#i guess we’re making the transition to living analog

[cinewhore]

I need to print maps and then i need to buy all my favorite movies and shows and afterwards maybe buy all my favorite albums and then i need to write down my entire contact list and then print all of my photos and d save them in an album and maybe I’ll buy my favorite video games too and then-

#i guess we’re making the transition to living analog #which shouldn’t but we are not in an analog world at all #so much shit is hard to do without a phone or computer or a fucking email #but i have noticed that the cell towers have been going out more frequently #and i was a top Girl Scout #so that means i need to be prepared in the event that i can’t access it for a number of days #but even that means taking out cash from my bank #but what does that even matter because cash is essentially useless without tech/people #which again states my point that money is fake but anyway #now that’s what i call blogging

[terra-feminarum]

As a detransitioner, how much do you think gender identity is built by gender stereotypes?

I don’t know. But here is my guess.

TLDR; I think gender stereotypes affect gender identification a lot but it’s complicated and also capitalist concept of self is at play.

Long answer: First of all, I do “believe in gender identity”, as I conceptualize identity as a sense of self based on tangible real life experiences. I’m white. I’m a sister. I’m a gardener. I’m a woman who has been perceived to be a male for a certain time period of her life, but I’m not an actual male. And so on. Many people also identify with the gendered stereotypes that are connected to their sex. People identify with religions that might not be true in an objective sense, but the identities are true – people truly are Christians and such.

So what I think we’re talking about here isn’t gender identity per se but the disconnect between lived experience and the idea that you can feel you’re something you have never experienced. We’re talking about fantasy instead of identity. “I wish I was this-and-that, because my mental image of this-and-that is pleasant and my idea of what I actually am is unpleasant.”

Not all transgender people adhere to stereotypes.  What about trans women who just physically transition but never wear heels, make-up or act like stereotypes? They exist, just as there are trans men who are very feminine. Does it mean there aren’t stereotypes involved or are the stereotypes just more subtle? A lot of trans men watch drag and are very into wearing “women’s clothes”, as long as they won’t be perceived as “women” – so they want femininity but without the burden of all things associated with womanhood.

A lot of people with gender dysphoria say it feels entirely physical, like their bodies just don’t match the mental map they have of their body.  Their bodies feel foreign to them; they are repulsed by their bodies even when they are alone.

Could it be they have developed these physical feelings as a reaction to the social discomfort they feel about being associated with certain gendered stereotypes?

Human psyche is very capable of developing symptoms that feel entirely physical. There are people who identify as “therians”, non-human animals. They have phantom limb feelings of tails and ears they think they should have. If transitioning into a non-human animal would be possible, would these people be miserable unless they were granted the access to have the tail they always knew is part of their body?

And then there are conversion disorders. They aren’t analogous to transgenderism but they do highlight the power human psyche has when in distress. Conversion disorders were more common when people didn’t have the cultural vocabulary to describe their mental anguish. Instead, people became blind or deaf or paralyzed or had seizures, fully experiencing these things as true, but having no physical deficit that would cause the problem. That’s how powerful the human psyche is.

I wonder if we have the cultural vocabulary to describe the anguish sexism and patriarchy causes us? Or are we like a soldier who will become physically paralyzed instead of saying: I'm scared and I don't want to hurt anyone.

In addition, culture affects the mental disorders humans experience. Certain psychological phenomena are only present in certain cultural context where the symptoms make sense individually and on a collective level. I'm fairly certain gender dysphoria is like this. Many cultures recognize people who cross gendered boundaries and inhabit the social role of the opposite gender, both genders or either, but I don't know whether these experiences include any kind of distress over one's physical body or whether these roles resemble more something like butch lesbians or feminine gay men.

As far as I know, there isn’t any coherent theory explaining gender dysphoria as something universal and inherent. To me it looks like this: A person strongly believes or wants something (I’m a man). It is incongruent with the body the person has (a female body) and with how others treat that person (societal role of a woman with all the stereotypes attached). This disconnect between the want and the reality causes distress. Just like the disconnect between “I feel I should be beautiful” and the reality of “I’m not conventionally attractive” will cause distress, ruminating, excessive time in front of the mirror, plastic surgery. The distress isn’t caused the physical body itself (being unattractive or being a female) but the cultural connotations attached to this physical reality – like people thinking you’re stupid, or that you need to defer to men.

Personally my transition was very much affected not only gender stereotypes, but what these stereotypes caused: misogyny, lack of representation of women as complex humans, sexual harassment. One huge factor was that transition existed and I was able to find information on the subject, so my fantasy self became a potential real self, and so, in a way, it became reality at some point. If the means to transition didn’t exist, I doubt my dysphoria would have been too deep. After all, I’ve despaired over other things as a young teenager: I wished I could be tall, I wished I could be Japanese, and so on and so on. Alas, “racial transition” does not exist and becoming tall isn’t very viable either, so I grew out of these thoughts and learned to understand I’m actually a human being instead of a character I should and could design to be as cool as possible.

The current capitalist culture teaches us our bodies are changeable, and in fact, changing or enhancing one’s body is almost a duty. Existing just as you are is neglect. You’re expected to self-fulfill by changing your body. You are expected to design yourself like you are a character.

To be honest, sexism and homophobia in this society is so deep, I have empathy towards people who will solve their distress by transition. It's a very individualistic solution, solving nothing at the larger scale. But as much as I wished every woman would ditch make-up and heels and have self-respect, they won’t, either. And so some women transition into men, some women defer to men. There is still much to do.

In conclusion, I think to develop incongruence of gender identity, we need strict stereotypical gender roles, but in addition, it is driven by an individualistic culture of “self-development” and the cultural gaze being turned inwards, everything revolving around one’s one self and self-actualization. What is also needed is the idea of being able to change your sex, or changing the meaning of sex altogether. We rarely despair over something that isn't realistically possible.

#detrans #gender identity #gender dysphoria

[etirabys]

I started reading Carolyn Elliott's Existential Kink because of this blog post, am 1/3 through, and cannot imagine a book that could more appeal to me while also belonging to a genre that will say, “What [this book] is presenting to you here is ... a witchy, tricksy, feminine path to enlightenment that's quite a bit different than the more publicly vaunted, masculine routes of asceticism, contemplation, and yogic saintliness.”

The ultimate operation the book is trying to perform on the reader, assuming the reader has preexisting masochistic tendencies they can amplify, is to get them to notice the pleasure they can potentially take in the most uncomfortable moments of their lives and reframe it as pleasure. 

The worldview/aesthetic the book tries to impart:

[I thought,] "God is one kinky-ass motherfucker. God—the divine—whatever He/She/IT is—creates this world, and this world is a gonzo horror show of war and rape and abuse and addiction and disaster. If God is running the show, God must like it this way!" Now, you might guess that a thought like that would lead to some kind of terrible nihilistic breakdown. But for me... actually, it didn't. Instead, it made me smile—perversely—and gave me a feeling of lightness, play, and possibility. ...

Well if God is a kinky freak and I'm a part of God like all these “spiritual” people say, maybe deep down I'm a kinky freak too. And maybe I can get more in touch with my divine nature by giving myself permission to like all the scary stuff in life, instead of just resenting it. ...

I propose that all our suffering and stuckness in life comes from forgetting that we're divine sparks playing a wild kinky game and that great miracles can come forth in our lives when we reverse the process of forgetting by deliberately reclaiming the pleasure of the game.

The title is well chosen! The book is trying to get the reader to treat life itself as one big BDSM scene that they can lean into if they want.

Which, this is a weird sell, but it happens that I'm totally into this and have been doing it on my own*, so having someone dump a whole framework of doing life that extends this is delightful and intellectually stimulating!

* I used to be normally socially anxious where I just felt awful, but these days when I'm uncomfortable because I said something stupid or cruel, or someone's pushing my boundaries, 50% of the time I notice and go, "whoa, I'm uncomfortable, that's interesting and nice in a way". I do this simply because it's better to feel nice and interested than awful. Raw misery is hard to spin this way, but anything complicated where there’s some human nuance in it provides a launchpad for this transition.

The author describes "orgasmic meditation" where she lies down for a time-limited period, focuses on the sensation as someone rubs her clit, and does not attempt to change the kind of stimuli she is receiving. There are obviously strokes she likes and strokes she is less into, and part of the point is to expand the range of things she can enjoy – going from "oh, not this one" to "yes, even this one". And you can apply this same process to, well, life:

This practice of “getting off on every stroke” can, by analogy, be extended beyond the context of Orgasmic Meditation (or sex) and be applied to life, wherein one considers everything that happens as a “stroke.” As in, comments that other people make to you—those are strokes. Surprising situations that arise—those are strokes. A critical monologue from some inner voice—those are strokes.

Also very congruent with how I (would like to) think of life.

I would never recommend this book broadly. Either you're open to being expansively masochistic like this appealing or you aren’t. But man is it good at articulating a cohesive is+ought framework that, if you could lean into it, can get you to do this top-down reinterpretation of more experiences as pleasurable.

#rambl #existential kink #eti reads stuff

[lovelylogans]

11 and Analogical for the prompt please?

diurnal/nocturnal

ao3 | other fics on tumblr | coffee?

warnings: uh, mention of someone putting something up their butt that should not be up there (virgil is a nurse, for context, no character does that) food mentions, sleep being interrupted, please let me know if i missed any

pairings: analogical, hinted future royality

words: 1,126

notes: more silly analogical should be In This World so the prompt “You’re a monster.” might not be as angsty as you wanted it to be lmao

Their schedules being opposite had always been a thing, but since Virgil’s taken on his job, it’s been to an even more extreme level.

Their bedroom door flies open. 

“I have to rant about academia, are you up yet?” Logan demands, sounding entirely too lively. Usually, Virgil would cite the time, but he lost that particular privilege as soon as he took on the night shifts at the hospital, so he can’t say Logan sounds too lively for six-thirty at night.

About three seconds later, Virgil’s alarm goes off. Virgil groans, pulling his pillow over his head.

“Virgil,” Logan complains (oh, he would so hate it if Virgil said he was complaining.) 

“You’re a monster,” Virgil whines directly into the mattress, as he’s made an attempt to keep his pillow over his ears, despite the fact that it won’t dissuade Logan.

“Good,” Logan says. “According to my calculations, it has been approximately eleven and a half hours since you’ve eaten. I haven’t had dinner yet. What do you want?”

“Hello, Virgil,” Virgil grumbles into his mattress. His warm mattress, that has never betrayed him by waking him up before his alarm. “Good morning, Virgil—”

“—factually inaccurate—”

“—did you sleep well? How was your shift last night? Oh, here, let me—”

As Virgil has been complaining, Logan has walked over to the bed. Virgil thinks, oh, good, he might sit down and calm down.

But no. Logan removes the pillow Virgil has clutched over his ears, and immediately thwaps Virgil over the head with it.

“Hey!” Virgil squawks, rolling over.

“Oh, my apologies,” Logan says. “I thought throwing open the door and immediately demanding your romantic partner, and I quote, wake the fuck up, Logan, you will not BELIEVE the bullshit that I had to deal with right before my alarm went off was how we were waking each other now, or have you forgotten your return from shift this morning?”

“I had to assist on a butt stuff thing!” Virgil says. “You love hearing about the butt stuff things! You’re overjoyed to get the opportunity to rant about the height of human stupidity!”

“At five-thirty in the morning?!”

Virgil opens his mouth. Closes it.

Logan sighs, but it’s less frustrated, more the kind of tone he takes when he’s forgiving of Virgil’s particular quirks and foibles, and he tosses Virgil’s pillow back. 

“You know very well that I am very interested in all your night nurse endeavors, as you are passionate about your career and I enjoy it when you are passionate,” Logan says, as if detecting any potential misgiving Virgil’s anxiety could possibly discern and twist into insecurities. “I also, yes, enjoy ranting about, as you put it, the height of human stupidity. However, I also value my time of sleep, and mentioned this. Remembering your behavior in undergrad, it is not like that was the first time you inadvertently woke me with some kind of fun fact you thought I would enjoy, and vice versa. Roman suggested doing this to swiftly demonstrate my… malcontent.”

“Roman did,” Virgil says.

“Yes, I know,” Logan says, “Never, ever tell him that I took his advice. But I believe we are now even. Do you agree?”

Virgil stares at him a couple moments. Logan is staring at him, very serious, very straight-faced. Everyone else would think he was straight-faced. But Virgil knows his boyfriend better than basically anyone else, so he can see the slight nervousness that this idea has backfired on him.

“Yeah, fine, we’re even,” Virgil says. Logan smiles, ever so slightly. “I keep forgetting that you aren’t on this schedule.”

Logan considers him, before he makes an attempt to flatten what Virgil is sure is some godawful bedhead. And Virgil, with a soft feeling fluttering in his chest at the look in Logan’s eyes, knows he’s forgiven for his earlier “waking-Logan-up-way-too-early” thing.

“Good evening,” he says, and leans over to peck Virgil on the lips. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah, pretty decent, I guess,” Virgil says. “How was school?”

Logan inhales, and it’s the specific kind of inhale Logan does whenever he’s about to start ranting about something, and Virgil tamps down his grin, because annoyed, ranting Logan was hilarious, and also a fantastic start to his day.

Well. Logan in general was a fantastic start to his day, except for when he was on a revenge plot that was hatched by Roman.

And so Virgil listens as Logan rants his way through the politics of academia as he makes them dinner/breakfast (tonight, it’s pasta; tomorrow, Virgil will make it, so it’ll probably be eggs) as Virgil kicks on the coffee machine, and ducks out briefly to brush his teeth.

He and Logan get to have a much more thorough hello kiss that way, one that almost gets carried away until Logan hears that the timer’s going of, and turns his attention back to their food. Virgil’s only a little sad about it.

It’s been strange, definitely, adjusting to their new life; Virgil as a night nurse (extra pay, to help his boyfriend-nearly-husband pay for his doctorate degree in astronomy) and Logan at school means that they have weird hours to be together. But, Logan had reasoned when it first started, a month and a half ago, didn’t most couples only have a few hours together in the mornings and evenings regardless? They were adjusting from their lives as college students; nearly every other couple who made the transition from college to the real world had to deal with the same realities. So it shouldn’t matter that Virgil was waking up as Logan was winding down, and vice versa. They’d make it work.

And they have, for the most part; Virgil likes his colleagues on the night shift, for the most part, especially a particularly peppy nurse named Patton, who he was planning on bringing over on their next mutual off day to have dinner with him and Logan and maybe Roman. He thinks Roman and Patton would get along really well. Maybe even romantically well, but he was keeping that to himself. And Logan was doing a fantastic job at school, idiots trying to scheme to climb the academic ladder notwithstanding. They were living their lives.

It was kind of great.

And so, even as Virgil was making sure that he was dressed in his scrubs and he had everything he needed for the night, as he leaned over to kiss a minty-mouthed Logan, in bed, reading a book before he’d go to sleep not long after Virgil would leave for his eleven o’clock shift, the fact that Logan had been a monster didn’t matter to him.

All the really great parts of him mattered way more.

#anonymous #ask #my fic #sanders sides fic #sanders sides fanfic #analogical

[sawdustandgin]

A Year of Happiness, Joy and Sarcasm: My 2020 in Review

Absolutely nothing needs to be said about the year of our lord 2020 that hasn’t already been shouted from every social media platform like a shrieking alarm alerting us that the ship is sinking. We know. We’re all wet. 

I will not remember 2020 as mask-clad because I didn’t take any photos while wearing one. 

Every December, I reflect on the year through a short essay, allowing myself many opportunities to gush about the music that I didn’t include on my best-of lists but that I still loved dearly. (Though I guess I skipped last year. I found an abandoned draft the other day…) And consistently, I have regarded each year as one of transition. 

I don’t have clear career aspirations outside of wanting to engage with music as deeply and personally as I can; my only concrete life plan is to profile small towns across the country through the lens of its local music scene. So, with this nebulous image of a future endeavor, I have had a tumultuous time with money since losing my job two years ago. I realized fairly quickly, after only a few months of foundering at it, that I was unable to freelance my way to a liveable income. And in all honesty, this was for the best—nothing hurts worse than realizing the activity you are most passionate about has become a chore. I stopped worrying about pitching editors and trying to rub elbows, and I got to work applying for jobs. I, incredibly luckily, secured one after a few more months. The adjustment to being unemployed was a leap for me and my deep desire for a routine, but the adjustment to being employed and trying to maintain a balance between day job and side gig was even harder. 

Then I loosened up a bit. Toward the end of last year, I tried to make a vow to be more consistent with the blog, but instead, I prioritized sleep. At the time, I didn’t realize that it was an either/or scenario and probably would have made a greater effort to avoid my television if I had. But ultimately, I had to accept that my relationship with music journalism was on my terms. And regardless of how [in]frequently I ‘discovered’ new artists (for myself), I wasn’t ‘missing out’ on anything. 

And let’s be real, I wasn’t overly eager to listen to new stuff starting around April. I put so much energy into not losing myself in quarantine that I tuckered myself out before shit really hit the ceiling. When I began thinking toward my year-end lists in November, I began to worry that this would be my most deflated best-of season in recent memory. 

That’s ok, Zoë, no one really cares about top ten lists, I can hear you thinking, colored by a fascination with my determination. But as a double cancer and pisces moon, I like to cling to the art that moves my soul (read: ~nostalgia~). And so I take great joy in spending all of December and most of January repeatedly listening to my favorite music until I conjure a partially arbitrary ranking system and create playlists galore. It really is the best time of the year. 

Of course, there are always a few titles that need no additional spins, whether due to automatic disqualification or simply because I listened so much that I know it intimately. The automatic disqualifications this year were particularly striking. 

A few easy omissions were Chromatica, Positions, and Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Lady Gaga delivered her skip-less album around the time when it became clear that the pandemic was not even somewhat close to containment; my roommate and I cooked to Chromatica every night, singing along to every word. With each new record, Ariana Grande becomes a more graceful songwriter, and it also helps that Positions is a plain ol', boot-knockin’ good time. And the raw power Fiona Apple wields in Fetch the Bolt Cutters would be frightening were she not the perfect vessel to deliver it to us. 

Then there is the category of albums that simply didn’t need my (albeit dim) spotlight: Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, græ, and KicK i are each masterpieces in their own right. They each move purposefully through diverse landscapes, each song a new adventure not bound by genre or expectation. Interestingly, Perfume Genius and Moses Sumney were never mainstays in my music rotation, while my love for Arca is unquestioned. 

That leads us to Re-Animator, I’m Your Empress Of and The Mosaic of Transformation, all of which I actively feel bad for disqualifying. I’m too much of a fan of Everything Everything to impartially write about their new album, though it was one of my most frequently played. I have been writing best-of lists for six years now and I would prefer to write about a constantly expanding, diverse group of artists. That means I can’t keep doting on Empress Of, despite her status as one of our best contemporary artists. Me and Us were truly just prelude to her 2020 record, whose title is a formal introduction. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is also the most talented analog synth musician that I personally have ever engaged with, and her latest album is everything I could have wanted.  

It took some self-control (aka strict time management) to not write a few thousand words about The Ascension. Let’s recall my massive thesis on Carrie & Lowell… Yes, I am a former Catholic who thrives in the ambiguous invocation of Scripture, especially from a songwriter who quite literally shaped my taste in music. Luckily, I’m not nearly as pent up with anger and existential dread as in 2015 when I was, for the first time, processing the physical and emotional distance from my family. This elongated emotional breakdown was spurred by drama between my parents, but was also due to an irrational fear I held about my own mother’s death. Listening to Sufjan Stevens forgive his mother on her figurative deathbed has stayed with me. 

The anxiety I felt about 2020 was almost entirely external, so the gorge formed from the current of The Ascension was not nearly as deep a canyon in my heart as C&L, though it is still an affecting 80-minute journey. Stevens’ production, when coupled with his lyricism, is a breakthrough, though I do hear murmurs of folktronica from earlier in the decade. (I’m begging everyone to listen to Under Our Beds by Consilience.) And for perhaps the first time, there were songs that I occasionally skip. If I still had to commute to work, I bet they would have grown on me. In fact, this would have been a perfect driving album—one that wouldn’t cause me to weep while on the interstate. (oh Carrie. oh Lowell.)

Then there was VOL.II by my dear friend Lauren Ruth Ward. She gave me an opportunity to write a unique interview with her about the record to be printed on the inside of the gatefold, making it a permanent fixture on this most exciting of sophomore albums. I could not justify writing anything more about it, if only to preserve the sanctity of that interview, which I gave more effort and attention than any other piece of writing I had done. It was a wonderful and inspiring experience that I hope to replicate. The most heartbreaking part of the pandemic’s onset, from a social perspective, was not being able to visit Lauren after the record was released. 

With all that said, 2020 was about so much more than the music I listened to. All the digital replacements for physical intimacy during lockdown made me realize that my legacy (aka all my music writing) is fragile, locked into the impermanence of the internet. So I took it upon myself to build a physical archive; in the fall, I finalized a zine template, and the first eight issues are in the can. (So far, I have 19 zines planned. Email me if you are interested in having one!) 

I’ve also been living without a front tooth since mid-March. On one hand, it’s been convenient to wear a mask to hide the hole in my mouth, but on the other hand, all I want to do is bite into an apple. (For almost two years before I even knew I had to have my tooth removed, I had been forced to slice apples before being able to eat them. The abject humiliation.) The journey with my dentists and oral surgeon has been excruciating, to say the least. Who knew three people in the same medical practice could have such mightily different styles of care? [Author’s note: I got my crown after writing this essay! :grinning-emoji:]

In sum, it was my image of myself that I was able to see a bit clearer this year. Each year I think that I’ve figured something else out about myself, which had always led me to believe that I am a most-complex, divine being. But I think a more accurate interpretation is that, put simply, I am not static. My thoughts and emotions adapt to life and life doesn’t seem to stop throwing me around like sneakers in a tumbling dryer. My pronouns are now they/them and while I don’t have many specifics as to why, I just know that this feels right. 

I hope your year was at least acceptable; 2021 promises a host of new challenges, but I think we can take ‘em. 

#year in review #best of #best of 2020 #music blog #music review #Lady Gaga #Ariana Grande #Fiona Apple #Perfume Genius #Moses Sumney #Arca #Everything Everything #Empress Of #Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith #Sufjan Stevens #Consilience #Lauren Ruth Ward #2020 #year in review 2020

[swedeandsour]

Jonna Lee on Demystifying the Aura of Her Viral Fame; Finding Her Voice and Her Die-Hard Fanbase

In her videos Jonna Lee (ionnalee/iamamiwhoami), carries an imposing presence. Her talons drawn over the bloodied shriek of her piercing falsettos, Lee certainly echoes the sentiment of a mythical being where cryptic words of love and hope beckon wondrous melodies through striking iconoclasm. In reality, what we see with Jonna Lee the performer is quite different. Though her intensity apparent in the palpitations of her rave-driven melodies; analogous to what someone might see in the industrial nightlife of Central and Eastern Europe, ionnalee's stage presence carries a certain tenderness to it. A tireless worker for her often die-hard audiences, Lee's performances are vibrant and energetic. There in her live show, vigorous dance routines sandwich between the illuminating wings of "Chasing Lights" and we even see a Russian floating-step that sees her levitate off the ground on during her performance of "y". With her vocals honeyed and mellow despite their resonant carry, the smoke and mirrors of Lee's live element showcase Jonna in a different light. It’s a real joy of performance that we see with Jonna, one that shines a light on her oh-so-human vulnerability that we often forget when she’s draped in faux-fur and suited-up in character.

Speaking to Jonna before her show in Toronto in her co-headlining show with TR/ST, we tried to demystify the mythology behind Lee’s eccentric presence. Kind and soft-spoken, the fearless performer seemed somewhat reserved and humbled by the whole concept of even stepping out on a world tour. There speaking about influences and finding her artistic voice and without dredging into drawn-out cliché, Jonna made sure to highlight one very important aspect. Throughout the viral madness of her initial few videos and now a world tour, none of it would have been possible without the undying support of her fans.  

Words + Photo: Peter Quincy Ng

Part of the interview has been edited for clarity

We’ve been slowly demystifying Jonna Lee. What’s it like being on tour so far and meeting your fans through your newly found infamy?

First of all, it’s amazing to fathom all of that; very surreal. It is kind of like you are in a little bubble working alone a lot, or with me and (producer) Claes (Björklund). We don’t have much connection with the music industry or just networks, so coming out seeing this many people and listening; seeing their response, it’s quite new to me. At this (crowd) size especially, it’s overwhelming but positive stuff obviously. It just takes a while just to process everything.

Tell me about your beginnings form Jonna Lee to iamamiwhoami to ionnalee again, and on how you found your artistic voice. You transitioned from largely acoustic singer-songwriter prose with sweet and mellow melodies to a more aggressively electronic and experimental style - striking and shrill.

I didn’t know I had in me, but in the beginning Claes believed in me a lot. In the beginning I tried to find my voice and sound more like this person or that person. I’ve been trying to sound British at first, because I had spent so much time in London in my earlier teens. At first I had also been afraid to do things out of the box as we recorded; because me and Claes, it’s the same team you know? We both kind of made our transition.

I remember at first, I was like, “No we need to strip back, no compressors”. I just wanted everything to be super natural and organic, and then when everything came out I was really dissatisfied and felt like I was invisible. We started playing around started to scrap everything. I mean we couldn’t because it was already out, but you know mentally start over. Then we did you know? No rules, let’s just do this.

Now I find we’re back again at it and I needed to connected to my personal point of view, because I’ve grown a lot musically as well. I’m also a better producer than I was ten years ago, so I wanted to see where I was ten years after this project. I don’t know if I am going continue as iam(amiwhoami) right now, but we’ll see. It’s a scary thing as well.

When you first started iamamiwhoami, there was a lot of mystery behind your origins and the mythologies of your persona. Were you worried about how you would be perceived or did you think you have convinced people you were Lady Gaga?

Uh no (laughs), I was not but I was hoping to maintain my anonymity because we were a group. I figured if they figured out our identity, then they’d judge the book and my previous work and everything. At the point of exposure (of my identity) though, we were all really disappointed but then again we never really tried to hide anything. We just took advantage that no one in Sweden really cared about iam(amiwhoami), so we were able to continue for quite a long time. When the whole thing happened though, it was just kind of surreal, you know (being mistaken for) Christina Aguilera, you can really plan that stuff ahead (laughs). I don’t think that sort of viral is happening anymore because everything has changed so much.

iamamiwhoami acquired viral fame, and one of the jokes on YouTube is that 90% of your views amounted from someone typing in one of the letters from b-o-u-n-t-y and the other 10% of fans are of the “COME TO BRAZIL!” trope. Was the concept of viral fame difficult to digest at first? Was there any pressure to keep the viral craze running?

Oh, it can’t be like that, I don’t think you can really do that, that whole thing with typing “y”, that’s just the internet doing its thing. Obviously, the other views are because it’s a great song and video. When that happens, you can’t (do anything to) affect it. You can try to force-feed it by doing the same thing repeatedly but if you look at the fifty-two something videos and continue to do quality things, then they those views will continue to be there. You see that in the shows, with a lot of those fans that have been there for ten years and that is so precious. The media coverage, that’s not connected to the actual work though. That’s connected to something else. It’s about what’s popular at the moment and I can’t compete with that and it has nothing to do with me.

In the age of instant celebrity, you managed to secure infamy without anyone really knowing who you were. For you is that an optimistic feeling?

That’s something that I’m proud of, but perhaps too proud of maybe. It’s rare that something is as pure as something like that, so I’m really happy that happened. Obviously I pointed a lot of people in a direction where if they weren’t interested they wouldn’t follow it, like with the whole identity when it wasn’t this supposed person or whatever, but it’s something that allowed me to tour all over the world.

You’ve recently assumed the persona ionnalee, a stylized spelling of your name. In a way, it has been hard to detach your previous effort iamamiwhoami from your current persona. How are the two similar yet different, and is that something you strive to change?

Mainly iam(amiwhoami) was about us (referring to Claes) internally, but it didn’t appear like it from the outside because I’m the frontperson and I created the project. It was always me and Claes. Claes is the main producer, I am the co-producer, we write all the music together and I write the lyrics and the melodies as well.

But for ionnalee, in iam(amiwhoami), I’ve never written from the point of “I”, from my perspective, my life and what concerns me. Also I produce everything myself but with some collaborations with Claes. He’s always like, “let’s do this!” playing some instruments. We love working together, we share a studio together. We have also had some of the same people working like (videographer) John Strandh and a few other ones were involved with iam(amiwhoami). So (the difference) it feels more like a project, not a person.

Both your projects have a very substantial audiovisual component to them and actually all you’re your singles follow up with a video. That’s quite a daunting task to say the least as music videos are huge commitments in time and in financial resources. How do you keep things fresh without blowing the budget?

Like financially, it’s always a bit of a struggle with how much time we can put in and with what gear we can produce with. We don’t have the funds to rent a lot of expensive stuff, so we relied a lot on what we could afford with our friends and stuff who want to help us create. For example, my brother Viktor (Kumlin) has always been John’s gaffer and cinematographer, even though he’s now a cinematographer himself. That’s one thing, but keeping the quality we will always make something because we feel like we have something to say and that’s easy then. You have the vision, you have the script, you have the song and everything’s together. If I would have continued making a video for every song like with iamamiwhoami that would be something that in the end would be something that wears out. I’m doing things differently now, to be more concentrated because I don’t want to being doing something just for the sake of format, like where I have to make a video.

Going back to the visual aspect, there is definitely the mythology; the mystique of “bounty” and “kin” but what really seems to be the underlying motif is the connection between the human connection to nature and the cosmos. Can you tell us how that inspires you, your imagery and music?

There are two sides to that; there’s creation in what we have done and the normative and traditional ways of doing things, then there’s creation, nature and how we connect to folklore. It’s what I grew up with and what my collaborators also did, so I guess it goes back to a question of visual aspect and it’s aesthetic. It’s a really hard question to answer.

Music is always a collaborative effor especially in the world of Jonna Lee, but what is most surprising is your connection to your fanbase. From the audiovisual aspect of in concert to your live shows, tell us how that has been? I suppose it has to be humbling but at the same time intimidating knowing that you have to deliver essentially for what they have paid for.

They are 50% of everything; they shaped the way the world tour acted. I didn’t think I would have toured (otherwise) because it would have been a hopeless thing. They’re communicating, live-chatting everything, I mean it’s sort of cliché but for ten years that’s really been the core of it all, otherwise it wouldn’t have been as interesting to create. They want to want to be part of it, that’s how I see it.

I know there have been many so-to-speak deeper questions being asked, but being the riddle and enigma you are, there is also an element to absurdity to all of this. Do you ever laugh at the all the toilet paper, cardboard boxes, glasses of milk, aluminum foil, morphsuits and fake fur you’ve used?

I mean that’s part of it; doing it in a different way. I mean I am laughing it all the time, like (the video) for “Some Body” that just came out today, editing it with all the common themes. It’s important to have that self-distance with yourself so that you don’t go in and become too self-absorbed. So humor is a good tool, because it also speaks to people and it’s nice and it makes you feel good and it’s not just (speaking mockingly) fashion! You know, it needs to have its human side.

You can check out ionnalee’s latest video for “Some Body” below:

#ionnalee #iamamiwhoami #jonna lee #swedish pop

[thecinephale]

Super Girl: The Effort to Look Female

Harrisonburg is not rural Virginia. It’s a city. It inhabits over 50,000 people, includes James Madison University, and has gone Democrat every presidential election since 2008. Still, I spent the last few weeks with my stomach in knots, working out a strategy for my weekend there. While the wedding I was attending was right on the JMU campus, our Airbnb was deeper into Rockingham County, my girlfriend’s grandma lives in Stuart’s Draft, and we had to drive through all sorts of places to get there and back from Brooklyn. 

And as my friend Kelly said, “It’s a college town, sure, but there IS a Cracker Barrel.”

***

Next week marks my one year on hormones. Some trans people call this a second birthday, but for me that date is too nebulous. Do I claim the doctor’s appointment that acted as a first consultation? Or the first time I let a green oval of estrogen slowly dissolve under my tongue? Maybe it’s a month further when my bloodwork came back normal and I began taking a proper dosage?  

I prefer to think of transitioning as a process with many beginnings. If I had to pick a date, it would be May 12, 2017, when I fully came out to myself. But even this erases the person I was at 16 who dressed in drag for the first time. 

A year on hormones doesn’t feel like a landmark. It feels like I’m running out of time. Everyone is different, but I know generally there’s a timeline of when changes occur and when they stop. Some people claim it’s a four year process, but most people see the majority of changes in the first two years. I’m halfway there.

***

Sunday night the first trans superhero appeared in mainstream media. Nicole Maines portrayed the character of Nia Nal on The CW’s Supergirl in its fourth season premiere. Like hormone birthdays, this monumental event can’t be reduced to a single day. Nia isn’t a superhero yet, for now just a reporter working under Kara/Supergirl. And her transness has not been discussed. Both are known because they were announced at Comic Con back in July. The first trans superhero in mainstream media, played by a trans actress. 

Nicole Maines knew she was trans when she was 3 years old. By the time she was able to vote, Maines had successfully sued her school district, ensuring basic human rights for all transgender students in her home state of Maine. The CW’s marketing team has played up the “real life hero plays on-screen hero” angle and they’re not wrong. 

I knew I was trans 20 years later in my life, after I’d finished my first puberty and voted in two presidential elections. Maines and I have drastically different experiences of transness, and yet I spent the last several months watching 65 episodes of Supergirl (plus crossovers!) to prepare for her debut this week. Sure, most trans women don’t look like Nicole Maines. Most cis women don’t look like Melissa Benoist. This is how this works.

***

Once I decided to go on this trip to Virginia, I also had to decide how I was going to present. I’ve been, as they say, full-time since February. Some days I just wear jeans and a t-shirt, like most women, but it’s been a long time since I’ve actively pretended to be a man. It always made me feel awful and as my breasts grew (now at a C cup!) it became more and more difficult. My girlfriend’s extended family knew she was dating a woman, but didn’t know I was trans. I felt up to the challenge. This weekend I was just a woman. Period.

It’s been my experience that the most mindlessly validating individuals are those I’d least expect: catcallers and the elderly. My guess is they have limited knowledge of transness and classically feminine signifiers like a skirt or long hair makes their animal brain think woman. Of course, if they notice their “mistake” the catcallers will be especially cruel. Still, these experiences factored into my expectation that a high femme presentation would get me through this weekend. 

I have no idea what I look like. I’m not sure I ever will. Intellectually I know my face has feminized, but I don’t know how much. I don’t know why sometimes I get correctly gendered, but mostly not. I don’t know if people are just humoring me or saying what they’re supposed to or being kind when they say “Miss.”

I appreciate this effort, but it’s not what I want. I want to look in the mirror and see a woman, I want the people in my life to look at me and see a woman, and I want strangers to look at me and see a woman.

In Virginia, nobody saw a woman.

***

The most trans-related scene in Nicole Maines’ first episode didn’t feature her at all. Martian J’onn J’onzz (David Harewood), recently retired, has joined an alien support group. While Supergirl has previously leaned hard on the alien as immigrant analogy, this scene isn’t the first time the show has equated alien status with queerness. Season two introduced an underground alien bar that was obviously meant to evoke the historic haven of the gay bar.  

An alien that looks human begins by saying he’s at the group to share his happiness. “For the first time since I’ve been on this planet I feel like I fit in,” he says with a smile. “And it’s because of this.” He taps a device on the side of his head that reveals his true alien form, before switching back to the human veneer. 

An older alien who looks human but has pointed ears and tusks on his forearms pushes back. “Who decides what’s normal? Why should we have to wear these devices that change our appearance so we can be tolerated?”

The first alien responds with the obvious: “Well, that’s easy for you to say. You just look like a Tolkien fan.”

***

Whether we want to look cis and whether we have the ability to look cis is certain to be a heated topic between trans people, because it’s often a heated topic within ourselves. Everyone is taking stock of what they have and what they want. And sometimes it’s impossible to distinguish what we truly need to feel okay and what society tells us we need. I identify as a binary trans woman, not because I believe in the gender binary, but because I’m close enough that I can live (for now) with that conformity. The more gender non-conforming you naturally are and the more gender non-conforming you desire to be the more external pressure you’ll receive.

I’m 5’5 and 110 pounds and within my first three months on hormones I’d developed breasts. These are my natural privileges. My body hair, facial hair, and Adam’s apple are my negatives. The curly hair on my head and my masculine but not that masculine face are up for debate. Every week I get an hour of electrolysis done on my face, which is the process of hot needles and tweezers manually killing every hair follicle. It’s more painful than it sounds. I’m one year into this process and have at least another year left. It costs $75 per session and my ability to afford that at all is another privilege, while the huge chunk of my income that takes up is another negative.

My facial hair is my biggest insecurity and whenever I get misgendered I assume that’s the reason. My mom regularly insists it’s my Adam’s apple and if I would just get that surgically reduced I’d be able to “pass.” The truth is probably more complex. A mix between stubble, the Adam’s apple, and the small characteristics that are targeted in a comprehensive surgical process known as Facial Feminization Surgery. 

I’ve never wanted FFS. I can’t even decide if I want the Adam’s apple surgery. Going on hormones was such an easy, obvious choice for me, but these surgeries can feel like a betrayal of my transness. I don’t want to look cis. But I do want to look like a woman. I’ve started to worry that for the rest of the world those will always be the same thing.

Due to my size I thought I would be like the alien who looks pretty normal but just has tusks on his arms. I could proudly be like, “Look at my tusks/Adam’s apple! I’m an alien/trans. Deal with it.” Maybe I’m really the other alien, whose life is consumed by their alien status unless they change themselves. Or maybe we’re all both aliens and the support group is our minds. Two sides debating, one that looks in the mirror and sees a woman with some unique qualities, another that looks in the mirror and sees a man who needs to change.

***

I wasn’t misgendered until halfway through the wedding reception. I certainly got stares, but it was unclear whether those were lesbian couple stares or transgender stares. I chose to think lesbian couple. Last week my electrologist worked under my jaw so I could wear a full face of makeup. I wore a blue and white Kate Spade dress that was conservative yet flattering. I had on heels and my hair was up. It was the most femme I’ve ever looked. If a random catcaller correctly gendered me the week before when I was wearing a sweatshirt and no makeup, then surely my gender had registered now.

Again, the goal is not that no one knows I’m trans. The goal is for people, without thinking, to say “she.” If afterwards they go “Hmm is this one of those transgendereds I’ve read about?” then fine. But I want to win over the gut instinct. I know this is wrong. Our identities shouldn’t require any external validation. But they do. 

Once I began interacting with people and there was cause to gender me, I did about 50/50. But even when correct there was a pause. I suddenly felt very foolish. This idea I had that I was my harshest critic, that the man I saw in the mirror would look like a woman to these Virginians, was painfully misguided. I look how I look. It will continue to change gradually as I continue hormones and electrolysis, and this may or may not change how others perceive me. I can then choose to alter my appearance further with surgeries or, simply, accept the way I look.

***

“There’s nothing slight about fashion,” Nia says pitching a story. “It’s one of the most visceral forms of art. What we choose to wear tells a story about who we are.” A trans woman believing in the power of presentation is not exactly groundbreaking. But the show has always been filled with clichés that work because they’re true. 

What struck me most watching Maines’ debut was the immediate fondness I had for her. This, of course, has as much to do with talent and charisma as it does transness. Maines injects Nia with an immediate likability, an awkwardness that recalls season one Kara, but with an added vulnerability. I’d framed this character as a necessary first step. Sure, she looks like Nicole Maines… still a trans superhero! But watching her on screen I became very aware that I don’t know Nicole’s insecurities and I don’t know Nia’s. I don’t know anybody’s experience of transness except my own. I don’t even know what gender is or what it means to be trans. Nobody does. We may craft personal narratives to decipher our wants and needs. Cis society may craft narratives to understand, or, more commonly, to erase. But we don’t know. I don’t know why sometimes I look one way to some people and a different way to other people. I don’t know why I have some insecurities and not others. I don’t know why some clothes feel good. Or why some do not.

What I do know is that it felt good to see Nicole Maines on screen. I know that when Kara looked at her and said, “Oh my God. You’re me,” I thought, no. She’s me.

#Supergirl #trans #transgender #Nicole Maines #Melissa Benoist #Nia Nal #Kara Danvers #LGBTQIA #The CW #CWOpentoAll #weddings #cisnormativity #gender nonconformity #trans woman #trans women #gender dysphoria

[aijee]

I agree. I can’t ever see sending death threats as justifiable, no matter the circumstances. How is that better than making inappropriate jokes when you’re a teenager? How is that better than bullying? This culture of people, in particular ifans, feeling like they have power or have a higher moral ground over their faves/an idol’s life irks me, really. (I guess that’s a result of fans being idols’ source of livelihood, I guess. But what can we do.)

As someone in my twenties who experienced not being on the internet 24/7 and then transitioning into this era where we are, I just get sad seeing how some of the early warnings about the internet (which I personally think still applies) get lost in this generation. Things like “the internet isn’t a safe place. be careful” and “don’t believe everything you see on the internet, people can write anything” are just completely lost now. I’ve always been cautious with information I stumble upon on the internet, and no matter how people younger than me tell me I’m ridiculous for that, I will stand by my principle.

re: intersectionality. I think this intersectionality isn’t just Korea as a whole, but different places in Korea also has these sociocultural circumstances intersect in a different way, albeit maybe being similar. Just as it is in any other place in the world. Even as someone living in asia with some similar values, I can’t just say I know how everything is in Korea. We can’t never know the whole picture of that particular neighborhood and middle school in which mg grew up in. (Also lmao unironic koreaboos...)

It’s disheartening to see people tear someone down without knowing everything. A culture that I hope will die down or at least mellow out in the upcoming decade. At this point people will believe what fits their narrative best about this mg situation. The situation is hard and upsetting for different reasons for different people. I just hope everything will be resolved carefully for all the parties involved. I agree that it is a clusterfuck, but as you said: being empathetic is important, to everyone, to every side :)

Thank you aijee, it’s pleasant to have these discussions with you even when we don’t know each other personally! Although you’re probably tired of me clogging your inbox by now haha! - 🎐

I often use the analogy of blackened windows of a car to describe communicating on the Internet. Outside of it, you might think you’re screaming and flipping the bird at a wall, but there could very well be a real human being on the other side who can see and hear that. The Internet isn’t always the void we think it is. Bots aside, real fucking people use social media sites. CRAZY. Even if we do recognize that, there are simply people there who don’t care because of “free speech” or “it’s the Internet get over it.” Shitty reasons to be an asshole, really. Losing humanity to the digital sea is somehow poetic.

I distinctly recall this one time I saw on the rare time I’m on Twitter, in some iteration of a hateful trending tag, really pitiful tweets along the lines of “Well I’m depressed as fuck, so I’m going to hate on people if I want to” as if having mental illness justifies hate. Nothing justifies being hateful; bad histories are only the explanation.

I respect you greatly for holding on to those principles. I feel a strange sort of pity for the younger generation who were born in a digital world. Despite how much the Internet generation can grate on my nerves sometimes, being submerged in capitalistic advertisement and algorithms isn’t their fault. So many Internet gen kids think they know everything, too, just because their accessibility to media is vast compared to what older generations had at such impressionable ages. There definitely needs to be far more education about how to safely, mindfully navigate the Internet. But with so many schools hesitant to give accurate sex education, we’re fucking eons away from legit Internet safety, my dudes.

Okay, at this point I don’t think I’ve replied to every possible point you’ve made, but my brain honestly feels a bit like mush now (for a number of reasons). Hopefully the dissertations I’ve offered thus far are satiating enough.

#askaijee

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 60: Keeping It Together

“It’s not our fault!”

Does Steven Universe have a more ominous setting than the Prime Kindergarten? Rose’s Room comes close (and I maintain that Rose’s Room is the scariest episode of the series), but episodes featuring it always pay off the unsettling setting with an actual scare. Whereas the muted colors and cacophonous clangs of Kindergarten maintain a constant thrumming dread, promising something horrible and imminent, and lets that tone linger uninterrupted. Amethyst’s fight with Pearl in On the Run is intense, and the Crystal Gems confronting Peridot in Marble Madness ramps up the suspense, but we haven’t seen any true horror from Kindergarten until now. 

And yeah, holy shit.

As I mentioned in Reformed and Sworn to the Sword, Keeping It Together establishes Garnet’s next big arc. But hers is much different from her fellow Gems’, both in structure (it’s the shortest by far and resolves with its Peridot Episode instead of its Steven Episode) and in tone. Garnet is the emotionally healthiest Gem on the planet right now, so she needs a bigger push than Amethyst or Pearl if she’s going to lose her cool. This isn’t to belittle the other two Gems, but there’s a reason the prompts for their episodes are day-to-day issues (for them) like renewing their physical forms or training a student, while Garnet needs dramatic scenarios like the Cluster Gems or a friend’s betrayal to reach the same level of crisis.

In short, external motivation is everything to Garnet’s arc because she lacks the internal baggage of her peers. There’s nothing unhealthy about being queer a fusion, so her problems stem from societal oppression that targets her for being who she is. We’ve seen her face fusionphobia with grace against Jasper, and we’ll see that bookended with Peridot when the season ends, but an attack on her identity as abhorrent as the Cluster Gems is certainly grounds for an extreme reaction.

We’ll get there, but first I have to point out how well-structured this whole episode is. The opening revels in switcheroos, first with Garnet’s serious conversation turning out to be part of a chore session, then with two red herrings in quick succession: the hint that we might see Ruby and Sapphire, and an extended callback to On the Run suggesting a focus on Amethyst. 

From there, the episode looks like it’s going to be about Steven settling into his own new status quo as a more respected member of the Crystal Gems. And in a way, it is! We spend a lot of time with him, and he summons his shield without any fanfare when the going gets tough. But it makes sense to focus on him more here than in Reformed and Sworn to the Sword, because Garnet’s status as a fusion is still novel to him and has changed their relationship in a way that warrants examination. And in an episode about Garnet encountering forces that don’t understand fusion to a horrific degree, it’s a soothing contrast to see Steven’s own misunderstanding come in the form of genuine curiosity.

Steven is also where we get a lot the goofiness that often accompanies the show’s horror episodes, but don’t let the clip of his spectacular shrug fool you, the comedy crown here goes to Peridot. This is the episode that tips the scales on Peridot as a villain: she began as a coldhearted alien, and her bureaucratic fussiness emerged in Warp Tour and Jailbreak, but now she fully transitions from a menacing opponent to a panicky thorn in the Crystal Gems’ side. All it takes is one look at Steven to make her lose her worker bee cool, and the action scene that follows plays her increasingly absurd bag of tricks for laughs as she outmaneuvers our heroes.

Peridot’s newfound jitters make sense on a character level, as she lost her power and is stuck on a world she knows is doomed. But the silliness that ensues also works wonders for Keeping It Together’s structure: by making her such a loud source of comedy, her exit marks a concrete tonal shift from goofy to grave. And by making her someone to be pursued, we get rid of Amethyst and Pearl in the process. And by revving up to a breakneck pace to follow her zany action, we reach the third act around the episode’s halfway mark to let it sink in that much deeper. Thanks, Peridot!

After focusing on Garnet in the episode’s onset, we’re right back to hanging out with her again. She’s even more confident than usual here, accepting Steven’s effusive praise with a simple “thank you” and acknowledging out loud that she’s great, to show us how big of a deal her panic attack is. We’ve seen her handle monster after monster without breaking a sweat, and she even defeats Jasper with a smile hours after getting destabilized. But the Cluster Gems hit her where it hurts, and seeing Garnet get rattled like this is far scarier than the monsters themselves. 

Not to take away from Aivi and Surasshu’s awful Cluster Gem theme (great, but awful), but the true sound heroes of this scene are whoever designed the ungodly noises these things make. Considering nobody is credited as “Monster Scream Maker” I’ll go ahead and shout out the whole sound design team for this one: Timothy J. Borquez, Susy Campos, Tony Orozco, Daisuke Sawa, Robert Serda, and Tom Syslo. I have no idea how their jobs work, but I’m so glad they’re so great at what they do.

And then of course there the visuals, and dear lord are they upsetting. The drizzle of mismatched body parts starts small, with a hand and foot that happen to match Ruby and Sapphire’s colors taking the Gem Shard concept we’ve seen in Frybo and Secret Team to a whole new level of creepy. But the limbs get bigger and bigger until the excruciating reveal of five screaming Gem ghosts transforming into a monstrous “arm” reinforces Garnet’s pained explanation of what these Cluster Gems actually are: the remains of her long-dead friends forced together.

But even then, even as Garnet is literally falling apart, she manages to push through the horror and save the day with Steven’s help, leading to Estelle’s showstopping argument with herself. Where A.J. Michalka’s frequent use of separate voices for Steven and Connie shows Stevonnie’s youthful uncertainty, Estelle’s normally steady performance makes her frantic and distinct portrayals of Ruby and Sapphire a shocking swerve. It both subverts and fulfills our expectation of seeing Garnet’s two halves after Stephen brought them up during laundry, and brings home the idea that splitting up isn’t a fun party trick no matter how much Stephen (and fans) want to see more of them.

The little details here are amazing. I love that it’s Ruby’s eye that tears up during the fight, but by the aftermath she’s moved to rage while Sapphire is still reeling; one lives moment to moment, and the other thinks in the long term. I love that gaps in the conversation are filled by them clearly sharing the same thoughts, namely that Rose might have known about these experiments and kept them secret; the notion that this is even possible foreshadows how dark Rose’s secrecy is going to get in the coming episodes. And even though it’s tragic, I love that the header quote can first be read as Garnet’s guilt over being part of the rebellion that caused her friends to suffer, but can be reread after The Answer as guilt over prompting the Diamonds’ interest in fusion. It’s not her fault, but it certainly would feel like it was.

But therein lies the difference between Garnet and Amethyst/Pearl: guilt this intense would shut the latter two down, but by the end of the episode Garnet has kept it together. She’s still upset, and she should be, but she’s not letting herself drown in her sadness and anger. 

The Week of Sardonyx is about to test Garnet again, and Pearl’s betrayal can hit even harder now that we’ve explicitly been told about the importance of consent in fusion. And as I hinted at earlier, fusion’s multipurpose metaphor extends to a specifically queer reading that’s vital to Garnet’s arc. I honestly wouldn’t mind being hammered over the head with the message that homophobia is bad, because yeah, homophobia is bad and kids should know that and children’s media doesn’t bring it up very often. But like everything to do with fusion, the Steven Universe team handles the allegory factor with incredible finesse. There’s no one-to-one analogy between fusion and queerness beyond Ruby and Sapphire both presenting as female; indeed, the mistreatment of queer people in the real world rarely includes forcing them into long-term relationships with each other a la the Cluster Gems, and Homeworld society only finds fusion acceptable in same-Gem relationships, so it’s actually heterophobic if we want to get stupid and pedantic.

This show doesn’t need an episode about conversion therapy or corrective rape to display the horror of an outside force perverting what you are and oppressing who you are, and Garnet’s journey through Season 2 shows that Steven Universe isn’t content with presenting two women in a relationship and patting itself on the back for being progressive. The fact that the show addresses homophobia with sensitivity but without pulling punches is something entirely new, but the fact that it’s doing so while enhancing a character and advancing the main plot is even more outstanding.

Future Vision!

The headline here may be kicking off Garnet’s arc, but it also revs up the Cluster Arc: these shard fusions are bad, but who could’ve guessed they were apocalyptically bad?

Peridot’s surprising resilience to large objects and gravity is as true in the Beta Kindergarten as it is in the Prime, if Kindergarten Kid is anything to go by.

The question of whether Rose could’ve known details about Diamond tactics reframes Sapphire’s rage in Now We’re Only Falling Apart.

If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have inconsistencies…

As great as Steven is here, would he really be that surprised that he’s coming along? I get that they’re showing that the status quo of getting some respect is still new to him, but yeah, after saving everyone in Jailbreak I think he’s pretty official. Enh, just a gripe, it’s implemented well enough.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

I think just above On the Run sounds right for Keeping It Together. It’s a terrific Garnet episode with a welcome side of Peridot, and manages to set the stage for a new arc while culminating Kindergarten’s foreboding tone with a bang. 

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

The Return

Jailbreak

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Winter Forecast

Keeping It Together

On the Run

Warp Tour

Maximum Capacity

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

The Test 

Future Vision

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

No Thanks!

     4. Horror Club      3. Fusion Cuisine      2. House Guest      1. Island Adventure

(No official title card for this one, likely due to Keeping It Together being part of a Steven Bomb, but luckily this piece from Vondell Swain will do.)

#keeping it together #steven universe #su #steven universally #review

[s3mag]

Make Something that Makes Something

I wish that, going into 2020, we had more people who set out to inspire… and less people who signed-up to influence. To influence is a self-serving interest… building one’s own ego first & foremost. To inspire is much more selfless, pure, & impactful. 

Therefore, influencer is not a word I’ll ever take seriously, and you shouldn’t either but I guess that’s your choice. Just because it’s somehow become a tolerated term DOES NOT make it fly. On the contrary, it shows a glaring problem with 21st-century digi-boy society. One that we’re just sweeping under the rug here. And that is: We’re not even self-conscious about our self-centeredness anymore. This social media era is diseased with ego & relentless self-promotion. And I promise if you’re led by your ego, you’ll end up unfulfilled, burnt-out, and resentful. 

 Look guys – we play with cars… it’s pretty trivial/superficial stuff. We’re not exactly changing the world here. BUT to contradict that… if we use our tools wisely, we can ABSOLUTELY connect with people, find the common ground, gain perspectives, and inspire one another. For those of us who really get it, we know there’s so much more to car culture than what’s on the surface. REAL car culture is a nucleus, and a lot of universally positive things circle that nucleus. Creativity, innovation, leadership, guidance, friendship… the list goes on & on. For us, car culture means camaraderie. It teaches discipline, and perseverance. It’s the way we express ourselves, and add our splash of color to the world. It’s our rebellion from normalcy & sensibility. And it’s therapy. 

  With this E30 M3, Cory Rowan was able to translate his love for cars into something bigger than himself. At this point in my life, that’s like… the ultimate win. He came up with the concept of Honest Assembly. And under that name, he put a team of college students under the leadership of auto-industry professionals & mentors. The lead sponsor/believer in the project was CRC Industries. And the goal, was SEMA’s Battle of the Builders 2018. That’s what they were working & competing for. Ravi from CSF Cooling (one of the mentors) volunteered to put the car in his booth at The Sema Show, front & center. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for these students. And to double-down, Cory’s wife is a doctor, so being close to his heart, the entire project would operate under the umbrella of raising awareness & support for the Morgan Adams Foundation – a children’s cancer charity. 

  The M3 had belonged to Cory for a while before this idea ever sparked. He’d been holding onto the car since it’s a real E30 M3… and E30 M3 values are going up up & awaaaay. But it’d just been sitting in storage. It didn’t run. It was in ‘ok’ shape, but kind of forgotten. But – it was a great platform for the task at hand. 

The plan was to keep it fairly period-correct & pay homage to the essence of the early M3s. But as the Honest Assembly project started to get legs & Battle of the Builders became officially ‘on’… everyone involved knew they were gonna have to pull a rabbit or 2 out of their hats to capture eyes at an event like SEMA. 

Ravi from CSF also happens to be a BMW guy & a little bit of a BMW purist. Ravi & Cory both STILL felt it was crucial to NOT bastardize the factory M3 styling too much. Meaning – they didn’t want to cut up the OEM M3 widebody, just to tack on some trendy fiberglass suuuper widebody just because it’s the SEMA thing to do. But SEMA is all about the aftermarket after all. 

550hp/560tq F80 M3 engine (S55B30) and 6-speed transmission – First swap of its kind in the world.

Sooooo they decided to use their wild card under the hood, and Cory bought a wrecked F80 (2014-2018) M3 at auction, strictly for the motor-swap. The F80 runs BMW’s S55 engine: A twin-turbo, inline-6 making 444hp. To put BMW’s modern technology into the analog E30 chassis, was going to cause major pains in all the asses, respectfully. No easy feat. And no one had done it. Buuuut between the capable team of mentors on this project… they had the networks & know-how to theoretically get it done. And… it was gonna put these students straight in the deep water lol. If they could pull this off, everything else would be easy. Here’s how it went down: 

  Timeline

  Disassembly:

12/2017 – We disassemble & categorize every part, nut, and bolt on the donor E30 M3.

  2/2018 – Body work on the E30 M3 begins with Cars Remember When.

  2/2018 – F80 M3 bought at auction, & complete disassembly of that car.

  3/2018 – E30 M3 goes to bare metal.

  3/2018 – 325E test car arrives & is torn down. This car acts as the template for the transplant.

  4/2018 – Initial S55 engine fitment in the 325E.

  5/2018 – Students travel across country to Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Georgia to work with mentors from CRC Industries, BimmerWorld, and Motion Control Suspension.

  6-9/2018 – Fabrication & electronics to make the S55 engine run.

  9/2018 – The S55 engine runs for the first time inside the E30 325E. The team is elated!

  Reassembly:

9/2018 – The E30 M3 returns, and the mad rush begins. SEMA is 6 weeks out. The drivetrain has to be transplanted along with a full reassembly. Any sense of a normal life ends for the next month.

  10/28-29/2018 – The M3 is as close to finished as it’s been, and the chassis transition & drivetrain transplant are complete. While working on the car at each fuel stop, the drive through the night from Denver to Las Vegas begins.

  SEMA:

10/29/2018 – The car arrives at SEMA minutes before the first round of judging for the Battle of The Builders. The car is complete, but totally untested. At this point, the team is simply relieved to make it to Las Vegas. They’re exhausted. The honor to be judged for the BOTB is a monumental achievement.

  10/30/2018 – Tuesday, the first official day of SEMA. The car is dramatically displayed in CSF Radiator’s booth. To our surprise, the car is announced as a Top 40 SEMA BOTB finalist. The car ran in testing, but not in its final configuration. Everyone knows that a running car is required to move forward in the competition. This kicks off the fury of late-night testing. Some basic issues are found & resolved thanks to help from local BMW shop, Sin City BMW. There would be a slight sense of relief if an electrical issue hadn’t reared its ugly head while servicing the clutch.

  10/31/2018 – The Honest team makes their way to the lunchtime Top 12 announcement of the Battle of The Builders in the SEMA Grand Lobby. It is a Hollywood style affair on a lit stage with TV cameras and SEMA executives. Our team was announced as a Top 3 finalist in class. Moving to the next stage of competition means that our car has to drive across the SEMA floor and onto a TV stage for thousands of spectators no later than Friday at 8am. The celebratory atmosphere quickly fades & was replaced with the anxiety of prepping the car. There would be no sleep for the next 44 hours.

  10/31 – 11/1/2018 – A strict rule of SEMA is: No running cars inside the building. That means the team can’t confirm if the car actually runs. So every sensor and connection is physically checked by the team with help from Ryan of BimmerSpeed, and ECU communication to each connection is remotely confirmed by the tuner, Mike at BPM Sport.

Non-stop work continues through Wednesday & Thursday night as new issues surrounding the wiring migration from the ’85 to the ’88 are discovered. The team is given a deadline of 9pm on Thursday by the contest organizers.

  9pm rolls by and the car only sputters. The deflated team is visited by many of the other Top 12 contestants. Maybe it’s seeing the words of encouragement from other builders in the Top 12, or maybe the show organizers just realize how hard we’ve worked to get this far, but we somehow get a second chance. The producer of the television show covering the contest, Bud Brutsman, extends our deadline to 8am.

  One more all nighter for the Honest team seemed to be a strange gift, but we were grateful. Reinforcements were brought in again from BPM Sport and BimmerSpeed to help diagnose the issue.

  11/2/2018 – It’s 6:30am and only a handful of the team are still awake. The first crowds of show employees and presenters start arriving for the day. There is no choice but to fire-up the car & pray. A few stumbles & it fires! Immediately an announcement is made over the PA system, “No SEMA cars are allowed to be started in the convention center.” …but it didn’t matter. It was showtime!

  The car never makes the cut for Top 4 of the show. But that doesn’t seem to matter to a group of young builders and the mentors supporting them. In 11 months, the team had gone from average enthusiasts looking for junkyard parts to modify their daily drivers… to being in front of thousands of fans on television. All week, show visitors & industry icons stopped by the booth to meet the young team behind the car. The feeling when you’re mentioned in the same breath as your heroes was more than any member of the team could prepare for.

  And ladies & gentlemen – this is how we inspire! 

Think about the lives this car has touched, and the ripple-effect it will have. College students – who’s career paths & careers goals have been shaped, molded, and honed-in. These kids have found confidence, experience, and an insane surge of motivation to pursue their passions. Industry professionals & mentors – who were able to pass down what they know & who they know… and pay it forward to the next generation. Being able to give back like that, is a huge measure of success in my book. Children unfairly having to fight cancer at such an innocent age… are gonna beat it one day soon. They may be part of the first generation that never drives a gas-powered car. But their lives were touched because we did. 

  You say cars are superficial… materialistic. Maybe. But I’m not. And I don’t think the culture is either. 

You can say that baseball is just a game. Or that music is just a poem with noise. But for people who’s lives have been touched by these things… they’re so much more then the sum of their parts. 

The point is: It’s about shared mindsets… and shared character. It’s not about a car. You & I?? We speak through cars – yeah. Others?? they speak through baseball. Or music. Or whatever. And we speak to each other! We hear each other across demographics, and over the chatter. Maybe Cory’s Honest Assembly speaks to someone reading this mag who plays baseball. And that guy gets inspired to do something similar within his sport. And a musician catches wind of that in the stands… and is inspired to write a song. A song that comes through the speakers and hits someone who works at a bank, and inspires him/her to get creative & do more for their local community. And its current pace, social media is pushing us. Pushing us to become more & more dependent on likes, subscribers, and followers. Push back. 

  Engine / Drivetrain

550hp/560tq F80 M3 engine (S55B30) and 6-speed transmission – First swap of its kind in the world.

Custom coding & performance tuning from BPM Sport

6 F80 coolers & pumps with custom plumbing, 4 fans, and controllers

CSF charge cooler & heat exchanger

Differential machined for 4 clutches, custom ramp angles, and a 3.38 ratio from Diffsonline @diffsonline

Stainless steel oval exhaust from Ouroboros Fabrication

  Chassis

Chassis consulting & components from BimmerWorld, professional BMW race team & parts manufacturer/supplier founded while racing an E30 M3

Extensive chassis reinforcements 

Bare metal nut and bolt restoration with parts and consulting from James Clay of BimmerWorld and BimmerWorld Racing

Bodywork performed by nationally award-winning team at Cars Remember When

Fabrication consulting by VW factory backed Project Baja and Flaherty’s Fabrication 

Carbon fiber spoiler and Gurney flap

  Wheels / Brakes / Suspension

F80 M3 ABS (converted to 4-channel) 

F80 brake master cylinder/booster (modified pedal box)

AP Racing Radi-Cal calipers designed for the F80 from Essex Parts Services 

Motion Control Suspension (MCS) 3-way remote dampers and true rear coilovers 

Custom subframes

Tubular suspension with custom geometry from SLR Speed 

Forgeline centerlock wheels with offsets to accommodate customized suspension & brake components

  Interior:

Cardinal red napa interior

Napa black leather-wrapped dash, steering wheel, console, and pillars

New plastic, rubber throughout

Students:

Justin Bruch

Parker Brown

Reece Cochran

Isaac Gesundheit

Peter Golledge

Zach Lagarenne (lead student builder)

  Mentors:

Dori Ahart – CRC Industries (lead believer and sponsor)

Geoff Barrett – BMW CCA (supporting mentor)

Mike Benvo – BPM Sport (tuning and coding)

Nate Bourgeois – Ouroboros Fabrication (exhaust)

James Clay – BimmerWorld (lead project tech advisor and parts sourcing)

Fox Chung – BMW CCA (supporting mentor)

Dean Coccaro – Zendex Tool and GoJak (made our 1.5-car garage into actual usable space)

Ravi Dolwani – CSF Radiators (SEMA booth, cooling, and PR)

Dan Fitzgerald – Diffsonline (custom differential)

Erin Flaherty – Flaherty’s Fine Fabrication (oil pan and general awesome mentor)

Wyatt Gilbert – Motion Control Suspension (suspension consulting)

Jeff Jegelewicz – Cover Craft (developed custom cover)

Ryan Lindsley – BimmerSpeed (gets team out of jambs)

Sam Lopez – Gorilla Wraps (livery install)

Josh McGuckin – Gates and Project Baja (fabrication mentor)

Brian McGuire – Yardr.co (“make it work” mentor)

Alex McCulloch – Glen Shelly Auto Brokers (vintage BMW nut)

Jeff Ritter – Essex Brakes / AP Racing (brake tech consultant)

Cory Rowan – VisFire Creative (designer and project manager)

Steve Schardt – Forgeline Wheels (wheel fitment and design)

Scott Skrjanc – Lincoln Electric (welding supplies)

Andy Wall and Scott Morton – Cars Remember When Restoration (body restoration)

  Post SEMA:

The Honest Assembly team is expanding. They moved out of the home garage, and into a real shop more well-suited for the mentorship concept & technical builds. Some of the 1st-round students who are still in school will stay onboard, and new students will join them. The core focus of partnering student enthusiasts with industry mentors remains the same.

  An improved version of the S55 powered E30 M3 will now be offered as a turnkey restoration service. Several industry mentors and a few students from the original build team focused efforts since SEMA to refine the car. The was car town down for a full overhaul of wiring, suspension, and fitment. The prototype chassis has gone from an already highly technical motor swap to a comprehensive package with proprietary suspension, cooling, chassis reinforcements, ABS, and numerous modernized features hiding under the E30 M3’s skin. The team now considers it the most technically advanced E30 M3 in the world while still maintaining the core ethos that made the E30 M3 legendary. The cars will be built using the team’s original formula of pairing young enthusiasts full of fresh ideas, with seasoned industry professionals that made the team’s first build so successful.

Text by Wooley     Photos by Brian McGee

"With this E30 M3, Cory Rowan was able to translate his love for cars into something bigger than himself. At this point in my life, that’s like… the ultimate win. He came up with the concept of Honest Assembly. And under that name, he put a team of college students under the leadership of auto-industry professionals & mentors. The lead sponsor/believer in the project was CRC Industries. And the goal, was SEMA’s Battle of the Builders 2018. That’s what they were working & competing for. Ravi from CSF Cooling (one of the mentors) volunteered to put the car in his booth at The Sema Show, front & center. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for these students. And to double-down, Cory’s wife is a doctor, so being close to his heart, the entire project would operate under the umbrella of raising awareness & support for the Morgan Adams Foundation - a children’s cancer charity. " Make Something that Makes Something I wish that, going into 2020, we had more people who set out to…

#bimmer #bmw #e30 #f80 #M3 #s55

[nimiumcaelo]

“Indeed, Miss?” -- Chapter 4

Chapter summary: Bertie wears a rather modern dress. She and Rosalyn go to the Queens.

Chapter notes: Okay, so the 'Queens' club is, as you might have guessed, basically just the 'Drones' but for ladies. Drones are male bees that don't work and live off of the other bees' toil, and, while that's a really neat little analogy that Wodehouse made, I figured I should probably swap it out just a little because of the whole genderswap thing. Queen bees don't do work, either, and only really exist to reproduce, which isn't exactly a perfect analogy, but works well enough, I suppose. (Also, for those of you who don't know Latin, frater means brother and soror means sister, so Rosalyn is making a little joke at the beginning.)

Chapter 4: In Which the Chaperoning Begins

I was somewhat uncomfortable with my newfound chaperoning duties. I was not in the habit of fraternizing (or, rather, sororizing) with Miss Wooster’s acquaintances, and it would be distinctly obvious to any of the members of their party how Miss Wooster was being followed around. Miss Wooster is an accomplished hostess and always attempts to make any guests of hers feel welcome, though I knew I would, due to a mixture of propriety and personal feeling, end up watching her from the side of the room, performing my duty yet forced to remain outside. That is not to say that I wished to join in with her friends – even if there were not the issue of class, they are rather too excitable for my tastes – but, rather, that I wished I would not have to be there at all. There are many ways in which I tend to enjoy myself whilst Miss Wooster is at one of her clubs. By chaperoning her I would be unable to participate in any of them.

However, I did my best to appear at ease with the situation. I am, as I have said before, fond of Miss Wooster and, besides, I had agreed to these duties through my own free will. To chafe and pull out at the eleventh hour would be unthinkable.

The time came for me to test my skill at chaperoning two days after we arrived back in London. Miss Wooster, tired from her trip and the still-fresh emotional wounds of recent events, decided to spend a day in rest and recovery; the next morning she declared herself fit and ready to face the outside world.

“Ah, Rosalyn,” she said while I was helping her fasten her brassiere, “I hope you don’t mind, but I was thinking of toddling ‘round to the Queens later today. Bingo’s just returned from her little tryst in Scotland and I wanted to help ease the transmi – train – transatla – what’s that word, Rosalyn, that means ‘shift’?”

“Transition, miss?”

“That’s the one! Yes, her transition back into the life of a single cherry, pulled away from its pair at the root. She’d got engaged to some fellow up north but they broke it off and now she’s got a hefty case of forlorn glances and drooping shoulders, apparently. I thought I may as well try and buck her up with a nice afternoon binge.”

“Indeed, miss?” I selected one of Miss Wooster’s dresses – a modest, ankle-length affair in flattering indigo – and was about to help her into it when she stiffened and drew herself up, casting me an icy stare.

“Now, Rosalyn, you know I don’t want to wear that one on my first day back in the metrop.”

“Is the dress not comfortable enough for you, miss? This lavender one is made of a softer material, if that is a concern.”

Miss Wooster pursed her lips and attempted to look commanding. I fear the effect was diminished, somewhat, by her standing in her undergarments. “It’s not the material, Rosalyn; you know what I’m referring to. Where did those nice velvet ones end up, with the ruffles on the skirts?”

“I really could not say, miss. Perhaps you misplaced them?”

Miss Wooster brushed past me to the bureau, knelt down, and pulled a scarlet monstrosity out of the lowermost drawer. She stood, then, and brandished the garment before herself. I confess I may have flinched.

“No, Rosalyn, I did not misplace them anywhere,” she said. “I want to wear this one.”

I met her iron gaze with my own. “Are you certain, miss? I fear you may be mistaken for a member of the chorus.”

“Yes, I’m certain, Rosalyn. Now, quit gaping at it and help me put it on.”

“Very good, miss.”

I put away the other dress and assisted her into the garment, hideous though it was. She stood, then, in front of the mirror and admired herself from several angles.

“Now, see, Rosalyn – it’s not so bad.”

I disagreed quite vehemently. The dress – if one could call it that – merely brushed her knees and had an open back. True, the modern style asserted that boyish figures such as that of Miss Wooster were to be desired, and this style of dress was quite becoming to her, yet I still had to resist the urge to tear it to pieces. One can recognize someone’s beauty in the nude and still wish for them not to appear in public in such a state. Such was the case with this dress.

“Indeed, miss. Will that be all, miss?”

Miss Wooster paused in her admiration. “Oh, if you could just help me with my hair, Rosalyn.”

I collected one of Miss Wooster’s combs and began brushing the fair strands smooth, then gathered them to one side and pinned them above her right shoulder.

“Thank you, Rosalyn, that will be all.”

“Yes, miss.”

I departed from the room and headed into the kitchen, where I sat down and ran a hand over my fevered brow. I began to fear that chaperoning Miss Wooster may be a trifle too difficult to handle, even for myself.

~

We left the flat shortly before lunch and headed to Miss Wooster’s club. At first, I thought I would simply remain in the entryway and look in every now and again to ascertain whether Miss Wooster’s behavior was appropriate; Miss Wooster, though, before I had a chance to act, took my elbow and dragged me into the main rooms after her.

“What-ho, Barmy!” she cried upon spotting said individual. “What’s your score?”

Miss Fotheringay-Phipps was engaged in tossing playing cards into a hat. She looked up upon hearing Miss Wooster’s address and was about to reply when she spotted me, and gaped quite openly.

“Oh, hullo, Bertie! I think I’m up to twenty just now. I say! – I didn’t know your girl Rosalyn was joining the club!”

The main rooms of Miss Wooster’s club are always quite full of chatter, yet at this exclamation a general murmur went ‘round. I felt a faint color rise to my cheeks.

“Oh, no, Rosalyn’s not joining the club,” Miss Wooster explained, much to my gratification. I felt nearly every pair of eyes watching me. “She’s just been posted as my chaperone for the next couple of weeks.”

“Chaperone?” Miss Fotheringay-Phipps gaped again. The expression was not very becoming. “What do you need a chaperone for? We’re all ladies here – at least,” she added, looking around, “I think we are.”

Miss Wooster gave a light chuckle and sat down beside Miss Fotheringay-Phipps on one of the Chesterfields. “No, it’s just my beastly Aunt Agatha, Barmy. She’s got it into her head again to marry me off and she doesn’t want me palling around with any ‘bohemians’ without a chaperone.”

Miss Fotheringay-Phipps frowned, affronted. “Well, I say!”

“That’s what I told her! But, once an Aunt sets her sights,” Miss Wooster continued sagely, “she’ll be dashed if she lets up. It’s not so bad, though, because I convinced her to let Rosalyn chaperone me, instead of some silly old goon with eyebrows to his chin. Now, I’ve just got to drag poor Rosalyn with me everywhere I go until the Aunts let the veil and gown pass from their minds like water over a chicken.”

“Does water do that?”

“I haven’t the foggiest. Does water pass over a chicken like that, Rosalyn?”

I had been attempting to remove myself to the wall and avoid the curious gazes of the club’s many patrons. At Miss Wooster’s address, though, I was forced to return to her side and face the scrutiny of about twenty different young ladies.

“No, miss. I believe the expression you are looking for is, ‘passing like water over a duck’s back.’ Ducks, as aquatic birds, have feathers which do not allow water to penetrate to the skin. By saying that something passes like water over a duck’s back, one is saying that it passes without consequence or without effect.”

Miss Wooster beamed up at me, then turned to Miss Fotheringay-Phipps. “Brilliant, isn’t she, Barmy? I say, it won’t be half bad having her following after me!”

“I wish I had a chaperone!” Miss Fotheringay-Phipps mumbled. “Seems like loads of fun.”

Miss Wooster cast me a secret smile, then joined Miss Fotheringay-Phipps in her card-tossing game.

#f/f #jeeves/wooster #chaptered fics #jooster #indeedmiss #p g wodehouse

[lancecarr]

NAB 2019: Michael Bergeron on the Move to IP

At NAB I talked with Michael Bergeron, Product Manager of Studio Camera Systems at Panasonic, about the move to video over IP, including SMPTE ST 2110, Newtek’s NDI, and bonded-cellular systems.

Two Categories

AW: I’m interested in a general overview of Video over IP in its various flavors: NDI, bonded wireless, SMPTE 2110. I’m asking you here at Panasonic, because Panasonic doesn’t own of any of these — it doesn’t have any proprietary protocols involved — but Panasonic has fingers in all these pies. So Panasonic is well-placed to give us an overview of where we are as an industry as we transition away from traditional baseband connections, like SDI and HDMI, into an IP-based world. Can you give us some perspective on all this?

MB: We sort of see IP falling into two very distinct categories. One is the [higher-end] GigE, 10GigE, or more world. We were doing H.264 streaming to [Newtek’s] TriCaster back when NDI was a gleam in Andrew Cross’s eye. One of the cameras that was popular then was the AG-130. Once it started offering streaming out, we worked hand-in-glove with Newtek to get to the point where we could get streaming and control on the same wire. We’re seeing more and more, with our streaming and with NDI, and with where we’re going with wireless, there are enough protocols out there, published and available, that we’ve not found a need to make a new one, but to incorporate existing ones as needed into the products. For example, for ENG, we’re doing a version of one-channel cellular bonding though a 3G or 4G dongle, for news, as an alternative pathway. 

The other big application is AV: conference rooms, education, small classes, government meeting rooms; this is exactly the space where our PTZ product line was, and so we were just all over there. It’s a natural fit. Many of these applications never even went to SDI; they had been running analog composite video or HDBaseT and they weren’t ready to do SDI. And then when streaming and NDI came along, that made perfect sense for them: the idea you could hook up a system with Cat6 cable, plug a couple of PTZs in, it made perfect sense for them, that’s something they’re willing to do.

AW-UN70 NDI-enabled PTZ camera. Once cable carries signal, power, and control.

  2110’s Advantages

And that runs in parallel with what’s happening in the broadcast world, where you’re starting to see not just the deployment of SMPTE 2110 but you’re beginning to see where the real gains are going to come in: it’s about how you can distribute the architecture of a system more easily.  One example, something we’re showing here, is the Live Production Suite, a modular switcher platform which can be a 12G SDI switcher, an IP switcher, or any combination: you just switch out the gateways. And if you need more bandwidth because you’re going from HD to 4K, you add more bandwidth with the crosspoints or the M/E as needed. 

Panasonic’s Live Production Suite demo

(“MoIP”, Media over IP, is a generic term for SMPTE 2110 — people were saying Video over IP, but the “VoIP” acronym is already used for Voice over IP.)

25 Gigabit fiber connects the modules

When we look at that modular system, besides being able to switch what your inputs are, you can also distribute these modules across the plant. So if I’ve got ten cameras in one arena, and ten cameras in a different arena on the same campus, I can put the gateways and CCUs there in the arenas and just run the internal fiber connectivity back to my control room. And it’s not putting the video up on your full-on LAN, which scares your IT department. 

Another thing that that does: if I’m using a 25 GB network for transport, and I decide to try 8K, it’ll just work: 25 Gig will transport 8K with no problem.

Dividing Lines

AW: NDI has its footprint in the corporate / industrial, houses of worship kinds of application, and ST 2110 in high-end broadcast. Is there a firm dividing line between these domains, or is there crossover?

MB: There is not a firm dividing line! NDI is kind of behaving like DV: it’s not staying where it was “supposed to be”, it’s not staying in its little box. You see a lot of small TV stations; they’re asking us a lot about, “when can I get NDI on this, when can I get NDI on that, because I want to go IP, but I don’t think putting in a lot of fiber is realistic for my tertiary market station”.

In the early days of DV, we had DV/1394 converter boxes from Sony, Miranda, and Convergent Design. Today, BirdDog is providing NDI converter boxes.

A single-channel box turns one baseband source into an NDI source.

A quad converter sends four sources over a single Cat6 or fiber line.

We’re also going to need to see some streamlining of the 2110 products, to get the cost down over time, but we’re going to see both of those, a big mish-mosh in the middle. And they do work together in places: Evertz will do both, Ross will do both. We don’t have both in the same product yet, but it won’t be long.

5G?

AW: What about 5G? How much of the hype is justified, and how much is just hype? Compare it to your existing bonded 4G types of products.

MB: In terms of transport for video, I don’t think 5G necessarily solves any of the issues you have with 4G. It has more to do with congestion management. The trouble is, if there’s news, there’s network traffic: they tend to follow each other. If you’re at the courthouse and someone’s walking out the door, and you try to light up your bonded backpack, and everyone else there is doing the same thing, guess what: your market’s going to saturate. It’s going to happen in 5G just like it does in 4G; I don’t think 5G solves that problem. 

Where 5G does matter is that it’s going to create yet another delivery stream, so there will be yet another over-the-top delivery mechanism. The folks like Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime, they’ll be used even more on 5G, so their ascendancy will continue.

AW: But I bet that at least in the near term, we’ll see bonding solutions that let you plug in 3G, 4G, and 5G modems and split your transmission across all these channels…

MB: Sure: the more diversity, the better the redundancy.

What’s to Come?

AW: What else should we be looking for over the next couple of years, whether from Panasonic or others, that hasn’t really been talked about yet?

MB: There’s a pivot from trying to deliver a higher-quality picture to trying to deliver better overall production value. So, especially for the small screen, rather than more resolution, it’ll be more camera angles, and more sophisticated camera moves. You’re seeing some of that in our “smart studio” products, with more PTZ cameras and dolly tracks; I think that kind of technology is going to proliferate in the market. We’re going to get high-density sensors; they’re coming anyway. So now we can throw those pixels at all kinds of problems. Like with our 8K ROI system, we can get four HD pictures from one camera position, by using all those pixels that we have.

One 8K camera with a wide-angle lens…

…creates four HD feeds, automatically or manually positioned.

With the UE150, we can turn a 20x zoom into a 32x zoom. So there’s all sorts of problems that can be solved by more pixels that don’t involve us going to a higher transmission or display format. 

Disclosure: Panasonic kindly made Mr. Bergeron available for an interview during NAB, but Panasonic did not suggest or dictate the topic of the conversation, nor has Panasonic edited or approved this post. There is no material connection between me and Panasonic.

The post NAB 2019: Michael Bergeron on the Move to IP appeared first on ProVideo Coalition.

https://www.provideocoalition.com/nab-interview-michael-bergeron-on-the-move-to-ip/

[dailyaudiobible]

02/18/2019 DAB Transcript

Leviticus 6:1-7:27, Mark 3:7-30, Psalms 37:1-11, Proverbs 10:3-4

Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am absolutely, positively not Brian, but I am the other, I guess, I’m the other half of Brian since the two of us are one. I am Brian's wife, Jill, for those of you that are new this year. Welcome to this amazing community led by an amazing man. I have watched my husband go from word reader, Bible reader, to theologian to lover of God's word and I am immensely…I am one immensely proud wife. Welcome to a new day, to a new mercy, and a new living breathing word. It is truly an honor to be here with you. I know how seriously Brian takes this, I see what he does every day, day in day out, no matter where he’s at. So, it is truly an honor that he has entrusted me with this mantel of carrying the word. We are reading today, starting in the Old Testament, the Christian Standard Bible translation on this 18th day of February, and we begin in Leviticus 6:1 and we're reading through verse…I’m sorry…chapter 7 verse 27. And we will see what kind of names he has left for me.

Commentary:

Every day this community gets Brian's explanations at the end of this. He’s become this theologian, this deep historian, and this man that can explain the Bible and interpret in a way that just makes it clear and understandable, which is…it’s just such a gift. Many of you like me have said, “I’ve tried to read the Bible through…I mean…I was even a junior Bible quiz student growing up in my church and just didn't understand Scripture. And the way that Brian explains it and delivers it is so beautiful and so rich and its such a gift and I feel bad that you're stuck with me today. So, my offering today, where I see myself in the Scripture is in the passage in Mark. I find myself all too well relating to the scribes who walk into a situation where Jesus is casting out demons, demonic spirits, and even knows what's about to happen so He tells the disciples to have the boat ready and before long here come the scribes. And I, with conviction, say that I ashamedly find myself with the scribes. And here's what I mean by that. When the natural mind cannot comprehend what fits into our religious confinements, when we do not understand outside the parameters of our belief system, and if it doesn't fit into our theology and our denominational confinements, boy, we like to call it the work of the enemy, don’t we? If we can't understand it, it must not be holy, it must not be God. And, so, if it's not of God it is automatically of the enemy. And I think so often we find ourselves, I find myself, blaming God for things He is not responsible for and blaming the enemy for things that God might be actually a part of. But in this particular Scripture  it is the work of the enemy and Jesus is taking it upon himself and casting out demons and the scribes come down and they insert their personal opinion and their personal belief system which we do so many times in so many of the wrong places. And Jesus responds in a way that only He can. He responds to them with a question and I hear the conviction in my own heart as the question is presented, “how can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. You know, we often pin that quote to the speech that Abraham Lincoln gave often forgetting Jesus himself said it first. And it's so true. When my husband and I are not on the same page in parenting our kids can detect it and they’ll utilize it in their favor, right? We often reference that in government but what about this statement to be true in our churches. And if we go a little bit further inward let’s look into our homes. And if we were to go in just a little bit deeper, what if we look into our own lives?

Prayer:

So Jesus, we invite You into all of the places that we do not understand with our natural mind, we invite You, Holy Spirit, to bring understanding and direction and counsel and guidance and we can do that so much more clearly when we stop and give room for pause and room for breathe and room for You to speak into that which we do not understand, but we must create space for You to speak. And we can do that so much more effectively if we will stop before we jump to assumptions, before we make our conclusions, before we reach for our religious rules and boundaries and parameters and confinements and restraints and allow You to do what You do, which is guide us, counsel us, direct us, correct us, break us outside of our comfort zones and break us outside into deeper waters as You call us into the deep. So, Father would You forgive us where we have inserted our own personal preferences and opinions of what we think we already know. And when we do that we allow You to come and show us more of what we don't know, that we need to know and give us a longing to know You more. How I long to know You more. Give us Your eyes to see, Your ears to hear, and Your mind, give us the mind of Christ. We love You. We are so grateful for all that You are, all that You've done, all that You have not done because You know better and all that You are yet to do. In the name of the Father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com, that is the main place. Keep the main thing the main thing. That's the main thing. Everything else that you need to know about the Daily Audio Bible, it is there. That is the main page. Of course, we are all over social media. Daily Audio Bible social media page, Facebook, Instagram, and we also have the Daily Audio Bible women's page where we offer daily encouragement in just being a woman. And we also have the More Gathering Facebook page. So, if you are attending the More Gathering page and you have not liked that yet, I encourage you to do so. If you do not you will miss the daily posts that go out and we will be posting important information there for you guys. We’ll be posting the worship songs that you can start listening and learning and agreeing with the messages that we will be doing through song and worship and some other important information that is coming up as well as we get closer to the gathering itself.

If you have ever been to Israel, but really, really, really long to go. It's not your time to go. I would encourage you to follow the social media pages on their journey. They will give you as close of an in-depth look as you possibly can through virtually being there through social media. And I am personally asking you to cover the team while they are there. I was there a few years ago with Ezekiel and I knew it was a hardship for my husband and for Mike who goes and assists and all of the other people that are there working but I had no idea the depth of the trip, especially for Brian. It is…he will not tell you this…it's grueling for him. And, so, especially starting off with jetlag. There's no way to get around that and the responsibilities that he has to do to keep the Bible read fresh while he's there and all of the other demands of the trip. So, please, please cover him in prayer as he goes and the rest of the team and all that are on the journey and the pilgrimage. I say this almost every time I get behind the mic but it is your prayers that sustain our family and this community and I cannot, cannot highlight the magnitude of what I just said. I would have to give you stories and that would take time, but your prayers are the sustenance and the wind that keep this ship assail for lack of a better analogy…well…I guess…to keep a fire burning you have to have a little bit of wind to pick up that…to keep that fire, that ember burning. And when it’s about to die, when the wind picks up you’re gonna have a good frame. So, thank you for your prayers as always. Thank you for being a community that truly prays and cares for one another. It is…it's beautiful to see you bear one another's burdens. And I think sometimes the tendency is to think if Brian could just pray for me know...if, you know, if that pastor, if that evangelist could just pray for me all will be well. If they could just hear my story. It's not physically…here’s the bitter cold truth. It’s not physically possible for Brian and I to meet all of the demands and the needs of this community. It is possible for all of us to do it for all of us together and you all do it beautifully, absolutely beautifully. So, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for doing what we can't. And we can't…it's not because we don't want to…it’s that we are physically incapable of doing all that there is to do and we do a lot throughout the day and it seems like, you know, we could very much get thrown into the idea that there's not enough time in the day. There is exactly enough time in the day. We just have to manage it well. So, thank you sincerely for picking up where we leave off and for being the beautiful body of Christ. It is truly one of the most breathtaking parts of this community and we are grateful. Okee dokee shmoecky, that's it for today. I think Brian will be back with you tomorrow. Until then, that’s it for me today. I’m Jill. Love one another.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Good morning Daily Audio Bible, my name is Chris, I’m calling because my wife struggles with infertility and because I am an obstetrician I sought and obtained a donor which led to a frozen embryo. Maybe I did not seek God’s will long enough, but my wife was against adoption. Maybe I did not insist in her receiving counseling prior to doing this treatment but afterwards her behavior was definitely strange. Anyway, our son was born in 2015. Then in 2017 a job opportunity came up and my wife seemed excited because it meant security for our family. We prayed about and then we went and moved three hours away without her at first but only to give her a little time but not for more than a few weeks. Well, she barely came during that transition, but she did come to choose our new home and then she disappeared. I found her months later and she refused to __ my file custody of my son and she trumped me by signing for a divorce. Since then she’s claimed that she was counseling and has placed the divorce on hold but she’s still withholding my son and denying access even against courts orders. I have an attorney but he’s very slow. It’s now been one year since she’s filed for divorce and longer since she ran off with my son. Please pray that she’ll do the right thing. Her name is Carla from the Hudson Valley region of New York. Her stronghold is her mind. Her mother who’s a pastor and a strong matriarchal __ family. Also, please pray for me. I’m definitely __ stronger in my walk than I need to be, pray for my mind and for my son to be returned. He’s my only son. I am my dad’s only son and my dad waited 82 years for him to be born. My son’s name is Andr...My son’s name is Andred. Thank you.

Hi family I’m just calling on behalf of Karen. You called in. I just want to start off by saying I’m very happy and grateful that you did because you had a change of heart and your seeking change. You want…you want change. You want God to work in your heart and in your life and help heal the broken places for you and your son. So, I pray for starters that this change can be made permanent, solidified. And I pray that the Spirit of God will clearly guide You on what to do next, where to go, where to change even more. And as for Your son, I pray for healing and a complete identity restoration within his mind. I lift both Karen and her son to You God and I thank You. Thank You for having her call-in. Thank You for just the work You’re doing in her life, it’s just amazing, in all of our lives. I pray for all of our lives, lift all of our lives up into Your hands, that Your will will be done in each and every one of us because we know Your will is the best and most perfect way to go. Sometimes we think, yeah, this is the right way, but I believe in Proverbs it says, “the way of a man seems right, but it ends in and leads to death. That’s so true. In so many cases in my life it’s been the case. And I pray that we can have Your wisdom and be guided by Your Spirt. You know exactly what actions to take and where no to go. Thank you. Talk to you guys soon. Bye.

Good morning, good evening, good afternoon Daily Audio Bible family. This is Andrea DeLane from Kentucky and I just wanted to share and encouragement with you today. Obviously, we’re going through and we’re hearing about the crucifixion of Jesus and His resurrection and it’s so humbling to me. It’s just like, so humbling when we really stop and meditate and think on all that Yeshua has done for us, that He’s torn down the walls of separation between us and the Father and He has, so that we can be restored to Him. And, so, this morning also in my own personal time reading the word of God, I was reading and looking up Scriptures on humility and that brought me to first Peter 5, where he’s talking about, “humble yourself, and under the mighty hand of Elohim so that He will exalt you in due time casting all your worry upon Him for He is concerned about you.” And I just had to stop there because to take that all in, that He is so concerned about us, that He loves us so much. And I just want to remind you that to cast your cares upon Him for He truly, truly cares about you. And sometimes we want to feel it, but the fact is that He’s laid Himself on a cross, stretched His arms out and said I love you. And that, is enough to know that He cares, but He is so much more bigger and broader to just come down to each of us individually and show us His love. And I pray today that you experience His love. So, I agree with you for your prayer request and I love you. Have a good day.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family, this is Michael from Mesa. It’s been a little bit since I called in. Let’s see. Basic things. Amber from California, I think, I listen on my commute so my memory is really not so great on it but I think that’s right. Going through just marriage things. I have my own Amber, and we’ve been through so so many things over our 25, 27+ years of marriage. I, you know, I’m with you there, girl. So, just to let you know I’m praying for you. Brian, trip to Israel. I’m praying for you and the team and everybody that’s going. Praying for safe travels, technology working well, and just a wonderful and blessed time. In terms of myself, I know, I would guess that, as large as this family is, there’s someone still pray for me for clients. There’s things starting to build but I have nothing solid yet. And my work hours toward the billable stuff I’m supposed to be doing is all really low right now. So, prayers that the Lord would bring some of the efforts to fruit and that I would actually have some clients. My big project, working on the __ that I’m working on is going well but it’s coming to a close to. So, I’ve gotta get the client work in. Anyway, if you all know pray for me that’d be great. Love you all so much. Every day, the voices are a blessing to me just in that as I’m commuting back and forth during the day. You’re a rich family. Love you deeply. Talk you later. Michael from Mesa.

[chocolate-brownies]

Her baby is colicky. That’s how it begins. The only way Manoush Zomorodi’s infant son can be soothed is when she walks him in his stroller through the streets of Brooklyn. She walks for hours. Any noise sets him off, so even talking on her flip phone is off limits. She grows bored. She finds herself spacing out, her mind wandering in a way she hasn’t experienced since childhood. Years later, she has a new job as a radio reporter. She’s given the chance to host her own show. It’s called Note to Self, about how technology is shaping our lives. She sits down to brainstorm. You know, as many ideas as you can dream up. No idea is a bad idea! There’s only one problem. She has no ideas. She tries to think back to a time when ideas came easily. And she remembers: those long walks with her son. Before her smartphone. When she was bored. That’s how Manoush came up with the Bored and Brilliant challenge, in which she asked her listeners: Will you join me in a week-long experiment? Will you change your digital habits, get bored on purpose, and see what happens? Twenty thousand people signed up within 48 hours. I sat down with Manoush to find out what she and her listeners learned. 

Q. Why do you think boredom can be a good thing? 

Our parents always said, “Only boring people get bored.” So you think, “If I’m bored, I’m insufficient!” Then when we have our own kids, we’re told we have to make sure those little minds are constantly stimulated. We think boredom is something to be avoided. But we’ve gone to an extreme, which is that technology means we don’t ever have to be bored. Because all those little cracks in our day, those moments of walking someplace or waiting in line for coffee or sitting on the subway, are filled with our phones. The moment we get that uncomfortable feeling, we can immediately be distracted with texting or scrolling. So once I started to notice I was never bored anymore, I wondered: Is that a good thing? What would happen if we got rid of boredom entirely? Would we be missing something? 

Q. What did you find out?

I discovered that neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists are coming to understand that boredom is actually very important because it’s the gateway to mind-wandering. And allowing your mind to wander—some people call it daydreaming—is necessary to your creativity. It’s the time when you take one disparate idea and another disparate idea, and you smash them together to make something new. When you’re bored, you find the space to ask, “What if?” It ignites a network in your brain called the default mode, which some scientists refer to as the imagination network in your brain. 

Daydreaming is the time when you take one disparate idea and another disparate idea, and you smash them together to make something new.

Q. Is the default mode the same thing as being on automatic pilot?

So yes, physically you’re on automatic pilot, right? You’re folding laundry or you’re walking or you’re not doing anything that requires focused attention. And so you click over into the default mode, and you just kind of space out. And it turns out this default mode is where you do your original problem solving—including something called autobiographical planning. This is where you look back at your life, you build a personal narrative, and you plot out the steps to reach where you’re going to go next. When I learned this I was like, Well, what if we changed our digital habits? Could we make ourselves more bored on purpose? So I came up with this seven-step program (see page 56) to do just that. 

Q. But doesn’t it seem like the state we really want is “flow,” where you’re totally immersed in what you’re doing? 

Yeah, but how do you get into flow? You don’t just snap your fingers. I always think of how, when I was a kid, I’d draw and then two hours would be gone. And I’d be like, “What just happened?” It was this wonderful feeling of having lost yourself in time and space, and I wanted to feel like that all the time! But how did I get there? It requires the proverbial blank page. It requires me to feel the discomfort of “I don’t know what to draw. But there’s nothing else to do. All right, well, I’ll just start with a circle.”

And then suddenly the minutes fly by. And what I hear from young people is that the moment they could press on and get away from the bored and into the flow, that’s the moment where they’re like, I’m just going to check Instagram or get on Snapchat. 

Q. You say our desire for novelty is an urge that’s as hard-wired as our desire for sugar or fat. While it’s great that technology makes it easy to find out what’s new, what’s the flipside of that? 

I think of the food analogy in relation to information overload. I personally am a glutton for news and information. I just want to read everything. But what is the point in stuffing my brain with all this new information if I’m not going to use it somehow? For many people there’s also this insatiable appetite for social connection. Getting a “like” or a “favorite” is like having a piece of candy. It tastes so good! But you’re going to be hungry again really soon. So where’s the nourishment? Where do you find the satisfaction so that you’re not swiping, swiping, swiping…? 

Q. It’s like we think our phones are helping us stay connected to people, but there’s a paradox there.

Yeah, like today we connect on Twitter or Facebook. OK, that’s a connection. But would I recognize you in real life? Would we be happy to see each other? Would we be able to sit down and have a real conversation? It’s OK to be connected to a lot of people on social media platforms, but I want to make sure we don’t lose sight of real connection with people. Like right now you and I are having lovely eye contact. You have these beautiful blue eyes and cool cat glasses. When you see someone eye to eye, and you’re on the same wavelength, and they totally understand what you’re talking about? That’s connection! And you can’t do that in a text. 

Q. One of your listeners equated his phone to a baby’s binky. Another described theirs as a four-year-old in need of attention. How would you describe your relationship with your phone? 

I would say codependent for sure. The phone needs me because that’s how it makes money for all those free apps. But I definitely need the phone. I mean, my son right now is with my husband getting an X-ray on his foot. We can be in touch all day long. My phone tells me where I need to be in the next half hour. I have all my interview preparation in my phone. So don’t get me wrong, I love my phone. But what I’ve also realized is that I have compressed time in a way that sometimes my body cannot keep up with it. 

Q. Before I read your book I was kind of smug, thinking: I don’t have a problem because I’m just using my phone to be productive.

Our phones mean we can always be planning, always be productive. And I think we forget that being reflective actually helps us be productive because it helps us set goals. If we haven’t taken the time to sort out what’s important to us, then when we respond to an email, we’re letting other people set our goals for us. We’re confusing productivity with responsiveness. You know, computers have infinite capacity. Human beings do not. And that’s been a hard lesson for me to learn, particularly as a type A person who has so many things I want to do. It’s hard to get the meditation stuff into my life. 

Q. So do you meditate? 

I’m trying. I’ve started many times, but it’s very hard for me. I used to think I was the world’s worst meditator. But when I heard you’re supposed to fail over and over so you can just start again, I was like, Oh, I can do that! 

Q. One of the habits you asked your listeners to change was to stop taking pictures for a day. What advice do you have for parents like me who take a ton of pictures because we want to capture certain memories?

Part of being a parent is knowing that these moments are super fleeting. But why can’t we be OK with the fact that we’re not necessarily going to remember a certain moment? That’s why we’ve gravitated toward Facebook: because no chapter ever has to end. No one passes out of your life. Why not? It’s a sad thing when you lose touch, yes, but things do come to an end. Life comes to an end! So I’m really trying to be more comfortable with the idea: You’re right, you won’t remember it, and that’s why every moment deserves to be savored, because the ride is short, and it’s not easy. Who told you it was going to be? Nobody. 

Q. So do you think that we’re at a turning point in understanding the way technology might be interfering with our ability to space out and savor the moment? 

I would not have said that when we started the Bored and Brilliant project. But I took all the data that we collected, and I also did a ton more research. And I do think people are starting to understand that the idea that tech is always going to make things better is a utopian ideal—it’s not reality. There are fundamental questions about the next chapter of the internet. And while we wait for regulation or new business models or maybe it’s a Hippocratic Oath for software engineers, that’s all going to take some time. Meanwhile we have immediate work we can do on ourselves, on self-regulating. That’s something we have to teach ourselves and teach our children in schools. The people who participated in the Bored and Brilliant challenge were able to reduce the amount of time they spent with their phones. But more importantly, they created habits—like keeping their phones out of sight, and not using them while in transit—that made them more likely to connect with their own thoughts and with other people. 

You have to sit and be uncomfortable and go deep. That’s hard, but that’s where the good stuff is.

Q. You’re a fan of the tiny hack. Can you think of one small step that you would suggest people try? 

I guess it would be to realize that we have to schedule time for reflection into our lives. What we’re discovering is that the constant connectivity and easy access to information and other people means that we have to prioritize things that we’ve never had to teach before like eye contact, conversation, reflection, boredom. Because the future economy will require you to sit with a problem and work it through and not move to distract yourself with something else. You have to sit and be uncomfortable and go deep. That’s hard, but that’s where the good stuff is. 

ILLUSTRATION BY CAROLE HENAFF Bored and Brilliant: The Seven-Day Challenge

Here’s a chance to take a week to see whether you’re injecting enough space into your life.

Day One: Observe Yourself

First you’ll check your digital habits—and most likely be shocked by what you discover. 

The important thing is to accurately report on how often you check your phone. What are you checking—email, social media, missed phone calls, the weather? Do you read on your phone? What do you read—those long emails from your mom, The New York Times, or hashtags on Instagram? When do you pull it out most? Or is it always in your hand? Are you alone, or do you use it when you’re in a meeting or with another person socially? Do you take it to the bathroom with you?

Day Two: Keep Your Devices Out of Reach While in Motion

Keep your phone out of sight while in transit—so, no walking and texting.

When you are on the bus or walking down the street, you’re not doing nothing. We think of these moments as unproductive, inefficient, or lost if we’re not checking our mail or doing other tasks.But these are ideal times for letting our minds wander. 

Day Three: Photo-Free Day

No pics of food, kitten, kids—nada.

Take absolutely no pictures today. See the world through your eyes, not your screen. Instagrammers, it’s gonna get rocky. Snapchatsters? Hang in there. Everyone is going to be OK. I promise.

Day Four: Delete That App

Take the one app you can’t live without and trash it. (Don’t worry, you’ll live.)

Ask yourself: “Is this product serving me or hurting me?” When I asked myself that question, I knew I had to delete Two Dots, the game I stayed up playing well past my bedtime. I wanted to delete it. And yet the process was literally nauseating. This was by far the hardest challenge for the original Note to Self listeners who followed the Bored and Brilliant program—myself  included. But if I can do it, so can you. 

Day Five: Take a Fakecation

You’ll be in the office but out of touch.

Decide how long you need. An afternoon? An hour? Twenty minutes? It’s up to you. If there’s no way your boss will let you off the grid for an hour or 20 minutes, set aside time for yourself tonight. The important thing is to set a fixed period and to stick to it. 

Day Six: Observe Something Else

Reclaim the art of noticing.

Go somewhere public and stay for a while. It could be a park, a mall, the gas station, a café, the hallway at work or school. Once you get there, hang out. Watch people or birds or anything that strikes you. If you feel uncomfortable lingering in a spot to observe, then you can do this exercise while walking. Just make one small observation you might have missed if your nose were glued to a screen. 

Day Seven: The Bored and Brilliant Challenge

Use your new powers of boredom to make sense of your life and set goals.

Step I. Identify an aspect of your life that you’ve been confused by, avoiding, or downright terrified to think about.

Step II. Set aside 30 minutes where you’ll be completely free from distraction. Store away your phone, tablet, laptop, or any other digital device. Put a generous pot of water on the stove and watch it come to a boil. Or find a small piece of paper and write “1,0,1,0” as small as you can until the paper is full.

Step III. Immediately after you’ve completed Step II, and are mind-numbingly bored, sit down with a pen and pad and put your mind to the task of solving the problem identified in Step I. If you are a visual person, feel free to draw. If you’re a list maker, make a list. The point is to come up with new ideas and get them down on paper. 

The post Tap into Your Inner Brilliance appeared first on Mindful.

#sleep sounds #sleep music #white noise app #nature sounds #relaxing sounds #rain sounds for sleeping

[uclaradio]

Interview with Westerman

as interviewed by Salvatore Ingrassia

Westerman at the Moroccan Lounge, 11/29/2018

Questions have been rephrased for conciseness.

We’ll start off with some basic questions–what’s your full name, where are you from, and, in your own words, what kind of music do you make?

My name is William Westerman, I’m from West London (Shepherds Bush), and I make experimental pop music I suppose.

Which artists have most influenced your work? From what you can tell, how do these influences surface in your music?

Uh, I think there’s a lot of different artists… I try not to think about other artists when I’m making my own music. But I like a lot of different genres, my dad listened to lots of jazz so I think there’s elements of that in my music. I listened to a lot of singer-songwriters when I was still in my teens, people like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake–kind of classic, sorta songsmith-type people…. Increasingly now I listen to more kind of atmospheric stuff. I think from working with Bullion my producer, coming from more of like an electronic background, that’s obviously something that’s been seeping into the music as well.

Since releasing the Harvard EP you’ve undergone a pretty rapid sonic transition in just a few short years. It seems like you’ve moved away from a folky acoustic set-up and have begun producing more atmospheric, electronic music….What specifically has influenced this change in your music?

I think it’s just like, I had never really done any recording so when I was writing songs it was just writing on a guitar and singing ‘em live. Like you just have those two textures, your playing and your singing, and the lyrics. But I guess when it came to like start recording music and making the second EP and having done the process of seeing how you start to like build a track up, it just got me thinking about more kind of compositional elements. Just thinking about ways you could kinda create effects, and maybe it’s more effective to use a different texture and a melody line from an instrument as opposed to just your voice in that plane. So I guess just that process of starting to understand recording and the actual recording process a bit more.

And would you say working with Bullion has affected this in any way?

Yeah I mean sure, like we’re good friends, we get on really well and I think we just have a really good open and creative relationship where like we share music with each other all the time, and just like being opened up to I guess different types of music I didn’t know before. But yeah, also just watching the way that he makes his music and the way he builds tracks up I think by osmosis has just kind of affected the way that I think about arranging my own stuff.

There’s been a revival of 80s aesthetics across different genres in recent years. Your 2018 projects seem to somewhat reflect this trend.  What are your thoughts on this trend and how does your music fit in this landscape?

Um, I don't know. It’s strange because when I started making this music I wasn’t aware of like that that was gonna be a thing… I never think when I’m making music like ‘I wanna reference 80s sounds,’ it’s more just playing around with different textures when it comes to recording and just trying to find stuff which frames my melodies or my voice [in a way] which seems appropriate…. If that is something that’s being revived I do think there’s a nice romanticism in a lot of those sounds and textures, maybe if that’s a thing that’s coming back… maybe it’s kind of a nostalgia thing? I guess like when Ariel Pink first came through 10 years ago it was more of a thing of using analog gear. It might be linked to people getting more like… like people rejecting too-polished and too-processed “perfect” types of music…. But I haven’t really thought about it until you asked me.

Your music seems to elude categorization. What might inform your individualism and how do you see yourself in the greater landscape of music today?

I never really liked the idea of trying to sounds like something else. When I’m making music I try to not think too much about it and just sort of see what comes out, like I try not to process it too much other than like a degree of ordering and refining. But in terms of the melodies and stuff… I just try and follow that without looking at anything too much apart from my own intuition…. I guess it’s kind of alternative music, it’s not really concerned like the current trends of mainstream pop music.

One word that comes to mind when I think of your post-2016 output is subtlety. What is it about subtlety you find attractive?

I think the more music I make and the more I sort of understand making music and putting it together… I think a lot of modern music has just too much going on. Like maximalism can be cool if there’s like a reason for it. I do try and give the different elements and textures room to breathe. Like if the ideas are strong enough they should kinda carry that weight on their own, that’s definitely a principal that I do agree with. But I guess a lot if it is also just independence and what kind of voice you have. I have the voice that I have and it has a certain texture and a certain timbre and whatever… it’s just trying to suit it [and] find the right way of framing what you do, I guess.

As a solo artist, what would you say are some of the advantages and disadvantages of working by yourself? Does being a multi-instrumentalist influence your choice to go it alone? 

I don’t know if I’d really classify myself as a multi-instrumentalist, that’s kind of you. I kind of play guitar and play some other stuff quite badly *chuckles*. I think I’ve always just liked working on my own, for me my process is trying to expel a lot of the kinda craziness in your day to day life. It can all be quite overwhelming, a sort of wall of information. Making music has always been a quiet thing that I do just to kind of make sense of all this crazy stuff…. I was always making music before I was releasing music and it was for that kind of tranquility and solace. I guess the advantages are like, I’ve never really thought much about scenes or whatever music fits in ‘cuz I’ve never really been a part of one. So maybe in terms of sounding like an individual, that probably plays a large part in that.

You have a degree in philosophy. Are there philosophical concepts that you try to weave into your songwriting? Has this informed any lyrical themes or references?

I think there’s a lot of questions in my music. I don’t know if that’s informed necessarily by having done philosophy or [if] I did philosophy because that’s kind of the way my mind works. I am definitely quite concerned with balance. I did a lot of Greek stuff. Just thinking about like Parmenides and Aristotle… that’s something I’m definitely drawn to in music, to kind of create balance. It kinda goes back to just like, giving things room to breathe and not overloading things.

Finally, are there any contemporary artists you recommend?

That’s a good question… My favorite record this year is Amen Dunes’ album. I wasn’t aware of his music until this latest album but that’s a brilliant record. What else is good… I always find that a hard question, I do listen to music a lot but when you get put on the spot your mind goes blank. I’ve actually been listening to older stuff again recently. Like I’ve kind of been going back into a Talking Heads phase, which is a thing I do semi-regularly. But the Amen Dunes record, I definitely recommend that one.

#westerman #amen dunes #interview #profile #philosophy #bullion #ulca radio #music #college radio #ArtistInterview

[thomasreedtn]

Timothy Glenn ~ Uranus in Taurus: The Preview

After a long hiatus, but always timely … a new astrological meta-analysis by Timothy Glenn. This is an important — and potentially empowering — post. I know so many good-hearted, intelligent people about to have their world shaken like an electric popcorn maker struck by lightning. If you find yourself knee-jerk reacting to anything, it’s wise to step back and humbly reassess. Maybe your original assessment will hold, but it’s wise to examine any and all “of course” ideas. Look for those areas you consider “so obvious” that you’re certain anyone who disagrees with you is a neanderthal or idiot.

As Tim explains, we’re in preview mode. What do you wish to create? What are you fighting, and what are you supporting? Are you sure they’re mutually exclusive? Awakener, Revelator, Liberator Uranus is full of surprises. It’s popcorn time. Whether you get zapped or enjoy the show depends on your own creativity, awareness and adaptability. Sending love, discernment and courage to everyone … here’s Tim:

Uranus in Taurus: The Preview

by Timothy Glenn

We have been hearing quite a buzz about the revolutionary planet Uranus entering the staid sign of Taurus. Uranus tends to be ahead of its time, so no matter what sign it enters, it looks around and says, “Oh, this is so retro. It’s time for an upgrade.”

The three outer planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) never simply move from one sign to another. Since they scour every single degree of the zodiac, they always do a triple transit over the cusp during their ingress into any sign.

Uranus initially moved into Taurus on May 15. It will go into retrograde motion on August 7, and cross back into Aries on November 6. This gives us a six month preview of what may arise during the following seven years.

Movie Trailers

Most of us have watched previews of movies, and from that we have determined whether or not we would like to watch the entire film. We can apply the same principle here.

If we see or experience things we like during the preview period, we can invest more energy into manifesting such possibilities on a grander scale during the Main Event after Uranus returns to Taurus for the long haul on May 6, 2019.

Simultaneously, if we see or experience things we don’t like during the preview, the wise among us will make appropriate adjustments – or run the risk of the universe treating us to a major league, industrial strength cosmic attitude adjustment at a seemingly inopportune moment.

Shake and Wake

Uranus has been known as the Awakener, and could perhaps be credited with coining the expression “rude awakening”. While Uranus can bestow magnificent blessings, those blessings can sometimes arrive extremely well disguised.

As the Revelator, Uranus can also unveil broader perspectives and cold hard facts that shake outmoded belief systems to their foundations – usually not a comfy, cushy process.

During the original Red Pill experience in the first Matrix film, the character Neo fully realized that the world he had accepted as Reality had all along been a computer-generated simulation. He and all other humans had lived their lives inside that trap, perpetually being drained of energy by the artificial intelligence that had designed and built the Matrix. When this realization crashed through his barriers, he dropped to his hands and knees to vomit. Sometimes the truth hurts.

Much of the Blue-Pilled population still clings to their beliefs in the very systems that have misled and exploited them all their lives. These duped people are testing the Red-Pilled sector’s patience. However, Blue-Pilled obnoxiousness and obstinacy demonstrated by some of them, have reached such a fever pitch that others are at least beginning to question what they have been supporting.

We might wish for them to be awakened, without envying them the procedure of awakening. Mark Twain said, “It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.” And the deeper the resistance, the more intense the pain of releasing the lies they have believed.

Another Fine Myth

Q. What happens when the irresistible force meets the immovable object? A. The so-called immovable object has its illusions shattered.

Many of our Taurean illusions are coming up for review. Think you’re grounded? Think the Earth is solid? Think institutions and ways of life are permanent and immutable? Uranus in Taurus will invite you to guess again.

As our old friend the Buddha pointed out, the entire universe is transient. Everything is moving, flowing. Nothing is solid and stationary.

Scientific best guesstimates indicate that we are rapidly spinning on a planet that is flying at about 67,000 miles per hour around a sun that is barreling through the galaxy at 483,000 miles per hour. Meanwhile, the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are approaching each other at an estimated speed of a quarter million miles per hour.

And yet some part of human life thinks it’s immovable? Good luck with that.

All That Matters

Everything earthy will be challenged. Materially based, consumer driven societies will rethink and retool, or risk extinction. The old greed-fueled financial systems of debt slavery have reached their expiration date.

Uranus also serves as the Liberator. Uranus loves to create opportunities. Uranus promotes conscious evolution. And this is where Uranus can bring its highest ideals right down to Earth.

We will all have adventures in realigning our priorities, to the point that some of our dearest old values will be weighed and found wanting. Not a single one of us can expect to usher in the New Earth while carrying on in any of the old world paradigms.

Uranus in Taurus will strongly encourage greater conscientiousness in how we spend our material resources, individually and collectively. As more uncomfortable facts are unveiled about methods of procurement and production, humanity’s conscience will be galvanized. We will insist on the technological innovations that Uranus can provide. We will up our game.

And yes – Uranus rules electricity, hence electronics, hence computers, hence the internet – hence get ready for cryptocurrencies to move to the fore.

Signing In

During our preview period (now through November 6) we can watch for signs of things to come. There will continue to be indicators popping up everywhere.

And yet our crazy friend Uranus remains the least predictable influence in the solar system. He specializes in surprises. He enjoys giving a good head fake. In the aftermath, he loves to hear us say: “Who’da thunk it?” Uranus, that’s who.

We cannot ignore that as the first of the Earth signs, Taurus involves the physical planet. The prophesied Earth changes will not only continue, but escalate. The “system” is currently downplaying many of the phenomena happening right now, but this is an area to watch. Uranus in Taurus will rock the Earth – literally.

Growing Up

The time has come for humanity to grow the hell up already. Fortunately, Uranus in Taurus will generate the impetus for us to ascend to the next level of human evolution.

The Uranian method of awakening the sleepers can be analogized to having a bucket of ice water dumped on your head. But it works. Once you shake it off, life becomes a fresh new day.

Uranus in Taurus will support upliftment of all kinds, especially in the arts. Our divine creativity will be stimulated. Genuine inspiration will elevate society above the moral and ethical depravity of the corporate entertainment industry.

But our enhanced creativity will extend into all areas of Earthly life. We can expect to see tremendous advancements in ordinary folk type humans growing more of their own food, and helping reverse the environmental degradation that now staggers the intellect.

Uranus is the true Tech Giant. Whatever will help us shift life on Earth, the technologies (which already exist – and have long existed) will emerge. The key lies in our ever opening consciousness, especially in our hearts.

Uranus in Taurus? As Laura Bruno loves to say: “Bring it!”

Timothy Glenn http://www.soulpurposereadings.com/

from Thomas Reed https://laurabruno.wordpress.com/2018/07/09/timothy-glenn-uranus-in-taurus-the-preview/