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mrswhozeewhatsis · 1 year

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PSA from a fandom con photographer

As some of you know, I'm a con photographer. A while back, a bunch of us joined a group chat together, and we talk about all things cons and photography in there. Recently, the subject of photo theft has come up again, but this time a new comment was made and that's why I'm here.

In the past, I've heard photographers express frustration about people reposting our photos with watermarks cropped out or otherwise removed. Sometimes, these photos are edited further and someone else's watermark slapped on top of it. This is disrespectful, at best, and really offends the original photographer. Usually, this is done in an effort to gain clout online, and not for any artistic reasons. This is not what I'm here to talk about.

I know that a lot of folks on Tumblr use con photos for fic headers and aesthetics and such, especially for RPF fics. (Because we can totally tell whether a photo is Jensen or Dean, even with the background edited out, he's just that good.) It's come to my attention that some photographers would be REALLY uncomfortable with their art being used this way. They don't read fic, they don't understand it, or they just don't want their art used in a way that misinterprets the moment captured in the photo, even if it's fiction.

We need to respect this.

How do we feel when someone reblogs our fics and uses it to prop up an argument about our characters that we disagree with? We feel kinda shitty. That's how photographers feel when their photos are used in ways they weren't consulted about.

How do we fix this?

When you search Google and find an image from a con, do a reverse lookup on that image and AT LEAST TRY to find the original photographer. If the photo has been taken in the last year or so, you can come to me and see if I know who took it, too.

Ask that photographer if they are okay with you using their image in the way you intend. I know this is a pain, but remember how you'd feel if someone used your art without asking permission!

Many times, if you ask, the answer will be yes. Sometimes, it may be no. Please respect the answer you receive.

If you honestly try and can't find the photographer, then at least put a comment captioning this on the post where you use the photo. If you make a good faith effort and express this in your caption, that at least lets us know that you tried.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to ask me!

Personal note from me: If you like any of my photos, you are welcome to use them. I know I don't make the best photos in the fandom, so this isn't much, but it's there.

Also, "credit to Google" or "I found this on Google" is not credit. Google does not create images. Google only indexes them.

Just remember that there is a person behind every image and piece of art you find on Google.

Also, if you don't contact the artist/photographer, how does that person know that you liked their work? They don't. This is the same as if someone reads your fic but doesn't hit the heart or reblog it. Personally, I LOVE getting asked about my photos the same way I love hearing feedback on my fics. Let your photographer know you love their work!

I've been asked about screen grabs and gifs. I'm referencing just those photos taken by people at cons. Screengrabs and gifs also take talent to create, so if you can find out who made them and give them credit, that's awesome. Photos taken from the star's Twitter or IG....that's a good question. Credit would go to them, but they are impossible to ask if they mind. An argument could also be made that they know what might happen to any photo they put out there. (Maybe put a link to the original as credit?)

It was only recently that I saw someone comment about their photo being used to apply a narrative to Jensen based on his facial expression in the photo, and a brief mention of fic happened right after that, and I just got the feeling that certain photographers would not be pleased to know how we use their photos, sometimes.

As far as I know, no photographer has found their photo in a fic header and complained. But based on what was said, if they did, they might not be happy. And not just because most photos used in a fic header end up being further edited to make it work with the header, beyond cropping. For instance, an asexual photographer might feel icky about their photo being used as a header for a smut fic.

TL;DR - Credit your photographers in your headers, edits, and mood boards when at all possible. Make the effort to contact them and ask for permission. Some may give you blanket permission as I have. Some may not. Either way, this is their art that you're manipulating, so please respect it.

steps off soap box Thank you for listening!

#mrswhozeewhatsis writes #incoherent babbling by mrswhozeewhatsis #please credit your photographers and artists and screengrabbers and gifmakers #blessed are the gifmakers

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firespirited · 1 year

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i woke up prepared to apologize for getting angry over doll stuff but the more i think about it the more it’s obvious exactly where I stand.

Whether it’s “You shouldn’t reblog from vapider they’re a paedo” which led me down a rabbit hole that took hours and led to him being friends with someone who supports writing properly tagged dark fic.

“You should have researched BarbiesGBF he made caricatures without consent” which led to hours of searching to find one use of the r word (and since when do you need consent to make cartoons or post about popular public figures in a fandom?)

“I need to know for my safety your position on [extremely complex syscourse/vast spectrum of religious discrimination]”

I refuse to play broken telephone with a rumour mill. If you want “accountability” in your community you can keep dated screencaps somewhere public and decide as a community what the boundaries and acceptable responses are.

It’s stupid fandom stuff but it’s hitting deep because I’ve been in religious communities run on gossip and charisma and seen the same for activism. It was toxic, it destroyed multiple good people’s lives and if this kind of thing, the whole guilt by association, those awful doll confessions and vague accusations come to dollblr, I will make a new place with actual rules where we start over from scratch because I believe in rehabilitative justice and transparency.

So here’s the deal, we can make a baddollydeals type thread on The Pony Arena (or a google doc) for active bigots, theft and scams.

Anything else is vibes based judgement based on gossip and WILL be ignored. If you want accountability you either put up or shut up: you might think you’re just being a good person but you are being played in a systemic game I have seen play out before many times before. Your blocklist is your own business, the rumour mill is community business.

---------------------------

So as part of the “research” I went to twitter and there was a screencap of me so I went and deleted that comment because I can totally see how it could be construed as thoughtless and sexualizing - I’m mortified (for the record, I think highly of Brooke and thought her caricature was a guy at first because her public image is as a mermaid or a Disney princess, a while back we had an interesting email convo about doll repair)... That person didn’t message me on instagram or even reply, they just screengrabbed and shared as part of the public “scandal”. I’m a creep to the 56 people who liked that and who knows how many more. No questions no context and I find out by accident and can’t apologize and explain as I don’t have twitter.

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Said it before, i’ll state it again, if anyone has a problem with me: talk to me, @ me with your complaints, ask people if I have the ability to react to new information, grow and learn.

And more importantly, do the same for everyone: if you have an issue, leave a comment. otherwise we end up with broken telephone of 4 tweets saying variations on “barbiegbf is a sex offender” because someone once used a stolen picture of him to *say* hateful things on a live and it was clearly not him.

How many whispers until you are tainted for having interacted with me? it’s no way to do things.

#saf #dollblr #drama #i have always been completely open #i was just looking for stuff to watch

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effieandtim · 4 months

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Saw your post on Twitter about people not referencing where they get their content from. They’re so weird about it! It’s really not that hard! I once asked someone to credit my gif they posted because it wasn’t just a screengrab, it was a comparison I created from two different videos. And they did eventually credit me (without tagging me) and then proceeded to unfollow me and subtweet about it 🙃

yeah, my tweet was a little different bc it wasnt the content i created but rather found and posted - and it has been a repeated behaviour - not necessarily by that user as they later clarified they don’t do this, but with others

i am sorry that happened to you - i try to link the source when i post a gif if i know it, the only times i dont is when i have saved/post the gif from someone else who had taken it from someone else - in those cases i dont know the source

#anons

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lastsonlost · 4 years

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Well that was fast.

Felicia Sonmez is a national political reporter for The Washington Post

She was suspended by the newspaper on Sunday after controversial tweet

Sonmez was roasted for a post hours after Kobe Bryant died in helicopter crash

She tweeted link to a 2016 story about the 2003 rape allegations against Bryant l

Twitter users blasted Sonmez for the timing of the post, which she then deleted

Sonmez replied that 10,000 people sent her 'abuse and death threats'

In 2003, a 19-year-old woman alleged that Bryant raped her in Colorado hotel

The charges were dropped and the two sides settled a civil lawsuit

A Washington Post journalist has been suspended by the newspaper after she tweeted a link on Sunday to a years-old story about the Kobe Bryant rape case just hours after the basketball legend and his daughter were killed in a helicopter crash.

Felicia Sonmez, who covers national politics for the Post, took to Twitter shortly after the world learned of Bryant's death along with eight others aboard his private helicopter which crashed outside of Los Angeles.

In follow-up tweets, Sonmez writes: ¿Well, THAT was eye-opening. To the 10,000 people (literally) who have commented and emailed me with abuse and death threats, please take a moment and read the story - which was written 3+ years ago, and not by me. Any public figure is worth remembering in their totality even if that public figure is beloved and that totality unsettling¿

'To the 10,000 people (literally) who have commented and emailed me with abuse and death threats, please take a moment and read the story - which was written 3+ years ago, and not by me.

'Any public figure is worth remembering in their totality even if that public figure is beloved and that totality unsettling.'

Sonmez continued: 'That folks are responding with rage and threats toward me (someone who didn't even write the piece but found it well-reported) speaks volumes about the pressure people come under to stay silent in these cases.'

In another follow-up tweet, Sonmez wrote: 'As an addendum: Hard to see what's accomplished by messages such as these.

'If your response to a news article is to resort to harassment and intimidation of journalists, you might want to consider that your behavior says more about you than the person you're targeting.'

Sonmez deleted the tweets due to the overwhelming backlash, but others on Twitter screengrabbed the posts and responded with disgust.

The reaction on Twitter from Bryant fans was so severe that the hashtag #FireFeliciaSonmez was trending.

Tracy Grant, managing editor of The Washington Post, told DailyMail.com on Sunday: 'National political reporter Felicia Sonmez was placed on administrative leave while The Post reviews whether tweets about the death of Kobe Bryant violated The Post newsroom's social media policy.

'The tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.'

On Twitter, reaction to Sonmez's tweet was scathing.

'What a disgusting post from Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez immediately after Kobe Bryant and his daughter's death,' tweeted one Twitter user.

Another Twitter user demanded that Sonmez post messages like the one posted by former President Barack Obama

Twitter users slammed Sonmez for the timing of her tweet, which was posted hours after it was learned that Bryant and his daughter died in a helicopter crash near Los Angeles

One Twitter user called Sonmez a 'heartless reporter' for posting the tweet when she did

Are y'all trying to get him to pay for his "crimes" in the afterlife?' one Twitter user asked

Another Twitter user wrote: 'It takes immense skill and stupidity to find a way to play the victim, in a moment where 9 people lost their lives in a helicopter crash.

'Again, delete your account.'

One Twitter user demanded: 'Hey @washingtonpost , do the right thing and show the world that irresponsible journalism is unacceptable.'

Another Twitter user wrote: 'There's a time & place for everything. Bringing up dirt on someone that just died only a few hours ago is neither the time or place. Felicia is a f***ing disgrace to her profession.'

Wrote another Twitter user: 'Whether it was written by you doesn't matter. It was YOUR boneheaded decision to repost it within hours of his death. You're slime.'

Another Twitter user wrote: 'Here's an idea for @washingtonpost...Send Felicia to Wunan [sic], China as a permanent resident reporter to cover that region. Like next flight out immediately.'

That Twitter post referred to Wuhan, the city in China where a new strand of coronavirus has broken out and spread to other parts of the country and the world, infecting thousands.

At least one Twitter user, however, sympathized with Sonmez, writing: 'The minutes someone passes people try to completely erase their wrongdoings'

AND JOURNALISTS WONDER WHY PEOPLE HATE THEM.

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mlentertainment · 5 years

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I dont mean to be annoying but i feel so out of the loop. do you know what happened to Pj's twitter account and why fans are upset, i feel like I missed a lot but maybe thats for the better aha

listen you’re not wrong about being better off. it’s just a lot to cover lmao (long post warning)

this post is a good basis from the beginning of the weekend. basically someone posted their “impression” of him, before tying a ribbon around their neck, in reference to a film he was in (Ken Park, 2002) where he autoasphyxiates while masturbating. he responded with this:

and later with an official statement that was both heartbreaking and had some… questionable (?) statements about social media users’ true identities and sex work/pornography:

the rest of the weekend involved people tweeting relentlessly at him, making some INTERESTING assumptions about his mental health, if he was sleeping (or telling him to sleep), if he was on his medication, if he was BACK ON HEROIN (?!), etc. which he took in sarcastic stride, fueling them further:

during all this he was also poking fun at the people who still didn’t trust the validity of his twitter because he isn’t verified, despite posting about the account on his verified instagram:

[for clarification that is (was) in fact james’ twitter. he’s had it since 2011 and the account has been officially cited as run by him as recently as this year, according to this podcast episode description]

he also, among making incredulous responses to concerned mentions about his wellbeing, tweeted out a screengrab from tumblr, where some people were also posting about their concern for his wellbeing. it was just a lot of him sharing his adamant disbelief that the folks in his mentions and on tumblr are real people and are in fact social engineers trying to make kids look at porn (?). i’m assuming this shit was what was causing all the concerned messages in the first place/that ensued, so it was a vicious cycle of interactions that were interpreted as “indications” of his “paranoia.”

THEN, after this had died down a bit, someone tweeted the clip from it chapter 2 in which he and richie arm wrestled and he shouted “let’s take our shirts off and kiss,” jokingly suggesting this to james himself, before pulling the just kidding, unless joke. he responded in kind with the context/source of the quote, which was a scene from south park in which an adult man repeatedly invites jimmy (a 9 year old!) to take off their shirts and kiss, and hashtagging it as #ironic. and that’s when all hell broke loose (as if it hadn’t already.)

i wasn’t there for any of this last bit, so take the anonymous asks explaining on my blog with a grain of salt, but you can find those here, here, and here. reddie fans assumed, through the hashtag, he was saying that richie and eddie’s relationship was equatable to an unhealthy and abusive pedophilic relationship. [it can be assumed that he was instead referring to the hot topic of this weekend, which was his childhood trauma.] they “cancelled” him over both this and the fact that he… watches and enjoys… south park. (again, don’t quote me on the validity of this, but if that’s seriously what broke them………………… i have to laugh). this led to LOTS more tweets and an eventual deletion of his account.

ANYWAY that seems to be everything. he’s deleted/deactivated his twitter several times before, and his instagram is still up, so we can presume he might come back when shit’s calmed the FUCK down, but holy hell amirite. anyway happy Canadian Thanksgiving

#ask #james ransone #pj ransone #ask to tag #there's a lot going on and i can't believe i've kept up with so much of it #but there ya go #Anonymous #long post

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crossdreamers · 5 years

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On the use of "self-identify" in transphobic circles

Harry Josephine has written a very interesting thread on what it means to identify and self-identify over at twitter.

Self-identification is always anchored in a historical and social reality, and in a concrete life experience. To say that anyone can self-identify as anything is to willfully ignore the reality of people’s lives, and making a mockery out of the suffering of transgender people.

I am taking the liberty of unrolling it and presenting it here in an easy to read format.

Harry Josephine Giles is a writer living in Scotland. Kathleen Stock is a British professor and trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF).

.............

A thread on the misuses of "self-identify".

CN: transphobia, including screengrabs of tweets.

I've been thinking about the use of "self-identify" in transphobic circles, and how it's usually an equivocation that deliberately obscures trans life and political analysis. [1/?]

Here is Stock showing complete ignorance of both critical race theory and critical disability theory, using a straw tran to invalidate decades of work on what it means to be Black or disabled. [2/n]

In practical terms, *of course* in virtually all administrative situations one "self-identifies" as Black, disabled or a woman. There's never anyone checking what box you tick. Here, "self-identify" refers simply to the process of putting pen to paper.

But in disability circles, the political fact of taking on a disabled identity for oneself is a significant move, related to the crucial "social model of disability", where we recognise that we are disabled by society, not by the facts of our bodies. [4/n]

To "self-identify" in these terms does not mean to disregard the material facts of bodies (this is a debate within the social model: tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…), but rather the political act of identifying as a social class for class liberation. [5/n]

Such political acts are of course a key part of radical feminism, hence the Woman-Identified Woman. Woman is a social class we build together, creating solidarity across the material differences of our lives and bodies. [6/n]

historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/radica…

[Link to Defending the Social Model, by Shakespeare and Watson]

A third meaning of "self-identify" is Talia Mae Bettcher's usage of "First Person Authority" with regards to trans life, which is an *ethical* argument that the best way to know what gender someone is is to ask them:

s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.d…

[7/n]

So we have administrative, political and ethical usages of "self-identify", none of which are the ur-case that transphobes have in mind, which is a person abstracted from all social context saying "I'm a woman!" and then becoming one. [8/n]

This is the straw tran which has no interest in actual trans lives. Our long processes of self-discovery, reflection on political experiences of gender, hard-won understanding that woman as a class is necessary to us -- all are dispelled by the non-existent speech act. [9/n]

This is also not what is meant by a constitutive speech act in post-structuralist trans studies. A single verbal declaration ("self-identification") is not what we mean when we say gender is a performative: we mean a whole set of ways of being in the world over time. [10/n]

This marxist insight, continuous with de Beauvoir & Wittig, is that womanhood is produced socially by oppression & our responses. Where the Radicalesbians politically cathect womanhood, Wittig disavows it; both are also common trans moves. [11/n]

medium.com/@thinobiafalx/…

Stock never engages these marxist traditions of feminism, even as she proclaims trans politics as "neo-liberal". I'll note also that, along with her attacks on UCU [The University and College Union] membership, her feminism has not extended to supporting THE MASSIVE STRIKE THAT IS HAPPENING IN TWO WEEKS. [12/n]

I'll note here that while the first 70s-80s wave of transphobia did have a radical feminist analysis at least commensurable with foreshortened marxism (versobooks.com/blogs/4188-the…), the contemporary wave is entirely informed by a retrograde liberal positivism. [13/n]

The philosophical school to which Stock & her collaborators all belong is the analytic school which in 150 years of historical materialism, and a century after Wittgenstein, still thinks that human words can refer completely and coherently to transcendent truths. [14/n]

I cannot emphasise enough that the foundations of Stock's philosophy are the ontological equivalent of a contemporary physicist pretending quantum mechanics doesn't exist. Their modes of argumentation read like alchemical treatises. It's bizarre. [15/n]

Worse, there is no feminist history of this kind of gender positivism. It cannot build a feminist movement and is out of touch with all antecedents. Which goes some way to explaining Stock's refusal to ever consider the actually existing functions of power. [16/n]

Stock wants to prove what gender is, but once she's done so to her satisfaction there's nothing left to do with that knowledge except hand it to the police. The methodology entails the bankrupt anti-feminist politics. She needs an authority to validate her argument. [17/n]

Consider what it would mean for UCU, or any other political organisation, to set explicit terms for who counts as disabled, rather than trusting disability organisations' politics & disabled folk's first person authority. How could that ever build a liberatory politics? [18/n]

Race, sex and disability are historically-situated social categories. You can't extract a transcendent definition from that & the only political movements that have sought to do so are colonialist and fascist. It's anathema to class politics. [19/n]

So back to "self-identify". Stock floats a "neo-liberal", behind which I detect a spooky ghost of "postmodernism". This is the contemporary fascist fear that truth is abstracted from reality, that information is free-floating & there are only individuals.

existentialcomics.com/comic/224

The argument is that postmodernism has detached truth from the material base, and that only individual and singular speech acts have authority. This is a misreading of postmodernist theory and of transfeminism. [21/n]

When contemporary marxists and transfeminists talk about "identity", we are not talking about individual declarations, but historical facts. My identity is the way I belong to a class through oppression, through the performatives that constitute social being. [22/n]

Personally, to avoid this confusion, I never say "I identify as trans". I just say "I am trans". My transness is the product of my historical being in the world, oppressed by patriarchy, produced through the gender dynamics of the capitalist family. [23/n]

Against this analysis, transphobes deploy "Yes, but what if a man just says he's a woman to get into women's spaces?" This is a dishonest argument. (a) There's no empirical evidence of this happening when self-declaration is enshrined in law, (b) That's not how the world works...(c ) Even if it did happen it wouldn't justify trans oppression and "coarse-grained safeguarding" is a phrase uttered by no-one who actually does safeguarding, (d) That's not what legal self-declaration or trans identity mean in the first place. [25/n]

It is very hard to find a response to this straw tran, because from the start it has been devised to obscure feminist analysis, shift the debate onto meaningless territory, and exclude trans thought. Frustrasting! [26/n]

I can't recommend engaging in these debates. I can only recommend reading transfeminist thinkers, learning about trans life, and strengthening trans presence in the world. I'm no longer interested in debating these dishonest terms. It's a social struggle. We'll win. [27/27]

Read the twitter comments to this thread here.

#trans #transgender #gender identity #philosophy #terf

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jlf23tumble · 6 years

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1D Day, Hour One

God only knows what this hellscape will look like on December 18, so if I’m gonna recap each hour of 1D Day, I might as well do it now, eh?? 1D Day is a gift that none of us really deserved, and yeah, it has a ton of shitty moments, but much like X Factor itself, the true gem is Louis Tomlinson and how much he runs this entire show (and lbr, the band itself), Jesus, god, do I love him.

Anyway, 1D Day aired 7 hours of live content on November 23, 2013 to promote Midnight Memories, and yes, yes, we’ve all seen the gifsets, but like anything else with this band, it’s tremendously better in context. I watched this whole thing a couple of years ago, when I first got into this fandom, but I didn’t know all of the dynamics then, so it’s extra fascinating to me now. We’ve all binged worse shit than this that took way longer, and I promise you won’t regret an hour a night for a week--but if you’d rather read my hot take, here you go, under the cut! Note: these are really shitty screengrabs, and for that, I am truly sorry.

A horrible announcer introduces the D by saying they weigh in at a collective 792 pounds, and all I can wonder is does this mean they have daily weigh-ins, why is it that specific? This focus on their weight is just gross to me. C’mon, writers, you’re better than this (j/k, you aren’t).

The three-foot bubble between Louis and Harry is established pretty early on, with Harry doing the prettiest sitting in all the land before bolting to his feet immediately because Louis happened to walk by his couch. A very real question: Was this bubble a requirement that Ben Winston constantly whispers into their headpieces, or did sbb decide, hey, let’s make it obvious that we have to CONSTANTLY adjust where we stand, even if it’s two feet away because that’s not enough room for Jesus?

There are some truly hilarious guest “stars” to announce, the first being the giant video head of David Beckham, which pops up and immediately starts speaking, so we're already off to the races with a) fuckups and b) Louis’s annoyance at said fuckups.

Liam takes a good hard look at his future:

Harry isn’t allowed to gaze at Becks, he’s off by the listening booth, which is a giant red call box because they’re Briddish, pip pip, cheerio. Unrelated, but I low-key feel like Harry's coked up or else really taking the piss with all his “LIVE BANDDDDDDD,” JERRY! JERRY! JERRY!,” etc., not to mention how fast he’s speaking, the way he grinds on the guitarist’s lap while Louis fonds at the sky, and all the yelling with arms aloft.

The best part of the rundown of the guest “stars” (or breast stars, if you’re Niall) is that we’re only in the first 10 minutes, so everyone’s giving it a go, but then we get to Mr. Simon Cowell, and Niall claps five times to stony silence (me as Harry constantly staring at Louis from three feet away):

Piers Morgan comes out to describe the “grilling” he’s going to give them later, all angry—genuinely angry—that they’re trending on twitter because they keep saying that he smells. And they don’t stop, even here, they keep yelling, “What’s that smell? You stink, etc.,” and he’s such a dick that I want to bottle this moment and spritz it around my house daily.

This mild trash talking continues, with Piers promising “tears from Piers,” but Slytherin Niall pulls the fingernail out of his mouth, smiles that sneaky smile, and says, “Yeah, but this isn’t Piers Morgan Day, is it, this is 1D Day,” and I want a transcript because there’s so much talking, but all of it trashes Piers, and god, I love my sons.

Anyway, they keep winding Piers up (Piers: “I’m going to find out what you’re most embarrassed about,” Liam: “The way you smell,” Piers, genuinely in a rage: “Don’t say that”), and he keeps talking about how he’s interviewed heads of state, etc., the implication being that this is below him, but Niall counters that Oprah and Barbara Walters have, too, and they would have much preferred Oprah, to the point where Piers admits they couldn’t afford Oprah (lmaooooooo).

We move on to Harry, spinning a twitter wheel that means they’ll follow whoever it lands on, which seems like a cute idea. I’m guessing it’s the official twitter handle?? I don’t know or actually care!

Louis can’t read the teleprompter, and he mutters later that it’s because it makes no sense rather than being too hard to actually see, but me as Niall, already yawning at the 25-minute mark (the bubble is preserved, though, whew):

I’m guessing Scott Mills is the “host” of this show because he comes out with a stick (??) and an agenda (Scott’s no Dermot…he has a face for radio, as they used to say back in the day). This whole section just features a lot of Harry and his pinned sleeves staring at Louis, and honestly relatable:

The next task is toilet paper roll stacking, with two judges from the Guinness Book of World Records on hand to see if this band of hyenas can beat the current world record and stack 28 (!!!!) rolls in 30 seconds. Two reasons to love Louis: he interrupts this idiocy to ask, “How did you two get into this, is this a full-time job you do every day?” (I was wondering the exact same thing), and this is his face for this challenge:

Sadly, they fail, and Harry’s the one who has to tell the judges, “Well, sorry for wasting your time!” with a cheery wave from the ladder. Uh oh, though, the bubble, we’re at two feet:

Much better!

This is still too close for Ben Winston’s comfort, so we split up the teams in what feels like a college course with a lot of money to run fake broadcasting drills. Zouis gets to report from the field, with some tweet rapping; the weather guy, sports guy, and lead broadcaster experience some technical difficulties, prompting Harry’s infamous, “SOMETHING’S GONE WRONG,” and we’re off to Poland:

For a production company that seems hell bent on “no homo,” there are lots of things that raise my brows, like this big “handsome” (Harry’s words) he-man who’s going to pull a “boohs” full of 1D fans over a line, so the boys have to guess how long it’s going to take him…by writing all over his mostly nude body (I’m the eye contact that Harry and Louis maintain during this):

Dude pulls the boohs successfully, so yay! Next up is Wrong Direction, the world’s worst lookalikes (HONESTLY, I’m embarrassed for everyone in this segment on Hollywood Blvd: the idiots who are “fooled” by this, the guys themselves and the low-key insult of it all, myself because this went on for way too long):

I’ll spare everyone the individual matchups because yike, but the real Wrong Direction comes to the studio, with all the guys dressed up like their matches, and the real D is polite, albeit mildly “wtf are we supposed to do about this” (me, too, Zayn). Points to Harry for at least trying to strike up some conversation: “Did you have foon, acting like us?” We’re supposed to vote for the best one on Google+ (lolololololol).

Scott takes two girls who look like they’re legit about to pass out into the red call box so they can be the first people to listen to the new album. While they listen to something none of us can hear, we get some VT (that’s “videotape,” god, I hate the whole lingo lesson we got earlier) of Spain and some fans, all of which feels like lengthy filler. I feel for the people Scott mentions as being asleep during this because there is a LOT of fill. Maybe make this shit shorter, just a suggestion!

Next up is Jamie Scott from his home somewhere in the middle of the night; he wrote most of Midnight Memories along with Louis and Liam, and he gives them an 8.5 in terms of how they did on a scale of 1-10 (and that’s AFTER Louis insults his pillows with the alphabet on them, “In case you forget”). There’s a lot of Lilo hand-shaking in celebration, and some enthusiastic clapping from Harry (a little too enthusiastic…I’m gonna imagine that someone tells him to tone it down in his earpiece because he looks around quite a bit):

A few things happen that don’t really interest me: the first listen of “Through the Dark” (this is skipped in the vid), a remote report from Radio Disney (Harry: “HOLLYWOODDDDDD!”) and a fan who wins the chance to come visit them later in the day, and then we’re back to Scott, who looks exhausted, and it’s only been 40 minutes.

All is not lost, because the next VT is the totally unnecessary yet extremely vital coverage of the D’s exercise regime. I’ve seen so many gifsets of hottttt and sweaty Lirry, but you haven’t lived until you’ve heard Niall’s American accent while he stretches: “Welcome to my workout dvd! I’ll be with you for the next 45 minutes to give you the lowdown of how I stay in shape.” PLEASE @ NIALL, DO THIS.

I really WANT to be Harry and effortlessly pump out pushups, but in reality I’m Zouis, popping some robot dance moves and drinking Red Bull. The weird shorthand throughout this is that Liam is an animal (Ziam + a whip = fire), Harry’s into flirty sexercise, Niall wants an arse like Kim K’s, Zayn’s a slender boxer, and Louis…just fucks around? Missed opp for footie Louis.

The first performance is “Story of My Life,” and we’ve all seen it before, but godDAMN, Zayn sings like an angel. Lots of technical problems in the audio, prompting quite a few Louis/Harry hand gestures, but still, in spite of it all, they sound amazing individually and together.

Even local asshole Piers Morgan is impressed, as he comes out to tell them that they were surprisingly good, along with a bunch of other neg bullshit. This is another one of those segments that it pays to watch the whole clip of, and Jesus, do I want a transcript. They head over to the couches, and Piers points at Louis and says, “You have the most reason to be nervous,” but Louis’s like, “Yeah, but I’m not,” and wow, #goals.

Everyone gets a couch, and the upshot is that Piers is a terrible egoist who thinks he’s a fantastic interviewer, but he really isn’t…all the questions are shit, and these five eat him alive. Everything he asks falls flat, and it’s so masterfully, subversively handled, from Louis’s iconic “define girlfriends” (and the underappreciated attempt by Harry to define it for Piers later: “Like in primary school, if you hold hands with a girl and you're eight, is that a girlfriend?”) to the obsession with smells (Piers asking Niall, “Why do you always smell,” claiming it’s a fan’s question, and Niall answering that it’s because he had colic as a child, so can only fart; Piers asking Zayn, “Who stinks the worst,” and Zayn saying that they all smell quite good, actually) to Piers demanding to see Zayn’s tattoo and relentlessly attacking him for it being a gun (Louis keeps interjecting that it’s a watergun, but go off I guess, paraphrasing).

But the best is always Louis. “What’s the weirdest thing a girl has done to impress you?” “Tweeted Piers Morgan.” Later, he says pointblank to Piers, “You do stink.” But then…but THEN, it’s the Four interview 1.0, only instead of Ben trying to get Louis to deny gay rumors, it’s Piers, who does it twice: “What’s the one rumor you wouldn’t want to hear about yourself?” Louis’s answer: “That I’m not good at football.” “Are you good?” “No….I just wouldn’t want it confirmed.” Piers tries AGAIN: “What’s the worst thing you’ve had to read about yourself?” but Louis turns it around and says he hates reading about one of the other boys being dead (!).

Because he’s the worst, Piers takes it to the ladies and asks how many girlfriends they’ve had and how many times they’ve kissed a girl. Harry says he’s kissed 8 ladies (which prompts a good scoff out of Zayn), and everyone else says 5 or 6, 3 or 4, etc., with Louis declaring he’s only had one proper relationship (no genders mentioned), so maybe 2 (lmaooooo). Piers gets all excited that he’s kissed more girls than this hot boyband has, and I wanna say, you’re almost there, “friend”…keep working it through.

There’s more antics w/r/t Piers, like his poor 2YO daughter crying, and him trying to blame it on Harry Styles not answering her dad’s sex questions or stupid questions about embarrassing things they’ve caught the others doing, and yeah, I don’t think they’ll get into the big ot5 gang bang on live TV, but ask anyway, I guess?

The last person to suffer sitting next to Piers is Liam, and I love him always, but especially for saying, “How’s it going there, stinky?” when Piers takes a seat to ask him why he’s so sexy. Piers tries to “joke” that the sexy question is for him, but nobody says anything, and then he asks Liam AGAIN before admitting that it’s a shitty question, so then he asks about them all wearing tight jeans, and godddddd, why does anyone let him interview anyone??

The good news is that Piers can tell he lost, so as he tells them that he thinks they’re pretty okay, actually, but, “You’ve gotta stop calling me stinky,” and you know they never will.

Scott says it might feel like much longer, but it’s only been an hour, and Zayn’s lookalike won, so we can all rest easy. This hour closes with a review of the highlights, and it’s ham-fisted and awful. Shocking!!!!

I can’t do one of these every single day, but I’ll do hour two sometime soon! Hope you enjoyed this, @justlarried, lol!

#recap #1d day #hour one #it really did feel like a full day

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sshbpodcast · 5 years

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Rounding out TNG with a "WTF" Season 7

by Ames

The final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation manages to scrape the bottom of the bucket for ideas, because why refill the bucket when you know you're about to not need it anymore? There are still a couple great episodes in there, but more than a fair share of backwash.

Your A Star to Steer Her By hosts made it through season 7 to give you our top and bottom three episodes, with the most season overlap (and thus the fewest screengrabs) yet! As usual, you can see them all below or listen to the double-long podcast episode (S7 wrap up starts at 1:03:52) featuring special guest star Liz, also including our full series winners and losers, a Kirk/Picard captain debate (spoiler: Captain Spot wins), and a whole lot of nerd rage.

[images © CBS/Paramount]

Bottom Three Episodes

Season 7 has some of the worst episodes since we saw seasons 1 and 2, and there's really no excuse the Trek team has other than the series reaching its natural end of life. It was probably for the best.

“Emergence”: Ames This episode is a literal trainwreck that changes what the point of it is every couple of scenes, and that was flagrantly overwritten just to squeeze out another holodeck misadventure that no one asked for.

"Journey's End”: Caitlin Wesley Whiteass saves some Native Americans in space! And Picard loses a good number or ethics points by letting Boy Wonder here be the one to stand up for injustice instead of doing it himself. Yikes.

“Genesis”: Jake Science fiction tends to use DNA like some kind of magic totem that does whatever you want it to, but when that's to turn your characters into lizards and jellyfish and spiders, someone's got to call shenanigans. "SHENANIGANS!"

“Phantasms”: Ames, Chris Sci-fi horror is just not in TNG's wheelhouse and they never accepted that. The surrealist dream nonsense just didn't work either and everything became so annoyingly literal. Worst of all, that cake just didn't look great.

“Masks”: Caitlin, Chris, Jake Well, now we know Data and Picard are into some weird roleplaying, and that's about the only good that came out of this clusterfuck of an episode that puts mythology in a blender and dumps it all over everyone.

“Sub Rosa”: Ames, Caitlin, Chris, Jake This is the only episode in the whole of TNG on ALL of our bottom lists, and that's very indicative of how awful it is, and how sexist it is, and how rapey it is. You're not Star Trek! Star Trek's dead!

---

Top Three Episodes

There were still a couple good episodes tucked away for the final season, and we actually agreed on at least a couple of them!

“Gambit”: Chris If you like zany, campy heist stories, TNG has just the absurd hijinks for you. As one of the few two-parters in which BOTH parts actually work together, this story knows how to cross you, doublecross you, and double-dog-cross you.

“Parallels”: Caitlin Rejoice! Alexander no longer exists! Even if it's just one version in another parallel universe, we were so happy to get rid of that little twerp, and also get a really good dimension-hopping story!

“The Pegasus”: Chris, Jake Don't tell Admiral Pressman what he can't do, because he's gonna break all kinds of Federation-Romulan treaties about phased cloaking whether you want him to or not and look damn great doing it!

“Thine Own Self”: Ames, Jake Cultural contamination is at its best when carried out by an amnesiac android – it's just common sense! Also Troi gets to do a thing! Chocolate cake all around!!

“All Good Things...”: Ames, Caitlin The series finale does such a brilliant job bookending the whole show by bringing us back to Judge Q's courtroom for a final romp that wraps everything up in a wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey bow.

“Lower Decks”: Ames, Caitlin, Chris, Jake Another rare instance of total agreement for the fresh-faced youngsters at the center of "Lower Decks." It's always refreshing to see things from other points of view on this show, and this episode got it so right.

---

All that's left to do now is to wrap up the whole series, so check out our top and bottom fives of all of Next Gen as we move on to the next phase of our trek through the stars. Keep your eyes here, catch new episodes on Soundcloud, follow A Star to Steer Her By on Facebook and Twitter, and get rid of that damn candle!

#star trek #Star Trek TNG #podcast #star trek podcast #top three #bottom three #emergence #journey's end #genesis #phantasms #masks #sub rosa #gambit #parallels #the pegasus #thine own self #all good things...#lower decks

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 5 years

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How SparkNotes' social media accounts mastered the art of meme-ing literature

Most millennials know SparkNotes as the ultimate no-nonsense study buddy, but today’s students not only receive help with schoolwork from the website, they get high-quality entertainment, too.

SparkNotes remains a crucial tool for text comprehension — full of study guides and supplemental resources on english literature, philosophy, poetry, and more. But over the past two years it’s also become a source of some of the internet’s most quick-witted, thought-provoking, and ambitious memes.

SparkNotes' Twitter and Instagram accounts have carved a unique niche for themselves online by posting literary memes that find perfect parallels between classic works like Macbeth, The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, and Frankenstein, and present-day pop culture favorites like The Office, Parks and Rec, and more.

It may come as a surprise to those who once frequented the site for the sole purpose of better understanding Shakespeare plays before a final exam or catching up on assigned chapters of The Catcher in the Rye before the bell rang, but SparkNotes is cool now, and absolutely killing the social media game.

SEE ALSO: The magic of Book Fairies

As someone who spends the majority of her workday on the internet and splits her leisure time almost exclusively between reading books and re-watching episodes of The Office, I fell in love with the account's near-perfect meme execution after mere minutes of scrolling through posts.

In a world with so many bad brand tweets and tone-deaf memes, I felt compelled to seek out the well-read meme masters behind SparkNotes' social media to learn how it is they manage to make each and every post so good.

How SparkNotes' social media became LIT ✨📚

Chelsea Aaron, a 31-year-old senior editor for SparkNotes, is a huge part of the success. She started managing the site's Instagram in September 2017, and her meme approach has helped the account grow from 5,000 to 134,000 followers.

"When I first started managing the account, I tried a bunch of different things," Aaron explained in an email. "I ran illustrations and original content from our blog, and I also borrowed memes from our Twitter ... The memes seemed to get the most likes, so I started making and posting those on a regular basis, and now I try to do four to five per week."

Image: screengrab / Instagram

Aaron discovered the account's recipe for success by not only making memes about some of SparkNotes' most popular, highly searched guides — which include Shakespeare's plays, The Great Gatsby, and Pride and Prejudice — but by mashing them together with a few modern television shows that she's personally passionate about, such as The Office, Parks and Rec, Arrested Development, and John Mulaney's comedy specials. She's also known for hilariously retelling entire works (SparkNotes style, so, abridged versions) using the account's Highlight feature.

Image: screengrab / instagram

The brilliantly sharp, comical posts seem effortless, but Aaron explained the process takes some serious concentration. Essentially, she stares at a large collection of collected screenshots "in a state of panic" until an idea strikes. "It's wildly inefficient and incredibly stressful, but I haven't figured out another way to do it," she admitted.

Luckily, Aaron always has the SparkNotes Twitter account to turn to for inspiration, which is managed by Courtney Gorter, a 26-year-old consulting writer for SparkNotes who Aaron calls "a comedic genius."

Gorter has been managing the Twitter account for about a year and a half now, and joined the SparkNotes team because she utilized its resources growing up and wanted to help "make classic literature feel accessible" to others.

"I wanted this stuff to seem slightly more fun (or, at the very least, less intimidating) to the average stressed-out student who's just trying to read fifty pages by tomorrow and also has a quiz on Friday," she said. The memes definitely help her achieve that goal.

Scrolling through the SparkNotes Instagram account, you notice it generally uses a recurring but reliably satisfying meme format. Most of the posts consist of a white block filled with introductory text and a screenshot from a television show, like so.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by SparkNotes Official (@sparknotes_) on Apr 16, 2019 at 10:25am PDT

Gorter, on the other hand, ensures the Twitter account showcases a far more widespread representation of the internet. She posts everything from out-of-context screenshots, GIFs, and videos, to altered headlines from The Onion and trending meme formats of the moment, like "in this house" memes, "nobody vs me" memes, and more. The account is full of variety and gloriously unpredictable.

Hades: Orpheus I’ll let you bring your wife back from the Underworld, but if you turn and look behind you she’ll be lost to you forever. Orpheus: pic.twitter.com/FWD9P2nO0m

— SparkNotes (@SparkNotes) April 16, 2019

Normal heart rate: /\⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ /\ _ / \ __/\__ / \ _ \/⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ \/ The old man you just killed, whose heart lies hidden beneath the floorboards yet continues to beat: ⠀/\⠀ /\⠀ /\ _/ \ /\_/ \ /\_/ \ /\_ ⠀ \/⠀⠀ \/⠀⠀ \/

— SparkNotes (@SparkNotes) April 12, 2019

Gorter, who describes herself as "constantly on the internet" feels a lot of her ideas are the result of "cultural osmosis ... our collective tendency to consume references and jokes without realizing it just by being on the internet a lot."

"Sometimes I’ll be reading a book, and I’ll remember a joke I saw earlier that fits. Sometimes a new meme format will crop up over the weekend, and I’ll think, 'That could work for Macbeth,'" she said.

Though the two accounts are clearly distinct from one another, they both give off the same hip English teacher energy and running them has become a truly collaborative effort. "I constantly send her [Gorter] emails asking stuff like, 'Can I still say 'big mood' or is that over?' and 'What's the deal with this whole 'wired vs tired' thing?'" Aaron said.

Together, the two women spend their days discussing iconic works of literature, making pop culture references, and keeping up with the latest memes. (A dream job.) Their separate styles fuse together to make each other's posts the best they can be.

The meme approach works wonders

One might not initially think that Boo Radley and John Mulaney have much in common, or that Michael Scott could effortlessly embody Romeo, Julius Caesar, and Holden Caulfield if you simply alter your perspective. I certainly did not.

But Aaron and Gorter's work will convince you. Once you start merging the worlds of classic literature and modern television series, you won't want to stop.

The SparkNotes instagram is my favorite thing pic.twitter.com/FCc6sXjJly

— Jessie Martin (@jessie_martin97) March 29, 2019

Fun fact, the official Sparknotes Instagram account is probably the best one: pic.twitter.com/sIR6tsw7ZP

— Tommy (@tommy_jacobs92) February 28, 2019

When describing why the posts work so well, Aaron explained that Hamlet, Mr. Darcy, and Gatsby — three of her favorite characters to meme — have super relatable personalities, which makes the process so simple.

"They're dramatic, and awkward, and obsessive, which makes them identical to about 97% of the people on The Office," she said. "I've learned that you can use Michael Scott as a stand-in for pretty much any classic lit character, and it isn't even hard. (That's what she said)."

What wow the @SparkNotes Twitter is extremely good???? It all appears to be this good!!! https://t.co/PyEqTdQ3Ly

— Rachel Kelly 🥛 (@wholemilk) May 2, 2019

Why is @SparkNotes's Twitter so good it has no right to be this good https://t.co/eFBQpLMpe3

— Kelsey [Version 2019.05] (@flusteredkels) May 2, 2019

Gorter thinks the accounts are so appealing because they create a deep sense of community — an online space that isn't so isolating, rather a place where where bibliophiles, television enthusiasts, and meme lovers can all come together and geek the hell out. There's really something for everyone.

"When Steve Rogers said, 'I understood that reference,' I felt that deeply. I think people enjoy being in on a joke, especially when the source material (classic literature, for instance) isn’t particularly hilarious," Gorter said. "There’s a delicious juxtaposition there. I know that I personally get a secret little thrill when I understand something as contextually layered as a really niche meme, and a slight sense of frustration when I don’t."

Engaging followers and changing with the times

SparkNotes as a whole has come a long way since it was launched as TheSpark.com by a group of Harvard students in 1999.

What started out as a budding web-based dating service quickly transformed into a trusted library of online study materials, and over the years, as the publishing industry, technology, and the internet evolved, so did SparkNotes.

Like the social media accounts, SparkNotes' SparkLife blog — full of quizzes, artwork, rankings, advice, and trendy posts like "How To Break Up With Someone, According To Shakespeare" and "Snapchats From Every Literary Movement" — perfectly encapsulates the site's commitment to catering to its audience.

Whoever runs the Sparknotes twitter and Instagram pages deserves a raise

— louise🌻 (@_Fallxn_) February 21, 2019

SparkNotes does a remarkable job of shifting with the times to stay relevant and interesting in the eyes of its readers — and the quest to balance fun and education really seems to be paying off. Recently, the Instagram account tested out a post that called upon students and teachers to request custom-made memes by reaching out via email with the title of a book or subject they want meme'd, along with a message for the intended recipient.

"The response was amazing!" Aaron said. "We got almost 250 emails, and it's so great to see the genuine affection and admiration that teachers have for their students, and vice versa."

Thanks to the social media accounts, SparkNotes is not only helping students learn, but helping entire classrooms bond with their teachers. (And hopefully teaching educators who follow a thing or two about good memes.)

Print isn't dead, it's just getting some help from the internet

Aaron and Gorter are having a blast running the accounts, but ultimately, they hope their lighthearted posts will inspire people to pick up a book and read.

"I hope what our followers take away from this is that classic literature doesn’t have to be totally dry," Gorter said. "If our memes encourage our followers to engage with classic literature and be excited about reading, that's so rewarding," Aaron added.

The present-day approach to selling classic literature is undeniably unconventional, and the crossovers are absurdly ambitious, but they work so damn well. What's great about the memes is they're created in a way that doesn't diminish the literature plots, because in reality, one would have to have such a comprehensive understanding of the text to make such good jokes.

The memes are actually pretty high-brow when you think about it, sure to delight intellectuals with great taste in pop culture. I have no idea how the legendary writers would feel about their greatest works getting the meme treatment, but people online are definitely loving it.

It's refreshing to see a brand account succeed at such a genuinely funny level, but perhaps even nicer to see it thriving off of wholesome content that doesn't drag other accounts or get its laughs at the expense of tearing others down, as we've seen accounts do in the past.

SparkNotes social media accounts are genuinely just nice corners of the internet dedicated to making people laugh and hopefully igniting a love of literature.

WATCH: Steve Carell to reunite with 'The Office' creator for Netflix's 'Space Force'

#_uuid:9b22ebd8-ea58-31ce-9978-8521a7e4e858 #_category:yct:001000002 #_author:Nicole Gallucci #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_revsp:news.mashable

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thatishogwash · 6 years

Text

Finding a New Dream

Day 1, October 28 : First Meeting / “wanna play?” / old days AO3

Day 2, October 29 : getting together / "I'm your number one fan" / popcorn AO3

Oikawa is exhausted. He had just been on a press tour for the past week that ended that night with the release of his new movie. He loved what he did and he was proud of the work that went into the movie, more than thrilled to see how it all came together in the end, but it didn’t change the fact that he was wiped out. Even extroverts need some time to themselves and he had very little of it the last couple months due to filming on location.

When Oikawa was twenty his first dream of being able to play at the olympics came crashing down with complications in his joints, specifically his knees. They had been put through too much pressure and he was already showing signs of arthritis, the bone-on-bone grind of his knee was excruciating but the knowledge that he had worked so hard, had come so far only to have his dream slip right out of his fingers was devastating.

Oikawa knew he was lucky to have the support system he did. His parents and sister had always been there for him but they never understood his drive to be the best. They thought he was young and therefore it’d be easy to just pick another career path, even though everything he had worked for up to that point had been for his one dream. Oikawa Tooru didn’t make backup plans or have second options, it was all in for him. It always had been. But there had been three people who understood his dismay at the news, three that rallied around him and let him have his off days. They let him snark and snap at them, let him wallow in his own self pity, went through the waves of his manic episodes and they bared that until he came out on the other side.

Oikawa’s good looks and flirtatious personality had gained him a small following online and he decided that was what he was going to do. He worked damn hard to build his following even more, he did everything from showing what he ate in a day to exercise planning. His followers seemed to really enjoy the small snippets of his life, especially if he showed one of the three friends who had stuck by him. They liked Hanamaki’s off the wall humor, complimented Matsukawa’s bushy eyebrows, and cooed over any small glimpse of Iwaizumi they managed to get.

Oikawa turned that small bit of internet fame into something else. He managed to snag small roles on game shows or sitcoms, which got him an eight episode guest spot on a supernatural drama. He ended up dying horrifically in the end, saving the woman he loved by sacrificing himself and the talk of him having his own spinoff sent twitter into a frenzy.

Eight years later Oikawa’s knee still bothered him when he put too much pressure on it for too long of a time. He had landed his first starring role in a superhero movie, he could still remember the tears running down his face as his agent called to tell him he got it. It had been a long time shooting, getting to know everyone on set and showing little snippets of it on his various social media accounts. He had loved every minute of it.

But he was tired and though he had been surrounded by people, he felt lonely.

Oikawa walked into his apartment, not at all surprised to hear the sound of the TV and Iwaizumi telling someone to shut the hell up. Oikawa almost laid down right there in the genken in sheer relief but he pushed his nice shoes off, smiling at the old beat up pair of trainers, the leopard print loafers, and the worn boots already there.

The sound of nails on the hardwood floor came at a quick clip to Oikawa before he was nearly bowled over by a big mound of fur and love. Oikawa cooed at his son, putting the bag of popcorn out of the way before the mutt could forget his love for his dad and tried to eat it.

“My son, my love, the light of my life.” Oikawa hugged his furry neck, burying his face into the wiry fur as his dog tried to lick his face.

“I’m insulted, I thought I was your son.” Hanamaki’s voice was a welcome respite from those that had been surrounding him the past couple months.

“I used to be his love.” Matsukawa’s own tone was devoid of emotion but Oikawa had known him long enough to know he was amused, playing a game with Hanamaki. Oikawa looked up to see Hanamaki and Matsukawa staring over at Iwaizumi.

“What?” Iwaizumi snapped once he realized all eyes were on him.

“You’re supposed to say you were the light of his life.” Hanamaki pulled on Iwaizumi’s cheeks.

When Oikawa’s depression had taken him to a really dark place it was Iwaizumi who suggested he get something to take care of so that he could concentrate on something other than himself. It was Iwaizumi’s brash way of saying he was worried so Oikawa went out to get a plant to make his childhood friend feel better, but what he found instead was a scared tiny fur ball that had bit his fingers when he pulled it away from the garbage it had been munching on. It had barely been bigger than his hand, hair matted and one of its ears chewed off.

No one expected that pathetic little thing to last the night, let alone grow into what Oikawa considered the most handsome boy who nearly weighed as much as he did, was missing a ear, and would still eat out of the garbage if no one was around to stop him. Whenever Oikawa was taken away from home for work he always invited the three to stay over and watch him.

“What are you wearing?” Oikawa asked, finally realizing they were all wearing identical shirts. Hanamaki and Matsukawa struck a pose before looking over at Iwaizumi who let out a loud sigh and half heartedly struck the same pose.

“We’re your number one fans!” Hanamaki and Matsukawa said, Iwaizumi grumbling the words and looking like someone was forcing him to say it at gunpoint. It was then Oikawa realized that it was his face printed all over the shirts and they were all ugly screengrabs from various videos of him. One he was midsneeze, another had one of his eyes closed, one worst than the last.

Oikawa missed them terribly.

But they could never know that.

“We tried to get sir poops a lot to wear one but he chewed it to pieces so we had to excommunicate him from the fanclub.” Hanamaki said, pointing at the dog who saw attention on himself and wagged his tail harder.

“I told you to stop calling him that, he’s going to get a complex.” Oikawa admonished before standing up, biting back a groan when his body protested being crouched down for so long. His knee gave a worryingly loud crack and they all looked down as if it was going to pop right off.

“Go get out of that monkey suit, it’s Mattsun’s turn to pick a movie so you’ll most likely fall asleep and then get angry at me in the morning for letting you wrinkle your dyson suit.” Iwaizumi said.

“Dyson makes vacuums, this is Armani Hajime.” Oikawa admonished with horror but allowed himself to be pushed off to his bedroom.

Twenty five minutes later found them all on Oikawa’s U-shaped couch. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone but he had purposefully bought the couch so they could all fit comfortably on it. Iwaizumi was the shortest out of them, a fact that none of them let him forget, yet he was still considered a tall and very muscular man. It made cuddling up on anything that wasn’t pretty massive a hardship for the four of them.

Oikawa sat in one corner while the other three occupied the other. Oikawa’s dog, though he really was all of theirs, was curled up on the end next to Oikawa. Iwaizumi was leaning back in the other corner with Matsukawa pressed against his side, his long legs hooked over Hanamaki’s criss crossed ones. Hanamaki had found the popcorn Oikawa had brought them from the premiere, he always said it was better than any other kind of popcorn. Considering Oikawa had to spend a good majority of the movie in spandex and looking like a comic book hero type super hero, he hadn’t eaten anything like popcorn in nearly a year.

The fact the other three fell into a relationship wasn’t a surprise to Oikawa. They had opened their arms for him, they always had but Oikawa’s career had finally been taking off. His reputation was more important than ever and he had seen the way some actors and actresses were treated after coming out. He couldn’t imagine the gossip that would spread if Oikawa Tooru was to come out not only as gay but in a relationship with three other men.

Looking at the other three Oikawa knew it wasn’t like that. There was nothing but a deep sense of trust and love shared between them. Even when Oikawa turned them down they never treated him any differently, the door left open for him if he should ever choose to walk through it.

Oikawa could admit he was scared. He was terrified of having another dream ripped away from him but as he watched Iwaizumi place a soft kiss on the crown of Matsukawa’s head, as Hanamaki used his tongue to grab pieces of popcorn because his hands were busy giving Oikawa’s injured knee a massage, he felt something overcome that fear.

So with a deep breath Oikawa pulled his leg away from Hanamaki, earning a questioning look that turned into something softer, something a bit mischievous as Oikawa shifted closer. Hanamaki wordlessly opened up his blanket to allow Oikawa to push in close against his side, propped up Matsukawa’s legs before putting them across his own lap. Iwaizumi gave him an encouraging smile.

Maybe Oikawa’s acting career would come to a crashing stop tomorrow. It would be another devastating blow but he��d manage to get through it like he had the last time because he had another dream to hold onto and it involved the three men closest to him.

#haikyuuot3 #haikyuu!!#my writing #haikyuu #oikawa tooru #Iwaizumi Hajime #hanamaki takahiro #matsukawa issei

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bbcbreakingnews · 4 years

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Head of NYPD union spotted with prominently-placed QAnon mug in background of Fox News interviews

The head of the NYPD’s second-biggest union has been spotted giving interviews with a QAnon mug placed prominently in the background.

NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association president Ed Mullins was spotted at least twice in one week giving on-air interviews with a QAnon-emblazoned mug over his shoulder.

QAnon is known for advocating a far-right conspiracy theory alleging a secret, ‘deep state’ plot against President Trump and his supporters. There has yet to be any conclusive proof of these claims, initially made by an anonymous poster called Q on the 4chan website.

NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association union president Ed Mullins gave two TV interviews in which a QAnon mug could be seen in the background over his left shoulder

The Qanon mug’s interview appearance was spotted and shared online by a Twitter user Friday

The QAnon mug could be seen most recently in an interview Mullins did with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto on Friday.

During the interview, the mug can be seen sitting on top of a printer over Mullins’ left shoulder.

The black mug – made more obvious because its sitting in front of a white-background framed document – bears a ‘Q’ logo designed out of an American flag logo. It also reads ‘QANON’ and includes the group’s popular slogan hashtag ‘WWG1WGA,’ which means ‘Where we go one, we go all.’

When news of the mug’s interview presence made the rounds on social media, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s press secretary, Bill Neidhardt, replied to a tweet with a screengrab from the interview, writing simply: ‘Delusional.’

Mullins and de Blasio have been going head-to-head lately, due to de Blasio’s current commitment to shifting $1billion out of the NYPD’s budget and signing bills that make it crime for city police to apply pressure on the necks, chests or backs that could obstruct breathing while taking them into custody.

Eagle-eyed social media users noted that the QAnon mug also appeared in an earlier interview Mullins did on July 13, although it was slightly less prominently-placed back then

Ed Mullins claimed that neither the office the interviews were taped in nor the mug were his

The prominently-placed mug from the interview appears to have the same design as this mug, bearing the group’s slogan ‘WWG1WGA,’ which means ‘Where we go one, we go all’

Officers caught engaging in those acts could face misdemeanor charges, the New York Daily News reported.

In response, several New York State police departments – including Westchester an Suffolk counties – issued orders banned their officers from pursuing or participating in arrests in New York City to avoid legal trouble, according to SBA tweets.

It has been argued that police officers may need to apply at least some, fleeting pressure to those specified areas while making arrests.

Eagle-eyed social media users noted that Mullins’ July 17 interview wasn’t the first time that a QAnon mug got screentime.

The same mug was seen in the background of a Fox News interview Mullins did on July 13.

During that interview, the mug also sat on the printer over his left shoulder, but the mug was closer to the wall and not quite so prominent.

‘No one noticed when he did the same thing a few days ago, so he made the mug a bit more prominent today,’ one tweeter wrote of the mug’s new position in the more recent interview.

It’s unclear if Mullins was aware of the mug’s presence in the background of his interviews or who might have placed it there.

When asked about the mug, Mullins told HuffPost that neither the mug nor the office he did the interviews from belonged to him. He also claimed that he had ‘no idea’ what QAnon was.

Mullins declined to reveal whether the office belonged to someone in the SBA, but noted that it ‘wasn’t even in New York.’

Mullins does not appear to have any previous connections to QAnon, but HuffPost noted that the SBA has linked to articles from a far-right police news site called Law Enforcement Today, which has endorsed congressional candidates who support the conspiracy theory.

There are at least 50 Republican candidates running for public office who have either ‘endorsed or given credence’ to QAnon, including 11 who will be up for election in November,

Mullins is just the latest prominent political figures to have been tied to QAnon, a conspiracy theory that falsely claims — among many other fantastical allegations — that Democratic officials are secretly operating a worldwide pedophilia ring.

President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn recently posted a video in which he uses QAnon phrases and slogans.

And a report from the liberal watchdog group Media Matters found that there are 59 Republican candidates for public office who have either “endorsed or given credence” to QAnon. At least 13 of those candidates will appear on ballots in November.

Over July 4 weekend, Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn was seen in a video alongside relatives reciting the QAnon oath and slogans.

Trump himself has been known to retweet QAnon-related tweets.

The concept that someone like Mullins, who has such obvious law enforcement ties, supports QAnon is ‘frightening’ because the group ‘is dedicated to the illegal and unconstitutional use of the military as a police force to hold tribunals and execute America’s enemies,’ Mike Rothschild, author of The World’s Worst Conspiracies, told CNN.

The SBA currently has about 13,000 active and retired NYPD sergeants among its membership.

The FBI issued an official statement declaring that ‘conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists,’ including QAnon, is a growing threat in May 2019.

WHAT IS QANON?

Origins: Q Anon started on fringe website 4chan, where a poster calling themselves Q left messages claiming to be a senior federal official and purporting to reveal a ‘deep state’ cabal intent on bringing down Donald Trump. Q grew out of the discredited Pizzagate conspiracy that top Democrats were involved in pedophilia and cannibalism from the basement of a Washington D.C. restaurant, but quickly picked up steam with ‘Q’ leaving ‘clues’ and claims that Trump was going to bring down the deep state. Whenever the conspiracies turn out to not be true, followers rationalize that the inaccuracies are part of Q’s larger plan.

Who is Q?: There may now be multiple people posing as Q on the anonymous 4chan boards

A QAnon believer blocked the bridge near Hoover Dam with a homemade armored tank in the name of the movement, and later pleaded guilty to terrorism

Hoover Dam: In June 2019, 32-year-old Matthew Wright, a QAnon supporter, blocked the bridge near Hoover Dam in Arizona with a homemade armored vehicle in a 90-minute stand-off. He pleaded guilty to terrorism charges and has written two letters to Donald Trump from jail, which include the sign-off, which has become the QAnon motto: “For where we go one, we go all.”

Michael Flynn: Trump’s former national security adviser became a martyr figure for QAnon believers after he took a plea deal from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, admitting he lied about his Russia contacts. QAnon conspiracy have spun Flynn pleading guilty into him being a persecuted victim of the deep state – and some even claim he is ‘Q.’

Many believers put three star emojis next to their Twitter handles. But the retired three-star general has denounced any connections to the group and pulled out of participating in an event after finding out it was hosted by a QAnon believer.

QAnon believers make former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn out to be a martyr after taking a plea deal with Robert Mueller

QAnon Political Candidates: Jo Rae Perkins, 64, won the Republican primary in Oregon in May to run for a Senate seat against incumbent Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley. “I stand with Q and the team,” she said when asked about her interest in the group. She insisted she goes to QAnon message boards as a “source of information” and claims media focuses too much on the group. Perkins won 49 per cent of the vote against three other Republicans.

Marjorie Taylor Greene came in first place in the Republican primary in a deep-red Georgia district, and will enter an August runoff. She has admitted to believing in several QAnon conspiracy theories.

The post Head of NYPD union spotted with prominently-placed QAnon mug in background of Fox News interviews appeared first on BBC BREAKING NEWS.

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lordendsavior · 7 years

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Harry Styles is a faithful disciple of silence. He rarely does interviews, and when he does he speaks with charm and cheek while avoiding any nuggets of actual information that could be described as revealing. Until he started doing press around his debut solo album this spring, giving him various bits of artwork and magazine covers to screengrab, his Instagram looked like an A-Level photography project—full of dramatically monochrome shots of infrastructure and food. His Twitter timeline is essentially a corkboard littered with messages expressing thanks to his fans, structured like love letters from a husband in the trenches—"See you soon. Love. H."

In our climate of oversharing, his withholding nature may conveniently double up as a watertight marketing tactic, creating a shroud of mystery that's inherently desirable (what's he wearing today? What's he eating for breakfast? What does he do when he's not making scheduled public appearances?). But for him, it's more than that – "When I go home, I feel like the same person I was at school," he told Rolling Stone earlier this year, "You can't expect to keep that if you show everything."

This is why you don't often see Harry Styles among the names that frequent the daily aggregated news cycle of and Person Says Thing > The Thing is Outrageous! > Actually, The Thing Is Very Nuanced > Ugh, Someone Has Said Something Else Now. He has, to paraphrase someone he once dated, removed himself from the narrative. But, at the same time, Styles has created a narrative that exists just between him and his fans. Simply put: he cares about them, very sincerely and very unabashedly. Which isn't unusual—Lady Gaga is a perfect example of the often very intimate way fandom culture works today—but Harry Styles is muse to such a vast number of teenage girls, a demographic whose interests and opinions are rarely taken seriously by music critics or society at large, that his respect for them takes on a different meaning. It's a relationship best summarized by the following quote from Styles in that Rolling Stone interview: "Who's to say that young girls who like pop music—short for popular, right?—have worse musical taste than a 30-year-old hipster guy? That's not up to you to say." He goes on: "Teenage-girl fans—they don't lie. If they like you, they're there. They don't act 'too cool.' They like you, and they tell you. Which is sick."

This was also the defining characteristic of One Direction's relationship with their fandom. They knew exactly who elevated them from bronze winners of a generic talent contest to global superstardom, they knew exactly who kept them there, and in return they gave them what they wanted. In the wake of their split, journalist Anna Leszkiewicz described One Direction as "a towering monument to the power of teenage girls."

It would have been both a strange and fairly stupid move for Styles to abandon that relationship moving into his solo career, but if anything he seems to have doubled down. He still doesn't say a great deal to the press, save for the endless shouts of appreciation for the people who make his life possible—namely, his fans and faves (artists like Stevie Nicks, to whom Harry Styles owes much of its inspiration)—but over time he's fostered a channel of trust that means his shows have become as close to a safe space as is possible for young girls to get as far as experiencing live music is concerned.

Harry Styles is currently touring Europe. He passed through London last weekend, with fans arriving to camp outside Hammersmith's Eventim Apollo in west London as early as Tuesday. Approaching the venue on Sunday evening, the area outside is deserted. It looks like a Glastonbury camping zone on clean-up day. Duvets are draped over the empty barriers; the floor is littered with foil blankets and carrier bags full of empty sandwich boxes and crisp packets; Pride Flags and Black Lives Matter placards have been taped in place like calls to arms. Everyone is already inside, obviously, and has been for ages. There are about 50 girls camping across the road on a patch of grass underneath Hammersmith flyover so they can be first in line for tomorrow's show. To arrive on time to a Harry Styles show is akin to missing it.

As for inside the venue, you can hardly see the stage for the number of LGBTQ Pride and Black Lives Matter signs held aloft by the audience. In Manchester, people also held up the city's bee symbol. The "I love you"s and "Marry me"s stereotypically associated with teen girl fandom are still very much there in spirit, but their articulation has taken on an actively political tone. The rainbow, the striking black and white of the BLM logo, the Manchester bee—all are symbols of support shared widely on social media, where pop fanbases tend to be most active, exemplifying a generational shift in consciousness towards social awareness. Here, they're brandished less a show of resistance and more as a celebration. People feel comfortable expressing themselves this way because they know everyone in the room is already on their side.

Styles has spoken generally about equality in the press before ("Most of the stuff that hurts me about what's going on at the moment is not politics, it's fundamentals," he told Rolling Stone. "Equal rights. For everyone, all races, sexes, everything"), but it's what he says at his shows, addressing people directly, that means the most to those who care the most. Throughout the night he encourages people to be "whoever you want to be in this room" and continually thanks them "from the bottom of my heart." Someone throws a Pride Flag on stage and he holds it with both hands above his head and runs back and forth across the stage. Someone else throws a French flag and he does the same. Someone else throws a bit of tinsel and he drapes it around his shoulders like a stole.

The room is full of groups of teenage girls hugging each other, hugging people they didn't know, turning to ask the people behind them if they could see alright. Anyone crammed towards the front has been there from the second the doors opened, denying themselves water or a sit-down so they could be as close to their idol as possible. The show had to be stopped twice to help two girls who fainted in the pit. Harry calmly asked people to take a step back, repeatedly checked if everyone was okay and spoke soothingly about looking after one another. He played "Kiwi" twice because it's what the fans wanted, though not without a bit of showmanship ("if you want us to play it again you're going to have to scream louder than that").

It's also worth noting that, although it was ostensibly The Harry Styles Show, five of the ten people onstage are women. As well as a female drummer and keyboardist playing in his own band, he's being supported by MUNA—a goth-pop trio from LA whose music communicates the emotional disarray of sexuality and relationships, as well as heavier topics like assault, through a specifically queer lens. On stage in Hammersmith this weekend, they repeatedly acknowledged the marginalised communities present within the crowd, providing reassurance that—in this room, at least—they are seen and heard. There are, sadly, so many awful reasons to feel unsafe at any show, but in light of the Manchester Arena bombing, pop shows now carry a particularly horrific association that lingers in the back of your mind and can make you inadvertently take note of the emergency exits. Rather than avoiding it, guitarist/vocalist Naomi McPherson addresses the elephant in the room and reminds people how brave they are for being here at all. Singer Katie Gavin introduces their single "I Know A Place"—essentially the San Junipero episode of Black Mirror as a song—by describing it as their imagining of an ideal world we should be working towards. "I know a place we can run / Where everyone gonna lay down their weapon," Gavin sings over a dancey four-to-the-floor beat, "Don't you be afraid of love and affection."

For all the talk of inclusivity and equal rights often thrown around within subcultural communities like punk, hardcore and indie—predominantly male-dominated spaces that can't seem to go a day without someone in a band being called out as abusive—it strikes me as significant that this is one of the few shows I've ever been to where I've not felt threatened by anyone in the room. And it's not because I am, at 5 feet 3 inches, one of the largest people in this one. It's because Harry Styles supports his fans' politics while they really live it, and as a result his shows have become a place for people to celebrate being whoever they are. The diversity of the room itself speaks to that. He's cheering just as much for his fans as they are for him.

Pop music is accessible and available in ways that more subcultural music isn't, but this dynamic doesn't just present itself anywhere. Justin Bieber shows, ecstatic as they may be, are not largely comprised of kids shouting down racism while overtly celebrating their queerness. Pop, like all music, can often be a form of escapism—a way to forget yourself, especially if being yourself can mean facing a multitude of hardships. The actual content of Harry Styles' music isn't anywhere near political but, because of the way his fans engage with him and each other, his shows inherently are.

Obviously, anything can happen anywhere and anytime. Harry Styles' name on the front of a building can't guarantee the absolute safety of everyone in it. But it does foster a world away from our current one; a world that feels less oppressive and more like MUNA's "I Know A Place." I can't imagine how valuable it is for teenagers to experience that—even if it's just for a night.

#i love this article #harry styles #the pink tour press

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vinayv224 · 4 years

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Trump just said the US has done more coronavirus testing than the rest of the world. Not even close.

Trump in the White House briefing room on Tuesday. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

He’s making it up as he goes along.

President Donald Trump made a number of false and misleading claims on Tuesday to advance his case that the US is not only over the worst of the coronavirus outbreak, but nearing the point of being ready to reopen for business.

Most concerning was his insistence that the US has mastered what public health experts say must be step one to reopening: widespread testing. The US’s daily testing capacity has been flat for about a month, and experts say it needs to triple before it’ll be truly safe to reopen businesses.

To hear Trump tell it, however, the US has actually conducted more tests than all other countries combined.

“I think I read yesterday a report that we’ve done more than everybody — every other country — combined,” Trump said at one more on Tuesday, adding later: “We’ve tested more than every other country in the world even put together.”

Asked why the federal government hasn't lived up to Pence's promises about testing, Trump lies and says the US has tested more than all other countries combined (this is not true) pic.twitter.com/QmpvxnB0Mq

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 21, 2020

This is a whopper. According to Worldometer, a site that tracks coronavirus data by country, the US has in fact done more testing than any other individual country that reports data — the number of tests conducted in China, for instance, isn’t available — but we’re nowhere close to doing more testing than all other countries combined. Well over 20 million tests have been conducted across the world, and just over 4 million have them have been done in the United States.

So Trump’s claim isn’t even close to correct. And it also overlooks that while the raw number of tests conducted in America sounds impressive, it’s lags behind countries like Germany and Canada in terms of tests per one million people.

The reality is that while US coronavirus deaths are growing at a slower rate than they were a week ago, it’s still too early to say whether the worst is already in the rearview mirror.

NEW: Tue 21 April update of coronavirus trajectories Daily deaths: • Still too early to say if US has peaked • Beginning to look like UK has • But descents look much slower than ascents • Successes in dark blue: Australia, Norway, Austria Live charts https://t.co/JxVd2cG7KI pic.twitter.com/jHrg49Uamp

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) April 21, 2020

But with the economy in ruins and a tough reelection fight on the horizon, Trump has reasons to reopen businesses quickly. Characteristically, they don’t jive with reality.

Perhaps Trump’s most egregious lie on Tuesday was saved for his comments about anti-stay-at-home protests he’s encouraged in states like Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia — protests that are essentially against his own policies.

“I’ve watched some of the protests,” Trump said. “They’re separated, there’s a lot of space in between. They’re doing social distancing, if you can believe it.”

Trump on anti-stay-at-home protests: "They're separated, there's a lot of space in between. They're doing social distancing, if you can believe it." (Many protesters are not doing social distancing.) pic.twitter.com/NEiReWWFYI

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 21, 2020

Fox News’s coverage, however, has made it abundantly clear that many of the protesters are not only not social distancing, but they’re seemingly thumbing their nose at the notion and thereby putting their friends, family, and neighbors in danger of contracting the virus.

Consider this screengrab from Fox’s coverage of a North Carolina protest on Tuesday — coverage that led the noon hour:

Fox News screengrab

These stills from last Friday’s coverage also show protesters packed together in a manner that could spread the virus.

Fox News just showed a protest against social distancing with someone holding a sign saying "COVID-19 IS A LIE" pic.twitter.com/mcgVBJy9DZ

— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) April 17, 2020

Trump, however, seems willing to say whatever it takes to make reopening business at this juncture seem like a reasonable option, and he’s getting help from other members of the White House coronavirus task force in this effort.

On Tuesday, for instance, task force coordinate Dr. Deborah Birx made a case that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s (R) move to reopen hair salons and tattoo parlors as soon as this weekend could make sense — if workers are able to give haircuts or tattoo people while remaining socially distanced.

“If there’s a way that people can social distance and do those things, then they can do those things,” Birx said. “I don’t know how.”

Asked how it's possible for hair salons and tattoo parlors in Georgia to reopen, Birx says "if there's a way that people can social distance and do those things, then they can do those things. I don't know how." pic.twitter.com/Qx7YgPUPSV

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 21, 2020

At another point, Trump was asked how people in South Carolina could be protected from the governor of Georgia’s decision if it turns out to be a bad one. “We’re going to find out,” he said in response.

The news moves fast. To stay updated, follow Aaron Rupar on Twitter, and read more of Vox’s policy and politics coverage.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/3avhCMm from Blogger https://ift.tt/2RVkKuL via IFTTT

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un-enfant-immature · 4 years

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AI chatbot maker Babylon Health attacks clinician in PR stunt after he goes public with safety concerns

UK startup Babylon Health pulled app data on a critical user in order to create a press release in which it publicly attacks the UK doctor who has spent years raising patient safety concerns about the symptom triage chatbot service.

In the press release released late Monday Babylon refers to Dr David Watkins — via his Twitter handle — as a ��troll” and claims he’s “targeted members of our staff, partners, clients, regulators and journalists and tweeted defamatory content about us”.

It also writes that Watkins has clocked up “hundreds of hours” and 2,400 tests of its service in a bid to discredit his safety concerns — saying he’s raised “fewer than 100 test results which he considered concerning”.

Babylon’s PR also claims that only in 20 instances did Watkins find “genuine errors in our AI”, whereas other instances are couched as ‘misrepresentations’ or “mistakes”, per an unnamed “panel of senior clinicians” which the startup’s PR says “investigated and re-validated every single one” — suggesting the error rate Watkins identified was just 0.8%.

Screengrab from Babylon’s press release which refers to to Dr Watkins’ “Twitter troll tests”

Responding to the attack in a telephone interview with TechCrunch Watkins described Babylon’s claims as “absolute nonsense” — saying, for example, he has not carried out anywhere near 2,400 tests of its service. “There are certainly not 2,400 completed triage assessments,” he told us. “Absolutely not.”

Asked how many tests he thinks he did complete Watkins suggested it’s likely to be between 800 and 900 full runs through “complete triages” (some of which, he points out, would have been repeat tests to see if the company had fixed issues he’d previously noticed).

He said he identified issues in about one in two or one in three instances of testing the bot — though in 2018 says he was finding far more problems, claiming it was “one in one” at that stage for an earlier version of the app.

Watkins suggests that to get to the 2,400 figure Babylon is likely counting instances where he was unable to complete a full triage because the service was lagging or glitchy. “They’ve manipulated data to try and discredit someone raising patient safety concerns,” he said.

“I obviously test in a fashion which is [that] I know what I’m looking for — because I’ve done this for the past three years and I’m looking for the same issues which I’ve flagged before to see have they fixed them. So trying to suggest that my testing is actually any indication of the chatbot is absurd in itself,” he added.

In another pointed attack Babylon writes Watkins has “posted over 6,000 misleading attacks” — without specifying exactly what kind of attacks it’s referring to (or where they’ve been posted).

Watkins told us he hasn’t even tweeted 6,000 times in total since joining Twitter four years ago — though he has spent three years using the platform to raise concerns about diagnosis issues with Babylon’s chatbot.

Such as this series of tweets where he shows a triage for a female patient failing to pick up a potential heart attack.

The @babylonhealth Chatbot has descended to a whole new level of incompetence, with #DeathByChatbot #GenderBias.

Classic #HeartAttack symptoms in a FEMALE, results in a diagnosis of #PanicAttack or #Depression.

The Chatbot ONLY suggests the possibility of a #HeartAttack in MEN! pic.twitter.com/M8ohPDx0LX

— Dr Murphy (aka David Watkins) (@DrMurphy11) September 8, 2019

Watkins told us he has no idea what the 6,000 figure refers to, and accuses Babylon of having a culture of “trying to silence criticism” rather than engage with genuine clinician concerns.

“Not once have Babylon actually approached me and said ‘hey Dr Murphy — or Dr Watkins — what you’ve tweeted there is misleading’,” he added. “Not once.”

Instead, he said the startup has consistently taken a “dismissive approach” to the safety concerns he’s raised. “My overall concern with the way that they’ve approached this is that yet again they have taken a dismissive approach to criticism and again tried to smear and discredit the person raising concerns,” he said.

Watkins, a consultant oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust — who has for several years gone by the online (Twitter) moniker of @DrMurphy11, tweeting videos of Babylon’s chatbot triage he says illustrate the bot failing to correctly identify patient presentations — made his identity public on Monday when he attended a debate at the Royal Society of Medicine.

Dr Murphy unmasked. Now for his positional statement. His driving force – patient safety. Can’t argue with that!! @DrMurphy11 #RSMDigiHealth @RoySocMed pic.twitter.com/hOC7kzlNz3

— clive flashman (@cflashman) February 24, 2020

There he gave a presentation calling for less hype and more independent verification of claims being made by Babylon as such digital systems continue elbowing their way into the healthcare space.

In the case of Babylon, the app has a major cheerleader in the current UK Secretary of State for health, Matt Hancock, who has revealed he’s a personal user of the app.

Simultaneously Hancock is pushing the National Health Service to overhaul its infrastructure to enable the plugging in of “healthtech” apps and services. So you can spot the political synergies.

Watkins argues the sector needs more of a focus on robust evidence gathering and independent testing vs mindless ministerial support and partnership ‘endorsements’ as a stand in for due diligence.

He points to the example of Theranos — the disgraced blood testing startup whose co-founder is now facing charges of fraud — saying this should provide a major red flag of the need for independent testing of ‘novel’ health product claims.

“[Over hyping of products] is a tech industry issue which unfortunately seems to have infected healthcare in a couple of situations,” he told us, referring to the startup ‘fake it til you make it’ playbook of hype marketing and scaling without waiting for external verification of heavily marketed claims.

In the case of Babylon, he argues the company has failed to back up puffy marketing with evidence of the sort of extensive clinical testing and validation which he says should be necessary for a health app that’s out in the wild being used by patients. (References to academic studies have not been stood up by providing outsiders with access to data so they can verify its claims, he also says.)

“They’ve got backing from all these people — the founders of Google DeepMind, Bupa, Samsung, Tencent, the Saudis have given them hundreds of millions and they’re a billion dollar company. They’ve got the backing of Matt Hancock. Got a deal with Wolverhampton. It all looks trustworthy,” Watkins went on. “But there is no basis for that trustworthiness. You’re basing the trustworthiness on the ability of a company to partner. And you’re making the assumption that those partners have undertaken due diligence.”

For its part Babylon claims the opposite — saying its app meets existing regulatory standards and pointing to high “patient satisfaction ratings” and a lack of reported harm by users as evidence of safety, writing in the same PR in which it lays into Watkins:

Our track record speaks for itself: our AI has been used millions of times, and not one single patient has reported any harm (a far better safety record than any other health consultation in the world). Our technology meets robust regulatory standards across five different countries, and has been validated as a safe service by the NHS on ten different occasions. In fact, when the NHS reviewed our symptom checker, Healthcheck and clinical portal, they said our method for validating them “has been completed using a robust assessment methodology to a high standard.” Patient satisfaction ratings see over 85% of our patients giving us 5 stars (and 94% giving five and four stars), and the Care Quality Commission recently rated us “Outstanding” for our leadership.

But proposing to judge the efficacy of a health-related service by a patient’s ability to complain if something goes wrong seems, at the very least, an unorthodox approach — flipping the Hippocratic oath principle of ‘first do no harm’ on its head. (Plus, speaking theoretically, someone who’s dead would literally be unable to complain — which could plug a rather large loophole in any ‘safety bar’ being claimed via such an assessment methodology.)

On the regulatory point, Watkins argues that the current UK regime is not set up to respond intelligently to a development like AI chatbots and lacks strong enforcement in this new category.

Complaints he’s filed with the MHRA (Medical and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) have resulted in it asking Babylon to work on issues, with little or no follow up, he says.

While he notes that confidentiality clauses limit what can be disclosed by the regulator.

All of that might look like a plum opportunity for a certain kind of startup ‘disruptor’, of course.

And Babylon’s app is one of several now applying AI type technologies as a diagnostic aid in chatbot form, across several global markets. Users are typically asked to respond to questions about their symptoms and at the end of the triage process get information on what might be a possible cause. Though Babylon’s PR materials are careful to include a footnote where it caveats that its AI tools “do not provide a medical diagnosis, nor are they a substitute for a doctor”.

Yet, says Watkins, if you read certain headlines and claims made for the company’s product in the media you might be forgiven for coming away with a very different impression — and it’s this level of hype that has him worried.

Other less hype-dispensing chatbots are available, he suggests — name-checking Berlin-based Ada Health as taking a more thoughtful approach on that front.

Asked whether there are specific tests he would like to see Babylon do to stand up its hype, Watkins told us: “The starting point is getting a technology which you feel is safe to actually be in the public domain.”

Notably, the European Commission is working on risk-based regulatory framework for AI applications — including for use-cases in sectors such as healthcare — which would require such systems to be “transparent, traceable and guarantee human oversight”, as well as to use unbiased data for training their AI models.

“Because of the hyperbolic claims that have been put out there previously about Babylon that’s where there’s a big issue. How do they now roll back and make this safe? You can do that by putting in certain warnings with regards to what this should be used for,” said Watkins, raising concerns about the wording used in the app. “Because it presents itself as giving patients diagnosis and it suggests what they should do for them to come out with this disclaimer saying this isn’t giving you any healthcare information, it’s just information — it doesn’t make sense. I don’t know what a patient’s meant to think of that.”

“Babylon always present themselves as very patient-facing, very patient-focused, we listen to patients, we hear their feedback. If I was a patient and I’ve got a chatbot telling me what to do and giving me a suggested diagnosis — at the same time it’s telling me ‘ignore this, don’t use it’ — what is it?” he added. “What’s its purpose?

“There are other chatbots which I think have defined that far more clearly — where they are very clear in their intent saying we’re not here to provide you with healthcare advice; we will provide you with information which you can take to your healthcare provider to allow you to have a more informed decision discussion with them. And when you put it in that context, as a patient I think that makes perfect sense. This machine is going to give me information so I can have a more informed discussion with my doctor. Fantastic. So there’s simple things which they just haven’t done. And it drives me nuts. I’m an oncologist — it shouldn’t be me doing this.”

Watkins suggested Babylon’s response to his raising “good faith” patient safety concerns is symptomatic of a deeper malaise within the culture of the company. It has also had a negative impact on him — making him into a target for parts of the rightwing media.

“What they have done, although it may not be users’ health data, they have attempted to utilize data to intimidate an identifiable individual,” he said of the company’s attack him. “As a consequence of them having this threatening approach and attempting to intimidate other parties have though let’s bundle in and attack this guy. So it’s that which is the harm which comes from it. They’ve singled out an individual as someone to attack.”

“I’m concerned that there’s clinicians in that company who, if they see this happening, they’re not going to raise concerns — because you’ll just get discredited in the organization. And that’s really dangerous in healthcare,” Watkins added. “You have to be able to speak up when you see concerns because otherwise patients are at risk of harm and things don’t change. You have to learn from error when you see it. You can’t just carry on doing the same thing again and again and again.”

Others in the medical community have been quick to criticize Babylon for targeting Watkins in such a personal manner and for revealing details about his use of its (medical) service.

As one Twitter user, Sam Gallivan — also a doctor — put it: “Can other high frequency Babylon Health users look forward to having their medical queries broadcast in a press release?”

Can other high frequency @babylonhealth users look forward to having their private medical queries broadcast in a press release?

— Sam Gallivan (@samgal) February 25, 2020

The act certainly raises questions about Babylon’s approach to sensitive health data, if it’s accessing patient information for the purpose of trying to steamroller informed criticism.

We’ve seen similarly ugly stuff in tech before, of course — such as when Uber kept a ‘god-view’ of its ride-hailing service and used it to keep tabs on critical journalists. In that case the misuse of platform data pointed to a toxic culture problem that Uber has had to spend subsequent years sweating to turn around (including changing its CEO).

Babylon’s selective data dump on Watkins is also an illustrative example of a digital service’s ability to access and shape individual data at will — pointing to the underlining power asymmetries between these data-capturing technology platforms (which are gaining increasing agency over our decisions) and their users who only get highly mediated, hyper controlled access to the databases they help to feed.

Watkins, for example, told us he is no longer able to access his query history in the Babylon app — providing a screenshot of an error screen (below) that he says he now sees when he tries to access chat history in the app. He said he does not know why he is no longer able to access his historical usage information but says he was using it as a reference — to help with further testing (and no longer can).

If it’s a bug it’s a convenient one for Babylon PR…

We contacted Babylon to ask it to respond to criticism of its attack on Watkins. The company defended its use of his app data to generate the press release — arguing that the “volume” of queries he had run means the usual data protection rules don’t apply, and further claiming it had only shared “non-personal statistical data”, even though this was attached in the PR to his Twitter identity (and therefore, since Monday, to his real name).

In a statement the Babylon spokesperson told us:

If safety related claims are made about our technology, our medical professionals are required to look into these matters to ensure the accuracy and safety of our products. In the case of the recent use data that was shared publicly, it is clear given the volume of use that this was theoretical data (forming part of an accuracy test and experiment) rather than a genuine health concern from a patient. Given the use volume and the way data was presented publicly, we felt that we needed to address accuracy and use information to reassure our users. The data shared by us was non-personal statistical data, and Babylon has complied with its data protection obligations throughout. Babylon does not publish genuine individualised user health data.

We also asked the UK’s data protection watchdog about the episode and Babylon making Watkins’ app usage public. The ICO told us: “People have the right to expect that organisations will handle their personal information responsibly and securely. If anyone is concerned about how their data has been handled, they can contact the ICO and we will look into the details.”

Babylon’s clinical innovation director, Dr Keith Grimes, attended the same Royal Society debate as Watkins this week — which was entitled Recent developments in AI and digital health 2020 and billed as a conference that will “cut through the hype around AI”.

So it looks to be no accident that their attack press release was timed to follow hard on the heels of a presentation it would have known (since at least last December) was coming that day — and in which Watkins argued where AI chatbots are concerned “validation is more important than valuation”.

A little challenge to one of our critics…#RSMDigiHealth https://t.co/XqvQpRYMLX

— Babylon (@babylonhealth) February 24, 2020

Last summer Babylon announced a $550M Series C raise, at a $2BN+ valuation.

Investors in the company include Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, an unnamed U.S.-based health insurance company, Munich Re’s ERGO Fund, Kinnevik, Vostok New Ventures and DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, to name a few helping to fund its marketing.

“They came with a narrative,” said Watkins of Babylon’s message to the Royal Society. “The debate wasn’t particularly instructive or constructive. And I say that purely because Babylon came with a narrative and they were going to stick to that. The narrative was to avoid any discussion about any safety concerns or the fact that there were problems and just describe it as safe.”

The clinician’s counter message to the event was to pose a question EU policymakers are just starting to consider — calling for the AI maker to show data-sets that stand up its safety claims.

Europe sets out plan to boost data reuse and regulate ‘high risk’ AIs

#TechCrunch

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nomadshipper · 7 years

Text

If There's God (of Social Media)

@kazliin I’m not done with coping from your destructive chapter.

I cannot write angst, thank god for that. So there’s my semi headcannon/hopeful thinking of what happen behind he screen?? This is heavily inspired by @kixboxer ’s idea of Victor’s secret internet accounts

—-

Victor Nikiforov have two instagram account.

He also have two twitter handle.

One of the account in each platform are ratified, blue ticked, and co-managed by Yakov’s PR team during the time of need such as posterity shots, events and exclusive shows announcement.

The other account, however, lacks the mark of legitimacy, have less than 3 digit followers in contrast of millions in his official accounts, also running mainly on Katsuki Yuuri based content.

His second instagram especially, conspicuously named poodleonskate, is an avid follower of Phicit Chulanont’s account and religiously liking every single post tagged #spottheyuuri, won at least 3 giveaway post (2 of them are Yuuri Merchandise, the other is artisan nail polish set) and mainly posts random scenery photos and Katsuki Yuuri’s screengrab stills.

His other twitter also used to liking and retweeting every Yuuri-content from Chulanont’s feed. He also used the twitter to gush about Yuuri with fellow Yuuri fans, that probably will shred him alive if they know that he’s… well.. him?

Victor probably spent more time using his unofficial account more than Yakov would like. He almost failed to be surprised when Mila casually commented on his post as poodleonskate, she probably caught him engaging some excited foray with twitter user yuurifan1275 about Katsuki’s new exhibition skate. Yakov apparently knows too and offhandedly warned him about personal information and maintaining public image.

That didn’t stop him to occasionally slip. The worst slip on came in the form of liking one of Chulanont’s instagram post using his official account.

(“Holy fucking shit?”, Phichit choked and ultimately sprayed the half chewed remains of his breakfast all over the kitchen table. The notification in his phone stayed innocently.

‘V-nikiforov, blueducky, saracrispino liked your post #spottheyuuri #cocolacafe #spring #detroit #dogfriendslife ’

“Ew.” Yuuri crossed the livingroom with disdainful eyes towards their table and the remains of Phicit’s breakfast all over their dingy table.

As much as he wanted to share the extraordinary happening in his sns life, Yuuri getting aneurysm this early in the morning is not exactly the best scenario for everyone involved.)

Yakov gave him an earful afterwards while his rinkmates watched from the rinkside with varying degree of amusement and secondhand embarrassment. Half an hour and several 'yes coach, not going to happen again’ thrown, Victor’s back on the ice with nothing but slight mortification and cold dread of someone caught red handed. Despite himself, a traitorous part of his mind cannot help but being thrilled of the outcome.He slightly hoped that Yuuri (or Phichit, and then by proxy, Yuuri) would comment on it.

They didn’t.

—–

Donna Francie @bingowednesday What just happenED?!!!! OMG!! [img]

Eloisethecat @bonnie-bie @bingowednesday Victor liked a #spottheyuuri post??#whatdoesthatmean #viktuuri

Victuuriistotallyreal @just-inn Excuse me while I’m draining my tears out #viktuuri

Bluescluesboy @JonahLi @bonnie-b @bingowednesday here we go again…

Viktorlove @sundayterrs @JonahLi Ikr?! It’s just a lke?!! We all know Victor LOVES dog? Like LOVE LOVE? That post have a cute dog!! Not evrything is abt your gross shipping!

Zaskia G. @chameleonarecute Another day in FS fandom.. #viktuurilimbo #spottheyuuri

ひめこ。西山 @kumahimee Can confirm that Japanese twitter also lost their shit. #instagate #spottheyuuri #viktornikiforov #katsukiyuuri #figureskating

—–

After the Big Reveal, years worth of tears were spilled within a day, heart wrenching apologies, more kissing, and tedious ceremonies and official duties performed with hands on each other’s body parts, the floodgate finally opened.

Within an hour V-nikiforov’s official account already liked every post tagged #spottheyuuri, compilation videos of Yuuri singing in the livingroom while dipping a mop, every Katsuki based aesthetic blog, and various account’s post in which Yuuri is tagged.

(“Holy shit.” Ketty said as her feed flooded with notification after skating legend Victor Nikiforov, also Yuuri’s supposed arch nemesis retweeted her post about Yuuri’s FS composing session, liked Every.single.photos. In her instagram featuring her equipment that was used in composing Yuuri on Ice song.)

(“Holy shit” said professor Gilman of Advanced Trigonometry class after his usually barren instagram feed exploded after someone named V-nikiforov liked his last year’s class photo featuring international student slash campus heartthrob Katsuki.)

“Really.” Yuuri asked dryly, but the corner of his mouth are soft and fond.

Victor looked him straight in the eyes, his eyes are sporting the same puffiness as Yuuri and as red. His nose is still clogged when he answered but his grin are terribly (terribly) blinding.

“Really.”

—– Phicit+chu posted

[image]

I totally appreciate the likes guys, but #reallyvictor? #nowweknow #wegetit #littleyurihadbenscreamingfor10minutes #guys #guystherearechildrenpresent #pausethekissing #victuuri #lovewins #Iamthebestman

—–

#umfbmha #my fic #give me mundane and fluffy viktuuri #YOI

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