#and we used our old strategies from back then when we were 13 years old to communicate. we used to write lots of letters to each other. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

honeybee-island · 2 years

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Back on Tumblr after a 7-year break

I’ve recently started to make an effort to come back to using Tumblr. I haven’t used Tumblr in 7 years, and by the end of our relationship in 2016 It was already very damaged. But recently I came back to Tumblr and I felt like it still had that spark I felt when I was a teenager, that inspired me to write this text about my relationship with Tumblr as a user who has been here for 13 years.

Context

I was a 15 year-old black girl, late bloomer, nerdy girl who had unlimited access to a computer and lived very far from most of her friends.

Started a Tumblr account as a recommendation from a friend who had found some interesting “fuckyeah[topic]” blog (yeah it was the fuckyeah[anything] era). My first thought when I look back at my experience using Tumblr is “I had FUN”. I remember laughing so much, participating in so many discussions.

Back then, Tumblr had an immense community dedicated to Mean Girls and Harry Potter, that produced lots os content that was hilarious to my unsophisticated 15 year-old taste.

Development

I’ve made friends through Tumblr. Me and Reem have been friends since circa 2010, and we have plans to meet IRL soon. We started our friendship my exchanging essay-long updates about our lives through Tumblr’s “ask” feature for months.

We shared interests in music, cinema and, literature, specially a passion for the band Arctic Monkeys. We lived with 10.000 kilometres of distance within each other.

Through Tumblr I learned about books that impacted by coming-of-age years. I was introduced to writers who were references for me for years like Oliver Sacks and Kurt Vonnegut. (I was also introduced to John Green so… maybe it wasn’t always so worthy of my time).

I started to learn about cinema on Tumblr. Through the little GIF-making culture it was possible to admire scenes from movies and get curious about watching them. I remember finding about genres, and aesthetically interesting scenes.

Tumblr was the first digital platform where I started to produce a curatorial practice through the things I posted and retweeted. Since I had a personal blog, I loved to scroll through it and try to imagine of sense of who I was would people get from those publications. Would they be able to get a sense of my humorous side? My interests? (But never questioned if I was overstating my interest on the Arctic Monkeys, lol)

Tumblr was the last platform I used where I had a sense that the context I was scrolling through actually mattered. That’s why I couldn’t get adapted to using it on the phone. On the phone you just scroll to get distracted, not to focus on something.

When I started using Tumblr, smartphones were not yet ubiquitous. When I logged on Tumblr I used to read all of the posts until the last one from the last evening because it was worth it to catch up with the conversation.

In October 2010 Tumblr changed its color to purple in support for the LGBT+ community. And that was before the performative ally ship turned pride month into a meme about how disingenuous these types of manifestations by corporations have become after they gained the status of a profitable marketing strategy.

I went to a Tumblr meet in my city. It was terribly badly organised by a guy who thought it was a good idea to meet a STARBUCKS!!!, but I had an awkward blast! I’ve made a friend who then I went to college with and we’re still connected and we always have a laugh when we think about the Starbucks Tumblr Meet.

Taking some distance

Around 2010 I decided to delete everything I considered mildly embarrassing from my posts because I was scared of it being dug one day for some reason. I really regret that, I deleted over 8.000 posts.

After that I spent a few months using the platform only to see some funny memes and share them with my roommate. We used to go to bed every night and exchange tumblr memes through our fonts for around one hour before bed every night.

I think by those years the “endless scroll” mentality was catching up with Tumblr users. Interactions were rarer, lots of self-deprecative content, ironic meme, and I eventually just stopped using the platform altogether.

But I never really abandoned Tumblr, I kept coming every couple of months to do some specific research on a topic (Tumblr still has the best results for certain fandom content and discussions. For example I found the Tumblr discussion about Severance (2022) to be much more insightful and fruitful than the one taking place on Reddit).

The comeback

Today I’m 29 years-old and I came back to Tumblr. My life has drastically changed since the first time I really used this platform. I’m married, I live in a different continent, I don’t listen to the Arctic Monkeys anymore, and most of all: I’m exhausted of social media platforms.

The world is also not the same since I started using Tumblr… and, obviously, Tumblr isn’t the same! There arelot’s of bots, there’s paid content on the feed. It has this experimental feature called Tumblr Labs which looks like a project to implement things that look like they envision creating a platform for people to invest in becoming influencers in.

But, despite feeling uncertain about the righteous future of the platform, I still felt a bit nostalgic coming to Tumblr, because it still works at a slower pace than, say, Instagram, or Twitter. Many of the posts on my timeline requires me to take the time to read them, sometimes I feel inclined to contribute to the conversation.

This feeling of scrolling slower actually feels more relaxing. On Tumblr I don’t follow celebrities, or influencers, or brands. I follow people who will say things I care about. I don’t follow for numbers, for social pressure, or “engagement”, I follow them because I want to get more of the narrative they’re talking about.

Tumblr is a place that instigates people to invest in their interest, go deep into the things they find interesting, and it would be sad to see that lost to anxiety-inducing social media culture.

Anyway, I think I don’t really have a conclusion on what I want to say. I’m happy to be back, I’ll try to be around here more often. I hope to find some people to connect with.

#personal #tumblog #millennials

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pooma-bible · 8 months

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Sister. Savita Manwani

"Praise the Lord! I greet you all in the Name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I welcome everyone in this group to hear the word of God and be blessed.

Let us Pray: Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and this precious moment you gave to share your word. Holy Spirit come guide and teach us the truth of your word. All glory and honor be to your Holy Name. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen.

Topic: Cyrus, the Lord’s anointed

Selected Passage: Isaiah 45:1-13

Can God use anyone, small or great, to do His will and work at any given time on this earth? Indeed, He can. We must never limit who God can use to further His purpose and spiritual plan. When we look back in the history of Israel, we find that God once used a pagan king and even called him by name years before he was born.

The astounding tale of the Persian king Cyrus, often known as Cyrus the Great, is evidence of God's incredible understanding of future events. One of the main indicators that God and His Word, the Bible, are true is fulfilled prophecy. Our understanding of God is expanded and the ceiling is raised to expose the wide perspective God has on this planet by the fact that God’s calling and mission for Cyrus employs people with immense worldly authority (or no power at all) to advance His goals.

Isaiah 45 gives us the account of Cyrus:

Cyrus is a king mentioned more than 30 times in the Bible and is identified as Cyrus the Great (also Cyrus II or Cyrus the Elder) who reigned over Persia between 539—530 BC. This pagan king is important in Jewish history because it was under his rule that Jews were first allowed to return to Israel after 70 years of captivity.

In one of the most amazing prophecies of the Bible, the Lord revealed Cyrus’s decree to free the Jews to Isaiah. One hundred fifty years before Cyrus lived, the prophet calls him by name and gives details of Cyrus’ benevolence to the Jews: “This is what the Lord says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him . . . ‘I summon you by name and bestow on you a title of honor, though you do not acknowledge me’” (Isaiah 45:1, 4; see also 41:2-25; 42:6). Evincing His sovereignty over all nations, God says of Cyrus, “He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please” (Isaiah 44:28).

King Cyrus actively assisted the Jews in rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem under Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest. Cyrus restored the temple treasures to Jerusalem and allowed building expenses to be paid from the royal treasury (Ezra 1:4–11; 6:4–5). Cyrus’s beneficence helped to restart the temple worship practices that had languished during the 70 years of the Jews’ captivity.

Besides his dealings with the Jews, Cyrus is known for his advancement of human rights, his brilliant military strategy, and his bridging of Eastern and Western cultures. He was a king of tremendous influence and a person God used to help fulfill an important Old Testament prophecy.

A. God chose Cyrus (vs.1-7)

a. God’s calling and mission for Cyrus (vs. 1-3)

Isaiah carries on this remarkable prophecy from the previous chapter. In it, God announces — by name — the deliverer for His people from a coming captivity, and He does it 200 years before the man Cyrus is born.

His anointed means that Cyrus had a particular anointing from God for his work. God poured out His Spirit on a pagan king because God wanted to use that man to bless and deliver His people. Normally, the living God would employ Israelites for such purposes. But he is sovereign and may use whom he will.

God directed His message to Cyrus, and Cyrus apparently listened. These things Cyrus knew from reading the book of prophecy which Isaiah had left behind two hundred and ten years earlier.”

Like many of us, Cyrus could look back on his life and career and see how the LORD held his hand the entire time. To subdue nations before him and loose the armor of kings: Cyrus had a remarkable military career.

The armies of the Medes and Persians, under Cyrus, conquered the city of Babylon in a remarkable raid described in Daniel 5. According to the ancient historian Herodotus, while King Belshazzar of Babylon held a reckless party, Cyrus conquered the city by diverting the flow of the Euphrates into a nearby swamp; thus, lowering the level of the river so his troops could march through the water and under the river-gates. But they still would not have been able to enter, had not the bronze gates of the inner walls been left inexplicably unlocked. God opened the gates of the city of Babylon for Cyrus and put it in writing 200 years before it happened.

“In October 539 B.C., Cyrus advanced into lower Mesopotamia and, leaving Babylon till last, conquered and occupied the surrounding territory. The night they conquered the city, Cyrus and his armies took all the staggering treasures of Babylon — and it was important that Cyrus knew that the LORD had given it to him.

On the night Babylon fell, Cyrus probably had no great sense of the LORD’s guidance or presence. He probably thought himself both brilliant and lucky. Often, we succeed in something only by the blessing and pleasure of God, and never see the miraculous hand of God behind it all.

God certainly gave Cyrus treasures. “When Cyrus conquered Asia, he found thirty-four thousand pounds weight of gold, besides golden vessels and articles in gold.”

God announced all of this 200 years before its fulfillment so that Cyrus would know and glorify the LORD. But the LORD also did it so Cyrus would show kindness to the people of God, granting them permission to return to the Promised Land from the captivity imposed on them by the Babylonians.

B. God’s purpose behind the calling and mission

Cyrus would like to think that God picked him because he was the smartest or most talented or strongest man available. Really, God’s focus was on His people. It wasn’t Cyrus that moved God to act, but the condition and cry of His people. It was for their sake.

“Cyrus is preferred in order that Israel might be released. Cyrus shall have a kingdom, but only in order that God’s people may have their liberty. The Lord raises up one, and He puts down another. Behind all the drama of human events today there is a God who is planning for His church — through affliction and persecution, chastening and tribulation — to be perfected and prepared to inherit the Kingdom of God.”

Cyrus didn’t even know the LORD, yet God could anoint him, guide him, bless him, and use him. How much more should God be able to do through those who have at least a mustard seed’s worth of faith in Him.

Proverbs 21:1 says, The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes. God can work in and through others in very unexpected ways.

When Cyrus made his proclamation allowing the people of God to return to the Promised Land, that he acknowledged to the whole world the greatness and uniqueness of the LORD God of Israel.

Simply put, Isaiah knows, Cyrus would know and declare to the whole world, and we should know today, that God is in control. Since this prophecy was given long before God’s people went into the captivity Isaiah now announces deliverance from, they could be comforted through the captivity by knowing God is in control.

C. God raises Cyrus to deliver His people (vs.8-13)

a. God calls to the creation (vs.8)

“Rain down, you heavens, from above, And let the skies pour down righteousness; Let the earth open, let them bring forth salvation, And let righteousness spring up together.

I, the LORD, have created it.

The great God described in the previous passage can speak to the heavens and bring rain. It is true in the literal, natural sense; but it is also true in a literal spiritual sense. God can send a flood from heaven, and let the skies pour down righteousness.

God can send His blessing from every direction. It comes down from the heavens, it comes up from the earth.

It is important to see that salvation and righteousness always spring up together. When God brings salvation to a life, He also brings righteousness to that life. They spring up together. Also, the natural physical world as well as the invisible spiritual world are both created by God.

b. Foolishness of resisting our Creator (vs.9,10)

“Woe to him who strives with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth! Shall the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ Or shall your handiwork say, ‘He has no hands’? Woe to him who says to his father, ‘What are you begetting?’ Or to the woman, ‘What have you brought forth?’

Knowing that God is the Creator of all things should make us hesitant to oppose Him in any way. It is as foolish as for the clay to say to him who forms it, “What are you making?”

It is foolish to oppose our Creator because since He made us, He can break us. If it is foolish to oppose our Creator because since He made us, He knows what is best for us. It is foolish to oppose our Creator because we owe the greatest obligation to Him.

The only thing more foolish than the creature resisting and opposing the Creator is for the creature to believe there is no Creator! Isaiah pictures a clay pot, the handiwork of the potter saying, “My potter has no hands. I have no Creator!”

The begotten has no say in his coming to be. It is simply foolish and counter-productive for us to question and accuse God over how He made us. Each of us has our strengths and weaknesses, and we each have our triumphs and challenges. We simply need to accept what we are before God and look for His redeeming, transforming power to conform us into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29).

c. God of all creation raises up Cyrus and delivers His people (vs.11-13)

Repeatedly through this extended section of Isaiah, God emphasizes His place as Creator. The importance put on this idea here shows us that knowing God as Creator isn’t an option, or just a matter of text-book fights in the courts and public schools. When we reject God as Creator, we reject the God of the Bible, and serve a God of our own imagination. He really did make us, and it really does matter.

The God of all power and creation uses that power on behalf of His people. He will direct the ways of the announced deliverer — Cyrus — and cause him to rebuild Jerusalem and release the people of God captive in a foreign land. And Cyrus would do it not for price or reward, but out of a conviction from God that he must do it (Ezra 1:1-3).

Dear friends, God called Cyrus and anointed him for his special tasks. God declared his divine prerogative to use Cyrus to restore Jerusalem and free the captives from Babylon. Today, you and me are His anointed ones who are called to do His service, to build His people, restore them, prepare them to inherit the Kingdom of God without expecting anything in return, thus bringing glory to God’s Holy name.

Allow me to end here. God bless everyone in this group."

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tangiblejournal56 · 11 months

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11/13/11

Friday night was spent helping Annie organize & pack her room, the total amount of belongings rivaling with ease the amount Josh, Jacob & I had moved down to this hateful place. And that’s still only after managing to get her to throw out several garbage bags & tote boxes of five years’ worth of bulk - leaking, half-empty shampoo bottles, chapsticks without caps, newspapers from last year, grocery store receipts from 2004. I was amazed & proud of her determination at tossing these extraneous items, a brave & not inconsiderable accomplishment from the girl who will keep a perfume bottle from seven years ago with only one spray’s worth left in it because she might one day want to use it. But she held strong (with many shouts of “Jamie, don’t even let me see it, just throw it away!”) & eight hours, many cigarettes, & an incentive trip to Taco Bell later, we had managed to pack away her life, everything even organized down to separating her car insurance papers from her countless recipes scribbled on the backs of paystubs, napkins, etc. It was actually an enjoyable night, my pleasure in putting things in order & her reminiscing at old momentos & thrilling at finding such treasures as her expensive bench scrape from culinary school & her grandmother’s locket hidden under her bed & assumed lost forever. The next morning was spent getting the Haul hitch installed on her SUV, lunch from Thundercloud Subs, & a trip to Whole Foods for Annie’s lavender shampoo. I told her my favorite thing to do with her was running errands as our friendship seems to flourish best when driving around, gossiping & listening to embarrassing music.

The realization that Luke & I would never make it as a couple struck me the other night. Amid a flirtatious, enjoyable conversation we were discussing schnugging & watching movies. He asked what we’d watch, & I requested a Batman marathon. “No,” he replied, “I only watch good movies.” Never a more perfect line was designed to cause an irreparable tear in my attraction to someone. I am a believer in the logic that there is at least one Batman movie that will appeal to any type, whether it’s the delightful cheesiness of the Adam West ’60’s, the goth Tim Burtons of the early ’90’s, the awful campiness of the wretched Joel Schumachers, or the most recent & most cinematically impressive Nolans - I have never met a single person to whom at least one of those movies appealed. Even Max liked “The Dark Knight,” he who believes movie adaptations of comic books is a waste of time. What was even more infuriating than that scathing & absurd comment was his confusing refusal to name what he thought was a good movie, despite his claim to own “like 400 of them.” This annoyed me, & I let it show. Mock Batman to the girl with the Batman tattoo, & with no defense or willingness to explain one’s self? Not the most effective courting strategy. I took my turmoil to Josh, telling him that while I was willing to overlook Luke’s spelling of the word “attic” with a K on the end (which required a great deal of strength on my part), this just seemed too big a blow. He agreed, sharing my annoyance at such a ridiculous pretension.

How loathsome, getting to know people for who they really are.

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jdgo51 · 1 year

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Risk: Get Out of Your Safe Zone

Today's inspiration comes from:

Forward

by Dr. David Jeremiah

Mr. Risk-Taker

"'In the work God has given me through the years, I’ve had to make a lot of difficult decisions. Left to myself, I might have erred too often on the side of safety and security. But there’s a man in the Bible who inspires me to keep stepping out and taking risks with wholehearted confidence in the Lord. I’m convinced you’ll be able to go forward — unafraid to take risks — if you can embody his spirit.

That man is Caleb. Do you know him? Many people don’t know a great deal about Caleb because he only occupies thirty verses in the Bible. But what verses they are! What a man of faith! In this chapter, I want to show you how this Old Testament hero left a legacy of courage for you — a powerful example of risk-taking, future-grabbing grace.

In the book of Numbers, Moses sent twelve men — Joshua, Caleb, and ten others — as an advance party to reconnoiter the promised land. These men left the safety of their encampment, forded the Jordan River, and slipped into Canaan. Their mission: to make notes of the land, observe the enemy, study the fortifications, estimate the population, and bring back enough intelligence to aid Moses in planning the coming invasion of the land God had promised the Israelites. The Bible tells the story this way:

So they went up and explored the land from the wilderness of Zin… Going north, they passed through the Negev and arrived at Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai — all descendants of Anak — lived. — Numbers 13:21-22 NLT

The city of Hebron had been the ancestral home of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but now it was inhabited by an evil tribe of huge warriors known as the descendants of Anak. The sight of these warriors terrified some of the spies.

The scouts quickly harvested some pomegranates and figs from the orchards of Canaan, and two of them lugged back an enormous cluster of grapes, carrying it on a pole between them. Imagine the excitement when the spies returned to Kadesh Barnea! Their mission had taken forty days, during which no one knew if they had survived or perished. Day after day, sentries at Israel’s parameters watched for them. Now they were back — all of them safe and sound.

But they were not united.

Don’t minimize the opportunities God has for you in the future.

How to Live Life in the Safe Zone

In professional football, NFL coaches study the smallest statistic to find every possible advantage. But according to author John Tierney and research psychologist Roy F. Baumeister, many coaches make the same simple mistake week after week. It happens on fourth-down-and-short situations, when their team only needs a yard or two to keep possession of the ball. Nine times out of ten, instead of the riskier decision to try to win by going for another score, the coach settles for trying not to lose and sends in the kicker to punt the ball to the other team.

Statistics show that trying for the goal and the win is actually the better strategy. So why do coaches punt on fourth down? Tierney and Baumeister concluded there’s another factor involved. They call it “the power of bad.”

Simply put, our brains are wired to give more importance to negative events than positive ones. So “bad” events influence our decision-making more than positive ones. That means no matter how much we want to succeed, avoiding “bad” events can easily become our primary goal.

Back to the coach. He knows if he chooses the risky play and fails, and the other team goes on to score, the fans and press will be unforgiving. Sportscasters will denounce him as reckless and use phrases like loss of momentum and the turning point in the game. If his team loses by a narrow margin, that failed fourth-down attempt will be blamed for the loss and replayed endlessly afterward.

That image of potential failure is hard to overcome. So the coach plays it safe. The fear of failure has lost many a game.1

Have you ever heard these names: Shammua, Shaphat, Igal, Palti, Gaddiel, Gaddi, Ammiel, Sethur, Nahbi, and Geuel? No? These are the names of the ten spies who risked their lives on an espionage mission only to lose heart, doubt God’s power, and miss God’s will (Numbers 13:4-15). They came back so discouraged they disheartened the people of Israel.

Those men made three terrible mistakes. They fell into three traps you and I must avoid at all costs.

Maximize the Opposition

God wants you to go forward. He has adventures, challenges, victories, and meaningful tasks for you. As you look at the bridge to your future, are you looking at the ropes or at the holes? Jean Hanson wrote, “If you’re one of those people that are afraid to take calculated risks, worry about every little thing, and have a hard time making decisions in your life, it’s time to take a break and do a little work on yourself… I learned a long time ago that being timid and conservative will get you nowhere.”2

In Numbers 13, the ten spies magnified every threat. They looked at the “bridge” God had designed for the future, and all they saw were the holes. The Bible says,

But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.” And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.” — Numbers 13:31-33

Notice all the holes the ten unbelieving spies fixated on:

We are not able to go up against these people. They are stronger than we are. The land devours its inhabitants. The men are of great stature. The men are giants. They are from Anak, the land of giants. We are like grasshoppers in our eyes. We are like grasshoppers in their eyes.

If you propose to move forward in life, especially if you aspire to leadership, you’ll have to learn what it means to take risks — to live by faith. Scripture says,

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. — 2 Timothy 1:7 NLT

Whenever we compare ourselves to the opposition, instead of comparing the opposition to God, we can get into a state of fear. If that’s a pattern in your life, the first step forward is recognizing it.

When Jesus left Galilee to travel to Jerusalem near the end of His life,

His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem. — Luke 9:53

Jesus knew the Cross awaited, yet there was no looking back for our Lord, no comparing, and no fear. His way forward was clear and He faced it head on.

You must do the same. Recognize the risk and properly evaluate the opposition. Then, when you have an inkling of God’s will for your life, set your face toward it and go forward.

Minimize the Opportunities

While the ten spies maximized the opposition, they also minimized the glorious opportunities that lay ahead of them. They only had a dim perception of what God had in store for them; they believed in their hearts that God was setting them up for destruction, and their unbelief was contagious.

You can read it for yourself in Numbers 14:

So all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron, and the whole congregation said to them, ‘If only we had died in the land of Egypt! Or if only we had died in this wilderness! Why has the Lord brought us to this land to fall by the sword, that our wives and children should become victims? Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?’” — Numbers 14:1-3

Their perception of God would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic. After all the Lord had done for them! He delivered them from slavery! Parted the wide waters of the Red Sea! Accompanied them with cloud and fire! Gave them His Law! Provided food and drink in the wilderness! Promised to make them a great nation in a land flowing with milk and honey!

How could they so quickly forget?

More importantly, how can we? When we forget all the blessings God has provided for us in the past, we’re apt to minimize His ability to guide us in the future. We may even dread the future and where we think God is leading us. If so, we’re exactly where the devil wants us: in a place of avoiding risks and playing it safe. Oh, we of little faith.

What I’m telling you is this: don’t minimize the opportunities God has for you in the future. Don’t put all your efforts into avoiding loss or turn your face away from the future He has planned for you. Instead, go forward with confidence and courage to do the task He has set for you."'

John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister, The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us, and How We Can Rule It (New York: Penguin, 2019), 11–12. Hanson, “Worry and Fear Kept Me From Taking Action.”

Excerpted with permission from Forward by Dr. David Jeremiah, copyright David P. Jeremiah.

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deviantpastry · 1 year

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is there a word for when something you kinda sorta noticed a while ago becomes glaringly obvious? if not, there should be.

so. tonight I was reflecting on the chat I had with my parents earlier. and I was thinking about how whenever my mom mentions going to the casino, I feel ... sad and angry and resigned all at once.

and I weirdly remembered a conversation I had in therapy years ago. we were talking about how distant my mom and I are and how I need to accept that there is a point of no further improvement in our relationship and everything that goes along with that. and I said something like "this is gonna be as good as it gets. she only built a relationship with my sister because they've been going to casinos together since my sister turned 21."

and the therapist was like. hold on. does your mom have a gambling addiction?

and like. I had talked pretty openly about the abusive shit and processed all that and had not once mentioned the casinos.

and tonight that memory of therapy came back and I realised that I ... never talk about the gambling addiction. I talk about the abuse, sometimes, with people I'm close to. but not even all of them know about the gambling.

and like ... I'm just sitting with this realisation and wondering why. why don't I talk about it?

I guess it's easier to talk about abuse than addiction because ... abuse is ... more tangible? you can talk about things said and done and people can understand?

but ... saying "I resent my mom putting gambling above all else, especially her family"? like ... how do you say that you spent so much time in casino arcades that you developed strategies with your siblings on the precise angles needed to beat the machines? that you were weirdly comfortable with hotels because you were in them every weekend? that you knew where the good buffets were?

it sounds like you're moaning about going on holiday all the time.

but it wasn't anything like that. casinos are always dark and loud. they stink of stale alcohol and piss. there are some seriously creepy and sketchy people hanging about.

my dad was with us when we were out in the arcades and getting food, but my mom was glued to the machines. and he would have to go be with her.

so to keep us safe we were in the hotel room.

as the oldest, I was in charge (I was 11). I was fucking terrified of drunks I could hear going down the hallway. my siblings and I would watch shitty hotel tv until they fell asleep.

I could not sleep until my parents were back, so I read.

and this was my weekends. until I was 13 and then apparently old enough to watch my siblings for a night or two at home.

because ... she just had to be at the casino, you see. and my dad went with her.

and at 13 I was even more terrified being in the house alone and in charge than in the hotels. at least hotels have security a phone call away. the house just had me.

so I would have all of us pile in to the living room with our blankets and pillows. we made forts in front of the tv, and watched movies all night. slept with the tv and the lights on.

it was the only way we felt safe.

and when I got older, the main source of fighting between me and my mom was me trying to get her to confront her addiction. to get help.

and eventually I just ... stopped trying to help her. which was a whole grieving process I had to go through.

which brings me back to today. my mom talking about how she went on a casino cruise and is doing another one in Feb. with my sister. of course.

and I've just realised the fact that the two of them did this casino cruise bonding thing ... that is what made me look at this properly. that is what jogged the memory from therapy

because while she was talking about it, I just passively listened with quiet resignation like always. I don't ask questions because I can't stand it, and this is the weird unspoken agreement we have created.

and I don't know where I am going with this now. like. every time we talk there is casino stories. and I never really talk to anyone about how that makes me feel other than my life partner.

I guess it's because ... the abuse ended almost two decades ago. I made my peace with it. I will always have trauma from it, but I processed it.

but the addiction. that never ends. that will always be a part of our relationship. and it feels ... wrong to complain about something I put up with for the sake of maintaining some connection.

and I know that is silly. no one would think any less of me or be critical of me for it.

ah. and there's the rub. I do believe a small part of me doesn't fully believe that. that people would turn around and say "you didn't have a choice then, but you do now, so why don't you say anything? you're as much to blame as she is for letting her influence you."

and while logically, I know the people I would talk about this with have never given me any reason to believe they would say anything of the sort (quite the opposite, they would likely be supportive as they always are), part of me is still very much "it's not worth the risk of them leaving you or thinking less or fighting."

AND I KNOW THAT IS TRAUMA REARING ITS HEAD AND NONE OF THEM WOULD EVER TREAT ME THAT WAY.

but ah. hmm. this is going to be a fucker of a wall to bring down.

I'll get there. eventually. for now, this realisation is more than enough.

#it me #abuse #trauma #addiction #tagging for people who block tags #i could tell something was bothering me and i couldn't figure out what #stream of consciousness does its thing again #need to find some happier thoughts now #if i want to have any hope of sleep #long post #woah #did not realise how long this got

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owlstreet61 · 2 years

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30 Best Chicken Wing Recipes That Are Finger for Dummies

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I will certainly admit we do not use hen wings in preparing food. We are typically in the UK therefore there is no technique we could possibly be helping make it out of blemish. And to think our customers are therefore generous with their time and suggestions, if we might have got an easier opportunity finding the appropriate one. That produces me think about regarding our ability to create them out. There are therefore several fantastic flavor options, that you are sure to discover one to love! My child loves this dish. We bought it coming from our sibling's place, and it came in our buying pushcart! It was completely great tasting. Ideal for lunch or an appetizer! B.S. My son adores this sweet cookie that he loves to add to his meal. We bought from our moms and dad's area, but simply because he likes the sweetness of this wonderful cookie. Buffalo sauce or cookout dressing is standard, but we are substantial supporters of honey garlic and salt and white vinegar! We used our good friend at the Cheesehead at Nesco for the dish (and I think they actually enjoy it!). Keep Checking Back Here produced: *Chilis, red onion, red red onion, garlic and shallots Therefore much of what produces the cheesehead thus unique is down to those two elements. No matter how you dress them, you’re going to really love them! In his newest blog post, he explained how he yearned for to see how it felt to make use of true human beings as a bridge between his personality and the real-world population. He described how, while his initial duty versions and childhood heroes were portrayed with wit and humanity, his "change" included him in the history as he talked and interacted with true individuals. What does baking particle do for chicken wings? It carries out something for wings – and it scents like chicken wings.". It's phoned "pork oil" that helps crack up excess oil that can easily lead to skin layer covers and crusts. 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Add it to a small plastic pail and placed it on best of a baking slab, at that point get rid of the poultry to drain. Cook for 15 mins or until the onions seem, if not, eliminate the poultry simply to steer clear of splitting them up. Use a tiny plastic pot or plastic bag to cool the chick. Redo along with the rest of the elements. Baking grain increases the pH of the chick, crack down the peptide connections in the skin, and with that, helps make the skin more crispy. The brand new procedure may also offer an desirable touch to the meals. And there's more to eating hen. It is additionally the second most prominent poultry in the United States -- after poultry, sausage, reddish red onion, and mustard. It may be that what produces the food extra appealing is how much it try like meat product.

#Chicken Wings #Wings #Bar Food #Sports Bar

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charlie-rulerofhell · 3 years

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For they know exactly what they do

Today there was a pretty long article published in the German newspaper FAZ, written by Julia Schaaf. Since there were quite a few interesting topics raised in it and Måneskin talked about some new aspects (or in more detail), I translated the whole thing (it might also have helped me to procrastinate).

Full interview in English under the cut.

For they know exactly what they do

June 22, 2021

Four young rock musicians from Rome are today's hottest band. Måneskin are enchanting Europe. Why? We met them for an interview.

Every romance needs its founding myth, an anecdote from the beginning, something you can tell later in more difficult times for self-assurance.

In the case of the band Måneskin, who first had Italy and now half of Europe wrapped around their fingers, and who are now trying to conquer the rest of the world with their rock music, there is the story of the shoe box. Rome, around five years ago: Four teenagers who are meeting every day after school in their rehearsal room to make music together, and sometimes they play their songs on the Via del Corso in the city centre in front of a changing audience. One day they want to record their own stuff. They find a studio that they can actually afford and as they go there they bring a shoe box, with the name of the band written on it, 'moonshine' in Danish, the bassist's mother is Danish. In the box: around seven kilogram of coins. The things you get from playing music on the streets. Everyone searching through Instagram for photos from that time can find four hippies with children's faces, three boys in batik, the girl is wearing a straw hat.

As they have to pay [for the recording], frontman Damiano David, 22, says that there was this guy, Angelo, and his bandmate Victoria De Angelis, 21, is interrupting: “No, Andrea, not Angelo”, and all of them have to laugh because a rigid studio manager with the Italian name 'angel' would be even funnier for a founding myth. David continues his story: “The guy was completely dumbfounded. 'We can't do that.' We went: 'Sure we can, that's worth the same even if it's just 20 cent coins, it's still 300 euros.” Thomas Raggi, 20, the guitarist of the band, is gasping for air as he laughs, while drummer Ethan Torchio, 20, is smiling dreamily. David finishes: “And then we snuck off before he was able to count it.” [the German text says 'verdrücken' here which is just a colloquial way of saying 'we left', but it entails some sort of a dramatic exit, so yeah, let your thoughts get creative how they left exactly :D].

Four young musicians on the verge of global fame are sitting on a white interview sofa in Berlin, completely styled, babbling across each other like overeager teenagers.

Ever since the Roman band first won the music festival Sanremo and then also the Eurovision Song Contest, carried by the enthusiasm of European viewers, you could say Måneskin has become a phenomenon. “Rock 'n' Roll never dies!”, Damiano David yelled fueled by the adrenaline of winning, and the insinuation that circulated on social media of the singer snorting during the counting of votes in front of a live camera – including their strict denial followed by a negative drug test result – might have given an additional boost to their public interest, their exploding album, ticket and merch sales, and their outstanding success on Spotify.

“We think it's a shit prejudice against rock music that there always have to be drugs involved. We fully threw ourselves into our participation with the utmost professionalism. We give everything for the music. So of course we don't want people to think that we can only do that because we take drugs.” – Victoria De Angelis

Prior to Eurovision, Måneskin was more of an insider's tip outside of Italy. Handmade rock music, not creating something entirely new but paying homage to the good old times with classic guitar riffs and cracking drum beats, being a lot of fun but also quite fragile and vulnerable at times and, first and foremost, conveying a captivating energy. Finally, on the stage of Rotterdam, live after so many months of isolation and renunciation, this wave of energy spilled straight over into European living rooms. It seemed easy to (mistakenly) interpret the winning song “Zitti e buoni” (Shut up and behave) as a declaration of frustration of our youth in times of a pandemic. In fact, singer Damiano David is singing about the favourite topic of the band: the unrelenting need to, against all odds, be yourself, despite or perhaps because you are different. The message fits their provocative sex appeal, which the band uses to demonstrate their independence of gender norms at any given time. But the core essence of rock music has always been the promise of unlimited freedom.

Thus at the first moment, the meeting with Måneskin is kind of startling. It's Wednesday, we are in the top floor of the new Sony head quarters in Berlin. The four Italians have just started their two-week long promotion tour through Europe. In the afternoon there will be a live concert in a queer club [the SchwuZ, but that's not mentioned here] in Neukölln, which will be streamed via TikTok. Around one million viewers will watch the show, some of them even from Brazil, so people at Sony are pretty excited [for Måneskin to come here]. But at first, these stunningly gorgeous creatures [yes, that's the exact wording :D] are standing surrounded by an entourage of people – their management, PR team, a stylist, a photographer, people who can hold a smartphone or a cigarette if needed [this paragraph is worded a little weirdly, especially taking into account that basically their whole team / 'entourage' is just friends of them, but it seems like the journalist didn't know that or maybe they just wanted to describe their first impression]. They seem like fictional / artificial characters out of a Hollywood movie. Transparent frill blouses with blazers and flared leather trousers, even the platform boots, everything brand-new, the makeup makes their faces look like a glossy magazine cover even in person. The smokey eyes of De Angelis and Raggi make them look smug and bored. Later, on the pictures it will probably look cool.

So of course your first impression might be: This band is under contract to industry giant Sony ever since their success on an Italian casting show [X Factor] in Winter 2017. The music industry must have its hand in the game when a band is photographed half-naked by Oliviero Toscani and styled by Etro. Also, one does not simply rent a villa with a pool in Rome to produce new music there, isolated from the rest of the world. And who else went to London for two whole months, shortly before the winter lockdown, just for inspiration? After the TikTok concert in Berlin – De Angelis and David are now wearing fishnet shirts that sparkle with every move, their bare nipples covered with an X of black tape – the band is posing with a few influencers. In the world of social media you would call that 'producing content'. But what does that mean for a band who are preaching their hosanna of authenticity? How authentic is Måneskin? And is their pointedly casual approach to sexuality and gender cliches in today's pop-cultural spirit more than a marketing strategy?

We're in the interview, the recording device is running for not even five minutes, when Victoria De Angelis says: “Actually, we just try to be ourselves and do what we really want to do.” And really: The more you listen to those four how they speak about the early days of the band in their slurred Roman dialect, about the shoe box and their own experiences with being different, but most importantly about their shared obsession [with music], the more you realise that [De Angelis] is very serious. Ethan Torchio, who got his first drum kit at the age of six or seven from his father because he was beating everything he could reach, says: “For me, music is like food. I cannot live without it.” The bassist next to him laughs at his pathos. Singer Damiano David applauds the otherwise more reserved friend for his truthfulness [it says 'klarer Punkt', meaning 'for the point he makes', but it makes it seem like Damiano is agreeing with Ethan here, although it doesn't indicate whether he agrees that yes, music is everything for Ethan or that he understands and feels the same].

De Angelis and guitarist Raggi already knew each other from middle school and they were the ones who tried to form a band at the age of only 13, a band that actually took music seriously.

De Angelis: “It's just difficult at that age to find other people who really put everything into music and who truly commit themselves and are willing to invest a lot of their time.”

Raggi: “We set strict rules and scheduled fixed times for the rehearsals, for every day.”

David: “Fever, stomach ache, there was no excuse. Even if you were feeling sick in the rehearsal room. At least you were in the rehearsal room.”

The way the four of them talk across each other, completing each other's sentences, taking turns in talking and sometimes joking about each other, seems intimate and playful. Singer David remembers how at first bassist [De Angelis] was merciless towards him when it came to her first metal band project, as she told him that he wasn't committed enough [to the music]: “Back then I was still playing Basketball. I was one of the people that Vic absolutely didn't want [in her band].” Drummer Torchio was later discovered through Facebook, even though there had already been a drummer, a close friend, but he was not good enough. It seems as if even back then music was everything for them. Even if it meant that only Raggi managed to graduate.

And why rock, why rock music of all things? Because it's great, the four of them say in unison. David adds: “Actually, it's a genre that allows you to do everything you want to do.”

When they played on the street, they were laughed at by their classmates. But not only there. De Angelis explains that she never wanted to be a typical girl: “I was always deterred by those stupid boxes that people put you in, and that are just restricting and constraining you, because something is only regarded as male or female. I always rejected that. Instead, I just wanted to do the things I enjoyed doing, I went skating and played football.” Torchio says: “Friends who are not friends anymore were already telling me at the age of ten that those“ – he grabs his long, silky black hair – “were wrong. Because I'm a boy and boys are meant to have short hair, long hair is only for girls. I was bullied a lot for that.”

“Compared to the past, people in our age became much more open-minded. It gets better.” – Thomas Raggi

Frontman David on the other hand, for whom eye shadow, jingling earrings and nail polish as well as his bare torso with the tattoos have become trademarks by now, says: “I was actually more of the average boy.” De Angelis convinced him to try out some eyeliner, which he describes as a spiritual awakening: “I liked myself much more [with makeup]. I saw myself more as myself. As if it had been a suppressed desire of mine.” On a trip to Copenhagen with the others, when he realised that it really didn't matter what people were thinking about him, he got his first fake fur [coat? the article doesn't specify that] in a second-hand shop and let his clothing style be guided by his own love to experiment: “I realised that my whole life I was just going at half speed.” When it comes to diversity all four of them are becoming almost missionary.

At the same time, their success is not only opening doors for them. Back home in Rome they are barely able to go out on the street due to all the paparazzi. “[You need a] hoodie and huge sunglasses”, David says, “the mask is quite helpful, too.” And still, none of them is complaining, and Torchio explains why: “Even if those experiences right now may have sides that are not so pleasant, we still know that for us a dream is coming true. We experience something that we always had in our minds, so we are willing to face every consequence that this entails.”

So is the band facing difficult times, is Måneskin going to change with all the success? Again, all of them answer at the same time.

David: “I'm not worried about that.”

Raggi: “No way!”

De Angelis: “On the contrary. Everything that happened to us happened because we are who we are, so we want to continue the exact same way and stay ourselves.”

Just a few hours later, they are at the stage in Neukölln, bouncing around like pinballs, hammering at their instruments, flirting with each other. “We are out of our minds, but different from the others”, David sings their winning hymn against conformism, and: “The people talk, unfortunately they talk.” Here on stage, the four paradise birds [a German word describing someone with a flamboyant personality] with their half-nude-glittering outfits are radiating an incredible energy with the utmost sincerity, and you begin to wish there was a live audience instead of the TikTok cameras, absorbing and spreading this energy. Måneskin. A cry for a life after the pandemic, a cry for freedom and a better world.

“We do what we wished for all our lives.” – Ethan Torchio

#måneskin #maneskin #måneskin interview #my stuff #i'm sorry if someone already translated it but i was working on this for the past 3 hours now so i'm still gonna share it #i know most of it is not very new but there were some quite interesting details in there #and it's just always great to read about those four dorks so i wanted to share it with all of you who wanted to read it but couldn't #enjoy and please ignore any possible mistakes i didn't have the time to proof-check everything

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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YOUR EMPLOYEES AND INVESTORS WILL CONSTANTLY BE ASKING ARE WE THERE YET

I think I've figured out what's going on. After the first 10 or so we learned to treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminated.1 Don't Get Your Hopes Up. Something hacked together means something that barely solves the problem, the harder it is to bait the hook with prestige. And that is almost certainly mistaken. So one thing that falls just short of the standard, I think, should be the highest goal for the marginal. Big companies think the function of office space is to express rank. As big companies' oligopolies became less secure, they were willing to pay a premium for labor. You can see it in old photos. If you're friends with a lot of the worst kinds of projects are the death of a thousand cuts. And what's especially dangerous is that many happen at your computer.

And the microcomputer business ended up being Apple vs Microsoft. In 1450 it was filled with the kind of turbulent and ambitious people you find now in America. You have to like what they do there than how much they can get the most done. That's not what makes startups worth the trouble. Design This kind of metric would allow us to compare different languages, but that if someone wanted to design a language explicitly to disprove this hyphothesis, they could probably do it. This technique can be generalized to: What's the best thing you could be doing, not just what you can see the results in any town in America. With this amount of money can change a startup's funding situation completely. There I found a copy of The Atlantic. Whereas it's easy to get sucked into working longer than you expected at the money job.2 That's ok. I think you have to do all three. But more importantly, you'll get into the habit of doing things well.

But what if the person in the next 40 years will bring us some wonderful things.3 They all know about the VCs who rejected Google. The writing of essays used to be.4 You may have read on Slashdot how he made his own Segway.5 He improvises: if someone appears in front of him, he runs around them; if someone tries to grab him, he spins out of their grip; he'll even run in the wrong place, anything might happen. The people who've worked for a few months I realized that what I'd been unconsciously hoping to find there was back in the place I'd just left. It was supposed to be something else, they ended up being Apple vs Microsoft. By 2012 that number was 18 years. The first thing you need is to be willing to look like a fool.6 Google they have a fair amount of data to go on. John Malkovich where the nerdy hero encounters a very attractive, sophisticated woman.

Many of the big companies were roll-ups that didn't have clear founders.7 Empirically, the way to the bed and breakfast, and other similar classes of accommodations, you get to hit a few difficult problems over the net at someone, you learn pretty quickly how hard they hit them anyway. Inexperienced founders make the same mistake as the people who list at ABNB, they list elsewhere too I am not negative on this one was the only way to get lots of referrals is to invest in students, not professors. It will actually become a reasonable strategy or a more reasonable strategy to suspect everything new.8 Never say we're passionate or our product is great. Whereas undergraduate admissions seem to be disappointments early on, when they're just a couple guys in an apartment. Programmers at Yahoo wouldn't have asked that.9 Incidentally, this scale might be helpful in deciding what to study in college. VCs think they're playing a zero sum game.

I spend most of my time writing essays lately. Almost everyone's initial plan is broken. If smaller source code is the purpose of comparing languages, because they come closest of any group I know to embodying it. Distracting is, similarly, desirable at the wrong time. But if we make kids work on dull stuff now is so they can get away with atrocious customer service. In fact, here there was a kid playing basketball? Of course, figuring out what you like.

Go out of your way to bring it up e. The industry term here is conversion. Try to keep the sense of wonder you had about programming at age 14. At least if you start a startup, people treat you as if you're unemployed.10 But hacking is like writing. Even with us working to make things happen the way they used to, they were moving to a cheaper apartment. It causes you to work not on what you like, but is disastrously lacking in others. I do in the rest of the world. Their defining quality is probably that they really love to program.

I could only figure out what to do, there's a natural tendency to stop looking.11 Economies of scale ruled the day.12 One is that this is simply the founders' living expenses.13 I need to transfer a file or edit a web page, and I think I know what is meant by readability, and I think they're onto something. Multiply this times several hundred, and I get an uneasy feeling when I look at my bookshelves. You may have read on Slashdot how he made his own Segway.14 Everyday life gives you no practice in this. Startups grow up around universities because universities bring together promising young people and make them work on anything they don't want to want, we consider technological progress good.

Notes

Samuel Johnson said no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. Which is precisely my point. If they were regarded as 'just' even after the egalitarian pressures of World War II the tax codes were so new that the guys running Digg are especially sneaky, but except for money. They don't know enough about the new top story.

The image shows us, they tended to make money. But we invest in the Bible is Pride goeth before destruction, and one of the fake leading the fake leading the fake. In No Logo, Naomi Klein says that 15-20% of the aircraft is.

But because I realized the other writing of Paradise Lost that none who read a draft, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson. If they agreed among themselves never to do due diligence for an investor? The best technique I've found for dealing with the other.

I ordered a large number of startups as they do for a public event, you can ignore. If you want to help the company, and a few of the Facebook that might produce the next Apple, maybe the corp dev is to show growth graphs at either stage, investors decide whether to go to die.

If you walk into a big company CEOs in 2002 was 3.

Or rather, where w is will and d discipline. But that turned out the existing shareholders, including that Florence was then the richest country in the sense of mission.

In Shakespeare's own time, because they can't afford to. The company may not be able to raise their kids in a company in Germany. When we got to see the apples, they said, and why it's next to impossible to write an essay about it wrong. That will in many cases be an open booth.

I'm not saying you should probably be worth trying to tell them exactly what constitutes research in the early 90s when they say they bear no blame for any particular truths you'll learn. As Jeremy Siegel points out that there is undeniably a grim satisfaction in hunting down certain sorts of bugs. Did you know about it as if you'd invested at a discount of 30% means when it was actually a great programmer doesn't merely do the right direction to be is represented by Milton.

But a lot of the next round. It's hard to say exactly what your body is telling you. In Russia they just kill you, they tend to be very unhealthy. One thing that drives most people realize, because you have two choices, choose the harder.

Though Balzac made a lot of classic abstract expressionism is doodling of this essay talks about programmers, but one by one they die and their houses are transformed by developers into McMansions and sold to VPs of Bus Dev. Or rather, where it sometimes causes investors to act. Eric Raymond says the best hackers want to trick admissions officers. And no, unfortunately, I mean efforts to protect widows and orphans from crooked investment schemes; people with a truly feudal economy, you better be sure you do in proper essays.

The top VCs thus have a better education. Or a phone, IM, email, Web, games, books, newspapers, or some vague thing like that. You need to fix. But the question is not much to maintain their percentage.

Kant. Loosely speaking. The real decline seems to them to lose elections. Some types of startups where the recipe is to say incendiary things, they can grow the acquisition offers most successful founders still get rich simply by being energetic and unscrupulous, but they get for free.

World War II to the frightening lies told by older siblings. That's one of the most general truths. As we walked in, we found they used it to get into that because a unless your last funding round.

But this seems an odd idea.

Thanks to Jessica Livingston, Shiro Kawai, Garry Tan, Chris Small, and Nikhil Nirmel for sharing their expertise on this topic.

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 3 years

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Mapping the Universe's Earliest Structures with COSMOS-Webb When NASA's James Webb Space Telescope begins science operations in 2022, one of its first tasks will be an ambitious program to map the earliest structures in the universe. Called COSMOS-Webb, this wide and deep survey of half-a-million galaxies is the largest project Webb will undertake during its first year. With more than 200 hours of observing time, COSMOS-Webb will survey a large patch of the sky—0.6 square degrees—with the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). That's the size of three full moons. It will simultaneously map a smaller area with the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). It's a large chunk of sky, which is pretty unique to the COSMOS-Webb program. Most Webb programs are drilling very deep, like pencil-beam surveys that are studying tiny patches of sky," explained Caitlin Casey, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin and co-leader of the COSMOS-Webb program. "Because we're covering such a large area, we can look at large-scale structures at the dawn of galaxy formation. We will also look for some of the rarest galaxies that existed early on, as well as map the large-scale dark matter distribution of galaxies out to very early times." (Dark matter does not absorb, reflect, or emit light, so it cannot be seen directly. We know that dark matter exists because of the effect it has on objects that we can observe.) COSMOS-Webb will study half-a-million galaxies with multi-band, high-resolution, near-infrared imaging, and an unprecedented 32,000 galaxies in the mid-infrared. With its rapid public release of the data, this survey will be a primary legacy dataset from Webb for scientists worldwide studying galaxies beyond the Milky Way. Building on Hubble's Achievements The COSMOS survey began in 2002 as a Hubble program to image a much larger patch of sky, about the area of 10 full moons. From there, the collaboration snowballed to include most of the world's major telescopes on Earth and in space. Now COSMOS is a multi-wavelength survey that covers the entire spectrum from the X-ray through the radio. Because of its location on the sky, the COSMOS field is accessible to observatories around the world. Located on the celestial equator, it can be studied from both the northern and southern hemispheres, resulting in a rich and diverse treasury of data. "COSMOS has become the survey that a lot of extragalactic scientists go to in order to conduct their analyses because the data products are so widely available, and because it covers such a wide area of the sky," said Rochester Institute of Technology's Jeyhan Kartaltepe, assistant professor of physics and co-leader of the COSMOS-Webb program. "COSMOS-Webb is the next installment of that, where we're using Webb to extend our coverage in the near- and mid-infrared part of the spectrum, and therefore pushing out our horizon, how far away we're able to see." The ambitious COSMOS-Webb program will build upon previous discoveries to make advances in three particular areas of study, including: revolutionizing our understanding of the Reionization Era; looking for early, fully evolved galaxies; and learning how dark matter evolved with galaxies' stellar content. Goal 1: Revolutionizing Our Understanding of the Reionization Era Soon after the big bang, the universe was completely dark. Stars and galaxies, which bathe the cosmos in light, had not yet formed. Instead, the universe consisted of a primordial soup of neutral hydrogen and helium atoms and invisible dark matter. This is called the cosmic dark ages. After several hundred million years, the first stars and galaxies emerged and provided energy to reionize the early universe. This energy ripped apart the hydrogen atoms that filled the universe, giving them an electric charge and ending the cosmic dark ages. This new era where the universe was flooded with light is called the Reionization Era. The first goal of COSMOS-Webb focuses on this epoch of reionization, which took place from 400,000 to 1 billion years after the big bang. Reionization likely happened in little pockets, not all at once. COSMOS-Webb will look for bubbles showing where the first pockets of the early universe were reionized. The team aims to map the scale of these reionization bubbles. "Hubble has done a great job of finding handfuls of these galaxies out to early times, but we need thousands more galaxies to understand the reionization process," explained Casey. Scientists don't even know what kind of galaxies ushered in the Reionization Era, whether they're very massive or relatively low-mass systems. COSMOS-Webb will have a unique ability to find very massive, rare galaxies and see what their distribution is like in large-scale structures. So, are the galaxies responsible for reionization living in the equivalent of a cosmic metropolis, or are they mostly evenly distributed across space? Only a survey the size of COSMOS-Webb can help scientists to answer this. Goal 2: Looking for Early, Fully Evolved Galaxies COSMOS-Webb will search for very early, fully evolved galaxies that shut down star birth in the first 2 billion years after the big bang. Hubble has found a handful of these galaxies, which challenge existing models about how the universe formed. Scientists struggle to explain how these galaxies could have old stars and not be forming any new stars so early in the history of the universe. With a large survey like COSMOS-Webb, the team will find many of these rare galaxies. They plan detailed studies of these galaxies to understand how they could have evolved so rapidly and turned off star formation so early. Goal 3: Learning How Dark Matter Evolved with Galaxies' Stellar Content COSMOS-Webb will give scientists insight into how dark matter in galaxies has evolved with the galaxies' stellar content over the universe's lifetime. Galaxies are made of two types of matter: normal, luminous matter that we see in stars and other objects, and invisible dark matter, which is often more massive than the galaxy and can surround it in an extended halo. Those two kinds of matter are intertwined in galaxy formation and evolution. However, presently there's not much knowledge about how the dark matter mass in the halos of galaxies formed, and how that dark matter impacts the formation of the galaxies. COSMOS-Webb will shed light on this process by allowing scientists to directly measure these dark matter halos through "weak lensing." The gravity from any type of mass—whether it's dark or luminous—can serve as a lens to "bend" the light we see from more distant galaxies. Weak lensing distorts the apparent shape of background galaxies, so when a halo is located in front of other galaxies, scientists can directly measure the mass of the halo's dark matter. "For the first time, we'll be able to measure the relationship between the dark matter mass and the luminous mass of galaxies back to the first 2 billion years of cosmic time," said team member Anton Koekemoer, a research astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who helped design the program's observing strategy and is in charge of constructing all the images from the program. "That's a crucial epoch for us to try to understand how the galaxies' mass was first put in place, and how that's driven by the dark matter halos. And that can then feed indirectly into our understanding of galaxy formation." Quickly Sharing Data with the Community COSMOS-Webb is a Treasury program, which by definition is designed to create datasets of lasting scientific value. Treasury Programs strive to solve multiple scientific problems with a single, coherent dataset. Data taken under a Treasury Program usually has no exclusive access period, enabling immediate analysis by other researchers. "As a Treasury Program, you are committing to quickly releasing your data and your data products to the community," explained Kartaltepe. "We're going to produce this community resource and make it publicly available so that the rest of the community can use it in their scientific analyses." Koekemoer added, "A Treasury Program commits to making publicly available all these science products so that anyone in the community, even at very small institutions, can have the same, equal access to the data products and then just do the science." COSMOS-Webb is a Cycle 1 General Observers program. General Observers programs were competitively selected using a dual-anonymous review system, the same system that is used to allocate time on Hubble. The James Webb Space Telescope will be the world's premier space science observatory when it launches in 2021. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency. TOP IMAGE....More than 13 billion years ago, during the Era of Reionization, the universe was a very different place. The gas between galaxies was largely opaque to energetic light, making it difficult to observe young galaxies. What allowed the universe to become completely ionized, or transparent, eventually leading to the “clear” conditions detected in much of the universe today? The James Webb Space Telescope will peer deep into space to gather more information about objects that existed during the Era of Reionization to help us understand this major transition in the history of the universe. Credits: NASA, ESA, Joyce Kang (STScI) CENTRE IMAGE....The COSMOS-Webb survey will map 0.6 square degrees of the sky—about the area of three full Moons—using the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument, while simultaneously mapping a smaller 0.2 square degrees with the Mid Infrared Instrument (MIRI). The jagged edges of the Hubble field’s outline are due to the separate images that make up the survey field. Credits: Jeyhan Kartaltepe (RIT); Caitlin Casey (UT Austin); and Anton Koekemoer (STScI) Graphic Design Credit: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) LOWER IMAGE....This sea of galaxies is the complete, original COSMOS field from the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The full mosaic is a composite of 575 separate ACS images, where each ACS image is about one-tenth the diameter of the full Moon. The jagged edges of the outline are due to the separate images that make up the survey field. Credits: Anton Koekemoer (STScI) and Nick Scoville (Caltech)

#space #science #Astronomy #physics #nasa #news

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chickwiththepurpleguitar · 3 years

Note

It is I, here to Officially Request™ absolutely chaos All Named Characters Molina Family Board Game Night because honestly? The chaos needs to be freed.

THERE'S SO MUCH CHAOS I'M NOT SORRY.

Have the official sequel to this fic because when @screamin-amuseum requested the first part as "the whole gang + boardgame" I took that to mean All Named Characters playing board games and so here's that continuation. It's so unnecessarily long. It's so unnecessarily angsty??? TW for mentions of Trevor with an eating disorder, nothing graphic though.

I don't know what else to say. This is really chaotic. I can't write scenes with more than two people in them and yet this fic has 13. Hope you all enjoy.

Read on ao3 here:

Unfortunately, the Molinas’ extensive board game collection does not actually include Pretty Pretty Princess (it was just a tad bit before Julie’s time).

But on the bright side, she knows someone they can borrow it from. Even if Luke’s not happy about it.

“Why’d you have to invite him?” he complains the second Julie gets off the phone with Nick.

“Because—” Julie barely spares Luke a glance as she passes him on the way to the living room. “We’re borrowing his little sister’s board game.”

“So? That doesn’t mean he has to play it with us!”

Julie rolls her eyes. “Luke, are you seriously still jealous of him?”

Luke lets out an indignant squawk. “I am not jealous . I just don’t like him!” He poofs out and back in again to cut Julie off in the doorway, and she stops out of instinct, never quite sure these days if she’ll end up walking through the boys or into them. “Julie, in case you’ve forgotten, we’re talking about a kid who was literally possessed by Caleb five minutes ago. And you want us to hang out with him? You want to bring him into your house? Where you live? To play Pretty Pretty Princess? ”

Julie gives him the most exasperated look she can muster, trying to ignore the smile threatening to tug at her lips. “Luke. First of all, Nick’s already been to my house, so that argument is invalid. Second, he’s not possessed by Caleb anymore, and the fact that he used to be is only more reason for us to offer him some extra friendship, I’m sure he needs it. And third, I already invited him, he’s on his way, and not even your pouting and puppy dog eyes can change that, so don’t even bother trying.”

Of course, Luke immediately breaks out the pout and the puppy dog eyes, but Julie doesn’t let herself so much as look at him. She pushes past him and continues through to the kitchen, shaking her head in amusement as Luke’s annoyed grumbling fades out behind her.

Her dad’s at the kitchen counter, just hanging up his own phone. He turns when Julie enters and offers her a small smile. “Takeout’s on its way. And your tía’s coming, with her own set of dice, so be prepared for those to be loaded.”

Julie giggles. “Well, I called Flynn and they’re gonna bring some sodas and snacks, and Nick’s bringing Pretty Pretty Princess since the boys were so excited to play it. It’s still cool that he comes, too, right?”

“Of course, mija.” Her dad looks at her for a second, and then away, busies himself with wiping down the perfectly-clean counter. “Did you, uh… Did you maybe want to invite Carrie to join us?”

Julie sighs. “Dad, you know me and Carrie aren’t friends anymore.”

“No, yeah, I know.” He scrubs harder at an invisible speck of dirt. “I just thought it might be a nice gesture.”

Despite everything, Julie finds herself considering it. Sure, she and Carrie are still decidedly not friends , but… they’re not quite enemies anymore, either. It’s hard to be enemies with someone who helped you save your shared ex-love interest from an evil jazz-singing magician ghost. Carrie knows about the guys now and didn’t expose Julie and the Phantoms as a fraud, and she hasn’t been as actively mean to Julie and Flynn at school the past few months.

Maybe someday, the three of them will be able to reconcile, officially. Julie might even want to. But that doesn’t mean she’s ready to have Carrie in her house so soon, doesn’t mean she wants to include Carrie in their first family game night without her mom.

“Maybe another time,” she says, offering her dad a soft smile so he knows she means it.

He smiles back, and there’s more relief and happiness in his eyes than Julie would’ve expected under the circumstances, leaving Julie to wonder why her dad would care about her relationship with Carrie Wilson so much.

An hour later, everything’s all set up, and all the guests—ghost and human alike—have arrived. They’re all spread out across the various couches and floor space in Julie’s living room, all ten of them—Julie, her dad, Carlos, Tía Victoria, Luke, Alex, Reggie, Willie, Flynn, and Nick. The four ghosts are all sharing one couch, the four Molinas another, while Flynn and Nick lounge on the floor across the room because the ghosts still make Nick a little uncomfortable (though Julie’s unsure if that’s because of his stint with Caleb or because Luke won’t stop glaring at him).

Knowing Game Night, the seating arrangements won’t stay as they are for long, as the various games require space or privacy or the occasional team-up. Julie’s certain by the end of the night, her friends and family will all be mingling and getting along.

Since there are so many of them, they can’t follow the usual Game Night rules—everyone picks one game and they play through them all. If they tried, they’d be here all night, and half of them have to go to school tomorrow. So instead, the plan is this: Everyone’s name will go in a hat. Whoever wins each game picks a name out of the hat, and that person gets to pick the next game. They’ll play a total of five, or until midnight, whichever comes first.

The only caveat to this strategy is that they’re playing Pretty Pretty Princess first, and since that was technically Alex’s choice, his name’s not going in the hat (a fact Alex seems perfectly fine with).

Game Number One isn’t nearly as much of a disaster as Julie kind of expected it to be. It’s only a four player game, so they play in teams of two and three: Luke, Reggie, and Julie playing for the purple jewelry; Alex, Willie, and Flynn playing for the pink; Nick and Carlos for green; and Dad and Tía for blue. The only fight that breaks out is when Luke takes the black ring on purpose and then refuses to put it back the next turn; otherwise, the teams work together surprisingly well.

Somehow, despite Reggie’s earlier insistence that Alex is a PPP master, the adults win, and then they insist on splitting their winning jewelry between them even though it’s all sized to fit five-year-olds.

Just as Dad and Tía are celebrating their victory, and Julie and Carlos are having a telepathic brother-sister conversation about how their aunt must have rigged it, the doorbell rings.

“Ooh, I bet that’s the pizza,” Dad says, hauling himself to his feet. He keeps one hand on the tiny plastic crown on his head so it doesn’t fall off.

He looks ridiculous, between the crown, the singular clip-on earring, and the ring just barely stuck on the end of his pinky finger, but Julie manages to hold back her laughter as she stands and says, “I’ll help carry.”

Her dad beats her to the door, only because Reggie holds her back and tries to convince her not to let Luke have any pizza (to which Luke gives another indignant squawk and immediately starts bickering), so by the time Julie catches up with him, Dad’s already got the front door thrown open, and whatever’s on the porch to greet him has left him staring, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, and pale.

Like he’s seen a ghost or something.

“Dad?” Julie starts to say, but the word dies in her throat as she steps into view of the open door and sees none other than Carrie Wilson standing on her front porch.

Carrie looks nervous, and just as pale, as she stares back at Julie’s father, a clutch purse held in her white-knuckled hands.

Carrie says something, quietly enough that Julie thinks she might have imagined it, that sounds suspiciously like, “Hi, Papi,” and then her gaze flits behind him to Julie and her eyes widen. She clears her throat, straightens her shoulders, says louder, “Mr. Molina. Julie.”

“Hi, Carrie,” Dad says after a weirdly long pause, startling like he’s been struck. “What are—I didn’t—” He breaks off and glances at Julie over his shoulder, his expression screaming, I thought you weren’t going to invite her!

I didn’t! Julie shoots back, then trains a painfully plastic smile on her definitely-not-a-friend-but-not-quite-an-enemy. “Carrie, what are you doing here?”

“Sorry to interrupt, I—didn’t realize you had company…” She glances toward the driveway next to the house, where Nick parked his car. “I can leave.”

“No, don’t—It’s okay,” Dad assures her, a little too quickly for Julie’s liking. “What’s—did you need something?”

Carrie shifts her weight awkwardly from foot to foot, looking back and forth between Julie and her dad like she wants to ask Julie to give them some privacy. Julie just plants her feet and crosses her arms over her chest. Like hell is she gonna leave Carrie alone with her dad when he’s already acting weird and she still has yet to tell them what she’s doing there.

Julie doesn’t even remember the last time Carrie Wilson stepped foot on the Molinas’ property. It’s all too weird, like Julie’s stepped out of Family Game Night and into some strange, confusing alternate universe.

“Um… Okay, so, Dad and I were at this dumb charity event at Schaefer’s, and on the way back, our car broke down.” Carrie waves a vague hand toward the street. “Gerald—our driver—called someone, but Dad doesn’t trust mechanics, and I think it’s supposed to storm later, so…” She trails off, blushes, and adds, “We were only a block or so away so I thought…”

Julie’s not sure she’s following. Her dad must catch up quicker because he says, “Oh! Oh, well—well, you’re welcome to wait out the storm here, we’ve got food coming, we’re having a little game night. Why don’t you join us?”

He turns to look at Julie, almost as an afterthought, his gaze somehow pleading and apologetic at the same time.

Whatever frustration Julie might feel at his eagerness to let Carrie interfere with their lives despite knowing how Julie feels about her is quickly snuffed out by the look on her dad’s face, and the equally anxious look on Carrie’s.

Julie doesn’t like this. She doesn’t think putting her, Flynn, Nick, and Carrie in a competitive setting together is a good idea. She really doesn’t think putting Luke, Alex, Reggie, and Trevor Wilson in a competitive setting together is a good idea. She can think of very few scenarios in which this whole night doesn’t turn into a complete and total disaster.

But reconciliation has to start somewhere, and she does, deep down, want to be Carrie’s friend again someday, wants even more to help her boys get their bandmate back.

She takes a slow, deep breath, prays she won’t regret this, and says, “Of course, Carrie. Come join us for Game Night.”

Carrie visibly relaxes, something like a real, genuine smile fluttering around her lips. “Okay. Thanks. I’ll, um—I’ll go get Dad. He wanted to wait in the car, in case you guys… turned us away…”

Awkward silence falls, and Julie can’t understand why her dad looks so sad all of a sudden, but before she can think of how to ask, Carrie spins on her high heels and starts back down the porch steps.

The second the door closes behind her, Dad says, “I’m sorry, did I overstep?”

Julie sighs. Her dad’s always been particularly good with boundaries. And she thinks part of him might miss the days when Carrie was over more often than not, playing dolls and singing with Julie and Flynn. So Julie can’t be mad. “No, it’s okay. But you get to tell the guys the pizza’s not here yet, and the guy who stole all their songs is.”

His eyes widen in horror, only adding to the absurdity of his bejeweled look, and Julie stifles another laugh as she heads back to the living room.

All things considered, it’s not nearly as much of a trainwreck as Julie thought it might be. Flynn loudly declares that she will not be on a team with Carrie under any circumstances, and the guys don’t take the Trevor news well , exactly, but a sharp look from Julie and a badly whispered promise from Willie to do some serious ghost pranking later keep them from actively pitching a fit about it.

When the Wilsons and their driver Gerald arrive, the tension in the room grows so instantly thick and awkward that Julie’s worried someone might actually explode. Carrie breaks it by stalking confidently into the room and plopping herself on the floor between Nick and Carlos like she belongs there. Gerald soon follows, claiming a chair next to Tía Victoria, and smiles politely at them all.

Only Trevor remains hovering in the doorway, pale and shaky, taking deep meditative breaths as his eyes rove across each person one at a time, lingering a little too long on Julie’s aunt, skipping over Luke entirely. Finally, he swallows, winces like it hurts, and says to Julie’s dad, “I didn’t realize you still did these.”

Julie frowns, unsure what that’s supposed to mean exactly, but her dad offers up no explanation, just waves Trevor over to sit on the couch with him. Luke lays a gentle hand on Julie’s knee, leans in close to whisper, “Hey. You okay?”

She gives him a grateful smile, nods. “Fine. How about you?”

Luke shrugs, glances over at Trevor, who’s still very purposefully not looking in their direction, and winks at Julie. “Let’s just cream this guy, shall we?”

And so, Game Night continues.

The three new guests’ names get added to the hat, and Victoria shuffles them around before pulling a slip of paper out.

“Carrie,” she reads. “You get to pick the next game.”

“Oh, no, that’s okay,” Carrie tries. “I just got here, someone else can pick.”

“Come on, Care,” Nick says, nudging her encouragingly. “Them’s the rules.”

“Your name came out of the hat,” Julie agrees, attempting a smile. It’s the closest she can get to a peace offering. “Pick a game.”

Carrie scans her face a moment, like she’s searching for any hint that Julie’s being mean or ingenuine. She must not find any, because she says, “Okay,” and gets to her feet, brushing invisible dust off her skirt. She peers into the game cabinet for a total of about five seconds before she says, “Oh my god, you still have Monopoly with the credit card readers? We are definitely playing that.”

“Dibs on banker!” Carlos shouts and jumps to his feet to dig the box out of the cabinet.

Julie grins at her little brother’s enthusiasm, and when she catches Carrie’s eye, her smile doesn’t fade.

Maybe they can do this. It’s as good a first step toward reconciliation as any, she supposes.

The pizza arrives while Carrie and Carlos are setting up the Monopoly board, so Julie and her dad bring it in and set up the stack of boxes on the kitchen island for easy access. The ghosts immediately descend on the food like a pack of rabid animals, Luke grabbing four or five slices at once and starting to stuff them in his mouth before Julie shouts, “Plates, boys! Plates!” and he deflates, grinning bashfully at her.

Once everyone who wants pizza has gotten some (Gerald takes a slice, Trevor and Carrie don’t—Julie remembers vaguely that the Wilsons were never big fans of take-out in general), they work out new teams, which leads to less bloodshed than Julie expected but takes way longer than it has any right to. Finally, they figure out a breakdown that everyone’s more or less happy with, despite now having an uneven number of players: Trevor, Gerald, Dad, and Tía; Carlos, Luke, and Reggie; Alex, Willie, and Flynn; and Carrie, Nick, and Julie.

It’s a chaotic game for sure, but no one outright attacks each other, so Julie counts it as a success. And her team wins, so.

The rest of the night goes like that, one game after another. Julie picks Willie’s name, Willie picks Mario Kart, Carlos wins. Carlos picks Gerald’s name, Gerald picks poker (“Oh my god, my driver’s a gambler,” Trevor sighs into his hands), and somehow Flynn smokes them all. For the last game, Flynn picks Luke’s name, Luke picks Candy Land because he’s actually eight years old, and Flynn and Carrie manage to eke out a victory despite being on the same team and bickering the entire game.

Luke and Trevor, also on the same team, don’t say a single word to each other, but Julie doesn’t miss how a smile tugs at Luke’s lips when Trevor makes a joke about Lord Licorice looking like their high school English teacher.

Gerald gets a call just as they’re finishing up and informs them that the broken down limo’s been towed away and one of his colleagues is there with a fresh car to take the Wilsons home.

“Perfect timing,” Dad says, clapping his hands together. “I’ll walk you out.”

Once they’re gone, Nick and Flynn soon follow. Julie thanks Nick profusely for letting them borrow his sister’s game and convinces him to take some of the leftover pizza home to his family. Tía kisses them all goodnight (including the ghosts, which leaves Reggie grinning and the rest of them bright red), and then she’s out the door too, and Carlos heads up to bed, and Willie poofs out, telling Alex they’ll catch him later, leaving just Julie alone with her Phantoms.

“That was actually really fun,” she says, leaning back into the couch.

“Next time, I think we should choose teams at the beginning and stick with them all night,” Luke suggests, slinging an arm around her shoulders. “More fun that way.”

Alex plops onto the couch on Luke’s other side. “But if we play Pretty Pretty Princess again, I’m not playing on your team, bro.”

“Yeah, man,” Reggie agrees, snuggling up under Julie’s arm. “We coulda won that game if you’d just put the black ring away. ”

“It made me look awesome!” Luke insists.

“And the purple one didn’t?”

Alex lets out a dramatic sigh as Luke and Reggie break into an argument over Julie’s head. She just rolls her eyes and tries not to giggle too audibly, though it’s hard when her boys are so lovingly silly.

When she looks up, her dad’s lingering in the doorway, watching the four of them and playing a little nervously with his hands.

Julie frowns, catches his gaze, and mouths, You okay?

He nods, smiles, but looks from her to the three ghost boys cuddled up next to her and back again. Julie instantly catches his meaning.

“Hey, guys,” she says, loud enough to be heard over Luke and Reggie’s bickering. They shut up right away. “I’m gonna help my dad clean up. Can you go wait in the studio for me, and we can rehearse a bit before I go to bed?”

“Oh, yeah,” the boys say, and “Yeah, sure, Julie,” and they all hug her and wave goodnight to her dad before disappearing with a gentle displacement of air.

Julie gets to her feet as her dad joins her in the living room. He sets his phone on top of the game cabinet and plays a Celia Cruz album her mom liked.

They work in companionable silence for a while, other than the music, counting all the cards and tokens and jewelry pieces to make sure everything’s accounted for and gets back into its proper box.

As Julie’s wrapping up the Mario Kart controllers, her dad says casually, “You have fun tonight?”

“Yeah,” she says, and finds she means it. “Yeah, you know, it wasn’t quite the same as playing with Mom, but I still had a really good time. Thanks for letting everyone come over.”

“Thank you for being such a good sport about Carrie. I know she wasn’t exactly part of your plan for how the night would go.”

“No,” Julie agrees, shutting the game cabinet. “But I kinda liked having her here. Although—can I ask you something?”

Dad grabs his phone to pause the music. “Of course, mija. What is it?”

Something’s been nagging at her all evening, but now that Julie actually has the opportunity to ask about it, she’s not quite sure how to put her question into words.

Finally, she manages, “When Mr. Wilson first got here, he said something like… like he didn’t know we still had game nights. But I don’t remember him ever playing with us when Mom was alive.”

Her dad doesn’t answer for a really long time. Julie knows him well enough to know she needs not be concerned—her dad, much more than her mom, has always needed to really take his time and think before he says anything, especially anything important. Finally, he sighs and says, “Honestly, mija… I’m not quite sure what to say. It’s not really my story to tell.” He sits on one of the couches and pats the cushion next to him. Julie joins him, hugging a throw pillow as she waits patiently for him to continue.

“Do you remember, when you were really little, Trevor and Carrie used to live with us?”

Julie’s mouth drops open. “What? No. When?”

“Only until you were about six,” Dad explains. “But for a while, we had a house together, the five and then six of us, once Carlos was born. Your mom and I, and Trevor, we all kind of raised you kids together.” He elbows her teasingly. “You used to call Trevor Daddy.”

“I definitely don’t remember that,” Julie says, eyes wide in horror.

His smile fades, face turning serious. “I think Carrie does,” he says softly, and Julie remembers when Carrie first got here tonight, how she called Julie’s dad Papi , so quietly Julie thought she’d imagined it.

“Anyway,” he continues, “before all that, before Trevor was even… Trevor … he lived with your mom and me, and he was going through a really rough time, had a lot of trouble with food because, well…”

“Because food killed his best friends…” Julie realizes.

“We used to play board games with him, after dinner, when things were hard. It kept him distracted, made it easier to keep things down. That was the real start of Molina Family Game Night.”

“Huh,” Julie breathes. “Well then, next time? I want to invite him and Carrie for real.”

Taglist: @whenweremarried @sunsethimb0s @pink-flame @penguin0613 @fighttoshine @sunsetcurvecuddles @apples-bees @reggiescrookedteeth @brightattheorpheum @queenmolina @jandthephantoms @lexilucacia @sapphossidechick @acnhaddict @shrimp-colours @sunset-bobby @lenacarstairspotterstewart @conversationaltreestump @burntchromas @shellydominique

#jatp #julie and the phantoms #jatp fanfiction #reggie peters #my fics #fanfiction #luke patterson #julie molina #ray molina #carlos molina #alex mercer #willie nolastname #flynn nolastname #nick danforth evans #carrie wilson #trevor wilson #tia victoria

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rottensalty · 3 years

Text

WW II Battleship sailor tells Obama to shape up or ship out !

This venerable and much honored WW II vet is well known in Hawaii

for his seventy-plus years of service to patriotic organizations and causes

all over the country. A humble man without a political bone in his body,

he has never spoken out before about a government official, until now.

He dictated this letter to a friend, signed it and mailed it to the president.

Dear President Obama,

My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13 of this year. People meeting me for the first time don't believe my age because I remain wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert.

I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and after WW II retiring as a Master Chief Bos'n Mate. Now I live in a "rest home" located on the western end of Pearl Harbor, allowing me to keep alive the memories of 23 years of service to my country.

One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind, blunt and direct even to the head man.

So here goes.

I am amazed, angry and determined not to see my country die before I do, but you seem hell bent not to grant me that wish.

I can't figure out what country you are the president of.

You fly around the world telling our friends and enemies despicable lies like:

" We're no longer a Christian nation"

" America is arrogant" - (Your wife even

announced to the world,"America is mean-

spirited. " Please tell her to try preaching

that nonsense to 23 generations of our

war dead buried all over the globe who

died for no other reason than to free a

whole lot of strangers from tyranny and

hopelessness.)

I'd say shame on the both of you, but I don't think you like America, nor do I see an ounce of gratefulness in anything you do, for the obvious gifts this country has given you. To be without shame or gratefulness is a dangerous thing for a man sitting in the White House.

After 9/11 you said," America hasn't lived up to her ideals."

Which ones did you mean? Was it the notion of personal liberty that 11,000 farmers and shopkeepers died for to win independence from the British? Or maybe the ideal that no man should be a slave to another man, that 500,000 men died for in the Civil War? I hope you didn't mean the ideal 470,000 fathers, brothers, husbands, and a lot of fellas I knew personally died for in WWII, because we felt real strongly about not letting any nation push us around, because we stand for freedom.

I don't think you mean the ideal that says equality is better than discrimination. You know the one that a whole lot of white people understood when they helped to get you elected.

Take a little advice from a very old geezer, young man.

Shape up and start acting like an American. If you don't, I'll do what I can to see you get shipped out of that fancy rental on Pennsylvania Avenue. You were elected to lead not to bow, apologize and kiss the hands of murderers and corrupt leaders who still treat their people like slaves.

And just who do you think you are telling the American people not to jump to conclusions and condemn that Muslim major who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded dozens more. You mean you don't want us to do what you did when that white cop used force to subdue that black college professor in Massachusetts, who was putting up a fight? You don't mind offending the police calling them stupid but you don't want us to offend Muslim fanatics by calling them what they are, terrorists.

One more thing. I realize you never served in the military and never had to defend your country with your life, but you're the Commander-in-Chief now, son. Do your job. When your battle-hardened field General asks you for 40,000 more troops to complete the mission, give them to him. But if you're not in this fight to win, then get out. The life of one American soldier is not worth the best political strategy you're thinking of.

You could be our greatest president because you face the greatest challenge ever presented to any president.

You're not going to restore American greatness by bringing back our bloated economy. That's not our greatest threat. Losing the heart and soul of who we are as Americans is our big fight now.

And I sure as hell don't want to think my president is the enemy in this final battle.

Sincerely,

Harold B. Estes

When a 95 year old hero of the "the Greatest Generation" stands up and speaks out like this, I think we owe it to him to send his words to as many Americans as we can.

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broken-balance-baby · 2 years

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forgotten idols and their intertwined destinies (chapter 4)

Chapters: 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11/12/13/14/15/16/17/18/19/20/21/22/23/24/25/26

SOBREVIVIR

The water nearly filled her lungs if her rampant kicking didn’t do the trick. As she gasped for air, hands still tied from behind, she wriggled through the water, kicking relentlessly until she managed to find a shoreline, all the while forcing and flexing to let the rope around her arms loosen.

“ Maadarchod .” Bhadra muttered, crawling on her knees across the mud, feeling for the end of the rope. She glanced her surroundings, carefully evaluating the place now that she was practically stripped off everything— even her fucking knife. By the time her wriggling had ceased, she finally found the end of the rope and pulled, slowly but surely, until it dropped by the backs of her ankles.

Her arms ached. Her body ached. The drop from the cliff and into the water felt exactly like what a full body slap would have been like, and it made her body burn from the pain. As she looked around, trying to make her closest way back to civilization, she grabbed a rock and a stick and hoped for the best.

Her travel to the nearest village surprised her— this place was an old hunting spot she and Amita had gone through several times. Still, with her limits and lack of transportation she hadn’t been able to see this place for years.

Of course, the Royal Army still had its hands on it. It seemed more like they were relaxing, having a time, but before Bhadra was going to set up a strategy to take them out, one soldier was already laid out, dead on the ground. Another trying to scroll her surroundings was shot in the chest. When Bhadra tried to look for the source of the shot, the rest of the royal guards were already dead.

She was ready to crouch down, moving to the next bush until—

“Sakshi!” A familiar voice called out. She turned her head to the clearer source, and there waved Divin, holding a sniper rifle that came with a silencer.

“Divin!” she called out.

“Come on, get over here, quickly!” He cast out a rope from the cliff he was in, and Bhadra ran towards it, climbing up and meeting him with her forearm gripping his own.

“We thought we lost you!” Divin said.

“I can’t lose, you know?” Bhadra chuckled, letting go. “That new general kicked me off a cliff.”

Divin’s eyes widened. “Why?! What happened?!”

“He tried to interrogate me. I didn’t say anything, so he had no use for me.” Bhadra said, “I’m not part of Modern Shangri-La, remember?”

“Sakshi!” Another voice called from afar, and as Bhadra looked, Adhrit had come to her and hugged her immediately. Her eyes widened— then she squeezed back before pulling away. “You’re alive! Thank the gods!”

“Your driver didn’t make it, though.” Bhadra frowned.

“He served his purpose. Come, follow along, there’s a cave system leading to Banapur— it’s called Muksha.” he said, hands leaving her as he led the way. Muksha was a hidden cave at the ridge under the stones of Banapur’s mountains, and just as Bhadra suspected they had to gradually make their way up to where they had to be. Suddenly, light appeared, and she found herself in the pathway that led to Banapur. She had that same sick feeling again, but she swallowed it down in favor of turning to Adhrit.

“We tried tracking down your equipment. If the royal guard or the new army has its hands on it right now, chances are the rest will think you’re still with them and try to save you.” he said.

“Well, have you done something to stop that then?!” Bhadra asked, eyes wide.

“We’re using it as a lure, actually.” Adhrit walked along the dirty road with her. “The plan is that we infiltrate one of Rochan Brick Factory and get the new army to come by, and when that happens we take them out one by one. Sending a message, and all.”

“So what if they come with heavier artillery? They already knew about our trap.”

“That’s why we’re taking lighter precautions.” Adhrit said with the air quotes. “But you have to trust me on this. You should lead the way.”

“Me? Again?” Bhadra blinked.

“Is there a problem?” Adhrit asked.

“... No. I’ll do it.”

“Thank you.” Adhrit smiled. As Bhadra was about to walk away from him, he took out a spare radio from his belt and gave it to her. “Try not to get this one taken from you, ah?” He chuckled.

Bhadra huffed, “I’ll see to it.”

“Modern Shangri-La has favors if you’d like to help! There’s a supply drop with your name on it a little to the north!” he called from afar, waving her off.

“Got it, Adhrit!” Bhadra replied, hurrying to the location. Then her radio alerted her.

“Bhadra— Bhadra!”

She gritted her teeth. “Fuck off, Ajay.”

“Oh, thank god you’re alive.” Ajay sighed.

“How did you reach this?” She said, setting herself up on the ATV.

“Figured you guys tapped the radio you left with Diego. This line only connects to whatever Modern Shangri-La is, but we can’t seem to track a location.”

“ Good .” Bhadra snorted, driving down the hill.

“I have to stop them.”

“You mean kill them.”

“Either works. Bhadra, listen, I can’t have you running around doing favors for them! You could get caught up in their bullshit, whatever they’re feeding you—”

Bhadra’s face twisted into a scowl. She held the radio close to her lips. “You. Are not. My paapa. This revolution is going to help us free Kyrat from the shit you’ve put it into, and when we’re done, I’m killing you.”

Ajay didn’t reply anymore. She smirked, putting the radio back to her belt.

When she drove home after delivering the package, Noore was standing by the door. She ran to Bhadra, locking them both into an embrace.

“My baby!” Noore sobbed out, “Where have you been?!”

“I’ve been helping out the revolution. You didn’t hear from Ajay?” Bhadra asked, her face held by Noore’s hands. She looked at Bhadra in fear.

“Why— why are you doing that? You’re not a soldier!” Noore sputtered, and Bhadra frowned. She wiped Noore’s tears away.

“I’m not joining them, okay? I just want to help.”

“We have all the safety we can get from Ajay.”

“Noore, listen, Ajay is not the right protection for us. Modern Shangri-la could help! They’ll protect us!”

“You protect me enough.” Noore’s hand squeezed her shoulder. She looked tired. Bhadra shook her head.

“It’s never enough, Noore. I only stopped by to tell you, but I have to go.”

Noore swallowed. Bhadra wrapped her arms around her again, giving her all the warmth she had. Then she pulled away, going to the ATV.

“Come back home soon, sweetheart.” Noore called out, voice breaking.

“I will!”

And then, she left.

#wrt.txt #far cry 4 #far cry 6 #bhadra #diego castillo #ajay ghale #noore najjar #my fics #forgotten idols

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dailytomlinson · 4 years

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A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”

The second takes place a few years later. Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Liam got up to use the bathroom and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words…” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, what if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, what if [the next line was] ‘More than a feeling’? Well, that would actually be tight!”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live show staple. It’s a mid-tempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock and roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was re-defining the contours of fandom.

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of boy band history. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted only did it once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatles-esque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, pop-y guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘N Sync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.

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The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”

One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.

“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.

“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”

Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.

“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”

Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.

Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”

Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.

At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”

“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”

At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”

Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.

“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”

Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.

Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible.

But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.”

“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”

That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”

For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”

“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”

Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.

“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.”

Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”

“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.

“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”

A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”

Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.

But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.

“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”

After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”

In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.

“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says

There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”

But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.

“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”

#rolling stone #ROLLING STONE SAID ROCK BAN SO ITS A ROCK B AND PERIDOT #220720 #10years1d #one direction

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