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s0lar-ch3ri · 3 months

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hey new draft making

i keep putting this off, but it today arrives! a ramble about ryan selucreh to fill tghe tag for once

(spoilers for mythborne ahead BUT ITS BEEN OUT FOR A WHILE FOR FREE NO PATREON REQUIRED PLEASDE CHECK IT OUT I NEED MORE MYTHBORNE FRIENDS IN MY JRWI MUTUAL CIRCLE)

so who even is ryan selucreh? well, hes a football jock and a big oaf, the stereotypical strong dumb athlete kid. however, theres more to ryan that we're diving into, years after the oneshot ended!

one thing to note on ryan is how his powers were gotten in a mix of ways aster and connor did. aster was born with them (assumed cause goddess mother), connor got them from a book (recieved from searching, wasnt born with it), ryan got his powers from squats. silly, sure, but like i said, its like the inbetween of the two. he has the power himself and doesnt need a book for them or anything, but he wasnt born with them either. i also wanna note how asters powers are like life (plants and the sun, both can symbolize life) and connors powers are like death (decay and disintegrating, both are related back to death), but ryans powers cant be "like" anything. its not something super showy, hes just super strong (strong enough to rip a mountainin half im pretty sure was confirmed).

lwts get into those comments ryan made, and how its reflected across the 3 episodes. yeah, the comments on faking his personality around people and how he doesnt know who he is anymore.

first showing of this is with the j crew. charlie gave a good idea (he was nicknamed jyan), but condi says he told them that. granted, it was probably to be funny, but theres other options to that. ryan missaid his name out of nervousness, the j crew misheard him, he wrote his name really wrong, so many different options that also are pretty comedic. yet, ryan told them he was jyan to join their team.

on the floatball jersey he wears, they didnt even have a 10 for him, simply a jersey with a 1 and a "poorly painted 0". did someone else use the 10? why didnt they have one? another way ryan changed for people symbolically, wearing one number but being another.

ryan joins in with the omnious curse speech despite it not being planned. an attempt to keep fitting in with his group there.

hell, ryan even was an ass to connor before when he was with the j crew, yet wasnt when he was with connor and aster alone.

he even goes out of his way to try and save asters dad, an act of carrying for her and her father. hes such a friendly and caring dude that hes trying to fit in with them all to keep up their friendships.

thats what makes the whole "i dont have a real personality" line mean so much. because he really doesnt. all that can be seen as his personality is simply to appeal to another person.

HELL IM FUCKING CONNECTING IN THE FACT THAR RYAN WAS A HISTORY MAJOR TO THIS! WHO EXPECTS THE JOCK TO LIKE HISTORY? NOT ME, I THOUGHT THAT WAS CONNOR, AND THATS WHY ITS SO INTERESTING, CAUSS NOTHING LEADS YOU TO BELIEVE RYANS INTERESTED IN THAT SHIT!!! ryan barely talks about his past or anything, minus the memory (but that was only to save professor aeliana), BUT HE DIDNT FUCKING BRING IT UP. kinda ironic, the character whos past is pretty unknown is in classes learning about our past.

oh yeah did i ever mention his parents are dead? cause they are (confirmed by condi a while back)

maybe thats why he tries to be so appealing to everyone, to make up for that missing link. i mean, its not like that event wouldnt have some impact on you (also no jrwi pc has gone to therapy from what i know so safe to assume he has no coping skills PLUS ITS A CONDI PC YPU THINK HES MENTALLY STABLE??).

another thing i learned: ryans last name is a backwards hercules. fun call back to the name, yeah, but the actual story may have some weight here...

the screenshot doesnt give the full story, of course, so i will. the picture leaves out how the reason he went through hardships was because he was driven to madness. according to research, hera was mad at hercules being born (for he was the product of zeus and a mortal woman), so she made him go crazy and slaughter his family. to make up for it, he was given 12 impossible tasks to do.

am i saying the full story applys? hell fucking no! i dont think ryan killed his parents or anything, but i think the jist can apply. a man trying to be forgiven by people for wrongdoings that wouldnt have happened if said people didnt make those wrongdoings happen. ryan trying to get the validation of his friends and acquaintances by pretending to be someone hes not, which wouldnt be needed if he could see friends accept people as themselves. given impossible missions (be someone else) to appease those who he looks to (whether its to the side or up to).

another thing to note is theres no episode cover with only ryan on it. cover 1 has all 3, cover 2 has background faceless frat members and connor, and cover 3 has only aster.

it could be from how there was only 3 episodes of mythborne, yet this could be solved by having all 3 in a cover at once. while it would have been a lot, they had all 3 in the first and a total of 4 characyers in thr second cover. this of course was a purposeful choice, and it shows in a way who the focus is meant to be on in that ep (all of them, connor, aster).

so why coupdnt ryan have been focused on in episode 1? yeah he was directly related to the chaos (j crew being first vicitms and shit), yet that clearly had a more general showing. its because ryan isnt a character who can be focused on. he crutches to his friends like a team relys to eachother, thats how he has purpose, thats how hes even a person.

i woulsnt even doubt the stupid bit being an act! to play in a sport, you actually do need good grades (in my school experience, above a C+ in all classes), and ryans been on this team since he started college (infered from dialoge with j crew member), probably since kindergarten even (has known j cre since kindergarten). he learnt it from them, and found it to be a possibly appealing trait of himself to others, everyone likes the lovable idiot! sure, what he does to play an act can be extreme, but if this is really thr coping mechanism i think it is, its not too much for him (also wanna note how of all characters ryan is the biggest stereotype caharacyer).

the 3rd episode btw seemed a lot from the cover and namr and all like the whole world was a fake (for me atleast), and isnt it fitting that ryan was the first to fall off the stage? the man, who had an identity crisis outloud for once after it seemed like one friendgroupd was about to learn his secrets, the first to exit stage down (stage direction jokes). hes been playong a play himself for what feels like his whole life by now, he doesnt need a script.

i came in here to talk about ryan, put him under a microscope, see who he is. really, ryans a shell of a person, a muscle soulless being pretending to be a person someone can love and care about. maybe he too thinks about how connor had changed inside to save him. whatever it is, i think ive not learnt from this who ryan selucreh is, and maybe if he gets aomething like this, he can learn himself who ryan selucreh is.

#chilling in solar lights #jrwi #jrwi podcast #jrwishow #jrwi show #jrwi spoilers #jrwi mythborne #jrwi ryan #ryan selucreh #the rambler.#this took a turn for sure #oh well we gottaa #just roll with it #sorry #jerwee supreme

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lastweeksshirttonight · 9 months

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It was 95 degrees with 35% humidity today, my house feels like the inside of a blast furnace, and somehow I decided this was prime "watch and write about John" hours. So greetings from the surface of the sun, we've got more LWT to see!

Last Lee Tonight (wherein there is, theoretically, a universe where John Oliver is writing Tumblr reviews of Lee's topical news comedy) Season One, Episode Seven

(original air date: 6/15/2014) Major topics covered: US immigration reform, Washington Football Team Interview: Stephen Hawking

Trigger warning: racist iconography

"If you don't learn the recorder, you're fucked." "Seriously though, playing the recorder sets you up for life."

So uh, fun story. Remember how last week I said that the YouTube channel was finally starting to get the hang of things by episode six, aside from the occasional oddity of a one-minute clipped joke here and there?

The YouTube team didn't upload the main story from this episode to the LWT channel. At all.

We're still in prime "figuring this shit out" mode! Strap in!

That's consistent across the entire episode. After the last episode, which saw the show starting to coalesce into its modern form, this episode seems to go back to the drawing board and toss all kinds of shit at the wall to see what sticks - it's honestly most reminiscent of episode one. The opening segments are lightning-fast and don't transition into each other well, the central topic doesn't go nearly as deep as you'd expect it, and there's a random (but amazing) interview at the end of the show. I wonder if the next episode will swing the pendulum in the opposite direction again.

John starts our episode banging and then punching the desk, going in the opposite direction from our last episode. He seems to be taking out his rage on the glass countertop, which he looks very silly doing.

We begin by revisiting net neutrality, from Episode Five. (I'm linking it because I wrote this months ago, and if your executive dysfunction is anything like mine, you totally forgot everything about the episode.) In that episode, John described Tom Wheeler as a dingo, and somehow Tom Wheeler was asked about the LWT episode in a FCC meeting. He speaks like a literal robot and refutes, in the weirdest way possible, the idea that he's a dingo. How is that the thing you focus on from that whole segment. How. What? Christ.

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The unsaid caption "Satire is not C-SPAN, however." goes without comment, which is unbelievable to me. That phrase cracked me up so hard I had to pause the episode. I know there was a rich vein of missing the point entirely and subsequent dingo humour to mine here, but come on John, that caption is a gift.

We then move to Iraq, where ISIS forces crossed nearly the entire country in five days and stole $400 million dollars. This bit only goes for about a minute before we move to another topic, Obama visiting the Standing Rock Sioux reservation and pledging aid. We finally then transition into a discussion of the Washington Football Team, who, at the time, were still refusing to change their goddamn racist name and iconography, which I will not be using here. (I did learn from writing this that apparently they have rebranded - FINALLY - as the Washington Commanders in 2022, after two seasons of being Washington Football Team.)

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I appreciate how John lets an extremely sincere and powerful commercial made by Native Americans regarding the offensive name largely speak for itself, aside from one dark joke at the end, before discussing what an abject shitwhistle former Washington Football Team owner Dan Snyder is and how pathetic his protestations are.

It did take a while, but Snyder was ousted from his ownership post of the team in 2021 after a massive expose of sexual harassment under his watch was released in 2020. He's been mired in investigations over financial conduct, fraud, and deceptive business practices as well, to which I can only say "good".

The night's main topic, which has no YouTube video anywhere (I'm sorry), is immigration. John says he has a vested interest in the topic and the audience laughs, which is funny-weird because it doesn't seem like John is trying to humorously highlight his insider nature here. The real focus here is the debate over immigration reforms, as the system is (and remains) very broken and anti-immigrant sentiment is high all over the world.

I do wish this clip was on YouTube. It's not the most informative piece on immigration, but is a nice window into how much John loved this country prior to the beginning of its full collapse. This definitely takes much more from The Daily Show mold, being a comedic monologue interspersed with news clips that allow John to riff on the state of immigration, as opposed to later LWT immigration segments, which tend to be exceptionally sobering. This one is comparatively light-hearted and surface-level, and John delivers the material with a very comfortable confidence. I don't think the segment itself is a standout, but I really like John's attitude here.

We technically get our first animal-fucking joke during this segment, which is about bears only fucking face to face and stops John cold as he helplessly giggles over it. One step closer to getting all the running jokes in order!

Somehow, the end of this with the animated Actual American Tale video is on YouTube, so please enjoy one of the most depressing things LWT has ever put together. It's genuinely far more distressing than the actual main topic segment.

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The episode ends with the only appearance of "recurring segment" Great Minds: People Who Think Good, where John interviews Stephen Hawking. Interestingly, I was listening to a podcast today (gonna likely make a separate post on it) where John talked about how much he loved interviewing Hawking and how he wanted to showcase the man's wit and humour more than his intelligence. I think that the interview is incredibly successful in that regard.

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I adore this interview so much. Never have I had so much fun watching John get totally roasted.

Random notes:

Lee is a very predictable man corner: today we get a black suit jacket with lavender shirt and dark purple tie, which is a great look, 9/10. The only thing keeping it from being a 10 is that it's missing an element of boldness. Maybe a deep purple jacket or a shinier tie?

Lee continues being predictable in a second bullet point: the interview outfit is a black suit jacket with a light-blue and white checkered shirt and black tie. Definitely a pedestrian but still solid look and I still love the baby blue on John, so I give this 7/10.

Please stop making me talk about American football in these, John, I beg you.

"I lost my virginity to the sound of a man ranting about Bulgarians." This is so far the best line of early LWT, I will bear no other arguments.

There are no random 1 minute YouTube clips of isolated jokes this episode! 🎊

Once an episode, someone from the past 20 years of American political culture pops up that I've completely forgotten about and am upset to be reminded of. This week, it's Michele Bachmann, who I refuse to look up to see what she's doing now. You cannot make me think more about Michele fucking Bachmann.

There is an extended interview with Stephen Hawking that adds a few nice bits, like John asking Stephen a meandering hypothetical about him being a drug lord with inconsistent staff.

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#john oliver #last week tonight #last week tonight with john oliver #stephen hawking #last lee tonight #Youtube

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justforbooks · 1 year

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The documentary film-maker, journalist and author Gavin Weightman, who has died aged 77 after a long-term illness, was one of a number of talented young programme-makers who were recruited in the late 1970s and early 80s to work in the current affairs and features departments of London Weekend Television. As producer and director, Weightman’s outstanding contribution was The Making of Modern London (1983-85), a long-running series that documented the social history of the capital from 1815 to the then present day. What made it stand out was its extensive use of living memory to drive the narrative. Since then, testimony or oral history has become a common feature in documentary TV film-making.

The first series, Heart of the Empire, covered the London of Dickens, Queen Victoria and the Edwardians. In one episode, a 90-year-old Lady Charlotte Bonham Carter recalled the terrible mess horse-drawn traffic made in London’s streets, and how she suffered the indignity of wading through rain-soaked manure to attend a lunch at St James’s Palace. By contrast, Eastender Ted Harrison remembered family “holidays” spent hop-picking in Kent, leaving home at midnight to be there on time. The programmes used extensive archive film, often unearthing unseen footage, innovative rostrum camera work and specially written music to bring each individual memory to life.

Born in Gosforth, Northumberland, Gavin was the son of Doreen (nee Wade), a teacher and translator, and John Weightman, a broadcaster and later professor of French. During the war, John had been the only non-French newsreader for the BBC French Service. The bulletins he delivered sometimes carried coded messages and he often transmitted from the same studios as Charles de Gaulle. Gavin’s love of French food, wine and culture was passed on through his parents. The family lived in West Hampstead, London, but, spending summers near the Northumberland hills, Gavin also learned to love the outdoors and appreciate wildlife.

At primary school Gavin was captain of football and cricket. His secondary education began with a scholarship to Haberdashers’ boys school, Hertfordshire. By all accounts he did not thrive there and left aged 17 to begin a career as a journalist on local papers – first a stint on the Brighton and Evening Argus and then the Richmond and Twickenham Times (or the “Ricky-Twicky Times” as he fondly called it). Half a dozen reporters and editors would be crammed together in a tiny newsroom, all hammering away on 30s-era typewriters amid a dense fug of cigarette smoke. Standing out was Gavin, a tall and decidedly crumpled figure. His old friend the Canadian Broadcasting journalist Brian Stewart recalled Gavin “pouring out copy with ease, offering advice to everyone else on their writing and generally keeping everyone in stitches with gossip”.

After five years on local papers, in 1967 he began a degree course in sociology as a mature student at Bedford College, London University, where he developed a keen interest in social and economic history, especially the Industrial Revolution.

On graduation he spent time working for a newspaper group, writing for local papers. In 1974 he joined the staff of New Society magazine, writing features on a huge range of subjects. He was simply interested in everything – from Industrial Revolution housing to nudist camps in the postwar era and even the history of poaching.

While there, he happened to answer the phone to somebody from LWT current affairs calling to invite another journalist to apply for a job. Gavin took the message, then said, can I apply? He did and got the job, as reporter on The London Programme (1978-82), then, for a year, as its presenter. I was working there as a reporter at the time, and he and I became great friends. His voice was perfect for narration, but getting a man accustomed to a crumpled look to trade up to the suit and tie then required of presenters was always going to be an uphill struggle. What is more, by his own admission, Gavin never really mastered the technique of being able to walk and talk at the same time – another essential for being on screen.

After a brief spell on The Six O’ Clock Show, he gradually devoted more of his time to producing and directing films for the features department. His interest in social history made him the ideal choice to produce, direct and narrate not only the first 12 films of the Making of Modern London series (1983-84) but subsequently two wildlife series – City Safari (1986) and Brave New Wilderness (1990) – and a series on the history of the River Thames (1990), all of which had accompanying books.

When Gavin left LWT in 1991 to set up his own production company, he made more social history programmes for Channel 4, but increasingly concentrated on writing. He wrote more than 20 books ranging from Signor Marconi’s Magic Box (2003) to The Industrial Revolutionaries (2007). His most successful, The Frozen Water Trade (2003), told the history of exporting ice around the world from a frozen Massachusetts lake. It was serialised on Radio 4.

To his many friends Gavin was great company, loved for his ready wit and easy charm. Many a meal round his kitchen table ended with him playing a mean blues on his vintage Gibson guitar.

Gavin’s first marriage, to Myra Wilkins, ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, Clare Beaton, a children’s author and illustrator, whom he married in 2009 after a long-term partnership, their son, Tom, his children, Lucie and Ben, from his first marriage, two stepchildren, Jack and Kate, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, and his sister, Jane.

🔔 Gavin Weightman, documentary maker, author and journalist, born 4 March 1945; died 18 December 2022

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS #gavin weightman #in memoriam

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lt91arch · 3 years

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#2013 #football lwt #wliam #120513 #pics

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stelloulas · 3 years

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a quick recap of louis' latest euro looks

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silentskzo · 3 years

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ㅤㅤ— louis tomlinson layout's

#louis tomlinson #louis william tomlinson #louis tomlinson icons #louis icons #louis tomlinson headers #louis headers #louis tomlinson layout #louis layouts #lwt layouts #solo louis #solo louie #layout twitter #louis tomlinson twitter layout #louis tomlinson football

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5sosarelarries · 4 years

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𝐹𝑜𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑒 𝑙𝑜𝑢𝑖𝑠⚽

~IᑕOᑎՏ~

{pls like and reblog xx}

#aesthetic #larry stylinson #larry is real #louis tomlinson #lwt #walls #football #footie #louis tommo #louis william tomlinson #louis tomlinson icons #icons #purple aesthetic #louis aesthetic #lou #og creation

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dolcemercury-blog · 5 years

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𝚍𝚊𝚢 𝟷𝟶: Louis + my favorite AUs

Spy AU

College AU

Footballer AU

Models AU

ｐｌｅａｓｅｄｏｎａｔｅ

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scotianostra · 2 years

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Happy Birthday to Scottish actor, John Gordon Sinclair born February 4th 1962 in Glasgow.

His birth name was Gordon John Sinclair but there was a Gordon Sinclair already registered with Equity so added Sinclair.

He joined Glasgow’s Youth Theatre after he visited one night and met fellow fan of Canadian progressive rock group Rush, Robert Buchanan. As a result he starred in a number of films by director Bill Forsyth, perhaps the most famous of which was 1981’s Gregory’s Girl, shot when he was 19 years old. He reprised the role nearly two decades later in Gregory’s Two Girls, and also appeared in Forsyth’s Local Hero.

He has continued to act on stage and screen. Other roles include parts in Goodbye Mr Steadman, Mad About Alice Gasping and Roman Road. He was also in the first series of LWT’s Hot Metal and both the radio and television sitcom An Actor’s Life For Me. He played Dan Weir in Espedair Street, the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of my favourite Iain Banks novel, as well as playing the lead part of Dr. Finlay in the Radio 4 series entitled Adventures of a Black Bag.

He appeared in the 1982 Scottish squad’s World Cup song “We Have a Dream”, a number 5 hit in the UK, which was written and performed by BA Robertson. It featured John Gordon Sinclair speaking his recollection of a dream about Scottish football success. He later revived this Scottish footballing connection by narrating the 2006-07 BBC Scotland documentary series That Was The Team That Was.

John Gordon Sinclair played Frank McClusky, a leading character, in the 1990 John Byrne TV serial “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and played one of the main characters in the Tesco TV adverts in the late 1990s and early 2000s alongside Prunella Scales and Jane Horrocks. He has appeared in the West End of London on many occasions The pinnacle must have been when he was awarded an Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 1995 for Best Actor in a Musical for his 1994 performance in “She Loves Me”.

Sinclair also performed the part of “Master of Ceremonies” in Mike Oldfield’s premiere performance of Tubular Bells II at Edinburgh Castle in 1992. More recently John has been seen in World War Z with Brad Pitt, the BBC series Ill Behaviour and the forensic crime drama Traces, alongside fellow Scots Martin Compston and Laura Fraser. There’s nothing new to report on John, his last film was in 2020, Miss Marx a period biography about Karl Marx’s youngest daughter.

I follow John on twitter and he has replied a couple of times to comments I have made, we share the same political views and is a supporter of Scottish Independence.

#scotland #scottish #actor #writer #funny guy #happy birhtday

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thehauntologicalsociety · 3 years

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Nigel Kneale’s The Quatermass Conclusion

In the last quarter of the 20th century, the whole world seemed to sicken. Civilised institutions, whether old or new, fell … as if some primal disorder was reasserting itself. And men asked themselves, “Why should this be?”

The fourth and final television outing for Nigel Kneale’s rocket-scientist hero, Quatermass was made for LWT (the three previous series were made for BBC), and reached television screens in 1979, more than 20 years after the character’s last appearance in Quatermass and the Pit (BBC 1958-59, filmed in 1967).

Quatermass is set in an alternative Britain of the near future, a country which has disintegrated into virtual anarchy, beset by muggers, with gang wars in the streets and state-sanctioned ‘gladiator’ killing replacing football at Wembley stadium.

Played here by John Mills, the professor is no longer a decisive man of action, but a weary, confused old man, adrift in a Britain he barely recognises, and desperately searching for his missing granddaughter. She has become a member of the Planet People, a cult of young believers who see their salvation beyond the stars, but are actually willing victims of an extraterrestrial force which causes them to gather in vast numbers across the planet, before 'harvesting’ them, like animals killed for their scent. In a wry demonstration of grey power, the young are finally saved from annihilation when the professor assembles a team of aged scientists who are immune to the alien attraction.

Kneale’s script was written some 10 years earlier, which might explain its preoccupation with hippie-like religious cults and stone circles. But a year after the 'Winter of Discontent’, in which Britain was crippled by strikes and power cuts, rubbish was piled high in the streets, and unemployment reached levels not seen since the 1930s (with worse yet to come), the series’ vision of societal collapse may have seemed all too contemporary.

Ideas of what was acceptable for television had moved on since the 1950s, as had the standard of special effects, with the result that Quatermass was a good deal more explicitly horrific than its predecessors. The mass deaths of the young Planet People were chilling, as was a scene in which a young girl levitates from her hospital bed, then explodes into dust.

Kneale’s plot perhaps owes something to the New Age theories of Erich von Däniken, author of Chariots of the Gods, in which he claimed that Earth had once been visited by advanced alien beings which left their mark in the form of the Egyptian pyramids and other ancient architecture.

An edited two-hour version, The Quatermass Conclusion, was shown in cinemas outside the UK.

Mark Duguid

Written by Nigel Kneale. Directed by Piers Haggard. Cinematography by Ian Wilson. Film Editing by Keith Palmer. Producer: Ted Childs. Executive producer: Verity Lambert. Music by Nic Rowley and Marc Wilkinson. Starring: John Mills, Simon MacCorkindale, Barbara Kellerman, Brewster Mason, Margaret Tyzack, Ralph Arliss. Euston Films/Thames Television. 4 x 50 minute episodes. 24 October – 14 November 1979.

#The Quatermass Conclusion #Quatermass #John Mills #1979 #Mark Duguid #Piers Haggard

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starbug · 6 years

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The Game: Coborn Arms vs. Cock Hotel [S01E01] 1991 This week, Danny Baker takes a look at the latest attempt to raise the Cock up from the bottom of the East London Sunday League.

#Danny Baker #The Game #football #LWT #Sunday league football #tellybox #TV #soccer #Sunday league #The Cock Hotel #1991 #90s

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jjfantasy · 6 years

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I was tagged by @edenofalltrades :) <3

last (1-5)

drink - Earl Grey

phone call – my friend, Pati

text msg - "There will be some more” - to a friend who missed catering at work

song you listened to – Ralph — Crocodile Tears

time you cried – week or so when I remembered my dog...

ever..? (6-11)

dated someone twice - No

ever kissed someone and regretted it - Yes

been cheated on – No

lost some1 special - Yes

been depressed – Yes

gotten drunk/thrown up – Yes, I’m trash at times.

fav colors (12-14)

(I think we’re missing some questions here…)

(we for sure are…but my favorite color is purple!)

(still don’t know what was supposed to be here but my favorite color is Periwinkle)

(*touches soil* something bad happened here - anyhow my fav color used to be blue, but lately it’s violet and mint)

in the last yr have you.. (15-21)

made new friends/ mutuals – yes, God bless

fallen out of love - I’m almost there I think, yeah

laughed until you cried – Yup

found out some1 was talking about you – No

met some1 who changed you – I think so, yeah

kissed some1 on your FB friends’ list – No

general (22-51)

how many of your FB friends do you know irl – 70%

you have any pets – I used to have a Westie, lost her about 1,5 year ago *sigh*

do you want to change your name - No

what did you do for your prev. birthday – Invited my closest friends for a beer to a pub and we went later for the Warsaw boulevards. I was surprised how many showed up and it was a nice evening. At 1AM it was still 30*C. Well, I’m a summer kid.

what time did you wake up today – 6:30AM, too late, too late...

what were you doing @ midnight last night - sleeping, gotta go to the work in the morning

what is something you can’t wait for – for my current bad mood to finally go away, for changing old car to new, for going to ski vacation in 4 weeks

what’re you listening to atm – Ellogram - Come Home from my Spotify list

have you ever talked to a person named Tom – Yes

something that’s getting on your nerves – my job

most visited site - tumblr, reddit

hair color - dark blonde, but currently I’m dyed light

long/ short hair – I had long but since I was hairdressers last week it’s below shoulder now

do you have a crush on some1 – used to, hoping to end this nonsense

what do you like abt yourself - *cringes*

want any piercings – not really, maybe some extra in ear, but haven’t planned on it really anytime soon.

blood type - 0rh+

nicknames – Niux, JJ, Dżoanita (The polish dż is spelled as J in Joanna)

relationship status – *tumbleweed*

zodiac - Leo

pronoun(s) – She/Her

fav tv/ on-air shows - Lucifer, LWT with John Oliver, B99

tattoos? – I want two, I don’t have the courage yet

rightie or leftie - Rightie

ever had surgery - Twice, can my nose calm down and let me breathe

piercings - Ears

sports - I follow a bit polish Himalayans, polish national football team, ski-jumping once in a blue moon, personally I can say I train Zumba, I hike and other sports like swimming or cycling not regularly

vacation – Winter mandatory ski trip. Summer seaside and mountains hiking.

trainers – huh? It’s winter, but I love me Nikies

more general (52-58)

eating – Swiss peach

drinking - Water

i’m about to watch – well prolly new Lucifer when I get home

waiting for – inspiration to struck

want – I’ve been craving popcorn since weekend :P

get married – is there anybody crazy to marry me. Sure, someday.

career – I’m quite okay as IT girl.

which is better (59-65)

hugs/kisses - Kisses

lips/eyes - Eyes

shorter/taller – Taller

older/younger - Older

nice arms/ stomach – Arms

hookup/relationship – Relationship

troublemaker/hesitant – Hesitant

have you ever (66-75)

kissed a stranger – No

drank hard liquor - Yes

lost glasses – No

turned someone down - Yes

sex on 1st date - No

broken a heart – I don’t think so

had your heart broken - Yes

been arrested - No

cried when some1 died - Yes

fallen for a friend - Yes

do you believe in.. (76-81)

yourself – Someone has to.

miracles – No

love @ first sight – I think I do

santa clause - No

kiss on a 1st date - Yes

angels – No

other (82-85)

best friend’s name – Kasia

eye color - Brown

fav movie – Matrix

fav actor – I think either Keanu Reeves or Edward Norton. Those are two I’d specifically watch a movie for.

tagging: @lehdenlaulu @auroraborealis82 @gallifreyan-uprising @clevercloudpoetry @18tpaz @bb8scoldoutside @danimydear @dawnofthedusk , sorry if you’ve been tagged already

#tag games #tagging #tag game

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lastweeksshirttonight · 1 year

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April is here and so is more looking back at the past ten seasons of Last Week Tonight. Wooo!

I'm going to aim to have Last Lee Tonight posted every week on Thursdays. Work is always a wrench in my plans but I'm pretty sure I can keep up that pace. They'll let me leave at some point right? hahaha help.

Now that the admin notes are out of the way, let's get cracking.

Last Lee Tonight (wherein John waited three episodes to dump music knowledge on us and honestly I'm impressed he waited that long) Season One, Episode Three

(original air date: 5/11/2014) Major topics covered: global warming; campaign finance and 2014 Senate political ads; Russia/Ukraine tensions

"History was made this week. ...Technically, history is made every week, that's kind of how history works."

We are still in that unique transitory period where John's team has figured out that longform segments are probably the way to go... but aren't really sure how to best utilize the rest of their show's time. The first two episodes were marked contrasts to each other structurally and were easier to compare. This third episode is all over the place, rushing through the first small segment on football, before covering a wide array of information and sources on Russian actions in around 8 minutes, which then gets us to our first main segment about ten minutes in. You can tell that the writers are still really trying to work out how to best structure their strange new show.

We start the episode talking about the first openly gay player in the NFL, Michael Sam, something I swear happened both earlier than and later than 2014. I fucking love that ESPN completely ignored the player in question's sexuality and just talked stats and genericisms. SPORTS!

We don't spend long there, as we move straight into discussing the present Ukranian/Russian tensions, first through the lens of Eurovision. I am truly shocked that John hasn't covered Eurovision every damn year, because it's the kind of overly theatrical camp nonsense he adores. We get a very Daily Show-esque bit where John grabs a paper way on the other side of his desk to quote Russia's entry, and it makes me sad that the audience barely registers it as a joke.

Also shit Conchita Wurst won Eurovision nearly ten years ago. I feel so fucking old.

Russia also recently annexed Crimea at the time, and John briefly covers the struggles Putin will have with the annexation. Putin is busy minting a two-pound commemorative coin over his 'victory', so we get a fake commercial for the "Worthless Desolate Landmass Commemorative Coin". This feels very much like a Bugle bit, complete with the satirical underpinning of acknowledging that Russia will actively make Crimeans' lives worse. And obviously Putin shirtless on a horse.

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(I know that continually mentioning other things John has done that line up with these LWT bits probably seems a bit harsh or uncharitable, but LWT was clearly still trying to find a voice that wasn't cribbed from the two productions John was most associated with - to say nothing of the gigantic shadow The Colbert Report cast over every talking-head show in its wake. There's a lot of what I'd consider essential LWT that's been completely missing from these early episodes, from the common running gags of being a furry and shitting on his appearance, to a more unhinged level of social disruption and trolling, to even some of his linguistic choices - and that honestly makes sense. John has said multiple times that no one on the show had any idea what they were doing at this point, so why not pull from things that worked before?)

The first major story starts 10 minutes in, and regards campaign finance. The FEC has allowed bitcoin contributions to campaigns and jesus christ kill me now

Sorry. Campaign finance just innately pisses me off, and John gets me by basically saying "what else is left" while listing off all the campaign finance fuckery of the past few years at that time. I wish 2023 Me and 2023 John did not have to see what else was left.

John's joke about cribbing band names from the Kentucky Derby is gold. Tag yourself I'm California Chrome.

We get our first delightfully off impression of the series from John in this section - it's the rich evil Southern gentleman voice, in the form of Mitch McConnell threatening to kill people with a shovel over his love of coal. No amount of context will help me explain that better.

John also confirms that Mitch McConnell is not a homegrown Kentucky girl like his then-competitor, Alison Lundergan Grimes, by noting that "Politifact rates that true". I laughed so hard at that I had to pause. Please bring that gag back.

The Kentucky piece is overall worth watching, as it hits how campaign finance has influenced political advertising in ways directly detrimental to statewide and nationwide issues of import. The only part of this on YouTube is the capper, where John makes the most over-the-top and morally repugnant ads he can possibly think of. Trigger warning for gory violence including disembowelment, implied animal cruelty, and old man and middle-aged nudity. (Required note from this blog: it is not John Oliver nude. Fucking weirdoes, the lot of you [/j]) Link is here bc the video is, quite reasonably, age-restricted.

We now move to our very first "How Is This Still A Thing?", with the subject "Dressing Up as Other Races". Honestly no notes here, this segment came out the gate strong and basically in the same format it retains in the current day. (Seriously stop using other cultures as a costume.)

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Finally, with five minutes left, we get to the segment Wikipedia thinks is the main one, on climate change. (The pacing of LWT Season One is a rollercoaster.) Global warming in 2014 threatens everything, yet 1 in 4 Americans think it doesn't exist. I would like to travel through time to scream at them and John thinks even talking about that kind of stat is fucking pointless. Bill Nye is brought on to have a statistically representative debate on the topic, which involves a random fuckload of people being on stage at once. I love the chaos but this is a very slim bit.

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This was the weirdest episode to watch so far, I think. They took the lessons of the last episode and did attempt to apply them, but we aren't quite at the sweet spot of LWT pacing and structure yet. We'll get there eventually, I'm sure.

Random notes:

Lee obviously focuses on important things corner: After the absolute banger that was "red check pattern" last week, we return to neutral blue shirt and bubble-patterned navy tie. The unique tie elevates this to a 8/10 look, but one thing I cannot wait to get to is his "bold outfit choice" era of shit like silver suit and blue check shirt.

John describing bitcoin as something only "heroin dealers and assassins" use makes me yearn for the innocent time of 2014, when people were not trying to sell me every goddamn coin and ape doodle and metaverse on earth.

The YouTube team for this episode truly had no idea what to clip for this one. Their main segment doesn't have an authorized clip, and I don't know why they decided to take a 5 minute segment and make two clips out of it, an abbreviated version and a full version.

Speaking of weird shit on the LWT YouTube, have this 45 second bit of HBO selling the fuck out of their new show and John being obviously uncomfortable with it. However, in this clip he is, and I say this with a minimal amount of bias, hot as fuck. ("I'm no one's idea of a photogenic human being" SHUT UP MATE MY GOD)

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I found this ad on their YouTube as well, which was very fun. Back when we expected some actual timely news discussion on LWT!

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#john oliver #last week tonight #last week tonight with john oliver #last lee tonight #bangs appreciation hours #truly that buzz clip is so fucking odd #Youtube

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karenuse54-blog · 5 years

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Talking baseball with John Thorn, official historian of Major League Baseball and coauthor of The Hidden Game

(John Thorn, photo by Alison Richards; Bill Savage, photo by Rich Lalich.)

In 1984, John Thorn and Pete Palmer helped launch what would become the sabermetric revolution in baseball by publishing The Hidden Game of Baseball: A Revolutionary Approach to Baseball and Its Statistics. More than thirty years later, we have seen the game of baseball absorb the insights of Thorn, Palmer, and those who came in their wake in a way that no one could ever have predicted back in the days when RBI, batting averages, and pitcher wins were king.

In 2015, we were proud to bring The Hidden Game back into print. To kick off the baseball playoff season, we hooked up our old friend Bill Savage, lit prof and Cubs fan, with John Thorn to talk about the book and the game.

In The Hidden Game, you and Pete Palmer helped explain new forms of baseball statistics to fans (and the powers-that-be in The Game). Many of these stats have come to be widely accepted, despite the stubborn adherence to BA/HR/RBI and W/L records among the more retrograde fans. Which of the even more recent statistical categories do you think most add to our understanding and enjoyment of players’ accomplishments?

I admire the work of modern statistical analysts even as, over the years, my interests have drifted more to the history of the game, particularly its earliest period—even before statistics entered the discussion of which player was better than another. Voros McCracken’s FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) has seemed to me to be a great breakthrough in the way we look at the game, and how we measure it. BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play) is also a solid new stat, as it reveals the good luck or bad that may inform short-term outcomes. WAR (Wins Above Replacement) is a refinement of Pete Palmer’s Linear Weights System, with the principal difference being its baseline of a mythical replacement player (available via callup from Triple-A) rather than the LWTS baseline of zero. The latter still seems to me more elegant mathematically and philosophically, as an average team will go 81-81 and thus provide no extra wins above a team that is 0-0 on Opening Day.

What’s your take on the new measurements of hitters (launch angle and exit velocity) that are based primarily on technological advances rather than new mathematical ways of framing the game’s data points? Back in the day, people might have seen such things but not have been able to quantify them.

Interesting . . . which is to say that I am interested in their likely assistance in evaluating hitters’ future chances and perhaps their suitability in certain trade ruminations. I am not, however, impressed by these measures’ in-game or in-season utility. They seem to me to be the shiny tinsel on the otherwise perfect tree.

The powers-that-be in MLB are concerned with how long a game takes—but recent research by Grant Bisbee of SBNation.com (comparing two games with strong statistical parallels, from 1984 and 2014 https://www.sbnation.com/a/mlb-2017-season-preview/game-length) suggests that the difference between today’s game and the game of a generation ago is simply how long pitchers take to throw the ball. Why not just have a 20-second pitch clock, as some minor leagues do?

As it has turned out, few pitchers exceed the 20-second mark with any regularity, so this argument may be moot, or at least window dressing, compared to other problems of pace/length, e.g., number of relief pitchers used, number of pitches thrown (deep counts), time between balls put into play (“Three True Outcomes”), and so on.

The powers-that-be in MLB are also worried about their aging fan base, and blame pace-of-play and length of games for a potentially lost generation of young fans. But my experience is that some young people (many of my students at Northwestern, for instance) love baseball, and the pauses inherent in the game fit with their constant fiddling with phones, Tweeting and texting. (Ahem. I have been known to tweet between innings as well.) If you could mandate anything to get younger fans into baseball, what would it be?

This is above my pay grade, of course—I work for the Commissioner but do not presume to mandate anything. As an advanced fan, however, I might speculate that more balls in play, fewer strikeouts, and fewer situational relievers might well make the game more appealing to fans of any age.

Part of baseball’s historic continuity is the relative stability of the rules, with the lowered pitcher’s mound and the DH being prominent counter-examples. Is it worth changing fundamental rules to speed up the game? The gesture for an intentional walk, starting extra innings with a runner on second, and so forth? Some sports chatterers are even suggesting making the game 7 innings long. I’d (unseriously) suggest just starting every batter with a 1-1 count, like in park district softball. How should baseball balance historical continuity with modern demands?

I think most fans do not appreciate the fairly violent gyrations in the rules that characterized the game into the twentieth century, and those that characterized the 1960s and early ’70s. Baseball has always had an experimental quality—just as one might say of the America’s evolving adventure into democracy. Both the nation and its pastime may be viewed as solid, inert institutions, inhospitable to change, yet that is not the way I see either. Continuity, yes; obdurate resistance, no. Traditionalists will tend to be older and bound to affirm their life’s experience of baseball (or America). But older fans, while they may dominate today’s marketplace of ideas, do not represent the economic marketplace of tomorrow.

Baseball is America’s most ancient and historic game—yet many people think MLB doesn’t do enough to teach its history to current or potential fans. As MLB’s official historian, how would you like to see teams in MLB (and the minors) use the game’s history to enrich the fan experience?

My dear departed friend Larry Ritter, author of The Glory of Their Times (1966), liked to say that the best part of baseball today is its yesterdays. For older fans, certainly that is true. But I think baseball’s past enriches the experience of younger fans, too, and when a seemingly unique event resonates across the canyons of time to recall another, similar happenstance, the effect is warming, enriching, beautiful. I believe that my mission as MLB’s official historian is to share the pleasure I experience in making such connections, and perhaps to inspire a new generation to explore the depths of this endlessly fascinating game. No sport connects with its past on a daily basis the way that baseball does. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson—these are names that all baseball fans know and revere. Can the same be said of our other team sports—say, for Red Grange (football), or George Mikan (basketball), or Howie Morenz (hockey)?

One huge issue lately is cultural differences between “old school” baseball people and younger players, especially stars from Latin America, who play with more overt emotion and exuberance. This moment parallels the reaction of many players, coaches, and executives to how Negro League players brought their style of play to the Bigs after Jack Robinson’s debut. It seems ironic that MLB can simultaneously worry about not appealing to young fans, and criticize players whose style might very well appeal to such young fans, accustomed as they are to the more emotionally-charged behavior on basketball courts and football fields. The term often used in this conversation is about “respecting the game.” What does it mean, to you, to “respect the game”?

Respecting the game has meant different things in different eras. The ungovernably rowdy 1890s nearly placed baseball permanently in the shade, trailing college football, cycling, golf, and automobile races. When decorum returned to the game, female fans did too. In the 1950s, Mickey Mantle ran around the bases with his head down after a home run, so as not to show up the pitcher. Given its roots in sublimated martial activity, baseball has sometimes struggled to strike a balance between chivalry and bravado. I am utterly confident that it will do so again, embracing Hispanic conventions while not abandoning North American reserve.

Electronic strike zone: Yes or No? If yes, how?

It may come. Certainly cricket and tennis have accommodated it. I have always accepted mistakes as an inevitable feature of human endeavor, and almost miss the vanishing error in the field as much as I miss the triple. But it is hard to deny the appeal of greater accuracy.

The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown is not directly run by MLB. Right now, while executives from the PEDs Era are being inducted (Selig, Cox, LaRussa, Torre), the writers who vote on players seem pretty set on excluding Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and other players whose records they call “tainted.” If you could mandate how players are selected for the Hall, what system would you enact?

I do mandate how players are selected for the Hall of Fame between my ears, but not for the one in Cooperstown. It is a grand institution, and part of its enduring vitality may be accounted to its annual controversy, stirring fan interest and sometime outrage.

Source: http://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2018/10/01/talking-baseball-with-john-thorn-official-historian-of-major-league-baseball-and-coauthor-of-the-hidden-game.html

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