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quartzturtlecosplay · 3 years

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Plus Size Cosplaying and an Industry that fails us [Long post]

In late 2020, I purchased a cosplay from a popular online store, EZCosplay. This was before more recent accusations of false advertising and poor craftsmanship came out. I knew the store had some issues (I’ve purchased from them before and I knew first hand), but it was my only option for this specific cosplay.

I could go into detail about the many controversies of the store itself, but for now I’m going to talk about the main problem many of these online cosplay stores seem to have: working with non-standard sizes.

The struggle of finding good, plus size cosplays can be really difficult and almost heartbreaking. Most “plus size” cosplay listings still follow Asian sizing (where American 2XL is an Asian 5/6XL and still may not be big enough). Even if a costume can meet certain measurements, there’s no guarantee that it will fit or be flattering.

I’ve often had to find myself emailing specific stores, asking if their custom sizes go up to my measurements (I am B: 52, W: 46, H: 53, for reference). For my most recent attempt, I was looking for Asami Sato’s outfit from the first couple seasons of Legend of Korra [outfit reference]. Nothing too complicated, just a pair of wide fitting pants and a jacket. I was either met by emails saying “no, that’s too big for us” (despite their size guides saying they can make men’s cosplays in that size) or those that basically said “put in the order, and we’ll see what we could do” with no definitive answer. At the end of my search, I had only one option: EZCosplay.

The cosplay itself ended up being fine, a couple of details missing here or there and the gloves were practically worthless. But hey, at the end of the day I found something that fit, I should be happy right? Yes and No.

I’m not going to defend this store. I’ve bought a total of 3 cosplays from them, only 1 of which I’m actually alright with. And there are countless other stories from buyers who have suffered the same disappointment, ranging from all sizes. It’s the lack of care for customers that drive these companies to neglect their plus size markets. Although I was happy with the outcome this time, it was only because I’ve seen how bad things can get if you try finding something more fitted and structed.

Looking back to my first time working with EZCosplay, its easier to see the problem here. Back in 2018, I ordered a Love Live! Flower Bouquet Nozomi dress [pictured below]. For those who are unfamiliar with the design, Nozomi is a larger chested HS Idol. With this outfit, the white is supposed to go completely under the bust and the skirt should begin right above the hips [link to the reference].

Technically speaking, it did fit around me. They were able to make it in my measurements and it fit all the information I gave them. HOWEVER. as we can see, the white hits about halfway down my chest before stopping, not at all as pictured in her design. As larger people already know, when you translate smaller patters into bigger sizes without accounting for actual forms and shapes, you’re left with something like this. Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy wearing this cosplay.

As someone who is more used to making their own costumes, this is not how you make plus size clothes. Simply making a pattern bigger doesn’t automatically make it fit plus size bodies. If you’ve ever had to take standard patterns and upscale them to fit, you understand what I mean. Alterations must be made, otherwise you feel like you’re in a potato sack. This is the problem that most people have with EZCosplay. While their costumes do technically fit up to larger sizes and they offer custom measurements, they lack any suitable structure or fitting. I’m sure the Love Live! cosplay would look great on a smaller size, however that’s not what we’re working with (and no way in hell I’m changing myself to wear it).

Now, there are some ways to get around this. If you need less complicated and less structured cosplays, you’ll probably be fine. Or if you find one that allows you to customize the waist line yourself (like how a lot of Toph Beifong cosplays are or maid costumes with aprons, for example). You could easily get a My Hero Academia uniform or a Ouran High School Host Club jacket. Those would be no sweat for larger sizes. Again, bringing up my Asami cosplay, it doesn’t have much structure to it and it fits relatively okay.

But as plus size/larger cosplayers, we should be allowed to be WHOEVER we want and we should be able to find costumes that fit us that aren’t just suit coats and robes. I’m not saying we can’t wear these kinds of cosplays, I’m just saying we shouldn’t have to limit ourselves in what we wear just because that’s all they have for us. America’s standard size is 14/16 for woman. Just like in the regular fashion world, anything above those sizes are either incredibly expensive or they just straight up don’t exist.

As cosplaying becomes more popular, we need to push for more size inclusivity. There have already been so many changes in the last 10 years, with more online stores becoming readily available with larger size options, but we’re not there yet. We need to keep working and demanding big cosplay companies to expand sizes for more inclusivity. Not just plus size cosplayers, but those who are also in the body-positivity movement who actually want to see change.

Both the cosplay community and cosplay industry have a lot of problems. But it’s by talking about these problems that we can work to fix them. We don’t need to change ourselves to fit our fandom spaces, fandom spaces and the costume industry needs to change to accept us, regardless of size, age, race and gender.

If you are looking for sites that offer plus size options, check out:

Note - These are places I’ve found that fit my measurements of 52/46/53, I’ve stared (**) the ones that go beyond that

MicCostumes - Anime and Video Games (I’ve worked with them before, may review at a later time if anyone is interested)

Cosrea ** - Superheros, Disney, and Some Games (Free custom sizing)

HalloweenCostumes.com ** - General Pop Culture, US/UK based

FortuneHouse on Amazon - Large Anime selection

WoShow on Amazon - Large Anime selection

Angel Secret ** - Disney Princess (custom sizing)

And of course, EZCosplay with custom sizing and good discernment .

If you have any questions or would like a full review for how it was working with EZCosplay or MicCostumes, please let me know. As mentioned, I usually make cosplays myself but I’ve been trying to branch out with cosplay sites and closet cosplays, as they can be an easier and more affordable option.

#plus size cosplay #cosplay #cosplay community #cosplay review #pnw cosplay #ezcosplay #body positivity #plus size resources #plus size acceptance

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unpretty · 5 years

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In your mind, how is Wayne Industries structured?

wow this took like six months and ended up a lot longer than i intended and i’m not even sure if i answered the question you were asking

i am ignoring literally everything from canon because canon says that every single company owned by wayne enterprises is called Wayne Insert-Industry-Name-Here and that’s dumb as all hell and i hate it. also i made the company founding contemporary with famous olde rich people like the rockefellers and whatnot because Old Money. i’ll put dates on some of these but on some of them (like when we’re getting real granular) i just cannot be fucked to bother. let’s also agree that there are a bunch of things that are technically subsidiaries but which are actually the exact same goddamn thing just slightly altered because it’s in a different state or something, which i don’t need to list.

i am assuming for these purposes that wayne enterprises is a privately held conglomerate with control having been ceded to a board of directors during thomas wayne’s tenure as ceo-in-name-mostly as well as while the company was in a trust; the board was subsequently dissolved once bruce was old enough to make that decision. privately held companies aren’t obligated to disclose financials or maintain a board, which is great if you’re planning to be batman and also make a lot of theoretically financially unwise decisions like setting a minimum wage of $15 throughout the organization and implementing a cash profit sharing plan.

anti-trust and monopoly laws aren’t an issue because they’re way too diversified and none of their business units dominate their chosen industry. there are probably conspiracy theories that the reason for the immense diversity of interests is actually to keep different markets competitive and protect other businesses from anti-trust suits, which would be pretty compelling if every wayne from the start weren’t fueled by spite and pettiness.

anyone who wants to has blanket permission to use this for whatever because canon is for suckers but so is figuring out corporate structures yourself

tumblr is probably going to completely fuck the formatting so you might want to read this on my other blog instead

Wayne Enterprises (1864)

Wayne Capital (1864)

Technically speaking Wayne Capital was Wayne Enterprises before they diversified but I didn’t want to clutter up the big header so here we are. Ostensibly started as an investment firm, actually started as a ponzi scheme that went sideways and turned into a legitimate business. There was a war going on, things were confusing, people were dying or else just skipping town because it seemed like a good time for that kind of thing. Next thing you know you’ve got a lot of extra cash and you’re actually making a decent amount of interest on that small loan you made to that guy with the boat. One thing leads to another and now you’re a shipping tycoon who also owns some banks. These things happen.

Wayne Capital Bank (1865)

It’s a bank, you know what a bank is.

Coinsure (2006)

Bruce hangs out with a lot of pornstars who have a lot to say about how PayPal sucks and also isn’t regulated at all because they’re not technically a bank even though they hold your money so what the fuck.

Created as a secure payment processor originally only usable by members of their bank but it eventually expanded outward.

Coinsure: Unlike Some People We Could Name, We’re Regulated Like A Bank, Because We Are One

Eventually expanded into allowing user profiles, donations, recurring donations, and crowdfunding.

Does not yet offer a platform for posting exclusive content so in that regard it doesn’t quite suit as a Patreon or Kickstarter alternative but they’re debating adding those kinds of functionality.

Totally works as a Ko-Fi or GoFundMe alternative tho.

Arkenity Financial (1947)

Large-scale industrial loans in particular are handled under this banner.

Coine Realty (merger 1982)

They bought Cobblepot Real Estate Services for cheap when the parent company was having financial trouble and then merged it with existing real estate services that were previously part of Wayne Capital.

Previously Cobblepot Real Estate Services actually just owned a lot of property for slumlording purposes.

Guess who’s still bitter.

Wakewater Insurance Services (1885)

No one wants to insure my boats? Fuck this, I’ll insure my own goddamn boats, is what I’ll do. Does anyone else want in on this? Okay, cool.

Property and other insurances through Wakewater are some of the only policies to fully cover acts of supervillainy and/or heroism.

This division bleeds cash under Bruce but who cares.

Wakewater Life Insurance Company (1885)

Fuck this, I’ll insure my own goddamn self.

Wakewater Health (1983)

The fact that they didn’t have this until Thomas was in charge is depressing, I think we can all agree.

Thomas was in charge so all their plans are extremely generous.

Wakewater Mutual Automobile Insurance Company (1931)

Fuck this, I’ll insure my own goddamn cars.

Wakewater Home and Renters Insurance Company (1908)

Renters got added later, probably when Gotham got more apartments.

Tropos Energy (Formerly Wayne Oil and Gas, 1896)

When they were planning to change the name of this division, Thomas Wayne lobbied for Waynergy, and would have given up fairly quickly if someone had not pointed out that this sounded too much like Weinergy. Thomas insisted on referring to this branch of the company as ‘Weinergy’ for the remainder of his life, and no one could stop him, because he owned it. Imagine working your whole life to become one of the top energy researchers in the world just to have the guy who owns your whole company, a philanthropic brain surgeon, introduce you as ‘one of the Weiner Boys from over at Weinergy’.

Nor'easter Co (merger 2009)

Wind energy tech

Did they buy the company just because Bruce liked the name better than the old one? No one is sure.

Gotham Solar (1987)

Associating Gotham with the sun in any capacity is hilarious.

If It Works In Gotham It’s Gotta Be Good (unofficial motto)

Great Lakes HydroElectric (1904)

It’s two years younger than the hydroelectric plant near my house because I said so.

Galactomics (1954)

Nuclear power plants

This name seemed like a really good idea in the 50s.

Galactomics Lifestyle (2004)

Furniture and decor

There was a huge market for their secondhand custom kitschy office furniture so they rolled with it and made a furniture division.

Most people are not aware that they also run nuclear power plants.

GaleTek (Formerly Wayne Rail Company, 1871)

They were the Wayne Rail Company, and then the Gotham Rail Company, and then Gotham Land and Sea, then GLS which they pretended didn’t stand for anything or possibly stood for a variety of charming slogans, then they merged with about three different aviation companies to swallow them into their aviation division and the combined name they came up with was GaleTek. Welcome to corporate naming conventions, it’s a goddamn nightmare.

Hart Aviation (1927)

They used to have a lot of defense contracts but that all went down the tubes in the 80s because Bruce’s parents weren’t down with that. Now they just make cool shit for commercial use.

They also make zeppelins because it’s a comic book, someone has to make the fucking zeppelins and it might as well be Batman.

Gotham Rail Company (1871)

They’re actually a railroad so they got to keep the original name.

Well, sir, there’s nothing on Earth like a genuine, bona fide, electrified, six-car monorail.

Superior Freighters Inc. (1874)

I’m on a boat.

They’re classified as ships but generally lake freighters are referred to as boats, that’s a fun fact, enjoy.

Wayne Motors (1914)

Founded because one of Bruce’s ancestors really hated Henry Ford. You’d think it would be because of the unabashed antisemitism but it was actually the pacifism. In an ocean of good reasons to hate Henry Ford he found the bad one.

These were almost all notoriously-shitty also-ran semi-bootlegs until the turn of the century.

They also made racecars but those weren’t available for retail sale so the good racecars weren’t enough to offset the reputation of the horrible cars people could actually buy.

The racecars were good because Bruce’s great-grandpa had a liquor-smuggling operation.

Fox finally had the bright idea to just get weird with it so they brought back really old models of car with the exact same body but with electric engines. They’re extremely popular.

They have a contract with the city of Gotham to produce really nice city buses at a loss.

Gotham City Broadcasting Network Company (acquired 1972)

Patrick Wayne bought a broadcasting company just so they’d stop talking about Watergate. He was a big Nixon fan. The networks have gotten better since then. Thomas Wayne set a lot of strict advertising guidelines that continue to this day. It’s become an umbrella for Wayne Enterprise’s entire entertainment division, which is a bitch to map out because entertainment companies are structural nightmares. I did this to myself but I’m still mad about it.

Birch & White Publications (acquired 1953)

Acquired before the rest of the entertainment division because they didn’t originally have an entertainment division, just this one shitty book publisher.

Founded in 1866 by what was probably a secret gay couple who liked magazines about men being manly and fighting weasels, or whatever it is men did in 1866. I’m imagining the homoerotic covers on these magazines and they’re great. Do you think they were former cowboys? I’m going to say they were former cowboys.

I just looked it up and Patrick’s dad was named Kenneth. Kenneth Wayne. I can’t believe this. Anyway he was really into these books as a kid so when the publisher started going defunct he just straight-up bought it.

Birch & White owned shares of GCBN as part of their deal with the radio station to produce radio shows of their more popular characters, which was why patrick bought this one instead of NBC probably.

These days they publish all sorts of stuff but they also republish their huge backlog of old weird shit. Also they brought back the pulp magazine and the homoerotic covers. I’m going to say that was Thomas. He insisted.

GCBN (1931)

If you think I’m listing individual national network affiliates you can go straight to hell.

GCBN News

GCBN.com

TheGackbin.com

They use this one for entertainment news.

Did they name their website after what Thomas insisted on calling the main network? Yes.

“Can’t we put it in the Gackbin or something?” - Thomas Wayne, to the board of directors that actually runs his company for him, about a show that he wants to watch that doesn’t exist yet.

Sure, Tommy, we’ll get right on that.

The joke’s on them, Dog Surgeon had an enormously popular primetime run.

The dog surgeon had a dogtorate.

GCBN Sports

GCBN Radio (1931)

The original and still the champion

GothamRadio.com (2003)

They spotlight a lot of local and indie bands, it’s pretty great actually.

Gotham Television Company (1986)

This is all the cable channels. There’s a lot of them.

Clue TV (1986)

We’ve got your Columbo, your Poirot, your… other things. Also a lot of Forensic Files-esque true crime.

Martha loved true crime but hated reenactments and victim-blaming and bad science. So she didn’t actually like most true crime. Then she married a billionaire!

This was basically The Martha Wayne Background Noise Channel.

Now it’s The Bruce Wayne Background Noise Channel.

FunnyBones (1986)

It’s comedy but also shlocky b-movie science fiction and horror.

Experimented briefly with a Z instead of an S and everyone hated it.

In this universe they picked up MST3K because I said so and no one can stop me.

Civil History (2003)

A history channel that focuses on civil rights instead of wars and aliens and war with aliens.

Curiousities (1989)

Science news but also informative documentaries.

Bubbly (1986)

It’s a soap opera channel and lemme tell ya they’ve got some weird ones.

They import soaps and dramas from around the world but their original content is notorious for the depth of the lore. Why is there so much lore.

Rolling Stone (1992)

They gave Rolling Stone a channel because why the fuck not.

Really good political news coverage, actually.

Vaudevision (founded 1914, acquired 2003)

Pretty comparable to RKO except it lived. You can probably guess their schtick.

Vaudevision Animation (1941)

The weird cartoons that they only show on cartoon network at 2am probably.

VVA Classics (2001)

Old-ass Vaudevision cartoons on perpetual reruns

Vaudevision Home Network (1983)

Pretty standard movie channel.

Vodevista (1995)

Spanish language television.

Kale Studios (2017)

World of Kale from Kale Studios, brought to you by Vaudevision.

Bruce debated over whether this would be more of a tech/software company or an entertainment company and decided on entertainment. They’re not here for revolutionary gameplay. They’re here for artistically rendered kale.

Also “brought to you by Vaudevision” rendered across the bottom of a video game loading screen was too funny to pass up so here we are.

Northern Hospitality (acquired 1936)

I’m starting to lose steam, here. Figuring out GCBN was exhausting. Why did I do this to myself. Anyway Wayne Enterprises owns some hotels because reasons.

Red Oak Hotels (1936)

Pretty nice hotels, lots of conference centers.

Art Deco as a motherfucker and they will never update their aesthetic, ever.

They keep stained glass artisans across the country in business.

Lakeshore Motel (1962)

So skeevy

Can’t argue with the prices tho

Efforts have been made to get them less skeevy but they’ve still got a pretty skeevy vibe.

Amberview Hotels (acquired 2005)

Midrange hotels, extraordinarily generic.

Bruce bought these just to put another layer of separation between himself and the inns he wanted to open because the Lakeshore Motels were too skeevy.

Amberview Inn (2006)

Cheap like a motel with hourly rates but actually about as nice as the hotels.

Cops keep trying to set up stings because of the reputation as a favorite for sex workers but they have very good lawyers telling them to fuck off.

They hire a lot of women with large gaps in their employment history.

Grand Lighthouse Resort (1906, acquired 1940)

It’s on its own island. Maximum fanciness.

They replaced the golf course with a small farm in the 90s and now all the fancy food is grown on their fancy farm.

Wayne Health (1908)

So many supervillains used to work under the Wayne Health umbrella. Mostly because when people do evil shit they get fired. It’s not supervillainy if you’re gainfully employed doing it. If you’re unemployed and experimenting on animal brains, you have a problem.

Wayne Health (1908)

Originally Wayne Ray Tech. They made X-Rays. The name was meant to imply that they had other, even better rays. It was 1908. It seemed plausible.

Started making centrifuges and pH meters in the 30s, then expanded into spectrophotometers… why am I telling you specific devices? They gradually added more and more lab and medical technologies, that’s good enough.

Anyone who tries to make anything brain-related gets the side-eye these days. They’ve been burned too many times before.

“And it’s definitely not supposed to be used to read or control minds?” any engineer working on a brain-related project will be asked, repeatedly, forever.

Wayne Care Network (1966)

Patrick bought some hospitals. I don’t know why. Why does anyone do anything? Why am I doing this? The world is filled with mysteries. They probably own a lot of hospitals and clinics that I don’t feel like exploring.

Gotham Central Hospital System (1966)

Patrick probably wanted special treatment at the hospital. Maybe a doctor tried to start shit. Honestly that would explain a lot about why Thomas became a doctor.

St. Rita’s Hospital (1984)

Thomas Wayne’s baby and where he did most of his work as a surgeon. Ask him about the guy with the brain maggots! Just kidding, you don’t have to ask. He tells everyone that story. He’s great at parties.

ChemiCare (1975)

Pharmaceutical development.

Pretty standard pharma company until Thomas got his hands on it. Insulin! Insulin for everyone! They’re practically giving it away!

I’m making myself sad so let’s move on.

Asclepius Digital (2006)

Health software, digitization of file systems, etc

It’s boring but vital, okay?

Gotham Department Stores, Inc. (1898)

Owning a department store: all the cool tycoons are doing it. Right? Right. Started as Wayne Co, eventually diversified and Wayne Co became a subsidiary of a larger company.

Wayne Co. (1898)

Started specifically to get in on the whole 'mail order catalog’ craze.

Even more specifically, the ones full of snake oil. Just, pages and pages of horseshit potions and elixirs.

We wrapped this tapeworm in some cocaine for ultimate weight loss! Order today!

They also sold other things, eventually. But mostly weird bottles of nonsense.

Actually did a lot better in the Great Depression when they sold cheap shit by mail, only some of which still had tapeworms and cocaine in it.

These days it’s very Sharper Image. Lots of toys and airplane catalogs.

Gotham Department Store (1916)

What if we sold things in stores? Wacky idea, I know.

They didn’t stick with the Wayne Co. name because Wayne Co. had… a reputation. On account of all the coked-up tapeworms.

They tried to go for a high fashion demographic, which worked out for about ten years and then went all to hell for another ten years.

Spent many years as the store Grandma would take you to for back-to-school clothes shopping.

Saw a resurgence in the modern day with the advent of such exclusive product lines as the infamous “It Has Pockets” line of women’s fashion.

Green Market (1995)

Thomas to his board of directors: “What if we opened a grocery store that sold nothing but food produced ethically enough and of high enough quality that I would be willing to buy it for my family?”

“Mr. Wayne are you asking this just because you’re sick of not being able to make impulse food purchases while shopping”

Thomas Wayne fingerguns aggressively while backing out of the boardroom.

They really need to work on their marketing because everyone assumes it’s all pricey organic stuff instead of reasonably-priced locally-sourced products.

SuperModern Foods Company (1962)

This name seemed like a good idea in the 60s. I was going to list all the things here but have you ever looked at what Nestle owns? Or Unilever? You think I’m making a list like that? No. Fuck that. They probably used to own a lot more companies and then got rid of a bunch of them because they sucked.

Space Cakes (1962)

They should have changed the name but they didn’t and they get bought by a lot of confused stoners.

A fixture at Gotham gas stations.

Havermann Dairy (acquired 1967)

Space Cakes had a disagreement with a dairy supplier so they bought them. As one does.

Alberici Meats (acquired 1974)

They had to do something with all the extra cows.

Tucker’s Old-Fashioned Soda (acquired 2015)

“Why did Bruce Wayne acquire an obscure small-town Kansas soda company?”

“Who can possibly understand the whims of the idle rich,” says local reporter.

Saraniti Pickles (acquired 2017)

Walmart nearly destroyed their perfectly-acceptable business with shady practices.

Spite: A Valid Way To Run A Business Since 1864

GRC (1924)

I have put off finishing this for like two months because I was so deeply disinterested in figuring out the technology subsidiary, but now I’m putting off finishing something else so here we are. Originally the Gotham Radio Company, now it’s just GRC because video killed the radio star and also they mostly make weird shit that isn’t radios. In close competition with Wayne Health to see whose former employees are most likely to become supervillains.

GRC (1924)

Technically speaking they still make radios and turntables and whatnot, but mostly it’s, like. Cables. Circuit boards. The kind of shit that only gets used by other companies and also people who have to make a road trip to Fry’s because all the other stores just sell phones now. Have you ever tried to replace a fucked-up molex connector without having to order something online? It’s hell. They stock GRC products in a special section of the Gotham Department Store, I decided this just now while thinking about molex connectors and getting mad.

Did you know RCA’s vacuum tubes were called Radiotron?? Why are all the names for things so shitty now when we used to name things stuff like Radiotron. This has nothing to do with anything, except I guess for the fact that GRC probably still manufactures weird vacuum tubes that would otherwise be impossible to find.

GRC is a godsend for vintage radio enthusiasts.

Maelstromatic (1929)

I’m not saying they picked their name based on the fact that a maelstrom is theoretically a more powerful whirlpool but also that’s exactly what I’m saying.

These appliances will fuck you up and that’s a guarantee.

They’re safe now but for a long time they had a reputation of being extremely powerful and dangerous.

“If you forgot to empty your pockets the Maelstromatic washer would turn all your bills blank… those were the days.”

Old people complain about how the new energy-efficient Maelstromatic appliances just aren’t as good as the ones that would trip the breaker most of the time and regularly burn their clothes.

GRC Labs (1938)

Someone’s gotta make that weird shit!! This universe has superior grappling hook technology and they have GRC Labs to thank. I’m gonna say it was developed for the military to infiltrate Nazi castles? That seems plausible. They had a scientist thinking outside the box, and inside the grappling hook.

So many supervillains…

They’re on such high alert now but it’s really hard to tell a mad scientist from a regular scientist. You’d think it would be obvious but the guy who’s obsessed with jetpacks is just a regular ol’ nerd. He monologues about jetpacks on the reg but he’s never tried to rob a bank or become a jetpack cyborg. He just loves jetpacks. Meanwhile that guy with the robot cat for the elderly nearly killed like thirty people. Shit’s unpredictable.

Computronic Machines (1965)

It was the sixties and everyone was making computers.

The Computronic Program-o-Mat was deeply unpopular despite having what was clearly a better name than any other home computer ever made.

Nerds these days lust after original Program-o-Mat cases to put new computers inside them and then make them run Doom.

They make decent consumer tech now. Desktops, laptops, phones. Boring stuff.

Computronic Machine Programs (1972)

They made decent niche technical software and that kept the whole division afloat quite frankly.

Contemporarily they produce a lot of security software and apps, and have even released specialized forks of certain operating systems.

These days the most well-known software to come out of this division is CB Chat, a hyper-secure and super-encrypted chat program because Bruce wanted one. It is popularly assumed that this was because he did not trust Snapchat with his nudes. He has never disputed this.

They will never change their name. Never.

Telelectroscope (2003)

Internet and cable service provider.

Keeps getting sued by other ISPs for making their prices so low. It’s not fair!! They’re trying to put us out of business!! Wah!!!

This was pretty much the first thing Bruce did when he became CEO because his internet at the mansion was garbage and he was mad about it.

Spite: A Valid Way To Run A Business Since 1864

… i can’t think of anything else to add to this list. am i… am i done? am i free?

#atomic-black #original #ficblogging #greatest hits

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sophygurl · 5 years

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WisCon 43 panel Learning to Hear the Dog Whistle

[Just wanted to say this was one of the panels I suggested and I’m so glad it went through and that I was able to make it to the panel. This is something so many of us need to work on, and I’ve made it a practice to point out when I think someone has unwittingly passed on a dog whistle-ish message, in large part because I hope/want for others to do the same for me when and if I do it, myself. Anyway, I learned a lot and this panel was really good.]

Political dog whistles are meant specifically to target one audience who agrees with you, and perhaps to trick others into agreeing with your subtle and covert language. It's important for us to be able to recognize these dog whistles, often used by racist, transphobic, and other bigoted groups. How do we learn to listen for and recognize these whistles when they are used specifically to dodge our ears?

Moderator: Heidi Waterhouse. Panelists: Seth Frost, Keffy R. M. Kehrli

Disclaimers: These are only the notes I was personally able to jot down on paper during the panel. I absolutely did not get everything, and may even have some things wrong. Corrections by panelists or other audience members always welcome. I name the mod and panelists because they are publicly listed, but will remove/change names if asked. I do not name audience members unless specifically asked by them to be named. If I mix up a pronouns or name spelling or anything else, please tell me and I’ll fix it!

Notes:

Heidi started the panel off saying that the panel was obviously not full of all kinds of representation (example: the panelists were all white), so they were going to miss some stuff. The hope was that they could impart more generally how to recognize dog whistles. [They also had a lot of audience additions later on]

She also said that when we talked about racism and antisemitism, etc. - we’re talking about a set of behaviors vs. individual people. She suggests giving someone a chance to walk back a dog whistle you’ve just heard them use and asking them if they know what they’ve just said.

Seth said he knows more white supremacy dog whistles than even he’s comfortable with, and he points them out whenever he sees them.

Keffy doesn’t know as many as he’d like, but he lives on social media and finds it important to recognize them whenever possible.

Heidi took a moment to define dog whistles - intentionally coded language meant to be covertly used within a group or community. For example: “interested in ethnic heritage” ~might~ mean someone is really into their Scottish heritage and actually eats haggis on purpose, but it also might mean they’re a white supremacist.

Seth used an example of a time the host of a TV show he was watching had a spider web tattoo on his elbow - without context he didn’t know if it meant the host just really thought spiders were cool or if he was a white supremacist. For context, Seth would have needed to see other tattoos, or what his political affiliations were, etc. Another example is Norse stuff, which can be totally innocuous, but is also something white supremacists are co-opting.

Keffy brought up seeing the number 88 on people’s user names - it might mean they were born in the year 1988, or it could be a white supremacist signifier.

Seth added that many Nazi’s are not smart. They use this “bullshit numerology” where 88 = HH = Hitler. However, 88 is also a lucky number in Chinese traditions, so that’s another example of something being used in multiple ways and not knowing without context how someone is using it.

Seth also talked about the 14 words - a white supremacist mission statement. So “14 words” or even just the number 14 can be a white supremacist dog whistle.

Heidi brought up the fact that we’re using dog whistle in it’s negative sense, but all in-group communities have their own language they use to recognize one another.

One example Heidi noticed was a show Forged in Fire about blacksmiths. A lot of them wore Thor stuff due to that connection, but slowly over time less and less of them continued to wear Thor-themed things as they’d had it pointed out to them how white supremacists were using those symbols.

Keffy talked about one way to notice if something is being used as a dog whistle or not is to pay attention to who shows up when you see it. When, for example, TERFs swarm to a post using specific language, it’s time to look up the terms used and understand how they’re being used.

Keffy explained what TERF meant, and used scare-quotes around “radical feminist” because he doesn’t see them as being particularly feminist or radical - especially not in the sense it was used in the 80′s. [yup]

Keffy also mentioned the use of pattern matching. If someone is using XX or XY in their bio - well, that’s not bad in and of itself, but if you take a moment to look at their page and you see them harassing a lot of trans people, then you have your answer.

Seth added that watching how they interact with others can be important. If you think they’ve used a dog whistle but aren’t sure, it’s okay to put some distance between you and them to just observe who they’re interacting with and how.

Keffy said it can be important to have friends from many different groups, and if someone tells you that something is harmful to them - listen and believe them. We often learn by being told after accidentally reblogging or retweeting something, and that’s okay. You just have to believe that people know better about their own oppressions.

Heidi talked about how bigots were using the triple parenthesis around names of Jewish people to mark them on twitter - some Jewish people and allies started to use the triple parenthesis for themselves intentionally as a sort of “I am Spartacus” protest. There was a big discussion about this in regards to reclaiming vs. causing harm due to generational trauma. It was important, in that instance, to listen to the Jewish people whose trauma was being triggered, and to believe them about not doing this.

Keffy added that he stopped retweeting as much from people who were using it because his followers had told him it was a trigger for them.

Seth said, as a Jew and trans person, “If I ask you to stop using a hurtful thing, that’s a big show of trust”, so he thinks about that when people come to him in a similar manner.

Heidi posed the question of having scripts for when we call out our friends, or when it’s time to ping an ally to help us out.

Keffy said he’s not that organized to have a script, but he does have some friends that he’s asked to take over. Gave an example of taking T and shifting pronouns, had a friend with a more masculine sounding voice call the pharmacy to ask about it first due to concerns about not being taken seriously.

Keffy also talked about the term calling in, rather than calling out, which is a more personal and quiet approach. He’ll usually DM someone or talk to them privately about these things - unless the discussion has already spiraled out in public.

Seth also said he doesn’t have a script for this, but in person he’ll usually just comment with something like “oh that’s gross” and if asked why, he’ll explain with as few words as possible.

Heidi agreed, saying that person is probably freaking out internally, and won’t hear a lengthy response anyway.

Keffy said no matter how long he’s been working on social justice stuff, when he’s called out/in, he still feels shame or defensiveness or both. It can take time to work through that, so expecting a full discussion right away might not be realistic.

Keffy also advised that if you ask an ally to do this for you, make sure they’re actually getting the right point across.

Heidi shifted the conversation to how to support people being targeted. The first step is to believe them when they tell you something. The point of these dog whistles is to seem like they aren’t a big deal, when they are.

Seth agreed, saying they throw just that much doubt about how they’re being used, so that people aren’t sure if it’s something bad or not. He advised defaulting to at least a base level of politeness when asked to stop using something - you can just stop.

Keffy gave an example of “drinking the kool-aid” to refer to something being cult-like. Keffy gave some background on the phrase coming from what happened in Jonestown. The leader was very abusive and he did dry runs of giving his followers laced drinks. They were punished and even killed if they didn’t drink it, which made it safer for them to assume it was fake again and to just drink it. Knowing all of this, we can see that no one was really consenting to drinking the laced drinks. Hundreds of people died, and their family members and loved ones can be very triggered by the callous and casual use of this phrase popping up in what seems like otherwise-innocuous instances.

Heidi gave another example - death marches. These kinds of phrases are used so commonly that we sometimes forget, or don’t even initially know, the history of them or the gravity of that history.

Seth talked about the trouble with hearing dog whistles when other people don’t. It can be very isolating to have other people saying “no I don’t hear anything.”

Heidi said a panel like this could easily become a “you’re not aware/angry/anxious enough” discussion, but really the world expands more when we learn more about it.

Seth talked about the main stream media often using antisemitic language that they may or may not be aware of, or mean. Examples: coastal elites, bankers. Keffy added that it’s gotten to the point where if he hears George Soros’s name brought up, he just stops listening. [RIGHT?!]

Heidi put it to the audience to give more dog whistle examples for us to be aware of.

One audience member talked about the “from (whichever city is nearest)” being code for black, poor, and violent. It was pointed out that Chicago is used as code for this nationwide.

Another audience member talked about Reagan’s “welfare queen” mythology that was put together on purpose and is still ongoing today.

Someone else in the audience asked how to tell if someone is trying to recruit you as an ally or just accidentally passing on a dog whistle they weren’t aware of.

Heidi advised looking for other clues in their language and interactions. Keffy added that this is why dog whistles are so insidious. The welfare queen myth became a meme that people began to believe in. So if you explain the history and context of it’s origins and watch how people respond to it - bigots often respond to these sorts of things by telling on themselves. You can tell in the reaction how they meant it once it’s pointed out to them.

An audience member gave another example - the peanut gallery. It has racist origins due to segregation - black people had to sit in the balconies and the myth was that they were unruly and tossing peanuts into the theater.

Another audience member talked about “urban” being used as code for black people in a negative sense. This audience member is a white teacher of mostly non-white students and urban can be used professionally as just a definition but she has to be careful about usage due to it’s other association.

Someone else in the audience talked about intelligence, but I missed most of what they said about it.

Keffy added on to that, by adding that IQ is just racist, and if it’s not being used to be racist, well then it’s still ableist so it’s still wrong. [good points]

An audience member talked about how eugenics is used as a dog whistle for “less intelligent people shouldn’t breed.”

Another audience member talked about gas stations and other places often owned by immigrants proudly displaying signs saying “American owned”. This is code for saying “this is the white gas station” for racists and xenophobes.

Someone else in the audience brought up the issue of faux dog whistles, such as the ok symbol. Another audience member replied that the problem is that they become associated with the bigotry anyway.

Seth added that everything is made up at some point or another.

Keffy expanded on that by saying the problem with “just for lulz” dog whistles is that this is how white supremacists recruit a lot of teens and young adults. It might not initially mean what it comes to mean, but it draws people in, which is the point of it.

An audience member brought up the dog whistles of merit, merit-based, and meritocracy - a commentary on reverse racism and affirmative action.

Keffy talked about commentary in science fiction genres about how there’s no more fun adventure stories because of all of these serious issues and social justice inclusion - codes for bigotry.

Heidi discussed ableism and how lots of times people just don’t know they’re using ableist language, but other times it’s done on purpose as gatekeeping. One example was putting “athletic” as what someone is looking for in a dating profile. Keffy added that you could do a whole panel on dog whistles in dating profiles.

Seth offered the example of people referencing Idiocracy as a dog whistle for eugenics.

An audience member brought up people talking about dueling accommodations - which is a real thing - but it’s often used to say that we shouldn’t even bother trying to accommodate people. Also gatekeeping through issues like service animals, claiming people aren’t “disabled enough” to use them, etc.

Keffy complained about things like signs saying “be healthy, use the stairs”.

An audience member talked about people casually claiming they have OCD or ADHD when it’s not true.

Heidi asked the panelists and audience to consider some transphobic dog whistles and gave the example “real women.”.

Seth said when people put “bio female” or “Webster’s dictionary defines womanhood as....” (which by the way isn’t even what Webster’s says but whatever).

Heidi talked about cis women even being attacked for seeming trans - both sides of the political spectrum tend to do this one.

Heidi also talked about fatphobia used in this way, such as making fat jokes about Trump - but that hurts all fat people.

Keffy brought up people who claim that cis is a slur.

I raised my hand from the audience to bring up people claiming queer is a slur as a way of excluding lots of groups beyond gay and lesbian, like trans people and asexual people. Keffy added that this is an effective dog whistle because it sounds social justice-y. Keffy also talked about “get the L out” - lesbians wanting their own group outside of the queer community.

Seth added the phrase “gender critical” as another one that sounds on the surface like a good thing, but is used by TERFs.

Keffy said they often tweak and claim terms that trans and non-binary people use to make fun of them or take power away from them.

An audience member brought up people using respect as a key-word to keep minorities from being angry and standing up for themselves.

Heidi brought up racist school dress codes, and asked people to add more dog whistles to the panel’s # - #HearTheDogWhistle. It’s a process to learn these things.

Seth closed by saying if someone tells you a thing is problematic - stop. Do some research. Even if it turns out you disagree with them in the end, it doesn’t hurt to stop and find out more. Respect other people.

#wiscon #wiscon 43 #dog whistles #hear the dog whistle #bigotry

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putschki1969 · 6 years

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Interview Translations ~ 10th Anniversary Film Pamphlet

Note: Sorry, this is long overdue. I’ve just been crazy busy with work and planning my Japan trip in summer. There’s some nice stuff in those interviews but nothing too exciting so I opted for summaries instead of proper translations (scratch that, I ended up doing a proper translation). Without further ado, let’s get to it. Enjoy!

~ Keiko Solo Interview ~

-- It’s been ten years since you debuted with your single “oblivious”, what did you feel when you first listened to the demo tape of “oblivious”? The demo tape I listened to was sung by Wakana. But it wasn’t just “oblivious”, the tape also included many other songs we would sing later such as “Kimi ga Hikari ni Kaete Iku”, “Kizuato” and “Seventh Heaven”. They were all sung by Wakana. At that time I wondered, “who is singing these songs?” They caught my interest because I was unfamiliar with these kind of melodies and I had never sung such songs before. “What kind of song is this?”, “What kind of world lies hidden within this song?” Wakana’s voice made me feel all these things.

-- What kind of music had you been singing and listening to until that point? Back in the day I listened to a lot of Western music such as R&B, rock and dance music, at that time all I did was “listen” to music. It wasn’t until I came across Ozaki Yutaka-san’s music that my interest in music changed, “listening” turned into “singing”. From then onwards music was all about “singing” for me.

-- Compared to that music “oblivious” was quite a different genre, wasn’t it? It was totally different! It sounded very mysterious! Of course she is human...but because Wakana was singing it the song didn’t even feel human, it felt ethereal. That was super mysterious!

-- When you overcame all the hurdles of trying a completely new genre with Kalafina’s music did you ever feel something akin to joy? Yes. In the beginning I didn’t feel any kind of joy. It wasn’t until about one or two years ago that I felt like I could properly express Kajiura-san’s music, that I felt like I could do it justice. When I look back at our interviews from the time of our debut, I really wasn’t able to say anything substantial. I think it took me about five to six years to be able to sing Kalafina’s songs properly. When I think about it now I realise that all these years I must have suffered from some sort of inferiority complex. That’s why I saw it as my duty to get rid of all my weak points.

-- What kind of weak points? Could you give an example? Well, this is just my personal interpretation...when you sing Kajiura-san’s music, a song might evoke 10 kinds of emotions within you but if you end up expressing all ten of these emotions, I feel like it will ruin the song. For example, during my solo parts it’s very difficult for me to control my volume whenever I have to sing a higher range than my usual bass voice. Singing 「utatte ～ ho ～ shi ～ i ～*」with the same volume is no problem for me now but back then I’d sing 「utatte ～HO（with emphasis on the “ho”）～ shi ～ i ～」. My “ho” would always end up being too loud. There was just too much force in my throat. By singing like that, by emphasising the “ho” of “hoshii” the feeling behind the line changed, instead of 「uttate hoshii - I want you to sing」 it became 「uttate HOSHII* - I WANT you to sing」. For me that ruined the song. I have had troubles like that with each and every song so all these years I have seen it as my task to get rid of all my shortcomings. That’s the hidden side of my activities as part of Kalafina.

-- Your first meeting with Wakana-san was long before you recorded “oblivious”. What kind of impression did you have of her back then? All I remember from that time is her singing. I was actually shocked. I felt like her singing was quite dispassionate and indifferent. Back then I was crazy so maybe that’s why I felt like that *laughs* We didn’t sing any emotional songs during our events* but in Wakana’s case there was just nothing there that caught my attention. She had always been a true vocalist with her classical and high legato voice so I guess she didn’t really fit into that kind of event, I thought she was probably singing quietly in her own little world. Now I know that she is actually lively and loves to talk but back then I had no idea.

-- What impression did you have of Hikaru-san’s voice when she joined Kalafina? When I first heard her voice I felt a sense of translucense. I immediately wondered, “what kind of girl is this?” We had received a demo tape with our next songs and we were told, “there is this new girl singing the demos”. When I listened to her voice I thought it was very clear. I felt there was a lot of pureness to it.

-- So it felt very natural? As if she were a natural born singer? Yes. I don’t have many memories of that time but I know that when we met at the recording studio for the very first time we didn’t talk at all, I just watched her. I am not shy or anything but when it comes to girls I just like to wait and see how things go. When I watched her I felt a a very mysterious and slightly scary aura around her, I can’t explain it, it’s not something I feel about her now. And all of that was coupled with the gloomy lighting of the recording studio *laughs* I can still remember how Wakana enthusiastically agreed with me and was all like, “yes, yes, totally!” I don’t remember much about that time but it still feels very nostalgic.

-- Throughout the years ever since you got together as a group you have distributed certain roles among the members. I feel like the progress of Kalafina’s music has happened largely due to your supportive “leadership” role. While your supportive role might have started with chorus work, am I right to assume that this supportive role naturally expanded to include areas that are not music related? I think that’s exactly the case. Originally Kalafina was known for “Wakana’s voice”, that was our trademark. Those comforting high notes falling gently from the sky. And on the other hand we had a world created by Hikaru’s clear voice. I was somewhere in between providing harmonies. During this period I got closer to them and I wanted to feel what was inside their hearts. I can’t recall which live it was exactly but I still remember that deep within myself I wanted to make sure that Wakana was able to concentrate on her singing. So during MCs and interviews I’d take the lead and draw attention to myself so Wakana would have time to prepare for lives. After all, if Wakana’s concentration wavers our songs don’t work, if she is unwell it is conveyed through her voice. That’s how I just naturally started doing these things, little by little this became my assigned role. Whether it is wrapping up MCs or taking care of various live-related worries during our rehearsals, I felt it would be a good thing to take these things upon myself. I thought that would be the least I could do to make sure that our audience could enjoy Kalafina’s music at its very best. That’s pretty much how I got my role.

-- Isn’t that really hard? ...it is! *laughs* Especially since I am not perfect by any means. But in order to support others I can’t afford to make any mistakes so in all earnesty I devoted a considerable amount of my time to Kalafina’s music.

-- One word to describe your 10 years as part of Kalafina? For me...it was all about “learning”... I learned a lot about music and I learned a lot about people.

-- What do you mean by you “learned about people”? I developed an interest in people. The way people live, the way people think etc...”That’s interesting!”, “I wanna know more!” Something changed within myseld and I was suddenly interested in people, I really learned a lot in that regard. Before my time in Kalafina I didn’t care much about other people. This interest is the source of our very first live activities and it is the most intense learning experience in my entire life.

Keiko got the same questions as Wakana about her reaction when she heard about the documentary (at first worried then joyful). How she felt about the location shoots for the movie (she had fun in Shibuya and walked around areas where she hadn’t been in around six years. She got the chance to reflect upon many things) and some thoughts regarding their 10th Anniversary Live (it was the perfect cumulation of 2017. She felt enormous happiness that day) Nothing new there...

*1) She is referring to her solo lines in “seventh heaven” *2) I guess she means it came off as too commanding or something *3) In case anyone is not familiar with Wakana’s and Keiko’s pre-Kalafina activities => Back in 2005/2006 they had already been signed up to Space Craft and they were taking part in various music events. Wakana was singing in a stage play called “Herstories” and both Wakana and Keiko (Kaori and Ayaka Ito as well) took part in a regular event called “Female Voice Party”.

Scans of the pamphlet can be found here

Next up: Hikaru’s Solo Interview | Previous post: Wakana’s Solo Interview

#kalafina #my translations #translations #summary #10th anniversary film #10th anniversary film pamphlet #pamphlet #interview #keiko

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portfolioshowcase · 6 years

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Interview, Navina Khatib - Psychedelic Colours Over The Horizon

Navina! Do you have a psychedelic vision of life?

My vision of life is free, colorful, peaceful and open-minded. I wouldn’t say that it is psychedelic as for me this term is associated with a certain time, style, music and also chemical supplements. My vision of life is never to oppress creativity, to be honest about your own creativity, cherish your creativity, never give up on your creativity, no matter what they say. My vision of life is a genuine and constant discussion with creativity in order to maintain and preserve it until the end.

A person with awareness or someone in meditation is bound to have a psychedelic vision, yet some supplement with chemicals for glimpses. Where does your vision come from, was it influenced by an event or a spiritual longing?

I think the root of my imagination and creativity lies in my childhood, growing up in the laidback German countryside in the 80s. We had no TV or other distractions back then, so the only media we were exposed to were vinyl records and tapes, and, of course, books. As a child, I loved listening to fairytales. I think one of my favorites was “Tino und die Nachtigall” (Tino and the Nightingale) by Will Quadflieg, a fairytale about a boy who catches birds - until one day he catches a nightingale that takes him on a trip around the world and changes his life forever. “Die Unendliche Geschichte” (The NeverEnding Story) by Michael Ende had a deep impact on my life, too. I recently remembered that it was the first movie that I ever saw, on a friend’s video recorder. All of my favorite fairytale recordings had a beautiful soundtrack, so the discovery of music has influenced my imagination ever since. When I create I love to listen to music, especially ambient music. The mood totally reflects my vision of life and my imagination. I still love music that expands space and time, full of lush pads and reverb. So maybe my vision of life comes from audiovisual patterns.

A large amount of your work consists of landscapes, dreamscapes, psychedelic colors all over the horizon. Showcasing poetry, hidden treasures in these moments. Now again, is that because of a spiritual longing or something else entirely?

Longing is definitely a central topic in my photos. I started photography at age 11 and along with music and film, it was my first love. It gave me the opportunity to totally lose myself – time appears to stand still when taking a photograph – to imagine foreign places and dream of traveling. I always wanted to see the world. In German, there is a word called “Fernweh” that literally means the longing for distance. In addition to photography, I also do films. Fittingly, my first attempt in filmmaking was a short with the title “Longing”.

I love distant and foreign places, but for my art, I feel a simple landscape is not enough. I view things differently, I see more in them. I see more colors and more horizons. I would say that with the abstraction of every landscape, I am referring to the conflict between the perception of our inner and outer world. My aim is the dissolution of concrete reality in order to solve this conflict and even more – to dissolve it.

Are these scapes invented through imagination? What are your feelings towards imagination and its importance in shaping human consciousness?

Imagination is everything to me. It’s free. It’s raw, It’s real and honest. You will find exactly the distance you long for with your imagination. Imagination is life and the engine for creativity. Imagination is protecting ourselves from the pressure and harshness of the reality of life. It’s like a shell that unfolds its beauty inside.

Have you had a more elaborate experience of your consciousness, something that moved you into the unknown? Could you please share that with us?

It’s mostly places that moved me and expanded my consciousness. When I was 20 I lived in California (San Francisco and Santa Barbara) for one year. I traveled a lot along the West Coast during that time – the nature just blew me away. The color and the wilderness of the Pacific Ocean has influenced me ever since. Later, I lived in Mexico City for a year, quite a chaotic place where you could easily lose yourself in all the buzz.

When I was younger I really liked the idea of losing myself. I guess on the one hand to experience my limits, and on the other hand to pull me out again. I have always loved the unknown, so a few years later I went back to Peru to work in an orphanage, which became the content of my first documentary. An extended trip through South America in 2011 brought me most of the photos you can see in my gallery.

A lot of my pictures were shot in Uyuni, a huge salt desert in the Altiplano of Bolivia – the most breathtaking place I have seen so far. Experiencing it has definitely expanded my horizon. Imagine blue, pink, red lakes with pink flamingos on top of it. However, even the most breathtaking nature is still a reality. I figured out that in my imagination this is not enough. By the abstraction of these landscapes, I want to take away even the last glimpses of reality. You could say nature is my muse and inspiration; the abstraction of it makes it complete.

..and does that contribute to why you chose this medium, of being a visual artist?

I can express myself best in visual arts. When it comes to film I show reality. My first feature film “Casa Luz – House Of Light” was about the children of an orphanage in the Andes of Peru. My second film, which is still in the pipeline, will be about personal destinies in modern society. For me film is the medium to document reality, photography to document imagination.

Now, can you please bring us closer to your process? Do you usually sketch first, or use photoshop to create later? What's it like?

Almost all photos were shot in places that are already magical, such as the Altiplano of Bolivia or the foggy woods on La Gomera Island. I exaggerate the psychedelic nature of these places by giving them my vision and imagination via post-processing.

Coming back to the colors, with such an extraordinary palette - how do you think that affects the mood of the photograph itself and also the experience of the viewer?

I started creating it as a kind of therapy - you could even call it a color therapy - for myself. In Berlin where I live, we hardly have light and colors especially in the winter days, so most people get depressed. From the fields of art therapy I know about the impact colors have especially on children. I love the power of colors, the influence they have on our moods and minds.

How do you keep the perspective straight on where you wish to lead the viewers of your imagery? Does that actually shape your experience while creating as well? Do you feel it makes you want to be more grounded before you start creating?

I can tell you what the colors evoke in myself, but I can’t and I don’t want to control how other people might perceive them. I am always happy when somebody writes me a lovely message or elaborates on my work, for example saying it is like a kind of meditation for them. This makes me more than happy, for it means that the colors might have the same kind of impact on them as they have on me.

However, I don’t want to lead the viewers. I don’t want to be explanatory. I don’t want to give answers. People should see in my pictures whatever they want to see in them.

With that, can you tell us about your favorite poem that you have read since you started creating?

The magic of poems caught me at a very young age, the play with language, metaphors, myths, and images.

I love the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. It is really dark, but it sparks so much the imagination. I love how the language is put together. Poe was a master and it really moves me to think that it took him 10 years to finish this poem. In a world where every single second is money and everything is calculated, spending 10 years on a single poem seems unimaginable.

Lastly, What would you suggest or share with other visual artists?

Artists should free themselves from expectations and should love what they do so that this love shines through their work. They should trust their intuition.

Creativity comes from creation; life is creation, creation through love.

Interview with Navina Khatib

https://www.instagram.com/navinakhatib/

https://www.vimeo.com/navinakhatib

Interviewed by The Portfolio

#Interview #Photographer #Filmmaker

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anothertroy · 7 years

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Pretty Green Eyes by Ultrabeat, Rome by Susanne Sundfør, Dead Stars by Covenant, Autoclave by The Mountain Goats, or You Threw It At Me Like Stones by Rome? xxx (I'm so fucking out of it that I just did first five songs on shuffle so uhh yeah. if none of these work I'll keep sending you songs

for curious readers, I offered @bonewhiteglory bad Drarry AU fic based on whatever song she put in my inbox, to cheer her up while she’s sick :x here and hereafter as and when I get to it, Harry and Draco visit a goth club, a place man ought not to wot of, the house in my head, Rome, and discover that war is hell (though not all at the same time and not in that order). (I am splitting these across five posts over the course of…whenever rather than putting them all in one so I didn’t have to cut them, bc I know text on my blog isn’t especially legible, but y’all can feel free to ignore them or read them if you like :x)

Autoclave - The Mountain Goats

hand me your hand, let me look in your eyesas my last chance to feel human begins to vaporize

“You’re totally sure this is where we’re meant to be?” Harry peered at the map. Draco made another, longer, infuriated sound and waved his wand, setting the locator spell glowing again. the light hovered, circled, grew still; Draco didn’t even bother to comment. magic couldn’t possibly let them down and the light was quite clear: this was the place. I knew this was a bad idea, he thought moodily, watching Potter and his maddening frown get closer to the cave mouth.

the Ministry had tried everything to get him to accept an assignment with the Boy Who Lived To Piss Him Off - bribery, threats, withholding Caramac bars in the break room magical vending machines - and finally he’d gone to the man himself to tell him to make them stop, only to discover that Harry had had no idea it was going on at all. “Bloody hell,” he’d said sheepishly, “No wonder you won’t come out with us for happy hour.”“No hour I spent with any of you could possibly be described as happy,” Draco had ground out, “I’d be living a lie.”“Not for the first time,” Harry had grinned, and three days later Draco had agreed to go on a mission with him just to be contrary.

now they were on a damp, damp moor, looking at a damp, damp cave, wearing damp, damp robes and probably likely to find nothing but a damp, damp squib perpetrating what the local villagers persisted in referring to as “the thing”.

“Hello,” said Harry like a wretched 1940s schoolboy, “There’s writing here.” he scrubbed at the wall of the cave with his sleeve. “I…N…N - hold on.”“Oh, by all means,” Draco muttered. his shoes were ruined.“I think it says Inn’s Mouth. Maybe there’s a…” he trailed off, looking at the cave.“A hostelry. Of course. In there. How manifestly likely.”“You are an arse, Malfoy, you do know that?”“Takes one,” Draco said before he could stop himself, “To know one. Great aunt Miranda, can we please just look inside and then can we please leave?” and then he marched past Harry into the cave, because he knew, he just knew his fellow auror and the all-round bane of his life was getting ready to say -“You don’t have a great aunt Miranda.”

fuck my life, Draco thought with feeling, casting a ball of light to illuminate the path and the tragic state of his shoes. it was dark up ahead, though in the distance there was a faint visible glow - probably a campfire made by the total fuckbucket responsible for their having had to go out there in the first place. he mentally went over the report they’d been handed:sheep missing, cows partly missing (non-missing parts dead), also missing one (1) daughter (may have run away), villagers blame the thinghe’d gone over it twice and then turned to Harry and asked, “Blame the thing on what?”“No,” Harry had said with the resignation of someone who’d seen the report before, “They blame The Thing. Not like…The Thing, from the movie, just - they call whatever’s doing it The Thing.”“The thing from the movie?”“The movie The Thing?”“Potter,” he’d said acidly, “If there’s a punchline to this joke I’d suggest you progress toward it rapidly.”

it hadn’t been an auspicious start.

now, the sound of Harry’s more sensible boots crunching over grit and small bones accompanied the approach of the orange illumination, coming to them from around a curve in the tunnel. bearing right, Draco was surprised to find himself entering a large chamber - surely taller than the hill itself; they must have been going imperceptibly downhill all the way in - empty but for a central pillar. atop the pillar was a strange figure, carved and twisted and somehow emitting the light which threw the roof of the chamber into shadow.“What on earth is that?” said Harry, stopping beside him, apparently equally bemused.“The pillar’s Spanish marble,” Draco replied on purpose, “But that, I don’t know.”“It’s…” Harry sounded like he was going to choke; Draco glanced at him sharply and realised he was laughing. “It’s the thing!”“It’s the thing.” Draco spoke flatly, but he had to admit to himself, not without discernible amusement. “Well. So it is. What, Auror Potter, are we going to do about the thing?”“How is this eating sheep?” it was a mildly chilling question.

not one for being caught stalling, Draco approached the pillar cautiously, wand at the ready. whatever it was (it’s the thing, his mind supplied with an edge of hysteria) it was beautiful, sinuous, tactile; Draco wanted to touch it. he had to touch it. the song, the unbearable singing - he reached out with his free hand, maddened by the need to caress the carved arch at the top, where the purple glow was strongest. behind him, he heard someone say, “What the fuck -” but it was as nothing to the communion happening between him and this extraordinary icon, the place where the skin of his hand met its ice cold surface.

“Draco - Draco -” the voice was frantic. he looked up; Harry was in front of him, and also beside him. there were two of him now. just my bloody luck, he thought vaguely, staring from one to the other in irritation. “Draco, your - your hand -”“Oh,” he tried to say, “that,” and he’d intended to explain that he had given it in sacrifice and that Harry should do the same - “Hand me your hand,” he barely managed to say through a mouth that felt clogged and peculiar, shifting. all the Harrys, and the chamber was full of them now, staggered back in horror and sync as he grew, expanding and unravelling outwards into the black light.

you ought to head for the exits, the sooner the betterI am this great, unstable mass of blood and foam

#that's not what Autoclave is about Troy #leave the idol in the mine #harry potter #draco malfoy #drarry #rocks fall; everyone dies

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cosmosqueen · 7 years

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My SINF AU Idea - Part #2

So now we’re going to get to the general idea of the AU I had in mind. Future posts will expand more on it and headcanons I have about SINF in general.

SPOILER ALERT

The basic idea: the continuation of the series that follows the twin’s lives, specifically Sophie’s, after the end of the series instead of that vague epilogue we had.

For any of you who read that horrific first chapter that I wrote and will rewrite if I ever get back to writing (hah! Like that’s going to happen), you would know that the first thing I changed, other than writing the huge Reveal in Sophie’s POV and what thoughts she may have had during it, is to make it so that Sophie killed Osiris before being knocked down by Isis. It left a bad taste in my mouth that Sophie was regulated into a damsel in distress and, thinking further into it, Josh couldn’t have possibly managed to stab both Osiris and Isis at the same time with his arm span. While the swords can be instant kills, I don’t quite recall Osiris and Isis being that physically close to each other and they are massive beings.

Other than that minor change, the idea I had is that Josh would be spending the next few decades training and adjusting to life with a hook while Sophie would be stuck attempting (and later succeeding) to rule the remnants of the De Danann Empire under an alias (I choose you, Artemis!).

For those wondering why Sophie would be the ruler, it’s mentioned by Scathach that the Original Twins were also the Ruling Twins. How could the Original Twins (AKA Sophie and Josh) be known as the Ruling Twins if they weren’t the rulers of the De Danann Empire? They weren’t even officially introduced to the Elder society/council by Osiris and Isis because things went to shit quickly before they could.

While the epilogue did state that Aten and Virginia were the leaders who lead the humans to establish settlements all over Earth, Aten was just dethroned and I highly doubt that the Elders would be so ready to crown him as emperor again, especially when he’s highly sympathetic to the humans, whom the Elders will probably blame for the destruction of their capital city. Now the humans will be more willing to see the two as their leaders since they know that both are sympathetic to humans and have helped free humanity from slavery before.

So the compromise: Sophie, as Artemis, will be the new Empress with Aten, Virginia, and the rest of people she knows she can trust acting as her advisor and Josh being the MIA Emperor. Now, she won’t immediately be the new Empress. Both the Elders and the Humans need to regroup before they can discuss what to do. And even then there will be debate amongst the Elders because she’s only 15 years old and a human, but she’s also a human with magic which has never happened in centuries, and she’s a Silver Twin. The Silver Twin thing will be what ultimately lets her claim the throne, in addition to the convincing Aten and Sophie’s other allies has to do in the background. However, because she’s young, inexperienced, human, and under a lot of stress (an identity crisis, a total upheaval in everything she thought to be true, constantly being chased by murderers, etc.), she’ll rely heavily on her advisors, will constantly be training and learning (magic, fighting, learning, creating a potion of immortality, etc.). Because she didn’t have the full support of the court, the Elders will constantly demean her and there will even be challenges issued to her to show she’s unworthy and because of Right of Conquest and such. Basically, it’s like those historical dramas where’s there’s constant plots against the ruler and everyone has an agenda.

After the first few decades where she stumbles about and isn’t really an effective ruler, she’ll have an epiphany, get out of her depressed funk, probably have the first contact with her brother in decades (even if it’s a letter), and get her act together. However, because the Elders have a different mentality than humans and her enemies are bastards, Sophie will change into a colder and more ruthless person. She’ll still be empathetic and kind, but she’s willing to be ruthless and make an example out of someone if she needs to. She’ll grow to be a competent ruler that doesn’t rely too heavily on her advisors. However, her empathetic side will be largely overshadowed by her new ruthless, silvertongue side since she’s surrounded by Elders and plots. This’ll be a factor that causes conflict between her and Josh since their adventures will make them familiar strangers/acquaintances. Later on, I plan for Sophie to regain more of her empathetic side and balance the two.

As SINF fans know, each title of the book refers to one specific character. The last book, The Enchantress, should have been Sophie, but given the lack of role Sophie played and the bigger role Virginia had that seemed more attuned to being an enchantress, there was massive doubt amongst the fans that Sophie was not the Enchantress and Virginia was instead. To deal with that issue, my solution is that the Enchantress refers to Sophie’s future self. For me, enchantress can mean two things: a woman who enchants items with power and a woman who puts people under her spell. Sophie will be both and not necessarily entirely literal. Sophie will learn and become skilled in enchanting objects. For the people portion, it will be more about her future reputation as a ruler and her future charisma. She won’t literally put people under her spell to make her like her. Instead, she will become a beloved ruler to both humans and Elders.

At the end of The Enchantress, humans clearly hate the Elders as a whole with a few exceptions. That’s completely understandable since they were slaves. But we know that humans will eventually worship the Elders as gods again so what changed? The answer: Sophie. In the centuries that her reign will be (tentatively about 2,000 years), she will find a way to make it so that the two races can live in harmony. Unfortunately for her, she won’t be able to find a way to make the two races equal to one another, so instead she’ll make sure that humans will be treated better, will have some independence/rights while making it so that humans will view the Elders more favorably. It’ll be where the current system of humans worshiping the Elders as gods (and not simply harsh masters) will come to be.

So she’s the Enchantress because her accomplishments seem only possible if she put people under her spell and for her charisma. The part about Aten and Virginia will be leading humans to other parts of the world to make more settlements, but under Sophie’s authority.

While Sophie is busy training and learning to be an empress, Josh will be training with his new powers, getting use to his new limb, and having adventures. It’s already established that the twins are in a time loop and time travel is a thing, so it isn’t surprising if the twins were to meet and interact with past or future versions of themselves. Therefore, in this AU, right after Josh destroys Danu Talis, he’ll be whisked away by his future self (the one we see in the books) and be trained by him. I fully plan on Josh reuniting with Sophie while she’s still empress and for him to be an emperor too. It’s just that the hook is really distinctive and Josh needs to train with his aura more too. So he’ll only come back after he’s able to hide the blade and gain some knowledge about the Elder society since he doesn’t have an Elder’s knowledge and memories to support him like Sophie does. Since the swords are bullshit, I think that it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that after a lot of trial and error, Josh will be able to shapeshift the hook into a hand. It’ll just be hard to maintain which is why he’ll still have the hook as a hook in the future.

Anyway, this AU is about the two growing and their journey throughout the (at least) 110,000 years they’ve been alive. They’ll gain friends, lose them, fall in love, become jaded and regain some optimism. I even plan on them adopting a few kids. They will make a new family with said kids and find a brother in another Elder. By the end of it, they’ll probably seem like Mary Sues and Gary Stus, but they have lived for a very long time and they will become very good at acting.

One of the biggest reasons why I’m not writing this fic is because it’s a daunting task. The twins live for a very long time and even with time skips, this will end up as an immensely long fic. In addition to that, I’m constantly coming up with alternative outcomes or headcanons that I find that I like more than my previous outcome/headcanon. I am also incapable of thinking or writing intricate plots that are prevalent in politics, making it another reason why I’m not writing a fic for this.

Maybe one day I’ll at least write drabbles for this AU, but for now I’m just going to share every idea and headcanon that I can think of.

#sinf #secrets of the immortal nicholas flamel #the secrets of the immortal nicholas flamel #sinf au #my fanfiction #sophie newman #josh newman #plot bunny #fanfiction idea #fanfiction

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vsplusonline · 4 years

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Oscars, movies help pass the time on cruise ship quarantined in Japan

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/oscars-movies-help-pass-the-time-on-cruise-ship-quarantined-in-japan/

Oscars, movies help pass the time on cruise ship quarantined in Japan

Some cruise ship passengers savoured lavish meals; others watched movies or were glued to the live Academy Awards broadcast. The lucky few whose turn it was to get fresh air paced the decks, revelling in a glimpse of blue sky.

Nearly a week into quarantine on the Diamond Princess, tied up at the quay in Yokohama, boredom warred with anxiety as the hours ticked by and 66 more people tested positive for coronavirus, bringing the total cases on the ship to 136.

Health authorities have said the quarantine will stretch to Feb. 19 unless something unexpected happens, meaning deliverance is still more than a week away for the nearly 3,700 crew and passengers, ranging in age from children to octogenarians.

For some, the quarantine could be even longer. A World Health Organization statement on Sunday said the period could be extended “as appropriate” for close contacts of newly confirmed cases.

Many passengers appear to be trying to put on a brave face, flooding social media with photos of food, a young boy and his father snuggling in bed, and shipboard TV broadcasts of a magician – also under quarantine – performing tricks with red silk scarves.

“Princess stepping up its game with food service,” wrote passenger Matthew Smith under a photo of plates of food – including heaps of smoked salmon and large pieces of chocolate cake. “You might have to drag me off the ship when the quarantine ends.”

Others watched the Oscars, which were broadcast live on Monday morning. Informal ballots were distributed to passengers beforehand, which one person hailed as “Important Mail Delivery!!!”

Aun Na Tan said it had been many years since she had viewed the ceremony live. “Normally it was on during our work time, but now we have plenty of time,” she said.

A 43-year-old Hong Kong resident quarantined with his wife, child and other family members did the same. He declined to give his name.

“We were rooting for ‘Parasite’,” he told Reuters, referring to the South Korean film that took Best Picture and two other awards. “We are doing origami; the ship is making instructional videos. We are doing some exercise.”

Getting off the ship was a relief, even for some who left for the hospital.

“We are in a much more pleasant setting than we were on the ship,” said Clyde Smith, 80, from his hospital room in western Tokyo, where he was evacuated after he and his wife tested positive.

“We’re doing great, and right now I am looking at Mt. Fuji” from the window of the hospital room, said his wife Renee, also 80.

BIGGEST REGRETS

The biggest regrets for the couple, from Atlanta in the United States: having to leave their grandsons, 25 and 23, in the cabin they had shared on the ship, not bringing more changes of clothes and being stuck with Japanese hospital fare.

“I would really love a Big Mac and french fries,” Renee said. “I’m getting tired of miso soup.”

The Smiths say they aren’t worried about their health, as they’ve shown no symptoms, despite having the coronavirus.

“We’ve had a good life, if things don’t work to our advantage on this one – so we feel good about life in general,” Clyde said. Asked if this experience would put the two retirees – who have visited all seven continents – from further travels, Renee declared, “Oh, heavens no. This is a little bump in the road.”

Back onboard the Diamond Princess, small groups are allowed out on deck every other day but must wear masks and stay well away from other people.

“We’re out in the bay, docked, so it’s kind of nice,” passenger Adam Waltz said in a video showing him and a companion walking briskly under Monday’s blue sky, sun flashing off the ocean.

But others were less sanguine. One passenger, with the Twitter name Da, said he or she had talked to younger passengers worried about financial repercussions, such as losing jobs, due to the enforced time off.

More confessed to unease later on Monday.

“There’s going to be a shipboard announcement, but I can see ambulances and trucks lining up,” Da wrote. “Now we’re just waiting for more news from the Health Ministry.”

Cruise ship officials said they would expand the entertainment on offer to help passengers pass the time.

Get real-time alerts and all the news on your phone with the all-new India Today app. Download from

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#Politics

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biofunmy · 4 years

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Donald Trump’s Anti-Abortion Policies Have Created A Nightmare For Women In Nepal

Beeju Maharjan

Ramba Devi and her sister-in-law, Dusha Saud.

KATHMANDU, Nepal — On Wednesdays and Fridays, Shikha Sharma was banned from saying the word “abortion” out loud.

This makes things pretty tricky for her, because Sharma is the go-to person for everything young Nepalis want to know about sex but are too afraid to ask.

As the host of a popular late-night radio show, Sharma, 33, takes questions from across the country about consent, queerness, safe sex, sexual taboos, and social mores. Listeners of her show, Khuldulee.com — Curiosity.com in English — can call for free or send her questions via the show’s Facebook page. Sometimes they even track down her personal number for questions or to write messages that simply say, “thank you for your advice :)”

“The most common type of distress calls I get are from young people who’ve had unprotected sex,” said Sharma, who has hosted the show for 12 years. “They’re scared about getting pregnant but stop short of asking where and how to get an abortion, because most of them aren’t aware that there are free abortion clinics in Nepal.”

Sharma’s job became particularly difficult in 2017, when her station bosses first told her that, for two days a week, she wasn’t allowed to say the word, let alone discuss, abortion.

The reason? Donald Trump — and the Republican Party.

That’s because, shortly after Trump was elected, he activated the “global gag rule” (GGR), banning US funding of foreign NGOs that provide abortion counseling or referrals. For a country like Nepal, where the health care sector relies heavily on US aid, the effects were always going to be catastrophic for women’s health, but no one was quite sure just how bad things would get.

Trump didn’t come up with the GGR, but he has made it worse. The origins of the GGR date back to the administration of Ronald Reagan, who opposed abortions in almost all circumstances, and refused to fund it around the world. In 1984 Reagan brought in what was then known as the Mexico City policy, named after the host city of a UN conference where it was announced, which required NGOs to certify they would not perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning if they wanted to receive US government aid.

The GGR was eventually rescinded by Bill Clinton in 1993, and now it only comes into effect whenever there’s a Republican in the White House. When the president is a Democrat, it’s taken off the books. Back and forth, back and forth. It leaves the lives of many women around the world, almost exclusively poor, at the mercy of the Oval Office.

In one of his first acts in office, Trump sat triumphant — in a room full of men — and signed the executive order that reinstated the policy, marking a break from the Obama years. Two years later, having renamed the Mexico City policy to the friendlier-sounding Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance, he went further than any Republican president before him. Under Trump’s expanded policy, which NGOs scrambled to understand the implications of, foreign NGOs that receive aid from the US could no longer even use their own, non-US funds to refer patients to places that provide safe abortions. In fact, if they even mention abortion as part of their counseling or education programs, they and any other local health care organizations they might support could lose their funds too. The expanded rule has closed off entire networks of grassroots health workers — who need aid money the most — from doing abortion-related counseling, effectively choking off smaller civil society efforts that wish to help women but lack the resources and funds to do so.

Beeju Maharjan

Shikha Sharma, host of the late-night radio show Khuldulee.com.

In 2017, no one was completely sure how exactly Trump’s expanded GGR would translate across the world, in countries that relied on the US Agency for International Development (USAID) for health care. For Sharma, it led to a literal gag: She had to either stop using the word “abortion” on air for a year, while the show was supported by USAID, or risk losing funding for her radio show — because for two days a week, Khuldulee was partly funded by US money. This was how Trump ensured that on Nepal’s most popular show about sex and sexuality, abortion became the Thing That Could Not Be Named.

“I started taking questions about safe sex on Tuesdays, and then answering them on Thursdays, hoping the caller was still listening and was safe,” Sharma said. “One time, a health expert I was interviewing used the word ‘abortion’ while taping a show that would be aired on a Wednesday. I had to send the transcript to my bosses, and was advised to cut the word out of the final version that aired. Otherwise, I was warned, it would make things difficult for us.”

Since 2017, experts fearing the worst issued warnings about the repercussions of Trump’s expanded policy, but had no way to assess the impact on the ground. Now, a collaboration between BuzzFeed News and the Kathmandu Post has found that everything rights groups feared as a result of the expanded GGR is unfolding in real time. In Nepal, where one-third of the country’s GDP comes from remittances, curtailed USAID funding has led to staff reductions and the closure of clinics, and women and men have lost access to conversations about consent, contraception, and HIV. The most common health complaints brought to gynecologists by women — prolapsed uteruses and other abortion-related complications — are directly related to the information vacuum created as a result of the gag.

This is the story of how a decision made in Washington, by a man elected to office by US voters, has turned life-threatening for women in one of the poorest countries in the world, where the vast majority cannot access doctors and clinics, where child marriage is still a common practice, and, although maternal mortality has improved, deaths have historically been high.

Beeju Maharjan

A nurse counsels a couple about family planning methods at Paropakar Maternity Hospital in Kathmandu.

To reach Doti, a district in the Far-Western Province of Nepal, you have to fly an hour from the capital, Kathmandu, then drive for seven hours up lush and winding hillsides. As the air grows thinner, and snowcapped peaks become more frequent, a short, steep flight of stairs carved into the rocky hillside leads to a single-story clinic, run by the Family Planning Association of Nepal (FPAN), the country’s oldest sexual and reproductive health advocacy organization.

It isn’t much to look at; its sparse rooms are painted white, with strip lighting, plastic furniture, and the occasional diagram of the reproductive system, but the clinic is a lifeline for women in the surrounding villages. Health care is inaccessible to large parts of Nepal’s population — like, really inaccessible: A 2017 study found that there were only a total of seven doctors, nurses, and health care providers for every 10,000 patients, and most of these doctors are concentrated in urban areas. This means that Nepalis living far away from Kathmandu in places like Doti, farming in villages nestled deep in the hills and mountains, frequently have to walk for days just to see the nearest doctor. And in Nepal, as in other countries where there is a deep cultural stigma around sex, women with reproductive health–related problems are already reluctant to seek medical help.

Ramba Devi and her sister-in-law, Dusha Saud, are regular visitors to the clinic, even though there’s no such thing as a quick trip to the doctor in these parts. Even for a routine checkup, both women must put their farm work aside for the day, walk three hours up and down a steep hillside, and put up with taunts from neighbors who see their medical trips as an indulgence, a way of avoiding work — or worse, a sign that they are failing their one job as dutiful wives: bearing more children.

But Ramba and Dusha know the cost of too many babies. Ramba’s mother had eight children, and Dusha grew up with 11 siblings. With that many mouths to feed, a woman could never hope to leave the village, or look for a new way of life. As they waited for a nurse at the FPAN clinic, Ramba and Dusha sat on a wooden bench, flushed from their long walk.

A few weeks ago, both women had come to the clinic for a “minilap,” or minilaparotomy — a sterilization procedure for permanently obstructing the fallopian tubes.

Beeju Maharjan

Clinics across Nepal are dependent on US aid.

“People said we would die because of the operation, and that our bodies would never recover, but I am glad we went ahead with it,” Ramba, 35, said as she held Dusha’s hand. The younger of the two women, Dusha seemed nervous, fiddling with the many strings of glass beads around her neck, swinging her feet back and forth as they dangled off the bench.

The memory of their last trip to the clinic was still fresh for Dusha. It had taken a while to recover from both the painful minilap surgery and then the walk home immediately after. The women could have waited at the clinic for a while — the nurse had advised them to — but they wanted to get home before it got dark outside.

Despite the lingering pain from that last visit, the women were glad they underwent the procedure. “It’s much easier this way,” Ramba said. “Raising a small family is better. I don’t know how we would get by if we had more children.”

Before the minilap, Ramba used to get a contraceptive injection every three months, walking up and down the steep hill each time she needed a booster. Then, she switched to a five-year implant in her arm. But when her husband left the village to work abroad, she had the implant taken out.

“He wasn’t with me at home, so there was no point having a permanent contraceptive device,” she said. “[The IUD] can cause many problems — it can fall out in the fields when we work, move around the body, anything can happen.”

IUDs can and do get dislodged occasionally, and FPAN’s nurse confirmed this was more likely to happen if a woman is performing heavy manual labor. According to the nurse, Doti was full of women like Ramba, who stopped using contraceptive pills or injections when their husbands migrated outside Nepal for work, sometimes as evidence of fidelity, or because they were genuinely afraid of what an alien implant would do to their reproductive systems — particularly as they labored hard on the hills, farming and walking for hours carrying heavy loads on their heads.

Ramba’s husband, who works as a contract laborer between Malaysia and Dubai, usually only comes home for Dashain, one of the most important annual festivals in Nepal. At those times, Ramba too would get some form of semipermanent contraception, only to have it removed again once her husband left. It wasn’t exactly a fail-safe method — she got pregnant three times this way.

Many women in the village ended up with unplanned pregnancies as a result of inconsistent contraceptive use. According to the nurse, the most common question she heard when the clinic’s staff conducted health check-ups in the village was “How can we have smaller families?” FPAN’s internal records, seen by BuzzFeed News and the Kathmandu Post, showed that boys as young as 17 had begun asking for vasectomies, just so they wouldn’t be stuck at home with a brood of children, like their parents had been.

Beeju Maharjan

A clinical assistant at a Marie Stopes clinic cleans surgical equipment.

Abortion was legalized in Nepal in 2002, after a long campaign by rights advocates, doctors, and organizations like FPAN. But when President George W. Bush was reelected in 2004, FPAN lost 40% of its funds, laid off hundreds of staff, and closed down four projects that taught Nepalis the basics of family planning, according to its director general. Now, under Trump, FPAN has closed down outreach services in 11 districts, along with a family planning project that began when Obama was in office and was supposed to continue until the end of 2019. After Trump’s GGR, it shut down in early 2018.

Republicans in the US frequently describe the GGR as protecting unborn children. The evidence suggests otherwise. The policy targets abortion only very narrowly — forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies has far-ranging effects that go beyond this stated aim.

Multiple studies now indicate that abortion bans do not bring down the number of abortions — instead, they endanger the lives of women who need those abortions in the first place, by forcing them to seek dangerous alternatives. The studies show the GGR endangers the lives of newborns and their parents, by denying them lifesaving education about safe sex, maternal care, cancer screenings, and HIV transmission.

Anil Basnet, a former FPAN employee who worked with the organization for over three decades, was supervising the family planning project that began in the Obama years and shut down in 2017.

“I knew the project was doomed when America elected a Republican president,” Basnet said, seated at the FPAN office in Kathmandu, beside a poster with the words “Sexual Rights Are Human Rights.”

“People involved with FPAN began to resign and look for new jobs after Trump was elected. I also resigned then,” he added. Basnet, who is in his late fifties, has not found a new job since. For the time being, he has chosen to continue working with FPAN’s remaining clinics as a consultant on a temporary basis.

But worse than the loss of equipment, projects, and jobs is the information vacuum the GGR has created around women’s health, by constantly (and absurdly) conflating sexual and reproductive health care with abortions. The Trump administration has even objected to UN resolutions that apply to women, on the grounds that the resolutions were actually promoting abortion by suggesting that women who had survived armed conflicts should receive sexual and reproductive health care.

For women like Ramba and Dusha, every unplanned pregnancy creates a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty and disempowerment that generations will have to bear — longer hours of physical labor, more mouths to feed, less money to send their children to school, young girls who are married off early and sent to their husband’s homes, early pregnancies, and…repeat.

Landlocked between India and China in a geologically vulnerable spot, Nepal is a small country prone to flooding, landslides, fires, epidemics, earthquakes, and avalanches. The US has been one of the biggest contributors to Nepal’s development since the mid-20th century, providing more than $1.6 billion in assistance, helping the country lay its first roads, installing its first telephone exchange, and increasing literacy rates.

A large part of this aid money has been used for health-related programs. Since women make up 51% of Nepal’s population, and women’s health is directly interlinked with their reproductive health, women need doctors who understand a “rights-based perspective,” which is a fancier way of saying “her body, her choice.”

Now that the GGR is policing choice itself, the funding crisis in Nepal has deepened a dangerous gender divide — contributing to a trend of sex-selective abortions that favors male fetuses. According to this flawed logic, common to several South Asian cultures, sons are potential breadwinners and therefore seen as a profitable investment. Daughters, who rarely have the opportunity to go to school, earn significantly less, and are eventually married off — often at great cost to their families — are regarded as an inconvenience.

Hundreds of miles away from Doti, closer to the border with India, Rautahat district has always had it bad — the district has among the lowest literacy rates in the country, scoring low on several Human Development Index indicators like gender equity, health, and life expectancy. This year, the annual monsoon floods in July saw over 70,000 homes, including those made of mud and bamboo, completely washed away.

A dusty maternity hospital in the district here serves a population of 800,000 people with only 50 beds. Stationed next to the Snakebite Ward, the maternity hospital sees an annual tide of pregnant women seeking abortions in the months immediately following Valentine’s Day.

Beeju Maharjan

A health worker talks with patients at Rautahat District Hospital in eastern Nepal.

“What is this, but the result of Western influence?” said Sabita Begum, a nurse who had worked in maternal care for over a decade across Nepal. Begum was joking, and not really blaming the West. While Valentine’s Day is regarded as a Western import that sanctions the public performance of couplehood, Begum realized it was ultimately about sex — and specifically, the very Nepali desperation for sons. This, she said, was the reason she had gained so much experience in carrying out abortions.

“Nine times out of 10 when a pregnant woman comes in, it’s her family who wants to know the sex of the child, not her,” Begum said. “It doesn’t matter how educated they are, people will pay thousands of rupees to find out, and then abort the baby if it’s a girl,” she said.

Begum was seated in her “office” — on a chair with no back, in front of a steel bedframe. Prenatal sex determination is illegal in Nepal, but Begum said that when she and the attending doctors refused to comply with a family’s request, the woman would invariably be taken somewhere else — to another clinic, or across Nepal’s border to neighboring India — until the family found someone willing to reveal the baby’s sex, and abort the fetus if it were female.

In her career, Begum has worked as a maternity nurse at a United Nations–run health care center, at clinics in the plains (where she works now) and in the mountains, and said she encountered the same crisis everywhere: Girls are married off early so that their families no longer have to worry about keeping them safe from other men. Once married, they start producing children immediately, and keep doing so until they have at least one son, and preferably more. Eventually, after repeated deliveries at a young age, Nepali women become prone to prolapsed uteruses — a condition in which the pelvic floor muscles and ligaments become weak and are no longer able to support the uterus, often leading to the uterus protruding from the vaginal opening.

Begum’s eyes flashed in anger as she spoke. “Everybody knows why it happens,” she said. “But what can we do? It’s a health crisis caused by an attitude problem. There is no solution.”

One particularly effective — albeit slow-acting — remedy was the relentless campaign for sexual rights led by USAID-funded organizations that worked with Nepal’s government to strengthen the country’s health care system.

Beeju Maharjan

Sabina Begum, a nurse at Rautahat District Hospital in eastern Nepal.

For years, nonprofit organizations that were funded by USAID trained entire fleets of doctors, nurses, and government officers in destigmatizing sex, sexuality, and sexually transmitted diseases, handling cases of sexual assault with sensitivity and care, discouraging age-old — and frequently lethal — superstitions about women’s menstrual cycles, educating families about women’s rights to study and work and to have a life beyond making babies.

Now, Trump and his policy have begun to undo all of that work.

At a maternity clinic that we are not identifying for fear of endangering the clinic’s funding, BuzzFeed News and the Kathmandu Post spoke to a woman who had undergone multiple abortions so she could ultimately have a son, as Begum had described. The woman spoke on the condition of anonymity because sex-selective abortions are illegal in Nepal.

S. had her first child, a daughter, when she was just 20 and got pregnant with her second a few years later. This time, her family drove her to a town almost seven hours away, close to the border with India, for a sex-determination test. When the test showed that she was carrying a fetus that was female, her family decided she should abort it. Since she was over 9 weeks pregnant, she didn’t have the option of using pills via prescription to induce the abortion and required surgery. Her family took her to a private health clinic where she terminated the pregnancy.

“It felt like I was in labor for about an hour, it was much worse than when I had my first child,” she recalled.

S. said the pain subsided at around midnight when she started bleeding profusely and saw what she described as “a lump of meat” leave her body. “It was over after that,” she said.

S., who is now 33, said she did not regret her decision anymore, but remembered feeling sad at the time she took abortion pills on a separate occasion.

“I wondered why I had to throw that baby away,” she said. After a pause, she added, “But then I told myself I already had a daughter and I didn’t want a second one.”

After the abortion, S. didn’t want to take any form of contraceptive precautions, because her female relatives had scared her by talking about the side effects. As a result, she got pregnant three times — and had two more abortions when the fetus was determined to be female. Finally, S had a son.

It was only last April, after getting yet another abortion, that she decided to get an IUD implant.

“People say I am already fat and will put on more weight, but so be it,” she said.

When Nepalis swap tales of the country’s mountaineering legends, a fond mention is also reserved for the so-called MS Ladies.

This is how outreach workers from Marie Stopes International, an organization that provides contraception and safe abortion services around the world, are known. The MS Ladies are Nepali women famed for walking for days across frequently rough terrain to reach isolated villages in the hills and mountains. Dispensing health care, counseling couples and families, addressing sensitive and often taboo subjects around sexuality, violence, and Nepali traditions, MS Ladies also helped women assess whether they needed an abortion, providing guided, nonsurgical abortions when necessary.

As of 2019, disinformation is rife and sources of good information on sexuality — like the MS Ladies and Khuldulee.com — are fast disappearing. Two years ago, when Marie Stopes International refused to sign the GGR, its local branch in Nepal also had to shut down outreach services to 11 districts; when combined with the FPAN closures, that meant there were no outreach services in 22 of Nepal’s 77 districts.

In the past, FPAN and Marie Stopes employees trained Nepal’s health care providers to set up mobile clinics, which in turn traveled to remote parts of the country, offering care for people who lived on $1–2 per day, conducting screenings for diseases like cervical cancer, providing free health consultations, teaching new mothers how to care for babies, and distributing contraceptives. The work also included addressing popular myths and the stigma around health care.

“There is an old misconception in Nepal that surgeries, particularly those related to family planning like vasectomies and implants, should take place in the winter months, never in summer,” said Tushar Niroula, the head of Marie Stopes Nepal. “People believe that the chances of infection are lower and people heal faster in cold weather — this was true once, but science and medicine have progressed in a way that patients can get help without waiting for the seasons and the weather to change.”

At a bustling government-run maternity ward in Kathmandu, Dr. Jageshwor Sharma Gautam said he feared that the women worst affected by funding cuts would be those from the most marginalized sections of society, because they no longer had anyone who could guide them toward making healthier reproductive choices.

“Abortion is just the visible tip of the iceberg of reproductive health,” he said. “It is linked to things like nutrition, immunization, family planning, women’s overall health, including their reproductive health. It affects family planning, so when we discuss contraception, we also talk about how condom use is related to HIV transmission, about HPV and cervical cancer. All of these things fall under the broad category of people’s sexual social behavior.”

Gautam said that if women could not freely discuss safe abortions with licensed doctors, they would resort to other, more dangerous means to terminate their pregnancies.

“These days, people can just buy pills over the counter at every medical shop, without prescriptions. If a woman says she missed her period and asks for the pills, she will be given five tablets, no questions asked,” he said.

“But this can lead to severe complications — for instance, if women take these pills when they’ve been pregnant for over 13 or 14 weeks, excessive bleeding can lead to death. We are treating patients like this more and more frequently, and there is no way to stop this from happening without being able to talk about and offer safe abortions to women who need it.”

Describing the Bush years of 20012009, Gautam said that his hospital would treat at least two women with abortion-related complications every day.

“There would be several women in the wards, who would come to us after an unsafe abortion with injuries in their intestines [and] uteruses, high fever, and heavy bleeding,” he said. “There were many deaths. It was a terrible time.”

In 2019, things appeared to be regressing once more: Gautam said that the GGR actually made it harder to explain reproductive health to women, because it closed off the possibility of talking about several other related subjects. Manuelle Hurwitz, director of institutional delivery at the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) said it was impossible to put a “human cost” on the impact of losing USAID support.

“Not having that support now is going to have a long term impact on people’s health in addition to more immediate impacts such as the closure of health services,” she said in an email. “The Global Gag Rule is really not stopping US funding for abortion because US funds were never utilised for abortion. It has increased stigma around reproductive rights, and hampers basic information such as where to get services from. In a country like Nepal, years of progress can be set back.”

Meanwhile, Sharma’s notifications at Khuldulee.com are still blowing up.

I’m two weeks late! Why won’t I get my period?

Should I have sex with her?

Is it safe?

Is it normal to feel this way?

Am I pregnant?

Where do I go? ●

Sahred From Source link World News

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#IFTTT #WordPress

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mrsteveecook · 5 years

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updates: I got in trouble because my coworker saw maxi pads in my car, and more

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are five updates from past letter-writers.

1. I got in trouble because my coworker saw maxi pads in my car

Thanks again for answering my question Alison. I did appreciate your insight and the nice comments from everyone.

I was laid off on Friday. The branch was closed and every single person who worked here was laid off (including our HR and managers). There was no hint of it. Hiring was still going on like normal and we got small raises at the end of last year. We were given 20 minutes to pack our personal stuff, handed checks for our outstanding pay and walked to the parking lot. The building was locked up. We were told we would each get an excellent reference from the company with the explanation the layoff was through no fault of our own. I asked the HR person from head office who was there to oversee the layoff about me getting written up and he said it was stupid and wouldn’t be mentioned in my reference and not to worry about it.

(Other than seeing the person who complained in passing I had never talked to her. She didn’t work in my area and I didn’t find out she was transgender until after I was written up and my boss told me. I am gay and I would never want a member of the LGBT+ community or any other person to be hurt. There was no past history between us. The reason for the write-up was that I made her feel uncomfortable and excluded and should be keeping “items of that nature” private. I don’t know why she was looking in my car but they were in a bag on the backseat and not out in the open.)

I have already taken note of all your great advice on cover letters and resumes. Thank you!

2. I’ve become the office seamstress

I informed my HR person that I couldn’t finish all the pillows before the all-hands, but I did finish a set of four so they could show off all the colours. I didn’t attend the meeting as I was away, but in absentia I was presented with a gift card as thanks, along with a few others who go above and beyond to be helpful around the office, which was nice. Something came up that put the rest of them on hold for about a month, but I’ve done and delivered more than half of the pillows by now, and have informed HR that the rest will be done by next week – a much more manageable timeline. They really do look great, and I’m glad I did them, but I definitely should have set timeline expectations a bit better during the first go-around.

As for the quilts, they were not spoken of again, and I am absolutely not bringing them up – thank goodness! I’m reserving that particular gift for immediate friends, and will avoid bringing them into the office when I gift them. In fact, I’m currently looking for a different job (for mostly unrelated reasons) and I’ll likely avoid sharing that particular hobby altogether so I don’t find myself in this position again – or at least take the advice of other commenters who suggested I point out the actual cost of such hand-made gifts if anyone so much as hints they’d like a custom piece to call their own!

Many thanks to you you and the commenters for the insights and support, and happy holidays!

3. How can I increase my chances when I’m under-qualified for a job?

You won’t be shocked to hear that I did NOT get that job — I didn’t even make it to the phone screen stage after all. It was a small government office, but that still meant they were not interested in references at the HR screening stage and I got screened out. I had much too much faith in my reference’s reassurance that he knew everyone over there!

However… my reference was not wrong that he had a large number of contacts. Months later I applied to another position that did ask for references up front, and as soon as I’d stepped through the door for the interview, the hiring manager pointed out that we “had a friend in common.” I hadn’t even realized he’d worked extensively with my reference in the past. He talked to all my references by phone immediately after my first interview and had his mind mostly made up by the second interview, which mostly turned out to be a pitch for me to accept the offer, plus an opportunity for him to feel out if my intent was to stick around for a few years. This place says they actually want someone to start at a slightly lower level and grow into a heftier role as the organization expands.

The pay here is a couple thousand dollars less than the other role’s would have been, but the work is much more related to my areas of interest, and the potential upward mobility could be much, much higher. I was able to parlay my other experiences and the reference into something I’m truly excited for, just like you and your commenters told me! I’m really pleased with how this worked out. I have much more flexibility and responsibility than I’d have had in the county government, and some of the initial bumps were smoothed by other Ask a Manager tips.

4. What do I write/say when I was referred by my late friend? (#3 at the link)

I wrote in because the woman, Leia, who had encouraged me to apply for positions at the state-runTeaching Hospital (TH) where she worked had passed away, and I was not sure how, or if, I should mention this in an interview. Thanks for your compassionate answer, and the kind comments from the readers. I replied in the original thread once or twice and wanted to give everyone a fuller update.

There is nothing really spectacular here. First, it is unlikely I will get called in for an interview there any time soon, unfortunately. In early January, around the time my question was published, TH laid off a lot of employees and decided to leave many other positions vacant and did another round of non-fills in late February, over 700 jobs total. (State is supposedly investigating how this money crisis came up so suddenly.)

Second, I was hired as a half-time library page just over a month ago. (Some people may recall seeing my open thread post under my regular username.) This is an enjoyable job; my coworkers, my boss (assistant branch manager), and grandboss (branch manager) are great. The HR rep who onboarded me told me I’m eligible, after probation, to apply for full time library assistant positions–my new longer term goal. I also emailed my interviewer for a page opening at another branch, who had decided to go with another candidate, to let her know I had been hired. She congratulated me and added, “I think [your new bosses] made a wise choice” which made me feel good all over again.

I do need to pick up a second part time job, but now I can afford to use all the AAM advice on how to make good choices about potential jobs. To be honest, when Library hired me, I was in a position, between finances and unemployment rules, where I had to take literally the first job I was offered. I was just lucky it was a job I was interested in and had great people. Thanks again!

5. I’m a recent grad and I feel like I’m working too much

Thanks to you and all of your commenters for their advice! I ended up deciding that I mostly needed to adjust my expectations and attitude for the job, and that would probably make my experience a lot better.

It worked — for awhile. But the 24/7 demands got more and more frequent, to the point that I had to schedule more than 2 hours off WEEKS in advance, and was met with a lot of resistance to do something as simple as play a soccer game. I started tracking my time, and I went 50 days without a break, including weekends and days I officially asked off to move apartments. I would get woken up at 5:30am on the weekends to work. I worked every single day between Christmas Eve and New Years (including the holidays), when our office was supposedly closed.

It’s probably not a huge surprise that I found a new job in June. I took your advice and asked a lot of questions about the culture and out-of-office requirements. I’m so happy to say that I’ve been in my new position for about 4 months, and have never been woken up to work, and I got my weekends back! I’ve even been assured that our office is actually closed between Christmas and New Years, and I scheduled a vacation where I’ll be totally offline.

You may also like:

I got in trouble because my coworker saw maxi pads in my car, and more

update: my manager told us we were going to be laid off — but she was wrong

updates: husband’s boss is sleeping with married department head, and more

updates: I got in trouble because my coworker saw maxi pads in my car, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

from Ask a Manager https://ift.tt/2ECJt1Y

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newstfionline · 5 years

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America’s forgotten war in Syria isn’t stopping

By Adam Taylor, Washington Post, November 28, 2018

The United States is fighting a war in Syria. It’s a quiet war with debatable legal standing, but it is a real war nonetheless. Estimates of the number of U.S. troops there over the past year run anywhere from about 500 into the thousands.

In theory, at least, the U.S. presence in Syria is about defeating the Islamic State, the extremist group that controlled major chunks of Syria and Iraq in recent years and later orchestrated or inspired terrorist attacks in Europe and North America. Today, the U.S. government claims the Islamic State is near total defeat.

Yet the Trump administration has declared it will be in Syria indefinitely. Does that mean that the enemy is not, in fact, as defeated as it seems? Or does it mean that the mission has crept beyond the Islamic State? In this case, the answer may be both.

The Islamic State has lost almost all of the territory it held at the peak of its power in 2014 and 2015. This is largely thanks to a U.S.-led military intervention--particularly the use of American air power--that began under the Obama administration and continued under the Trump administration. It is also a success that came at a high cost to Syrian civilians, according to groups such as Amnesty International.

But if the Islamic State is down, it is not yet out. Two estimates released over the summer suggested that the group may still have more than 30,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq. And there’s at least some evidence that its military operations are not over quite over yet, either.

Over the weekend, the Islamic State is believed to have killed dozens of U.S.-backed fighters in Deir al-Zour, a province in eastern Syria that is one of the group’s few remaining regional strongholds. Syria’s minority populations, such as the Druze, have expressed concerns that the Islamic State is regrouping in remote parts of the country. And this year, the Islamic State made a comeback in parts of central Iraq with a wave of kidnappings and assassinations.

Such developments are hardly a surprise. Indeed, many experts warned that even after the Islamic State lost the territory it controlled, it would remain a powerful insurgent group for years. But the United States is already moving on to a different--and not altogether complementary--foreign policy objective.

In January, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered an expanded view of American goals in Syria. “Continued strategic threats to the U.S. other than ISIS persist. I am referring principally to Iran,” Tillerson said at an event at Stanford University, suggesting that the U.S. military presence in Syria was operating on an indefinite timeline.

Tillerson may be gone, but the United States has only focused more of its attention on Iran. John Bolton, who has served as the White House national security adviser since April, is a fierce critic of Tehran. Just weeks after Bolton assumed his role, Trump announced he would be pulling out of the nuclear deal reached with Iran under President Barack Obama. In September, he told reporters in New York that the United States would not leave Syria “as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders and that includes Iranian proxies and militias.”

The U.S. government keeps a tight lid on what it is doing in Syria, even when there are horrific incidents such as the recent shooting of a U.S. Marine by a Syrian ally. Seth Harp, writing for the New Yorker, recently made a rare visit to the largest of about a dozen American bases in the country--at more than 500 square acres, it is about the size of Monaco. There he found a strange little slice of America in Syria.

“It could be here or Kuwait or doing training in Texas or Mississippi, but it all looks the same and feels the same,” said one bored, Pringles-eating National Guardsman.

Neither they, nor anyone else, seems to know how long this will go on. President Trump’s bellicose pledges to destroy the Islamic State--and then withdraw Americans from the Middle East--certainly helped him win the 2016 election. Since then, he hasn’t missed many chances to tout the successes of the war. “We’ve defeated ISIS. ISIS is defeated in all of the areas that we fought ISIS, and that would have never happened under President Obama,” he told the Associated Press in October.

But he also affirmed that the United States would be staying in Syria for the foreseeable future. “We’re going to see what happens,” he said. His strongest move in protest of the indefinite American presence there has been to pull back funding that was allocated to rebuild parts of Syria once held by the United States--hardly a move that might promote a clean break from the country.

And by refocusing its efforts on Iran before the Islamic State is fully defeated, the United States runs the risk of setting itself two contradictory standards for victory. If that happens, the United States is likely to suffer at least one loss--and its quiet war in Syria may only get bigger.

#Syria #US military in Syria

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robgrayofficial · 6 years

Link

GOOOD AFTERNOON PATRIOTS!Happy Saturday! This is u/ivaginaryfriend here to help kick off this Saturday recap style! But before we get started on that, just a reminder we have a MAGA rally coming up later on today in Elko, NV @ 2:00 OM ET!!!!As always, if you guys wanted to catch up on any past recaps, you can check them out here!Now, onto the recap!Sunday, October 14th:🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:NBC News has totally and purposely changed the point and meaning of my story about General Robert E Lee and General Ulysses Grant. Was actually a shoutout to warrior Grant and the great state in which he was born. As usual, dishonest reporting. Even mainstream media embarrassed!Princess Eugenie of York was a truly beautiful bride yesterday. She has been through so much, and has come out a total winner!Thank you!Thank you to NBC for the correction!I will be interviewed on “60 Minutes” tonight at 7:00 P.M., after NFL game. Enjoy!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Gay Pede Here That Loves Trump and The Second Amendment!!!Getting redpilledA page with 3.7 million followers on Instagram called “rap” posted this wonderful piece of education. After quickly amassing 100k likes it was taken down. Just imagine the incredibly positivity and change we’d see if we weren’t constantly being silenced. KEEP IT UP, PEDES! MAGA!STOP RACIAL DISCRIMINATION! RACE SHOULD NOT HURT ANY RACE IN THE ADMISSIONS PROCESS AT A JOB OR IN COLLEGE! WHITE, BLACK, ASIAN, LATINO! We should pick based on MERIT!🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:All I’m offering is the truth.Hahahahahah 😂When NPC meets Dragon EnergyMy kids asked me why my pumpkin looks so stupid this year.Monday, October 15th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Trump Delivers a Statement Upon DeparturePresident Trump and the First Lady Arrive at the Lynn Haven CommunityPresident Trump and Governor Rick Scott Deliver Remarks at Eglin Air Force Base🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:“The only way to shut down the Democrats new Mob Rule strategy is to stop them cold at the Ballot Box. The fight for America’s future is never over!” Ben ShapiroThe crowds at my Rallies are far bigger than they have ever been before, including the 2016 election. Never an empty seat in these large venues, many thousands of people watching screens outside. Enthusiasm & Spirit is through the roof. 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Crazy Bernie and his band of Congressional Dems will outlaw these plans. Disaster!TOGETHER, WE WILL PREVAIL!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:Cherokee Nation BTFO Warren's claims & DNA test, saying they are "inappropriate and wrong", "a mockery", "dishonoring" & "undermining Tribal interests"Elizabeth Warren's DNA Results Disqualify Her from Cherokee TribesJudge dismisses Stormy Daniels lawsuit against Trump. Has to pay his attorney fees! Good job Avenatti, you hack.President Trump Signs Bill Requiring Airports To Provide Spaces For Nursing Mothers. You know, because Trump Hates WomynHOLY SHIT!!!!!!! DONALD TRUMP OWNS ELIZABETH WARREN. SHE OWES THE COUNTRY AN APOLOGY. HAHAHHAHA🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Would you hang this in your house? Yes or Hell Yes?I bought an old Jeep, I call it Elizabeth Warren. Its all white but says its a CherokeeLesley Stahl asked President Trump if he will make a pledge to not shut down the Mueller investigation. Trump responded: “I don’t make pledges to anyone, and if I was going to make a pledge it wouldn’t be to you”. This man is a GODSEND."MY DNA TESTS ARE BACK, I'M 0.1953125% MEXICAN!!! TACO BOWLS FOR EVERYONE!Tuesday, October 16th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate Individuals to Key Administration PostsPresident Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate Personnel to Key Administration PostsPresidential Memorandum on the Delegation of Authority under Section 1604(b) of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019President Trump and Governor Scott Visit the FEMA Aid Distribution CenterPresident Trump and the First Lady Visit Florida and GeorgiaPresident Trump Delivers Remarks at the Georgia Operations CenterPresident Trump Delivers Remarks to Red Cross WorkersPresident Trump's Message on Medicare🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Pocahontas (the bad version), sometimes referred to as Elizabeth Warren, is getting slammed. She took a bogus DNA test and it showed that she may be 1/1024, far less than the average American. Now Cherokee Nation denies her, “DNA test is useless.” Even they don’t want her. Phony!Now that her claims of being of Indian heritage have turned out to be a scam and a lie, Elizabeth Warren should apologize for perpetrating this fraud against the American Public. Harvard called her “a person of color” (amazing con), and would not have taken her otherwise!Thank you to the Cherokee Nation for revealing that Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to as Pocahontas, is a complete and total Fraud!“Op-Ed praises Trump Administrations efforts at the Border.” @FoxNews The Washington Examiner States, “Finally, the government has taken steps to stop releasing unaccompanied minors to criminals and traffickers.” This was done by the Obama Administration!The United States has strongly informed the President of Honduras that if the large Caravan of people heading to the U.S. is not stopped and brought back to Honduras, no more money or aid will be given to Honduras, effective immediately!“8X more new manufacturing jobs now than with Obama.” @FoxNews @cvpayneFor the record, I have no financial interests in Saudi Arabia (or Russia, for that matter). Any suggestion that I have is just more FAKE NEWS (of which there is plenty)!Incredible number just out, 7,036,000 job openings. Astonishing - it’s all working! Stock Market up big on tremendous potential of USA. Also, Strong Profits. We are Number One in World, by far!“Federal Judge throws out Stormy Danials lawsuit versus Trump. Trump is entitled to full legal fees.” @FoxNews Great, now I can go after Horseface and her 3rd rate lawyer in the Great State of Texas. She will confirm the letter she signed! She knows nothing about me, a total con!“Conflict between Glen Simpson’s testimony to another House Panel about his contact with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr. Ohr was used by Simpson and Steele as a Back Channel to get (FAKE) Dossier to FBI. Simpson pleading Fifth.” Catherine Herridge. Where is Jeff Sessions?Is it really possible that Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie was paid by Simpson and GPS Fusion for work done on the Fake Dossier, and who was used as a Pawn in this whole SCAM (WITCH HUNT), is still working for the Department of Justice????? Can this really be so?????REGISTER TO http://bit.ly/2HIbOFb ! #MAGA🇺🇸Just spoke with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia who totally denied any knowledge of what took place in their Turkish Consulate. He was with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo... ... ...during the call, and told me that he has already started, and will rapidly expand, a full and complete investigation into this matter. Answers will be forthcoming shortly.WOW, John James is making headway in Michigan. We are bringing jobs back to the State, and the People of Michigan appreciate it. Debbie Stabenow has been no help, if anything, a major hindrance. John James is a star, I hope the voters see it. Polls are tightening!(Retweeting Fox Business) TONIGHT: @POTUS talks 2020 election in an exclusive interview with @trish_regan. Don't miss the full interview on 'Trish Regan Primetime' at 8p ET on Fox Business Network.I will be interviewed tonight by Trish Regan on @FoxBusiness at 8:00 P.M., right after the great Lou Dobbs!We have today informed the countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that if they allow their citizens, or others, to journey through their borders and up to the United States, with the intention of entering our country illegally, all payments made to them will STOP (END)!Anybody entering the United States illegally will be arrested and detained, prior to being sent back to their country!Elizabeth Warren is being hammered, even by the Left. Her false claim of Indian heritage is only selling to VERY LOW I.Q. individuals!Stock Market up 548 points today. Also, GREAT jobs numbers!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:9 Events in 6 Days!! President Trump (MT, AZ, NV, TX), VP Pence (OK, IA, WV), Donald Jr (MI, IN)President Trump reelection campaign has $100 million head start over DemocratsU.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a DecadeKeith Ellison's lead vanishing amid domestic abuse allegations🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:ROFLMAO! YES! MAGA!That Awkward Moment When Even FakeNews Drops YouDNA and Me - Find out if you're 1/1024th American Native too!Real Results! Jobs not Mobs!HAHA. #horseface is trending on Twitter. You know what to do.I'm thinking Trump knows exactly what he is doing...Wednesday, October 17th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate Personnel to Key Administration PostsPresident Trump Meets with Workers on “Cutting the Red Tape, Unleashing Economic Freedom”President Trump Presents the Medal of HonorVice President Mike Pence and Karen Pence Visit GeorgiaPresident Trump Hosts a Cabinet Meeting🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:“Trump could be the most honest president in modern history. When you look at the real barometer of presidential truthfulness, which is promise keeping, he is probably the most honest president in American history. He’s done exactly what he said he would do.” Marc Thiessen, WPostWatched the debate last night & Beto O’Rourke, who wants higher taxes and far more regulations, is not in the same league with Ted Cruz & what the great people of Texas stand for & want. Ted is strong on Crime, Border & 2nd A, loves our Military, Vets, Low Taxes. Beto is a Flake!Ted Cruz has done so much for Texas, including massive cuts in taxes and regulations - which has brought Texas to the best jobs numbers in the history of the state. He watches carefully over your 2nd Amendment. O’Rourke would blow it all! Ted has long had my Strong Endorsement!AP headline was very different from my quote and meaning in the story. They just can’t help themselves. FAKE NEWS!August job openings hit a record 7.14 million. Congratulations USA!“Network News gave Zero coverage to the Big Day the Stock Market had yesterday.” @foxandfriendsHard to believe that with thousands of people from South of the Border, walking unimpeded toward our country in the form of large Caravans, that the Democrats won’t approve legislation that will allow laws for the protection of our country. Great Midterm issue for Republicans!Republicans must make the horrendous, weak and outdated immigration laws, and the Border, a part of the Midterms!(Retweeting The GOP) TODAY is the LAST day to register to vote in Massachusetts and Wisconsin!(Retweeting The GOP) You can cast your ballot before Election Day in:➡️KS➡️NC➡️TN Get out and vote ➡️ http://gop.cm/6016r7aje“President Donald J. Trump is Following Through on His Promise to Cut Burdensome Red Tape and Unleash the American Economy”(Video)(Video)(Video)(Video)College educated women want safety, security and healthcare protections – very much along with financial and economic health for themselves and our Country. I supply all of this far better than any Democrat (for decades, actually). That’s why they will be voting for me!Congressman Neal Dunn (@DunnCampaign) of Florida has done an outstanding job at everything having to do with #MAGA. Now working hard on hurricane relief and rebuild. Strong on Crime, strong on Borders, loves our Military and our Vets. Neal has my highest Endorsement!LIVE from the White House: Sgt. Maj. John Canley becomes the 300th Marine to receive the Medal of Honor.This afternoon, it was my great honor to present @USMC Sergeant Major John Canley the Medal of Honor in the East Room of the @WhiteHouse!Ever since his vicious and totally false statements about Admiral Ron Jackson, the highly respected White House Doctor for Obama, Bush & me, Senator John Tester looks to be in big trouble in the Great State of Montana! He behaved worse than the Democrat Mob did with Justice K!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:State Department provided 'clearly false' statements to derail requests for Clinton docs, 'shocked' federal judge saysUS Treasury employee arrested on charges of leaking reports to mediaPresident Trump to withdraw from UPU treaty, ending the ridiculous US Postal Service subsidy of Chinese package shipments into the US! Chinese knockoffs BTFO! US business and trade wins again!!!Black lady is laying down some bombs.WOWWWEEE. This lady needs going to the top. She's savage. Link to tweet in comments.REAL Pocahontas decedent demands apology from Elizabeth Warren...WEW LADSU.S. Steel workers set to get biggest pay raise in yearsPRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:WATCH PARTY: Texas US Senate Debate - Cruz vs O'Rourke - 10/16/18🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:"you can't do that, it's dehumanizing.... "HAHAHAHAHHAHA how many times do we see headlines like this?A Large Herd is approaching the USA Border. Take Shelter immediately.We're reaching satirical levels previously deemed impossibleThursday, October 18th:🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:I am watching the Democrat Party led (because they want Open Borders and existing weak laws) assault on our country by Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, whose leaders are doing little to stop this large flow of people, INCLUDING MANY CRIMINALS, from entering Mexico to U.S..... ... ....In addition to stopping all payments to these countries, which seem to have almost no control over their population, I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught - and if unable to do so I will call up the U.S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!.. ... ....The assault on our country at our Southern Border, including the Criminal elements and DRUGS pouring in, is far more important to me, as President, than Trade or the USMCA. Hopefully Mexico will stop this onslaught at their Northern Border. All Democrats fault for weak laws!Congressman @DaveBratVA7th is one of the hardest working, and smartest, people in Washington. He is strong on the Border, Crime, the Military, our Vets and the 2nd Amendment. He is a powerful vote for MAGA and loves the Great State of Virginia. Dave has my Total Endorsement!Secretary of State Mike Pompeo returned last night from Saudi Arabia and Turkey. I met with him this morning wherein the Saudi situation was discussed in great detail, including his meeting with... ... ...the Crown Prince. He is waiting for the results of the investigations being done by the Saudis and Turkey, and just gave a news conference to that effect..@StateDept @SecPompeo outside of the West Wing after our meeting this morning in the Oval Office...See you tonight Missoula, Montana! #MAGARally🇺🇸All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they don’t, they will after I speak to them. I am in total support. Also, Democrats will destroy your Medicare, and I will keep it healthy and well!Can you believe this, and what Democrats are allowing to be done to our Country?Look forward to being there. Something’s happening! #MAGAThank you Mexico, we look forward to working with you!Prime Minister @AbeShinzo of Japan has been working with me to help balance out the one-sided Trade with Japan. These are some of the investments they are making in our Country - just the beginning!Will be landing soon. Looking forward to seeing our next Senator from Montana, Matt Rosendale. He will represent our Country well, far better than Jon Tester who will vote with Cryin’ Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi - never with us!The only thing keeping Tester alive is he has millions and millions of dollars from outside liberals and leftists, who couldn’t care less about our Country!Thank you Missoula, Montana. Get out and VOTE for @MattForMontana and @GregForMontana!! #MAGA🇺🇸 http://bit.ly/2Akiepn …Jon Tester says one thing to voters and does the EXACT OPPOSITE in Washington. Tester takes his orders form Pelosi & Schumer. Tester wants to raise your taxes, take away your 2A, open your borders, and deliver MOB RULE. Retire Tester & Elect America-First Patriot Matt Rosendale!#JobsNotMobs!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:US, Mexico agree on plan to handle migrant caravan from Central AmericaJason Chaffetz with the spice!Breaking: Rep Meadows after FBI lawyer James Baker's testimony today: "Rod Rosenstein should resign immediately".MEME WAR UPDATE: The left is creating accounts with pictures of believably-ok looking women and DM'ing to ask about the NPC thing. They are sending compliments and then asking you to connect with them via real (personal) accounts "just in case the NPC account gets deleted." This is likely DOXING.SUPREME COURT: First Amendment May Be Expanded – Supreme Court Takes Case That Could End Internet Censorship, Expand First Amendment – the case could force Facebook, and other companies, to protect users First Amendment rights!PRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:WATCH PARTY: President Trump & Matt Rosendale - Missoula, MT - 10/18/2018WATCH PARTY: MISSOURI AND NORTH DAKOTA SENATE DEBATES 10/18/18🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:He is!BWAHAHAHAHA!!! BEAUTIFUL RED PILL ON R/ALL!I’ve been conservative for one year now. The_Donald helped me get my mind back to normal after 13 years of living in California, with brainwashing from Universities and Hollywood. Life is so much better not being consumed by leftwing propaganda that made me hate the rich and America. Love you pedes!Ridin' that Red Wave feels good.When you say anything remotely positive about Trump on /r/politicsFriday, October 19th:TODAY'S ACTION:President Trump Delivers a Statement Upon Departure#JobsNotMobsPresidential Memorandum on Promoting the Reliable Supply and Delivery of Water in the WestPresidential Proclamation on National Forest Products Week, 2018Presidential Proclamation on National Character Counts Week, 2018🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:Congressman Andy Biggs is doing a great job for Arizona and our Country!When referring to the USA, I will always capitalize the word Country!Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was never given or shown a Transcript or Video of the Saudi Consulate event. FAKE NEWS!Beto O’Rourke is a total lightweight compared to Ted Cruz, and he comes nowhere near representing the values and desires of the people of the Great State of Texas. He will never be allowed to turn Texas into Venezuela!#JobsNotMobs!This is what it is all about for the Republican Party! #JobsNotMobsWOW - Mesa, Arizona! Look forward to joining everyone soon. Something’s happening!! #MAGA🇺🇸On my way - see you all shortly! http://bit.ly/2CwSrvQ was outside of the massive totally full hangar tonight in Mesa, Arizona! http://bit.ly/2HIbOFb #MAGA🇺🇸Beautiful evening in Mesa, Arizona with GREAT PATRIOTS - thank you! http://bit.ly/2HIbOFb #MAGARally🇺🇸replay: http://bit.ly/2AkieFT …[]()SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:ACOSTA CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣BREAKING! (Literally) Horde Of VIOLENT INVADERS Break Down Gate In Front Of Armed Police To FORCE Their Way Into Mexico!Beto O'Rourke supporters can't name anything he's done...Child Rape Gang Trial Which Saw Tommy Robinson Jailed Over Reporting Restrictions Sees 20 Abusers JailedScott Adams Predicts 'Greatest Turnout by Republicans, Maybe Ever' in MidtermsPRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:WATCH PARTY: President Trump & Martha McSally Rally - Mesa, AZ - 10/19/18WATCH PARTY: WISCONSIN 1st CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT & GUBERNATORIAL DEBATE 8:30 ET & 9:00 ETWATCH PARTY: Massachusetts, Nevada, AND Wisconsin Senate Debates🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:SABO STRIKES AGAIN! MAD MAXINEJOBS NOT MOBS!We all won the lottery when this man became PresidentThe President of the United States just tweeted my artwork. Wow. Thank you everyone.Saturday, October 20th:🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:If the Democrats would stop being obstructionists and come together, we could write up and agree to new immigration laws in less than one hour. Look at the needless pain and suffering that they are causing. Look at the horrors taking place on the Border. Chuck & Nancy, call me!Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp will be a great governor. He has been successful at whatever he has done, and has prepared for this very difficult and complex job for many years. He has my Strong Endorsement. His opponent is totally unqualified. Would destroy a great state!Get out and Early Vote for Brian Kemp. He will be a GREAT GOVERNOR for the State of Georgia!Ron @RonDeSantisFL DeSantis is working hard. A great Congressman and top student at Harvard & Yale, Ron will be a record setting governor for Florida. Rick Scott gave him tremendous foundations to further build on. His opponent runs one of the worst & most corrupt cities in USA!Rick Scott is known as easily one of the best Governors in the USA. Florida is setting records in almost every category of success. Amazing achievement-the envy of the World. Ron DeSantis will build on this success. His incompetent opponent will destroy Florida - next Venezuela!SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:77,000 Red Wave non Russian bots sign up for a Trump rally for Cruz. Venue only holds 18K. Red Partaaaay in the parking lot!!Mathematically Impossible!!!!This will never get old. Happy anniversary you glorious bastards!🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:Thanks to Democrats, Republicans have a winning election slogan.No Mega Million winners? That's ok.TRUMP IS MAKING ELECTIONS GREAT AGAIN!WEEEEEEEEEEEW LAD!!!!!!! STILL NOT TIRED OF WINNING!Without further ado, some tunes to get you jamming through all this WINNING:Good For GreatYou're So Last SummerLessons LearnedMakeDamnSureGood Ol' Fashion NightmareSink, Florida, SinkMAGA ON PATRIOTS! #robgray

#robgray

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sportsminorityreport · 6 years

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New Football League updates: June 9th 2018

The XFL has announced Oliver Luck as their Commissioner. He is a very good choice for three reasons specifically valuable to the XFL.

First, he is a huge name in college football circles. He was a high profile AD with a great reputation at West Virginia and then had a high profile job with the NCAA. He was a mover and shaker in the NCAA circles. People know him. His reputation speaks for him. He brings a real level of credibility with the masses that frankly Vince McMahon did not have with the football crowd.

Want to convince football fans that the new XFL will be a sober variant of the old XFL? Hiring this guy is a good start.

Secondly, his experience is in college football. I don’t know how much Luck will help in this regard, but this is the right kind of hire considering the XFL is starting a year behind the AAF. They will likely have second choice of these post graduation players when they start.

The AAF is almost all NFL guys. (Luck spent time in NFL management, but he’s more than that. ) They have displayed a myopic NFL view. They are going to suck up a lot of the NFL training camp fodder players. Now that may or may not be an issue. The AAF is calling itself a developmental league and appears to want all of their better players to leave for the NFL.

Will they block those players from jumping to the XFL?

If they do, the XFL may have to look harder at the colleges for talent. Which brings us full circle. Having the right college minded guys could really help the XFL dig up college talent. Luck may not be a great help in this regard, but hiring guys with collegiate ties is conceptually smart.

Finally, Luck used to run the Houston Dynamos. He has experience with this XFL level of attendance sports team.

Now can you really make it work with rosters this large, at this attendance levels, and this few games...? If the model actually works, Luck is a great candidate to try to make it work.

Their competition’s --- the AAF’s --- announced Teams and Locations

The AAF has announced 7 of their 8 locations and their coaches. Here is the data from Wikipedia.

With one slot left, at least 2 of the top 3 DMA markets will not be served in year 1.

They have not signed Tim Tebow, Collin Kaepernick, or Johnny Manziel.

I am going to grade this data and see where they stand across a wide range of areas. Most of it is opinion stuff, but I’ll say why I grade them there.

Now some of this may be premature. They may chose team names for example. I am trying to only grade what work has been done.

Brand Names

First of all...the naming convention for the teams sucks. I get that soccer does this, but they are a different fan base. Football fans like team names that reference a mascot. Now the AAF may be saving that for more press conferences, but I would argue that is self defeating. You really want to announce the team names as soon as possible and start churning out revenue producing merchandise that makes fans more likely to come out to your games.

These names do nothing to excite and are hard to market, so F’s all around for wasted opportunities.

DMA “value”.

DMA is a Designated Market Area. It was used extensively in the age of broadcast media. It denotes how big of a population footprint a broadcast signal for a station in a city carries. The way to think of this is when you would buy an ad on say a Dallas TV station, you want to know what cities get that station. The country is divided into 210 DMAs. So in this regard DMA is still important for advertising as buyers want to hit a certain region.

The #1 DMA, the NYC DMA has 7.3M TV households. It is my “A+”. LA is #2 with 5.5M. They are my “A”. Chicago is third with 3.5M. “A-”. The next 7 DMAs are in the same neighborhood --- 2.4-2.9M. They are my “B” grades. The next 24 DMAs run from about .9-1.9M. They are your various “C” grade DMAs.

For the most part, NFL teams come from these markets.

The answer “why?” should be obvious.

I rate .5-.8M household DMAs (basically DMAs ranked 35-62) as “D” grade DMAs. That is, they are generally below average in pro football advertising value. Years ago when the USFL had expanded to 18, Donald Trump, owner of the New Jersey Generals, snidely commented that 4 teams should be contracted. Later ABC would tell a consulting company hired by the USFL that they would not lose any broadcasting value if the USFL contracted 4 of their teams. These are the markets where a team can be supported at the gate but they don’t have much of a TV value.

Now this is a VERY quick and dirty look. Some markets have a lot of money to spend. Some don’t. Some advertisers like specific markets. The Big 12 survives because people in the region like beer and trucks a whole lot. UT and OU sell a lot of those ad slots, but in general, the size of the market is a very relevant thing if your intent is to have TV pay you big money.

Stadium Quality

Admittedly this is a very arbitrary thing. If I was doing this properly I would visit each stadium inspecting all the facilities...How many luxury boxes? What state are they in? How much concession space is there? Is there sufficient restroom space? Are they clean? etc...

But I am thinking in terms of fan experience in general. Georgia State is using a stadium that up until a few years ago was a solid pro baseball stadium. The facilities are solid as far as fan enjoyment, but in many ways it is still half a stadium and a bit frankensteinian at that.

Feel free to question any of those grades that you want to.

Appropriate Seating.

Now this includes both the quality of the seating as well as the total capacity.

Lets be real here. The AAF doesn’t have much to sell. The USFL had a ton more. Even in year one, you had four USFL teams that could have won 6-8 games in the NFL. The AAF has no quarterbacks of note. Really their only asset to sell to fans is Steve Spurrier.

On top of that, I am getting the vibe that they will be more like the UFL than the XFL in terms of paying for talent. (By that I mean lesser salaries, not that they won’t pay them --- as the UFL ultimately failed to pay their players at the end.)

What I am saying is that the AAF will not draw old XFL numbers.

15K per team is fairly likely. With that in mind, how many of these stadiums will appear cavernous, ruining the game day experience ala the LA Express in the LA Coliseum?

If the AAF doesn’t have a plan to tarp large parts of their stadiums, I think this will kill this league.

Buy some tarps, gentlemen.

Head Coach Ticket Value

Like everyone else, I was blown away by the signing of Steve Spurrier to coach the team in Orlando. Great Hire. Spurrier has ties in the region and has the personality to press flesh (is that still an ok term to use?) to sell tickets. The dude is OLD so he may not have the energy to do a ton of that, but he will be worth his salary.

I thought the AAF would repeat that thinking with their other coaches... Not so much.

How can I put this nicely...Their other coaches are not exactly fan favorites. Some have burned bridges. Some are not media friendly. Some are stiff. And one is mostly unknown. AND none of them are especially great in their regions.

Dennis Erickson? The guy who jammed Idaho to go coach in Arizona where he was mediocre? Now I gave him some credit as he did help Utah right the boat for 3 years and legitimately has SOME value in Utah, but he’s no Spurrier....

Tim Lewis was the secondary coach in Atlanta for 4 years. If he was the coach of Atlanta, I’d get it more...

I’d understand Childress in Memphis as he has spent basically the last decade in KC and Chicago, but Atlanta? Where is the connection there?

The AAF is going to need their coaches’ brands to sell tickets. I don’t see it.

Head Coach Coaching Value

This is where things start looking up. Almost all of their coaches have some skins on the wall. Sadly almost all of those coaches look like they have fallen off a bit. Still, if everyone is a little off, maybe the fans don’t notice?

I gave poor Tim Lewis a D because we don’t KNOW that he can be good. That doesn’t mean he won’t prove to be the best of the lot.

This is about grading the apparent quality of the hires a lot more than the quality of the coaches as coaches. This is more about how well the management appears to have spent their money.

Grade so far

This is a cumulative average of how the league MANAGEMENT appears to have done so far in setting things up.

I think that really you wanted 8 B’s and no D’s. You didn’t get any B’s and you got two D’s.

I have long questioned the merit of being overly NFL-centric with your thinking in building a league to compete with the NFL and to me that comes out loud and clear with their hiring. With the exception of Rick Neuhiesel, who apparently begged to get in, these appear to be NFL guys who weren’t going to be allowed back in and an NFL assistant who maybe thought he’d never get a shot to run his own show.

At best, it appears to be NFL groupthink. At worst, it stinks of homey-hookup.

Bottom line thinking has to start at some point unless they have a lot more money backing them than I think they do. (Unlikely with the reported salaries).

It doesn’t appear that this collection of cities is going to be especially media relevant, so revenue is going to need to come from the gate. How are these coaches going to sell teams devoid of star talent?

A positive note for the AAF

It is compelling to look at the map at wiki.

There is an obvious clustering of regional teams. Now maybe...just maybe...that will lead the two regions to fall in love with the teams and experience (gasp!) travelling fans that might bump up ticket sales.

I think this may be an accidental benefit rather than a planned one.

The most likely scenario for this placement is that the AAF is trying to seal off warm weather sites. These are sun belt locations. The USFL feared bad weather destroying game day attendance. You lose a few games revenue to bad weather and it wrecks a team’s budget.

If the AAF does not have much TV money to speak of, they would share the same bad weather fear.

Additionally as the AAF and XFL both share a seemingly identical business model, this would likely force the XFL to look to other markets. The AAF picking these sites may be about forcing the XFL into more challenging locations.

I know which markets I would chose if I was the XFL and this would be a blessing.... But...If I was the XFL I wouldn’t be making a MINOR league that is Quixotically chasing the sliver of NFL fans who don’t love football enough to overlook a 2 minute protest prior to the game starting.

You think those guys are going to be loyal fans of low quality minor league football?

It seems foolish.

Just saying.

It will be interesting to see if they are too smart by half.

A final note on the XFL

The XFL has apparently reached out to 30 cities as potential sites for their 8 initial teams. Among the locations “confirmed” to have received inquiries so far are Houston, San Antonio, Cleveland, Kansas City, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Orlando.

San Antonio is a good site for a team if the teams are not mickey mouse, less so if the league is dogged about being minor league. The fans are hungry for serious pro football to come to town, but might not come out for a truly minor league product.

Final Word

I would still love to be a consultant for either of these leagues. I think I could really help either one’s odds of survival. I have suggestions for each.

0 notes

simonconsultancypage · 7 years

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Tallinn, Estonia

The D&O Diary completed its European assignment with a final stop late last week in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital city. With a population of around 440,000, Tallinn is relatively compact. In fact, the population of the entire country of Estonia (with a total land area roughly equal to that of the states of Vermont and New Hampshire, combined) is only about 1.2 million, making it one of the smaller countries in the EU. Though Tallinn is relatively small, it is full of charm and history.

The most important thing to know about Tallinn is that its old town and historic city walls — including 26 watchtowers — are largely intact, making it one of the best preserved medieval cities in Europe. Within the walls, the city is full of Gothic-era houses, beautiful church towers, and graceful spires. The city’s fortifications were begun in the 14th century, when Estonia was a province of the Danish king, and, later a territory of the Teutonic knights. The walls were expanded during subsequent occupations by the Swedish and, later, the Russians. (Estonia was part of the Russian empire from the early 18th century until 1918.) Today, the fortified areas and much of the city within have been mostly (although not entirely) refurbished. After several days there, we found that we were still discovering new alleys, courtyards, and passageways.

We were fortunate that while we were in Tallinn the city was hosting its annual Tallinna Vanalinna Päevad (Old Town Days) festival, which featured a number of musical, artistic, and cultural events and activities at locations within and just outside the walled city. The festival was very cool – and I mean that in both the colloquial and literal senses. On Thursday afternoon, the air temperatures were, maybe, 43 degrees, and the wind was blowing a steady 25 mph, with occasional gusts up to 35 mph. Then it rained. And then – sleet. Eventually, and as happened every evening while we were in Tallinn, the skies cleared, the wind died down, and the seemingly eternal sunshine of the northern latitude late spring shone down on the city’s historic district. The weather did improve by Saturday, when we had a full day of sunshine and more moderate temperatures. Still, we kept out coats on and zipped up the entire time we were there.

The festival events included a broad diversity of musical and artistic performances, including traditional dancing by groups in authentic costumes representing ethnic minorities from the Baltics, from Scandinavia, from Eastern Europe, and from within greater Russia. The musical high point was performance in the Saturday afternoon sunshine by a brass band of students from the University of Tartu (second picture below). The afternoon program on the main stage in the central square also included a rendition of popular music from the Soviet era, including (I am not making this up) “Today I Play the Saxophone, Tomorrow I Betray my Country.” ( I understand from a little bit of Internet research that the phrase is a reference to Soviet-era propaganda which tried to suggest it was a short step from following Western culture, such as jazz, to betraying Soviet principles.)

There are several excellent museums in Tallinn that help explain the country’s fascinating and complicated history, including in particular the Museum of Occupations, which explored the city’s occupation by the Russians and Germans between 1939 and 1991. The country’s two century era as part of the Russian empire ended after World War I. The country’s brief existence as an independent republic from 1920 to 1939 ended all too soon, when the Soviet army invaded. The German Army pushed out the Soviets in 1941, but the Soviet army drove the Germans out in 1944, and the country remained one of the Soviet republics until finally in 1991 when, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country once again became an independent country. Because folk singing festivals were an important part of the independence movement, the Estonian’s refer to their independence efforts as the “Singing Revolution.” A key event in the drive toward independence was the day on which the Estonian flag replaced the Soviet flag on the tallest tower in the Old Town, the Tall Hermann tower, which rises above what is now the country’s parliament building.

Since 1991, the country has been transformed. The current atmosphere is overwhelmingly positive and forward-looking. Estonia joined the EU in 2004 and it adopted the Euro in 2011. Tallinn itself projects openness and dynamism. While the country is now thoroughly Westernized and modern, vestiges of the Soviet era remain. Redevelopment undoubtedly will eventually eliminate the crumbling remnants, but in the meantime, the authorities in Tallinn have tried to make a virtue out of a deficiency by turning sites that might otherwise be viewed as eyesores into a tourist destination. The city has created a walking trail called “Tallinn Culture Kilometer,” which encompasses a trail through an area in which art museums and galleries sit alongside (and are slowly overtaking or even replacing) abandoned buildings from the Soviet era. Because the area sits along the harbor shoreline near the passenger ferry terminals that is already actively being redeveloped, I suspect the remaining Soviet-era buildings in the area will soon be gone.

The primary reason for my visit to Tallinn was to participate in an event on D&O insurance jointly sponsored by the Sorainen law firm and Polaris Corporate Solutions. I was fortunate enough to be able to make a presentation at the event on the topic of the recent global rise of collective investor actions, as well as to participate on two panels on D&O insurance and director and officer liability topics. It was a privilege and an honor to be a part of this excellent event, and it was a great experience for me to learn about the D&O insurance market and liability environment in Estonia and in the Baltics generally. It was also a pleasure to find out how many professionals in the Baltic region follow The D&O Diary.

In the first picture below, I am standing with Reimo Hammerberg of the Sorainen law firm; Peter Schlamberger of Polaris; and Vanja Nadali of Polaris.

In this picture, I am standing with Dr. Milda Pranckevičiūtė of Nasdaq. Nasdaq operates three securities exchanges in the Baltics as part of the Nasdaq Baltic group, including the stock exchange in Tallinn.

While I was in Tallinn, I was fortunate to meet one of Estonia’s leading D&O insurance brokers, Helen Evert, of IIZI Kindlustusmaakler, pictured below.

More Pictures of Tallinn:

Just five tram stops east of the old town is Kadriorg, a city park build from the pleasure gardens of the palace that the Russian Emperor Peter the Great built for his wife, Catherine. The palace now houses an art museum.

At the northern end of Kadriorg is a memorial for the crew of the Rusalka, a ship that sank with all hands in the late 19th century. The memorial is built along the shoreline, with views out across Tallinn Bay and back to the Old Town.

Tallinn’s Old Town is remarkable and beautiful but it is hard to capture in just a single photograph. So, instead, here is a collection of photographs of the old town, its ramparts, walls, and buildings.

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