interculturalpragmaticsblog

[wikipediapictures]

eMate 300

“The Newton eMate 300 was an Apple Newton built into a laptop like casing including a standard keyboard. It was aimed at the education market.” - via Wikimedia Commons

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

Bath and Body Works Country Apple Refreshing Shower Gel

mid 1990s-2002

Found on Ebay, user boosbargainboutique

[inkykeiji]

hi clari!!! hope you're having a wonderful week <3 can i ask you where do you write your fics? is it an app or just word?

hi sweetpea!!! (´∀｀)♡ aw thank you hehe i hope you are as well!!! <3 sure you can! i write using pages, which is pretty much like apple’s version of microsoft word. it’s just purely a word processing app & it’s available across all apple devices for freeeee so i use it on my phone, my ipad, and my mac respectively! tho u can use it if you have a pc as well through the icloud website!

[thatsexcpisces]

Gifts to get the moon signs for Christmas 🎄🤍

°❆⛄⋆.ೃ࿔🦌*:･❄️ °❆⛄⋆.ೃ࿔🦌*:･❄️ °❆⛄⋆.ೃ࿔🦌*:･❄️

Aries moon: clothing and items for the gym and working out, bold accessories that make them stand out, hats, earrings, tickets or a class for their favorite activity or take them on any fun adventure, new car (if you wanna go big), fancy mirrors, watch, strong fragrance, trendy gadgets

Taurus moon: jewelry, luxuriously-presented items, something cozy and for the home, a spa day voucher, soft blanket, cute slippers, beauty products, skin and self care items

Gemini moon: cute journals to write down their thoughts, entertaining card/games (ex. cards against humanity), stationary, technology, thought-provoking gifts, their favorite book collections.

Cancer moon: cooking set, something sentimental and hand-made (ex. a scrapbook of all your memories together), a comfy robe to lounge in, recipe book, candles and stuff for the home

Leo moon: gifts related to their interests whether musical or hobbies in general. ex., if they love lana del rey get them a vinyl collection of her music or a poster of her. designer clothing, something extravagant and unique, tickets to their favorite musical or show.

Virgo moon: organized home planners, plants, cookbook, antiques, cleaning gadgets, home fragrances, books on getting organized and lifestyle advice, gift cards for home goods stores or their fav stores in general, maybe even get them a small pet to keep company!

Libra moon: designer handbags, books on fashion, good-quality perfumes, beauty items, fancy soaps, silk scarves or pajama sets, luxury brand shoes, fancy decorations for their living space

Scorpio moons: spiritual gifts, something personal from you, leather/ dark colored clothing, pampering gifts, marble items, brand sunglasses, ruled by Pluto; get them an elegant version of whatever they generally like; if they like gold jewelry, get them a carefully-selected box of fancy gold rings or something like that.

Sagittarius moons: gifts brought from a foreign country, something unique, plane tickets to a country they’ve always wanted to go to, travel picture book to record their journeys, good- quality camera, laptop, money, practical gifts

Capricorn moons: expensive things (I mean it’s a Capricorn moon here 💀), money in an envelope, gift cards to high-end stores, good chocolates, wine, and other specialty gourmet items, functional coffee machine, items to relieve stress (back-massager tool, etc), self-help books

Aquarius moons: technology, new phone, computer, Apple headphones, vintage record player, art materials, something no one else has, something related to their humanitarian or quirky interests, trivia games

Pisces moon: dream journal, thoughtful gifts, paintings, adult coloring books or stuff for arts and crafts, cute headphones, their favorite album and CD’s, something that encourages creativity, collection of bath salts and fragrances, meditation/yoga tools, locket necklace, fluffy blankets and pillows

Thank you for reading hope y’all have a good holiday! 🫶🎁🌟

°❆⛄⋆.ೃ࿔🦌*:･❄️ °❆⛄⋆.ೃ࿔🦌*:･❄️ °❆⛄⋆.ೃ࿔🦌

[sirfrogsworth]

When I got to this photo in Katrina's collection of vintage family imagery, I was pretty stumped as to how to approach it.

There is a major problem when you zoom in to 100%.

The paper it was developed on has little micro bumps. When it was scanned, the light from the scanner caused a highlight on one side of the bump and a shadow on the other. This causes a pattern which is nearly impossible to eliminate using traditional techniques.

The easiest way to fix this is actually quite clever. You scan it once, then turn it upside down and scan it again. The second pass reverses the side the highlight and shadow appear on, so you can combine the images in Photoshop and blend them together, essentially canceling out the bumps. It's weirdly analogous to noise canceling headphones.

But I don't have access to the physical copy of this image.

So... now what?

Enter Fast Fourier Transform or FFT.

This is a filter that uses extra fancy math to recognize patterns in the image and eliminate them. There is a pretty good filter for Photoshop, but it does not work easily with newer Macs with Apple Silicon. I really did not want to figure that out, and I also was too tired to go downstairs to my PC. However, I learned that a Photoshop competitor, Affinity Photo, has this filter built in. So, I downloaded a trial copy and started the process of trying to figure out how to fix this image.

It was amazingly simple. It brings up these star patterns and you just paint black circles over every one but the center. It literally felt like magic. (Full screen with sound recommended)

So once I did this process I ended up with this...

The paper still had a rough texture but it was much easier to work with using traditional techniques. I started with a black and white conversion and meticulously went through the photo zapping scratches and flaws and balancing tones and sharpening facial features. All of my photo restoration tricks were needed.

I eventually landed here...

I then thought maybe I should match the sepia tone of the original print, so I got to here...

I think the black and white looks nicer in this instance, but I always like having options and this is the most faithful representation of how the photo originally looked.

But there is something else I have been playing around with lately. Photoshop has these experimental neural filters that use cloud processing to do various tricky enhancements. Most of them are in beta and they can be very quirky. But they have a colorizer that tries to detect people and things and adds color to them. Not every black and white photo is a good candidate. I have found these professional portrait photos work decently, but the filter is very hit-and-miss. And there are tools within the filter to help you make a miss more of a hit, but often I have to accept the photo isn't going to work.

But I decided to give it a shot with this one and surprisingly, the colorizer got me most of the way there.

I can work with that.

The one thing it does well is skin. Manually painting color onto skin is tricky and requires more skill and knowledge of traditional painting techniques than I have. But if a filter can do that part for me, I can do the rest.

So after my touchups, I got the image to here.

All I have left to do is my standard color enhancements to make them a little less ghostly and a little more human.

And I present to you where I started and the finished product. I encourage you to flip back and forth.

I'm not sure how, but I was able to go from an image I thought was impossible to edit to a beautiful colorized memory for my best friend's mom. I cannot wait to show her.

[wumblr]

one thing i haven't really seen in all this analysis of niche microtrend revival is that this was an ongoing process in the past also. like... one thing that has been conspicuously missing from 90s-00s period historical dramas is the absence of deee-lite or pizzicato 5 mod/disco revival. alongside it there were elements of like, baroque pop revival (a 60s niche microtrend) that permeate as far as manic street preachers or danny elfman, and i think this is what eventually morphed into the jon brion and yann tiersen era of alternative music. there was a rockabilly episode in daria, that scene was solidly adjacent to ska the whole time. goths and punks never really at any point stopped doing the 80s. i can understand why you can't do a revival-revival easily because the distinctions are so difficult to pin down and it would be so fussy, but one example i can point to is to look at what textiles and production tools were new at the time and which scenes overlapped. disco differs significantly from 90s disco revival in fashion because chaka khan was wearing things more like organza and rayon and polyester while lady miss kier was designing her own nylon and spandex and producing album art on an apple desktop. giorgio moroder was bridging the analog to digital transition and picking up synths from europe, donna summer was a theater summer stock actress. does any of this really matter? no, but if you're styling a vintage photoshoot or doing a theme party you can throw in paisley and bellbottoms, a zoot suit, or denim and spikes. they were all there

[astralnymphh]

what do you imagine ellie smells like? which perfume/body wash/scent would she use? im curious!!

i'll cut this off based on product + natural scent causeee ideas aplenty! ౨ৎ MDNI implied smut

perfume/cologne— im gonna project just a tad and propose black ice cologne. it's my fav, plus the smell is attractively tantalizing. if my nose caught a whiff of ellie wearing that scent, ohh boy, i would be FAWKING on her. but besides personal projection, i'm catching a lingerance of anything fusing aromatic, dry woods, or soft oriental scents. like amber or leather, and i weirdly feel the scent of apples is something you'd be inhaling when going in for a hug. you're at her door, greeting her, and as soon as you nosedive that collarbone— forest of apples. a peculiar occurrence, ellie never dons a scent to mask her own, so what's the reason? you. oh my goddess, she definitely sprays a few clouds to her wrist and neck if crush!reader was coming to hang out at her place in jackson. pursues the act of impressing you— bluffing up her true appearance with the perfumes, the freshly ironed and tucked–in shirts, a pair of warm mahogany boots that aren't nearly as scuffed as her converse. literally doesn't need all that, I'll take her as she is. I bet she also applies way too much on accident the first few times, welling a sear to your nose and a lake to your waterline when you sniff. ackk.

natural scent— so steering off the beaten path of her smelling sweaty, in an attractive manner, i just know that girl reeks a vintage aroma. like a dad scent. naturally comes with wearing cast–offs from the pre–apocalypse age, but also because i hc ellie borrowing several pieces from joel's closet sometimes— in tandem with his jacket. hopping hurried feet back on that beaten path though, B.O. yeah, body odor can transmute into nose–curling pungency when baked beneath the sun or vigorously pushed to surface because of jolly little ring–a–round–the–rosies with blathering infected that refused to die during patrols or hustiling workdays, but normally? when that tang settles upon her skin by the lick of warmths gentle spirit, cuddled up in a blanket with you? ugh, a pheromone fest, piquant. has her dumbfounded when you nudge the wad of your nose in her neck, sniffing noises coming from you as you take that shit in greedy. she tchs low in her chest, the little jitter of her chuckle budging your shoulder, "y'gonna watch the movie ooorr sniff me out like a dog?" cooed she, meshing a snort afterward as her palm whole on the base of your spine lifted, pressing a new presence on your shoulder and piano–tapping her fingers, which shifts a reply out of you, "stop smelling so good, n'maybe i won't get distracted.." you enchant at the level of a whisper, spoken lacy with red, flirty ribbons for tone. a sigh leavens above your head first, then a sough of fabric below— and a zipper, "alright, as long as you don't distract me."

and that's how ellie got fingered while watching an 80s action movie.

[captainzigo]

so unfortunately very few entries here are going to properly be vintage. also what i consider vintage might not line up with what you do. i am not old.

also i am not wealthy. and my family isn’t wealthy. this is an expensive hobby to have. i get most of my stuff from loving it and refusing to throw it away… and digging through the trash at university. you would be surprised with the stuff people throw away. planned obsolescence has nothing on the fact that people can’t be bothered to fix a sour harddrive.

i actually fix computers as a sort of second job. it’s nice to work on computers i can’t afford and that aren’t from the trash. but i love old tech. i love breathing life in to things long dead. i’m a technonecromancer. i am not including pictures of things i haven’t finished yet for the most part. and i simply am not including most things. this is but a fraction of my power

ok so these are all my computers that work. i didn’t include ones that im still working on. they all worked but needed repairs variously. mostly they just needed new hard drives.

my game consoles. again not including ones that don’t work. i actually bought that 3ds, but the rest my parents gave me after they got them used. that gameboy has needed a screen replacement that required soldering. the ds is my little trooper and has needed nothing ever. the wii needed a new disc drive. and the 3ds came in japanese and i hacked it to english.

there’s a back view of my stickers

these are some of my various devices. again not including ones that don’t work. that nano needed a new battery which was actual hell and i’m surprised it survived. that ipad is the first ipad and she works beautifully and one time i fastened it to my tummy for a tellytubby costume. i was slutty lala and i played the old spiderman movie trilogy in glorious VHS quality. i couldn’t find my iphone 3gs for this picture :( but it will turn up. i’ll include an old picture instead of cleaning my room to find it lol

here are some novelties i just like. thats an old radio i swiped from my great grandfather. i got it working but it broke again. i dont know whats wrong with it and its so old that the parts are impossible to find. on the right is the browser for DS which is just so quaint. i love it. it barely works at all but i loaded a wikipedia page one time so xP

this is my terrible stupid tiny phone i got from aliexpress that barely works BUT IT DOES WORK and is technically loaded with all modern smartphone features. i attached a video of it barely playing roblox

this is my og imac. with the og keyboard. i didn’t include it with the working computers because it doesn’t. the harddrive died and im trying to fix it but its really hard. i’ve already sought out two different adapters that haven’t worked

and this is a commodore 64 that i also got out of the trash. it does not work but im hoping to make it work. someone clearly loved it. enough to paint it crazy colors and enough to

write some weird scifi quote on the inside of the case under the RF shield. but maybe they died, or it just became too much of an undertaking.

not included here is:

• several more apple products that i just don’t think look good. all the iphones between 6 and 11 are just so ugly. and i don’t actually like the way apple watches look

• the phone, tablet, and smart watch i actively use

• various bits and bobs like the official speakers for a imac 4, an electronic pocket dictionary, various wii peripherals and so on

• all of my audio equipment

• my iphone 3gs. i just never found it or any pictures of it. i love it tho. it was my first phone (hand me down. i’m not that old) and i have had to repair it so many times and i love taking bad photos with it

• all of my monitors

• my many videogames

• my old fridge that i love and cherish and use

• anything i have fixed and then given to someone else

• a bunch of other stuff

so if you are a beautiful trans woman, are you in love with me yet? or do i need to make a part two

[bastardiary]

I noticed something I don't like about self-improvement blogs on Tumblr. A lot of them who claim to be goal focused, are all very similar in the sense that they prioritise physical appearances and aesthetic over more ugly or rough truths about growth.

They're all pale pink, girly, sparkly, use Pinterest pictures of pretty girls like Bella Hadid, that model from the terrible Idol show, k-pop girls and celebrities who're pretty. It all just seems so plastic to me because they encourage overconsumption, buying certain products that you can get for so much cheaper, some examples are the Apple headset, those Stanley cups, pink and pastel gym sets, pricey skin care products and makeup like the dior lip gloss.

At first, those blogs looked attractive and eye catchy due to the moodboards of pretty pictures, but after, i realized the advice and self-improvement tips are mostly surface level and vague.

I know that those bloggers have good intentions behind running those blogs, but it won't take away from the fact that everything is seen through pink lenses. Everything is sugar-coated to look pretty, to match those perfect pictures of coquette-esque girls, mostly skinny, and sometimes of colour instead of Caucasian white.

Then there's a certain point where those blogs don't really post any valuable advice anymore, they instead post pictures together that match, add some tags and wait for the notes to roll in.

At some point, I found myself being distracted by photos of playboy models wearing pastel pink dresses, Lana Del Ray photos that were edited to look vintage, bedrooms that had a colour scheme of pink, white and gray, collections of dior makeup, shoes, bags, collectibles, soaps, you get the gist.

[centipedelightning]

General surface & x Reader Uf!Sans headcanons

this is mostly from the perspective of Red making it above ground without any resets from by frisk. The only resets he knows are the ones by Flowey. Not proofread it's nearly one in the morning.

CW: weed mention, underfell typical violence mention, uhh mental health and medication mention?, sex mention

reader: no gender mentioned and aroace safe <3

words: 1091

General stuff

A slut for a good coat. His main one is his favorite but he's a beast at the thrifts. There is a risk of bodily harm if someone tries to get between him and a vintage coat. He's ready to shank someone. God save you if you are a reseller. He can smell it.

On that topic I see the underground getting a Lot of vintage clothing from the dumps so monsters as a society have two distinct styles: 70s/80s/90s/00s and monster culture originals pre-burial

Style-wise he goes for anything heavy and durable. Above ground he lets himself enjoy dressing up more and his style gets a more specific direction and goes very 80s with a touch of the 90s.

He likes plays and musicals. Prefers more local, low-key stuff though. Mettaton put him off uber-professional productions. He'll still sit through it for Edge tho.

Big boy <3 He's like 5'1 (154-ish cm) and fat. The fat doesn't manifest the same way because monster food doesn't work like human food. He just is fat and so his body reflects that. Some of his bones are wider and thicker to take up more space to emulate extra fat on the body. (if I get any comments about fat being a bad word or fatphobia in general just know I will hunt you down and donate your organs to the needy)

Reset trauma... He gets a therapist topside. It took a lot of convincing though. He's been prescribed half the pharmacy but it's working!

I hope this makes sense but he's a conservative slut. Like his ass-cheeks aren't hanging out like another skeleton he knows, but the way he sips his apple-tinies is whorish (/pos btw I'm slut positive)

GLAM ROCK GLAM ROCK GLAM ROCK. You can't convince me he and Edge wouldn't bond over glam rock. Like Red enjoys pretty much anything that falls under rock, but he introduced Edge when Edge was a babybones so it's their thing. Mourned when he found out it isn't really a thing anymore.

Space nerd of course. Galaxy clusters are his special interest specifically (btw every single skele is autistic. All of them). He finds bigness interesting. Do not let him get high and bring up space he gets really philosophical and has breakdowns. Incomprehensible vastness isn't always fun to think about when blasted.

Flirty drunk of course, but that's just stage one of Red getting hammered. If he gets like super super plastered the bravado goes elsewhere and he starts taking bets and picking fights.

This is a lot darker but that gold tooth isn't his... And you might be thinking "yeah??? obviously???". You don't get it. He got his tooth knocked out in a scrap with a metal elemental and decided to just trade.... tldr he ripped another monster's tooth out of their face to replace the one said monster knocked out. [I stole this vague concept from a tiktoker but I can't remember who so shout out to you kisses <3. Your brain truly <33333].

x reader

On a less dark note, he's a great partner.

He. Would. Never. Cheat. I mean it. I get the fandom characterizes him as a whore and a womanizer but in my heart, I know he would never. He has a lot of trust issues from the underground. If you somehow managed to get into a relationship with him, he is yours from now to the heat-death of the universe.

He is comfortable with flings, but you have to be friends for at least a year (only kinda joking) before he considers an actual relationship.

Would I be crucified if I said he prefers Queer Platonic Relationships? probably. I think he would though. Like he enjoys intimacy and stuff but isn't actually dying to pursue a romantic relationship yk.

Whether or not it's platonic, romantic, or something else, he loves dates. He's not gonna do super big dates every other week but he loves a good movie marathon and cuddle sesh.

Or a sesh. He's not a pothead but he accepts any request to smoke. Quiet high. I also mentioned the introspective philosopher thing. I mean it, you gotta keep an eye on this guy. Other than that he's chill.

Big dates happen every few months. They usually happen when he realizes it's been a while. Big dates end up with you feeling more loved than you thought possible. You get at least one gift–not necessarily expensive–and are treated to something you both enjoy. Red prefers quieter or less social activities. You'd think this would be limiting, that "or" is powerful. An arthouse is quiet enough to cancel out the social aspect and a (car) drag race requires less social energy, so it cancels out the volume.

Speaking of art, he has a weird relationship with art. Initially, he was a hater. Simply put he was a hater. Then, as he spent time in art museums and art shows, he developed a much more personal relationship with art. As surface level as it might seem, his favorite artist is Van Gogh. Red nearly cried when he first saw The Starry Night on his computer and then did when he found Starry Night Over the Rhône. There was something about the way Van Gogh depicted the sky that touched him painfully deeply. Then he found out Van Gogh's life story and cried so hard he threw up. It wasn't pretty and Edge was very confused and very scared.

If you take him to see these paintings or others that are his favorites he'd seriously consider it some kind of lifelong promise. He'd also cry then and there too.

I really think he'd be a lot more emotional once he gets topside and a therapist

Receiving love language is touch. Gentle stuff. He isn't used to casual touches that both mean no harm and have no expectations from him.

Giving is acts of service. The laziness was not fully his own temperament. You see how you fare if your life is reset hundreds if not thousands of times by a rampaging flower that seems has a weird thing going on with your brother. You wouldn't do that well, would you? Thought so. Anyway, he likes to fix things to show he cares. Your toaster is acting funky? He's there and it's already fixed don't even worry about it. Ugh, there are dishes and you really don't have it in you to wash them right now? He's on it like a house on fire. Laundry? no. no he hates laundry actually.

[digitalnewberry]

Vintage Halloween postcards 🎃

In the early 20th century, people across America went wild for postcards. They sent them for every occasion imaginable, including Halloween. Advances in printing allowed for mass production of these cards illustrated with Halloween traditions and creatures.

May the Hallow Een goblins bring you luck, 1911

The majority of people creating and sending Halloween postcards were women. To market to a female consumer, these holiday cards depicted scenes of children’s play as well as romantic Halloween customs. The typical Halloween card shows beautiful, young, white women and/or children. Common themes are witches, black cats, bobbing for apples, and carving pumpkins, which are drawn from Celtic and English traditions. The cards draw on societal bias towards Western European people and culture.

May you have a lovely, scary Hallow-e'en, 1912

While less common today, Halloween then was full of divination practices that supposedly allowed young women to learn about their future husband. If a woman looked into a candlelit mirror at midnight, she could see the face of her destined love in the mirror with her. Despite the horror movie connotation this imagery has today, this folklore was common enough at the time that numerous cards are devoted to the concept. Throwing apple peels, dripping candle wax into water, and bobbing for apples also could allegedly inform the young woman about her upcoming romance.

May mine be the face in your Hallow-E'en mirror, 1911

The popularity of postcards faded after World War I. Their ubiquity in everyday life gives us a peek into the ways that popular culture was represented and produced during the first few decades of the 20th century. In these Halloween postcards, we see a society focused on tradition, at odds with the rapid technology modernization that allowed postcards to exist on this scale.

–Quinn Sluzenski, Digital Initiatives Assistant

Hallowe'en, 1908

See all of the Newberry's Halloween postcards 🎃

For more information:

Gabbert, Lisa. "Divination Games and the Romantic Halloween Postcard." The journal of cultural sciences, Ritsumeikan University, 683 (2023): 930-915, https://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/acd/cg/lt/rb/683/683PDF/gabbert.pdf

Williams, Rebecca Jean. Weird Old Figures and a New Twist: Cultural Functions of Halloween at the Turn of the 20th Century. 2017. Virginia Tech, Master of Arts dissertation. https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstream/handle/10919/78010/Williams_RJ_T_2017.pdf

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

OH SHIT!!!! I FOUND TANGERINE DREAM AND ROCKET POP

I can't believe this!!! I've been searching for Tangerine Dream especially for years and now it's on the way to me!!!!!!!! YES!!! I had teh Green Apple Spritz in high school as well, but my main concerns were Tangerine Dream and Rocket Pop, I remember these so vividly!

and I don't want the Caribbean Cooler or the Grape, if anyone on here wants it, I would send it to you as long it doesn't cost me much to ship it and I can figure out how to package it (Ive never sent anything like that before). if someone wants one of those, at least message me and I'll see what I can do. I dont want any payment, I just want someone to take them off my hands).

Bonne Bell Flip Glosses in Caribeean Cooler, TANGERINE DREAM, Green Apple Spritz, ROCKET Pop, and Grape Gusher

January 2000 (they could be Capricorns like me!)

Found on Ebay, user Twist-So-Fine

[hit-song-showdown]

Year-End Poll #58: 2007

[Image description: a collage of photos of the 10 musicians and musical groups featured in this poll. In order from left to right, top to bottom: Beyoncé, Rihanna, Gwen Stefani, Fergie, T-Pain, Carrie Underwood, Plain White T's, Akon, Nelly Furtado, Fergie. End description]

More information about this blog here

This poll highlights some interesting changes in the direction pop music was heading. By this point, it was clear that pop music was shifting towards a more electronic sound and specifically club music. Buy U a Drank by T-Pain is especially notable for this. Most obviously, T-Pain was one of the most successful adopters of Auto-Tune as a stylistic choice. I touched on the plugin briefly when discussing Cher's Believe, but with both that sound and most of T-Pain's discography, the vocal effect was used to give off a futuristic, almost robotic quality to the voice. But that didn't stop Auto-Tune (and T-Pain specifically) from being used as a punching bag for "untalented singing". In case it needs to be said, the exaggerated use of Auto-Tune on these songs were a stylistic choice. If you're using Auto-Tune to fix a bad vocal performance and it sounds like that, someone messed up. (Also T-Pain actually is a very talented vocalist).

I'm also bringing up this song for how it represents a subgenre of southern hip-hop that would become forever associated with the decade: snap music. While it has its stylistic origins in crunk, snap was recognizable for its simpler production and more laid-back sound. Popular snap songs from the time include Laffy Taffy, Crank That (Soulja Boy), and It's Goin' Down. While not on this poll, Crank That (Soulja Boy) is relevant for being one of the first examples of a song taking off online (as in, someone made the song and posted it online themselves). The song was first posted to SoundClick before expanding to a wider audience on MySpace.

This subgenre is more commonly remembered as "ringtone rap", for how this sound really worked with the audio processing technology capable of cellphones at the time. Like "bubblegum pop" in the past and "mumble rap" in the future, the term "ringtone rap" was often used in a derogatory sense.

But the simpler production techniques found on these tracks is also emblematic of how music production was starting to become much more accessible. Crank That (Soulja Boy) was created using a demo version of FL Studio, and the drum loop for Rihanna's Umbrella comes from Apple's GarageBand (specifically Vintage Funk Kit 03). Technology was allowing people to have easier access to both music production and audiences.

Also, this was the year this site was founded. Yay.

[embracered]

maybe some lammy headcanons? 😈

wow i got super duper interested in her again like 5 minutes ago someone is very observant

- Will not eat vegetables, feels like she's eating Mr Pickels cousins or something

- Mr Pickels is actually a comfort stuffie that she's extremely attached to, this started as a child because due to her autism she felt as if she couldn't connect with anyone, so she relied on fake social situations between her and an inanimate object.

- Collects vintage silverware, dishes, and salt shakers

- Been in a mental hospital ( like me guys!! )

- Interest in old psychology experiments

- sapphic

- 26 years old

- safe food is cocoa teddy grahams and sliced apples with grapes on occasion ( only green grapes )

- Does scrapbooking and penpaling

- only uses Mr. Bubble products, she smells heavenly.

[commodorez]

FujiNet: The First Five Years – Jeff Piepmeier

Five Years of FujiNet! This is the year of new “bring-ups,” exciting advances, and more features for FujiNet, the multi-peripheral network device for vintage computer enthusiasts. FujiNet made its way onto two new platforms and will be demonstrating the compact Macintosh (68k) and the TRS-80 Color Computer prototypes. The team made firmware and hardware advances for the Apple II+/e/c/gs and Commodore VIC-20/64/16/Plus4 and will be showing the Apple II production FujiNet device. Atari 400/800/XL/XE remains a perennial favorite seeing the development of aNode Desktop and moar High Score Enabled games – you can compete with your friends and other Atari gamers! The game lobby and original multiplayer games emerged onto the scene leveraging the distinctive network device and protocol adaptors. More vendors are producing devices enabled by FujiNet’s open source licenses making FujiNet more widely available. The team is more active than ever and looking forward to reaching all vintage platforms.

VCF East XIX

[mariacallous]

If you want to understand how China abuses its power on the world stage, consider the lobsters. After the Australian prime minister called in April 2020 for an international investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese ambassador to Australia, Chen Jingye, ominously hinted at the economic backlash. “Maybe the ordinary [Chinese] people will say, ‘Why should we drink Australian wine? Eat Australian beef?’” he told the Australian Financial Review. It and other outraged statements from the Chinese government had all the subtlety of a mafia capo wandering into the neighborhood deli and saying, “Nice little business you got here—shame if anything happened to it.”

In the weeks and months that followed, China instituted onerous import inspections on Australian rock lobsters and instituted new bans on timber and barley shipments from Australia. Given that in 2018 and 2019, China had accounted for about 94 percent of the Australian rock lobster market, the new trade restrictions were clearly meant to devastate the country’s lobster industry.

China also invoked punishing tariffs on Australian wine—tariffs that in some cases reached 212 percent—and exports stopped almost overnight. One winemaker, Jaressa Estates in the South Australian wine growing region of McLaren Vale, had been selling about 7 million bottles a year to China, some 96 percent of its total business, and saw that number drop to zero. “The country’s biggest overseas market vanished almost immediately. Sales to China plummeted 97 percent that first year. Storage tanks overflowed with unsold vintages of shiraz and cabernet sauvignon, pressuring red grape prices,” the New York Times reported. “Now that its economy is entrenched as the world’s second largest, the threat of losing access to China’s 1.4 billion consumers is a stick that few countries or industries can afford to provoke.”

It was a brutal lesson for Australia. As one winemaker told CNN, perhaps Australia shouldn’t be so quick to cross China in the future—and it should have approached questions about COVID-19’s origins with more delicacy. “Australia’s only a little nation. We should have absolutely supported it, but we didn’t need to lead the charge,” the vintner said. All told, Australia saw some $13 billion worth of exports targeted.

Outside the egregious Australian case, China has begun to wield the economic stick more regularly. For example, it halted salmon imports from Norway after the Nobel Peace Prize went to Chinese dissident Lio Xiaobo, punished Taiwan in 2022 with new restrictions on exporting pineapples, apples, and fish, and went after Lithuania when the Baltic country tried to strengthen ties with Taiwan. The wide-ranging Chinese move against Lithuania was unprecedented—extending not to just to obvious products like milk or peat but also against products manufactured with semiconductor chips made in Lithuania. As the New York Times wrote at the time, “China’s drive to punish Lithuania is a new level of vindictiveness.” The consequences for Lithuania were so dire that the German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce reported that the country’s high-tech industry faced an “existential” threat.

The most powerful voices in the global trade discussion largely stayed silent during these attacks. The European Union filed a perfunctory World Trade Organization complaint on Lithuania’s behalf but, as the New York Times reported, “otherwise largely left one of its smallest and weakest members to fend for itself,” and behind the scenes its officials urged Vilnius officials to appease China. “To use a Chinese phrase, they are killing the chicken to scare the monkey, particularly the big German monkey,” one European think tank leader said publicly. “Many European leaders look at Lithuania and say, ‘My God, we are not going to do anything to upset China.’”

And while some U.S. officials held performative tastings of Australian wine, the United States failed to step in to stabilize or support Australia, Norway, Taiwan, or Lithuania. There were no high-profile “Berlin Airlifts” of pineapples to U.S. grocery stores, tanker convoys of Australian Shiraz rolling up the Capital Beltway, or “Buy Baltic” public service announcements to encourage consumers and corporate leaders to look to Lithuanian suppliers. There was no coordinated effort to build a coalition to implement an emergency adjustment of tariffs on Australian wine or lobster, let alone to help the affected industries find new commercial buyers.

Perhaps it’s easy to write off such American reluctance as our own strain of protectionism—maybe the government didn’t want to be accused of undercutting Hawaiian pineapples or promoting foreign competitors to California Zinfadels—but the truth is that even at home the United States has failed to stand up for our industries when China targeted them. We didn’t support American airlines and hospitality companies when China pressured them to remove Taiwan’s name from their maps; nor did the United States government stand up meaningfully for the free speech of NBA players who criticized China.

China is learning, again and again, that bullying works, mastering the 21st-century toolkit of economic statecraft and warfare. As Bethany Allen, a journalist who has covered China for a decade, writes in her book, Beijing Rules: How China Weaponized Its Economy to Confront the World, “If we speak the language of markets … then China hasn’t just learned that language. It has learned to speak it louder than anyone else.” The Chinese Communist Party’s “authoritarian style of state capitalism,” Allen argues, means it “is willing to draw on its full arsenal of leverage, influence, charm, deception, and coercion.” And China has begun to deploy those tools all too frequently—leading to very real questions about whether anyone, companies or nation-states, can afford to be economically reliant on China.

The United States needs to do better—for ourselves and our allies. Strong allies are not going to help only out of self-interest, they’re going to do it because they want to follow their values and principles—and we have to make it easier for countries who want to help us counter China. We need to create an umbrella that shields countries, companies, and individuals when they take on China’s attempts at hegemonic thought and action.

Critical to any global strategy to counter China is building and securing the series of bilateral relationships and multilateral institutions and alliances that helped the West win Cold War I. We have to make it easy for our allies—and desired potential allies—to say yes to such alliances. China is surrounded by many relatively small and weak countries that need real reassurances, both security and economic, that if they side with the United States in a regional coalition they won’t be out in the cold.

Even countries like South Korea, Japan, and Australia that are G-20 countries with advanced economies and trillion-dollar-plus GDPs are small compared to the behemoths like China and the United States, especially if they’re left geopolitically isolated.

Beyond ad hoc responses to pressure on our friends when they stand up to China—especially but not only when they’re acting at our request—the United States needs to figure out a new alliance framework to deter such actions from China in the future. China needs to know that bullying won’t work.

On the security front, there’s little value in the Indo-Pacific in a replacement for SEATO, the 20-year attempt to build a Southeast Asia alliance like NATO that ended in 1977 after never achieving a working military structure. (One British diplomat called the alliance a “zoo of paper tigers.”) Today, too many of the countries across the Indo-Pacific are already protected by bilateral security pacts with the United States to bother joining a larger formal security alliance. For example, given that both Japan and the Philippines have their own security pacts with the United States, it’s not entirely clear what domestic political appetite there would be for, say, the Philippines to be treaty-bound to defend Japan if it’s attacked.

Instead of a military security alliance in the Indo-Pacific, we should be looking to build a new—and global—economic security alliance. America should lead the way in creating a new organization—call it something like the Treaty of Allied Market Economies (TAME), an “economic NATO” alliance of European and Indo-Pacific nations with open-market economies. Together, the partners in this alliance would respond as a unified block to political and economic pressure from China—or any other economic aggressor, for that matter—through a combination of trade barriers, sanctions, and export controls.

In some ways, this alliance would look similar to the coordinated but independent action that the West took in levying unprecedented sanctions against Russia after its Ukraine invasion. As an additional carrot to joining such an alliance, like-minded members could all share increased trade benefits in the form of tariff cuts, regulatory cooperation, and enhanced investment terms.

Beyond formal joint economic punishment of an aggressor, such an alliance could also plan for and commit to repairing and replacing real economic harms that member countries face when hit with retaliatory tariffs or trade wars. Such “trade diversion” often occurs in the market anyway. As one market closes, another opens—and we know that, in part, because of China’s actions against Australia. Markets are adaptable and most goods can flow elsewhere, especially if protectionist tariffs don’t stand in the way. It’s why Australia, for instance, weathered some of China’s aggressive moves better than anticipated. In particular, the Australian coal industry—which was also hit with punishing bans—turned out just fine because coal is such a fungible and high-demand product. “Once China banned imports of Australian coal in mid-2020, Chinese utilities had to turn to Russian and Indonesian suppliers instead. This, in turn, took Russian and Indonesian coal off the market, creating demand gaps in India, Japan, and South Korea—which Australia’s stranded coal was able to fill,” Foreign Policy noted. “The result of decoupling for one of Australia’s core industries was therefore just a game of musical chairs—a rearrangement of who traded with whom, not a material injury.”

One of the reasons that NATO has never had to invoke Article 5 against another nation-state attack—the only time it’s ever been used was after Sept. 11 against al Qaeda—is precisely because of how strong all other countries know the response from the combined NATO force would be.

The same should be true on the economic front. As Daleep Singh, a National Security Council official who helped coordinate the U.S. response to Ukraine, said, “The best sanctions are the ones that never have to get used.” China might very well think twice before weaponizing its trading strength if it understood the combined—and severe—penalties it might face in taking such action and that even if it did launch a trade war, it wouldn’t necessarily inflict much economic harm to begin with.

There’s enough evidence of China’s willingness to inflict economic pain for political gain across Asia and Europe that a well-crafted TAME organization would likely attract a long line of participants—many countries across the globe are becoming increasingly concerned about Chinese belligerent behavior, and there is safety in numbers. While it is unlikely that some large countries with significant economic dependence on China, such as France and Germany, would rush to join this new alliance, states that have already found themselves on the receiving end of Chinese coercion in the past—such as Australia, Norway, Sweden, Japan, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, the Philippines, and Taiwan itself, among others—are prime candidates for initial membership. Over time, as TAME membership grows in numbers, combined economic power, and market size, it will become a magnet too attractive for other market economies to avoid, especially if China continues to engage in brutish bullying tactics around the world.