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arcaneranger · 4 years

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Final Thoughts - 2019 Long Shows

Dear Lord. This is where all the good shows went.

2019 was absolutely awful on a season-by-season basis (except for Summer, anyway), but that’s mostly because most of the best shows ran longer than what has become the industry norm of a single season. And indeed, heading into the new decade, we seem to be seeing a major renaissance for two- or split-cour shows, given the massive success seen by shows like My Hero Academia, Food Wars, and Haikyuu!!..particularly in comparison to the new perpetual-runners Black Clover (which, despite running for over two straight years now, is still not the most popular show of Fall 2017 by viewer count on MAL, and sits at a ‘meh’ 7.2), and even worse, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, which is faring even worse on both counts even though it premiered two whole seasons earlier and the fact that it is the sequel to Naruto.

As a reminder of my rules, the shows on this list may or may not have premiered in 2019, but they finished airing this year. The split-cour rule (stating that I judge any show that “finishes” and then premieres a “new season” within six months) didn’t come into play for any 2018 shows, but it will for Ascendance of a Bookworm and Food Wars this year, at the very least.

With that being said! 25 shows running longer than thirteen episodes finished airing this year after being simulcast, and of those…

I skipped 6:

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part V: Golden Wind, Fairy Tail Final Series, A Certain Magical Index III, Ace Attorney Season 2 and Cardfight Vanguard (2018) because I either dropped or have not finished their previous (also long-running) seasons.

Yu-Gi-Oh VRAINS because the simulcast started late and also it was bad.

I Dropped 8:

Worst Long Show of 2019: The Rising of the Shield Hero

It’s always fun to see that a show you hated from its first episode only gets more and more distasteful afterwards, but it’s less fun when a service you have to promote because they’re the legal option is forced to shove it down your throat because they had a hand in making it and it became a massive hit that your friends don’t see any issue with because the author wrote a story that justifies its hero’s patronage of the slave industry. This is my punishment for watching the whole first season of The Asterisk War before I knew better.

YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world

A confusing mess from the word go, this ill-fated adaptation of a visual novel from the nineties seems like it was mostly made to cash in on the popularity of the Science Adventure series, but failed to present itself in a way that made an ounce of sense or looked remotely interesting.

Fairy Gone

Am I really the only one that saw potential here? I mean yes, it ended up a boring slog that didn’t care to move its plot in a meaningful direction, but the first episode was at least cool. I guess Izetta: The Last Witch should have taught me better.

We Never Learn

I know that I’m in the minority in terms of the male demographic for shows like this, but honestly, how are bland harem shows still this easy to market? A copy-pasted protagonist with copy-pasted waifus drag down what could be an interesting setup for a story.

Karakuri Circus

The first episode of this one had me excited, the second and third left me bored to tears and wondering if it would continue to look uglier by the minute. I haven’t seen a three-cour show look this janky since Knight in the Area.

Radiant

Having heard good things about this show from my cohorts, I do feel bad for saying I’ll probably never return to Radiant, but when you have a show that’s notably written by a European author...and it turns out to be a frustratingly standard shounen affair with middling production values, well, you can see my earlier annoyance with Cannon Busters.

Ensemble Stars

This one still gets to me. It almost looked like a male-idol show I would finally be able to get behind, what with its rebellious attitude and oddball setting...that is, until the setting got to be too unbelievable and the show began drowning its audience in side-characters because they had to squeeze every husbando from the mobile game into the story, and it all began to resemble UtaPri a little too much...but without the production value.

Boogiepop and Others

This was a hard drop, honestly. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I felt four episodes in, before concluding that I was bored and not particularly invested, two things that should never describe the experience of watching a Madhouse show. The fact that this was the project responsible for ruining One Punch Man only made it worse. There’s a slow burn, and then there’s walking away without turning the stove on.

And I Finished 11 (holy crap that’s like three hundred episodes just on their own).

That Time I Was Reincarnated as a Slime (5/10 & 1/10)

I’ll be honest, I had forgotten just how livid I was with the ending (and especially the sad excuse of a recap episode) of Slimesekai, and reading back through my write-up of it, it’s certainly coming back to me. While this year had bigger demons to fight (Shield Hero), the bad taste that Slime left me with hasn’t really faded, and the wasted premise bugs me to this day.

Hinomaru Sumo (7/10)

What Hinomaru lacked in production value, it happily made up for in good execution and earnest heart. I can’t believe this came from the same studio as Conception, Try Knights and 7Seeds, but if they can only get out one good show a year, I’m glad that we got one bringing attention to a sport that many will joke about but few understand, respect and appreciate.

Kono Oto Tomare (7/10)

Speaking of giving love to traditional Japanese culture, here’s a decent-if-unoriginal show about a local high school koto club down on their luck, and the troubled teens coming together under a scrappy protagonist to bring it back to life. Kono Oto Tomare doesn’t have much that you haven’t seen before, but a decently-executed club drama with Your Lie In April-inspired musical performances is more than enough to keep me interested, and since Forest of Piano kinda crashed and burned under the weight of its own self-importance this year, it was nice to have an alternative.

MIX: Meisei Story (8/10)

It’s hard to judge MIX next to the other shows on this list because it’s almost too old-school for its own good, revelling in an eighties storytelling style that didn’t end up jiving with a wide audience this year. But at the same time, its fun character dynamics (and a very good dub from Funimation, despite them saying they’d never touch sports anime again) were very entertaining to watch, even if it didn’t focus as much on the sport it was supposedly about as much as I’d have liked.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (8/10)

I fully admit that I’m very salty about the fact that this won Show of the Decade in Funimation’s poll while it was still on and I thought there were hundreds of more deserving shows, but I can’t deny that Demon Slayer was a very enjoyable experience, albeit one that I had notable problems with. That’s not gonna stop me from getting mad when it sweeps the Anime Awards in a few weeks, though.

Fire Force (8/10)

I was very afraid that David Productions wouldn’t be able to match the energy of Studio Bones’ adaptation of Ohkubo’s previous work, Soul Eater, but I was happy to be proven wrong. Even if the last few episodes contained a bit too much infodumping, it was all sandwiched between jaw-dropping fight scenes that proved that the people who make Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure can still handle the reins of a more traditional action show.

Fruits Basket 1st Season (8/10)

I know that my score for this one is a bit lower than others, but I think that Fruits Basket did pretty well in its first season, considering that it was largely spent setting up future storylines and adapting the part of the manga we’d all seen before, but with much higher production value. I’ve been familiar with this part of the story for over a decade, and the scene with Tohru and Kyo (you know the one) still made me cry. Now, we get the real plot going.

Dr Stone (9/10)

A great start to a totally new spin on shounen, Dr Stone gives me hope for survival in the post-Shokugeki world in which we’ll soon live, as a show that wears its research on its sleeve. A complex plot weaving interesting characters in and out of a narrative surrounding a philosophical battle where both sides actually do have fair points (even if one of them is going about it in a pretty cruel manner). More please.

Vinland Saga (9/10)

Once again, a great start to what will hopefully be years of quality storytelling, Vinland Saga made it seem like it was dragging in the middle only to reveal just what its slow burn had been leading up to, with twist-heavy storytelling and a fantastic cast to match the high visual quality of its brutal battles.

Run With the Wind (9/10)

It’s not often that Production I.G. gets to make a complete, fully-realized show anymore, and this one was a glorious reminder of the potential of the studio in the TV space, and a great rebound for the director of Joker Game. It’s gorgeous to look at, the cast is wonderful, and the story is both realistic and idealistic in a satisfying balance. It’s a miserable process to get to the finish line in real life, but sitting back and watching this was nothing but a treat. At least, until a minor fumble at the end.

Best Long Show of 2019: Dororo (9/10)

Speaking of complete stories, Tezuka Productions and MAPPA teamed up for a breathtaking adaptation of an underappreciated Tezuka classic that expands upon the story in exactly the right way to create a thrilling, savage, beautiful masterpiece that focuses a laser-sharp eye into the relationship between two characters in their journey to, literally and figuratively, become complete people. Also, that opening was killer.

And that’s it! That’s the fun list. Next comes the painful one. Stay tuned for the trash heap.

#final thoughts #year end anime list #long 2019 #dororo #demon slayer #Fruits Basket #vinland saga #run with the wind #Dr Stone #rising of the shield hero #fire force #kono oto tomare!#mix meisei story #hinomaru sumo #hinomaru zumou #that time i got reincarnated as a slime #tensura

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greatfay · 3 years

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controversial opinions?

Cold pizza actually not good. Tastes like angry bacteria.

There’s a completely separate class of gay men who are in a different, rainbow-tinted plane of reality from the rest of us and I don’t like them. They push for “acceptance” via commercialization of the Pride movement, assimilation through over-exposure, and focus on sexualizing the movement to be “provocative” and writing annoying articles that reek of class privilege instead of something actually important like lgbtqa youth homelessness, job discrimination, and mental health awareness.

Coleslaw is good. You guys just suck in the kitchen.

Generational divides ARE real: a 16-year-old and a 60-year-old right now in 2021 could agree on every hot button sociopolitical topic and yet not even realize it because they communicate in entirely different ways.

Sam Wilson is a power bottom. No I will not elaborate.

Allison’s makeover in The Breakfast Club good, not bad. She kept literally and metaphorically dumping her trash out onto the table and it’s clearly a cry for help. Having the attention and affection of a smart, pretty girl doing her makeup for her was sweet and helped her open up to new experiences. Not every loner wants to BE a loner (see: Bender, who is fine being a lone wolf).

Movie/show recommendations that start with a detailed “representation” list read like status-effecting gear in an RPG and it’s actually a turn-off for me. I have to force myself to give something a try in spite of it.

Yelling at people to just “learn a new language” because clearly everyone who isn’t you and your immediate vicinity of friends must be a lazy ignorant white American is so fucking stupid, like I get it, you’re mad someone doesn’t immediately know how to pronounce your name or what something means. But I know 2 languages and am struggling with a 3rd when I can between 2 jobs and quite frankly, I don’t have the time to just absorb the entire kanji system into my brain to learn Japanese by tomorrow night, or suddenly learn Arabic or Welsh. There are 6500 recorded languages in the world, what’s the chance that one of 3 I’ve learn(ed?) is the one you’re yelling at me about. Yes this is referring to that post yelling at people for not knowing how to pronounce obscure Irish names and words. Sometimes just explaining something instead of admonishing people for not knowing something inherently in the belief that everyone must be lazy entitled privileged people is uh... better?

Stop fucking yelling at people. I despise feeling like someone is yelling at me or scolding me, it triggers my Violence Mode, you don’t run me, you are not God, fuck off. Worst fucking way to "educate” people, it just feels good in the moment to say or write and doesn’t help. Yes I’ve done it before.

Violence is good actually.

Characters doing bad things ≠ an endorsement of bad things. Characters doing bad things that are unquestioned by the entire rest of the cast = endorsement of bad things, or at the least, a power fantasy by the creator. See: Glee, in which Sue’s awfulness is constantly called out, while Mr. Shue’s awfulness rarely is because he’s “the hero.” See also: the Lightbringer series, in which the protagonist is a violent manipulator who is praised as clever, charming, diplomatic, and genius by every supporting character (enemies included), despite the text never demonstrating such.

Euphoria is good, actually. It falls into this niche of the past decade of “dark gritty teen shows” but actually has substance behind it, but the general vibe I get from passive-aggressive tumblr posts from casual viewers is that this show is The Devil, and the criticism of its racier content screams pearl-clutching “what about the children??” to me.

Describing all diagnosed psychopaths as violent criminals is a damaging slippery slope, sure. But I won’t be mad at anyone for inherently distrusting another human who does not have the ability to feel guilt and remorse, empathy, is a pathological liar, or proves to be cunning and manipulative.

It’s actually not easy to unconditionally support and love everyone everywhere when you’ve actually experienced the World. Your perspective and values will be challenged as you encounter difficult people, experience hardship, are torn between conflicting ideas and commitments, and fail. My vow to never ever call the cops on another black person was challenged when an employee’s boyfriend marched into the kitchen OF AN ESTABLISHMENT to scream at her, in a BUSINESS I MANAGED, and threaten to BEAT the SHIT out of her. Turns out I can hate cops and hate that motherfucker equally, I am more than capable of both.

Defending makeup culture bad, actually. Enjoy it, experiment, master it, but don’t paint it as something other than upholding exactly what they want from you. Even using makeup to “defy the heteropatriarchal oppressors!” is still putting cash in their pockets, no matter how camp...

Not every villain needs to be redeemed, some of you just never outgrew projecting yourself onto monsters and killers.

Writing teams and networks queerbaiting is not the same as individuals queerbaiting. Nick Jonas performing exclusively at gay clubs to generate an audience really isn’t criminal; if they paid to go see him, that’s on them, he didn’t promise anyone anything other than music and a show. Do not paint this as similar to wealthy, bigoted executives and writing teams trying to snatch up the LGBTQA demographic with vague ass marketing and manipulative screenplays, only to cop out so as not to alienate their conservative audiences. And ESPECIALLY when the artists/actors/creators accused of queerbaiting or lezploitation then come out as queer in some form later on.

Queer is not a bad word, and I’ve no clue how that remains one of few words hurled at LGBTQA people that can’t be reclaimed. It’s so archaic and underused at this point that I don’t get the reaction to it compared to others.

People who defend grown-woman Lorelai Gilmore’s childish actions and in the same breath heavily criticize teenage religious abuse victim Lane Kim’s actions are not to be trusted. Also Lane deserved better.

Keep your realism out of my media, or at least make it tonally consistent. Tired of shows and movies and books where some gritty, dark shit comes out of nowhere when the narrative was relatively Romantic beforehand.

Actually people should be writing characters different from themselves, this new wave in the past year of “If you aren’t [X] you shouldn’t be writing [X]” is a complete leap backward from the 2010s media diversity movement. And if [X] has to do with an invisible minority status (not immediately visible disabilities, or diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, persecuted religious affiliations, mental illness) it’s actually quite fucked up to assume the creator can’t be whatever [X] is or to demand receipts or details of someone’s personal life to then grant them “permission” to create something. I know, we’re upset an actual gay actor wasn’t casted to play this gay character, so let’s give them shit about it: and not lose a wink of sleep when 2 years later, this very actor comes out and gives a detailed account of the pressure to stay closeted if they wanted success in Hollywood.

Projecting an actor’s personal romantic life and gender identity onto the characters they play is actually many levels of fucked up, and not cute or funny. See: reinterpreting every character Elliot Page has played through a sapphic lens, and insulting his ability to play straight characters while straight actors play actual caricatures of us (See also: Jared Leto. Fuck him).

I’m fucking sick of DaBaby, he sucks. “I shot somebody, she suck my peepee” that’s 90% of whatever he raps about.

“Political Correctness” is not new. It was, at one point, unacceptable to walk into a fine establishment and inform the proprietor that you love a nice firm pair of tits in your face. 60 years ago, such a statement would get you throw out and possibly arrested under suspicion of public intoxication. But then something happened and I blame Woodstock and Nixon. And now I have to explain to a man 40 years my senior that no, you can’t casually mention to the staff here, many of whom are children, how you haven’t had a good fuck in a while. And then rant about the “Chinese who gave us the virus.” Can’t be that upset with them if you then refused to wear your mask for 20 minutes.

Triggering content should not have a blanket ban; trigger warnings are enough, and those who campaign otherwise need to understand the difference between helping people and taking away their agency. 13 Reasons Why inspired this one. Absolutely shitty show, sure, but it’s a choice to watch it knowing exactly what it contains.

Sasuke’s not a fucking INTJ, he’s an ISFP whose every decision is based off in-the-moment feelings and proves incapable of detailed and logical planning to accomplish his larger goals.

MCU critique manages to be both spot-on and pointless. Amazing stories have been told with these characters over the course of decades; but most of it is toilet paper. Expecting a Marvel movie to be a deeply detailed examination of American nationalism and imperialism painted with a colorful gauze of avant-garde film technique is like expecting filet mignon from McDonalds. Scarf down your quarter pounder or gtfo.

Disparagingly comparing the popularity and (marginal) success of BLM to another movement is anti-black. It is not only possible but also easy to ask for people’s support without throwing in “you all supported BLM for black people but won’t show support for [insert group]” how about you keep our name out your mouth? Black people owe the rest of the world nothing tbh until yall root out the anti-blackness in your own communities.

It is the personal demon/tragic flaw of every cis gay/bi/pan man to externalize and exorcize Shame: I’m talking about the innate compulsion to Shame, especially in the name of Pride and Progress. Shame for socioeconomic “success,” shame for status of outness, shame for fitness and health, shame for looks, shame for style and dress, shame for how one fits into the gender binary, shame for sexual positions and intimacy preferences, shame for fucking music tastes. Put down the weapon that They used to beat you. Becoming the Beater is not growth, it’s the worst-case scenario.

Works by minorities do not have to be focused on their marginalized identities. Some ladies want to ride dragons AND other ladies. The pressure on minorities to create the Next Great Minority Character Study that will inevitably get snuffed at the Oscars/Peabody Awards is some bullshit when straight white dudes walk around shitting out mediocre screenplays and books.

Canadians can stfu about how the US is handling COVID-19 actually. Love most of yall, but the number of Canadian snowbirds on vacation (VACATION??? VA.CAT.ION.) in the supposed “hotbed” of my region that I’ve had to inform our mask policies and social distancing to is ASTOUNDING. Incroyable! I guess your country has a sizable population of entitled, privileged, inconsiderate, wealthy, and ignorant people making things difficult for everyone, just like mine :)

No trick to eliminate glasses fog while wearing my mask has worked, not a single one, it actually has affected my job and work speed and is incredibly frustrating, and I have to deal with it and pretend it’s not a problem while still encouraging others to follow the rules for everyone’s safety and the cognitive dissonance is driving me insane.

It’s really really really not anti-Japanese... to be uncomfortable with the rampant pedophilia in manga and anime, and voice this. I really can’t compare western animation’s sneakier bullshit with pantyshots of a 12-year-old girl.

Most of the people in the cottagecore aesthetic/tag have zero interest in all the hard work that comes with maintaining an isolated property in the countryside, milking cows and tending crops before sunrise, etc. And that’s okay? They just like flowers and pretty pottery and homemade pastries. Idk where discourse about this came from.

You think mint chip ice-cream tastes like toothpaste because you’re missing a receptor that can distinguish the flavors, and that sucks for you. It’s a sort of “taste-blindness” that can make gum spicy to some while others can eat a ghost pepper without crying.

Being a spectacle for the oppressive class doesn’t make them respect us, it makes them unafraid of us. This means they continue to devour us, but without fear of our retaliation.

Only like 4 people on tumblr dot com are actually prepared for the full ramifications of an actual revolution. The rest of you just really imprinted onto Katniss, or grew up in the suburbs.

Straight crushes are normal. They’re people first, sexual orientation second. Can’t always know.

The road to body positivity is not easy, especially if what you desire is what you aren’t.

You’re actually personally responsible for not voluntarily bringing yourself into an environment that you know is not fit for you unless you have the resolve to manage it. Can’t break a glass ceiling without getting a few cuts. This one’s a shoutout to my homophobic temp coworkers who decided working a venue with a drag show would be a good idea. This is also is a shoutout to people who want to make waves but are surprised when the boat tips. And also a shoutout to people who—wait that’s it’s own controversial opinion hold up.

Straight people can and should stay the fuck out of gay bars and queer spaces. “yoUrE bEInG diVisiVe” go fuck yourself.

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dragonrajafanfiction · 4 years

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Dragon Dancer IV: Goodbye, Tokyo

I stood behind Zihang’s chair, running a lock of his dark hair through with a comb, spreading the shiny strands in my fingers, and then, taking a pair of shears, snipped the ends into a straight line.

Chu Zihang sat quiet and still. Were it not for his coal black eyes, wide like an elk’s, I would have thought he was just the same as always.

Meanwhile, Lu Mingfei examined himself in the mirror turning his head back and forth examining my work.. “Not bad, Meix- er... Fengchu.”

I glanced at him with a small smile. “Thanks. I had a lot of practice.”

There were large and small boxes all over the floor. Some boxes contained light and heavy weapons, some boxes contained medicines and clothing for all seasons. Others contained compressed food, enough for the four of us to live in a wasteland.

Two boxes were just for supplies for Ru’Yi including diapers of different sizes, reusable cloth ones.

It didn’t feel like fleeing, but like moving.

I walked around Chu Zihang to work on the bangs over his eyes. It was his usual haircut. Of course, he didn’t know that.

“Wow, what a handsome style this is turning out to be....” Nono rubbed her chin.

“He’s handsome in any style.” I said.

Zihang glanced down, his cheeks turning a little pink.

“All the girls should chase him, but he has no one even in high school?” Nono asked suspiciously.

I was grateful for that, of course, but I bit my tongue and stepped away. “What do you think?”

“I like it.” He said in an almost inaudible mumble.

Lu Mingfei was watching us, his eyes distant. Who knew what he was thinking?But I could guess.

Erii. Did she cut his hair like this? I looked up but he turned away before I could say anything and pulled a cap on his head.

I opened my mouth to say something.

“I’ll be back later.” He said, picking up Chu Zihang’s backpack.

“What are you doing with his pack?” Nono asked.

“I have some...shopping... we still lack a detailed map and I won’t be using Fingel’s navigation until we can make sure he is not being tracked. There’s a bookstore nearby.”

“Cold-hearted! I would rather toss myself in the nearest toilet than betray you but you still distrust me!” came the voice of Fingel from his pocket.

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I went back to my room, planning to go to bed early, after feeding Ru’Yi well. This might be the last time we could sleep together in comfort like this. I looked down at Ru’Yi’s dark eyes. They were heavy with fatigue but she stayed awake. I wondered if she would grow up on the run. I thought to myself that maybe I could find a place for us to hide for a while. I’d change my name and then one day, I would tell her the truth about everything that happened around her birth.

How just like the Christ, she’d been attacked as a young child and we had to flee. And a handsome young man from the East came bearing her gifts.

She fell asleep quickly and I swaddled her and set her on a folded blanket on the floor.

A knock sounded at the door. I grabbed Tongzi and walked up to the foyer. “Who is it?” I called.

“It’s Saeki-kun!”

I frowned. “Who is Saeki-kun? I don’t know that name.”

I heard a loud sigh. “It’s Crow. I don’t want to be called that you know.”

I cracked the door, eying him in suspicion, not undoing the chain.

He looked at me with a hurt expression. “Really, all this and you come at me with a sword?”

Belatedly, I put the sword out of sight. “Don’t feel bad. I don’t really trust anyone any more. I know you say you’re watching your back but if I don’t watch mine, who’s going to watch it?”

He gave me a crooked smile. “I get it. Well, I won’t waste your time. I’m here to tell you about our escape plans. I’ve prepared ship for you. It’s a cargo ship, typically transports trash, but it also trades in black market goods and illegal immigrants.”

“A boat?” My eyes narrowed. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve made sure that captain understands the importance of getting you to your destination... by taking his whole family hostage.” His voice lowered and his smile disappeared.

I licked my lips. “Wow.”

“Convinced yet?”

“Ninety percent...”

“What?! What do I have to do?” He pushed back his bangs.

“Hey! It’s just you that saying you kidnapped his family. You have no evidence of it!”

“Why would I have evidence of a crime!” He hissed at me.

“Okay, in case of emergency how do we get off?”

“Huh?” He blinked.

“If things go south, how do we get off the ship!” My eyes narrowed. “I’ll feel better if I feel like I can escape in case something goes wrong.”

“Every ship has life boats...”

“You didn’t think of a plan B for the ship?!”

“I did but I can’t tell you. Trust me. I have a plan for the Executive bureau....”

“I don’t trust anyone any more!” My voice was starting to shake. “Crow, you tell me there’s a way off or I’m going to assume this is a death trap!”

He slammed his palm against door post and snarled into my face. “I love Ru’Yi.”

I shrank away and he lowered his head.

“Look. Nothing is one hundred percent. I’m doing everything I can here. If I could... I’d go with you.”

“Why don’t you?” I asked the question sharply. If the ship was good enough for us, it should be good enough for him, right?

He looked up at me, hurt radiating from his eyes. I forced myself to meet them, not willing to budge an inch on this.

“Because my father... he’s getting old. His mind is going. He can’t make his appointments if I don’t remind him. If I get sent to the isles, Hydra will break me out, and take care of him, but if I go with you? He might be at risk.”

I hesitated a moment to let go of my suspicions but then I relented, nodding my head. “Thank you... for everything.”

“Nah...” He waved me away. “If I could do it all over again, I’d do a better job. This is one last chance for me to get it all right. Lancelot knows you want to escape Japan so he’s monitoring all the ports. But this smuggling ship won’t go to a normal port.”

“Okay.” I whispered.

He smiled at me, his eyes soft. “Is there anything else you need?”

I thought a moment and shook my head.

“Then be ready to go. 2 am sharp.”

The pier was far away from the harbor area familiar to most people. There were no commercial buildings, only the endless rocky beach and the black undulating sea. The gray concrete pillars extended one by one toward the depths of the water, an unfinished trestle bridge for unloading cargo.

Only cargo ships were loaded and unloaded here and usually they transported high-value commodities. Looking out, rusty containers were piled around the wharf. The air was filled with a slight metallic smell.

My eyes were wide, searching for any signs that we were being followed or watched. It had been a long time since I had been in the open like this. Ru’Yi slept against my back, bundled in a tight wrap. The wrap also held Spiderfang and Tongzi at my side.

I looked at Nono and she too stayed vigilant.

Crow, however, calmly leaned on his red sports car, waiting and humming a tune.

“What are you singing?”

“The dock is my father’s fishing pole, my brother and I are standing at the two ends of the pole.” Lu Mingfei translated to us. “Sounds like a Japanese folk song.”

“It’s from my hometown! When we were young, we both waited for my father to come back from the pier. He’d bring back fresh fish, and my mother would make fish soup and tofu for us.”

Nono turned to him. “I thought your father was a gangster? Since when did he take up fishing?”

I glanced at Nono, hackles rising again.

Crow threw up his hands. “Do you think I grew up on Tokyo? We collected protection money from the fishermen! He came from the pier after collecting! You women and your trust issues!”

Nono rolled her eyes but didn’t continue to question.

The wind blowing on the sea was getting colder and colder. I checked to make sure Ru’Yi’s knitted hat was staying on her head. Tonight, we were all wearing the uniforms of the Japanese Executive Bureau: Long black trench coats, with the special customized Ukiyo-e pattern in the lining.

“That trestle bridge is also thanks to my brother...” He suddenly stopped talking.

He spit out the cigarette in his mouth, stomped it out with the toe of his shoe and strode forward. “How are you my friend! I missed you so much, my white sail, the portrait of my ship, the strongest male seagull among us. My dear captain!”

From the darkness ahead came a middle aged man wearing a white uniform with a pale face. I could smell the alcohol and oil from a long distance. The man and Crow hugged vigorously and rubbed their chins together in a strange greeting.

“He’s a Slav.” Nono muttered, just loud enough for me to hear.

My uneasiness grew at his rough and unkempt appearance. How could I trust this dirty alcoholic stranger with my child’s life? I wanted off this boat and I hadn’t even gotten on it.

Nono noticed my discomfort. “Yeah I know... but Crow has kidnapped this man’s family and I’m sure if anyone harasses any of us, they’ll have Chu Zihang to contend with.”

The captain took out a bottle of vodka from his trouser pocket and handed it to Crow. Crow unscrewed it and took a sip. They spoke Japanese and what sounded like Russian. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that Crow was truly a sailor and not a gangster at all.

He returned to us and enthusiastically introduced us. “My good brother, Captain Aliyev will take you out of Japan. There are not many people who dare to enter and exit the port of Tokyo directly. The Aliyev brothers run the smoothest on this route and have never lost their cargo!”

I nodded but couldn’t help but frown at the vodka bottle.

“We will unload the cargo in Vladivostok in seven days. Within seven days, I will guarantee your safety.” Captain Aliyev seemed very proud. “Our ship is of very high level. Although we dare not say we are being escorted by warships, if anything happens, we will raise an alarm! And there will be warships coming from nearby within an hour. No one has ever dared to embarrass us on the high seas!”

Crow looked at me and gave me a thumbs up.

I expelled a breath and smiled, returning his thumbs up.

But in truth, I had already planned my own escape.

After our conversation earlier this night, I couldn’t sleep. I spent about an hour researching destinations to teleport to if needed. I decided against any more islands and settled on a place called La Rinconada, high in the mountains of Peru.

It was a six hour ride from the nearest city. There were no paved roads and buses were irregular. The biggest advantage it had was the fact that anyone coming into such a place would be noticed long before they got there. It was landlocked, making for an easy escape once we needed to escape again.

I wouldn’t depend on the assurances of the captain or Crow.

“Why would armed ships come to the rescue of a garbage ship?” Mingfei asked, surprised.

Crow leaned over and whispered something in Mingfei’s ear. Mingfei let out a little... “Oh!” and nodded.

I glanced over, frowning. Why couldn’t he tell me?

“Ladies and gentlemen, please come on board with me, your bed and vodka are ready!” Captain Aliyev cheered.

“My friend, I will leave it to you! I owe you big time, Cap!” Crow shouted as he made his way back to his car.

He leaned against his sports car, looking at me. I felt that there should be more to say than this, but he waved his hand, shooing me off.

I gave him a wave and turned to follow the captain. As soon as I reached the captain’s side however, Crow shouted again. “I’ll take care of your wife and children!”

A shiver ran down my spine.

The ship was worse than I imagined. No matter how high a priority the cargo, a garbage ship still smelled like garbage, fish, and rusty steel. We were supposed to spend our escape in a literal floating dumpster!

The living area was below the deck, and Aliyev led us through the dark passageway. Nono was alert to everything, memorizing the dark halls to find her way back later on her own. I followed her lead, mentally marking signs in my head to make sure I understood the route back to the upper decks.

With her ability to profile and read people, Nono was also good as a watch dog. If anyone here seemed out of place, she would let us know.

Aliyev stopped at the end of a passage, the two doors on each side of the hall made for four cabins.

“Vodka, soft beds, 24-hour hot water. This is the best place to to live on this boat.” He squinted at us. “Why are you such good friend of Mr. Saeki?”

He didn’t wait for a reply. “Don’t walk around for your own safety. Many men on boat. Always sad, depressed and lonely. You are very beautiful... and they get drunk.”

Nono gave a loud snort and pushed into the door.

Mingfei went in the opposite door from Nono

Chu Zihang dutifully went to follow Nono but suddenly hesitated, looking at me.

I walked past him and then grabbed his arm, leaning into his ear to whisper. “Sleep with your sword tonight.”

I picked the door next to Mingfei’s.

The cabin was quite tidy, and there was even a small round porthole to look outside. But the so-called 24-hour hot water was just a shower head and the unlimited vodka was also the cheap kind, not that I cared.

The Captain stood at the door watching me. “He told me to make sure you had everything you needed. Are you his wife?”

“When are we sailing?” I asked with some annoyance.

“The goods are loaded and we can leave at any time.” He held out a key to me.

I stared at him, frowning. “Toss it on the bed.”

He shrugged and did so. “I will ask the crew to bring in your other luggage later.”

“Are there lifeboats?”

“Of course! We must follow maritime law.”

I squinted at him in silence. Was this guy talking about law when he was smuggling fugitives? “Okay. Thank you very much.”

He turned and his heavy footsteps receded down the hall.

I hissed through my teeth. “I don’t trust these people. I don’t trust these people!”

I unwrapped Ru’Yi and laid her on the bed and then I sat on the bed, looking out the porthole window, holding Tongzi and Spider Fang in my lap.

In a few moments Lu Mingfei came in and saw me. He held a device in his hand. “You’re worried to, huh? I brought a bug scanner.”

I smiled with immense relief as he swept the room. “Nono’s already got her Beretta heavy pistol assembled and loaded. Only now she’s taking sips of vodka.” He said, chuckling.

After a few minutes of scanning, he nodded. “Alright... looks like the room is clean of bugs. We’re good to go.”

“Thanks Mingfei.”

“Any time.” He put the device back in his pocket. “Get some rest, Meixiu.”

“Call me Hamilton.” I smiled.

“I’m not calling you that.”

As he turned to leave, I spoke up. “By the way, anything goes down, come find me. I have a place we can teleport to.”

"I know I can count on you.” He gave me a thumbs up, then walked away and shut the door.

#Dragon Dancer #Dragon Raja #Writing #Fanfiction #Chen Moutong #Nono #Lu Mingfei #Mingfei Lu #Luminous #Chu Zihang #Johann Chu

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wineanddinosaur · 3 years

Text

Can You Build a Successful Bourbon Brand by Trolling the Taters?

The labels are colorful, cartoonish, comical, and a bit grotesque.

There’s Tater Bait, depicting a woman with a massive head of 1980s hair cascading over a visor.

Smash Bill shows a poor man’s Rambo, armed to the teeth with an M60 machine gun.

While Waxx Dippz displays a bald-pated man with a Van Dyke beard, seemingly staring into your soul.

Though you might not understand the joke, each of these (and six others labels) seem to be blatantly mocking the modern bourbon geek, that sometimes vile species of obsessive who covets Pappy, clears store shelves of formerly mid-tier stuff like Weller and Eagle Rare, and even adulterates bottles with silly stickers and post-purchase wax coatings, often with a total lack of awareness for their inherent absurdity.

“I deal with these people all the time. Sometimes their lack of a sense of humor is a little alarming,” says Matthew Colglazier, a longtime liquor merchandiser and marketer. “Taking a piss (out of them), that’s part of the fun, I think.”

Catch ’Em All

Colglazier has regularly found himself in the orbit of these whiskey collectors after more than a decade in the spirits industry in various capacities. The Indiana man has been buying single barrels for liquor stores for years and been making trips to nearby Midwest Grain Products (MGP), the massive, former Seagram’s distillery in Lawrenceburg for nearly a decade — well before most drinkers were aware that it was supplying upstart craft distilleries like WhistlePig, High West, and Smooth Ambler with much of the bourbon and rye they were bottling.

Scouring store shelves, looking at the thousands of non-distiller bottlers, as well as the countless craft distilleries that have emerged, all trying to get a piece of the perhaps $10 billion pie, Colglazier began to wonder how a new American whiskey brand could possibly set itself apart.

“When it comes to creating something new and different these days, that’s really a challenge,” says Colglazier.

Feeling confident in his industry acumen, however, Colglazier and some partners decided to branch out with their own brand in 2018. A family member had alerted him to Krogman’s, a whiskey and brandy distillery that had existed in Tell City, Ind., from 1863 until Prohibition, and then ran on fumes until the 1960s. Searching through trademark filings, Colglazier realized that no one owned it anymore. And, just like that, Krogman’s was his.

“We don’t own a distillery, we don’t own a license or anything,” says Colglazier. He sources all his “juice” and lets partners like Cardinal Spirits, a top craft distillery in Bloomington, do the bottling.

Early Krogman’s releases would include Krogman’s Bourbon and Krogman’s Rye, sourced from MGP and packaged at 90 proof in opaque black and red bottles depicting a drawing of the old distillery that no longer stands. It’s a typical way to launch a new brand, by evoking an esteemed history that isn’t necessarily your own and has nothing to do with the liquid in the bottle. These releases sold all right, but they certainly didn’t become a sensation among consumers. Colglazier knew he would have to start tackling his branding in a different way.

“How much innovation is there in the bourbon category today?” asks Colglazier. “I started to think: It doesn’t just have to be about the blocking and tackling of history.”

Around then, Perry Ford, MGP’s sales manager and an old industry connection, sent Colglazier an inventory list of the single barrels he currently had available. Looking over the menu, Colglazier noticed that all nine of MGP’s whiskey mash bills were available in single-barrel form, everything from four bourbons and three ryes to a corn whiskey and even a light whiskey. The MGP mash bills you’ll most often see in single barrel form these days are the ubiquitous 95 percent rye or the “high-rye” bourbon favored by Smooth Ambler and recent darling Smoke Wagon.

As a whiskey drinker himself, Colglazier wanted to try them all, but he needed a good excuse. His first thought: What if he created a unique single-barrel release for each and every mash bill, and then turned all nine into a set? Since the whiskeys were all 3 years old — a little youthful for your average bourbon enthusiast — he knew he’d have to make the labels novel, interesting, and highly collectable if he wanted to sell them.

That would start with what he called each release, naming them after the insider slang (so often intentionally misspelled) that had become popular on secondary market buy/sell sites, private Facebook groups, and message boards over the last decade.

“I tried to pinpoint relatively specific things that people would know,” Colglazier says.

Thus, there’s Tater Bait, a reference to neophyte collectors who do exceedingly embarrassing things in pursuit of rare bottles. Flipperzz refers to people who buy allocated bottles at retail costs only to immediately “flip” them for bloated, black-market rates. Dusty Hunterzzz is a nod to those who comb through off-the-beaten-path liquor stores for vintage bottles that have lingered on shelves for years gathering dust.

“Your civilian bourbon drinker would have no idea what these things meant and would just think, ‘Oh, that’s an interesting label,’” adds Colglazier.

He tapped local designer Aaron Scamihorn for the label art. Scamihorn specializes in a bold, vintage comic book style, perhaps more befitting the skate decks and even craft beer labels he also designs than the sort of staid, regal branding we typically see in the bourbon industry.

“When we first discussed this project it was the first time I’d heard the word ‘tater,’” recalls Scamihorn. His labels are inspired by the beat-up VHS box covers for campy, ’80s movies you would have seen stocked on the bottom shelf at Blockbuster (Buyy it Noww! was surely spawned from 1980s “Harlequin”). That era tracks with the late-30s/early-40s demographic of guys that Colglazier sees as most into bourbon collecting right now.

At the least, these are the dudes who already have a deep familiarity with the most online and underground parlance of the American whiskey world (Unicorn! Maxx Profitzz!) needed to get many of these jokes.

“Some were really on the nose, others were a stretch,” says Colglazier. “Some barely make sense.”

Of course, whiskey fans have long had the “gotta catch ’em all” mentality that, in many people’s eyes, has turned the industry into a game of liquid Pokemon, and Colglazier is well aware of that. But Krogman’s reminds me more of another set of trading cards: Garbage Pail Kids, the 1985 series of depraved and deformed characters meant to mock the then-frenzy surrounding Cabbage Patch Kids.

“It pokes fun, but honors [these people] at the same time,” says Colglazier. “It makes it recognizable to that consumer. It’s kind of a tightrope, and I’m not sure everybody understands.”

No BS!

The trickiest part of the tightrope, of course, is that the same people the labels are mocking are inherently the only people who might possibly desire having these crazy bottles in their collections.

“Looks like they are poking some fun at the bourbon world in general, but actually just bottling ALL 9 MGP recipes at cask strength with no BS!” wrote one man on Reddit. “Kind of better than all the other brands who make up a bunch of back stories. [sic]”

And that’s exactly Colglazier’s point. Yes, the Krogman’s labels may be satire, but the whiskey is no joke — it’s all non-chill filtered and bottled at cask strength, catnip for the whiskey cognoscenti who don’t really care about a brand’s nonsense “origin” story.

The set was first released starting in late summer 2020, mostly at big box liquor stores in Indiana, though Tater Bait made its way onto Seelbach’s, an online whiskey retailer that has plans to sell a complete set of nine in the future. There were three to four barrels each of most releases, so fewer than 1,000 bottles per SKU. (For the completists, bottlings made for the Kentucky market had variant labels meant to poke fun at all the Booker’s Bourbon releases like Country Ham.)

They sold for just $32 a bottle, a remarkably reasonable price in an era that has seen other sourced whiskeys cost many times as much. Smoke Wagon’s 8-year-old MGP single barrels, for instance, sell for upwards of $700 per bottle on the secondary market. That’s why another Redditor agreed that it was an “exploitable niche” to sell barrel-proof MGP so cheaply, calling the entire series a “slam dunk.” “The Whiskey Vault,” a popular YouTube channel, praised the series as well, loving its execution and transparency.

“Not subtle!” joked co-host Daniel Whittington.

A Collectible in the Making?

You could argue that Krogman’s is the most honest bourbon brand of this crazy era. It may seem like a troll — and, of course, it partially is — but it’s one of the few MGP-backed bottlers offering unique releases and not trying to dupe consumers and generate high demand based purely on hype. While other bourbon and rye brands pretend they exist in a vacuum, clueless to online discussions and tater-driven market forces, Krogman’s has a keen self-awareness of the hyper-obsessive culture it is being released into.

Colglazier isn’t sure where the series will go next, but a part of me feels that while leaning so heavily into the scene, he’s unwittingly created something that, in a few years, might end up being one of the biggest collectibles of the era. Krogman’s may be seen as an economically priced prank right now, but could it one day be the American version of Ichiro’s Malt Card Series released between 2005 and 2014 — of which a complete “deck” of the 54 bottles in the Japanese series sold for $1.52 million in late 2020?

Probably doubtful, as Ichiro’s came from the shuttered Hanyu distillery and Krogman’s is certainly not as well aged of stock. But sometimes it takes a few years for these ahead-of-their-time ideas to pick up steam. Even the Malt Card Series had initially been consumed by buyers, not squirreled away and collected.

“People really want to see themselves reflected back in the things they buy,” Colglazier says of his bourbon. “In many ways, what we buy, what we collect, these are validations of who we are. People have used lots of consumer goods to validate themselves. This is just taking it to the next level.”

The article Can You Build a Successful Bourbon Brand by Trolling the Taters? appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/krogmans-bourbon-trolling/

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isaiahrippinus · 3 years

Text

Can You Build a Successful Bourbon Brand by Trolling the Taters?

The labels are colorful, cartoonish, comical, and a bit grotesque.

There’s Tater Bait, depicting a woman with a massive head of 1980s hair cascading over a visor.

Smash Bill shows a poor man’s Rambo, armed to the teeth with an M60 machine gun.

While Waxx Dippz displays a bald-pated man with a Van Dyke beard, seemingly staring into your soul.

Catch ’Em All

“When it comes to creating something new and different these days, that’s really a challenge,” says Colglazier.

“How much innovation is there in the bourbon category today?” asks Colglazier. “I started to think: It doesn’t just have to be about the blocking and tackling of history.”

“I tried to pinpoint relatively specific things that people would know,” Colglazier says.

“Your civilian bourbon drinker would have no idea what these things meant and would just think, ‘Oh, that’s an interesting label,’” adds Colglazier.

“Some were really on the nose, others were a stretch,” says Colglazier. “Some barely make sense.”

“It pokes fun, but honors [these people] at the same time,” says Colglazier. “It makes it recognizable to that consumer. It’s kind of a tightrope, and I’m not sure everybody understands.”

No BS!

“Not subtle!” joked co-host Daniel Whittington.

A Collectible in the Making?

The article Can You Build a Successful Bourbon Brand by Trolling the Taters? appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/krogmans-bourbon-trolling/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/656790305151057920

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veditudine · 3 years

Text

The void, the light, the sex

In " Midnight’s childrens" Salman Rushdie recounts that, in India at the end of the 1940s, to circumvent the rule that on the film screen prevented lovers from touching themselves, to avoid corrupting the youth of the country, he invented a brilliant device: They kissed the objects. So, a lover kissed an apple and then passed it on to his boyfriend’s passionate lips and so on with various props: from fruit to swords to teacups. The indirect kiss was born which, Rushdie writes, represented "an infinitely more refined conception of everything we see in cinema today and really full of desire and eroticism". Yet, unfortunately, its success was fleeting.

And the season in which we were convinced that the "indirect life", the Net stands between us and the rest of the world during the first lockdown , even with some sacrifices, could worthily substitute for everyday life ended. In the second enclosure (in Italy lockdown can not be said) have practically disappeared the thousands of conferences/ exhibitions/ videos that have flooded the first and in general has passed from we are all on the same boat to a widespread astiosità.

Now, apart from the fact that the nostalgia of pre covid everyday life leads us to assume it as a private normality of a critical vision, it seems to us that we can define this period as an acceleration/explication of processes that have been going on for some time. We take poor Debord when he said that in the Market (he said in the Show): "Everything that was directly lived has moved away in a representation-... the show is not a supplement to the real world, its decoration overlaid. It is the heart of the unrealism of the real world".

It does not mean to trace a continuity: the acceleration was so great that it also became qualitative, but to question the "we will come back as before". Since we in the market have found that the reduction of rights has been taken without problems, it cannot be the prolongation of this condition that is the cause of the general discontent, or at least not the only one. It may be, however, at least in part, the increased awareness that the first will not return. After all, the joyful journey that we had already begun towards the exchange between our, now useless, autonomy and the phantasmatic flow of goods offered by the changing Market will not, at this point, be able to consolidate and restart. The distance between the innovation of the Market and the resistance of old habits, tends, sometimes and only for a while, to create discomfort.

Until now, therefore, we have avoided offering ourselves an apple to the indirect kiss of the Net. We already have in other articles motivated because, during the first lockdown, we did not recommend books, movies or made videos etc. On the other hand, one of our little habits is to recommend some text, usually in summer (here you can find that of last year).

However, at this stage when such advice, as I said, does not seem to be well accepted or required, it seems to us the best one to do so, loving the idea that it is unheard of advice.

The sex life of Immanuel Kant

Jean Baptiste Botul

Let us imagine that in 1945, when the Red Army entered Königsberg, a handful of families began an extraordinary journey that led them to the foundation of New Königsberg in Paraguay. We also assume that these families idolize Kant, the most famous of their fellow citizens, and live like him, dress like him etc. A fundamental problem arises: if Kant lived in chastity, how can a community inspired by him not become extinct? The text contains a series of lectures, collected by Frédéric Pagès, held by the philosopher Jean Baptiste Botul to the attentive community of Kantians.

Botul raises a series of questions about the contrast between philosophy and marriage and more generally between philosophy and life. To respond, read again the Kantiane categories in this perspective. The thing in itself can only be sex (and in fact Kant develops a fetishism), metaphysics the desire to look under the skirts of reality and criticism, therefore, the attempt to harness it. Even the reasoned reading of the letters is interesting. Dear Marie Charlotte Jacobi invites the great thinker to find her and among other things writes : I will wait for you and my watch will be recharged". An extremely obscure phrase, but not for Botul who connects us to Kant’s stockings. Being a famous hypochondriac, the philosopher refused the use of garters fearing their pressure on the arteries. To hold the stockings he used the case of a watch with the respective spring, through which he adjusted the pressure of the wire. In this perspective, evidently, Maria Charlotte was making a clear sexual invitation.

This book is particularly dear to us because it made ridiculous the obnoxious Bernard-Henri Lévy, who did not realize, despite the hilarious conclusions of the lectures, that the philosopher Botul was but an invention of Frédéric Pagès and quoted it in his essay.

original book

The ambition of Vermeer

Daniel Arasse

Why take care of Vermeer, since we define ourselves as a collective research of the contemporary? In fact it is to highlight how in this text by Daniel Arasse we avoid some clichés that now characterize the readings of the sphinx of Deft (including this nickname attached to poor Vermeer). After all, compared to his great contemporaries (recently we mentioned Metzu), from the first major modern exhibition dedicated to Dutch painting to today, ours has always attracted attention for its specificity, often attributed to a sort of enigmatic aura.

Arasse analyzing life, debunking the myth of his being misunderstood, and especially in detail the works shows how, instead, the effect of his paintings is a deliberate artistic choice of Vermeer. The fame of the painter is that of "fine painter" that can be translated into meticulous and meticulous. It is an obvious contradiction to the fact that Vermeer paints in nuance, even in the smallest of canvases (La merlettaia, 24*21 cm).

On the other hand, the fact that the "realism" of Vermeer’s paintings is actually more a search for coherence and balance, or disequilibrium, within the canvas itself can have many examples: from the semi-finished bulb hand of the Art of Painting (1665-1666) to the picture in the picture of the Woman with Libra, which goes lower to the right of the female figure than to the left (certainly not by mistake).

We could give several examples, such as the use of perspective from below, but, to demonstrate his conscious poetic research, it seems useful to us the use of light, which is often cited as a characteristic evidence of the painter’s finesse. In the Allegory of the Catholic faith the window, which illuminates the scene, is ajar. This, in addition to being an indicator of the author’s Catholic faith for which faith (light) must be found through darkness, serves in the representation to: indicate that with regard to the picture the light has placed the author, prevent the windows from being reflected in the glass sphere hanging above the head of the protagonist. The sphere is a recurrent element in many canvases of the time, but normally it acts as a mirror both for things (in this case it could easily reflect a cross) and for people, often a self-portrait. Vermeer instead makes them represent only light and color, represented by colored spots.

That then, more than the other painters of his time, Vermeer could take the luxury of creating his own poetics and sometimes get out of the clichés of contemporary representations (for example, not executing portraits) it is due to the fact that, having other proceeds, Painting was not for him a source of income. So much so that you can paint 2, 3 paintings a year and keep some paintings (even as challenging as the Art of painting) for yourself.

Aesthetics of the Void - art and meditation in oriental cultures

Giangiorgio Pasqualotto

Which east and which cultures? It’s a necessary question to avoid falling into false generalizations. Well here we talk about Japan and China and more specifically classical Taoism and Buddhism, as well as Chan and Zen Buddhism.

In essence it is argued, and certainly not a novelty since the text is part of a path of secular studies, which unlike the West, which fears the void, in these cultures it is the central core from which the energies and aesthetic provisions are directed. Provided we understand: the void is not interpreted as nothing, as not being, as the concept of emptiness but as the experience of emptiness, not being, as you can get with specific forms of meditation.

Meditation that is not prayer, no one is invoked, but it is focused attention to what happens in the heads, in the body and in the world. Such a practice is necessary to produce or enjoy such an aesthetic experience, the latter being itself a form of meditative exercise.

From here the author analyzes various forms of Chinese and Japanese art, giving an interpretation of its own starting from an in-depth analysis of the void (and of its dialectical opposite the full) in these cultures, and is the original character of the book. We will therefore understand why in the tea ceremony the path that crosses the garden that leads to the Sun (tea room) must be made of stones at a distance varying from each other, Because in haiku there cannot be a subject or that in ikebana symbolically the vertical branch stands for the sky, the median for man and the horizontal for the earth. We are particularly interested in the discourse on the theater no, if only because by poor Westerners hating the void, is what we have so far understood the least.

*photos are taken at the same time in the same place the days before the lockdown

there is no English version. we recommend this:

Francois Cheng Empty and Full: The Language of Chinese Painting

#article #sun #book

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dippedanddripped · 4 years

Link

What do Kanye West, Billie Eilish, Daniel Arsham, Hiroshi Fujiwara, Bobbito Garcia and Tom Sachs all have in common? Well, they’ve all been connected (either directly or indirectly) to the heads of large corporations by one man, John C Jay, who is currently the president of global creative at Uniqlo’s parent company Fast Retailing. Over almost two decades at his previous job, as global executive creative director and partner at legendary American advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy, Jay created some of Nike’s most iconic campaigns. Most of all, he’s spent almost forty years exploring what gives a brand meaning, its significance in communities, and especially what pushes it forward in culture.

I remember meeting him in London last year at one of Uniqlo’s events where we spoke about everything from retail and sustainability to pop culture and what makes good design. And then the time ran out. But we had a lot more to discuss, so I called him to continue where we left off.

The below interview is a written version of ‘On the Record’ Season 2, Episode 3. It has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Christopher Morency: Welcome to ‘On the Record’ John C Jay. What does the C stand for? John C Jay: It’s actually not specific and in fact, in grade school, I would always get a point off on my report because I did not put a period after the C, and I would have to take it to the teacher, “I’m sorry, this is like Harry S Truman.”

Ha. This idea of driving influence as a brand is where I want to start. Looking back, creating just a great product was once enough. And obviously, that soon changed where that whole one-size-fits-all approach no longer worked. When was a time in the past when you saw that you needed to actually create culture around a product, something that is invisible to sell?

Well, as I look back, I don’t know if I certainly consciously was thinking about injecting culture into a product, number one. Because I was just trying to understand the origins, the foundations, and the concept of authenticity. What are the foundations of that authenticity? Why did it become important? Why did this culture become important? Why did it have influence? Where did it start at a ground level? And so that, for me, was the beginning of everything. It was to understand where something began and where the truth lies, rather than taking something from a culture, skimming it off the top, and applying it to something, a product, and trying to pretend that somehow those two were organically connected in order to market it. It’s always to understand what the origins of the product are, what the culture that created it is, who the creators are, why they created it, what the circumstances were, and so forth. So rather than skimming, stealing, and taking things off the surface, which the internet helps us to do very easily, it’s about sharing someone’s culture, understanding it and gaining trust first from the people who are creating it. So I never started with trying to find culture as a means to market something. It was always about finding the truth.

It fits with the quote you once gave around networking, to build this idea of local trust, and you first have to do good for a community and really earn the respect within local cultures before you, as a brand, can ask for anything in return.

I’ve heard that you’ve had conversations with Bobbito Garcia recently, and you only have to look at his sneaker book, which I think is still the all-time greatest, ‘Where Did You Get Those’, and hear from his words how did that culture evolve and how did it start through the sport of basketball and through the streets and so forth. And there are so many people who are in the “sneaker culture and business” who really don’t understand that that’s in the foundation of that icon, the sneaker. And I think that’s why it’s important.

What I find quite crazy about brands nowadays is how they get it so wrong. I often get brands coming to me asking, “How can we make sure that we appeal to youth culture? How can we make sure we appeal to this specific geography?” And very often, the answer is very simple, it starts with working with the people you’re trying to speak to.

Yes. Unfortunately it often starts Pinterest board, which in the old days we would call mood boards, but now we have professional mood board makers. And so our mood boards now all look the same across the world. If you pick a topic and suddenly you have graphic designers and marketing people bringing boards, suddenly any number of them are referencing exactly the same pictures. So I think that that is a result of people not doing their homework, and quite frankly not respecting the culture. The first advice I would give your audience is get your hands dirty, get your brains immersed into the culture that you’re about to talk about. You just can’t skim it off the top. You just can’t Google information. And I always say data isn’t really information, and information isn’t insight, and without insight, you can’t really be creative.

The result of that is obviously that fashion has become so homogenized where, in my personal opinion, it no longer leads culture. It follows it. And I think that’s a big shift we’ve seen happen, where we’re trying to keep up with it now.

It does often make me smile when I see people in the fashion industry who think they’ve invented something. And in the old days, I would say travel as much as you can, because it’s a humbling experience to travel and understand firsthand just how little you really know. If you spend your life on the computer screen, searching on the screen you think you know a lot, but it isn’t until you immerse yourself into the culture personally, and sit at a table, sit in a room. And these are the exercises I used to do for Wieden in the beginning and I did them long before that in gathering people that are interesting, not necessarily influencers, but they’re influential, interesting people I would put myself in the center and bring guests along and have deep conversations as to what makes their culture run. What are they proud of? My advice for young people is to do that themselves.

In the advertising agency world is very easy for creators to turn to the strategic planners to help you engage with a culture, but you really have to do it personally. You as a creative person personally have to get involved and earn that trust. Earlier, I referenced Bobbito, he was very important to me in my early days at Nike.

Yeah. I want to tap into that a bit more because before the internet obviously, travel was very much about immersing yourself in cultures and also meeting with people that really pioneered culture within their own micro-communities. Often it’s those behind the scenes. And we talked about this a bit before this podcast about guys like Tom Sachs, Hiroshi Fujiwara, and Bobbito Garcia that you met early on. Can you speak a bit about those early days at Wieden+Kennedy when you introduced them to the agency and Nike, and what you learned from all these different figures across creative disciplines beyond fashion?

Well, when I arrived in Japan to open the Tokyo office for Wieden+Kennedy, I had already been involved with the Japanese, particularly with Tokyo’s creative community. But now I’m opening a creative advertising agency and I’m trying to understand exactly the business that I’m now competing in and the culture that I’m trying to create. And there were certain people, certain things that were popping up that just seemed to be so interesting that were different from the rest of the world, in terms of marketing that we’re much deeper than simply advertising. And, of course, in Japan, this idea of collaborations between competing people, two designers working together [already existed]. When you think about those days of Nigo and Jun [Takahashi] at Undercover, and Hiroshi [Fujiwara] and so forth, these were all friends who helped each other out. And I thought this idea of double branding was so interesting. So I wanted to meet Hiroshi. Oftentimes I do this very naive thing as this kid from the Midwest, where I think, “Okay, if I had a dinner table for 12, who would I dream of sitting at the table with so that I could learn a lot?” And I still go through that exercise. I still offer that idea to many of my friends and people professionally. And I’ve made a career of filling those chairs around the table and making it happen merely because I’m interested in what they do and I want to learn from those people. And Hiroshi was one of them. And so I had the great pleasure of introducing him to, I think, [Nike’s] Mark Parker at that time. Today, I do this consistently.

Where did this idea of cross-pollinating creative disciplines come from? What’s an early example you can remember?

For a decade, I did what we call the Bloomingdale’s shopping bags with no names. The bags would change every season and featured different designers and creators and each bag never had the logo or the name of the store. And yet when the bag hit the streets of New York and around the world, people would immediately say, “Oh my God, did you see the new Bloomingdale’s shopping bag?” I was very influenced by architecture. And at that time of postmodernism, Michael Graves had just won the architect of the year award. I wanted him to do a shopping bag because each of the shopping bags were some kind of signal of culture, something that was happening in those light guys. I just wanted something that spoke through color and shape, something about what was in the zeitgeist around creativity, and at that time it was postmodernism. This was long before I arrived at Wieden+Kennedy that I was kind of participating in this chasing of culture learning. How much can I soak up? How can I learn from the people who are obviously smarter than me and more talented than me and those people who could bestow their knowledge upon me firsthand. I continue to have that advantage today.

I like this idea of being able to find these people and really having this grit of getting to them in the end, by any means necessary. It of course certainly helps to have a Bloomingdale’s or whoever it is that allows that risk of being introduced to the next potential figure.

Well, let me take you further back. Long ago, I came from the clothing business. I say this with a smile, because I grew up in a Chinese laundry. I’m a son of immigrants. I had no connections. I had nothing. I didn’t even have clothes. And I grew up with this kind of thirst of knowledge of thinking, “Oh my God, the world is so big. There’s something out there. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s out there.” So when I was in college, I admired GQ magazine. I always loved the reporting and the photography. I discovered the world through magazines. And so I kept writing them letters critiquing their issues. “I thought the editorial story was really great this month, but maybe last month could have been stronger.” One day long behold, I get a letter and I look at the logo on the top of the letterhead and it says GQ. And the letter came from one of the editors and it said, “John, you obviously are a fan of the work that we do. Would you be willing to come to New York and join our editorial staff?”

Wow.

I go, “What?” And I couldn’t, because I couldn’t leave school. I had to finish school from my parents, but that letter sparked something in my brain. If this kid who came from nothing could get a letter like that, anything is possible. And that’s how it starts. And, of course, through my career, I have many examples where other people led me to those moments.

I also remember you telling me over email about Kanye before his Nike days. Back when he really wanted to get into fashion. Tell me about that.

Mark Parker of Nike and I would always ask each other what the inspiration trip of the year would be and this one year he hadn’t been to Art Basel yet. So I said, “Let’s go to art Basel.” So we were exploring Art Basel and Kanye was there as he was studying art. And could he catch a ride with Mark on the plane back to New York because we were going back for a Nike event. So this was totally unplanned. It wasn’t premeditated in any way. And on that flight, Kanye opened up his backpack and pulled out his notebooks and there were drawings and storyboards and everything. And so he obviously had a lot of ideas about shoes and apparel. At the time it was mostly shoes. That’s how the introduction was made. I was just an innocent bystander standing over his shoulder looking at the drawings and so forth. These things sometimes aren’t planned but you take advantage of the opportunities when you can obviously.

Dan Wieden once said about you once that you are a real expert in merging creative disciplines. Yes, hip hop has always been very connected with fashion for example, but the extent to which art, fashion, music, retail, and food are connected today, is on another level. How have you experienced this evolution?

Well, it’s interesting. There’s a question that you had posed earlier about moving culture forward. How do you move forward? And I had a question for both of us. What do we mean, move it forward? Do we think we’re improving upon the culture necessarily? If I add a lot of marketing, shiny bells and whistles on something, is that moving the culture forward? And it’s just the words that we use. It’s interesting. We need to think about that. If I take something from a culture and apply it to a product and it sells really well, am I moving the culture forward?

I love that. The thing I want to get to next was this idea when brands cross creative disciplines with the right people well, and when they don’t.

I think it goes back to the very beginning of our conversation, when they don’t do it well, it’s because it’s just marketing. It’s just stuff. It’s just ways of applying layers of more gook on top of the product in order to make it seem attractive to people rather than bringing something new to the experience or bringing additional knowledge. I think we’re in the world of perhaps excess collaborations and they’re important to Uniqlo. We’ve had two in a row last week that were very, very important to us with Takashi Murakami and Billie Eilish and with Daniel Arsham and Pokemon. I’m very cognizant of the importance of collaborations and the power of them. But I think that we do spend a lot of time trying to really understand the uniqueness of each collaboration and why it brings something new and important to the public.

Where does youth culture come into all of this in terms of inspiration? I wonder the extent to which you guys at Uniqlo and Fast Retailing work with young people directly?

I think young people are incredibly important because they’re the future. And I think what’s really important today is to listen to them because they have a different point of view. And especially as we come out of this crisis to see how they’ve been affected and see their point of view. There’s maybe too much written about Millennials and Gen Z, but what I really think is that maybe we haven’t listened enough to them. I think it’s very easy to get very successful or comfortable in the ivory tower and think you know exactly what the mindset is of the people who are going to lead us into the future. And we don’t give them enough respect, time and effort. And I think that’s a mistake.

How much do you think about this at Uniqlo?

Of course youth culture is important. But in the case of Uniqlo, for example, our target audience is made up out of everyone. And that has fundamentally changed me as a creator because I no longer can say my target audience is male, 14 to 21, interested in this and that. What has been so extraordinary since joining Uniqlo is how this brand has helped me to see the world through a different lens and to completely change and challenge the principles of what I thought was creativity. This idea of respecting a few at the top and hoping that their opinion will drift down and enhance the people at the bottom [isn’t at Uniqlo]. Respect starts at the very ground level. And that challenges a lot of the learnings that we have as creators. I think that’s really the great gift that I’ve been given since joining Uniqlo, changing that lens to a respect for all at the beginning.

What changes when you take that approach?

Well, I don’t isolate what’s cool for youth culture, number one. We don’t even think of that, but we do think how is it that we can make clothes that can enhance the quality of life for everyone? So when people ask me, what’s your job again today? I try to describe it this way, my job today is to try to create the highest quality of experiences for the greatest number of people on earth.

That approach makes me think of Patagonia where they don’t actively target a specific group, yet still attract different types of groups, all with their own semiotics and shopping rituals. And each tribe, I would say, has its own idea of Uniqlo without the company actively pursuing each.

That’s exactly right. We try very hard not to apply ourselves onto you. We think you’re intelligent. We think you are cultured. We think you know how to mix our clothes with whatever clothes you like, and so rather than to create a uniform for you, we want to make something that easily blends into your own particular style. That’s not an easy thing to do. It’s much easier to put giant graphics and logos on things. And I think that I’ve been saying for a long time that we as a brand are perfectly positioned for the zeitgeist of where people are going, where young people are going, how they think of commerce, how they think of value, and this unfortunate crisis in the world has only accelerated my belief that we’re perfectly positioned for that because we don’t have to change anything, we just have to accelerate and just keep getting better at what we do.

Originally, desirability was so much created by exclusivity, whether it was exclusivity through price point or through scarcity. Uniqlo, however, has such an affordability, the design itself isn’t too difficult, which means it appeals to a lot of people. I’m really keen to hear how this idea of desirability is still created without all those traditional desirability drivers?

First of all, it’s about making quality clothes that will improve your life. That’s goal number one. Whether it’s improving it by one percent or 100 percent. Sometimes the improvements are invisible to the eye. And sometimes they’re very obvious through a particular technology. We make no disposable clothing that is outside of our world of understanding or language. We start with quality. And the quality has to be able to be achieved at affordable prices so that we can show our respect for everyone. That’s very hard to do. This is where sustainability has become so important to us as we move forward to the future. The concept of LifeWear is at the heart of what we do. Everything we make is called LifeWear. What that signifies is that our influence, our inspiration, our ideas, come from what needs you have in life. It offers us the opportunity to [break] down the traditional silos of the industry. In LifeWear we have this term, ‘simple made better’. What we mean by that is that simplicity is the entry point, not an end point for us. And we’re not afraid to take something that’s “classic or simple” and keep making it better inch by inch, year by year.

At the end of the day, that’s what luxury is, right? Regardless of price point.

Simple doesn’t mean plain. Simple doesn’t mean the narrow. Simple still means exciting. Simple means sophisticated, simple means elevated quite frankly. And how do you do that? It’s much harder to do without the blink.

Do you think the consumer is willing to change after Corona? Do you think we’ll see a change in the way they consume?

Of course. And some will go back to their old ways or whatever, but I think everyone wants quality. Everyone wants value. Everyone wants something that’s smart. Let’s say someone might say, “I can pay anything for a product”, but is it smart to pay that much for something? I think our intelligence has been tested here and those brands that can really prove that they’re worth the purchase will grow.

John, thank you.

#uniqlo #john c jay #Bobbito Garcia #daniel arsham #kanye west #collaborations #nike #streetwear blog

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johangraffiti-blog · 4 years

Text

What “them” say about us

“to have a second language is to have a second soul”

- Charlemagne

Introduction

Some roam the dark woods of youtubes outlandish side, the chatforums and craigslist articles in a state of boredom mixed with an emerging need to communicate with someone and unfathomable curiosity. We know these people. They discover groups and digital communes that would rather remain undiscovered. Sometimes joining them, sometimes starting them, but always silently. A double life, no exposure, secrecy. Or thats how it once was. Something happened. Someone must’ve said no. Whatever happened, it happened rapidly - one moment later we have conventions filled with human sized, stuffed - “human-stuffed” - animals (aka the furry-fandom), we have grown women in school-girl outfits imitating a troublingly oversexualised, 15-year old Japanese comic character (cosplay schoolgirl fandom), and we have THEM, who were until recently known as a group of graffiti artists with strange make-up - but there is much more to THEM.

They are by far the strangest creatures among us. Similar to the groups still remaining anonymous somewhere out there in deep, they hide. (The only difference is that they have real big problems following it through). What we knew is that they exist, we’ve seen their lettering online somewhere, sometime. Then, more and more - here and there and suddenly everywhere. Office buildings in London, slums of Kyoto, on a wall 40 meters from Meccas Kaaba. Offline.

Theories about THEM exploded: it was whistleblowers, Rothchilds, the new world order, nazis, aliens seeking world domination, or just another ‘social experiment’ designed by a couple of college students. I was convinced they were a group of spraypainters. It was everything and nothing - it was all smoke and smoke doesn’t disappear until someone opens a window or blows it away.

And then channel 5 the video that went viral. Click here or view below this post

It is the media. Ever since broadcasting had been invented in the 1920s, the media was doomed to pave the way to what intellectuals these days call fake news. Having to face a decrease in popularity due to the internets faster communication methods offline news purposely manipulate information to the extremes - for attention. Attempts to identify the tipper have failed, he is completely undercover. Even in an era of possibilities, it is seemingly impossible to prove his point.

Seemingly, a key point is at disregard concerning this whole issue - whilst everyone is distracted solving the true or false question, no one has confronted the possibility, no ones asked “what if?”. An atmosphere of ignorance is uncovered when we forget that these borderline groups are but bones in our societies anatomy. Broken bones - ones we stopped caring about, forgot and left to rot. This brings me to my key question:

How does a language reflect modern issues? or What “THEM” say about us

Needs, wants and priorities of individual cultures are often represented in their language. It’s vernacular reflects concepts, indicated by the composition of words they chose. The most common example is that of the Inuit, the peoples occupying the Arctics’ frosted wastelands. Their language evidence for their habitat - as it comprises of more than 50 different expressions describing the same thing: snow. No other language, including this one, has such a significant arsenal for describing what is essentially frozen drops of water. Ironically we don’t need to travel that far north to illustrate an argument regarding a plethora of words for the same exact thing. Found in the British Isles, countries known for their predominantly wet and cold terrain, are 100 different dialects for expressing either light, heavy, windy, frosty, brief, sudden or stormy rain. This means, whilst I will be incapable of conveying an equal amount of information about ice or snow in this language as an Inuit may in his, native South Americans, residing in the driest countries on earth, will find themselves in exactly the same situation regarding rain.

What this means in the context of THEM is really quite simple - if the anonymous interviewee is right about the interpretation of their symbols, being all about “escape, anonymity and isolation” then thats what plays a big role to them - it’s their snow.

So, by not paying attention to those in shame, by disregarding the isolated, among us exists a new sort of marginalised group.

This one is not bound by race, faith, sexuality. This one isn’t created by a hierarchy, a border or a shared history. It is international, it is seemingly impenetrable and, paradoxically, even though it is present, it is invisible. And its ways of communicating are scarily similar to a group of people, hidden in the shadows until just recently.

Let us talk about Polari.

Picture central London, 1951. Top hats and pea-coats swarming a densely packed nightclub. Two men stand at the bar, a coy exchange of looks through the sea of hats. The younger approaches the older, lights a cigarette, leans against the bar and politely asks for a drink. Intense eye contact as this moment is decisive - the boy hadn’t asked in a language just anyone would understand. He had asked in a language for people who lived on the margins of British society. He had asked in Polari.

noun: Polari; noun: Palari; noun: Palare

1 a form of theatrical slang incorporating Italianate words, rhyming slang, and Romany, used especially by homosexuals.

Being gay in the 1950’s in Britain wasn’t easy

Personal relationships had been left in shattered pieces following the war - sisters lost their brothers, mothers their children and children their fathers. Around 300.000 British soldiers were killed, 70.000 citizens in airstrikes. Just let that number sink in for a second. The war on terror is good enough reason for some people to avoid airports, trainstations and Christmas markets - 2.977 people died in 9/11, 138 in the bataclan November 2015 Paris attack, 11 in the Berlin Christmas market attack of 2016.

Fear is very real and, by avoiding those places, people still live in fear now.

Imagine the fear felt during the second world war - the rate of casualties feeds on your own hope of mortality. Any hour could be the next, could be the last one you live. So people began living in the moment. One finds himself perhaps experimenting, craving, discovering a new beautiful lust in these apparent last moments of light. Even in the armed forces homosexuality wasn’t frowned upon “with Britain seriously threatened by the nazis forces, weren’t fussy about who they accepted”

(source. 1)

But then, victory, the war was won. Structure rose from the chaos and old values were reasserted. So-called family values, with the traditional heterosexual build-up. The silent generation gave way to the baby boomers, child births were on the rise. What happened in the war stays in the war - and so the wartime indiscretions were pushed under the rug, needed to be forgotten. Among them the new sexual curiosity. Being gay was now a lot tougher than before, in the chaos.

Just 4 years after the war a British survey revealed that the general population was disgusted by homosexuality. Drag was banned until the mid 1950’s, simply sitting around as a cross-dressed man would get you arrested.

In 1963 the number of “homosexual offences” skyrocketed, with over 20 times the amount it was in 1921. More than 2.000 gay men incarcerated for living out their instinctual desires. (source 2.)

It also had something to do with laziness on the polices side, as they were conscious of how easy it was to arrest gay people. Gay people aren’t real criminals - often shy, polite and terrified of being arrested - but generally speaking never violent. It was an easy arrest for any officer trying to avoid a rough situation, hence their name in the Polari language: Betty bracelet. Feminisation of their own character was a common referral in Polari, yet the gay predominantly male community knew the police would deem that new title an insult. The slur was underlined using a clever innuendo, drawing comparison between their handcuffs and womens’ jewellery.

The executive wasn’t the only society the Polari felt rightfully threatened by - leading to the slow fading into the shadows of the their current civilisation. In medical terms, by most professionals of the time, men laying with other men was defined as a mental illness, often resulting from an overly dominant mother. Interestingly enough, one may interpret this belief as a way of enforcing the behaviour of the straight people as well. It would enforce the patriarchy, as a sort of warning to women, not to be overly bold, confident and assertive.

Away from the horribly cruel practice of chemically castrating discovered gay men, a new form of punishment was introduced as the 1950’s continued - aversion therapy. (source 3.

It was dubious to say the least and demonstrated such ignorance of the working ways of the human brain. Men would be shown images of those they loved, those they found attractive or wanted to court whilst being exposed to electrical shocks or vomiting by forcefully injecting substances into their system - a nightmare.

Then there was the media, which built its hatred using police and medical strategies as a foundation. Gays were criminals hence they were ‘evil men’ (source 4.), a connection between them and pedophiles was often drawn - apparently a strong theory as some people actually still believe in this correspondence today. (source 5.) Said theory was another piece of propaganda supporting the conservative family structure, with extra protective responsibility placed upon parents, in fear their children might fall victim to a homosexual.

Concluding, the British government, media, medical profession, the not mentioned church and most importantly the law constructed a prison limiting the self-expression and personal development and completely marginalising the gay community in the mid 20th century. All of this in hopes of eradicating homosexual behaviour - an attempt to stop interaction. A failed attempt.

Polari was born - a way of covering ones footsteps from any and everyone, except the like-minded. Being a reflection of marginalisation in society, Polari and the just recently emerged languages’ differences are mostly legal. Theres no law, except that of vandalism, enforcing this new groups identity. The media is onto them, but instead of portrayal in a purely negative light, THEM are embedded in way too much smoke for us to clearly see what they’re up to. There have been rumors of arrests, but this one again only due to vandalism - theres no actual crime being broken by their sheer existence - not like the British gay community of the post-war era.

So then, why was this comparison made?

Legal boundaries may differ but we still have a group of people here that hide due to their anxieties towards the general societies. Due to whatever reasons, some say loss of jobs caused by automatisation, some say disconnection from real human contact caused by social media and theres a few other theories, these people isolate and seclude themselves, just like the Polari community. A conclusion can be drawn by the parallel established here: like 70 years ago, we, the general society, are at fault for creating this fear.

Another interesting aspect of modern societies is reflected by a newly found type of speech due to technological progress. Communication and technology have always emerged hand in hand. A milestone in the early 1400’s, Johannes Gutenbergs moveable printing press allowed the first ever euro-national mass production of a book in a time of emerging enlightenment, a time when more and more people started to read. Newspapers were published, presenting new forms of communication - headlines, cartoons, editorials, columns; there was new paths to self-express as reading was turning into a form of entertainment for the first time in mans history. A perfect reflection of the then vanishing millennia commonly knows as the dark ages, characterised by a demographic, cultural and economic deterioration.

Broadcasting in the early 1940’s marked the beginning of a time of fast-paced knowledge, wether it was the temperature or recent events in politics - the common citizen knew. Sports commentary, chat shows and news readings were only a few of the new forms of using language introduced - but it was also the birth of many concepts. In a time of increasing surveillance and public safety, citizens raised concerns about allowing these tiny figures on screens into their home - with worries of brainwash, government controlled news and faked moonlandings, the first dystopian novels were born. What Broadcasting reflected in its pure essence is the next form of enlightenment among western humanity, a faster exchange in knowledge, a questioning of what was true and false.

Along came the internet and computers, changing everything. This is where our new groups language comes into play. New conventions were established - abbreviations, emoticons, acronyms. We live in a time that moves faster than any documented era has before. Writing on a keyboard takes a fragment of the amount of work it once did with a pen, or even a feather. What used to be a full letter and then a phone call is now just three abbreviated words on a screen we all carry in our pockets: “wyd” (what you doing?) Tweeting and texting have come along, giving us the most modern forms of new language yet - for the first time being limited to a certain word count resembles the fast paced time of slow attention spans we find ourselves in - something new has to happen, all the time. We have become addicted to the constant feed of information going into us via the world wide web. Everything spreads like wildfire, for the first time in history a new language doesn’t establish itself over centuries but over minutes and hours. We now move and establish fast - just like the new vernacular brought into existence by the unknown. Its roots are seemingly nowhere and everywhere at the same time, just like the internationally famous three letter acronym, “lol”, which has replaced an entire generations digital form of laughter.

Identifying a few of modern societies’ traits via the emergence of “THEM” language lies in the simplicity of analysing the lingual priority - what words are chosen, what does the language revolve around. A fear of society, similar to the forcefully-pushed-underground gay society in the British mid 20th century, demonstrates the severity of what the movement is about: although isolated and in need for escape, they remain independent. They fear us due to reasons that are yet to be verified, yet reasons that have emerged with recent times - otherwise THEM would’ve existed earlier. Guesses are automatisation and therefore the loss of jobs, some say the replacement of warm human relationships by the cold distance of social media - in the end it doesn’t really matter which of these. It was us a society that created a problem and it must be us a society that wakes up from a trance that has created yet another marginalised community. If we take these points into consideration, accept our responsibility and instead of starting yet another witch hunt, get together and actually try to solve a problem we might be able to help. Technology has made us become fast in knowledge but short in attention spans and therefore writing. What we must not forget is that the faster we go and the smaller our words become to make time for other things, the more people can’t keep along with this sort of a pace. They will feel left behind.

Anonymity is easily achieved on the internet, but is that really what we are aiming for? Being put into little groups along the margins of what once was a fully-functioning society in order to hide our faces in fear, rather than accepting our personalities and beginning to love ourselves. As we can see, with modern technology it’s extremely easy to create a new identity, even a new language in the course of minutes, yet fracturing the core of what makes our community - the shared values and morals present through language - will not help us evolve into something greater, but rather something even more distant and isolated than ever before. This is what the emergence of THEM teaches us about ourselves, that is how their language reflects our modern society.

Maybe it was a hoax created by the new world order, perhaps even aliens or another social experiment created by design students. But it does not matter. THEM are a symbol, an x-ray to our societies anatomy showing us the broken bones we did not notice.

Sources

1. Bbc.co.uk. (2019). BBC - WW2 People's War - A Gay Soldier's Story. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/36/a2688636.shtml [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

2. Butler, D. and Freeman, J. (1969). British political facts 1900-1968. London: MacMillan.

3. Glenn smith, Annie bartlett, Michael king, Treatments of homosexuality in Britain since the 1950s, British medical journal, pp.427-9

4. Series of articles released under that name by the Sunday Pictorial in 1952

5. https://www.afa.net/the-stand/culture/2019/01/the-inescapable-link-between-homosexuality-and-pedophilia/)

6. SOLL, J. and Glorioso, A. (2019). The Long and Brutal History of Fake News. [online] POLITICO Magazine. Available at: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/fake-news-history-long-violent-214535 [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

7. Pew Research Center. (2019). Political Polarization. [online] Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/topics/political-polarization/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

8. The National Archives. (2019). Deaths in the First and Second World Wars - The National Archives. [online] Available at: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/deaths-first-and-second-world-wars/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

9. BBC News. (2019). Berlin attack: What we know. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38377428 [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

10. BBC News. (2019). Paris attacks: Who were the victims?. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34821813 [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

12. Reallycoolblog.com. (2019). Introspection # 32: “Language as a Reflection of Society” – A Really Cool Blog. [online] Available at: http://www.reallycoolblog.com/introspection-30-language-as-a-reflection-of-society/ [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

Boinod, A. (2019).

13. Cultural vocabularies: how many words do the Inuits have for snow?. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/apr/29/what-vocabularies-tell-us-about-culture [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

leonard England, ‘a British sex survey’, international journal of sexology, February 1950, p.153

14. Study.com. (2019). What Are Baby Boomers? - Definition, Age & Characteristics - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com. [online] Available at: https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-are-baby-boomers-definition-age-characteristics.html [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

15. Owlcation. (2019). Johannes Gutenberg and the Printing Press: Social & Cultural Impact. [online] Available at: https://owlcation.com/humanities/Johannes-Gutenberg-and-the-Printing-Press-Revolution [Accessed 28 Nov. 2019].

16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVqcoB798Is&t=523s

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thehandmaidstalehulu · 7 years

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Margaret Atwood’s rule for herself when writing “The Handmaid’s Tale” was that everything had to be based on some real-world antecedent. And she was able to combine disparate historical events in plausible — and horrific — ways.

Hulu’s TV adaptation of her novel does the same; even when the show expands the world established in the novel and adds scenes that weren’t in the original material, they “could have been, because they have precedents,” Atwood said in a phone interview. Ahead of the Season 1 finale on Wednesday, Atwood explained the historical basis of the book and the show’s most disconcerting elements.

Episode 1: Color-Coordinated Clothing

The women of Gilead all wear clothing and colors prescribed by their status in this society: red for handmaids, blue for wives, green for Marthas, brown for aunts. “Organizing people according to what they’re wearing — who should wear what and when, who has to cover up what — is a very, very, very, very old human vocation,” Atwood said. It dates back to the first known legal code, the Code of Hammurabi, one part of which stated that “only aristocratic ladies were allowed to wear veils,” she added.

“If you were caught wearing a veil, and if you were in fact a slave, the penalty was execution,” Atwood continued. “It meant that you were pretending to be someone that you were not.”

The handmaid’s garb comes from a variety of sources (mid-Victorian bonnets and veils, nun wimples). Atwood’s trip to Afghanistan in 1978 — where she wore a chador — was also an influence. “They weren’t imposing it on everybody, at that point,” she said. “They did later.” All of these codes of attire — including the Third Reich’s yellow stars for Jews and pink triangles for gays — were ways of “identifying people, controlling people,” she said. “It’s easy to see at once who this person is.” The handmaid’s assigned color, red, was used by Canada for its prisoners of war, Atwood added, “who had the privilege to wear because it shows up so very well in the snow.”

The red is also borrowed from Christian iconography of the late-medieval, early Renaissance period, she said, in which “the Virgin Mary would inevitably wear blue or blue-green, and Mary Magdalene would inevitably wear red.”

Episode 1: Mob Justice

Gilead likes its ceremonies, and it has one to punish political enemies or disruptive elements that also acts as a release for the otherwise tightly controlled handmaids. The women stand in a circle and collectively participate in an execution, in some cases by tearing the accused apart with their bare hands. In the novel, it is called a “particicution,” a portmanteau of the words participation and execution. “When the mob takes over, no one person is responsible,” Atwood said. And this kind of frenzied murder party has a very old precedent, she added, citing “the Dionysian revels of ancient Greece,” in which Maenads tore apart sacrificial victims for the god Dionysus.

The mob will sometimes demand justice. “During the French Revolution, Princesse de Lamballe was torn apart and had her head put on a pike, which was paraded under the window of Marie Antoinette,” Atwood said. “And in Émile Zola’s novel ‘Germinal,’ which is based on real-life 19th century coal-mining enterprises, the guy who runs the company store is exacting sex from the wives and daughters of the coal miners in order to sell them goods because they didn’t have any money. So when the women get the chance, they tear him apart, and put not his head but his genitalia on a pike, and parade it around.”

Episode 2: Forced Childbearing

We get an early peek at how ends justify means in Gilead when Janine gives birth and can’t accept the reality that she will not get to keep the child. “There are a lot of utopias and dystopias based on economics, but this is one that goes to the absolute root, which is how many people are you going to have?” Atwood said. “And how are you going to get them? In some cultures, you don’t have to make special laws about it. But in other cultures, you have to bring in oppression to get the results that you want.”

Tyrants and dictators like Adolf Hitler and Nicolae Ceausescu have often dictated the terms of fertility and criminalized those who did not comply. “It’s no accident that Napoleon banned abortion,” Atwood said. “He said exactly why he wanted offspring — for cannon fodder. Lovely!”

An added wrinkle, of course, is that the handmaids aren’t just being forced to give birth, they’re being forced to be surrogates, and the children they bear are then forcibly taken from them and placed with high-ranking officials. After a military junta took power in Argentina in 1976, as many as 500 young children and newborns were “disappeared,” only to be adopted by military and police couples. Hundreds of thousands of children of indigenous populations in Canada and Australia were separated from their families. “It must have been public in that it wasn’t a secret, but it also wasn’t known at the time,” Atwood said. “Nobody registered that this was happening. And it was probably presented like, ‘Oh, we’re giving these children a wonderful opportunity. We’re sending them to school.’ You see how that could sound?”

Episode 4: Declaring Women Barren

It’s not initially questioned in the show why women would be used to solve the fertility woes of the period — until Offred visits a doctor who offers to help her out. Turns out, the Republic of Gilead has never considered the other half of the equation: men.

“There’s some confusion about this, because here you have Aunt Lydia saying it’s the wives who are barren,” Atwood said. “And for centuries and centuries, that’s what people thought. They thought it was the woman’s fault.” King Henry VIII kept changing wives (and the state religion), Atwood noted, adding: “That’s why Anne Boleyn knew she was doomed when she had that miscarriage. The idea was that the child was fully formed inside the seed of the man, and his seed was simply planted in the woman, the way you’d plant a seed in a field.”

A book titled “Eve’s Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History” by Robert S. McElvaine is illuminating on this front, she said. “You said a piece of land was barren, you said a woman was barren. You said a piece of land was fertile, you said a woman was fertile.”

In the show, the doctor knows otherwise. As does Serena Joy when she decides that Offred should use Nick. “That’s one of the things Anne Boleyn was accused of — having sex with her brother in order to produce a child,” Atwood said.

Episode 5: Why Ofglen Does What She Does

Ofglen has very few options once the resistance can no longer make use of her, and she opts for a last, desperate act of resistance, taking out a few guards with a stolen vehicle. It’s a departure from the book, but Atwood said she approved. “Do you remember the Buddhist monk who set himself on fire?” she asked. “José Martí, during the war with the Spanish, went into battle knowing he wouldn’t come out,” she continued, referring to the Cuban revolutionary who died in the Cuban War of Independence. “I think people do these things because otherwise they’ve been totally defeated. They know it’s not going to work in the present moment, but down the line, they are an example to others.”

Episode 6: The Mexican Ambassador

“The Hulu team made their Offred more active than my Offred,” Atwood said. “Partly because it’s a television series, and partly because it’s an American television series.” Offred would never have been able to stand up for herself or ask for help from a foreign emissary in the novel. The Mexican trade delegation visit doesn’t happen in the book. There is a scene in the novel in which Offred encounters some Japanese tourists, who she assumes are trade delegates, but she can’t honestly answer their pointed question, “Are you happy?” In the show, however, Offred speaks up to Ambassador Castillo when she has the opportunity — and she finds a way to get a note out to the outside world.

Atwood said ambassadors of neutral countries have often acted as conduits. In World War II, an Italian journalist named Curzio Malaparte reported from the Eastern Front, and he found a way to get out the news of what the Germans were really up to. “He was keeping these papers sewn into his coat and in the soles of his shoes and he smuggled them out through the diplomats of neutral countries,” Atwood said. “You have to trust people a lot to do that!”

Episode 8: The Black Market Club

Offred reunites with Moira at Jezebel’s, a brothel where powerful men go to conduct business and indulge in illicit sex and other escapades. It’s also a thriving black market for commoners and, more to the point, the Mayday resistance. Atwood said she was rereading a book by Norman Lewis, “Naples ’44,” which describes the black market that was tolerated by the Allies in Naples, Italy, during World War II “because they were helping to run it!”

“All of this stuff is so old,” she continued, “black markets, special clubs with items you can’t get elsewhere, information exchanged through subterranean conduits.”

In the Audible special edition of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” listeners learn that there is actually a chain of Jezebel brothels, some with golf courses. “Because of course women could no longer play golf,” Atwood said. “This has actually been a complaint of female politicians, that all these special deals and secret conversations and understandings are reached at golf clubs, and if you don’t play golf, you’re just out of it.”

Episode 9: The Mayday Resistance

Atwood did a huge amount of research on the resistance movements in various countries during World War II. One of her old friends, now deceased, was a member of the French Resistance, and he parachuted behind enemy lines to help funnel downed British airmen out of France. “His job was to interview them, to make sure they were really British, not Germans pretending to be British in order to reveal the underground lines of communication,” she said. “So they would ask about where they came from, football scores and such, and if you figured out that they were really German, they were shot. Just like that.”

She also met members of the Polish and Dutch resistance movements. “The people I met, of course, were the people who made it through,” she said. “Many others did not.” As evidence, she cited the members of the White Rose, who were caught distributing anti-Nazi papers and executed, and the female British spies who sometimes doubled as assassins. Using female agents, Atwood said, has been a tactic employed by resistance movements and Islamic extremists, and the handmaids’ outfits make them especially well suited for keeping secrets. “Just look at all the places where you could hide things!” she said, laughing. “Big sleeves! Tuck it in your stocking. Nobody’s going to look.”

#the handmaid's tale #handmaid's tale #tht #margaret atwood #article #season one #ny times

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transhumanitynet · 5 years

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The Future You That You Least Suspect

The other night my teenage boys asked me what was on my mind (likely looking for material to make fun of me. Just kidding, they’re thoughtful kids).

Instead of trying to “kid proof” my thoughts or rush the conversation, I wrote them this letter. First, to explain that I’m consumed by how we think about and where we look for answers to the biggest questions of our time (listed below), and second, to propose an alternative way of finding answers (hint: I found inspiration in an amoeba).

How are we going to address climate change before it creates global chaos?

What jobs will be available for my kids when they finish school? What should they study?

Over the next few decades, how will we re-train ourselves fast enough — again and again — to remain employed and useful as technology becomes more capable?

Can the human race cooperate well enough to solve our biggest problems or will the future simply overwhelm us?

Most importantly, where do we look to find answers to these questions?

Hopefully I didn’t ruin the possibility that my kids will ever again ask me what’s on my mind 🙂

Boys,

There is an old joke where a man is looking for his keys under a street light. Another person walks by and inquires, “Sir, are you certain you lost your keys here?”

“No” the man replies, “I lost them across the street.”

Confused, the stranger says, “Then why are you looking here?”

The man responded, “The light is much brighter here!”

Credit

This comic is as humorous as it is true. All too often, we each do this when we’re trying to solve something. It’s where our brains naturally take us first.

Our imaginations are constrained to the familiar (under the light), so we have a hard time finding answers to difficult questions and problems because the answers often lie in the unknown (or in the comic above, the darkness). Staying in the light is natural, easy, and intuitive, but this limits our discovery potential.

I. How to look in the dark?

History can give us some hints about how others found interesting things in the dark. For example, we discovered that:

the sun is the center of our planetary swarm

the earth is round

the physical world is a bunch of tiny, uncertain pieces governed by quantum physics

Before these became accepted truths, they were very difficult to imagine. This is part because they are non-obvious and also counter-intuitive to our everyday experience.

It’s also because we can’t know what is not known, which means we’re blind to what is yet to be discovered. Don’t believe me? Try to think of something you don’t already know. It’s impossible! That is, until you know it, and then it’s obvious.

Going back to the 5th question, how and where can we look today to find new unknowns (the dark) that help us solve our biggest problems? Where are today’s insights that are equivalent to the sun is the center of our planetary swarm?

I think the most exciting and consequential place to explore is not looking outside ourselves, but looking inside; in our own minds. This is where I see the most fruitful answers to the questions about your future and mine.

What if the next reality busting revolution happened to our very reality and consciousness? And if that happened, could the future of being human be entirely unrecognizable from our vantage point today? I hope so, because the answers to our challenges don’t appear under the lights we have turned on so far.

You’re probably thinking, c’mon Dad, this is crazy talk.

Well, it’s happened before.

II. Thanks Homo Erectus, We’ll Take it From Here

Our ancestor Homo erectus lived two million years ago and wasn’t equipped with our kinds of languages, abstractions, or technology. Homo erectus was possibly an inflexible learner as evidenced by the fact that they made the same axe for over 1 million years.

Imagine trying to explain to Homo erectus a complex phenomena of our modern day society, such as the stock market. You’d have to explain capitalism, economics, math, money, computers, and corporations — after extensive language training and the inevitable discussion of new axe design possibilities (of course, trying not to offend).

The supporting technological, cultural, and legal layers that enable the stock market to exist are the engines and evidence of our prosperity. It’s taken us thousands of years to develop this collective intellectual complexity. The point is, our brains are incredibly capable of evolving and adapting to new and more complicated things.

That our cognition evolved from Homo erectus demonstrates that we have radically evolved before.

III. Amoeba, You’re So Smart!

A few months ago, Japanese researchers demonstrated that an amoeba, a single-celled organism, was able to find near optimal solutions to the following question:

Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible route a salesperson could take that visits each city only once and returns to the origin city? (image credit)

This is known as the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), and classified as an NP-hard problem because the time needed to solve it grows exponentially as the number of cities increases.

Humans can come up with near optimal solutions using various heuristics and computers can execute algorithms to solve the problem using their processing power.

However, what’s unique is that Masashi Aono and his team demonstrated that the amoeba’s solution to the TSP is completely different than the way humans or computers have traditionally solved it.

That’s right, this amoeba is flexing on us.

(Note: it’s worth reading about the clever way they set up the experiment to allow the amoeba to solve the problem.)

This got me thinking: when we’re confronted with a problem, we use the tools at our disposal. For example, we can think, do math, or program a computer to solve it.

Professor Aono found a different tool for problem solving: a single-celled organism.

I know what you’re thinking, can the amoeba do my homework or take tests for me? It’s a good question!

Also, kudos to Aono and his team for searching in the dark — this experiment is non-obvious.

IV. Why Am I Telling You About Amoebas?

I strongly believe that we need a major cognitive revolution if we are to solve the global challenges we face. Our species evolved before and we can do it again, but we can’t wait a million years; we must accelerate this evolution.

What I’m saying is very hard to understand and imagine, because it’s in the dark. But bare with me.

The amoeba gives me hope because it didn’t evolve to solve the TSP. We augmented it with technology to accomplish something pretty amazing. Similarly, we haven’t evolved to deal with cooperating on a global scale, battle an invisible gas that warms our planet or retraining our brains every few years as AI takes over more of our work. How can we augment our own minds to allow us to take on these challenges?

Imagine a scenario where you are dressed head-to-toe in haptics (think Ready Player One) that allow you to experience and understand things by feeling changes in vibrations, temperature, and pressure.

Also imagine that you have a brain interface capable of both reading out neural activity and “writing” to your brain — meaning that certain communications can be sent directly into to your brain — the kind of stuff I’m building at Kernel.

Let’s call this a mind/body/machine interface (MBMI). It would basically wire you up to be like the amoeba in the experiment.

Now, what if you were given certain problems, such as the TSP, that your conscious and subconscious mind started working to solve? Imagine that instead of “thinking” about the problem, you just let your brain figure things out on it’s own — like riding a bike.

Would you come up with novel solutions not previously identified by any other person, computer or amoeba?

If we actually had the technology to reimagine how our brains work, over time, I bet that we’d get really good at it and be surprised with all the new things we can do and come up with. To be clear, this is not just “getting smarter” by today’s standards, this is about using our brains in entirely new ways.

Maybe that means that your school today would be in the museum of the future.

People would likely use these MBMIs to invent and discover, solve disagreements, create new art and music, learn new skills, improve themselves in surprising ways and dozens of other things we can’t imagine now.

When thinking about the possibilities, hundreds of questions come to my mind. For example, could we:

minimize many of our less desirable proclivities, individually and collectively?

become more wise as a species?

come up with original solutions to climate change and other pressing problems?

accelerate the speed someone learns (i.e. you get a new kind of PhD at age 12 versus the average of 31 today)

I wonder, is this what you will do at your job in 20 years? Would your mind change so much that it would be hard to recognize your 15 year old self?

Ultimately, for our own survival, we are in a race against time. We need to identify the problems that pose the greatest risks and respond fast enough so that we avoid a zombie apocalypse situation. The most important variable to avoid that: we need to be able to adapt fast enough.

I’m sure at this moment you’re thinking, woah, Dad, calm down!!

V. Your New Job — Being Really Weird (in a good way)

You’re right in wondering what jobs computers will take — if not all of them. They’ll do the boring things that adults do to make money, except far better and for far less money. But imagine a scenario where AI relieves you of 75% of your current day-to-day responsibilities, and is much better at doing those things than you. (I imagined what this world could look like)

A lot has been written, even movies made, about this scenario (e.g.Wall-E). If this happened, would you play fully immersive video games all day? Or live a life of pleasure and be work-free? Certainly possible, although those are linear extrapolations of what we are familiar with today — meaning that’s simply taking what we know today and mapping it into the future. The same thing as looking in the light.

What if millions or even billions of people could build careers by exploring new frontiers of reality and consciousness powered by MBMIs? These types of “weird” thought exercises may be breadcrumbs that extend the considerations we’re willing to make when thinking about our collective cognitive future.

These may be the starter tools that empower us to become Old Worldexplorers setting out for the New World, and journeying on the most exciting and consequential endeavor in human history — an expedition, inward, to discover ourselves.

Dad

orginally posted here:

https://medium.com/future-literacy/the-future-you-that-you-least-suspect-18cf63bd0061

The Future You That You Least Suspect was originally published on transhumanity.net

#climate change #kids #Parenting #Problem Solving #Thinking #crosspost #transhuman #transhumanitynet #transhumanism #transhumanist #thetranshumanity

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tumblunni · 5 years

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Baron omatsuri and the secret island traumatizes me yet again, hooray!

Ok wow that was a nostalgia blast! Finally goddamn have a physical copy of this thing to own. Its never been dubbed and the only way to get it was this weird manga UK licensed reprint of a bunch of (i think) hong kong english subtitles. The style of the subtitles looks like that, at least. Its all weird and grainy and very very old fashioned early days of subtitling style, which contrasts completely with the modern dvd menus and box and stuff. And its also a weird combination disc of four different movies, it seems they just bought out a licensing package deal or something? And just baked it onto the disc without checking or editing anything. Its not really a funny sort of bad subtitles though, its just awkward phrasings of thibgs that are hard to understand or random typos or whatever, no legendarily hilarious stuff. I kinda dislike it more when subtitles are like this, when theyre like...actually written by a guy who speaks fluent english but he just never watched the actual movie so theres a bunch of rookie mistakes. Also has a strange case of what you usually only see on fansubs- the obsession with leaving everything in japanese to Sound Cool. Nah we cant call them the Tea Party Pirates we have to say the japanese word for that. Nah we cant have this man say mustache when he's doing the mustache pose and talking about his crew of entirely mustache men who all do this mustache pose NO it has to be Chobehige because its somehow deep and edgy to not understand the word for mustache. Like i feel if i was watching this sub first i would have no idea what was happening! At least its not as bad as that older sub i saw where they insisted on translating friends as "crew", even when it was llike..a singular. This one man is my crew and here are all my other crews! Like i feel like that subber probably originally did that dumb old fandom thing of INSISTING that you had to say Nakama in japanese and Capitalized and it was a Very Important japanese word for specifically pirate friends that was Impossible To Translate. And then they just did a ctrl + F replace on the whole thing and made an incomprehensible mess. Also for some reason sanji just yells DOCTOR out of nowhere (chopper wasnt even in the scene) and baron omatsuri's one syllable "oh" is translated as some long string of what seems to be baseball jargon..?

But ANYWAY the movie is still fuckin awesome and i actually noticed EVEN MORE dark shit and subtle storytelling that i missed when i was a kid! The whole 'small child zombie stares blankly at the place where a sword stabbed through his chest and cant understand why he got back up' scene is EVEN MORE emotionally destructuve than i thought! Cos the subtlety of the voiceacting seems to make the poor kid sound so tired and resigned to it? He's desperately asking and his father figure feeds him the same old lies he's done a million times about how he's totally still alive and everything is fine. Like wow i missed that inplication that this has happened before! And then he kinda sounds like he's actually aware that Baron is lying and he's just pretending to believe him to make him feel better. And then he starts turning back into a corpse and he doesnt panic like muchigoro or not realize whats happening like the grandpas do. He just looks straight at his hand falling apart and tries to lie to Baron to make him feel better. *long shot of him from behind before you see whats happened* "I'm just feeling dizzy again. I've got used to it." *him staring blankly at his body falling apart, not even capable of feeling sad about it anymore* "Don't worry...i've got used to it." *thud*

Like FUCKING HELL this film is the best damn existential horror thing ever and why the FUCK did they market it as a fun happy kids film? it probably would have been way more successful if the twist wasnt kept all twisty, honestly.

And also WOW YEAH theres a lot of stuff thats the subtlest goddamn storytelling in the universe and youd never notice unless you watched this film a million times like i did! Like during the intro when everythibg still seems all fun and cute and normal, the advert for the Totally Innocent Not A Trap Super Secret Island Resort is being read over some random shots of waves and stuff. But then right near the end you see those same shots again and it becomes clear that it was literally the view from Baron's eyes as he was falling from the ship and drowning, desperately trying to keep his head above water and strain his eyes to see if anyone else had survived. All the moments that just looked like camera cuts were actually when his head fell beneath the waves. Thats fuckin amaizng you straight up showed the ending in the beginning and we didnt notice????

Oh and also right before THE FUCKIN TERRIFYING MUCHIGORO DEATH SCENE you see him casually mention being 'sleepy' a few scenes earlier. It just passes by without notice and you think that he's just drunk until he suddenly starts going from comedic slurring to fucking asphixiating and the SKIN ON HIS FINGERS PEELING OFF. Oh hey! Another thing i didnt notice before! FUCKING THAT. A fun game for you on your rewatch! Looking out to find the secret finger horror! Ha ha ha...ha...

Also MAN OH WOW all the subtle signs of Baron getting more desparate throughout the movie and how it seems the time limit for the zombies was almost up and he had to kill these specific pirates right now because he couldnt spare even a few more hours. In retrospect it makes sense how he was slipping up and leaving evidence for the heroes to figure him out. And its just so subtly offputting and strange how he goes from making a big fun performance about the festival early on and then starts subtky rushing through the formalities faster. Like you dont eveb conciously notice the tone is changing until suddenly BAM the full change happens and you realise you missed all those signs! And aaaa its so fuckin sad how you see him come running when muchigoro drops dead and he's like fuckin GET OUT OF THE WAY DAMMIT and kneels down next to the body and theb he just..turns emotionless again and goes ITS TIME FOR THE NEXT CHALLENGE. It is time. Its now. Shut the fuck up and do it, i dont have time to deal with this shit, just die so i can bring my friend back. (Tho of course you dont know thats why at the time) And then whats most jarring about the whole scene to me is how he's like "okay fuck it theres no more fun theres no more attractions, if youre not gonna play along then the final game is just i shoot your damn head off" WHILE YKNOW STILL STANDING OVER THE CORPSE OF HIS FRIEND AND STARING DAGGERS INTO THEM LIKE ITS THEIR FAULT FOR DARING TO CLING ONTO LIFE and then a fuckin half finished hapoy fun carnival game sign pops up in the backgroubd and everyone walks past it. Why was that somehow both hilarious and terrifying????? Just fuckin 'whoops we had this thing ready to go but alright its murder time i guess' and everyone IS SUDDENLY PACKING HEAT AND RIDDLING OUR HEROES WITH BULLETS???

And also even more subtly Baron just?? Stays with muchigoro?? Like notice how the entirety of the endgame takes place around where the dude dropped dead. And how when mustache pirate guy saves luffy you see Baron just walking in circles around the same area angrily shooting arrows at nothing in complete desperation even though the dude is gone and itd make more sense to run after him. No he stays standing right there and actually looks really damn relieved when luffy comes back, he's like 'holy shit you really were stupid enough to walk right into my trap jesus christ im so glad but also youre a dumbass'. And he fights entirely using arrows at this point so you might not even notice that he barely walks more than just circling a two meter radius of fuckin DEAD BEST FRIEND CORPSE. Which btw blends intonthe shadows for this entire scene and they only draw attention it again after Baron wibs and muchigoro comes back to life. And UGH MY HEART you see him smile genuinely for the firstvtime and he's like 'im so glad youre okay' and muchigoro is like 'haha im more than okay i can do somersaults!' and generally being a FUCKING TREASURE and this poor fuckin horrible evil man is hugging his buddy and gently leading him away from the battlefield so he doesnt norice he was just fuckin murdering some dudes to ressurect him. God the scariest damn thing about this film is how the zombies dont know theyre zombies and honestky they probably wouldnt even agree with their boss's plan to kill people to keep them alive. They justvthink they live a perfectly normal happy life on hapoy festival island, and he wants them to stay that way and never feel pain again :(

Aaaaand then yeah the infamous scene of revealing this horrifying intestines flower is growing out of the flesh on his back and all the corpses its digesting are pushed against the undulating flesh of its throat like a snake devouring its prey. And its cutesy fake flower face grows infinate eyes as it just keeps laughing and laughing. And then it gets graphically blown apart and the poor goddamn parasite host tries to shove the bloody instestines back into its body, knowing that without this horrifying monster chewing on his goddamn veins all his friends will go back to being dead.

THE END

THE FUCKING END

God it ends so abruptly seriously

I still cry my eyes out every time at the ending monologue of Baron dying and meeting all the souls of his dead friends and theyre crying telling him he shouldnt be here, they wish he'd been able to find another reason to live without him...

And then THE END

JAUNTY MUSIC OVER THE CREDITS

THE FUCKIN END I GUESS

What a great but very oddly executed movie. Seriously i feel it could have worked better if it was given space to breathe and more deeply explore the dark themes rather than the weirdness of trying to fool the audience into thinking it was cheerful and innocent. Like all of this shit happens in the last 30 minutes of the movie! They spend 60 minutes on the fun carnival games! What a strange sense of priorities!!

I WOULD DEVOUR A MILLION HOURS MORE OF DEEP SAD ZOMBIE CONTENT

I am like the Lily of fanfics

Oh yeah btw the horrifying deadly elder god spine parasite thing is named Lily and it looks pretty much exactly like flowey from undertale. This film kinda spoiled me for that game LOL ive never trusted a single talking flower ever since!

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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Chip Wilson, the founder and former CEO of the yoga apparel brand Lululemon, has written a tell-all book about his life and the business he built — and it is one wild read.

Little Black Stretchy Pants, which comes out on November 27, is being marketed as “the unauthorized story of Lululemon” — fitting given that the infamously controversial Wilson stepped down as CEO in 2013, and hasn’t been on the company’s board since 2015. (Lululemon has also distanced itself from its rogue founder; Wilson’s name isn’t even on its “our story” page. Vox reached out to Lululemon for comment on the book and will update if we get a response.)

Wilson’s Lululemon kick-started the athleisure market boom. Its $100 “Wunder Under” spandex leggings became ubiquitous in the fitness world, and the company convinced wealthy women they needed its luxury gear for working out. In the 20 years since its inception, Lululemon has developed a cult following; women and men alike swear by its products, to the point where there are underground markets dedicated to buying used Lululemon goods.

Under Wilson’s stewardship, the company has also been dogged by controversy and media blunders, and developed a reputation for being insular, pretentious, and eerie at times, due to the company’s obsession with developing employees under the self-help movement Landmark Forum.

Chip Wilson’s “unauthorized” book, Little Black Stretchy Pants.

I have covered Lululemon for almost five years, writing about the company’s products, fan groups, marketing efforts, and workplace culture. I read Wilson’s book in part to learn if the media’s depiction of him as being “socially inept,” unfiltered, and arrogant was unfair.

I found little to convince me he has been mischaracterized. This is, after all, a man who said in a videotaped interview that Lululemon pants weren’t made to be worn by all women; scolded a reporter for being late and invoked the phrase “Jewish Standard Time”; and checked out a woman’s butt while being interviewed by another reporter. (His book’s front cover, it’s worth noting, is an illustration of a woman’s butt, in Lululemon leggings.)

In the book, he’s similarly tactless, and it’s often cringeworthy to read; there are whole sections devoted to taking down specific Lululemon executives he disagreed with, and he claims to have singlehandedly invented the concepts of stretchy pants, minimalist marketing, and reusable shopping bags. He also refuses to take any responsibility for calamities he caused along the way, and instead paints himself as a victim of clueless CEOs, salacious media reporters, and disloyal board members.

Here are a few major takeaways about the world of Lululemon from Wilson’s account.

Wilson sold his former snowboarding apparel business Westbeach Snowboard in 1997 and was living in Vancouver when he took his first yoga class. He’d been having back issues due to participating in triathlons, and he took a class at a local gym. Wilson noticed the instructor was wearing clothes from a dance apparel company, which was thin and sheer.

He says that made him think about starting a yoga apparel company and “believed that if I could solve the transparency problem, address camel-toe, and thicken the fabric to mask any imperfections, I could create a perfect athletic garment for women.” At the time, brands like Adidas and Nike were using the “shrink it and pink it” philosophy to turn men’s athletic clothing into gear that could be sold to women. His idea was to create clothing designed specifically to emphasize women’s figures.

Wilson goes on:

Accentuating what made people feel confident — wider shoulders, smaller waists, slimmer hips — meant Guests would feel and look good in our clothing. I realized that the shape of our logo provided a perfect contour to enhance the natural shape of a woman’s body… There was a huge debate about where to set the seam lines on pants. Women told me they preferred side seams because when they looked in the mirror, side seams slimmed their hips. I wanted to move the side seams to the back to frame the bum and make the bum appear smaller. I persisted because I believed that eventually, men would tell women the pants looked great without really understanding why.

In executing the design of Lululemon stores, Wilson also writes that “the lighting would be perfect, and each room had to have a three-way mirror so a woman could be self-critical of her back side.”

Throughout the book, Wilson oscillates on whom Lululemon was created for. Initially, he talks about the opportunity to dress people who practice yoga regularly but also mocks that world, calling Yoga Journal a “mediocre publication wallowing in the depths of the granola world.” He also says Lululemon was propelled by “wealthy women” who could “‘buy’ time in their lives and were consequently often in great shape and very healthy.”

What he does make clear, though is that the brand was meant for a very specific type of customer: a demographic he calls “Super Girls.” This shopping segment were the daughters of “Power Women,” a group Wilson defines as a “female market segment in the 1970s and 1980s” who were divorced — which he claims was a result of the rise of birth control.

Men “had no idea how to relate to this newly independent woman” who “suddenly had significant control over conception,” and “thus came the era of divorce.” These daughters, he claimed, had single dads who got them involved in sports, and wanted to be like the male characters they saw in Saturday morning cartoons, “wearing capes and stretch fabric outfits.”

This demographic, Wilson writes, was “the best of the best.” For a 22-year-old college graduate, he believes “utopia was to be a fit, 32-year-old with an amazing career and spectacular health. She was traveling for business and pleasure, owned her own condo, and had a cat. She was fashionable and could afford quality.”

There’s long been a rumor that Wilson invented the name Lululemon because he thought it would be funny to listen to Japanese people pronounce it, and this comes up in the book.

Wilson writes how he came up with 20 names and logo possibilities, with one of them being Athletically Hip (the stylized A of the Lululemon logo comes from this original business name). He then recalls how he sold the name of a skateboard brand, Homeless Skateboards, to Japanese buyers for a large amount of money because, he believed, “Homeless” was a desirable brand name: “it seemed the Japanese liked the name Homeless because it had the letter L in it, and the Japanese language doesn’t have that sound. Brand names with Ls in them sounded even more authentically North American/Western to Japanese consumers, especially the 22-year-olds.”

He goes on to write how he “played with alliterative names with Ls in them, la la la, jotting down variations in my notebook” until he came up with Lululemon. Wilson doesn’t explicitly say he created this name as a way to exploit Japanese shoppers or make them stumble, but elsewhere in the book, he makes fun of Japanese tourists for traveling to Canada and buying Roots clothes. Lululemon’s first ad was a photo of three girls wearing glasses and a Roots sweatshirt, with the tagline, “Trendy Clothing for Rich Japanese Tourists,” which Wilson said was message for his “Super Girls,” that they’d “understand the nuances and subconsciously want to be a part of the Lululemon ‘tribe.’”

One thing Wilson makes clear in his book is that Lululemon is not meant for soda drinkers. In the original set of brand values that were printed in stores and on Lululemon’s ubiquitous red shopping bags — the company “manifesto,” which he admits comprised “random statements about how I lived my life” — he initially stated that “Coke, Pepsi, and other pops will be known as the cigarettes of the future. Colas are NOT a substitute for water. Colas are just another cheap drug made to look great by advertising.”

Wilson writes that “Coke and Pepsi threatened to drown Lululemon in lawsuits,” but agreed to cut the line from the manifesto only after a Lululemon employee pointed out that the line made the company look dated, since soda wasn’t aligned with health anyway (though he writes that he “wanted our Super Girl market to know the Lululemon brand was not for soda drinkers”).

He goes on to say that in 2012, he was upset to find soda cans popping up in the office, because being anti-soda “was fundamental to our health culture.”

Wilson also refuses to refer to Lululemon as an “athleisure” brand because he is personally not a fan of the term, as he believes it connotes “a non-athletic, smoking, Diet Coke-drinking woman in a New Jersey shopping mall wearing an unflattering pink velour jumpsuit.”

As a workplace, Wilson writes, Lululemon “screened for people who wanted families.” He writes how the company wanted to thrive off of family values, but he also doesn’t see a problem with forcing his narrow idea of relationships and family.

He writes how “we wanted our people to meet the perfect mate, we wanted people to have children, and we wanted the family nucleus to be an energy generator.”

In his original manifesto, Wilson also included this line: “Just like you did not know what an orgasm was before you had one, nature does not let you know how great children are until you have them. Children are the orgasm of life.”

Wilson goes on to write about how Lululemon initially hired a type of employee he calls “Balance Girls,” who were “type-A Wall Street personalities,” but the company had to get rid of them because “they had been working 14-hour days in finance, were not dating, and could see no prospects for marriage or children.”

Throughout the book, Wilson’s account of how he developed the business illustrates some autocratic tendencies, with specific rules for how employees should approach goal-setting and lifestyle. The most striking example is his 6/13 rule, which was an exact formula of how and when store associates, or “Educators,” as they are called, could talk to customers.

The rule was that “if a Guest was looking at a product for six seconds, an Educator had a thirteen-second window to educate them about the item. Barring any follow up questions, the Educator would then leave them alone until they looked at another item for around six seconds.” Wilson writes that this method would work because “our Educators [would] impress customers with their sheer knowledge of and enthusiasm for the item.” While it might sound like a shopping nightmare for some, it also might explain how Lululemon’s sales per square foot were in line with Apple and Tiffany & Co.

Inside a Lululemon class at a store in London on March 28, 2014. Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images

In his account of the Bloomberg interview in which he said Lululemon pants weren’t right for women whose thighs rub together, Wilson says the publication edited his words and presented them out of context. (For the record, Bloomberg did not isolate that portion of the interview, and Wilson did say that “it’s really about the rubbing of the thighs.”)

He also insists that Luon, the proprietary fabric used for Lululemon leggings, which many people complain pills after many wears, didn’t pill because of poor quality but because women were squeezing into sizes that were too small for them.

Wilson takes no responsibility for offending women; instead, he insists the media is rooted in sensational reporting. He points to another time in 2007 when the New York Times challenged him on a clothing line called VitaSea, which he claimed was made with “seaweed-based technology … that would make the shirts anti-stink, as well as moisturizing for the skin of the person wearing it.”

The Times published test results that showed the clothing had no seaweed in its particles. Wilson calls this “mean-spirited” in the book but does not offer an explanation for the results; instead, he pivots to claim the story was probably planted by an investor who wanted to short the Lululemon stock, and that the reporter probably received “a backroom payoff.”

In one especially bizarre chapter, Wilson basically defends Nike, which in 2001 was accused of using child labor. He says he “felt bad for Nike,” and sides with the company over the reports.

“In North America, I noticed there were some kids not made for school, who dropped out with nowhere to go,” Wilson writes. In Asia, if a kid was not “school material, he or she learned a trade and contributed to their family. It was work or starve. I liked the alternative.”

Wilson boasts that to respond to the Nike story, he decided to make the whole thing into a joke. He appeared in an ad in Yoga Journal with a few Lululemon employees, “dressed in diapers and baby outfits at sewing machines in one of our factories.”

In the book, Wilson writes that “if we were ever accused of child labour, I would just agree.” He then goes on to joke that “my own children have worked in the business from the age of five with no pay; working young is excellent training for life” — a tone-deaf take on child labor, especially coming from a white, Western billionaire.

Elsewhere in the book, Wilson mentions that “stores created tongue-in-cheek windows with a controversial political or social point of view.” When the brand opened its first store in Vancouver, he took out an ad in the paper promising free clothes to anyone who showed up to the store naked — and plenty did. Wilson describes this type of publicity as “worth millions and so much more fun than a standard press release.”

In Wilson’s account of how Lululemon went on to sell yoga apparel outside of women’s leggings, he tries to paint a picture of resourcefulness. When searching for the best type of material that would later become Lululemon’s $68 yoga mats, he admits he scrounged in the trash of a supplier to find the address for a source of materials in Asia.

In another anecdote, Wilson writes how he saw bits of fabric being discarded inside factories and he was trying to think of ways to use them: “One of the seamstresses used to take the ends of the pants she cut off and wear it as a headband because her hair got in her eyes while sewing. We thought, ‘what a great idea! Let’s take these pant ends and sell them!’”

Headbands, Wilson goes on, ended up becoming one of the brand’s best-selling items, thanks to “young girls who used them to differentiate themselves amidst a sea of school uniform.”

Original Source -> Lululemon’s ex-CEO wrote an “unauthorized” history of the brand. Here’s what we learned.

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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euroman1945-blog · 6 years

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The Daily Tulip

The Daily Tulip – News From Around The World

Thursday 14th June 2018

Good Morning Gentle Reader…. We have arrived in our summer pattern of weather in the south of Spain, mild temperatures at night and from now, progressively getting warmer in the day time.. June, July, August and September bring the heat and sunshine that Spain is the resort of choice for many families in Europe and recently China and japan, but Bella and I don’t see many people let alone people from China and Japan at 4:00am so we wander the streets alone, just an old man and his friend…

BANGOR UNI TEAM TACKLES TOAD INVASION OF MADAGASCAR…. An invasive species of Asian toad could devastate wildlife on Madagascar, according to biologists at Bangor University. They are part of an international team which says the toad's poisonous skin will kill animals preying on them. It is thought they only arrived on the African island around 2010 as "stowaways" on ships. South-east Asian predators have evolved immunity to the toxin, which animals in the closed Madagascan ecosystem lack. Whilst the toads are yet to have a major impact, the team's study has confirmed that all but one of Madagascar's native predators lack the gene which renders the toxin harmless.

SOUTH AFRICAN COMPANY APOLOGISES FOR SEXIST BEER CAMPAIGN…. A South African company has apologised for the branding of its new range of craft beers, which sparked an outcry, especially among women. Vale Bru ran a marketing campaign for the beers with names such as Filthy Brunette‚ Easy Blonde‚ Raven Porra and Ripe Redhead. Easy Blonde came with the tagline: "All your friends have already had her". After being criticised for being sexist, the company promised to remove the labels and names. The social media campaign advertised Filthy Brunette as: "When gushing and moist are used to describe something‚ then you know." While the Raven Porra was described as, "a porter with the best head in town". According to South Africa's Times Live, Porra is a derogatory term for someone of Portuguese origin. Thandi Guilherme, author of the platform Craft Geek, wrote on Instagram that Vale Bru "should be absolutely ashamed of yourselves. Crass, sexist, misogynistic branding and labelling". The Johannesburg-based company issued its first apology, which has since been deleted, on Instagram. It said: "Our attempt at making you‚ and ourselves‚ uncomfortable‚ worked. However‚ we never meant to belittle or degrade you." "If those keyboard crusaders want to carry on‚ feel free," it added. Ms Guilherme later wrote on her blog: "#Metoo, Rape culture and Trump's 'locker room' misogyny are not funny. These are real problems that society is trying to deal with. Don't go there." "I understand that sex sells‚ but these names don't hint at respectful sex," wrote South African blogger Lucy Corne. "Maybe they should have asked themselves whether these are things that they would appreciate people saying about their little sister." In a new apology, Vale Bru said it took "full accountability for our actions and we plan on making things right." "We were insensitive and wrong, for which we apologise unreservedly," it added.

FLORIDA ALLIGATOR ATTACK: DOG-WALKER FEARED DEAD…. A dog-walker who was attacked by an alligator in the US state of Florida is believed to have been killed by the reptile, state wildlife officials say. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) says Shizuka Matsuki was bitten by a 12.5 ft (3.8m) alligator. A necropsy was performed on the reptile after it was captured. It dragged Ms Matsuki, 47, into a lake in the town of Davie, 25 miles (40km) north of Miami, a witness said. The incident occurred at about 09:45 (13:45 GMT) on Friday. "The FWC believes that the victim is deceased and we will continue recovery efforts on the lake with local authorities," the agency said in a statement. "This tragedy is heartbreaking for everyone involved," the FWC added. Local media earlier reported that officers found a dog on a leash but no signs of the woman at Silver Lakes Rotary Nature Park. "Divers are searching," Davie Police Maj Dale Engle was quoted as saying by the Sun Sentinel newspaper. "Her dogs won't leave the pond. One of her dogs got bit by the gator."

CLIMATE CHANGE: POPE URGES ACTION ON CLEAN ENERGY…. Pope Francis has said climate change is a challenge of "epochal proportions" and that the world must convert to clean fuel. "Civilisation requires energy, but energy use must not destroy civilisation," he said. He was speaking to a group of oil company executives at the end of a two-day conference in the Vatican. Firms present included ExxonMobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Norway's Equinor and Pemex of Mexico. Modern society with its "massive movement of information, persons and things requires an immense supply of energy", he told the gathering. "But that energy should also be clean, by a reduction in the systematic use of fossil fuels," he said. "Our desire to ensure energy for all must not lead to the undesired effect of a spiral of extreme climate changes due to a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, harsher environments and increased levels of poverty." The world needed to come up with an energy mix that combated pollution, eliminated poverty and promoted social justice, he added. As many as one billion people still lack electricity, he said. Under Pope Francis' leadership, the church has moved to confront the business world on a range of subjects from poverty to tax havens and complex financial securities.

AIRBNB CANCELS THOUSANDS OF BOOKINGS IN JAPAN…. Travelling to Japan in June? If you've made a booking with Airbnb, you may have to find alternative accommodation. The online home-sharing giant has had to cancel thousands of reservations after Japan's government put in place a new law around home-sharing. The law regulates Airbnb's most popular destination market in the Asia Pacific region. Airbnb said changes to the guidance around its implementation meant reservations would now be affected. Under the new law, hosts are required to register their listing and display their licence number by 15 June to remain active. But the Japanese government said on 1 June that any host without a licence number had to cancel upcoming reservations that were booked before 15 June. Airbnb said it would therefore cancel any reservation made by a guest arriving between 15 June and 19 June at a listing in Japan that does not currently have a licence. "We know this stinks - and that's an understatement," Airbnb said. "Japan is an incredible country to visit and we want to help our guests deal with this extraordinary disruption." Airbnb also said it had set up a $10m fund to help those incurring any additional expenses related to having to make alternative travel plans because of cancellations.

Well Gentle Reader I hope you enjoyed our look at the news from around the world this, morning… …

Our Tulips today are from the Winner of Plant and Flower Close Up - Rebecca Reeve - Tulips at the Philly Flower Show

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments I love them and always try to reply, so please keep them coming, it's always good fun, As is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Thursday 14th June 2018 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming Jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in

Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus

#robertmcangus #robert mcangus #tulips #travel #news #blog

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douchebagbrainwaves · 7 years

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YOU'RE NOW A STARTUP FOUNDER, SO YOU START LEARNING FROM USERS WHAT YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN MAKING

A recent survey found 52% of companies are replacing Windows servers with Linux servers. Many of our taboos they'd laugh at. In a language with infix syntax. For example, most people seem to be overkill. For insiders work turns into a duty, laden with responsibilities and expectations. You can do what you want and publish when you want. In fact, the sound of the homing beacon. Instead of paying the guy money as a salary, why not give it to him as investment? Graduation is a bureaucratic change, not a subordinate executing the vision of his boss. And, like Microsoft, they're losing.

Are Mongol nomads all nihilists at thirteen? Cobol is the most powerful of those was the existence of channels. China. It made them hate working for the acquirer. I'm sitting drinking a cup of tea, or walking around the neighborhood. America is more open to immigration than Japan. You need a great university to seed a silicon valley in another country, it's clear the US is disorganized about routing people into careers. It would be a net loss.

Of course, it's not surprising if amateurs can do better. The number one question people ask us at Y Combinator about selling software to corporate customers. In one culture x is ok, and in some kinds of elegance make programs easier to understand. Put them on an anonymous forum, and the problem gets worse. I'm going to start with what goes wrong and try to trace it back to the root causes. For example, open source software have in common is that they're often made by people working at home. Or it could be any other way.

We have a phrase to describe what happens when rankings have to be careful to avoid if he happened to set his time machine for Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992. The trouble with keeping your thoughts secret, though, is thinking cheaply. This will sound shocking, but it may be heretical or whatever modern equivalent, but might it also be true? Will your blackberry get a bigger screen? And it happens because these schools have no real purpose beyond keeping the kids all in one head. Viaweb, but fortunately we still lived like 23 year olds. If you don't have a house or much stuff, but also connotations like formality and detachment. In this respect, as in a secret society, nothing that happens within the building should be told to outsiders. One reason they work on big things is that there's so little room for new thought. You're at least close enough to work that the smell of it makes you hungry. If you're not sure what to do as you're doing it, not a subordinate executing the vision of his boss. When I say business can learn from open source: that people working for you have to reinvent stuff for yourself, and if you don't let people ship, you won't have any prestige yet, if no one happens to have gotten in trouble for seem harmless now.

In the US things are more haphazard. If they're so smart, why don't they figure out how to make one consisting only of Japanese people. Best of all, governments. But they forgot to consider the possibility that he is wearing the wrong size shoes. Bottom-Up The third big lesson we can learn from open source, I don't think object-oriented programming is because it yields a lot of smart, young people. But if Ron's angry at you, it's because you did something wrong. The cheery, bland language of the people working there. The other place co-founders meet is at work.

This is one reason I'd bet on the 25 year old has some work experience more on that later but can live as cheaply as an undergrad? Most of the legal restrictions on employers are intended to protect employees. Public school teachers are in much the same way a gene pool does. Plus you can't get an H1B visa, the type usually issued to programmers. Suppose you realize there is nothing wrong with yellow. There are two senses of the word. I could see India one day producing a rival to Silicon Valley. If, like other eras, we believe things that people haven't realized yet can be made unnecessary by a tablet app. It won't have any artists. That's the only defence.

The m. A confident group doesn't need taboos to protect it. In practice they spend a lot of strength and diversity of the American people, etc, etc. You can't snicker at a giant museum, no matter how cozy the terms. But I don't see why one couldn't, by a similar process, learn to recognize and discount the effects of moral fashions. A more important source, because it's a better browser. Someone who gets this will work much harder at making a startup succeed—with the proverbial energy of a drowning man, in fact, the whole concept of a good effort is a fake idea adults invented to encourage kids. In more recent times, Sarbanes-Oxley has practically destroyed the US IPO market. Someone ignorant but smart will come along and reinvent everything, and in another it's considered shocking. That's the paradox I want to examine its internal structure.

Whereas fame tends to be particularly bad in forums related to computers, and that starting working means you get thrown into the water on your own company, because you're only replacing one segment instead of discarding the whole thing. I've been hearing this word all my life and I only recently realized that it is, in a mild form, an example of whatever paradigm might succeed the Standard Model of physics. The manual should be thin as well. And being a boss is also horribly frustrating; half the time it's easier just to do stuff yourself than to get someone else to do it as a sign of maturity. They're also getting bigger, and this gives you an edge over older founders, because the concept of users is missing from most college programming classes. But gradually I realized it wasn't luck. And finally, there are a lot of people wish that hacking was mathematics, or at worst as evidence of insanity, but they were so much easier. We funded one startup that's replacing keys. And you know what? Delicious is a list of n things, this work is done for you.

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