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#i might have had a Larry blog back in 2012 so this post can be about them in spirit
pinktyler · 2 years
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I actually dont understand why reblogging pictures of the same 2 men every day keeps me entertained
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alarrytale · 15 days
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I really admire Gina’s presence here since her blog was my first one to follow after I became larrie and most of the larry knowledge including HL’s sexualities, industry and pr tactics and closeting I learned from her blog. And as much I appreciate and respect all her opinions and povs, I also noticed how she suddenly switched to “I don’t know if they are still together, sometimes I think they are and sometimes I think they don’t” opinion + sometimes holds her opinion back on H’s sexuality as well saying that he’s just queer (like if there’s a possibility in her believe that he might be bi/pan) and however he label himself, the most important is that he’s happy. And tbh reading this opinion switches as a still quite new larrie is just making me anxious as long as my opinions and believes are based on what old-days larries, who witnessed it all, say. But I also noticed she just started to hold her back with such a bold opinions like you, Marte, have that they never broke up/hooked up with someone else if they had some breaks and that they are both gays. So she might be bold in her believes but she doesn’t write it anymore because it became an opening a can of worms for her since she’s popular and her asks are the most flooded with antis/gf harries/trolls opinions. So imo she just decided to step on brakes, not because she’s not firm in her believes anymore but because she’s just that popular. But that’s just what I observed in the past year, there were days when she had word larrie in her bio which she also changed.
Anyway I’m still happy she’s there just like you and have a patience and kindness to answers asks because I couldn’t imagine being larrie who believe they are still together and witness their stunt shenanigans and their gaslighting on us on my own.
P.S.: I really hope we’ll get Nouis reunion since they both play the same festival in Berlin and Louis even liked Niall’s post recently and we know how much excited Louis got in Nov that he might see “my Niall” for that RS event. I’m manifesting!
Hi, anon 💜
I think it's very important to make up your own mind and do your own research on all these topics, and not rely on different blogs to tell you what you should believe and not believe. That includes me. I think it can be difficult when you haven't experienced things in person and in the context of which it happened, and the source material is gone or the bloggers that sat on the info have left the fandom. It can be hard to know where to look and who to ask for guidance. However, there are still blogs with plenty of info, blog archives and timelines that can help you make up your own mind and help you put things in context. They're just not active anymore. So the blogs that are still active gets a lot of attention and asks. That doesn’t mean their word is gospel. I see many younger blogs here giving out wrong info, because they weren't here to experience it. There are also hardly veteran blogs who are still here to contest the info being wrong. That means the veteran blogs who're active gets a lot of attention and their opinions are more valued than others. That's both a good and a bad thing.
I'm very confident in my opinions because i have been here almost every single day since 2012. Both on twitter and tumblr. I was here during all the highs and lows. I'm also very clear about what i don't know or feel like i can't confidently make a decision on because of lack of info. I also very much believe in diversity of opinon and hearing different points of view. It's fine to have different opinions or different beliefs. Us larries aren’t a homogenous group of people. So we need to respect each others differences of opinons. We don’t need to reach a consensus. We also need to respect people having a change of heart or not wanting to take a stance on a subject because they don't have enough info to be confident enough in their opinions.
We larries take a breath and we get a ton of shit from antis. So i do understand why people are not always so bold and confident about their opinions. Some anons won't take "i don't know/i'm not sure/i have no opinion" as an answer. They need to know for sure and they need that assurance from the blogger. That's hard to deal with sometimes and a lot of responsibilty when you know the asker will take your word as truth. I wouldn't worry as much about what this or this blogger believes about this and that. Build confidence in your own opinions. You might know more about a subject than i do or what another blogged does. If a blogger succumbed to all the gaslighting, changed their opinons and left the fandom you wouldn't be as lost if you've made up your mind independently of them. You wouldn't be alone in your opinion either, there are loads of people still here who shares them. You just need to find them.
No one knows the full and whole truth here. We're all bound to be wrong about some things. So don't rely too much on others, find what makes the most sense to you and what your gut tells you and stick to it regardless of others opinions.
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saintqueer · 3 years
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do you think all the stuff they did in 2014 was seeding for a coming out and planned or was it them being defiant and knocking on the door of their closet??
DUDEEE this is a good ass question.
and honestly not one i'm sure i can answer definitively because both are really solid theories. and tbh i personally think it might be a little of both?
there was a lot of banging on the closet door going on in 2012 but then they were pushed deeper into the closet and (perhaps out of self-preservation) they stopped interacting completely throughout 2013 so that's why it was such a surprise when they started acting up part way into 2014. and arguably the acting up started with the Zouis leaked weed video where they were perhaps trying to break an "appearance clause" and get dropped by SJPR or Sony altogether. soooo if we theorize that perhaps the leaked video was actually the start of the Big Gay War, it would seem they were trying to force a change rather than working with their team to seed a coming out.
howeverrrrr, as time went on and especially with the appearance of GBA it became more likely that, perhaps after constant fighting from all the boys, the people in charge started telling them a coming out would be possible and started seeding it (whether it was ever the intention to allow them to or not) with the help of GBA as a tumblr plant to read the fandom. something drastic changed when zayn left however and the Big Gay War took a turn for the worst (not saying this is zayn's fault AT ALL btw). this is when we had outright sabotage of louis' image, the stunt to end all stunts, and RBB & SBB fighting back harder than ever. a lot of obvious retribution for all that louis did on behalf of the band and, it seems, for taking some pretty drastic actions to attempt freedom from Sony.
so to summarize an answer, i'd say it was first a shit-ton of banging on the closet door and then possible seeding with the help of their team and then, once again, banging on the closet door that included an intense targeted attack of louis.
i've tried linking some important posts above BUT i highly suggest reading up on the Big Gay War yourself and coming to your own conclusions. i'm basically regurgitating theories i've read from veteran larries on here that i moshposhed together in my brain.
you can have a look through my Big Gay War tag on my side blog @pegging1d. my GBA tag is very empty and still under construction so i suggest looking through @lornasaurusrex's GBA tag! Lorna's tags for the Big Gay War and GBA were sooo helpful to me when i was researching. that's where i located that GBA masterpost from diggingandfluff i linked above!
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softsweaterlouis · 4 years
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Mini larry breakdown
Hi for everyone that might read this post (which I think is going to be none bc probably most of the people who followed me left tumblr and the fandom). 
I’ve been going through a 1D/larry relapse during this quarantine and i wanted to write my feelings in this blog since it was the place where I stayed for all the time that I was in this fandom. 
Since 2016, after louis baby was born, I felt so sick and I couldn’t really handle being in this fandom anymore. Larry had always been my happy place, they brought me so much happiness for FIVE years (that is a lot! especially if those are your teen years and they were, I was a fan from 15 to 20!), so after Freddie was born, I couldn’t handle it anymore bc that was a proof that I couldn’t ignore anymore.
SO, I still kept updated on stuff and I read fanfics, but I was so angry at Louis that I didn’t even want to see picture of him. I get now that that was unfair, but I was just a girl who spent 5 years of their life beliving in their love and having the voice in the back of my mind saying “well, maybe what you tought wasn’t necessarly 100% true” was driving me crazy.
Then we go to the 2017-2020 era, which is made by me having fun at unversity and crying at university and not thinking about them, I woud watch some larry video now and then, I would listen to their new singles but that was that, I never really wanted to get much into their solo stuff bc for me it has always been ot4 and even though I enojoyed some of their songs (harry and niall the most), I still felt kinda “betrayed”.
Last but not least, I had stopped reading fanfics bc I was still mad at Louis and the idea of reading him in fanfics pissed me of. ( so I just started reaing A LOT of real bookd and here and there some sterek fanfics)
This is the very long back story that bring us (I know there is no “Us” since none is going to read this but let’s pretend that there is an us), in quarantine.
I live in Milan so I’ve been in quarantine since february 22th, after the second week I was like “you know, maybe I could read a larry fic again” and this is where everything started basically.
I spent a month reading all the fics that had been posted during the time that I was away from the fandom and then i ended back to larry videos and stuff and I was lke “have I imagined all of this????”
Then I got my period, and let me tell you, that was a HELL of a week. I cryed at least once a day thinking about how probably harry and louis weren’t really in a relationship and how our shipping affected them and i felt SO BAD. I cried bc I coulnd’t believe that I was SO SURE about everything, for me it was always like: something bad happens --> they are forced bc they want to come ouy BUT did they? Like, even if they were a couple for all that time, they probably didn’t want to come out and here we were all so sure that their management wanted them no be in the closet and that they wanted to fight them
But honesty I don’t even think that this is what happened bc like, Louis went back with Eleanor, he has her INITIAL tattooed in his hand, why would he do something like that if he is not with her????? He is not as famous as he was, he has a son (that look exactly like him) so there is no way that he still “needs” a fake girlfriend for the “i have to be straight” narrative. (like, to believe that for example harry was in a fake relationshipe with camille it makes more sense bc then he wrote a song publically about her at that brings attention ecc ecc).
So then, after a week of mental breakdown where i was putting myself down bc i was like “was i really that delusional???” I arrived to a conclusion:
it doesn’t matter if they were really together or not.
At the time, I really needed the belief of true love that fought against everyone and everything, at that was what larry gave me.
I regret nothing, I think that yes, their public relationship was affected BUT NOT their private one, bc that would be crazy.
I LIKE to think that something happened between them (back in 2010-2012) but maybe they just fooled around, they were best friends and really cared for eachother. Honestly, there are so many videos with harry making love eyes at louis that it’s not possible that he didn’t at least had a crush on him. But that’s the imposrtant passage, the “i like to think”, bc back then I would have said “I’m SURE that they are together”, but you know what, we simply cannot be. 
Human relationships are so complex, like, I don’t talk anymore with my bestfriend from highschool and we were SO CLOSE, we knew everything about each other and yet, we are not anymore.
I just hope that they still are close friends bc it would be a shame if they were not. I like to think that 1D will come back and I will be first in line for everything.
I have accepted the fact that Louis and Harry might not be the people that I thought they were, I had made up a complete persona for them but that is just what we as fans can see.
In particular now that they are doing their solo careers it’s really easy to see how they want to be seen.
Like, Harry likes the fact to be perceived as a mystirious celebrity, a little bit flamboyant but at the same time the straight dude who only dates super models. Back in the days I would have said “they are forcing him to date all these girls!!!” but ... maybe he is okay with that you know??? We’ll never know i guess.
If someone read all of this, cograts!!
These are just my thoughts, I have made peace with myself and now I can look at Louis picture without being angry at him and I can listen to Harry songs (almost) without thinking “it’s your fault if 1D are not back together!!!!” (I’m kinda still working on this last point ahah)
SO yeah, do I regret shipping larry??? NO, they were my life and I am happy.
Do I regret not realising that I cannot know how their private life and relationships are going just by wathcing interviews and videos?? yes BUT that’s just life, we learn and grow.
I will leave with a quote from an Italian movie called “mine vaganti”
“Gli amori impossibili non finiscono mai, sono quelli che durano per sempre”
(”impossible love never ends, it’s the one that last forever).
- an old larry shipper
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wernerherzogs · 4 years
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Larries are the most disrespectful invasive and trash fans. Louis called you all lunatics and genuinely hates you. The way you treated his mother, his sister, his child. All you deserve is his hate.
😪😪😪😪😪😴😴😴😴😴😴😴😴😴 we literally aren't. bad apples ARE everywhere. there are still ppl posting on harry&his friends/families' social media about haylor based on 6 pap photo ops over 2 months time back in 2012, but heterosexuality never bothers anyone, right? there were eleanor/het louis girls literally printing out freddie's pictures. the people who had first leaked info about jay being gravelly sick weren't larries. people just love uniting over a mutual scapegoat and excersising an opportunity to be bullies when they think it's "justified" (due to some quotes here and there). also the new mainstream media visibility&commodification of fandom have both heavily contributed to creating this new trend of people blogging as if louis/harry/jeff/anyone else themselves were watching, and awarding them private brownie points for being better&purer fans. it always works the best when you can publicly compare yourself to someone who is "Objectively" worse, lmao. and larries have been the easiest target since louis' tweets in 2012. but you're not better for not reading larry fic but "sticking to canon", aka making sure to keep up with all the potential women or men harry might be fucking. we're all on the same ground in a rpf fandom, but ulimately what y'all are doing kills the fandom at its core, since fandom has always been rebellious, not caring about canon, expressive, original, brave, and so on. but it IS tricky when it's rpf, and when you don't know how to set boundaries for /yourself/ most of all. that's why it's vital to be able to treat a rpf fandom as a fiction-based fandom no matter what your opinions about real people involved are. it's tricky when you Actually Care, too.
anyway i could rant longer but you didn't really deserve this answer. but i wanted to say this so i didn't block you, but get lost now, bully, you're not welcome here.
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hi all. i wanted to sit down and get some stuff off my chest.
first, i want to start at the beginning. i made this blog way, way back in august 2011. i was 15 years old, almost 16. i made it because i was bored and some of my classmates had tumblrs and i thought it seemed cool. (please please don’t look at my old posts. they were terrible and i’m not the same person i was at 15.) i didn’t have a blog theme, i just kind of talked to myself. i babbled about what i wanted to do, my boyfriend, just random things. sometimes my post might get a like here and there, and i was happy when it did. but notes didn’t matter. i just liked having this little online space to keep stuff i liked.
and then i discovered fandoms. i realized that people liked the same stuff i did and i could connect with them and talk about that stuff. i could interact and see the cool things people made, and i tried to contribute, too. i remember getting 278 notes on a rise of the guardians post and i was amazed. hell, i remember posting a picture of my jack frost bracelet and was thrilled that it got even 6 notes. it was so much fun, to get to interact with people who had similar interests as me.
i found one direction in 2012. i listened to up all night all the way through on my little red 4th gen ipod nano and cried when i first heard moments. i loved this band. they made fun music and at that point in my life, i really needed something fun and light. i fell in love with this band.
i went away to college in the fall of 2013. i remember asking my roommate if she minded if i put up some one direction posters, and she said no. that fall, i very quickly fell into the fandom. someone posted in our our class’s facebook page, asking us to describe our tumblr with a haiku. i don’t remember what i wrote, but it was about one direction, and this person reached out to me and said she liked one direction too, and let’s hang out. i said of course. she’s the one who introduced me to larry, showed me early ‘proof’ videos from chockuhblock or something (i can’t remember the spelling), videos that aren’t on youtube anymore. this was BEFORE fimq’s ‘top 30 iconic larry stylinson moments,’ if you can believe it. we bonded so much over one direction. we went to wwa and otra together. we took over the common room on the 11th floor to stream all 8+ hours of 1d day. @emmybazy​: thank you for being my first fandom friend.
it was all downhill from there, in the best way. i started writing fic. i believed harry and louis were in a relationship. i made everything about larry. i won a rainbow bear from a carnival and named it larry and took it around europe with me when i studied abroad. i successfully ‘converted’ several of my college friends to 1d fans, some even to larries. i wrote more fic. i made more online friends. i dragged emma @lesbianharrie into the fandom. (y’all are welcome.)
in the fall of 2017, i made more fandom friends. @dystopianharry and @suspendrs​ created a groupchat for boston-area larries. emma and i joined and before long, we made friends. friends we met irl and hung out with. we went to concerts, acted awkward at coffeeshops, wrote fic together and laughed and roasted each other and just had the best time. 
i’m not sure exactly what’s happened to me since that first night i laid in bed and fell in love with ‘moments.’ maybe i’m getting older and i’m just outgrowing some aspects of this fandom. maybe i’m bored because nothing’s really been happening and i’m tired of getting worked up over the small things. maybe some of the stuff that’s happened within the fandom turned me off.
but whatever’s happened, i’m falling out of love with the fandom and it’s time for me to move on.
i am calling this a ‘semi-retirement.’ i’m still going to be a 1d fan—i love one direction, and i love all five of the boys. i support them in their solo endeavors and i’ll support them if/when they get back together. i’ll still go to their concerts if they’re near me and i’ll still listen to their music. i just can’t be involved in fandom as much as i’ve been for the last six years. i’m still going to have one foot firmly planted in 1d hell and that’s never going to change, but the other foot is somewhere else now and i’m ready to talk more about where that other foot is.
so what does this ‘semi-retirement’ really mean? here’s what’s going to happen.
i’m going to finish a handful of fics that i’ve started and then retire from 1d fic for the time being. i’m going to finish the breath of the wild au and its sequels if it’s the last thing i do, no matter how long it takes, and i have a couple of WIPs that i want to finish and post but after that, i won’t write any more. i won’t start any new fics. i’m going to focus solely on haikyuu!! fic and sometimes breath of the wild fic. all my old 1d fic will stay up, i’m not deleting those.
as an extension of that, i’m going to stop reading 1d fic as well.
i’m going to start putting more of a variety of stuff on this main blog. i’ll keep all my sideblogs, but more non-1d content is going to be on main. legend of zelda, haikyuu!!, other games, youtubers, all of that will be on main. i’ll still reblog one direction content, but not to the extent i used to.
i’m not becoming a houie or anti. i still believe louis and harry are in a committed relationship and that freddie is not louis’ son. i just won’t be blogging about that unless something major happens.
i hope you guys won’t be mad that i’m stepping back from the fandom, and i won’t be upset if you unfollow me. i understand not everyone wants sports anime on their dash. i just know this is something i need to do for myself. i’m ready to spend more time in a new fandom, to contribute somewhere else for a change, and it think this has been a long time coming, if i’m honest.
thank you to every single one of you reading this post. i’m sorry it got so long, but you know me—i like precision. thank you for following me, for reading and commenting on my fic, for interacting with my posts, for sending me asks, for everything. i wish you all the best in life, both in fandom and outside of it.
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larriefails · 5 years
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Amy 28nachos know claims they don’t know who’s behind babygate. They literally get more deluded by the day and they don’t even realise it.
I mean, let’s break this down
When Larries started with their conspiracy theory, their initial target was Modest Management. I think it was mostly because they thouht they’d identified one of Modest’s employees in the background of some pictures of Louis and Eleanor and she was like a “beard handler”, you guessed it, they harassed her to hell and back
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  They also believed Harry was crying here
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Because Marco Gastel, another Modest Management employee asked to take Louis and Eleanor’s picture
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Truth is Harry went outside without his sunglasses and the glare of the sun was hurting his eyes. He wasn’t crying. I don’t even know if that’s actually Marco taking their picture, not that it’d be in any way suspicious for Louis and Eleanor to ask someone to take their picture if it were
They spent all of 2012, 2013, and most of 2014 yelling Modest was closeting them against their will, they called them “management”
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This one is long but boy it was funny to read
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In late 2014 this wack ass theory started to crop up, I believe mostly from lapelosa, worshippedlove, stagtatto/handslows, and verily (all of them are either not Larries anymore or have abandoned their blogs), the theory was that Sony was on the Larry side and Modest was against them. Which is… incredibly amusing
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When Harry started being spotted with Jeff and his family more and more, certain blogs started pretending to have insider knowledge about how Irving was actually going to sign the whole band and save Larry. These blogs were diggingandfluff, srslycris, lapelosa, larryappreciation, and some others that escape me now. They were 100% sure and even kept at it all the way into March of 2017, just five days before Harry announced his solo debut
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Obviously Irving and Jeff didn’t sign the band. Jeff signed HARRY, which was something the “antis and hets” Larries love to disparage predicted all the way back to 2014/2015
So Larries now hate Jeff, they think he’s incompetent and the product of nepotism. They don’t admit to having been wrong for over three years, to have lied about having insider knowledge. Cris and Kati have justified Angela (lapelosa) by saying that she trusted sources when she shouldn’t have.. and you know what? I could excuse a naive Larrie trusting a “receipt” because it plays into what they want to believe and it doesn’t really have a big impact anyway, but Angela spent literal years saying over and over and over again that she knew for a FACT that Irving would sign 1D, that Harry wouldn’t go solo, that Louis and Harry were engaged, and Kati and Cris can play it off like “well we didn’t trust those things, she did” but they reblogged the posts and never raised their voices to say that they didn’t necessarily agree
The result of this is an endless wave of hate towards Jeff, who’s one of Harry’s best friends and welcomed him to his family, and also a lot of hate towards Harry from rads. Rads believe Jeff/Irving are actively working against Louis, that they’re the ones that designed “babygate” that it’s all to “lift Harry up”, that it’s putting the “burden of the closet” on Louis so Harry can be his “true self” and how incredibly unfair that is
But we’ll go back to this, first we have to establish who Larries blamed when the Modest vs Sony theory became visibly absurd and while Azoff was still seen as a good guy. Well, it was Simon Cowell
Simon became the root of all evil. Now, I don’t particularly like the guy, he’s shady and greedy, but he’s a music executive, they all are shady and greedy. That’s how they get to the top
For a long time the Larrie theory was that Syco was behind all of it, that they knew they were gonna lose the band because the original contract was ending and there was no way they were signing a new one. That Louis was the mastermind behind the band breaking away from Syco so Simon was punishing him with all the events of 2015. Then they found out that as they were cooking up those theories, Simon Cowell had sold part of his shares in Syco to Sony and now Sony was in charge. For a while, Larries continued to believe that Simon was punishing Louis, this time because he’d “cost him his empire” (Syco). Then they realized that made no sense, because Louis was still a dad and now Simon wasn’t even in charge, at least not completely, so though at that point they had already started hating on Sony, they laser focused their attention on them
That was the new evil that needed defeating. Sony, in general. But Simon/Syco aren’t good guys either and they also have a hand in this. But also Modest facilitated Sony/Syco’s plans, so they’re still evil. And throw Simon Jones PR there too, while you’re at it
To Rads, it’s mostly a combination of Rob Stringer (Sony’s current CEO) and Irving Azoff, with Simon Cowell as an evil puppet, and the reason for babygate is boosting Harry’s career. They say that Irving astroturfed (sent anons) to tumblrs to convince these blogs that he was their savior and he gaslighted the Larries into liking him only to BAM stab them in the back (instead of just admitting they were wrong and bought a bunch of bullshit from fake insiders and random anons on tumblr). This is really funny because there’s been a bunch of CEOs in Sony (like, three?) between 2012 and now, hell, Stringer wasn’t even CEO when “babygate” started
To Larries, it’s more unclear. It’s Simon Cowell but actually Sony? But Irving isn’t helping Louis either but Rusty and JGG were also evil and it’s just a giant salad. The reason behind it at this point is a big fat shrug. Punishing him because…? Some might spew a bit about Savan Kotecha and how Louis was a “thorn in their side” (so powerful yet so helpless) Some others will say closeting but in the same breath that babygate is still a thing even without Larry (which is all sorts of confusing)
In other words: their theories have never made sense, they’ve never stood the test of time. Time and again they’ve been proven wrong and at this point they don’t even know what they believe anymore. I fact, Twitter and Instagram will still have you believe the evil is Modest Management
—–
A small glossary of people and terms:
Syco was 1D’s original label. Simon Cowell owned it 50/50 with Sony Music. The band also had a deal with Columbia Records (a Sony subsidiary) in the US. In 2015, Sony bought a majority of Syco’s shares off Simon and they’re now the major owners of the company (which includes the music label and the TV production company behind America’s Got Talent, Britain’s Got Talent and the X Factor)
Irving Azoff is a very important music mogul who managed some of the biggest bands in the world (still does, actually). His son, Jeff, is Harry’s BFF and manager. Irving and Jeff merged their respective management companies (Jeff’s Full Stop and Irving’s Azoff Management) along with Brandon Creed’s management company and Tommy Bruce (Tommy Bruce was Jeff’s colleague at Creative Artists Agency, the world’s largest touring agency, they both left to form Full Stop in 2016)
Harry is currently signed to Columbia Records (both US and UK). He has a three album contract that he signed around June 2016
Louis is currently signed to Syco in the UK and Arista in the US. He was previously signed to Epic records. We don’t know any more details of this contract
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larrydiary · 7 years
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I’m a Larry shipper, right? Why am i disappointed at the fandom, after coming back to it... +What even is Larry? + How can we save the ship
I was going through tumblr and came across some posts by anti’s 
First of all I want to clarify that I DONT hate Eleanor, I actually used to stan her a bit. I had these blogs about her and made a page saying We ship happiness or something with Elounor as avatar. I follow her on all my social media. Even if people say she’s untalented. She graduated Uni plus has a good sense of fashion so eh let’s forget that “beard” stuff. Let me live!
So why do we ship Larry. You have multiple types:
The O.G’s: They have been here since the first 2 years, anywhere between x factor days and 2012. They saw how close H+L were and started shipping them, probably from videos like this:
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Be it platonically or romantically, they just thought they were cute together and loved seeing them interact and mess around. Right now they have either moved on from it all or are still here, using past moments as ‘proof’ or just still love their relationship, be it platonically or romantically. A lot use old blog posts and videos as a way to convince the newer generation that Larry was and is something, they promote their friendship mainly . Again, not all of them make up theories and see every moment as proof. 
It is also quite obvious that since a lot of em are a bit older, that they ship Larry without being too annoying. That doesn’t count for everyone however...
New Gen. 2013-2015: These shippers either found out about 1D a bit later or just found out about Larry. They have watched countless proof videos and are convinced that H+L are together. By doing so much research they’ve learned a lot about Larry. They probably use the dug up moments and posts from the OG’s as a way to convince others that Larry is real or at least tell them about the ship.
1) So you have the shippers who DEFINITELY ship it and are 99.9% convinced it’s real and even when they start to doubt it they watch a lot of videos to re-convince themselves it’s real. They are often found analysing everything H+L do. 
1.5) Some even go so far as to hate on the GF’s, and sometimes they don’t even realise they are doing it. Traits: Call the GF’s names, try ‘their best’ to not disclose who they are talking about but do a terrible job at it (E.G “E is such a bitch, I don’t like her, neither do I like Br, ew!”), hate on the GF’s without reason (E.G. They see a picture of said GF and rant about how terrible they are, without good motives.), automatically dislike any woman who get’s associated with H or L, especially when the media reports they are rumoured to be dating. Even if it’s just an interviewer, a family member/friend, or a celebrity that H/L admire/look up to/respect/befriended. Ahem.
Apparently that is what people call, ‘a Larrie’.
2) You also have the shippers who mainly love their friendship. They’re okay with whatever as long as the two are happy and have a healthy friendship. They want them to interact more but don’t want to force the shipping thing. They don’t really research and dig a lot. They just admire and support from a distance.
They’re usually new to it, and chose not to fall into the rabbit-hole of Larry, maybe a friend introduced them to it, or just have other OTP’s and don’t really want to pay too much attention to Larry.
3) You have the people who are right in between. They would LOVE it if the two were together but aren’t mad at the fact they might just simply be friends. They like the concept of them dating, they might love Larry videos, make or love fanart, read or write fanfics. That in my opinion is the true definition of shipping, just loving the concept and idea of two people being together, having the opinion that they fit together. Nothing else! They want to think it’s real, but don’t force it. They always rethink what is proof and what is not. Always try to find a logical answer and are not afraid to deny said ‘proof’ but also on the other hand, try their best to convince others that there was something going on between them and possibly still is. E.G. they tell people stories about the past, show them footage, but do not want to force the people to believe it’s real. They don’t try to indoctrinate them. They just want to share the ship...
Aka the said friend of version 2.
It’s probably quite obvious i am that one^ 
So let’s see. People started shipping it cause they were always so close. And the others knew, they saw. They lowkey shipped it. The looks they gave the two, the “You two are so cute!” ~Niall, when Harry said his valentine was Louis. the ‘You two are together, aren’t you?” by Liam, the “When was the last time you kissed a girl?” ~int “When was the last time you liked it?” ~ Liam. Niall’s looks and smirks at the two. The boys teased them about it a lot and it was all fun!
There were even people who asked them if they were dating, and when Louis was going to propose to Harry. And did they mind? No! Because even if half of the people who shipped them were kind of convinced they were going out, the two still played along, made jokes about it and fed the shippers. They loved to see the shippers reaction, they chose to queer 1D, despite the rumours and jealous guys trying to hate on 1D, calling them stupid names.
Just a side note. watch this
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Korean boybands can do this... why can’t Larry? And you know that Kpop management companies are a lot like Modest... Even worse sometimes, you know that South Korea isn���t nearly as open to the LGBT as the west. YET THEY GET AWAY WITH IT!!!
People wrote fanfics, made fanart, made compilation videos(Larry moments), it was okay!
But then stuff started changing. Even when Louis said he had a GF, the two were seen acting in a way that made it seem he did not have a GF at all, similar to how they were right when Louis’ relationship with Hannah ended. Sometimes even worse. People loved it! JOKING that GF was hired! But there were people who took it TOO FAR! They hated on the girl, sent her hate, tried to sabotage their relationship. Louis didn’t like it. 
Now to back paddle a bit. Yes it was quite obvious Harry did like Louis to an extent. And Louis didn’t mind. He was there for the boy. Cared for him like his little brother, as a best friend. People thought Louis was gay cause he was quite flamboyant, well what do you get after growing up with so many sisters? Plus, have you seen him when he was a teen? I used to follow him on Bebo. He had girlfriends, and they were real. Now, not saying they’re 100% straight either, chill down, people. 
I guess through the years, Louis actually started to like Harry too. Maybe? No? Okay! but there was definitely some man love going on, as H+L friend would say. More fuel for the shippers.
To that point it was okay. But to resume what I started to say about the GF. People turned into pricks! Even IF the GF was hired, which i don’t want to comment on, sending hate to her went too far. We don’t need that kind of negativity in our fandom. It broke us apart! It made us all less close... 
Fast forward a bit and we are in the “She’s my girlfriend, People genuinely think me and Harry are together!” era! The two started getting less close. Presumably because they caught on. Louis found out about the hate, obviously. He thought that minimising the touchiness with Harry would make things less complicated. But it made it worse cause people found out. By now you have two sides. The side which realised what they were doing and is even more convinced that GF is fake, cause ahaha why would he do that to his poor Hazza if Modest! didn’t tell him to? And the side who started to believe in Louis+GF more. By now you know I’m talking about Eleanor but yeah.
So you can either believe Modest was there from the start and hired Eleanor, (who had a friend who worked at Modest) Because Modest didn’t like the idea of two guys being in a relationship going public, having her be the muse, the lover, the topic of the songs, or that Modest started interfering when they found out about the rumours getting worse.
The latter can mean that Larry was nothing more than a Bromance (or a one sided love cause Harry liked Louis, it was mutual but they stayed friends for the benefit of... being friends. You almost can’t deny that and if you do then i guess it was just a theory) and when the rumours went overboard, Modest took action and told them to stop being so touchy feely.
Harry for example, only get’s rumoured to be dating someone,he get’s papped hanging around a girl and the second it gets out, new articles start to sprout out of nowhere, and whenever things do get “confirmed” they never end well or last as long as Elounor did.They are mostly high profile people. He’s been getting labeled as a womaniser since pretty much the start of their career. That somewhat correlated with Larry since the womaniser image got people to not believe in the HxL rumours too seriously.  
I made a rant about that in 2012 but it was super messy so i’m not going to go into that.
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Either way, them being less close made people even more suspicious and to this day, even after them awkwardly denying rumours, even after Zayn saying it is not real. People believe they are together. Why? cause proof videos. I believe that if you are a true anti, you should at least dare to watch the 30 most iconic Larry moments, and if after all that you still stand by your opinion, then respect to you. 
There were far too many suspicious moments. Even if half of what they were trying to do was  a joke. You can not deny that they really loved each other. And something ruined it. 
The thing about their management company glaring at them or giving signs of approval whenever they do something wrong, or the thing about them giving signals not to answer a question is not made up. There is actual footage of them looking behind the camera and the interviewer saying they have to either stop an interview or saying they are not allowed to ask that. 
So why would the management company do such a thing when it is so obvious that the fans really like shipping the two boys?
The reason is because, even if the fans have no problem with it, others do. Outsiders do. A lot of celebrities don’t get permitted to come out. They have to act a certain way and get introduced to girls they have to date for a month or two, sometimes even years. With every generation you have a group of people who completely despise the concept of gay relationships. 
Now there are some groups and artists who’ve come out and are doing perfectly fine. But if you have as big as an audience as One Direction, things become more problematic. It is not only the fact that hundreds of girls who feel they have a chance with the boys or are raised not to approve of anything that has to do with the LGBTQ+ (so they grew up with homophobic parents) pretty much get a slap to the face. It’s that they will get so much attention that all the homophobic people in the world, potentially people who can influence a big group of people, will possibly start to hate on them, all these kids who are unfortunate enough to have closed minded parents will not be allowed to listen to the boys anymore. Their entire image will have a massive switch.
Now that they are solo, they have far more time to focus on themselves. Time to reshape and tweak their public image, time and space to show the world who they really are. They are breaking free from the bubble gum pop bubble. They are free to do whatever they want
When they first got put together, people started to say stuff like “One Direction is gay” Using ‘gay’ as an insult just to seem cool cause people thought that liking One Direction was shameful. Especially because of the often obnoxious fans. People simply did not want to be associated with them. But One Direction grew!
I don’t see them coming out any time soon. At this point i am not even sure if they are still together. Especially with the recent events regarding Louis.
I want to say that when Louis and Eleanor first started dating, it was quite awkward, but their relationship started looking realer as time passed by.  This time, it just does not at all. Not judging her, i love her. It’s just strange. She got back with someone who “cheated” on her and has a kid with someone else, you’d expect her to ask her boyfriend to do a paternity test. But that is their thing. They can do whatever they want.
Also regarding recent events. Harry seems to be so much more free. He’s swinging and waving around LGBT flags and is being more flamboyant than ever. 
Flashback to a couple of years ago when the boy said he liked girls, didn’t like nail polish or make up, and talked about girls. The boys kept mentioning he’s changed. They of all people would understand what exactly changed. 
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Now about Louis.
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That is just weird. Moving on.
I believe that we should all just chill and stop the negativity, I didn’t want to believe the misogyny until someone pointed it out to me, don’t get me wrong, i did see it before, but when I came back to this fandom I didn’t think it would be so much worse. 
Theories get annoying unless there is proof, in my opinion you can do whatever you like with them, as long as you are aware that your theory might be false/debunkable! 
You can ship it as much as you want but DON’T send hate to the GF’s, like, if you ship Larry, why waste time on them in the first place?
Maybe if we all stop commenting Larry on everything we see, maybe then they will come back as close as they were before. Cause it was quite prominent that Harry was saddened by it. They have good and bad memories from the ship. 
Just please guys, Larry is fun and i love it, but what I don’t like is all these “shippers” who point at Larry and management, everytime something happens between the two.
But I also don’t like people who attack the shippers, without listening to them first, stand in each others shoes, try to understand each other and why the other person thinks a certain way, step out of your own shoes for once ahaha. We’ll get to understand each other more that way. WE ALL HAVE TO HAVE AN OPEN MIND!!!
Louis said this:
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“My main hope for the future is that we all remain best friends throughout everything. I would hate it if anything ‘affected?’ our friendships.”
Sadly something did happen, we have two years to fix things. Maybe i’m just crazy cause i miss the good old days. But let’s at least consider it.
Can we make a plan? Start shipping Larry the way we did in 2011. Just secretly. Let’s not go overboard and theorise everything. Even if it is just for a couple of months. Let’s focus on the friendship! Make them believe we have moved on and know it’s just friendship. I really want to focus on that the next couple of years. 
I call it the Larry Reset! Hopefully now there won’t be an article to come out which says “Larry shippers have moved on and have accepted that Larry was a Bromance. Want it back the way it was.” Actually tbh let that happen!
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oltre-i-confini · 6 years
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this and that
Since I’m new here and I just read @dis-co-the-que​ ‘s Liebster Award answers on her blog, I figured this would be a fun way to introduce myself better to my new friends here. *tiny wave* And since I’m bad at following “the rules”, take the below loosely if you know what I mean.
The Rules: – Create a new post thanking the person who nominated you, providing their link in the post – Also, include award logo and answer the questions provided – Make a new set of 10 questions for your nominees to answer – Nominate 10 others and share your post with them so they see it
1. Why do you blog/write?
I don’t really blog. I used to... Back in the day I even had a livejournal, if you can believe that. God, this is like admitting you had a myspace profile (which I didn’t, thank heavens!) It makes me sound so old (*cough*experienced) and feels a little dangerous, like leaving your journal out unlocked where your mom might find it, but I like experienced and dangerous, so.... Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, ok so I guess this is almost like me saying I don’t blog when I just started a blog. But! This isn’t technically a blog, is it? Phew! Now that we’ve got that sorted out, I write because I’m empathetic and I love how it makes me look at the world and others more closely.
2. What scent takes you to a happy memory?
The smell of campfires in the summer always, always reminds me of happy times.
3. Humblebrag for a moment – what’s an accomplishment you’re proud of yourself for?
Hmmm this is the toughest question because there are so many things to choose from haha! :P Ok I don’t know if this is exactly an accomplishment, but I lived in South Africa for five months. I went to the University of Cape Town and I volunteered with a women’s empowerment program in one of the poorest townships. The name of the township I worked in is Nyanga, which means ‘moon’ in Xhosa. Nelson Mandela was Xhosa, and I also visited his home village of Umtata while I was in South Africa. I had so many memorable, meaningful experiences in that country. I stayed at a hostel in Coffee Bay, where I watched a goat climb a tree right in front of me while I layed in a hammock with a view of the beach (aka the end of the world.) I watched a woman build up the courage to be able to tell an entire room full of her peers that she was HIV positive but that she wanted to help others to learn from her mistakes. I could go on.
4. Ideal vacation spot?
I’m usually not a beach vacation type person, but I love St. Maarten and have been there 4 times now. The first time I visited the tiny Dutch/French island in the Caribbean was in 2003, and I got married there in 2012. It’s a really special place to me, and I could go back over and over. I’m really lucky that my parents bought a timeshare there when we first visited. I can’t wait to take me daughter for the first time, and we had planned to go next year in the Spring but Hurricane Irma completely devastated the island so that’s not happening for a while. Really I’m most sad for the people who live there, because they are amazing. We’ll be back soon I’m sure.
5. Why is your favorite band/musician your favorite?
My favorite band is U2 because they make me feel like myself and other fan family I’ve met because of them have unlocked some kind of secret to the universe together. I’m completely serious about this. People who are not U2 fans do not GET IT. I feel bad for them. The way a live show makes me feel is indescribable. If I was only going to live for 3 more hours, I’d want to spend it at a U2 show.
6. How do you blog/write? What’s your ideal setting, mood, etc?
Alone. haha and with silence. (I get too distracted by music.) This is nearly impossible to find time for when you have a toddler, which explains a lot why I haven’t done much of it lately...
7. How do you take your coffee?
With half and half, no sugar. I like expensive coffee. My wife worked at a local coffee roaster and cafe for a long time, so I’m totally spoiled.
8. What’s your oddball interest – that thing you like that doesn’t quite match up with your other interests or hobbies?
I have like some grandma hobbies. I like to crochet, cook, and decorate my house. It’s all so very homemaker, which if you knew me well....is the complete opposite of every other little thing about me.
9. What could you talk about, in depth, for half an hour, without stopping?
U2, politics, travelling, or other cultures - take your pick. These are my passions!
10. What are your goals for your blog? 
Ok if I’m considering this my blog, then I’m really just hoping to meet some cool people, laugh a lot, and see copious amounts of Bono and Adam photos. Not that I’m complaining about Larry or The Edge one bit.
Anyone who wants to can answer the questions below...or not. I’m not tagging anyone because I don’t want to leave anyone out and I’d love to see everyone’s answers to these questions!
1. What makes you jump out of bed in the morning? 2. Out of all the countries you have visited, which one did you like the most and why? 3. What’s something crazy that you can still barely believe happened to you? 4. Who inspires you most? 5. When you listen to music is it all about the lyrics, or is there a certain instrument that pulls at your attention most? 6. If you could have dinner with 3 people, living or dead, who would you choose and why? What do you picture the evening like, and what would you all eat? 7. How long would you survive the zombie apocalypse? Explain yo self!  8. Would you rather explore the deep ocean or outer space? 9. What are some of your favorite books? 10. What are your goals for next year?
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alarrytale · 9 months
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I know larries already do a lot of marketing for Louis, but do you think spreading knowledge of larrie would get more people on board? I’d never even heard of Louis until a friend of a friend vented about stunting in a discord server. That was 2 years ago and I’ve been here since, but i find that so many big blogs are cagey about trying to spread the truth to others. It’s like there’s this paradox of wanting Louis to be more popular but also being hostile to newer fans who don’t spontaneously know everything that’s happened in the past 10+ years. Like, we could just tell them. Heck I do believe and i still face hostility when i ask some blogs for clarification on ‘basic’ things the master posts gloss over because they assume everyone already knows.
“Um, don’t you remember what happened in 2012?”
No! I just got here!
I’m not saying we need a fandom missionary program, I’m just wondering why a community that claims to be dedicated to supporting two boys through injustice does so much gatekeeping of the knowledge of that injustice. I don’t mean to come off as bitter, but the longer I’m here, more more it feels like certain larrie blogs care more about feeling special for knowing the secret truth rather than getting the truth out there, even if it would help the boys they claim to love.
Hello!
So there is alot to unpack here.
I'm not sure it's a common goal for larries nowadays to spread the gospel of larry. It definitly was back in 2011-2014, when it was clear that the stunts were fake, HL worked actively against their closeting and the fandom as a whole were not split into fractions.
After Louis called larry 'a load of bullshit' and we got larry denials from both of them, fandom including larries started to tone everything down. Larries were scared of repercussions (from Louis mostly), repercussions from management towards HL (sometimes H og L had to stunt after larries were too loud and it got picked up by media). Larries' who were spreading the gospel also started to feel underapreciated because the loudest signaling from HL stopped. That was our fuel. When HL stopped fighting the closet, some larries took this as HL now willigly being in the closet to further their careers. Aka larries being loud now would sabotage HLs goals. So there are larries who dosn't think there is an injustice to fight anymore, if you understand what i'm saying. We have different views of what will 'help' them. None of us knows the whole truth. There are larries who believes in this and larries who believes in that. There isn't one common fandom lore either.
And to your part about treatment of newer fans. For us who's been here for a while it's like you've gone to first grade and progressed to thirteenth grade, but you are still in class with firstgraders who's asking firstgrader questions, didn’t do their homework and are taking up all of the teachers time. I think everyone expect newbies to read up on stuff before asking questions. If a google search can give you the answer, then google it. Explaining things over and over again can be tiresome and doesn’t make a good fandom experience. Also sometimes it's REALLY hard to explain certain things to people who weren't there when it happened. Things happen in context, and explaing why things that seems small now were really groundbreaking back then when it happened, is very difficult. Newbies also have a tendency to ask the basic stuff to bigger/older bloggers. It's like sending an e-mail to a math professor asking why 1+1=2. After answering that question several times a year for 13 years, that blogger might want to answer other more intersting questions. I always lose followers after answering basic questions, because i guess most of my followers knows the answer, have been around for years, and are tired of seeing the same thing on their dashes year after year. It's a difficult balance and i'm sorry you feel dismissed.
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newsjerk · 7 years
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How Google Book Search Got Lost
Google Books was the company’s first moonshot. But 15 years later, the project is stuck in low-Earth orbit.
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Books can do anything. As Franz Kafka once said, “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”
It was Kafka, wasn’t it? Google confirms this. But where did he say it? Google offers links to some quotation websites, but they’re generally unreliable. (They misattribute everything, usually to Mark Twain.)
To answer such questions, you need Google Book Search, the tool that magically scours the texts of millions of digitized volumes. Just find the little “more” tab at the top of the Google results page — it’s right past Images, Videos, and News. Then click on it, find “Books,” and click on that. (That’s if you’re at your desk. On mobile, good luck locating it anywhere.)Google Book Search is amazing that way. When it started almost 15 years ago, it also seemed impossibly ambitious: An upstart tech company that had just tamed and organized the vast informational jungle of the web would now extend the reach of its search box into the offline world. By scanning millions of printed books from the libraries with which it partnered, it would import the entire body of pre-internet writing into its database.“You have thousands of years of human knowledge, and probably the highest-quality knowledge is captured in books,” Google cofounder Sergey Brin told The New Yorker at the time. “So not having that — it’s just too big an omission.”Today, Google is known for its moonshot culture, its willingness to take on gigantic challenges at global scale. Books was, by general agreement of veteran Googlers, the company’s first lunar mission. Scan All The Books!In its youth, Google Books inspired the world with a vision of a “library of utopia” that would extend online convenience to offline wisdom. At the time it seemed like a singularity for the written word: We’d upload all those pages into the ether, and they would somehow produce a phase-shift in human awareness. Instead, Google Books has settled into a quiet middle age of sourcing quotes and serving up snippets of text from the 25 million-plus tomes in its database.Google employees maintain that’s all they ever intended to achieve. Maybe so. But they sure got everyone else’s hopes up.Two things happened to Google Books on the way from moonshot vision to mundane reality. Soon after launch, it quickly fell from the idealistic ether into a legal bog, as authors fought Google’s right to index copyrighted works and publishers maneuvered to protect their industry from being Napsterized. A decade-long legal battle followed — one that finally ended last year, when the US Supreme Court turned down an appeal by the Authors Guild and definitively lifted the legal cloud that had so long hovered over Google’s book-related ambitions.But in that time, another change had come over Google Books, one that’s not all that unusual for institutions and people who get caught up in decade-long legal battles: It lost its drive and ambition.When I started work on this story, I feared at first that Books no longer existed as a discrete part of the Google organization — that Google had actually shut the project down. As with many aspects of Google, there’s always been some secrecy around Google Books, but this time, when I started asking questions, it closed up like a startled turtle. For weeks there didn’t seem to be anyone around or available who could or would speak to the current state of the Books effort.The Google Books “History” page trails off in 2007, and its blog stopped updating in 2012, after which it got folded into the main Google Search blog, where information about Books is nearly impossible to find. As a functioning and useful service, Google Books remained a going concern. But as a living project, with plans and announcements and institutional visibility, it seemed to have pulled a vanishing act. All of which felt weird, given the legal victory it had finally won.When I talked to alumni of the project who’d left Google, several mentioned that they suspected the company had stopped scanning books. Eventually, I learned that there are, indeed, still some Googlers working on Book Search, and they’re still adding new books, though at a significantly slower pacethan at the project’s peak around 2010–11.“We’re not focused on shiny features and things that are very visible to users,” says Stephane Jaskiewicz, a Google engineer who has worked on Books for a decade and now leads its team. “It’s more like behind the scenes work and perfecting the technology — acquiring content, processing it properly so that we can view the entire book online, and adjusting the search algorithm.”One focus of work has been a constant throughout Google Books’ life: improving the scanners that add new books to the “corpus,” as the database is known. At the birth of the project, in 2002, as Larry Page and Marissa Mayer set out to gauge how long it might take to Scan All The Books, they set up a digital camera on a stand and timed themselves with a metronome. Once the company got serious about ramping its scanning up to efficient scale, it started jealously guarding details of the operation.Jaskiewicz does say that the scanning stations keep evolving, with new revisions rolling out every six months. LED lighting, not widely available at the project’s start, has helped. So has studying more efficient techniques for human operators to flip pages. “It’s almost like finger-picking on a guitar,” Jaskiewicz says. “So we find people who have great ways of turning pages — where is the thumb and that kind of stuff.”Still, the bulk of the work at Google Books continues to be on “search quality” — making sure that you find the Kafka passage you need, fast. It’s an unglamorous game of inches — less moonshot and more, say, satellite maintenance.
To understand how Google Books arrived at this point, you need to know a few things about copyright law, which essentially divides books into three classes. Some books are in the public domain, which means you can do what you want with their texts — mostly, those published before 1923, as well as more recent books whose authors chose to release them from standard copyright. Plenty of more recent books are still in print and under copyright; if you want to do anything with these texts, you have to come to terms with their authors and publishers.
Then there’s the third category: books that are out of print but still under copyright, known informally as “orphan works.” It turns out there are a whole lot of these — “between 17 percent and 25 percent of published works and as much as 70 percent of specialized collections,” a study by the US Copyright Office suggests.
How many books is that? No one knows for sure because no one can say with any certainty exactly how many total books there are. The statistic depends on how you define “book,” which isn’t as easy as it sounds. In 2010 a Google engineer named Leonid Taycher wrote a blog post that examined Google Books’ metadata and concluded that the number (then) was about 130 million. Others looked at this work and called it “bunk.” The actual number is probably somewhat lower than Taycher’s figure yet considerably higher than Google Books’ current 25 million-plus.
Some large chunk of that large number, then, are “orphan works.” And until recently, they weren’t much of an issue. You could borrow them from a library or find them in a used bookstore, and that was that. But once Google Books proposed to scan them all and make them available to the internet, everyone seemed to want a piece of them.
The legal battle that ensued was, essentially, a custody fight over these orphans, in which Google, publishers, and authors each sought to control the process of ushering them into a new home for the digital age. The three parties eventually agreed on a grand compromise known as the Google Books Settlement, under which Google would go ahead and make the orphan works available in their entirety and set aside money to compensate rights holders who stepped forward. But in 2011, a federal judge rejected the settlement, ruling in favor of advocates who feared it would forever ensconce a private for-profit company as the registrar and toll collector of the universe’s library.
Once the settlement collapsed, Google went back to its scanning, and publishers pursued the burgeoning business of selling e-books, which had leapfrogged Google’s lead in the future-of-books race due to the success of Amazon’s Kindle. But the Authors Guild continued to press its lawsuit, charging that Google’s arrogation of the right to scan and index books without the permission of copyright holders was illegal. Google is wealthy, but not so wealthy that it could ignore the threat of multi-billion dollar copyright infringement penalties (thousands of dollars per book for millions of books). This was the proceeding that dragged on until the Supreme Court put it out of its misery last year — establishing once and for all that Google had a fair-use right to catalogue books and provide brief excerpts (“snippets”) in search results, just as it did with web pages.
That ruling represents a foundational achievement for the future of online research—Google’s and everyone else’s. “It’s now established precedent — everyone benefits,” says Erin Simon, Google Books’ product counsel today. “This is going to be in textbooks. It’s supremely important for understanding what fair use means.” (Simon also notes with a chuckle that when the suit was originally filed, she hadn’t yet started law school.)
The Authors Guild may have lost in court, but it believes the fight was worth it. Google “did it wrong from the beginning,” says James Gleick, president of the Guild’s board. “They plowed ahead without involving the creative community on whose backs they were building this new thing. The big companies have a droit du seigneur attitude toward creative work. They think, ‘We are the masters of the universe now.’ They should have just licensed the books instead.”
You’d think a Supreme Court victory would have meant a renewal of energy for Google Books: Rev up the scanners — full speed ahead! By all the evidence, that has not been the case. Partly that’s because the database is so huge already. “We have a fixed budget that we’re spending,” says Jaskiewicz. “At the beginning, we were scanning everything on every shelf. At some point we started getting a lot of duplicates.” Today Google gives its partner libraries “pick lists” instead.
There are plenty of other explanations for the dampening of Google’s ardor: The bad taste left from the lawsuits. The rise of shiny and exciting new ventures with more immediate payoffs. And also: the dawning realization that Scanning All The Books, however useful, might not change the world in any fundamental way.
To many bibliophiles, Google’s self-appointment as universal librarian never made sense: That role properly belonged to some public institution. Once Google popularized the notion that Scanning All The Books was a feasible undertaking, others lined up to tackle it. Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive, which stores historical snapshots of the whole web, already had its own scanning operation. The Digital Public Library of America grew out of meetings at Harvard’s Berkman Center beginning in 2010 and now serves as a clearinghouse and consortium for the digital collections of many libraries and institutions.
When Google partnered with university libraries to scan their collections, it had agreed to give them each a copy of the scanning data, and in 2011 the HathiTrust began organizing and sharing those files. (It had to fend off the Authors Guild in court, too.) HathiTrust has 125 member organizations and institutions who “believe that we can better steward research and cultural heritage by working together than alone or by leaving it to an organization like Google,” says Mike Furlough, the trust’s director. And of course there’s the Library of Congress itself, whose new leader, Carla Hayden, has committed to opening up public access to its collections through digitization.
In a sense each of these outfits is a competitor to Google Books. But in reality, Google is so far ahead that none of them is likely to catch up. The consensus among observers is that it cost Google several hundred million dollars to build Google Books, and nobody else is going to spend that kind of money to perform the feat a second time.
Still, the nonprofits have a strength Google lacks: They’re not subject to the changing priorities of a gigantic technology corporation. They have a focused commitment around books, unencumbered by distractions like running one of the largest advertising businesses in the world or managing a smartphone ecosystem. Unlike Google, they’re not going to lose interest in seeking new ways to connect readers with books that might, a la Kafka, melt a frozen mind.
In popular mythology, interminable lawsuits turn into hungry maelstroms that drown the participants. (The archetype is Dickens’ Jarndyce v. Jarndyce from Bleak House, the generations-spanning estate fight whose legal fees eat up all the assets at stake.) In the tech business, court battles like the celebrated antitrust suit that plagued IBM for years tend to pinion giant corporations and provide new competitors with an opening to lap an incumbent. Google itself rose to dominate search while Microsoft was busy defending itself from the Justice Department.
Yet the Books fight was never as central to Google’s corporate being as that kind of all-consuming conflict. And it wasn’t all a waste, either. It taught Google something valuable.
As the Authors Guild’s Gleick points out, Google started Books with a “better ask forgiveness than permission” attitude that’s common today in the world of startups. In a sense, the company behaved like the Uber of intellectual property — a kind of read-sharing service — while expecting to be seen the way it saw itself, as a beneficent pantheon of wizards serving the entire human species. It was naive, and the stubborn opposition it aroused came as a shock.
But Google took away a lesson that helped it immeasurably as it grew and gained power: Engineering is great, but it’s not the answer to all problems. Sometimes you have to play politics, too — consult stakeholders, line up allies, compromise with rivals. As a result, Google assembled a crew of lobbyists and lawyers and approached other similar challenges — like navigating YouTube’s rights maze — with greater care and better results. It grew up. It came to understand that it could shoot for the moon, but it wouldn’t always get there.
It’s possible that Google might someday take another run at solving the orphan works problem. But it looks like it’s going to wait for others to take the lead. “I don’t know that there’s anything that we could do without a different legal framework,” says Jaskiewicz.
As I worked on this piece, I kept thinking back to a book I’d read a few years ago called Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, a whimsical, nerdy novel by Robin Sloan. It’s about a secret society dedicated to solving a centuries-old Name of the Rose-style mystery that’s rooted in bookmaking and typography. Google plays a critical supporting role in Penumbra, as the protagonist attempts to unravel the riddle at the story’s heart. As it turns out, even the company’s unrivaled informational prowess isn’t enough to do the trick. That takes a chance encounter between the protagonist and a particular book that provides an illuminating insight. It takes, in the phrase with which Sloan closes his tale, “exactly the right book, at exactly the right time.”
Penumbra reminds us that Google’s engineering mindset isn’t omnipotent. Breaking a challenge into approachable pieces, turning it into data, and applying efficient routines is a powerful way to work. It can carry you a good distance toward a “library of utopia,” but it won’t get you there.
And even if you get there, it isn’t utopia, anyway. The hard labor is still ahead. That’s because when you turn a book into data, you make it easy to find quotes and search snippets, but you don’t make it fundamentally easier to do the work of reading the book — that irreplaceable experience of allowing one’s own mind to be temporarily inhabited by the voice of another person.
To date, the full experience of reading a book requires human beings at both ends. An index like Google Books helps us find and analyze texts but, so far, making use of them is still our job. Maybe the quest to digitize all books was bound to end in disappointment, with no grand epiphany.
Like many tech-friendly bibliophiles, Sloan says he uses Google Books a lot, but is sad that it isn’t continuing to evolve and amaze us. “I wish it was a big glittering beautiful useful thing that was growing and getting more interesting all the time,” he says. He also wonders: We know Google can’t legally make its millions of books available for anyone to read in full — but what if it made them available for machines to read?
Machine-learning tools that analyze texts in new ways are advancing quickly today, Sloan notes, and “the culture around it has a real Homebrew Computer Club or early web feel to it right now.” But to progress, researchers need big troves of data to feed their programs.
“If Google could find a way to take that corpus, sliced and diced by genre, topic, time period, all the ways you can divide it, and make that available to machine-learning researchers and hobbyists at universities and out in the wild, I’ll bet there’s some really interesting work that could come out of that. Nobody knows what,” Sloan says. He assumes Google is already doing this internally. Jaskiewicz and others at Google would not say.
Maybe, when some neural network of the future achieves self-awareness and find itself paralyzed by Kafka-esque existential doubts, it will find solace, as so many of us do, in finding exactly the right book to shatter its psychic ice. Or maybe, unlike us, it will be able to read all the books we’ve scanned — really read them, in a way that makes sense of them. What would it do then?
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thelarrycult-blog · 7 years
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Introductions.
Hi everyone. We don’t have many followers yet because this blog is new, but we wanted to try to make a meaningful addition to the wonderful community of people here blogging about one direction, their (ex) girlfriends, and children, and against the larry cult. We all had our own larry blogs at one point, but we all realized (some of us knew each other as larries) that we were making a huge mistake continuing to blog in that ocean of queerbaiting, misogyny, misinformation and homophobia, because of the sheer amount of disgusting people, so we came here to join the better side and share our experiences in the larry cult. We’re going to provide brief introductions and mod tags here so you can tell the difference between us.
~L, the mind behind this blog. I was a “larrie” for 4 years until just recently, when I was sent nasty amounts of anon hate for sharing my opinion on how things might have been more real than we thought. I think they broke up in 2014, and on a rebound, Louis had a series of one night stands and got Briana knocked up. “Babygate” is clearly here to stay, and I made this blog to be a permanent reminder of all the events that have transpired in it. I’m the most extra Harrie you’ll ever meet.
~Briana. Hello my name is Briana. For years I’ve been a part of the Larry fandom. Every time I saw a pic/video of Freddie I got weaker. One day I had enough courage to admit that I no longer shipped Larry. I reached out to many other Briana/Freddie accounts and they really helped me throughout this process. I would protect Freddie with my life, and I would gladly help others who want to see the light too <3 Haylor is my new OTP.
~The Rogue. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but my larrie ass has finally been turned. I’ve joined this blog because I’ve finally seen the truth. The larries are deluded and obnoxious, and must be stopped. Also have you seen Briana? She’s my mom now. I love her.
~M. I used to be a larrie in 2012 but I started to doubt it when Louis and Eleanor got together. I never really had the courage to stop pretending because I was afraid of all the larries. Now I can finally say that I stopped believing in it a long time ago. Especially Freddie and Briana changed my mind. You can’t fake love and family. I’m hoping that people will realize that too. Not being a larry shipper has made me more brave and made me me.
~C. Hello peeps! I’m ~C and I’m part of this group of amazing, recovering larries like me because lately it has been a very difficult time, speaking about Larry and the dark, disgusting side of the fandom. It’s been a while now since I’ve finally opened my eyes and I can finally see how stupid I was by believing everything big larries tried to convince us about, literally brain washing everyone! I’m happy that I can finally be the real me without having to fear being judged by larries that think that us, ex larries, are nothing but trash, when they are actually anything but garbage. I love Freddie, Briana and Louis and I think they’re such a beautiful family. <3
~F. Hello guys! Well... I’m here because as of lately, my life has been turned for the better. I have left larry behind and I couldn’t be happier! I am so happy I have seen the light and I can share how I have changed since I realized how toxic it all was. I hope our followers can realize with us what an amazing family Bri, little baby Freddie and Louis make.
~gossip girl. hellooo, I’m gossip girl and I’m so happy to be a part of this group of recovering larries! Looking back on it now, I can’t believe how blind I was. Seeing Louis with Freddie has completely opened my eyes to his love for the boy. They’re a perfect family and I adore them both.
~k. I had been a larrie for almost four years before I realized that everything I had been believing in was a lie. I was too afraid to mention it to my friends because I know they would send me hate messages and make fun of me. I had been brainwashed by the bigger larries into thinking I was weak if I didn’t believe anymore. I’m so glad I left the toxic part of that fandom. I love freddie, and I hope he’s protected for the rest of his life.
~ds. in case you were wondering, that stands for dream smasher. all i dream about is louis living a happy life with his son freddie. however, larries ruined that for me with their deluded fantasies. i can’t believe i fed into it for so many years! now it’s time for me to smash the larries’ dreams with straight up facts. i’m ready to defend bria, lad, and dad and support them in any way i can <3
That’s everyone for now. If we add anymore, we’ll go back and add more and reblog the post. Thanks for your time, I hope we can all make your lives a little better every day :)
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keywestlou · 3 years
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Day 5
DAY 5…..Greece The First Time
Posted on June 1, 2012 by Key West Lou
I LOVE ATHENS!
What a city!
Arrived yesterday.
Lets begin with the flight from Milan to Athens.
Flew a German line. Aegean. Aegean is an affiliate/subsidiary of Lufthansa. The plane was a new airbus recently constructed by a French company. A big plane.
The trip takes only two hours. We flew south along the eastern coast of Italy. The rear side of the boot. Above the heel. Where the spur butts out. Then a left over the Aegean Sea.
The spur of Italy where we turned is the Puglia region. My mother was born in Puglia. In the town of Foggia. For whatever reason, I have felt my mother’s presence this entire trip. As the plane passed over Puglia, even more. She died more than 20 years ago.
The attendants are not referred to as such in this part of Europe. They are still stewardesses. Young. Not even thirty. No male stewards. It would appear age and sex discrimination are still alive in this part of the world.
The flight took all of two hours. Lunch was served. Yes, lunch. Not peanuts or pretzels. A terrific lunch.
Lunch consisted of two lamb sausages with vegetables. Cheese. Some terrific chocolate dessert. A very tasty cheese. Crackers.
Coffee at the end. In a real cup.
I had diet soda to drink. My glass was twice the size of one served in the United States. No ice. The soda cold. More soda for me.
And now the best, free alcohol. The woman next to me had a good sized bottle of red wine. The couple across from me cans of Heineken beer. Again, free.
My ticket cost $180 one way. I flew economy class.
Why the differences between a European flight and one in the United States?
A twenty mile cab ride to my hotel. I had selected a hotel close to the Parthenon so I could walk there each day.
The cab took me through old run down Athens. Much like a similar New York City neighborhood. Then the neighborhoods changed. All of a sudden I was on embassy row and the homes of ambassadors. Magnificent structures. All ancient Greek in style.
I wanted to engage the driver in conversation. He did not speak English. I did not speak Greek. I mentioned one word however that ignited him. He communicated effectively with me at that point. The word…..euro. He spun around to look at me. Yelled in his language what I suspect were profanities. Made it clear to me he was opposed to the euro, felt it had brought on Greece’s economic collapse. All this time he is driving looking at me. I understood he wanted a return to the old currency. The dracma.
He mentioned that Spain would be next to fall. He made it clear he did not like the Germans. They were economically sound while his country was going down the tubes. This economic problem was Germany’s fault. I suspect shades of World War II were still upon him. On the other hand, I found Italians were not happy with Germans either.
The driver appeared to be in his 60s.
Driving is crazy in Athens. Get out of the way! We were in the middle of Athens on a six lane highway going one way. The drivers were cutting each other off and cutting in front of each other. At excessive speeds.
Rather than fear the situation, I respected their abilities to drive so effectively. And without accident. At least I did not see one.
We drove past the Greek Parliament. An imposing building. Even more imposing was the plaza in front of the building. A concrete slab that appeared significantly larger than a football field. The place where demonstrations and riots took place. Such past activities could be sensed as you passed by.
We finally reached the hotel. I was excited. Supposedly a hop, skip and jump from Plaka. A place I was told was a fun area.
I checked in and headed for Plaka. Only two blocks away.
Plaka may be best described as a neighborhood. A big one. It sits at the foot of Acropolis. It is the oldest area in Athens. Sometimes  Plaka is refered to as the real Athens. Blocks and blocks of sidewalk cafes. Many inexpensive clothing and jewelry shops. Thousands of people. Yesterday, the day I was there. All ages. From all parts of the world. Enjoying themselves!
As opposed to Navaro, these people were smiling. Also they looked normal. Many overweight. Very few thin people.
I sat at one of the sidewalk cafes. Under a huge tree. Much like a Key West banyan tree.
Talking with people is easy here. I spoke with a table of Greek college students on one side. An Australian couple on the other. Everyone appears to love Americans. They were anxious to talk with me.
I found the preceding surprising. I was warned by many before the trip that Europeans in general dislike Americans. I don’t know what countries these people visited!
I walked a bit around the Plaka area. Came across some old ruins. Hadrian’s Library. Built in 132 AD by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Books were kept there. The building had reading rooms and lecture rooms, also. Sounds much like a 21st century library to me.
I was impressed with the use of the building. That libraries existed back then. I was also impressed with the construction. That which remained. Such precision in the workmanship. Each stone similarly cut and placed in perfect position. I thought, why not. The Egyptians did it with the pyramids well before Hadrian’s Library was constructed.
Plaka again is at the foot of a huge hill. A semi-mountain. Topside sits the Parthenon and Acropolis. Rising up the sides of the mountain are many outside cafes. It was past dinner time and I decided to try one.
The hill was steep. The stairs going up and down equally steep. People dining in outside cafes on each side of the steps.
Each restaurant had one or more persons working that I would describe as hustlers. They would stand on the steps and literally pull you into their restaurant.
I wanted to sit at the very top. It was a hard trip. I had to stop a couple of times and sit on a stoop to catch my breath. I finally made it. The hustler turned out to be from Canada. He was in his 60s. He told me his life’s story. His wife had divorced him after 40 years. I said don’t feel bad. My wife did it after fifty two years. He had recovered however from the misfortune. He now considered the divorce a fortuitous happening. He had met a younger woman. A Greek. Fell in love. Now lived in Greece full time with her.
The meal was only so so. I was disappointed. I had a lamb dish. The lamb was tough.
The strenuous walk up the steps was worth it. I could see all the way down and over the rooftops of Athens. It was dark and everything was lite up.
After dinner, I searched for some Greek music and dancing. I could find none. Perhaps it was too early. I did find a piano bar. Stopped inside. Stayed briefly. The entertainer was no Larry Smith.
Today it is my intention to go to the very top of the hill. By cab, I assume. The Parthenon and Acropolis await me.
I wanted to take pictures. I will before I am done. To share with you. I bought a new cell phone. I should not have. It is screwed up. By me. I cannot get it unscrewed. Cannot use it in any fashion.
At breakfast this morning, I met another couple from Australia. They had a tablet and offered it to me to write my blog. I knew it would take too long. As it turned out, I became totally frustrated with the learning process. My age was showing.
I am doing today’s blog from a second floor internet shop. About 40 computers available for rent by the hour. Cost is 3 euros an hour. That is about $4.20 American money. The way I type, it will take forever. My drinking money for today is being used up.
The room is large. Many people. Body heat and machine heat. No air conditioning. I will require another shower when I finish.
Enjoy your day! I am mine!
This mornings Citizens’ Voice had two especially interesting comments.
The first: “At the vaccine’s current availability rate of 600 doses a week, it will take through June just to vaccinate only those Monroe County residents 65 or older. Good luck!”
The other: “A Miami Herald article touted Key West as a ‘sort of lawless island.'”
The description offends me. And I am sure every Key West resident.
I have been in Key West in one fashion or another for 30 years. “A lawless island” is far from an accurate description. The rowdiness is limited to Duval Street. The haven visitors seek. They can get drunk, chase each other, and hopefully enjoy some illicit sex.
There is more to Key West than Duval. I have many times written or otherwise described Key West as a good place to live, raise children, etc.
Few residents go downtown. Not everyone is like me. I enjoy the Chart Room and the people I meet. I cannot recall the last time I might have drunk too much. Now, I rarely have a drink.
As to the sexes chasing each other, an extreme rarity if at all among residents. Residents are like family. See each other almost every night.
I am trying to think the last time a tourist chased me for sex. Has to have been a long time ago. No woman wants a man in his 80s. Then there is the problem the mind may be willing, but not the body.
On this day in 2015, Key West had 29 cigar factories, who employed 2,100 workers, who made 62,415,000 cigars, from imported Cuban tobacco.
Anne Ray is with the University of Miami’s Shimberg Center for Housing Studies. She said a most recent study indicated “Key West workers need to earn $33 an hour to afford Key West rents.”
I buy it. Rents are out of sight!
Key West has created a shortage of workforce housing.
No one cares, except for the working population. More and more leave Key West each year because they cannot afford to pay excessive rents and no longer wish to share a 2 bedroom apartment with 3 other people.
Mayor Johnston and the City Commission are aware of the problem. Everyone who lives or has lived in Key West understands it. Mayor Johnston and the Commission are into the problem and looking for how to make rents affordable. Even to the extent of hiring a full time Director of Housing to solely deal with the problem.
More than 50 House lawmakers want the new stimulus package to provide not for a one time $2,000 payment. Rather, $2,000 a month payments till the pandemic is behind the population.
The thought a wise and unwise one at the same time.
Wise in that those who need the money the most spend it swiftly. Such helps the economy. Everyone in effect is eating off the $2,000.
Unwise in that it might also break the bank – the U.S. economy. In addition unending payments might result in people not wanting to return to work if they can take in $2,000 a month without working.
Note the 50 plus Representatives want $2,000 per adult and each child.
My solution. Go for the $2,000 per month with a limit of 3 months. Then look at the problem again. If feasible, continue. If it has too many warts, do not renew.
One thing is certain in the U.S. Insanity prevails.
Two Ohio Republican members of the House of Representatives want a declaration calling for June 14 to be “President Donald J. Trump Day.” They are looking for co-sponsors to introduce the bill.
Two Louis thoughts.
Trump is not a Washington or Lincoln. He does not deserve such recognition.
The other is I was under the impression that naming a day after a person first required the person to be dead. If such is the case, we will have to wait to another time before the issue can be entertained.
Enjoy your day!
Day 5 was originally published on Key West Lou
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rtscrndr53704 · 7 years
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Property Snatchers: How Eminent Domain Can Leave You Without a Home
Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
For the last three years, Atlanta resident Sean Breslin has kept followers of his personal blog, Breslanta, breathlessly updated on the progress of SunTrust Park, the Atlanta Braves’ splashy new stadium, which opens this month. The former sportswriter was excited about the ballpark’s location near his home in the Cumberland/Galleria neighborhood, where he and his future wife had moved in 2013.
But early last November, Breslin found out that the stadium—and the network of new roads that would be built to provide access to it—was going to cost him his home.
“If it wasn’t all so ironic, I would cry,”  Breslin wrote in his blog.
His county had invoked eminent domain, a longstanding process that the government uses to seize privately held land for public use, like a new highway or railroad—or a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Increasingly, experts say, eminent domain is being used to further private development. And it’s happening all over the country.
The feds have been using eminent domain since the 1800s, and the principle was ratified by the Supreme Court in 1876, when the owner of a private house in Cincinnati sued the government, which had seized his land to build a post office. The court ruled that the power of eminent domain was necessary. It’s been a controversial and highly contentious issue ever since.
Now it’s kicking into high gear again. As the economy has bounced back from the housing crash, and real estate markets have heated up, more local governments have been turning to eminent domain to acquire land to build sports complexes, shopping centers, and new condominiums. Sometimes—but not always—these are blighted areas.
And although the ousted owners are provided with what local officials deem “just compensation” for their land, in accordance with the Fifth Amendment, some owners are rising up to challenge the notion that a bona fide public use is behind such seizures.
Sean and Cat Breslin and their home
Sean Breslin; Cat Breslin
Eminent domain has skyrocketed, and here’s why
Eminent domain has been on the rise across the country for a few years now, says Robert McNamara, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm based in Arlington, VA, that defends against such cases.
It dates to the time that developers started to come out of their recessionary hibernation in earnest—ready to put up sports, housing, and entertainment complexes. Backed by local officials in many of these communities, they weren’t letting private homes and businesses stand in their way.
During the recession, “you saw an almost entire absence of eminent domain abuse,” McNamara says. Now, by contrast, he adds, “We’re seeing cities and suburbs eager to redevelop their downtown areas.”
The growing recent use of eminent domain for private projects can be traced to the landmark Kelo v. City of New London case, which went before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005. In a 5-4 decision, the court allowed local governments to use eminent domain when redevelopment promised economic benefits to a community.
Susette Kelo, outside her New London, CT, home, which had been condemned by the state, shortly after the Kelo v. City of New London ruling.
In simple English, that means homes and businesses in most states can be seized, legally, if it is believed that the development might raise property values and could generate higher tax revenues.
“Under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, you’ve got two requirements for a taking: It has to be for public use, and the government has to pay just compensation,” says attorney Emmett Boney Haywood, a partner with the Nicholls & Crampton law firm in Raleigh, N.C. But Kelo changed all that.
The biggest spike in eminent-domain seizures is happening in the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic regions, particularly in states like Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland, McNamara says.
There is no national system for tracking when eminent domain is used for private developments rather than for public works projects, like schools and roads. But seizures in both categories are up considerably. The feds seize property for things like roads, military bases, federal buildings, and oil pipelines.
In 2012, the federal government filed 123 eminent domain lawsuits. The number rose to 568 in 2016.
Local governments aren’t always the bad guys when they seize someone’s property. Building schools, parks, and entertainment venues can make struggling neighborhoods safer, increase existing property values, and bring in new businesses as well as sorely needed jobs.
In Kansas City, MO, for example, eminent domain helped the city clear several blighted blocks for the development of an entertainment district and arena. Housing, hotel, office, and retail redevelopments have followed.
But all too often, eminent domain is used in cases that are not so clearly beneficial to the general population. The process can leave homeowners feeling powerless and badly adrift.
In many cases, there’s little homeowners can do once their homes are marked for the taking. Sean Breslin blogged about his experience, hoping that it would scare up a whistleblower who could reveal government shenanigans that could delay or derail the project. So far, no signs of foul play have emerged, and Breslin has accepted his fate. He anticipates receiving a first buyout offer from Cobb County as early as June.
“We’re thinking of having kids, so in a couple of years, we were likely going to be looking for a home in the suburbs,” Breslin tells realtor.com®. “But this certainly moves up the timing for us.”
States push back against Supreme Court ruling
Outrage over the Kelo decision prompted 44 states to enact laws to protect home and business owners from losing their property to private development. The exceptions are New York, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Oklahoma.
Last year, for example, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declared unconstitutional part of a 2012 law that allowed the taking of property for private natural gas projects. It ruled that an underground storage company could not show a benefit to the state beyond job creation.
But some states have since relaxed those positions, and angry property owners are fighting back.
California is helping lead the revolt. In October, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that allows communities to form “Community Redevelopment and Investment Authorities” and use eminent domain to take blighted property for economic revitalization projects, affordable housing, and infrastructure.
But “blight” doesn’t necessarily mean run-down properties in polluted industrial wastelands. Instead, the broadly defined term could apply to as much 78% of California’s land, according to a study by a Sacramento consulting firm, Andrew Chang & Co. That’s nearly four-fifths of the state.
During California’s budget crisis five years ago, Brown abolished about 400 local redevelopment agencies, which for years had been using eminent domain to declare private property blighted and to divert property taxes to pay for projects such as shopping districts, residential developments, stadiums, and even a green renovation on a luxury golf course. A state analysis concluded that instead of creating lots of new jobs, the projects generally just transferred jobs between communities, at a cost of roughly $5.5 billion a year.
“Now that the economy is better—and as states and cities have become hungrier for tax revenues—lawmakers are creeping back to the old habit of taking private property and turning it over to a private developer, under the guise that it’s somehow a public benefit,” says Larry Salzman, an eminent domain attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation.
How a former NFL player fought the system Bear Lake, Utah
Phil Olsen
Entrepreneur and former National Football League offensive lineman Phil Olsen wasn’t facing off against private developers when he led a recent effort to fight eminent domain in Garden City, UT. Instead, he was trying to block the town’s mayor, who was trying to take over portions of seven private properties in the town’s Bear Lake area. Including Olsen’s.
The lake is heralded as the “Caribbean of the Rockies,” and the mayor wanted to create more public access to it. In December, after years of wrangling with property owners, he announced that Garden City would use eminent domain.
“We knew that if the city went ahead, we couldn’t stop them,” says the 68-year-old Olsen, who visited Bear Lake every summer as a kid and bought his property after signing his first professional football contract. “But the city had never done eminent domain and thought it would be easy and cheap. Our goal was to prove that it was not going to be easy, and it was not going to be cheap.”
Among other actions, Olsen’s homeowners association began educating nearby property owners as to what could happen to them if the city was successful. It also lobbied for support, beginning with the governor’s office in Utah and working its way down through the Legislature and state agencies. Eventually, the eminent domain was quashed—in return for an agreement that all parties would help in funding a new, less intrusive, public access point.
“We care about public access to the lake. We’re not jerks,” Olsen says. “But you don’t use eminent domain flippantly. It should be used when there are no other alternatives, and in this case, there were plenty of alternatives.”
Phil and Connie Olsen, with their neighbor Jerry Phelps, celebrate the reinstallation of their gate at the head of their joint-use driveway, after successfully winning a lawsuit against Garden City.
Phil Olsen
The post Property Snatchers: How Eminent Domain Can Leave You Without a Home appeared first on Real Estate News & Advice | realtor.com®.
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rtawngs20815 · 7 years
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Property Snatchers: How Eminent Domain Can Leave You Without a Home
Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
For the last three years, Atlanta resident Sean Breslin has kept followers of his personal blog, Breslanta, breathlessly updated on the progress of SunTrust Park, the Atlanta Braves’ splashy new stadium, which opens this month. The former sportswriter was excited about the ballpark’s location near his home in the Cumberland/Galleria neighborhood, where he and his future wife had moved in 2013.
But early last November, Breslin found out that the stadium—and the network of new roads that would be built to provide access to it—was going to cost him his home.
“If it wasn’t all so ironic, I would cry,”  Breslin wrote in his blog.
His county had invoked eminent domain, a longstanding process that the government uses to seize privately held land for public use, like a new highway or railroad—or a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Increasingly, experts say, eminent domain is being used to further private development. And it’s happening all over the country.
The feds have been using eminent domain since the 1800s, and the principle was ratified by the Supreme Court in 1876, when the owner of a private house in Cincinnati sued the government, which had seized his land to build a post office. The court ruled that the power of eminent domain was necessary. It’s been a controversial and highly contentious issue ever since.
Now it’s kicking into high gear again. As the economy has bounced back from the housing crash, and real estate markets have heated up, more local governments have been turning to eminent domain to acquire land to build sports complexes, shopping centers, and new condominiums. Sometimes—but not always—these are blighted areas.
And although the ousted owners are provided with what local officials deem “just compensation” for their land, in accordance with the Fifth Amendment, some owners are rising up to challenge the notion that a bona fide public use is behind such seizures.
Sean and Cat Breslin and their home
Sean Breslin; Cat Breslin
Eminent domain has skyrocketed, and here’s why
Eminent domain has been on the rise across the country for a few years now, says Robert McNamara, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm based in Arlington, VA, that defends against such cases.
It dates to the time that developers started to come out of their recessionary hibernation in earnest—ready to put up sports, housing, and entertainment complexes. Backed by local officials in many of these communities, they weren’t letting private homes and businesses stand in their way.
During the recession, “you saw an almost entire absence of eminent domain abuse,” McNamara says. Now, by contrast, he adds, “We’re seeing cities and suburbs eager to redevelop their downtown areas.”
The growing recent use of eminent domain for private projects can be traced to the landmark Kelo v. City of New London case, which went before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005. In a 5-4 decision, the court allowed local governments to use eminent domain when redevelopment promised economic benefits to a community.
Susette Kelo, outside her New London, CT, home, which had been condemned by the state, shortly after the Kelo v. City of New London ruling.
In simple English, that means homes and businesses in most states can be seized, legally, if it is believed that the development might raise property values and could generate higher tax revenues.
“Under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, you’ve got two requirements for a taking: It has to be for public use, and the government has to pay just compensation,” says attorney Emmett Boney Haywood, a partner with the Nicholls & Crampton law firm in Raleigh, N.C. But Kelo changed all that.
The biggest spike in eminent-domain seizures is happening in the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic regions, particularly in states like Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland, McNamara says.
There is no national system for tracking when eminent domain is used for private developments rather than for public works projects, like schools and roads. But seizures in both categories are up considerably. The feds seize property for things like roads, military bases, federal buildings, and oil pipelines.
In 2012, the federal government filed 123 eminent domain lawsuits. The number rose to 568 in 2016.
Local governments aren’t always the bad guys when they seize someone’s property. Building schools, parks, and entertainment venues can make struggling neighborhoods safer, increase existing property values, and bring in new businesses as well as sorely needed jobs.
In Kansas City, MO, for example, eminent domain helped the city clear several blighted blocks for the development of an entertainment district and arena. Housing, hotel, office, and retail redevelopments have followed.
But all too often, eminent domain is used in cases that are not so clearly beneficial to the general population. The process can leave homeowners feeling powerless and badly adrift.
In many cases, there’s little homeowners can do once their homes are marked for the taking. Sean Breslin blogged about his experience, hoping that it would scare up a whistleblower who could reveal government shenanigans that could delay or derail the project. So far, no signs of foul play have emerged, and Breslin has accepted his fate. He anticipates receiving a first buyout offer from Cobb County as early as June.
“We’re thinking of having kids, so in a couple of years, we were likely going to be looking for a home in the suburbs,” Breslin tells realtor.com®. “But this certainly moves up the timing for us.”
States push back against Supreme Court ruling
Outrage over the Kelo decision prompted 44 states to enact laws to protect home and business owners from losing their property to private development. The exceptions are New York, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Oklahoma.
Last year, for example, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declared unconstitutional part of a 2012 law that allowed the taking of property for private natural gas projects. It ruled that an underground storage company could not show a benefit to the state beyond job creation.
But some states have since relaxed those positions, and angry property owners are fighting back.
California is helping lead the revolt. In October, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that allows communities to form “Community Redevelopment and Investment Authorities” and use eminent domain to take blighted property for economic revitalization projects, affordable housing, and infrastructure.
But “blight” doesn’t necessarily mean run-down properties in polluted industrial wastelands. Instead, the broadly defined term could apply to as much 78% of California’s land, according to a study by a Sacramento consulting firm, Andrew Chang & Co. That’s nearly four-fifths of the state.
During California’s budget crisis five years ago, Brown abolished about 400 local redevelopment agencies, which for years had been using eminent domain to declare private property blighted and to divert property taxes to pay for projects such as shopping districts, residential developments, stadiums, and even a green renovation on a luxury golf course. A state analysis concluded that instead of creating lots of new jobs, the projects generally just transferred jobs between communities, at a cost of roughly $5.5 billion a year.
“Now that the economy is better—and as states and cities have become hungrier for tax revenues—lawmakers are creeping back to the old habit of taking private property and turning it over to a private developer, under the guise that it’s somehow a public benefit,” says Larry Salzman, an eminent domain attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation.
How a former NFL player fought the system Bear Lake, Utah
Phil Olsen
Entrepreneur and former National Football League offensive lineman Phil Olsen wasn’t facing off against private developers when he led a recent effort to fight eminent domain in Garden City, UT. Instead, he was trying to block the town’s mayor, who was trying to take over portions of seven private properties in the town’s Bear Lake area. Including Olsen’s.
The lake is heralded as the “Caribbean of the Rockies,” and the mayor wanted to create more public access to it. In December, after years of wrangling with property owners, he announced that Garden City would use eminent domain.
“We knew that if the city went ahead, we couldn’t stop them,” says the 68-year-old Olsen, who visited Bear Lake every summer as a kid and bought his property after signing his first professional football contract. “But the city had never done eminent domain and thought it would be easy and cheap. Our goal was to prove that it was not going to be easy, and it was not going to be cheap.”
Among other actions, Olsen’s homeowners association began educating nearby property owners as to what could happen to them if the city was successful. It also lobbied for support, beginning with the governor’s office in Utah and working its way down through the Legislature and state agencies. Eventually, the eminent domain was quashed—in return for an agreement that all parties would help in funding a new, less intrusive, public access point.
“We care about public access to the lake. We’re not jerks,” Olsen says. “But you don’t use eminent domain flippantly. It should be used when there are no other alternatives, and in this case, there were plenty of alternatives.”
Phil and Connie Olsen, with their neighbor Jerry Phelps, celebrate the reinstallation of their gate at the head of their joint-use driveway, after successfully winning a lawsuit against Garden City.
Phil Olsen
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