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whatsgoingoninkpop1989 · 1 year ago

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Task 1 600 word creating generative value.

K-pop’s next big hit: the rise of RIIZE

Todays blog was inspired by news of RIIZE’s successful debut detailed in this article by Riely Miller.

Welcome back everyone! Today we are talking about the rise of RIIZE! Just who are they and where did these monster rookies come from!?

Rise is a Kpop boy group under SM entertainment that have just debuted with a single album on the 4th of September. The group consists of seven members named Shotaro, Eunseok, Sungchan, Wonbin, Seunghan, Sohee, and Anton.

It’s now been just over a week and sale results are out for the first tracking week of RIIZE’s “Get a guitar” single album. They’ve managed to achieve a ground breaking record with their debut single album. That record is becoming a million seller group. This means their single album has sold over 1 million copies within the first week of being released. What makes this more amazing is that this is a feat many groups have never achieved throughout long careers and RIIZE has done it with their debut.

So how did RIIZE do it? And what allowed for this rapid success?

Well leading up to the release of their single album debut, it was available for preorder. In Kpop many fans will preorder a song or album before it comes out so that on release day they get access to the song straight away. Other benefits of preordering are that fans will receive the physical copy of the music release first-even before retailers! These pre orders made during the week leading up to a release are known as pre-sales; which guarantee ahead of release a set amount of sales.

Now how does this relate to RIIZE? Well the group was pretty much guaranteed to break records with their debut sales before their debut even happened.

This is because RIIZE had garnered a whopping “1,032,144 million stock pre-orders for their upcoming debut album "Get A Guitar."”

Reaching over one million sales within a week of debut really is a massive accomplishment for RIIZE. Comparing them to their boy group peers that have debuted in recent years like the group Enhyphen, who in 2020 debuted and held the highest sale debut of that year with 280,873 copies sold during the one week period after their debut, it becomes obvious how insane selling one million copies for a debut is.

Part of RIIZE’s successful debut is due to them having a pre release. That’s right, RIIZE actually had a prerelease single that was put on streaming platforms two weeks before their debut single was released. But why would they prerelease a song before they’ve even debuted? Just how does a pre release help an artist out in Kpop? There are two usual reasons for a pre release.

As Kendall from Kendall’s Kpop blog describes, “1. To build hype about an upcoming album or 2. To present fans with a taste of the musical direction a release is going to take”.

And in the case of RIIZE’s pre release its both built hype for their single album and given fans a taste of the type of music they can expect from RIIZE in future.

The other part of their success is due to being from the Kpop entertainment pioneers SM entertainment. SM is a large corporation with many successful groups under their belt like Girls generation, SHINEE, Aespa and NCT. So in debuting under SM RIIZE was guaranteed an audience from the get go.

Now seeing how successful RIIZE’s debut was, I believe going forward SM entertainment has found their new money makers.

Til next time,

Tom(KBlogBQ),

Toodles.

#kpop #kpop boys #kpop icons #kpop news #riize #riize wonbin #riize shotaro #riize sungchan #riize anton #riize icons

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ideastreammarketing02 · 2 years ago

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Idea Stream Marketing – Web Development Agency

To develop a revered and trustworthy marketing business takes time, commitment, passion, and hard work! Idea Stream Marketing is one of the nation’s fastest growing marketing and web design company. No other agency can provide our excellent services at our below market cost.

The Top 3 Ads From The Superbowl (In Our Opinion)

Sunday night was an exciting night in Football as the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots went head to head, but if you’re not the biggest sport’s fan then I’m sure you enjoy the commercials a little bit more. Marketers of top companies such as Tide and M&Ms watched and waited to see if the colossal amount of money they spent would pay off. This year NBC charged a whopping $5 million for a 30-second spot, which basically guaranteed their ad would reach the eyes of millions of onlookers. So was it worth it for companies to spend this much cash on a Superbowl spot? We think it paid off for these three companies whose ads were attention-grabbing and hit the nail on the head.

1. The Bud Light Spots These days you can’t walk into a party atmosphere without someone shouting the phrase that Bud Light has turned into a hit and this year, for the Superbowl, they capitalized the success they’ve seen with their “Dilly, Dilly!” campaigns. The two-part set of commercials were each set during a medieval time period, just like their other ads, with the ‘underdogs’ battling a much more prepared army, all for cases of Bud Light. What makes this commercial so successful is that Bud Light took something that they know works and made it arguably better by creating a humorous storyline that almost ran parallel to the football game (the Eagles being the underdogs going up with the more favored Patriots). Introducing the “Bud Knight” was also a great addition that I’m sure will pop up as a Halloween costume a few times next year.

2. Budweiser’s “Stand By Me” Spot Budweiser has been stirring up some “tugging at the heartstring” content for years now starting with their Clydesdale Pony commercials and now with their latest Superbowl spot. This year, the country was shaken by the massive damages that natural disasters caused in places such as Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico. So instead of promoting their beer directly, Budweiser showed the work they put into providing canned water for disaster relief. With the song “Stand By Me” playing in the background, this ad did a beautiful job at storytelling, it was relevant and touching while giving viewers a break from all the humorous spots we saw this year.

3. Alexa Loses Her Voice Amazon used their Superbowl spot to promote Alexa, their digital assistant. What made this spot stand out from the rest and made it such a success were the various cameos by big (and relevant) celebs including Chef Gordon Ramsay, Rebel Wilson, Cardi B, and Anthony Hopkins. From Chef Gordon Ramsay, who is known for his temper, going off on a young man who asks Alexa for help with a grilled cheese recipe to Cardi B rapping her 2017/2018 hit when asked to play some country music. The spot was clever, humorous and made us all want Cardi B to be the permanent Amazon digital assistant.

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msstarchh · 4 years ago

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Can I request an irl Puffy fanfic where we (the reader) are a volleyball player more specifically a libero who carelessly throws their body around bruising and hurting themselves to win the game. This causes Puffy to get worried when they fracture their hand and get semi depressed. Which leads her to comfort us. Just an angsty-fluff moment.

I just want to say in advance that I have never played volleyball on a bigger level than one time in middle school, so I hope y’all bear with me on any mistakes I make!

Also this turned out way more angsty than I expected- heheh

Dont apologize to me

It was the middle of the last game of this season and you were nervous as hell. The score was 21- 20 and your team was in the lead. But the game wasn’t finished yet and they still had a chance to win.

You quickly glanced up to your girlfriend who was sitting on the sides cheering you on. You tried your best to remember the fact that no matter what everyone would still be happy even if you lost. But knowing you, you was a bit too competitive to just let a losing game go.

The ball was thrown towards your team and you did your best to hit the ball back. But something happened and you landed incorrectly when you hit the floor with your head first. You did your very best not to scream in pain but as your hand were pressed in a way that you didn’t even think was possibly possible you couldn’t help but yell out in pain and hissing though your teeth.

“Y/n?” you did your best to open your eyes to see who it was but after the hit your head had made, it was hard sine the room was so bright. A hand went behind your head and a couple of arms were holding you as you started drifting off from the huge amount of pain that was caused to your body.

“Its fine sweetie! Its gonna be ok!”

/////

You groaned as you felt your head ache. Attempting to turn around you felt a sharp pain zapping though your hand when you tried to use it for support.

“Y/n I swear to god. You can’t use your hand!” right… its been two days since your stupid accident happened and you had gotten pretty fucking sad news. You need to take a break from training. Probebly a year to let your wrist and head heal properly. Those words crushed you. You had been doing this for so long, and it was one of the few things that made your life worth living. Volleyball was what you loved.

“im sorry…” you apologized, stuffing your head against the pillow. A warm, soft hand traveled up and down your back as you felt the bed shift slightly.

“its not me you have to apologize to. Apologize to your hand, you idiot” you could even hear the smile in her voice. How could she find this funny in any sort of way? Your life was pretty much ruined. Pain twisted within you with all of that’s happened. It wasn’t long until tears stained the pillow your head was still buried in. soft sobs escaped your throat and you heard your girlfriend start to ask if you were alright.

“does it seem like im fine!?” you finally snapped attempting once again to raise yourself and this time you succeeded. Staring right at Puffy, your heart sank. This girl had been there for you since day one and you just got angry with her for caring about you. Regretting what you just said you reached to grab her hand to apologize. Quicker than not, she snacked it away.

“no.” it was a cold and harsh word that made even more tears form in your eyes.

“I have tried to support you the best I can during these years, seeing you in pain and trying my best to tell myself you will be fine!” she had stood up and backed further and further away from the bed you were sitting on.

“I made sure to take care of you and love you every time you ended up hurt or something happened. But seeing you do this stupid stunt and then yelling at me for being worried about you!!” deep breathes escaped her moth as she moved further and further away from you. By this point tears were streaming down your face. You fucked up.

“Puffy im so-“

“don’t bother…”

“Please… I didn’t mean to-“

“I just… I just need some time..” and with that, she was gone.

////

Its been almost 2 weeks and you were starting to get worried she would never come back. Sure, you could manage to do things around the house even with your fucked up arm, but the thing that was missing was her. Everything felt empty… you missed how she would hug you and how it would youst be you two. How she made you feel safe, how she made you smile even when you just wanted to fade away into nothingness.

“Hey, Y/n?” you tried to imagen her voice telling you it would be fine, but every time it came out so wrong.

“you here? HOLY SHIT Y/N THE KITCHEN IS SMOKING!!!!” It didn’t reach you until you were pushed out of the was onto the floor by a shorter person. You looked up to be faced with Puffy whop did her best to get rid of the smoke from the kitchen as she ran the faucet.

Once again tears were building up in your eyes as you were looking up at her from the floor. She was here…

“come on you dummy, lets get you back to bed, baby.” She kissed your head as you were laying down with her next to you.

#mcyt #mcyt x reader #puffy x reader #captain puffy #cpt puffy #minecraft youtubers #fanfiction #volleyball #x reader

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geehosaphat · 3 years ago

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I remember tears streaming down your face when I said “I'll never let you go” When all those shadows almost killed your light I remember you said don't leave me here alone But all that's dead and gone and passed tonight...

TLDR; Martin Ambrosius, District 2, Victor of the 293rd Hunger Games recalls his own time spent in the arena and confronts the ghosts of those he betrayed.

TW: Poison, Bombs, Decapitation, Murder, Death

The quarters for mentors was too similar to the tributes’ in Martin’s opinion. As he laid in his bed for the first night at the training facility after the train ride with his tributes, he couldn’t help but recall his first night after his Reaping. It had been cold, but not like a snowy day, just cool. His home had been comfortable enough in District 2 he supposed, but everything in the Capitol was next level.

Even the cold.

He hadn’t been able to sleep in that bed the whole time they had been there. Instead he’d taken the small couch in the space. The shape of the cushions reminding him of the slight flaws in his mattress back home. It had kept most of his nightmares at bay at least, even if his back ached in the morning from the position he’d been in for too many hours.

Then had come the training itself.

When showing his tributes the training facility and tools, he’d had flashbacks to his own time frantically spent trying to train in things that his mind would never fully capture. Sure, he’d picked up a thing or two since then (especially within the arena) but there was something so unnatural and clunky about him wielding an axe or trying to create a bomb. No, things like that were best left to those who specialized in the craft.

Martin had used any time that had not been spent honing crafts he’d never grasp forming alliances.

The first had been Miranda, a studious looking girl from District 3. Miranda had been good with traps and electricals. She had insisted to Martin that there was little difference between organizing a circuit board and creating a good trap. He hadn’t seen the connection but her skills were undeniable. She was thirteen. Martin remembered the cute way her nose scrunched up when she concentrated on something.

Then had come Kaydence, a boisterous kid from District 5. He was strong from working in the fields and large to boot. Kaydence had shown Martin how to use a hammer. There was this optimism that had never gone away. He was fourteen. Martin remembered the way how, when Kaydence had laughed, all of his fears tended to melt away even on the worst of his days in the arena.

Rounding out Martin’s allies came Trey, a fellow District 2 member that Martin remembered from the academy. Trey was no Career, but he had spent an inordinate amount of time on agility courses and with smaller long-range weaponry because the ability to juggle daggers while jumping through hoops had amused him greatly. He was seventeen. Martin remembered the handshake he and Trey had made up while huddled together under their camp while they waited for the acid rain the Gamemakers had sent to stop.

Just close your eyes, the sun is going down You'll be alright, no one can hurt you now Come morning light, you and I'll be safe and sound...

When Martin had gotten into the arena his first instinct had been to run in the opposite direction of the Cornucopia. This was, however, undercut by Kaydence’s insistence on getting himself a hammer that was shimmering in the very center of the chaos. Not wanting to abandon his allies, he’d rushed in at Kaydence’s heels and helped to distract as many of the District 1 Careers as possible to get their whole pack through the Cornucopia.

Sorting through their loot they found: Martin managed to snag a backpack that would prove to be full of medical supplies, Miranda had grabbed herself some wire and a crossbow, Kaydence got his hammer and a fishing net, and Trey grabbed a trident that none of them knew how to use. All in all they had decided it had actually been worth it once Martin had used their new supplies to patch up a few injuries they’d sustained in the area.

The first few days passed pretty uneventfully. The terrain felt confusing going from forest to desert and back again. They mainly kept to themselves, sharing stories from back home and sharing what the first thing they’d do if they were the one to make it home.

Miranda wanted to start her own academy in District 3; something that would give future tributes more of an access to an electrical side of things despite that being District 2′s whole deal. Martin had told her that she was onto something and hoped that, should she make it there, that they at least named the building after her or something.

Kaydence just wanted to hug his mother again. He didn’t care about the glory, though he hoped that District 5 would at least get enough food and money to make the pain he went through worth it. Martin had shared how much he missed Mim in return and Kaydence had pulled the older tribute in for a hug that Martin couldn’t refuse. Being in the arena made everyone lonely.

Trey was the outlier. Despite not having the skills of a Career he’d smirked at the question, snorting contemptuously at Kaydence’s soft answer. Money and power and fame drove Trey to reach for the finish line. His grandmother had been a Victor and, while his parents had never gone through the Games, Trey was determined to be just as big of a name as she had been. Martin had assured Trey that everyone was just as valid as the other for their reasonings but kept quiet about the rainclouds behind his neighbor’s eyes.

Don't you dare look out your window, darling everything's on fire The war outside our door keeps raging on Hold onto this lullaby even when the music’s gone, gone...

Food was scarce in the arena.

The few animals they had come across being squirrels and lizards which were high in protein if you could get enough for four people but, most of the time, catching food could only feed one or two of their members. This proved to be to Martin’s benefit when they re-entered the forest area and found a big bushel of berries. There was one that Martin recognized as safe to eat and they’d filled an entire pocket of his backpack to the brim with them to carry with them along their journey.

What the others didn’t see was the nearly identical bushel beside that one of poisonous berries that Martin snagged and stuffed into a separate pocket for later.

One by one, they eventually ran into the other packs in the arena and had to fight their way through the landscape so they could hope to get back to their families, back to their lives.

Three cannons fired when Miranda set off a bomb she’d managed to make with her skills and a sponsor gift she’d received. She managed to kill someone from District 1, District 6, and District 5 in that explosion. Miranda insisted that she was fine when they checked on her but Martin remembered the way she’d asked him to hold her when the others were asleep.

A single cannon fired thanks to Kaydence when a scrawny looking girl from District 4 tried to steal from their camp and was caught by the largest member of their party. She had barely even known she’d been caught before Kaydence sliced her head off. They tried not to look at Kaydence when they saw the face of that tribute in the sky that night but Martin remembered hearing his sobs while keeping watch for them.

A whopping four cannons fired for Trey’s use of Miranda’s crossbow. They’d been ambushed at an oasis in the middle of the desert, too delirious from dehydration to look for the attack awaiting them at the shore. Trey had saved their lives singlehandedly, having hung back from his allies to keep watch over them due to a “bad feeling” he’d had in his gut. Martin remembered how everyone had treated Trey like a hero in the moment but when it came time to acknowledging the fallen that night Trey was the quietest of all staring into those portraits.

Just close your eyes, the sun is going down You'll be alright, no one can hurt you now Come morning light, you and I'll be safe and sound...

Each day that passed brought Martin and his allies closer to the finish line. It didn’t feel real, not really, most days. They kept to themselves as much as they could, letting the other tributes kill each other off for the most part. Martin knew the people he was working with weren’t killers at heart, not really. He, himself, had yet to even get a kill thus far in the Game, not that he was complaining about the fact.

The problem came when the realization dawned upon Martin that only seven remained in the game and four of them were sitting together at his camp. He almost couldn’t process the knowledge, couldn’t anticipate what that would feel like. If Martin were honest, he’d never expected for them to get this far. He had imagined a million ways for him to go out but being part of the final seven? It felt like a dream.

So, this knowledge fresh in his mind, Martin began to prepare the supper for his camp in silence. Everyone else was sharing stories and inside jokes that they had created all together here in the arena. His heart sank as his hands worked against his heart’s desire to keep them all safe.

Miranda was handed her plate first as she always was. They had joked in the beginning about ladies first but really she was the youngest so it only felt fair to make sure she got a fair portion. Martin remembered the way he didn’t ruffle her hair the way he usually did as he passed her by and she pouted at him but made no further comment.

Kaydence was next, a big guy like him he always joked that he deserved double the portion of tiny Miranda but never actually complained about his share as the group always at least made it fair and everyone took turns missing a meal if they were running extremely low on sustenance. Martin remembered Kaydence calling him “Chef” sarcastically as he stared down at his plate of only berries.

Trey was the last of Martin’s allies to be given his plate at every meal that included every member of their group. Trey was usually fiddling with something which resulted in his hands being busy and Martin was never quite in the mood for getting accidentally stabbed by Trey dropping whatever fidget toy he’d found for the day. Martin remembered Trey taking this meal in silence and wished he had asked what had been on Trey’s mind at the time.

Just close your eyes, you'll be alright Come morning light, you and I'll be safe and sound...

One by one his allies began to realize what had happened to them as they grew steadily more ill from the dinner Martin had given them. The side effects of the poison they’d consumed wouldn’t be too painful, he’d been sure that they wouldn’t suffer for too long. He couldn’t even look them in the eyes as they accused him of his crimes.

Martin wouldn’t have been able to see them anyway, the tears overflowing as his allies’, his friends’ lives came to their bitter end.

Miranda was the first to go, having been the smallest and the first to have eaten. She had asked him why he did this to them when they trusted him. Martin had no answer and couldn’t watch her face as she had passed on. He made sure to close her eyes and lay her down gently afterwards, though, choking out apologies between his sobs. She didn’t deserve this fate, she was just a kid!

Kaydence, despite his size, followed suit. For the first time since Martin had met Kaydence he heard the District 5 tribute swear. Not at Martin but at himself for allowing his guard to go down so easily. This felt worse than if Kaydence would have yelled at him, at least Martin would have deserved that. When Kaydence passed on he offered the fallen tribute the same courtesy he had offered Miranda. Kaydence had been a good person and Martin would carry that guilt for the rest of his life.

Trey was the last to fall and Martin would later be told by Trey’s mother that her son was much too stubborn to let Martin see his weakness as he passed on. What she didn’t know was that Trey had shown it, silently, by being the only one to capture Martin’s eye contact and looking terrified by his fate. Sure, Trey had said nothing aloud but his silence spoke volumes that echoed in his mind still.

Martin spent the rest of the Game hiding in their camp until the last tribute sought him out. A bloodthirsty boy from District 4. Martin had wasted no time with this fight, having expected this eventually, and shot him dead in the heart with Miranda’s crossbow.

With that it was over and Martin was taken home. What barely anyone realized was Martin died in that arena alongside all of his friends.

#bhg #tw poison #tw death #tw bombs #tw decapitation #tw murder #[ s. safe and sound ]#[ mine ]

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formula-one-thoughts · 4 years ago

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2020 Italian Grand Prix

Oh my god. I still can’t quite believe what we all witnessed last Sunday. Despite a slightly mixed up qualifying (with a bit of slip stream drama thrown in for good measure) resulting in Verstappen starting from 5th and Sainz and Perez locking out the second row of the grid, Monza was set to have another paint it by numbers podium, with the overwhelming talking point being Ferrari’s disappointing pace. Oh how wrong we were. In addition to the Scuderia’s weekend being even worse than they could ever have imagined, we were gifted one of the most unexpected podiums in the history of the sport (well, not so unexpected if you were the mystery individual who reportedly placed a 20 cent bet on the top three and got back over €33,000!)

Mercedes lost what could have been an easy 1-2 through a combination of factors, first of which was Bottas’s terrible start. Overtaken by Sainz and then Norris (who took advantage of Verstappen’s poor start), he was swiftly eaten up by Perez and Ricciardo. Such was his lack of pace he thought he might have a puncture, and whilst he did pick up a small amount of damage from contact with Norris, it wasn’t enough to explain the pace with which he moved backwards through the field. Whilst Hamilton was able to motor away undisturbed into the distance, the lack of a teammate to protect him and help with pit stop strategy didn't look to be ideal. I couldn’t help but feel it was a small serving of karma following Hamilton’s less than complimentary comments on Albon and Red Bull during the week, where he suggested Alex wasn’t a strong enough number 2 driver to help Max and the team to victory. It wasn’t however a strong weekend for the Thai driver either. After another disappointing quali he made contact with Gasly, went wide across the first chicane and dropped back to 15th, a position he occupied for the majority of the race. His cause was not helped by a 5 sec time penalty for a first lap episode with Grosjean, and the damage his car sustained. His teammate meanwhile found himself stuck in the DRS train behind Bottas in P7.

Whilst their woeful qualifying result of P13 and P17 had already put Ferrari on the back foot, it really started to go downhill on lap 6. Whilst battling to avoid being overtaken by George Russell, Seb’s brakes failed and he careered quite comically straight through the polystyrene barriers at turn one, before retiring the car. The field was spectacularly bunched up in these early stages of the race, with the DRS train extending all the way from Norris in P3 to Latifi in P19. After the action of the opening laps no one could seem to make a move, least of all Bottas. His Mercedes wasn't only one of the slower cars in a straight line on the track, but also fundamentally isn’t built to follow other cars, being accustomed to leading the field.

The cars came in to pit for the undercut from lap 16, one of them importantly being Pierre Gasly. Lap 20 then brought about the turning point of the race, albeit in a less then dramatic fashion. Who would have thought that Kevin Magnussen pulling over on the exit of the Parabolica would have such insane consequences! With the Dane’s retirement came a safety car, and with that I assumed there would be a steady flow of cars into the pits, terrible timing for those who has recently pitted. Only the race leader and Giovinazzi came in though, and it soon became clear why: the pit lane was closed as Magnussen’s car was being recovered into it. Hamilton’s race lead actually played against him, as it meant his team had the least amount of time to warn him of this. With there being just 19 seconds between the safety car deployment and him crossing the pit lane entry he was alerted to the issue 5 seconds too late. Mercedes error was thus understandable to an extent, whilst Alfa Romeo’s, who had a whopping 75 secs to warn Giovinazzi, was not. However, both teams could have avoided the penalties that soon came their way had their drivers noticed the red cross signals indicating the pit lane closure. Again though, it’s somewhat understandable that they didn’t. Being such an unprecedented occurrence, the only driver to register that the signs meant they could not pit was George Russell.

Once the signs were gone though everyone yet to pit but Stroll filed in, McLaren pulling off a flawless double stack. It turned out that pitting before the safety car was a great call, and when racing resumed Gasly and Leclerc were in 3rd and 6th, respectively. The Monegasque quickly swooped past the two Alfas but it was to be a short-lived high for Ferrari, as he lost the back end of the car at high speed and went careening off at the Parabolica. It could have been an extremely nasty accident but instead we were reminded once again of how brilliant the sport’s safety measures are. Due to the extent of the damage to the tyre barriers the race was red flagged, and Giovinazzi and Hamilton were informed of the punishments for their illegal pit stops – a ten second stop/go penalty. Whilst the combination of the first safety car and red flag cost McLaren a possible double podium, the pause in the race massively advantaged Lance Stroll, who was able to make his mandatory pit stop without, well, pitting! This loophole has kicked up a certain amount of chat and criticism across the world of F1 (especially from a certain Lando Norris), and maybe the rules will be altered to say the obligatory tyre change can’t take place under red flag conditions. As the vast majority of red flags are due to heavy rain, the cars are on wet weather tyres when they come in and hence this has never been an issue before; it will be interesting to see whether the FIA address this for future races.

Another anomaly thrown up by the non-wet weather red flag was a second standing start (as opposed to a rolling start as per usual). I liked this, as it was a more neutralised beginning to the second half of the race rather than being the race leader’s to control. With Hamilton taking his penalty at the end of the lap, which would place him in last, the re-start was Stroll’s to lose, and that's kind of what he did! Losing places to Gasly, the two Alfas, and Sainz, he was in 5th within two laps. Max Verstappen’s race came to a dismal end as he pulled into the pits with power unit issue, but he had an uncharacteristically poor race prior to this, failing to make much of an impact on the cars in front of him. As Raikonnen moved backwards through the field, Hamilton was battling up the order, overtaking with much more apparent ease than Bottas (though admittedly most of the cars in his way were of the slower variety). As the countdown to the finish began, it was Gasly, Sainz, Stroll at the top, a potential podium I found near impossible to imagine. Surely Bottas would wiggle his way up to second, Hamilton would appear in first and Verstappen would return from the dead to plonk his car in third? But the trio were secure, the only possibility of a mix-up coming from Sainz, who lap by lap was nibbling into Gasly’s lead.

It was only on the final lap though that he was able to get DRS, and as much as I love wheel to wheel racing, I was terrified of the prospect of the pair taking each other out and Bottas lucking his way onto the podium. But fortunately, it was not to be, and we were blessed with the first podium not to feature a Mercedes, Red Bull or Ferrari since Hungary 2012. In complete disbelief, I cried as Gasly crossed the line and the Alpha Tauri garage erupted with joy, the most emotional race ending for me since Abu Dhabi 2016. What it meant to both Gasly and the team was palpable. After an unimaginably difficult 18 months, that saw him relegated from Red Bull and lose one of his best friends in the most tragic of circumstances, Gasly emerged as one of the most deserving ever winners of a Grand Prix. For Alpha Tauri, it was their second ever win and first in 12 years, at their home race to boot. As the Red Bull mechanics congratulated their sister team and Leclerc, Grosjean and many more came to congratulate Gasly in Parc Ferme, the waterworks really started on my sofa. Add to that the Williams drivers’ heartfelt messages of thanks and farewell to Frank and Claire Williams and I was a sobbing mess! Gasly sitting alone on the top step of the podium, taking it all in, is an extremely poignant image I'm sure will live on for years in the minds of every F1 fan.

It was a superb weekend for McLaren, securing a 2nd and 4th on pace that gave them a brilliant boost in the constructor’s championship. Whilst it was a disappointing afternoon for Perez, Stroll continued what has been an impressive season, disproving his doubters with a second career podium. It was sad to see the Williams drivers unable to score at the family’s last race, but they do seem to be on the up and hopefully will be in good hands to return to the top of the sport. With retirements due to both mechanical and driver errors, the weekend couldn’t have gone worse for Ferrari at their home race; as Seb said it was a good thing the Tifosi weren’t there to witness it. Nonetheless, they've got two more Italian Grand Prix to try and claw back a bit of their reputation, with their 1000th race at Mugello set to be an unpredictable one that they can hopefully capitalise from. I can’t wait.

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romchomp · 5 years ago

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That One Track from your favorite romance anime

So, I’m a whore for soundtracks. The amount of hours I’ve spent listening to various soundtracks is in the hundreds. Something I’ve noticed in discussions about good anime soundtracks is that romances are often left out, with the exception of Clannad and Your Lie in April. So here I am, ready to take the task nobody requested.

Before I start listing animes and their soundtracks I’d like to first say that the thing about scores in anime, movies, video games, and even tv shows is that they usually have one track that’s easy to identify (ie. a theme song, a track that plays during a progression/training scene or a track that plays during the climax, etc.). Depending on the tone and atmosphere of the series, this track could be sad, fun, a mesh of the two, or something beyond those lines. Regardless it should affect how you feel and be memorable. So in this post, I’m talking about different romance anime and what I think is** that one track** from them.

**Because I’ve had troubles embedding the tracks into this post I’ll just leave a link to a playlist I made with all the tracks used on soundcloud and youtube**

1. Toradora- Lost My Pieces

There are a lot of tracks from Toradora that I adore, including Yuugure No Yakusoku and Ameiro Rondo. What makes Lost My Pieces work out, however, is the fact that it plays at the climax of the series and stands for a mental shift in the main character as well as a tonal shift in the series. What else is interesting is that this is the only time the track is ever played in Toradora. It really shows how effective it was, considering the track's popularity. When most people think of Toradora’s soundtrack they’ll think of Lost My Pieces. This is certainly** that one track** that will make you...feel things.

2. Clannad- Roaring Tides

This one is probably more arguable considering how many tracks in Clannad are severe tear jerkers. Personally, Roaring Tides has always been that one track in Clannad that would without a doubt fuck me up. There’s just something about that piano...and the...everything. It’s a very dramatic piece and man is it good at heightening the drama in Clannad. Of course, Nagisa and SnowFeild are very close seconds and I can’t forget to mention Town, Flow of Time, People; or Existence; or the goddamn ending Dango Daikazoku (why does this show hate us).

3. Fruits Basket (2001)- Secret

Fruits Basket has a generally wacky soundtrack that covers a variety of tones. However, if there is one track that could be associated with the darker moments in the anime, one that always played when one of the characters talked in depth about the zodiac curse, it’s Secret. This track is a little different from the ones in Toradora and Clannad though. This one’s purpose isn’t to make the viewer cry. I think the track only has that effect from a nostalgic standpoint; listening to the track on its own after the fact adds quite a bit of feeling to this one. Secret is more or less, meant to set the atmosphere. That, put together with how often the track was used, makes it one of the more memorable ones. I can't wait to add the reboot to this list.

4. Nana- Akai Ren

Nana’s soundtrack doesn’t get talked about that often even among its fans. I’m not talking about the vocal pieces that were played by Black Stones or Trapnest, but the background osts. The reason for this probably has to do with 1) the songs sung by Black Stones and Trapnest are on a separate CD than the background tracks and 2) there are a whopping 43 tracks on the CD of background tracks. Regardless, there are a number of tracks that stuck with me even after finishing the show and the best example of this would be Akai Ren, which made me cry EVERY SINGLE TIME it played. That piano still haunts me. What also haunts is the second ending, Starless Night. That one’s a close second.

5. Anohana- Secret Base

I’ve been avoiding using the openings and endings on this list, but I’ll make an exception for Secret Base considering it plays like a track in the background for emotional scenes on several occasions. I was considering using Last Train Home instead, but that track just...doesn’t hit the same way and isn't utilized nearly as often as Anohana's ed. Secret Base also has the advantage of not being played in its entirety until the most climatic and emotional part in the series (as if just a few seconds of the song wasn’t already enough).

6. Your Lie in April- My Friend A Will Be My Accompanist

We all know the soundtrack for Your Lie in April is amazing. Whether it be the classical pieces performed by characters or the rest of the soundtrack that’s left for the background, but I think My Friend A is a particular track that’s memorable and easy to listen to on its own. It plays often throughout the show and because of that, I think it’s the most identifiable piece in the series. My Friend A is beautiful. It doesn’t even need the context of the show to make it an emotional listening experience. If anything this gives context to the show.

7. My Little Monster- Tetsukazu no Kanjou

Not as much of a tear jerker as it is just an adorable track that I often come back to. Maybe it’s a more of a track that elicits happy tears? My Little Monster’s soundtrack reminds me of Toradora’s in the sense that they both have fun scores that feature mostly quirky tracks with a few emotional ones sprinkled in. For this series, it’s emotional one is Tetsukazu no Kanjou, which the show utilizes quite well. It often plays when the audience discovers something new about a character or see an emotional shift in them.

8. Snow White with the Red Hair- Reconciliation: The Beginning of Two People

The best word to describe Shirayuki’s soundtrack would be magical; it's a true fantasy romance score. I was hesitant to mention this soundtrack at all because at first I felt that while Reconciliation is a gorgeous piece, it’s not overwhelmingly emotional, but I’m listening to it right now and have realized that uhhh it’s very emotional and I don’t know what I was thinking. And looking back, this track in specific added a lot to scenes and did, in fact, bring up several emotions. While (maybe) not tear-jerking, the track would definitely have you gushing at how sweet and precious the main couple is.

9. Bloom Into You- Earnest Wish

You know, you hear a lot of piano in romance series. A lot of violin. A lot of flute. But clarinet? That's not as common. This track really makes you wish there was more luckily, a lot of the other pieces on Bloom Into You's soundtrack also have clarinet in them. Anyways, any moment Earnest Wish started playing...I knew shit was about to go down. There was usually some dramatic wind (oftentimes blowing Touka’s hair) when it started playing. Something new would be revealed about the character's backstory or their insecurities. Good piece. Very good piece.

10. Kanon- Winter Fireworks

Kanon has the misfortune of forever being compared to Clannad and living in its shadow. Something I think, however, that doesn’t deserve to be compared to Clannad would be Kanon’s soundtrack. Its score is unique and successfully conveys a winter essence. Winter Fireworks is the best example, but there are so many other amazing tracks. I just [making aggressive hand gestures] really love it.

11. Your Name- Sparkle

Your Name is really good at using its score to accelerate emotional scenes and generally flow with the mood of the film. Its best example of this would be Sparkle, which plays at the climax and man does it work. The pace of the track has the perfect amount of energy to go along with a beautiful running sequence that was emotional as all hell.

So far I have only talked about tear-jerker tracks, but romances are also completely capable of having a track memorable by how warm and happy it is.

12. Toradora (again)- Startup

Startup is probably the easiest to remember/call out but I think Happy Monday is a really close second that no one talks about. Startup is used similarly to Lost My Pieces, though more often. Where Lost My Pieces plays at an emotional climax, representing a progression in the characters, Startup always plays when one of the main characters is making a stride to better themselves or their situation (hence, progressing the story). It’s a great track and does its job well.

13. Kaichou wa Maid Sama- Main Theme

Man, I could dance to this track. I remember always feeling giddy when this track started playing. You knew things were about to get exciting. It’s the perfect amount of fun and cheesy for a hilarious and sweet shoujo such as Maid Sama.

14. Princess Jellyfish- Umi to Tsuki no Yume

While it’s hard to stream the entirety of Princess Jellyfish’s soundtrack for free, there are a few tracks that are easily accessible on youtube. Umi to Tsuki no Yume is one of them and lucky for me, it’s one of my favorite tracks as well as one that seemed to stick out to others as well. It’s very befitting of the show’s flamboyant yet down to earth atmosphere.

15. His and Her Circumstances- Peace Reigns in the Land

I love every track from Kare Kano but this one especially left a mark on me. There’s plenty of lovely piano pieces that you could you point to as that one track but I personally find the tracks with trumpet solos and soft drums to be the charming point in its score. Peace Reigns in the Land normally plays sometime during the beginning of episodes and really leaves you feeling like everything is gonna be okay. As for accessibility to the soundtrack, there are a few tracks you can find on Youtube and I managed to find the entirety of the soundtrack here on Soundcloud uploaded only five days ago (so who knows how long it'll be up).

16. Nisekoi- Meirou

Nisekoi’s production value was always too good for its own good and its soundtrack is no exception. I was torn between a number of tracks from Nisekoi to mention. Should I go with the sweet and warm Lost of Words that reminds me of summer? Or the fun and goofy Meirou I can still remember playing at the end of each episode years after watching? Or what if I go with the more bleak Nikuhaku to represent that one track that stuck out in the series? Well. It’s Meirou. Hate to be anticlimactic, but Meirou captures the tone and atmosphere of the series better than any other track in the series. It's sweet but in a ridiculous kind of way.

17. Honey and Clover- Be Careful of Being Tricked!

I absolutely adore Honey and Clover’s soundtrack. It has an interesting range of instruments that gives it a unique charm. Be Careful of Being Tricked is no exception with its use of bongos, the organ, and acoustic guitar along with humming... It’s a good time. Bon Bon Bereppa was another track I thought of using for this list. Both tracks scream "How did I get myself in this situation?". It was really hard to pick one over the other, to be honest. It came down to the organ.

18. Lovely Complex- Orchestra Na Risa

Generally, the score of Lovely Complex is goofy and a riot to listen to on its own. Orchestra Na Risa is one of the slower pieces, and a touching one at that. Somehow it manages to feel sweet and whimsical while still fitting in with all the other ridiculous tracks and antics in the show itself.

Honorable mentions??

Doukyuusei (the whole thing tbh)

From Up on Poppy Hill- Kokurikozaka kara (theme song)

Air TV- Natsukage

Yosuga no Sora- Kioku

Now there are plenty of romance anime I have yet to watch and I hope many of them will make me think to myself "Wow, this would've made a great addition to that blog post I made about romance anime with good soundtracks". There are certain anime I’m even prepared for. But for now, I’m just writing about what I already know [it’s not a lot].

Here is a playlist of the all the tracks I listed in this blog post and here's a playlist I made of all my favorite romance anime tracks that you can check out if you feel inclined.

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the-wolfs-raven · 6 years ago

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Some of the commissions I’ve done recently. Still only $5 a pop!

To put this in perspective, folks, these take me anywhere between 1-2 hours to do, so that’s an income of a whopping $2.50-$5 an hour. lol

You, as the commissioner, reap the benefits of quick, inexpensive character portraits!

Sometime in the next week or so, I will be streaming commissions as well (need to get all of the programs and work the bugs out). I’ll be selling these for the same price, only you’ll be able to watch my backward, convoluted process and have changes made in real time. <3

Here is the link to my artists and clients page (whom, I should mention, take 20% of my earnings, but is a safe, streamlined way to commission me): https://artistsnclients.com/slots/41966-simple-fast-portrait

And here’s the link to my Ko-fi in case you’d like to throw a little extra cash my way (this is used to maintain my drawing equipment, purchase more programs, replace tablet pens or screen protectors, etc): https://www.ko-fi.com/tarvasha

I will also possibly be opening Ko-fi quick sketches which will be something like this:

Ko-Fi Sketch Donation Raffle

My oldest daughter is Type 1 diabetic and we had an issue with the review paperwork for our insurance, so we’re not covered for a short time. She’ll be needing more insulin soon, and as any diabetic (or someone caring for a diabetic) can tell you, it is not cheap.

On the bright side, once the paperwork goes through, we can receive a refund for money spend replenishing our supply. I think, if I do open the sketches, I’ll put the money towards her insulin and, when the refund comes in, I think I’ll donate whatever we were given back.

On second thought, I’m going to open them.

This is how it will work:

Buy me a coffee ($3) per character you’d like sketched. You may send the references to me through my Ko-fi site, over Tumblr, or over Discord (Tarvasha#3934).

Each coffee you purchase (no limit) will enter you into a raffle (you do not need to ask for a sketch for each ko-fi, as they will still count). This raffle will be a little different as you will not receive anything. However, whatever money I make from the ko-fi’s that go towards my daughter’s insulin will be donated to the charity/cause of the winner’s choice once I receive the refund from insurance.

There is a certain limit to the causes I will be willing to donate to. No hate groups or the like will be given any money, even if it is what the winner wishes. Should the winner not be willing to support a benevolent cause, a second winner will be chosen (Though I’ve had pretty good experiences with most people on Tumblr. I don’t expect a lot of people to want to donate to any sort of hate group or the like).

These causes will also include gofundme’s. patreons, kickstarters, etc. If you have a cool person/idea/group that you wish the money to go to, I can totally make that work!

This event will be open from now until April 30th.

To explain this a bit better, here’s an example:

You buy five coffees, ask for sketches for three of them, but do not need/want a sketch for the remaining two. You still have five entries to the raffle. At the end of the event (April 30th), a winner will be chosen. Let’s say you win. This means that the entirety of the ko-fi amount gained during the event is yours to donate. I will message the winner and ask where they would like the money to go. You can donate it all to a single cause, if you wish. Or you can break it up among several causes. Let’s say the total amount was $60. You could donate all $60 to something or donate $20 to one cause, $10 to another, $30 to another, etc.

If you would like to donate a ko-fi to me personally, you may do that as well, but it will not be included in the raffle.

Artist and Client commissions also do not qualify for the raffle, but commissioning me is always appreciated!

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magicrazy-1205 · 6 years ago

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Fandom vs. Religion: Is Fandom a Religion?

(This is an actual paper I submitted to my college English prof. He said write about anything so I did.)

(If you repost please give credit where credit is due) It is the most moving thing I have ever read. It makes me feel so close to the creator that I am breathless. Tears are streaming down my face, making me look like a fool but I don’t care. I just want to bathe in my feelings and let them infect others. The need to tell others of this wonderful thing. This thing which has reaffirmed my faith in humanity. This book that has such depth and is so poignant. Most people would think I had just found my way into religion. They would be wrong. I had just read The Fault in our Stars, a book that made even my heartless sister cry. This book caused us to go crazy. Anytime the author publishes a new book we must have it. Anytime there is new merch pertaining to the book we must have it. We try to emulate the way the characters behaved. Tried to be just as strong. Before long we joined a fandom full of people just as crazy about it as we were. It was like joining a religion. But aren’t fandom and religion kind of the same thing. Couldn’t fandom be a religion. Fandom is a religion or substitute religion because, like most religions it has a big following, the characters and figures are emulated in the hopes of becoming more like them, there are a lot of sub fandoms like there are lots of sub-religions, and finally elements of fandom are very similar to those of religion. Fandom and religion both have a large community of people. Most of the time, the public recognizes the religious community more than the fandom community. Fandom occurs more indoors, on the internet, than out in the open. The only reason fandom people are out in the open are for a fandom reason, such as, fan conventions. As such, any demographics pertaining to fandom are far more scarce than those that are about religion. Also, most surveys are done through the large fanfiction sites. Mainly, Fanfiction.net, Archiveofourown.org, and Wattpad.com, which are all sites for unpublished books and fanfiction. This makes it difficult to get any numbers. Another difficulty is the ever changing number of people joining or leaving a fandom. But there are a few things that are certain. Fandom is 17-25 year old female dominated. There are guys in there too but there are definitely more girls. Another factor is where in the world a person is. It is practically a requirement for a person to have internet in order to be involved in fandom. Some countries don’t have that access. And the last classifier is the fandom itself. Unfortunately I was unable to find any numbers that encompassed all fandoms compared to the rest of the world, however I can use a fandom I am involved in. Supernatural is one of the most prominent fandoms around. Anyone involved in any kind of fandom knows about supernatural. The first episode it aired it was viewed by 5.69 million people. And although viewership has gone down over the past 10 seasons it has not dipped below 1.45 million. That is just one fandom. There are hundreds even thousands more fandoms. And although I cannot give a number I can say it is a majority of the First and Second world countries population are a part of fandoms. Religion also has a large following. Religion is easier to get statistics on because people practice out in the open. They show their faith by going to church and following any holy texts the religion may have and emulating those that are in the texts. Since they are out in the open it is easy to get stats on religion. Jennifer Harper from the Washington Times said that 84% of the world's population in 2010 participated in religious affairs. That is roughly 5.8 billion people worldwide involved in some type of religion. And of those, the main religion appears to be Christianity with a whopping 2.2 billion people worldwide. The global median age for any religion is 28. There are about 14 million Jewish people in the world. This is comparable to supernaturals 5.69 million. If fandom was socially accepted like religion it would probably have more readily available numbers. The fact that one fandom can hold up against one religion speaks volumes for fandom as a whole. Emulation is a big part of anyone’s life. Everyone tries to be better or worse than they are. And to do that they have role models. In the case of fandom, characters are the role models. In religion, a messiah or prophet or creator of the religion. The difference between the two is the fact that fandoms can dress as their role models. They can act like them and use them to try to be braver or whatever they are trying to be. Cosplay is a way for fandom people to be able to dress up as their heroes in public. This is not blasphemous in the eyes of their peers, like dressing like jesus is. Claiming to be anything like the deity of a religion is considered bad form. The characters imitated through cosplay are able to be related to because they are (usually) human. Even if they will never be them they try to be as like them as they can. In religious teachings, the religious figures have an unattainable level of goodness. Those within a church are meant to be getting closer to the lord by being more like him knowing they never can be like him. In an interview I did with a friend of mine i asked him why he cosplayed. Below is a picture of his cosplay. His response was that he felt like it released apart of himself that related to deadpool. When asked why he enjoyed cosplay he said, “ Because for that short moment of time you can be something you want to be or can be.” He was relating the character to himself as a role model that could be achieved and maintained. Another thing i asked was if liking deadpool had ever affected any decisions or actions he had made in the past. His answer, “Yes; being able to let go of things that could harm me emotionally and psychologically.” This all goes to show that fandom people try to emulate their characters just as religious people try to emulate religious figures. Religion and fandom are large and widespread throughout the world. There are many different types and subtypes. In religion it is mostly because throughout history everyone has a different opinion about creation and death. There are about 4,200 different types of religion not including sub-religions. Christianity as i said before is the largest and most widespread religion. But under christianity a person could divide it down to, "6 major ecclesiastico-cultural mega-blocs" according to the world christian encyclopedia. These blocks are subdivided again by country. Altogether without all the subdivisions there are around 33,000 different denominations of christianity. The first subdivision is simply a differing in opinion. And this is just christianity. There are many many more in the other major religions. And anyone who does not have a religion is basically cast into the atheist division. But that is a minority. All over the world there is something someone is worshipping. The map below shows that.

Everyone is part of a religion, just like everyone is part of a fandom. If there is something a person likes there is a fandom for it. From a prominent tv show to a hobby like knitting, it is out there. There are fandoms for sports, music, people, shows, and hobbies. There is a fandom for bagels, there is a fandom for that one particular blade of grass in someone’s front yard, for goodness sake. But how are fandoms categorized? Well first there is is something a person is obsessed with, whether mildly or highly, and this person joins a fandom. A casual fan does not usually go into depth with his or her chosen fandom. But the more obsessed the more options. For example, on my tumblr page one would find an exorbitant amount of NaLu fanfiction. This is a ship fandom. It is one of the subdivisions of the fairy tail fandom. Which is a subdivision of the anime fandom, which is a subdivision of the tv show fandom, which is a subdivision of the tv fandom, which is a subdivision of fandom itself. Finding a fandom can be tricky with this many subdivisions but with a little perseverance I can almost guarantee it is out there. And one never has to go too deep if they don’t want to or stick with it till the end of time. The amount of sub-fandoms compared to the amount of sub religions is incredibly hard to count. But the fandom is most broadly categorized by its medium. So anything goes really. Except porn. Let me be very very clear. PORN IS NOT A FANDOM! IT IS IT'S OWN THING! But that is the only exception to the rule. All these subdivisions add up into one whole just like all the subdivisions in christianity. This all shows that since it has many subdivisions fandom is like a religion. Lastly I will be pointing out the glaring similarities between being involved in fandom versus religion. It is not a commonly accepted thing to compare fandom to religion. However a person cannot ignore the differences between the 2. The things that define fandom as fandom are if it has a large fan base and a lot of fanwork. Fanwork is fanfiction, fanart, any kind of contribution. There are those within a fandom that follow a fanfiction more than the actual thing the fandom is based on. Throughout all this mess though the characters are always the same. And unless it’s an au the work is also in the same universe. There is also fan merch as well. Anything that is sold pertaining to a fandom is merch. There are also fanvids fanmusic and a million other things i am forgetting. I am not saying all this for no reason. If a person was to think about it it sounds like any religion. A holy text could be classified as a fanfiction. Whether it is based on real or fictitious events makes no difference. Any paintings classified as real art that are based on any part of a religion are fanart. My favorite example is the roof of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. The below picture is called the Creation of Adam. It shows what appears to be god leaving the garden and adam to go back to heaven with his angels.

This is a form of fanart. It is not an original idea even if it is beautiful. It is a fanart of events that may or may not be fictitious. There is also the merchandise to think about. It has become more prominent in the late 1900’s and now but there has always been holy merch. For example, crucifixes, holy figure statues, rosaries, anything having to do with religion is merchandise. In recent years those types of things have expanded. Crosses on everything. Crosses on leggings shirts dresses shoes jewelry accessories and even tattoos. All this is merch just like in a fandom. And this not even the half of it. There are also the religion based movies, and music. These are also elements that can be related to fandom. These are the similarities that turn fandom into religion. Fandom comforts people in a way that is similar to religion. If a person is stressed reading a book or watching a tv series helps them to relax. It is the same way with religion. People turn to religion in times of need or sorrow or stress. It comforts them knowing there is something bigger than them at play, some higher purpose they are meant to serve. It is also comforting, for me, to know there is someone in the world who suffered more than I am. It helps me to know that my life is actually pretty good and that i have no excuse for feeling the way I do if they had it worse and still smiled. That is what fandom and religion do for me. I prefer fandom to religion because the characters are more relatable, more human. The characters I choose to emulate are always changing. This is what makes them a good dynamic character. They are like me. Changing to suit their situation, and growing in ways they did not think possible. And there are more people than me who think the way I think the same. Over many many more continents. This is what would make fandom a good religion. Fandom has a big following, the characters and figures are emulated in the hopes of becoming more like them, there are a lot of sub fandoms like there are lots of sub-religions, and finally elements of fandom are very similar to those of religion.

Works Cited "Finding Faith? Fandom and Religion." — University of Leicester. Leicester University, 20 July 2015. Web. 29 Apr. 2016. "Most Popular Fandoms." - Top Ten List. N.p., 2015. Web. 29 Apr. 2016. Romano, Aja. "Is It Possible to Quantify Fandom? Here's One Statistician Who's Crunching the Numbers." The Daily Dot. N.p., 30 Jan. 2016. Web. 29 Apr. 2016. "Khan Academy." Khan Academy. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 May 2016. "The Facts and Stats on 33000 Denominations: World Christian Encyclopedia (2001, 2nd Edition)." The Facts and Stats on 33000 Denominations: World Christian Encyclopedia (2001, 2nd Edition). N.p., n.d. Web. 01 May 2016. "List of Religions and Spiritual Traditions." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 01 May 2016. "Role Model." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 01 May 2016. "The Global Religious Landscape." Pew Research Centers Religion Public Life Project RSS. N.p., 17 Dec. 2012. Web. 01 May 2016. "Fanfiction Terminology." Fanfiction Terminology. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 May 2016. "Most Popular Fandoms." : Page 2. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 May 2016 Lusby, Allyse A. "Tumblr." Log in. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 May 2016. Sendlor, Charles. "Fan Fiction Statistics - FFN Research." : Fan Fiction Demographics in 2010: Age, Sex, Country. N.p., 18 Mar. 2011. Web. 01 May 2016. Harper, Jennifer. "84 Percent of the World Population Has Faith; a Third Are Christian." Washington Times. The Washington Times, n.d. Web. 01 May 2016. "Fandom Cosplay." Personal interview. 25 Apr. 2016.

#fandom #religion #isit #relatable #cosplay #fanfic #fanart

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badbackgroundscience · 6 years ago

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Time for some Particle Physics 101

No, not from you Tales of Suspense. There’s no such thing as “sub-anti-matter” particles. Antimatter? Totally a thing. Totally can interact with the electromagnetic force (and therefore radio waves). And as soon as it collides with the matter version of its particles, everything goes the biggest boom you’d ever see in your life.*

Wikipedia actually a nice handy breakdown of the types of fundamental particles, but it doesn’t mean much unless you already know what’s going on...at least a little bit.

Supposing you don’t remember any of your high school science classes, you should at least recognize two of these things - the electron and the photon. Maybe you’ve heard of the Higgs thing-y, but have no clue what it is, because it was in the news a few years ago.

Electrons and their heavier,** less stable, cousins “muons” and “tau particles” are all negatively charged, and all equally as negative (That’s the -1′s you see in their boxes). Together with the three “flavors” of neutrinos, they form the group physicists call leptons.

Neutrinos are produced as a byproduct of certain nuclear reactions, like radioactive decay and fusion. They’re cosmic ghosts, with basically no mass, and they’re capable of streaming through solid planets as if there’s nothing there. They’re electrically neutral (hence the name), so they don’t interact with the electromagnetic force. That means they - like the stuff this space ship is supposedly made of - wouldn’t interact with radio waves...because radio waves are electromagnetic waves.***

The next main group of particles is the quarks (not Armin Shimerman’s Quark, sadly). Most of the ones that exist currently in the universe are ups and downs, in the form of protons and neutrons. Protons are made of 2 ups + 1 down, and Neutrons are 2 downs + 1 up. Quarks can never exist as single particles; they always come in groups of 2 or more, because the amount of energy required to pull them apart will always be enough energy to create another quark that’s stuck to one you’re trying to isolate.

We call all composite quark particles - whether they’re protons, neutrons, or more exotic particles - hadrons. (If that word sounds familiar to you, you might be thinking of the LHC - the Large Hadron Collider - which is the large particle accelerator on the border of Switzerland and France.)

Particles made up of 2 quarks (specifically, one quark and one anti-quark) are called mesons, and particles made up of 3 quarks are called baryons.

Wait! Did I say “mesons”? That brings me to another panel in this issue...

I don’t know what an “ultra-meson” is, but you totally could invent a machine that fires out mesons. Unfortunately, all varieties of meson are super unstable, with the longest living a whopping nanosecond before they decay into electrons and neutrinos or photons.

The way to get around this is to make them travel at nearly the speed of light. Since the faster you travel the slower your internal clock appears to the rest of the universe (think: Special Relativity and Time Dilation), a super-super-speedy meson would appear to last longer to us. Maybe, like, a second or so.

But it looks like the baddie in this comic short has a weapon that won’t actually be as effective as he thinks it will be.

The remaining group of particles in the chart above are the bosons - the messenger particles for the fundamental forces in the universe. Photons pair with the electromagnetic force. Gluons pair with the strong nuclear force and are what hold quarks and hadrons together. The Gauge Bosons are particles that mediate radioactive decay for the weak nuclear force. And the Higgs is - as we understand it - what allows particles to have mass.

There’s a hypothetical particle for mediating gravity called the graviton, but no one’s ever actually detected it.

So that was the second story in Tales of Suspense #54 - a story about a lizard-like alien conqueror who gets scared of an old lady with a mink coat. The third is about the classic Marvel character Uatu the Watcher, who fails to intervene in protecting some aliens.

It actually turns out for the better.

Yeah - the aliens throw all their dangerous nuclear waste out into space for some other civilization to worry about.

(Why it got launched as a giant cloud, and not stored inside a large vat/rocket payload thing, is anyone’s guess.)

They aim their giant cloud for the “most deserted part of the galaxy”. We don’t know what galaxy they live in - whether it’s a spiral like the Milky Way, ellipsoidal, or something irregular like dwarf galaxies tend to be. We also don’t know where inside their galaxy their planet is located. If it’s like Earth’s situation, they’d be out in the boonies - located between two arms, and decently far from the super crowded center.

Wherever they’re located, they can only launch their giant cloud of radioactive junk at sub-light speeds, and space is very, very big. So it would certainly take more than a few decades before it ran into another system harboring life. But hey, they can’t even think to use an uninhabited planet in their system as a giant junk yard, so clearly they’re not all that clever.

But anyway, the cloud is heading for an inhabited system. Uatu struggles with the “no interference” rule his bosses have imposed, but he ultimately does nothing.

He also does nothing when a nearby supernova throws one of its planets toward the exact same system.

Turns out the two threats collide with one another, creating an explosion that literally obliterates the rogue planet.

Now, nuclear waste is waste for a reason - only certain isotopes are good for fission reactions, like Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239/241. After they break apart they don’t go boom again. You can’t make a nuclear bomb out of radioactive waste.

You can make a dirty bomb, though. Cobalt-60 is produced in nuclear reactors, and can be collected and put inside conventional explosives to add a radioactive health hazard, or inside another nuke to increase the radioactive fallout. But it itself doesn’t undergo a nuclear explosion.

Radioactive waste is dangerous because its atoms spit out small particles that have energies high enough to damage your cells and the DNA inside them. It’s not dangerous because it could undergo a second nuclear explosion.

So ignoring the fact that you would need a crazy amount of energy to obliterate an entire planet - you’d need 1,000,000 billion of history’s largest nuke Tsar Bomba detonating simultaneously at the center of the Earth, for example - this radioactive cloud couldn’t provide the fuel necessary for that “unimaginably powerful atomic explosion”.

But it does open up a good ice breaker question - would you rather die from your planet’s atmosphere getting polluted by radioactive fallout, or by having a giant space rock smash into you.

* Matter-antimatter collisions produce light, so you would indeed literally see it. And they’re the very best at converting mass into energy (unlike, e.g. nuclear fusion, chemical combustion) so gram for gram it’s the biggest boom.

** By ‘heavier’, I’m referring to mass, not weight. However in particle physics mass is always given in terms of energy equivalence, e.g. MeV/c^2. As an astrophysicist who never worked with high energy stuff, this still confuses me.

*** (They’re also photons - the particle versions of light.)

#comics #space #nuclear #physics

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beneathshadowsrp · 6 years ago

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The Crown of Shadows Results are in!

“And as the evening comes to a close, it’s time to announce the auction results. Once again, I am Carlton Cartwright and, judging from your bids, I think you all were just as impressed as I was with these impressive contestants and their wonderful dates. But, before we announce the winners and who will be taking home the Crown of Shadows, I want to remind ya’ll of where all of these proceeds are going to. The proceeds of this event are to help the Muttropawlitan keep strays off the streets and to instating a go green initiative around town. From cleaning up Wonderland Park to helping buildings such as All Saint’s Hospital be powered solely by Solar Energy panels, your donations will be a crucial to fixing up the town and, coming in at a whopping $17,205, will be able to not only clean up Wonderland Park and help out the Muttropawlitan, but build a dog park in town, install solar energy panels throughout All Saint’s Hospital, and go towards the funds to build a public pool. Thank you so much for your wonderful contributions and you’ll be sure to see your marvelous contributions come into effect soon. But, now for what you’re all been waiting for-”

Now that you’ve won your charity dates, feel free to play them out on the dash! Please feel free to reach out to your character’s date, plot OOC, and create threads surrounding it. You don’t have to create the date thread right away. So, feel free to take your time with and work together. If you want to wait to have your date thread after the full moon, by all means do that. And last but not least, have fun!! We’re so excited to announce the winners and we hope you are too!

The total amount of money raised from the charity event: $17,205

In Crown of Shadows Tradition, we will be awarding crowns to the top two highest bidders as a thank you for their generous donations. The crowns will bestowed upon them from the past years’ highest bidders and, come the next year, they will have the honor of passing the crowns down to the next winners:

The highest bidder who will win the Crown of Shadows (see image here): Mackenzie Foster

The runner up in highest bidder who will win the Princess tiara (see image here): Olivia Pierce

The Dates/Winners:

1: Amanda & Abby

2: Eliza & Sophie

3: Tae Cho & Juliet

4: James & Evie

5: Noah & Kenzie

6: Caitlin & Julian

7: Natalia & Liv

8: Kelsie & Kai

9: Damien & Astrid

10: Jacen & Carter

11: Rowan & Ella

12: Griffin & Nina

13: Serena & Silas

14: Lia & Jasmine

And in case you forgot what the dates were...

The Date Breakdown/Recap once more:

Contestant #1 is... Amanda Weaver. She is:

Goofy, Energetic, and Adventurous.

She hates asparagus. Vehemently.

She doesn’t want to entirely spoil the surprise, but it will involve shopping and it will involve dinner. In that order.

The winner of this date is... Abby Barnes.

Contestant #2 is... Eliza Holmes. She is:

Kind, Protective, Creative.

She can dance really well, but she only does so in the safety and privacy of their home.

The date would consist of a picnic packed and made by the contestant, near the water, under that old willow tree everyone loves. Then she would enjoy taking you up to the lookout pointe, overlooking the town and the water close by, to enjoy some wine. And perhaps some good conversation under the stars.

The winner of this date is... Sophie Vidales.

Contestant #3 is... Tae Cho. He is:

Outgoing. Lovable. Spicy.

Madame Zeroni once predicted he wouldn’t finish college. ‘She’ was right.

Free dance lessons at Tiptoes, with your choice of salsa dancing or hip-hop. Followed by a picnic dinner under the stars where you can also watch Netflix on his iPad.

The winner of this date is... Juliet Reynolds.

Contestant #4 is... James Armstrong. He is:

Dutiful, Chivalrous, and Trustworthy.

“My dad’s dead, does that count?”

They will take you on a boat ride on the water, departing from the Harbor and making their way to the Falls. There, they will drop anchor and enjoy a pre-packaged meal next to the Falls. Pack a swimsuit if you want to take a dive.

The winner of this date is... Eve Martin.

Contestant #5 is... Noah Armstrong. He is:

Down to Earth, Fun-Loving, Goofy.

‘I can fit my whole fist in my mouth, wanna see?’

This date is a scavenger hunt comprised of recreating popular romcom moments together on a budget. The clues, such as an ode to “She’s the Man” where a present shows up on your doorstep with a wheel of gouda cheese in it, will lead you to your date whom will be hanging off the side of their roof from a bungee cord, wearing a Spiderman costume like in the OC and holding cue cards from the movie “Love Actually”, while a boombox sits below playing “Kiss Me” from Six Pence None the Richer. After finally cutting themselves down, your date will take you into the backyard where a projector will be playing “10 Things I Hate About You” onto a sheet that has been tapped to the side of the building to look like a screen. This contestant, also, would like you to know, that during the movie, popcorn, ring pops, and chocolate covered strawberries will be provided.

The winner of this date is... Mackenzie Foster.

Contestant #6 is... Caitlin Dunmore . She is:

Caring, Dedicated, Passionate.

They can randomly produce facts about certain things. Makes them really good for trivia games.

On this date, you will meet up to have either coffee or dinner than off to a painting class and end the day with ice cream and strolling through the town at dusk.

The winner of this date is... Julian St. Clair.

Contestant #7 is... Natalia Hamilton. She is:

Charismatic, Adventurous, & Dominate.

Can sing rather well & can make up little cheers due to their time as a cheerleader!

On their date, they would love to explore the town & woods while under the moon. After a walk around town, you will then be invited out to one of the many bars and spend the night dancing, eating, and drinking in a private section while enjoying each other’s company.

The winner of this date is... Olivia Pierce.

Contestant #8 is... Kelsie Woods. She is:

Cute, Quiet, & Loving.

They once won a radio call in contest by being the first person who could sing the alphabet backwards.

If you win you can look forward to a picnic at the Falls with all the traditional picnic fixings. You two can eat, swim, and just enjoy a nice summer day.

The winner of this date is... Kai Papoa.

Contestant #9 is... Damien Pierce. He is:

Funny, Charismatic, Charming.

In our high schools production of Grease, I played Danny Zuko.

On our date, they will take you to a water/amusement park in Charlotte with an all access pass to all the rides and a VIP treatment with fast lane upgrades, free meals and a rental of our own cabana to sit and rest until you’re ready to hit the rides again.

The winner of this date is... Astrid Reyes.

Contestant #10 is... Jacen Todd. He is:

Sarcastic, Charming, Witty.

I’m a fan of Karaoke bars and frequent them every week.

On our date, they will take you to the local gun range and if you’re a first timer, teach you how to shoot, if not start up a friendly competition of who can best who on targets. After you’re done, dinner at the restaurant of your choice.

The winner of this date is... Carter Pierce.

Contestant #11 is... Rowan Hartman. She is:

Serious, sweet, loyal.

I’m an expert knife thrower and kick ass at darts.

On our date, they will take you on a sunset cruise on Lake Norman on a private yacht. This date is complete with dinner, a Netflix movie of the bidder’s choice.

The winner of this date is... Ella Bahar.

Contestant #12 is... Griffin West. He is:

Adorable, Funny, and Resourceful.

Scared to death of porcelain dolls.

The date will involve a trip to the arcade, where you can play games, battle it out in laser tag, take a spin around the roller skating rink, or get behind the wheel to race in go-karts. There, you will also enjoy a private, candle lit dinner for two over pizza, nachos, and your choice of soda. Unlimited tokens will be provided, along with a guaranteed prize of your choosing.

The winner of this date is... Nina Skala.

Contestant #13 is... Serena North. She is:

Fun-loving, Adventurous, Independent

They’ve lived in more than 4 different countries.

While most of us have lived in this town forever most of us have taken for granted some of the the treasures that are hidden in this town. The day would be full of exploring them. Starting off with breakfast at The Pie Hole, then move on to the Boathouse where most of the day would be spent out on the water. When the fun in the sun was done the party could move to Level Up! for a quick round of air hockey and dinner. After the sun goes down the excitement begins with Moonlight Zip lining that ends at the Observatory where desert will be waiting.

The winner of this date is... Silas Bahar.

Contestant #14 is... Lia Diaz. She is:

Sweet, Ambitious & Cheerful.

They are ambidextrous.

This date will be a carefree night in. Start out by having fun splatter painting your date’s living room and each other with paint filled balloons. Then, just as the sun is about to set, watch the light stream in through the windows and illuminate your splatter painted work as you enjoy a home cooked meal and a bottle of wine of your choice on a picnic blanket spread out across the floor. Then your date will lead you into the backyard where twinkly lights are set up for a free salsa lesson and a chance to watch the stars.

The winner of this date is... Jasmine Morris.

#shadowevents #shadowevents1 #shadowsfd1

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ideastreammarketing02 · 2 years ago

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Idea Stream Marketing

The Top 3 Ads From The Superbowl (In Our Opinion)

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Please feel free to visit us at: https://ideastreammarketing.com/

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vaughnsiel · 3 years ago

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Week 2 - Social Media Assignment Part 2: Social Media Experiment and Blog Post 2

After completing my social media log time usage for the first part of this assignment I was very surprised to see just how many hours in total I spent in front of a screen for just one 24 hour period. I do not consider myself very involved with posting on social media so I had assumed that my usage would be lower than average, but upon reviewing my recorded information I was very wrong. What I was mainly interested in was how I could apply changes to my screen usage after recording them for one day.

When recording this data I decided to include things like Google Chrome, Blackboard, Microsoft Word, Youtube, Outlook email, iTunes, and a handful of social media applications because I spend a considerable amount of time on each of them every day. But compared to my social media usage, my time spent on school-related applications weighed in significantly less than time spent on places like Youtube and iTunes. (3 hours and 30 minutes spent on a screen for school, 6 hours and 30 minutes spent on a screen for entertainment or streaming).

After recording a significant amount of data, I had realized that if I were to significantly reduce the number of screens I regularly use, I needed to also include the amount of time I spent listening to music since technically that did count. This also included podcasts and white noise videos. After recording for music and listening to videos, I noticed that the majority of my day had consisted of listening to audio and taking notes to see how I could change this the following day. In addition to this, I had deleted Twitter because I will usually catch myself opening it too many times per day. Doing these two changes really showed me how much of my day is spent on a screen.

When I recorded my log during the day, I spent about 2 hours on social media. After recording the data and deleting Twitter for a day, I spent no longer than 40 minutes on it the next day. I had also chosen to log my total hours spent listening to music and podcasts which totaled out to a whopping 7 hours and 30 minutes total of my day. Even though I wasn’t looking at a screen for the entire time, it was still very concerning. I had underestimated just how much I depend on personal screen usage during my workday. Knowing this, I tried to not take my earbuds to work so I could reduce this time. The following day I had only spent 2 hours and 20 minutes steaming and listening to things from my phone on the way to my work and a few minutes at home. In total, I had reduced my screen usage from a total of 8 hours and 30 minutes to a total of 3 hours and 30 minutes the next day.

The experience from this experiment had helped me realize just how much I depend on my phone to help me get through parts of the day, and that I will feel better and more rewarded having less time wasted on a screen. I felt like I was more on top of things that I needed to get done without having noise on in the background or watching Youtube videos. This experiment was much needed and was a refreshing experience.

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joseph-marc-blumenthal · 3 years ago

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T-Mobile will benefit from 5G implementation soon

The stream of news about 5G adoption will snowball soon. This is the technology of the current decade and in the 2030s. The next generations will come. For example, in May, the Neuberger Berman Next Generation Connectivity Fund (NYSE: NBXG) placed its shares on the NYSE, which intends to invest not only in 5G, but also in 6G, and what comes next. True, two-thirds of the fund's funds will be invested in companies with high capitalization (more than $ 20 billion), which, of course, develop today's technologies.

And among them, of course, Apple will play the first violin. More than half of Americans own the company's smartphones, so if Apple equips the entire iPhone line with 5G technology in 2022, it means that the standard will be available. Perhaps, if there is no mobile phone that supports 5G, fans will be helpless, because they predict that the main consumer will be the organization's network. The networks will manage the activities of "smart" factories, cities, transport, health care systems, etc.

If in 3 years on domestic equipment they launch 5G in million-plus cities, of course, many will grumble, but it is likely that we will not feel an acute lag. The fact is that there are not so many new services consumed directly by humans that require 5G. Sharing data with a game server in a multiplayer game is cool, but not everyone needs it. Telemedicine transmitted real-time tomographic images of our internal to Dr. House. Fortunately, he also received his instructions. Video training is flowing smoothly through Zoom based on today's standards.

Invest in international IT companies that, as the pandemic ends and emerges from a difficult economic situation, become the architects of the new economy.

The major consumer of 4G is no longer a person, but the Internet of Things. And Vivian Blumenthal expects 5G to be implemented in most of the main technological processes:

● The 5G standard will increase the data transfer rate by over 100 times. If the 4G standard allows you to reach 100 megabits/sec, then 5G will bring the speed up to 10-50 gigabits/sec.

● Thanks to this speed, the reaction time to an event, for example, when driving a car or remote surgery, will be reduced to a millisecond.

● Over 43 billion devices will be connected to the Internet of Things (IoT).

Already in 2025, the following should be operational:

1. Smart transport. This will lead to an 80% decrease in the number of incidents and a 25% decrease in traffic.

2. Smart factories. Networking will cause real-time automation, productivity gains of 20-30%, and assembly efficiency gains of 50%.

3. Smart healthcare. Telemedicine will cut healthcare costs by 30% thanks to remote services.

4. Smart retail. The main applications of the second and third waves of artificial intelligence will be stores that recognize a customer using biometrics and automatically accept payment for goods.

5. Virtual and augmented reality. The increased communication speed will allow you to achieve amusiveness (immersion effect).

According to Qualcomm's November 2020 report (The 5G Economy in a Post COVID-19 Era Report), the total gross domestic product created with the participation of next-generation communications technologies will be $ 13.1 trillion by 2035. This industry will create 22.8 million jobs. Apparently, Qualcomm's optimism suits Apple, so new iPhones will still use the company's modems. But the processors will already become their own.

Apple's pre-market stock has not yet responded, frozen at $ 146. Perhaps yesterday's growth of 2.6% has so far reflected all the accumulated positives. Vivian Blumenthal held the consensus forecast at $ 159. In terms of analytical fundamentals (multiples), Apple is not an expensive company. The company's revenue is $ 325 billion, and the EV / Revenue multiple is 7.7. The P / E multiple is 33 and the profit is a whopping $ 76 billion.

Besides Apple, American telecoms will soon benefit from introducing 5G, and above all - T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS), which is considered the leader in the speed of implementation of this standard. T-Mobile's 2020 revenues were $ 68.4 billion, up 54% year-over-year, reflecting the impact of Sprint's successful takeover. Revenue over the past 12 months has increased to $ 77 billion. Net income for the same period is $ 3 billion.

T-Mobile's share price has grown by 41% over the year and is now $ 147. The consensus forecast of analysts surveyed by Yahoo! Finance is at $ 166, with a fair value range of $ 130 to $ 250. The company's capitalization reached $ 183 billion, which is already quite comparable with the capitalization of AT&T, the largest telecom in the industry ($ 207 billion). Since the beginning of this year, the T-Mobile company has risen in price by 11%. The EV / Revenue is 3.72 and the P / S is 2.38. Debt in the amount of $ 60 billion relative to revenue is not as large as AT&T ($ 145 billion) and Verizon ($ 107 billion).

The multiple to earnings P / E is 60.6 and the predicted one is 44.6. The multiples are quite high and on the rise - there is a certain amount of excitement around the company's stock since they are the most obvious way to capitalize on the growth wave associated with introducing the 5G standard. Even Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway managers invested about a quarter billion dollars in T-Mobile in the fall. It would seem that the strategy of these investors should not include companies with such high P / E. However, T-Mobile's business model is clear and designed for long-term growth, in line with Buffett's investment philosophy.

We raise our target price for T-Mobile shares by the end of the year to $ 170, 15% above today's level, and have a Buy recommendation for the company.

#Vivian Blumenthal #BluLife #Joseph Marc Blumenthal

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orbemnews · 4 years ago

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Global Markets Drop Sharply, Following Wall Street’s Slump Here’s what you need to know: Commuters in Osaka, Japan, this month. The Nikkei stock index in Japan fell 4 percent on Friday, part of a widespread fall in stocks following a rise in yields in U.S. Treasury bonds.Credit…Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times Global markets fell sharply on Friday following the worst day on Wall Street in weeks, led by a 4 percent drop in stocks in Japan. Investors around the world took their cues from Thursday’s stock market rout in the United States, when the S&P 500 index fell nearly 2.5 percent. But Wall Street futures were betting on a rise in the S&P 500 when trading begins later today. Major European markets opened sharply lower on Friday, but then improved somewhat by midmorning. The Stoxx Europe 600 was down 0.6 percent, the CAC 40 in France was 0.5 percent lower and the FTSE 100 in Britain was trading 0.2 percent lower. In Asia, stocks in Hong Kong and Taiwan fell by more than 3 percent. Markets in South Korea and Australia fell by more than 2 percent. The performance in Asia was its worst since March, by one measure, though it followed months of significant gains as investors bet on the prospect of emergence from the coronavirus outbreak. The sell-off was broad-based, hitting stocks, bonds, gold and oil. Even Bitcoin fell. Investors were reacting to a rise in yields in U.S. Treasury bonds, which many read as a signal that the Federal Reserve and other central banks could soon begin to edge away from the easy-money policies they have used since even before the coronavirus pandemic to stoke growth. The recent rise in bond yields could make borrowing more expensive, slowing progress toward the Federal Reserve’s economic goals.Credit…Leah Millis/Reuters A tumultuous day in financial markets left onlookers questioning whether the Federal Reserve had showed too little concern as longer-term interest rates crept higher — and spurred speculation that the central bank’s leadership may need to speak out against the rise. Yields on all but very short-term government debt moved sharply higher on Thursday, driven in part by expectations that economic growth will snap back after the pandemic. Fed officials had been sanguine as rates moved up in recent weeks, pointing to the increase as a sign of growing economic confidence and downplaying the risk of a sudden increase in borrowing costs. Still, the sudden jump Thursday rippled through financial markets, and analysts at Evercore ISI said the Fed’s message might change as a result. The jump in yields could make borrowing by the government, consumers and businesses more expensive, slowing progress toward the Fed’s economic goals. “The Fed leadership holds some responsibility for this, as the absence of any indication of concern or — more appropriately in our view — central bankerly carefulness” in recent days “has been read in markets as a green light to ramp real yields higher,” Krishna Guha and Ernie Tedeschi wrote in a reaction note, capturing a narrative fast developing among financial analysts. On Thursday, yields on the 10-year Treasury note surged as high as 1.6 percent. That rate was below 1 percent for much of 2020 and had been steadily increasing this year in part as investors expect that a flood of new government spending and the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine would lead to fast economic growth later this year. Despite several public appearances in recent days, central bank officials including the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, and John C. Williams, the New York Fed chief, have not voiced concerns over the shift in yields. Raphael Bostic, the Atlanta Fed president, said as recently as Thursday afternoon that he did not yet see the increases as cause for concern. “The Fed has thus far not been willing to soothe markets” and that has helped fuel the move in yields, analysts at TD Securities wrote on Thursday. Some economists are speculating that the Fed might shift the size or style of its bond buying so that it is better-targeted at holding down longer-term interest rates. “A change of tone at least seems warranted in our view and possibly more,” Mr. Guha and Mr. Tedeschi wrote. “This could well come in the next 24 hours.” DirecTV has been bleeding customers faster than most pay-TV services.Credit…Christopher Gregory/The New York Times AT&T is selling part of its TV business, which consists of the DirecTV, AT&T TV and U-verse brands, to the private equity firm TPG in a spinoff deal as it looks to shed assets to deal with a burdensome debt load and focus on its mobile telephone and streaming businesses. The deal, which will give TPG a minority stake, values the TV business at $16.25 billion — about a third of the $48.5 billion AT&T paid just for DirecTV in 2015. AT&T carries $157 billion of debt, as of December, the result of megadeals including its purchases of DirecTV and Time Warner, which it paid $85.4 billion for in 2018. The entertainment industry has been disrupted by Netflix and an array of competitors fighting for viewers’ attention, complicating plans for DirecTV, which lost more than 3.2 million subscribers in 2020, and for HBO, considered the crown jewel of Time Warner’s business. Investors have worried that AT&T will not be able to become profitable enough to manage the debt load. The company made about $53.8 billion in pretax profit last year, meaning it carries a little more than $3 of total debt for every dollar of pretax profit. Traditionally, AT&T prefers that ratio to be closer to 2.5 to 1. Under the terms of the deal with TPG, AT&T will own 70 percent of the new stand-alone company, which will go by DirecTV, and TPG will own 30 percent. The board of the new entity will include two representatives from each company and the chief executive of AT&T’s video unit, Bill Morrow. The companies hope to fix challenges facing DirecTV — namely a subscriber base that has been bleeding customers faster than most pay-TV services. Annual sales at the DirecTV group fell 11 percent last year to $28.6 billion, and operating profit decreased 16.2 percent to $1.7 billion. The company is also counting on growth of AT&T TV, the company’s new service that streams TV over the internet to a set-top box. “We certainly didn’t expect this outcome when we closed the DirecTV transaction in 2015, but it’s the right decision to move the business forward,” said John Stankey, AT&T’s chief executive, who as an executive at WarnerMedia led both the DirecTV and Time Warner deals. TPG has ample experience with corporate partnerships, including taking a joint stake in Intel’s McAfee computer security unit and teaming up with Humana in its deal for the hospice provider Kindred. It has owned parts of Spotify, Creative Artists Agency, the cable provider Astound Broadband, and Entertainment Partners, which provides software to the entertainment and video industry. AT&T has not ruled out more divestitures. As DoorDash’s orders grew, so did its losses.Credit…Sean Sirota for The New York Times In its first earnings report as a public company, DoorDash showed how it has benefited from the pandemic even as it hinted that difficulties might lie ahead. The delivery company on Thursday posted revenue of $970 million for the fourth quarter, up 226 percent from a year earlier, as total orders jumped 233 percent. The company’s fortunes have been buoyed by the pandemic, as people have stayed home to keep safe from the coronavirus and have used DoorDash to order in food and other items. Yet it also reported a loss of $312 million, compared with a loss of $134 million a year earlier. The company, which went public in December, said it had increased spending on advertising, customer recruitment, research and development, and other expenses. DoorDash said it had also lost money because of costs associated with stock-based compensation related to its initial public offering. More important, DoorDash warned that its boost from the pandemic might fade. The widespread availability of vaccines in the coming months, the company said, is likely to create “headwinds” to growth. “We expect declines in consumer engagement and average order values, though the precise amount remains unclear,” the company said. The cautionary notes sent DoorDash’s stock tumbling nearly 13 percent in after-hours trading. Beyond the short-term effect of the pandemic, DoorDash faces other challenges. Restaurant owners have complained that its fees, often 30 percent of orders, are too high to allow them to cover their costs. Some cities, including Cleveland, Denver and Chicago, have passed temporary measures to curb the fees that delivery apps charge restaurants during the pandemic. DoorDash has responded by charging customers extra fees in those cities. In an earnings call, DoorDash executives said they were focusing on long-term success and growth. Tony Xu, the chief executive, said that even when restaurants reopened, people were likely to continue to rely on DoorDash’s deliveries because they had become “habituated to a convenience economy.” “This business is even more critical as we come out of the pandemic,” he said. An image of Brian Chesky, the chief executive of Airbnb, on the Nasdaq screen in Times Square on Dec. 10, the day the company’s shares began trading.Credit…Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times Airbnb, which has faced sky-high expectations since its blockbuster initial public offering in December, posted declining revenue and a whopping $3.9 billion loss on Thursday in its first earnings report as a publicly traded company. The company brought in $859 million in revenue in the last three months of the year, down 22 percent from a year earlier. Its loss was driven by $2.8 billion in costs associated with stock-based compensation related to its I.P.O., as well as an $827 million accounting adjustment for an emergency loan it took out last year to weather the pandemic. Airbnb’s loss approaches the $5.2 billion lost by Uber in its first full quarter as a public company and renewed questions about whether unprofitable tech start-ups can turn a profit. Although most money-losing tech companies say that they are spending money to fuel fast growth, Airbnb’s shrinking revenue makes that argument a harder sell. Airbnb presented its declining revenue as a show of resilience in a year when travel came to a standstill because of the pandemic. Last spring, the company lost $1 billion in bookings, laid off staff and raised emergency funding in response to lockdowns and other restrictions. By the summer, bookings had bounced back, though not enough to make up for the hole in revenue. In December, the company went public and raised $3.5 billion, valuing it at more than $100 billion. Since then, its valuation has risen as high as $120 billion on investor expectations that a fast vaccine rollout would spur a new boom in travel. Ron Josey, an analyst with JMP Securities, said Airbnb’s revenue was higher than anticipated. That showed the company was ready to take advantage when people begin traveling again. “Nobody knows how quickly demand comes back,” he said, but when it does, “Airbnb is a share gainer.” Airbnb’s stock rose 2 percent in after-hours trading. Yet even if travel bounces back this year, Airbnb faces challenges. Its hosts, who provide its inventory in the form of property listings, have become increasingly frustrated with the company and are seeking to list their rentals independently. Its problems with “party houses” worsened in the pandemic and the company has rushed out new rules. And regulators around the world continue to scrutinize the “Airbnb effect” of turning housing stock in residential areas into hotels. In a call with analysts, Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s chief executive, said the company’s priority was to prepare for a rebound in travel with efforts including marketing, recruiting hosts and improving its customer service. “Travel is coming back,” he said. “We believe people are yearning for what’s been taken away from them.” Source link Orbem News #Drop #Global #Markets #Sharply #slump #streets #Wall

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