soldier morale, but an edited version was produced after the war and shown widely for educational purposes — including in cinemas.

Don’t Be a Sucker feels strangely timely today. But in 1951, researchers Eunice Cooper and Helen Dinerman published a study in the Public Opinion Quarterly analyzing the film’s effectiveness (it’s now accessible on JSTOR) — and their findings are just as timely and important as the film. Beyond that, they’re chilling.

Don’t Be a Sucker seems eerily prescient, depicting a man in a square railing against Catholics, “Negroes,” foreigners, and even Freemasons who take American jobs and threaten the American way of life. A good-looking ordinary American man named Mike stands nearby, nodding along, until a Hungarian-born man — a refugee from the Third Reich, given the historical context — takes him aside and explains how this method parallels the way Hitler and his followers divided the German population and set them at odds against one another: Jews, Catholics, Protestants, intellectuals, and native-born farmers whose egos were flattered by the Nazis.

“I’ve heard this kind of talk before, but I never expected to hear it in America,” the man tells Mike.

Mike, now understanding that fascists gain power for themselves by creating division among the common people, sees the error of his ways. He learns that it is only by presenting a united front against greedy authoritarian leaders that citizens can stand against tyranny.

Mike learns the error of his ways.

The film has been uploaded to YouTube many times — particularly since 2016 — but following the violent protests in Charlottesville, Don’t Be a Sucker once more made its way around social media.

Many contemporary viewers have pointed out that the film echoes the present. But Don’t Be a Sucker was an object of study in the past. And what the researchers uncovered may be an even grimmer reflection of today’s America, and offer a key takeaway that is good to remember when confronting the resurgence of white nationalist and supremacist rhetoric in the public square.

At the film’s more public rerelease in 1947 and 1948, Cooper and Dinerman — working with the Department of Scientific Research of the American Jewish Committee at the Institute of Social Research — explored how viewers’ attitudes were affected by the film, particularly those of high school students. They published their findings in 1951.

Cooper and Dinerman divided a group of high school students into a control group and an experimental group. Only the experimental group saw Don’t Be a Sucker. Four weeks later, both groups were asked to complete a questionnaire, which included some questions related to the message of the film and some control questions. The researchers divided up the answers by factors including the participants’ religious identity (though they only mention Jews, Catholics, and Protestants).

A Protestant preacher in Nazi Germany, as portrayed by Don’t Be a Sucker.

Each group responded strongly to the representation of their particular religious group being isolated and persecuted by Nazis. The film also appeared to have an effect on American-born Protestants who were somewhat prejudiced against Catholics and Jews; after seeing the film, they were about half as likely as the control group to agree with the statement that “in times of depression, it is only right that jobs should be given first to people born in America.”

Still, the numbers seem a bit surprising: After seeing the film, a quarter of the American-born Protestants in the experimental group agreed that people born in America deserved preferential treatment, contrasted with fully half the same segment of the control group.

But the researchers also found a “boomerang” effect in their subjects, which they define as the film having the opposite of its intended effect. They identify four specific “boomerang effects” that Don’t Be a Sucker had on the viewers in their study, but the most interesting for our time is this: Cooper and Dinerman discovered that students who viewed the film were more likely to agree with the statement that “what happened in Germany under the Nazis could never happen in America.”

This is actually the direct opposite of the film’s intended message. The researchers attribute it to the fact that while Don’t Be a Sucker takes pains to show the extent of the Nazis’ cruelty, it only shows one parallel to 1947 America: a man on a soapbox in a square, ranting about foreigners and “negroes” to a skeptical crowd. Many respondents saw the American as simply different from his German counterpart — though the American was giving a similar speech, only the German commanded the respect of a crowd.

One man seems half-convinced by the argument — Mike — but the subjects of the study found him weak, gullible, and passive. Mike only balks when the soapbox speaker rails against Masons (Mike himself is one), but he is quickly talked down by the Hungarian refugee.

The implication, to many of the viewers, was that American fascists are ineffectual and silly, quite different from their German counterparts, no matter how similar their ideology might be.

Cooper and Dinerman also found that the students saw the man on the soapbox as a “lamebrain,” someone whom smart Americans knew to be a fraud and not worth their time.

“Believing that Americans in general would not be taken in by such talk,” they write, “these respondents regarded Americans who do applaud the agitator as uneducated, low-class, or in some other way inferior to themselves.”

They tested this statement with their questionnaire by including the statement: “In America, hardly anyone would listen to a man trying to spread race hate.” And to their surprise, they noticed a definite boomerang effect toward complacency among the students who were less prejudiced against people who were different from them: 29 percent of the students who had seen the film agreed with this statement, compared to 19 percent of those in the control group, who had not seen Don’t Be a Sucker, a result that Cooper and Dinerman called “quite startling.”

Furthermore, they found that 44 percent of those who’d seen the film agreed with the statement, “There are so many minorities in this country that no single one would ever be persecuted” — a sentiment that directly contradicts the film. Only 26 percent of those who hadn’t seen the film agreed with this statement.

“The inescapable conclusion is that the messages about Germany in this film, even when wholly understood, were not applied to America. A plausible hypothesis is that not only the German theme but its link with problems of discrimination seems to be ‘old hat’ to members of the audience,” Cooper and Dinerman wrote.

In other words, the link between fascist, racist sentiments in Nazi Germany and similar ideas as they surfaced in America (even just a few years after the fall of the Third Reich and the end of World War II) were too worn and “old hat” to make an impression on the audience. This bears out: Though the film shows a young black boy playing baseball with white boys, in 1947 America was still deeply segregated, with many white people not seeing a link between their attitude about black people and Nazi racism. (The film itself, after introducing the soapbox fascist as “anti-Negro,” focuses on Jews, Protestants, and Catholics, not race.)

And of course, the study participants were high school students, whose lives so far had been dominated by the looming threat of Nazis “over there,” but who as teenagers had naturally been immature in their understanding of the ideas that caused the heinous violence, and who had driven the conflict. They’d become desensitized.

Cooper and Dinerman’s paper goes on to evaluate the way Don’t Be a Sucker delivers its message, the limitations of its casting and its audience reach, and how future films of that ilk might convey their arguments more effectively. But two of their insights in particular seem striking in the context of today’s resurgence of white nationalist rhetoric: Don’t Be a Sucker’s viewers thought Americans were too smart to be taken in by fascists, and they were reluctant to draw parallels between Nazi rhetoric abroad and racist, anti-immigration rhetoric at home.

Mike is learning his lesson.

You could hear echoes of this during the Charlottesville events in 2017, whether in expressions of shock over events that many people had forecasted, the #ThisIsNotUs hashtag trending on Twitter that insisted the white supremacists who gathered in Charlottesville are not representative of most Americans, or the president’s initial refusal to specifically condemn the white supremacists who marched in his name. Both well-meaning and more pernicious sentiments abounded: that Americans are “better” than this, that the so-called alt-right are poor and ignorant rather than well-off and educated, that the actions of the Confederacy during the Civil War and of neo-Nazis today are anomalies, and the perpetrators should “go home.”

But others took a different view, pointing out that we can’t pretend racially motivated violence and hate isn’t an integral part of American history.

“The belief that America is somehow better than its white-supremacist history is sometimes an excuse masquerading as encouragement, and it’s part of the reason why the K.K.K. is back in business,” Jia Tolentino wrote at the New Yorker following the rally. “What happened in Charlottesville is less an aberrant travesty in a progressive enclave than it is a reminder of how much evil can be obscured by the appearance of good.”

To be wooed by authoritarian, fascist, divide-and-conquer rhetoric is to be a “sucker.” But thinking we’re too smart to be fooled, that it’s only crazies and lunatics who fall for this stuff — that’s what makes suckers of us all.

Original Source -> This 1943 anti-Nazi film keeps going viral. It may be less effective than it seems.

via The Conservative Brief

[mellifluous-cicadas-blog]

Designing Media for 3D Projection Mapping

videomapping In my current experience planning for tremendous canvases (the sides of properties) I have identified quite a few helpful recommendations and tricks. The goal of this post is to explore these discoveries with the intention of generating 3D projection mapping styles far more successful particularly for inexperienced designers. The initially factor that becomes apparent when viewing function at this kind of a massive scale is pace. The models and animation are at first created and previewed on a pc display - significantly less than 2' x 3'. Even preview projections are rarely much larger than 20' across. On viewing the very same sequences participate in on a canvas several orders of magnitude greater the pace at which occasions transpire is greatly magnified. As an instance, a 3D projection mapping project I intended and directed protected all 4 sides of a 450 foot tall making. This represents a far more than 200 fold increase in size, hence components and transitions that crawl at a snail's rate on the computer system keep an eye on, transfer at a speed that looks unrelated when applied in the actual display. To seem at it in another way: transferring one" on the pc screen (a reasonably little length relative to the entire display screen) equals a motion of twenty five toes -on a building of this sizing, fairly a huge length for a spectator observing from the audience. Editorial transitions are subject matter to the identical concerns - there is only more information to be processed when these a massive area of types industry of eyesight is energetic. The option is merely to change types aesthetic position of reference regarding timing. What seems alarmingly gradual on a small computer display screen will be just fantastic when masking the aspect of a big creating. A few techniques can be used to aid in this observe. The initially procedure is borrowed from visual effects perform for films, especially 3D types exactly where pacing concerns are very similar (for equivalent factors). Make a true world scale reference in your preview window. An excellent addition to this, beside the evident yardstick and nearby functions, is scale human beings. A simple silhouette versus the preview display screen is incredibly helpful. Working with the zoom operate, preview the animation at different zoom amounts shelling out interest to the dimension of the silhouette relative to your dimension. one:1 will present authentic velocity (issues will often zip via the display screen in a flash - excellent to see), and two:1 etcetera. will give the impact of standing in the again of the audience with individuals in entrance of you. This tactic can aid in utilizing yet another (conventional 2nd animators) strategy - pantomime. When zoomed at various shut ratios, understand the choreography as if you have been pushing the aspects all around with your arms like actors usually do with heads-up shows in large tech Hollywood movies. Immediately after the rhythm of the movement is uncovered, you can then get another pre-visualization aid by having this 'performance' out to somewhere there are quite huge buildings, and 'perform' the choreography as if it was occurring on the developing you are standing in front of. Bringing your laptop or iPad together with the reference motion picture can help if remembering the rhythms is a new apply to you. A second refinement to this strategy can be extra when a cozy pacing approach has been arrived at through use of the earlier mentioned method. This procedure includes the addition of audio. A click on-keep track of (A recorded metronome utilized by musicians to continue to be in sync on overdubbed recordings) can be really handy for developing a 'backbone' speed. This will hold you 'under the speed limit' so to communicate and has the extra benefit of making an classy pacing unity. If the simply click track is as well monotonous basically use it as a reference to opt for a rhythmic piece of new music at the exact same velocity. (For non-musicians search up the phrase BPM). The other big location of worry for obtaining excellent on these presentations is contrast ratios. It is disappointing (to say the minimum) to have types finely crafted visuals flip flat, grey, and desaturated on viewing them in context. The best technique is to have control of the ambient light-weight in the presentation venue. In this hugely unlikely and perfect circumstance, just one simply would hold all competing gentle sources off at the time of the show, allowing the projections to participate in in the equivalent of a dark theatre. The realities of 3D projection mapping demonstrates are quite different - almost never (if ever) does one particular have the chance to present their work in this kind of a pristine natural environment. Ambient light-weight resources are everywhere and can not be controlled at all. There will most likely be nothing at all ni your display that comes any place near to the deep blacks of your personal computer screen. In most situations the distinction ratio of the program content ought to be altered to engage in agreeably in the context it will seem. If at all achievable, go to the location for the presentation with a camera, and get as quite a few images of the lighting ailments as attainable. Even though the photos on their own will distort the lights circumstances, they will nonetheless be a helpful reminder of the sources and degree of ambient light current. Import these photos into your preview and use them for reference. Use them as backgrounds. Experiment with adjustments in the distinction of your program so that the substance seems presentable in this context. An superb way to check and preview this, regardless of no matter if on-internet site images is doable, is to do smaller scale projections in adverse lights problems. Consider executing previews in wide daylight or if indoors, with work lights on. Finally, in absence of any of these tests procedures, enjoy it safe and modify the contrast ratio (degrees in Photoshop) by 'crushing the blacks' as far as you can devoid of entirely destroying the photos. This will enhance the saturation as very well but in all probability not ample. Up coming use Hue/Lightness/Saturation (also in Photoshop) to boost the saturation as substantially as attainable without destroying the integrity of the pictures. Normally talking this is a predicament exactly where weighty-handed will pay out off - this is not the place for finesse or subtlety. If the over tests tactics are available, use them to do an A-B comparison among the pre-shade-corrected materials and the post-corrected material. 9 occasions out of ten you will locate that the material offers better with the blacks and saturation 'crushed' and that no important subtleties will be dropped. The elegance of 3D projection mapping is in the fitting of the content to to context (surface) and the choreography of the narrative - the true projection alone is much additional of a brute force workout and optimizing ones method for the troubles inherent in the medium will enable the finer points of storytelling alongside with the majesty and virtuosity inherent in the medium, to be appreciated to their fullest. In summary: keep in mind to retain the pacing ideal for the scale of the exhibit. Build references for relative sizes and use a rhythmic audio product to measure pacing. Examine and evaluate distinction ratios wherever achievable and use prevues in tough lighting conditions for examining. Crush the contrast and saturation of your elements, and know that with these essential principles in area, the inventiveness and spectacle of your present and patterns will stand out without having interruptions.

[slaaneshfic]

Journal 1

This year has seen the realisation of a number of pieces of research which have illuminated this practice of “play in horrific wastelands” as the subject of inquiry, as well as the “play in horrific wastelands that is the phd research process itself”. These research elements are as follows:

In April 2017 I delivered a paper at the Northumbria PGR Conference entitled “The Inhuman Ecstasy of Toxic Waste” (TIETW). This paper took the form of a video hosted on Youtube, in front of which I read a “script”. YouTube hosting allowed the use of the sites annotation system, clickable icons overlaying the video which can link outside of it to other content. The video a layering of original animations and sampled sections of films which form a gesturing figure over an ambient soundtrack, while the video lasts the duration it takes to read the script. In its intended state TIETW exists on Youtube, it uses the annotation system to present tangents from the main text, which is available to read by the viewer in the form a of a link to a Google Doc, where it can also be annotated by anyone.

TIETW is concerned with the late 80s/90s pop culture trope of a toxic waste spill which results in mutation of a person or animal. Frequently, especially in horror movies at this time the mutations occupy a space of both gift and curse, as well as having sexual, and particularly queer context. The importance of this work to the PhD is primarily the realisation made through it that “waste” is what marks the play space which I had previously thought of as “horror”. Waste can, and often is, the subject of horror. It is also politicised, abject, or mucosal. What is more potent for my research is that waste is, to the force that perceives it as waste, valueless. However when viewed from another position it is the site of production.

The concept of waste is being broken down further through two terms which I am using to mark some of its properties. The first of these is “Black Hole” which refers to something ignored or refused to the extent that even its absence is not acknowledged. An article by blogger Timothy Franklin on queerness in the popular wargaming franchise of Warhammer 40,000 points out that, “The inability to express sexual reality creates a gap into which queer sexualities can creep, and the bigger the gap the queerer a reader, fan theorist or slash/fic author can be without doing violence to the fiction. Hetero-normativity fails to assert itself” (Franklin, 2017). This concept of a Black Hole, an unacknowledged but fertile gap, represents a refinement of my initial research proposal’s focus on cultural activity which is at odds with Majoritarian culture, and therefore challenges the seemingly impenetrable surface of “Capitalist Realism” (Fisher, 2009).

The second term that my research is focusing on is “Tentacles”. This term is borrowed the recent book by Donna J Haraway “Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Cthulucene” (Haraway, 2016). In this book Haraway uses the the image of the tentacle as something which connects multiple points through touch. Crucially this touch is multilateral, we receive sense data as we deliver force, as well as potentially a change of temperature, moisture and so on. The introduction of the tentacular to my research again represents a refinement from the broader concepts of Deleuze and Guattari’s “machinic assemblages” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983). Tentacles are a way in which I am at present attempting to understand elements of my practice, particularly the moment of encounter with an exterior audience/witness/collaborator. In TIETW there are a number of tentacular elements. Firstly, the method of delivery has a number of calls for engagement. The presentation video that I speak in front of, is streamed from the video hosting platform YouTube. YouTube by default allows public comments under any video hosted unless they are disabled. The platform encourages not just the receiving of content but contribution to it. This is also shown in the culture of “response videos” where a person will record their own material, frequently a straight to camera monologue which transforms the original video into a conversation. YouTube is in part about user-made content, but the potential to respond in the comments or to link a video of one’s own makes it a system that encourages tentacles due to the lack of separation and distinctions of authority. YouTube also feels public, by screening my video from this platform in a lecture theatre, rather that playing a local file on my computer to that audience only it felt like I was opening a space to more contamination. YouTube has markers of its own branding which remind you of where this video is being played from. One of the other reasons for using that particular platform was its options of using its “annotation system”. This system allows a user to place shapes and text over the top of a video they have uploaded, which can be used to accentuate the content of their video with interactive links. The annotation system meant I could at hyperlinks to other videos and websites which would appear at set times in the video, and therefor my presentation’s duration. These annotations act like thought balloons above my head, speaking things that I myself do not say, but which discuss another layer of the presentation. What most attracted me to the use of this system was firstly that they offer a non-linear way of encountering video. By clicking an annotation, you leave the fixed duration of the video, possibly to start another video at a specified time-point and then on to another and another never playing any to completion. Secondly, and more importantly, these annotations are not accessible fully to the live audience at the PGR conference. Rather than the assumed superiority of the live experience, I wanted to the audience for the work to marked as the “anyone” that could watch it on YouTube. I wanted the live experience to point to this other space through lack. This presents a call for another tentacular action, for the audience at the PGR Conference to find the video in order to follow these paths outward.  

Another tentacular element that is present in this work is through signifying a refusal of the full authority of the performer, through the manner of their performance. I want the presentation to be welcoming by refusing to use the power of authority normally present in an academic presentation. I am introduced, and I make a point of smiling. I then start the video, but actually I don’t, I stop, I pull out my phone and half explaining to the audience half apologising I say “I’m streaming this over Facebook, just give me a second to set it up”. I balance the phone on the table in front of me and again move to start the video. I pause again while doing this, explain about the annotation system being the main reason I wanted to use YouTube. I explain that the annotation system is being discontinued out next week. Not enough people were using it, so soon you won’t be able to use it and videos won’t be able have clickable links over the top of their content, though the ones done before it is discontinued will remain. I try and convey how excited I am about this, though recognise that it possibly isn’t exciting for everyone. This could be a little embarrassing, as who else cares about the developments of minutiae in a internet video hosting platform? This is the point though, I want to be a little embarrassed, I want to overshare, and be vulnerable. This is another tentacle.

18. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXrQ_YJ2444

19. This strain of popular culture arguable traces its roots back to post-war nuclear fear. The same year that the first nuclear power plant came online, Gordon Douglas’s Them! (Douglas, 1954) arrived, combining the established genre of giant beast films epitomised by King Kong (Cooper & Schoedsack, 1933) with concerns about nuclear power. In contrast to the Japanese kaijū films like Godzilla (Honda, 1954) where an already present monster is disturbed by nuclear weapons testing, the ants of Them! are theorised to have grown to giant size as a side effect of similar tests. Later films in this theme will see monsters created from bio-weapons (The Crazies (Romero, 1973), The Return of The Living Dead (O’Bannon, 1985)), the poor disposal of growth hormone filled rats (Alligator (Teague, 1980)), nonspecific toxic waste (C.H.U.D. (Cheek, 1984), The Toxic Avenger (Herz & Kaufman, 1986), Slugs: The Movie (Simón, 1988)), and contaminated alcohol (Street Trash (Muro, 1987). Although outside the scope of this research, it is worth noting that the conservative message in the majority of such films is that a lack of regulation will result in the chaotic unbalancing of both society as it is structured at present, and the laws of nature as they are presently understood.