#it would go viral if we were in 2013...................i do miss that

[jokeroutsubs]

Joker Out interview with magazine Mladina, published on 30th of June 2023

Interviewed by Vanja Pirc

Photos by Borut Kranjc

This year's Slovenian representatives at Eurovision, the five-member band Joker Out, attracted an unusually large amount of attention with their accessibility and playfulness, especially with the song "Carpe Diem." In the days and weeks that followed, it became clear that their Eurovision entry, which only placed 21st, had indeed opened the door for them to go abroad. They started adding new concerts in Ireland, Croatia, the UK, Scotland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Serbia, and others to the ones they had already arranged in Slovenia and the former Yugoslav republics. They sold out all of them, some in just a few minutes. Well over eight thousand people will see them on the UK and Nordic tour alone. For musicians working in Slovene, that's an incredible statistic.

It's a remarkable milestone to see how they've come from "Špil liga," where they first came to the limelight by winning in 2013 when they were still a high school band, to today, being greeted by masses of enthusiastic fans below the stage, and being selected by the Scottish band Franz Ferdinand to be their opening act at Croatia's Špancirfest festival. We spoke to lead singer Bojan Cvjetićanin, guitarists Kris Guštin and Jan Peteh, and bassist Nace Jordan. Unfortunately, drummer Jure Maček was missing, but we could see that he is a man of many talents by looking at the huge wooden structure with a platform that added another floor to the band's rehearsal space in Šiška, Ljubljana.

After Eurovision, you made no secret of your disappointment at finishing 21st, but your Eurovision song "Carpe Diem," sung in Slovenian, is now one of the most listened-to songs of this year's Eurovision event. It's being played all over Europe, most notably in Finland, Poland, the UK, the Netherlands, Spain... Did you expect this turn of events?

Bojan: The result we achieved at the Eurovision Song Contest was really not the greatest. Not even close. But, as you can see, in the end, it doesn't even matter. What is more important for us is that we managed to achieve the rest of the goals we had set for ourselves. We approached Eurovision in a very organic way, aiming to translate our stage and concert experience from real life to the Eurovision stage. It was clear to us that this is the biggest show stage in Europe, maybe even in the world. We were aware that this is a competition of one song, one comprehensive performance to be presented in three minutes. Our goal was to ensure that the audience would remember Slovenia's performance in 2023, and we have achieved that. We also aimed to connect with other performers, and we succeeded in doing so. But most importantly, we wanted both our Eurovision song and our other songs to be well-received in the real world. The data from radio stations, online streaming platforms, and concert offers confirm that apparently, we have achieved that as well.

Before, you were known mainly in Slovenia, and to a lesser extent in the Balkans. However, your Eurovision song has temporarily climbed to the top 50 most viral songs in the world chart on the streaming platform Spotify. You even briefly surpassed Sweden's Loreen, the winner of this year's Eurovision, in terms of popularity.

Bojan: Just to clarify, we only surpassed her for a day or two. But it's really nice that it happened on Spotify's list of the most listened-to songs in the world.

Kris: Well, she did get a billboard in New York's Times Square as the winner at the time, so it's a matter of who surpassed whom, I suppose (gesturing with his hands).

Well, who did?

Bojan: I believe that what we will gain from this performance will surpass what many other performers will achieve. Eurovision has introduced us to a very large audience in a very short time, and they have really connected with our music. They are now translating our lyrics into their own languages and even learning Slovenian. We were surprised to see how many of them bought dictionaries to learn Slovenian - we know this because we were asked to sign them. Others are learning Slovenian through online platforms, and there are even dictionaries being created on TikTok. These listeners are not bothered at all that we are not creating in English at this point; on the contrary, they would like us to keep it that way. However, we have to be realistic. To truly expand our listener base, it's important to be accessible to people.

That's why you have already prepared an album a few months ago, featuring songs from both your previous albums rearranged in English. The album is now awaiting release. One of your main goals was to be able to translate your concert experience onto the stage.

Bojan: The first real international test after Eurovision was in Zagreb, where we performed as the opening act for the most popular young Serbian band at the moment, "Buč Kesidi", at a previously arranged concert. We performed outdoors in the middle of the day, with the sun still high up in the sky. However, we were greeted by a crowd of 2,500 people and received a phenomenal response. They sang along with us, and later we read in the Serbian media that we probably have the most Croatian fans among Slovenian bands. After this show, when we announced a solo concert in Zagreb's Tvornica for November, which is comparable in size to Ljubljana's Cvetličarna, the tickets sold out in five hours. So, we arranged another concert in the same venue, and that one sold out as well. The response in Croatia has been truly amazing, and they have set a very high bar for the future.

You have been intentionally engaging with the countries of the former Yugoslavia lately. Through songs like "Demoni" ("Demons"), you have approached them language-wise. In addition to Croatia, you have also been booked for concerts in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Your Eurovision song also reminds me a little of Plavi orkestar, which was once the most popular Yugoslav pop band, or Đorđe Balašević. It is probably not a coincidence that the line "The game of hatred is your thing, thank you, don't count on us" is reminiscent of his hit "Računajte na nas" ("Count on us")?

Bojan: No, no, it's not a coincidence.

Is it nevertheless more difficult to plan a breakthrough to the rest of Europe? After Eurovision, the Irish were the first to sign you up, did the audience there also know your songs by heart?

Bojan: Yeah, we haven't really gotten used to that yet (laughs). In Ireland, we managed to sell out our first show in 12 minutes. It's true that it was a small venue, comparable to Ljubljana's Orto bar, and it wasn't a solo concert, but a joint performance with this year's Irish Eurovision representatives. However, due to the high level of interest, we arranged another concert in a club twice as big, which is also their most iconic venue. Soon after, other venues started to show interest. We announced a UK tour, with over five thousand tickets on sale for four shows in major cities, and they sold out. We announced a Nordic tour, with around 2,500 tickets available, and it sold out in half an hour, along with three Finnish concerts in just ten minutes. Later, we released an additional 770 tickets, which were gone in five minutes. Offers are also coming in from many other countries, and it is impossible to predict what will happen in the upcoming months.

A number of Slovenian music artists have successfully reached international audiences, from Senidah to Laibach, from Gramatik to Umek, and you were the first ones to consider using Eurovision as a springboard. Would it make sense for our country to continue using this event to promote established musicians who are eager to make an international breakthrough? You were internally selected for this competition.

Kris: It all depends on what we as a country want to achieve from this competition in the future. We have to decide whether EMA is a competition where we find the most suitable representative and expect them to make the most of their opportunity while promoting our country along the way, or whether it is a competition where Slovenian musicians present themselves to Slovenian audiences. Personally, I believe that it is definitely better to choose a performer who already has an established infrastructure in place and a certain support base, because this can enable him to use his potential to the fullest.

Jan: I think that would be the best approach as well. However, since many musicians see EMA as one of the few opportunities to showcase their work to a wide audience through public broadcasting, it would make sense to maintain that aspect too, perhaps as a prelude to EMA, transforming it into a grand finale for carefully selected artists, similar to Sanremo.

Bojan: The main issue with the previous selections was that Slovenia didn't approach it with the intention of winning. Of course, success in such a significant event is not guaranteed. But why not approach it strategically nonetheless? For example, I believe we should send Senidah to Eurovision in 2024!

Senidah is the biggest star in the Balkans, the most listened-to musician. Is she also your role model in that sense?

Bojan: Absolutely. Senidah is the first Slovenian artist, after Mr. Predin and "Lačni Franz", to truly break through in the Balkans. She does write music in Serbian, but that's irrelevant; what's important is that she's made a remarkable breakthrough in a market that has so far been very closed off to Slovenians. And not only has she broken through, but she is topping the charts. However, I would understand if Senidah refused to participate in EMA, at least as long as the current rules are in place. EMA is too close in time to Eurovision. The winner has only one month to submit material. Imagine having to put together the most important performance of your life in just 15 days? We, on the other hand, had more time since we were internally selected—three months—and we utilized this extra time to design our pre-Eurovision campaign, which ultimately played a key role in our success. That's what left the biggest impression.

You managed to invest between ten and fifteen thousand euros of your own funds in this promotion. You have an extensive domestic touring career behind you. In October, you will fill our biggest venue, Stožice, for the first time, where you expect 12,000 people.

Kris: I've always considered it a privilege to have established a music career at such an early stage in our lives and to have quickly reached the point of financial self-sufficiency.

Bojan: It really worked out for us that right after we finished university, we began our professional lives as musicians.

Those who know you say that you are very disciplined, very organized. Bojan, your fellow classmates from Poljane Gymnasium in Ljubljana also say that even back then, you were absolutely convinced that you were going to make a breakthrough. Many people rolled their eyes at the thought, but you had a clear objective. You were networking with the right people, educating yourself, and Pavle Kavec taught you guitar...

Bojan: Yes, Pavle the legend. I knew during my time at Poljane Gymnasium that I wanted to be an artist. I hadn't fully decided whether it would be music or something else because I was also considering studying acting. But my thoughts were always centered around creating. I suppose that's more or less true for all of us. When Jure and Nace joined us, the first question was whether we were fully committed at 1000%, or if there was another one percent pulling us towards a "plan B," such as the directions we were trained in. No, there is no "Plan B" anymore. At some point, we made the decision to cut it off.

So, the high school students at Poljane Gymnasium may very well forget that you were once planning to be their sociology professor? We've also seen you in a few episodes of the series "Gospod profesor" ("Mr. Professor").

Bojan: I've given up on the professorship, but I still find acting very interesting. For once in my life, I would like to be in a film, playing a totally negative character. I would be mean as a snake. And it doesn't even have to be a Slovenian film; it can be from the Balkans.

Kris: I have to admit that I never thought of making a living from music, although I certainly saw it as an ideal. Even when I was deciding on my studies, I wavered between sociology and chemistry, and then preferred the latter because of its greater potential for employability. Well, later on, I did go into social sciences, for a master's degree in international relations.

Yet Kris, you were the one who had the ideal conditions to become a musician. You grew up playing guitar, because your father, Miha Guštin - Gušti, is the co-founder of "Big Foot Mama", one of the most popular Slovenian bands. Today, you are considered to be their successors.

Kris: I really had the ideal conditions to become a musician who does this for a living. Not only because of my dad, but my mum also worked for record labels for many years and has recently embarked on this path again, so I've been in touch with both sides of the music world, creatively and business-wise, since I was a little kid. But I didn't really start playing guitar until I was 14, 15. And nobody else among us is a trained musician either, except our drummer, Jure Maček.

Bojan: Yes, our Maček finished elementary music school, and he also played a lot, mostly with the "Logatec brass band".

Jan: Let's not forget his performances with the "Golaž brass band", and with the Cantabile Symphony Orchestra...

Jan, you are a mathematician. The link between music and mathematics was explored by Pythagoras after he listened to a blacksmith striking a hammer, and from that he developed the study of harmony.

Jan: Yeah, at the moment it's kind of like, if you have an out-of-tune guitar, you can just say you have a Pythagorean tuning (everyone bursts out laughing). To me, maths is relevant because it's the only thing in the existence of human understanding that you can really count on. It can be used to get definitive answers to at least some questions. I see it as something that gives you structure in your life.

Nace: I would have chosen to study veterinary medicine if I had gone to university, but I discovered very quickly that music was my passion. After high school I went out into the world, I played in a band on a cruise ship that more or less sailed the Baltic, somewhere between Russia, Finland and Sweden. You could say I've got a lot of musical mileage from playing abroad. But it's limited to German schlager and German rock. Our audiences were mostly German families (laughs).

You also have the most experience of performing in front of TV cameras, especially as a member of the in-house band of the TV show "V petek zvečer" ("Friday Night"), which gives airtime to more folk-music genres on TV Slovenia. Have you scrapped this "plan B" now as well?

Nace: Officially, I'm still a member of that band; maybe the managers are expecting me to come back to the show in the autumn. But it remains to be seen whether that will be possible. Most probably not.

Today, together with MRFY, you are considered the successors of our most popular rock or pop-rock guitar bands who managed to appeal to the masses, not only of "Big Foot Mama", but also, for example, "Siddharta" and "Dan D". Why hasn't there been a real breakthrough of new bands of this kind in the last few years? Were guitars considered to be outdated, were young people closer to electronica, trap, hip-hop, mixtures of genres?

Bojan: The music of "Siddharta" and "Big Foot Mama" was a kind of basic building block for me from the very beginning. These people have influenced me more than any other world-renowned musicians. So having them support us really means a lot to me. And the Špil Liga, where student bands have been entering for the last decade, has definitely been a very strong factor in the revival of the scene. MRFY are also from Novo mesto, which is considered a mini Slovenian capital of rock'n'roll, as many of the bands that have developed under the patronage of Tokac, the music producer and frontman of "Dan D", originate from there. At the same time, in last few years the Slovenian youth has become hungry for home-produced music of all genres, and this has stirred up a strong wave of creativity, which is being held in the hands of our own generation, as well as those a little younger and older than us. At this point, the whole spectrum of what we need, from clothes to design to photography, is being created by people our age, as well as those a little younger and older than us. Well, with one exception, of course, being our producer Žare Pak, but he's young at heart.

As you reach out to a wider audience, do you also feel the pressure to meet the ever-increasing expectations of both listeners and the music industry?

Jan: I feel that right now, more than ever, we can be confident and sure of what we are doing. We didn't even enter Eurovision with some deliberately made hit-like song to suit Eurovision ears, but we did a Joker Out song that could easily have been on our album last year. Our achievements so far prove that we are doing something right because people at home and abroad like it.

Kris: I also feel like we have more freedom to create now but also fewer inhibitions to go into more experimental waters in terms of music, outfits, visuals, or anything else.

Do you think that's what some people expect from you now?

Bojan: Musicians are often criticized for their style, genre, or sound. But such criticisms are absurd.

In particular, Slovenian rock or pop-rock has always been attacked in this respect for relying too often on tried-and-tested forms and less often, for example, on boldness, innovation.

Bojan: We've been on the scene long enough, and we know that the very concept of what Jokers do bothers some people. And that's why they keep pushing their idea that we don't make authentic music but rather some crap that we invented just to exist. So, they feel it would be good if we would stop doing that. These people want, or even demand, that Joker Out should stop being Joker Out. And we're happy that on the first and second album we were able to make music completely unburdened by expectations of how people would react to it. I think the second album is quite challenging in both its sonic elements and the overall meaning of the lyrics in certain songs. I'm sorry that not one of the critics mentioned "Plastika" ("Plastics") in their reviews. None of these intellectuals who have so much to say against our love songs thought that this could be a harbinger of a different, new direction.

This song was written in response to a study showing that the vast majority of teenage girls today want plastic surgery and other body modifications to meet their perverse beauty ideals.

Bojan: There's a lot of content that people don't want to see. On the other hand, I also don't understand why songs about love, which are in the vast majority in this culture at the moment, should be inferior to those about society. In fact, I hope to be able to sing about love for the rest of my life.

Kris: You will, you will sing "Umazane misli" ("Dirty Thoughts") for the rest of your life (laughs).

You addressed Europe with the words "We'll be dancing all night long, we'll love and play with each other as if there was no tomorrow." You have stated several times that you are not a political band, but isn't that actually very political? What is more political than being able to smile and rejoice even in the worst of situations?

Bojan: I very much agree. I even think that if Tokac had sung our song, the message would have gotten through to a lot more people. But because we sang it, a lot of people didn't take it seriously.

The current Prime Minister, Robert Golob, after learning that the future coalition had brought down the government of Janez Janša, said, "Today people are dancing, I am waiting for you to start dancing too." Do you think that if we had had your song then, he would have said instead, "We'll be dancing all night long"? As some employees of RTV Slovenia did when the depoliticisation of their institution could begin?

Bojan: The song "Carpe Diem" is largely written with the idea of fighting back against the things that are happening today. The fact that we had Eurovision in a country that was not last year's winner, because the event could not be held there due to the war, is quite an indication of the troubled times we live in. On the other hand, our only defense as musicians is to spread positive energy among the people and send socially relevant messages. We cannot do more than that. We do not want to take up arms, and we won't. Our only weapons can be our songs.

Culture and art can certainly be weapons too, especially in situations where people are suffering. Do you think that's why Ukrainians supported you at Eurovision, both the audience and the jury? The country is in ruins because of the war, people are displaced, and there is no end in sight to the conflict. But your dancing until dawn has been noticed.

Bojan: I am a child of refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina. My parents had to leave their home in Banja Luka because of the war. They came to Slovenia as refugees and stayed here. They had to rebuild their lives. In light of today's events, I can only conclude that the saying 'Historia magistra vitae est' (“History is the teacher of life”) is clearly not true. Because one day, when all the problems of this world are solved, I too will be able to afford the attitude of being opposed to all that is positive. But at the moment, that is not a possibility.

Your parents, Bojan, had to move because of the war, and your mother, Kris, moved from the Netherlands to Slovenia for love.

Bojan: That's a much nicer reason, isn't it?

Kris: Well, I also have a grandfather who fled Indonesia because of the civil war.

Migration flows have been huge in recent years, with thousands of people pouring into Europe, but they are often met with contempt and harsh treatment. Do you feel that your intimate experience of all this migration has also shaped your attitude towards all those who are seeking a better life?

Kris: Absolutely. In my home, this has always been a topic we have talked about. When I was still living with my parents, we often watched the TV program "Dnevnik" together, and whenever they showed a piece on migration, my mother would get very emotionally involved in the scenes on the screen. And that sticks with you. When you see a parent who can understand someone who had to leave home for completely different reasons and on the other side of the world, it naturally rubs off on you.

Bojan: Most of all, you feel the spectrum of pain associated with having to leave your home is much more than just having to leave a place. Only then do you realize that home is really a tangle of space, of people, of smells, of tastes, of everything surrounding you. Leaving all that behind is not the easiest thing to do. It is even harder to leave under duress, and the hardest to leave knowing that your home is in the process of being destroyed and that when and if you return one day, it will not feel like home anymore. The same people will not be there, the same smells will not be there. What has shaped your life will no longer exist.

Alongside wars and conflicts, another key reason why people from other parts of the world are moving to Europe in large numbers is climate change. Your generation is leading the fight to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, to live more sustainably. How important is this cause to you?

Kris: The fight for climate fairness is one of our few very clear common political positions. Here we are completely united and support all political choices towards sustainability. It is also very clear that this is an important issue not only for us but also for a large part of our audience. It was interesting to note that two years ago, at a rally for climate justice in Ljubljana, we saw a poster with the lyrics of one of our songs. We've summed up our own thoughts on the subject in the song "Novi val" ("New Wave)," which was written last year and is currently one of our most successful and important songs.

In that song, you say "The radio only plays lightnings and strikes', the newspaper says that we' ve lost our way. Today we'll sing and raise our glasses, we were born yesterday and have already been blamed for everything." And what are you guilty of? Probably not the fact that your generation faces precarious employment, that loans are hard to come by, and so are real estate, even rental properties?

Bojan: These are the facts of life lived by the "born yesterday" generation. They are the result of the accumulation of bad decisions over decades. These facts manifest themselves in reality as obstacles that reduce our ability to build the pillars of our independence and, as a consequence, are the reason for our failure to live up to societal expectations. In a world where laws have been written for decades in favor of a mega-massive littering of the planet, we are guilty of standing up for environmental justice instead of "doing something smarter and more serious with our lives," even though previous generations have themselves turned the (labour) market into a war zone of precarious employment. We fight day in and day out with the uncertainty of whether or not we will be employed tomorrow...

But even in this song, you sing and you raise your glasses.

Kris: This song and the Eurovision song "Carpe Diem" are actually very similar in spirit and message, except the second one addresses the listener in a dance guise and this one in a much more serious manner.

The song "Novi val" ("New Wave") has received a lot of attention because of the English version you released before the Eurovision, which you performed with the renowned British musician Elvis Costello. Your now ex-member Martin has a godfather who is a friend of Costello's, and in 2013 you sent him the song "Gola" ("Naked") to listen to. He did listen to it and suggested that you send him more songs. So last year you sent him "Novi val" ("New Wave").

Bojan: Yes, that was true, and when I sent him that song, I also asked him if he would be willing to re-arrange it in English. And he wrote back that he was up for it. Shortly after that, only about a week later, he sent me another email saying if we all agreed, he was ready to sing the song with us. Interestingly enough, he felt the song even before he understood what it was about. His first reaction after hearing the Slovenian version was that it was "a charming song that transcends the understanding of language". He recorded his vocals in New York, and we recorded them in Ljubljana. At the end of the song, we kept the chorus in Slovenian, at his request.

Costello has two Grammys, two Brit Awards, and was named one of the 100 greatest rock'n'roll musicians of all time by Rolling Stone magazine. What does his support mean to you?

Bojan: I can say without any reservation that even if I never wrote another song after this, I would forever be proud of what I have achieved. But it was this collaboration that gave us an indescribable amount of new energy to create. I am very proud of it. However, I must add that I felt the same pride when Tomi Meglič or Grega Skočir gave us words of encouragement. The moment when I first felt their sincere appreciation was a turning point for me, and since then I have existed quite differently as a musician. But of course, it is clear that Elvis Costello's encouraging words carry international weight. And that is something completely new for us. It's just a pity that we haven't been able to meet up yet because he was on tour in the US at the time of the recording of the song and later the video.

He will be touring Europe in the autumn, including Hamburg. You recorded the Eurovision song there in December.

Bojan: He honored us greatly then. He sent us the song "Hamburg Postcard", which he wrote especially for us.

Kris: Let's not forget something else. Our band has always described our music as "shagadelic rock'n'roll" (the Oxford English Dictionary defines shagadelic as "sexy, but in a psychedelic or retro way", A/N). We borrowed this term from "Austin Powers", but it was actually spoken by Elvis Costello, who played himself in that film. When we sent him our song "Gola" ("Naked") in 2019, we thought it would be a good idea to let him know that we also use the term "shagadelic rock'n'roll". And then he personally gave his permission to use it because he felt that that was what it was. To complete the circle, Elvis Costello is one of the original protagonists of the English New Wave, and we are now singing together about the New Wave. He is also from Liverpool, which hosted this year's Eurovision. Our collaboration was clearly written in the stars.

Costello, as a Liverpudlian, knew the most famous local musicians, The Beatles, very well and had worked with Paul McCartney. The Beatles are also among your role models, and this year you also visited the place where the Beatles began their musical journey for the first time. Do you now understand better why they remain the greatest?

Kris: For me, visiting Liverpool and the places that influenced the Beatles and their music gave me some perspective. We knew them through songs, like Penny Lane, for example, but in reality, it's much smaller and more 'plain' than we imagined. Liverpool is a beautiful city, but the suburbs where the Beatles lived are very ordinary working-class housing estates. One could say quite bland. Now I walk around Ljubljana with different eyes. I can imagine that one of our future songs could also feature an insignificant, less exposed street that made its mark on us...

Bojan: And this is where you can see very clearly why the Beatles are the Beatles. Because everybody has a Penny Lane in their life, an ordinary street where you meet a friend. Penny Lane is the most universal thing in the world

The English song "Novi val" ("New Wave") was covered by the BBC and ITV, and the British voted for you at Eurovision. Your music and performances have always been influenced by British pop. Is that one of the key places for you, besides the Balkans?

Bojan: I think our focus is on any place that is willing to accept us, but England has a special charm because we ourselves have been heavily influenced by British music. I'm not the ultimate "nomad," I dislike long flights and exotic destinations that can be unpredictable, so Europe is very dear to my heart. I would be very happy if we could establish ourselves as a European band that could travel a little bit around Scandinavia in the summer and then Dalmatia in the winter...

Kris: Or Spain, where we would eat tapas.

Is the interest in your band in the country also related to the fact that Bojan speaks Spanish?

Bojan: Yes, I ended up doing more interviews in Spanish than in English. The Spanish have also been very active because of our links with their Eurovision representative Blanca Paloma.

Kris: It's really amazing how you can charm a foreign audience by speaking their language. I understand it with the Spanish, as they are mostly less proficient in English, but I was surprised by the Dutch. Dutch is my mother tongue, of course, but I didn't expect that it would matter because in the last few years I have noticed that in Amsterdam, almost only English is spoken on the street. Even the oldest market vendor speaks perfect English. But they were very enthusiastic. On streaming platforms, the Netherlands is one of our top 10 countries.

You mentioned earlier that your fans are now learning Slovenian. What about your future - will it be written in English?

Bojan: The next album will almost certainly have songs in English, Slovenian, and Serbian, but it's very possible that there will also be some in French or Spanish.

What about Finnish? At Eurovision, the most talked-about thing was your friendship with the Finnish representative Käärijä, who came in second place. When you, Bojan, sang his song, he praised you, saying it was "better than the original".

Bojan: We haven't talked about a musical collaboration yet, but I was a guest at his concert in Helsinki in June, and we would be very happy to have him at our concerts. Unfortunately, that won't happen in Stožice because he has a big concert on the same day.

Now that it is clear that your international ambitions are growing exponentially, what is the ultimate goal where you would say, well, now we have made it?

Kris: Even before we had international ambitions on the level we have today, we often talked about how performing on the main stage of the Hungarian festival "Sziget" would be a testament to the fact that we have achieved something in our lives. Do you remember?

Bojan: How European of us, right? (laughs)

And - have they called you yet?

Jan: Not yet, but we are already learning Hungarian just in case (laughs).

Kris: And we were just wondering why we shouldn't just announce a concert at Wembley Stadium in London in 2030.

Bojan: Yeah, because if we started selling tickets now, we might even be able to sell them by then. (Everyone bursts out laughing because the stadium seats 90,000).

#joker out #bojan cvjeticanin #nace jordan #jan peteh #kris gustin #jure macek

[screenshotingmonstertv]

#american horror story #ahs #murder house #tate langdon #Evan Peters #us #it would go viral if we were in 2013...................i do miss that

[swiftgronmasterpost]

Spring/Summer/Fall 2013 - The End(?)

Click here for an appropriately sad Swiftgron breakup playlist.

I don’t know if it’s important or not but Dianna wishes several friends a late happy birthday on twitter, apologizing for missing the actual day through this spring and summer.  It seems like maybe she’s going through something (like a bad break up?) because it’s not like her to miss friends’ birthdays.

March 26, 2013 - Maybe a relevant tweet?

April 7, 2013 - Dianna tweets a photo of James Dean in a day dream like setting:

April 16, 2013 - The article that outed them:

Someone made a fake article that said Swiftgron was dating:

Dianna tweets seven times that day which is a bit much for her.

The hashtag here stands out to me:

The fake article goes viral and all week people are tweeting about the possibility that Dianna and Taylor are dating.

April 23, 2012

It seems to culminate on this day.  Many people are buzzing about Swiftgron and this actress tweets:

That’s right at midnight.

About 12 hours later Dianna deletes her public Tumblr:

On that same day Dianna reblogs several things on her private Tumblr.  These two stand out to me:

She reblogged both of these posts and the only hashtag they had in common was “#lost love” - she was searching that hashtag.

I think it’s very clear that today is the day Swiftgron 2.0 broke up.  I believe they were forced to by their management teams due to being outed.

April 24, 2013 - Taylor seems regretful/stressed out she screenshots her text to Austin and posts:

I think Dianna’s obviously upset about this and as an act of defiance she tweets at Taylor a few days later (Taylor does not respond.)

April 29, 2013

Instead Taylor posts on Dianna’s Birthday (April 30) a silly google search (very DIanna in nature tbh) with a play on the lyrics from 22:

Taylor had the week of Dianna’s 27th birthday off of the Red tour (it was scheduled like that) but as far as we know they did not hang out.

May 4, 2013 - Ours

At her first show since their supposed break-up, Taylor performs Ours as a surprise song. She introduces it by saying: “This is a song about how, when you fall in love everybody starts to give you their opinion. I imagine it could be really hard to make a relationship last, I wouldn’t know. But, given that everyone is giving you their own opinion about it, I think that the only opinion you should really listen to is yours and if you love that person, that should be all that matters.”

Dianna dyes her hair brown and goes to Morocco a week later with Ashley (”You searched the world for something else, To make you feel like what we had”) from about May 11 - May 14 or 15.  While there she attends the A Small World relaunch. ASW could be viewed as a bit “sketchy” if you will.  I think this is where she befriends Olivia Wilde.

This is Dianna’s first (known) trip to Morocco (Derek Blasberg is there too) but she seems to be drawn there over and over again after this, even marrying Winston Marshall there (and possibly meeting another boyfriend, Gus Wenner there.)

May 19, 2013 - Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas

Taylor wins 8 awards and says this during her acceptance speech:

This and the performance of Ours makes me think Taylor is bitter about a break up right now, even though publicly she broke up with Harry back in January.

This is also the event where Taylor is famously grossed out by Justin and Selena’s hetero nonsense and does this:

It seems like as always, Taylor has a lot going on right now...some kind of drama with Justin is boiling but it’s possible she’s also referencing her breakup with Dianna in her acceptance speech.

Dianna pops back up in NYC.

May 20, 2013 - WLW icon Kristen Stewart apparently spends the night at Taylors?

May 28, 2013 - Taylor plays Haunted on the Red Tour and gives a speech:

"This is a song that I haven't played on this tour so far. It came up when one of my friends tweeted the lyrics to it today and it reminded me that I haven't played this song in about two years. It has to do with the fact that, you know people talk about ghosts all the time. You just kind of imagine it being this supernatural thing, but there's another kind of ghost and it's just a person who is out there walking in the world or just doesn't love you anymore and that's a whole different kind of being haunted." Seems like she’s really going through it.

July 2, 2013 - Anniversary of Hyannis Port trip and interesting private Tumblr post from Dianna:

Bad things happen this summer.  Cory Monteith passes away and Taylor is assaulted at a meet and greet by a DJ.

July 2013 - Dianna buys a house in LA (I Wish You Would)

August 2013 - Dianna’s whosirmesir moniker gets outed and she stops blogging under that tumblr account.

August 14, 2013 - Taylor is in a weird place according to the Lover diaries:

1.  she seems to have basically written The Lakes here

2.  she’s really harping on themes she ends up addressing in I Know Places, Out of the Woods, and Wonderland

August 29, 2013 - Dianna steps out with restaurateur Nick Mathers.  

Not sure what to make of this one.  Dianna seems to date two types of men:  1. teeny bopper actors for bearding and pr purposes (it generally seems) and 2. rich businessmen.  Nick is type 2, but their relationship is reported on as if it’s PR.  “Sources” call up gossip sites to fill them in on the relationship and both their projects get plugged along with announcements on them as a couple:

I don’t know if they were more or less legit but she goes out with Taylor five days later...

September 4, 2013 - The Fun! Concert:

Swiftgron’s last pre-Kaylor public sighting - they go to a Fun! concert in LA

It’s just a split instant of video footage but Sarah Hyland uploads this to Vine and it does not look like Dianna is enjoying herself:

Note:  It kind of looks like DIanna has her arm around Taylor’s waist and also the person to the right of Taylor is Selby Drummond who is still friends with DIanna as of writing of this masterpost (December 2020) and who still appears to be a fan of Taylor’s.

Dianna does look miserable but I do think it’s interesting they seem to be making an effort to hang out on the two year anniversary of their public (perhaps private as well) first meeting.

Dianna tweets about the concert the next day:

September 6, 2013 - Taylor plays Speak Now as the surprise song on the Red tour.  Interesting given the timing of Dianna and her new boyfriend being public just one week before this.

September 8, 2013 - Taylor plays Sad, Beautiful Tragic for the first time ever live and gives this speech:

"I kind of feel like playing a song I've never ever played live before. This is um a song that I wrote about how you know just because something's over doesn't mean it wasn't incredibly beautiful. Cause another lesson I've learned is not all stories have a happy ending and you have to learn how to deal with that. So this is a song about a story that didn't end so happily but was still supposed to happen. This is called Sad, Beautiful, Tragic."

I don’t think this song was originally written about Dianna but I do think at this time while they stumble through the last phase of their relationship Taylor was inspired to sing it.

October 2013 - Taylor writes I Wish You Would, a song inspired by an ex who had recently bought a house near her driving past her house.  It’s thought to be about Harry but Harry didn’t buy a house in LA until March 2014.  But of course we know Dianna did buy a house near Taylor’s in LA earlier this fall.

November 11, 2013 - The music video for “She’s Just Another Girl” premiers starring Dianna looking stunning in high fashion drag, dressed up as the lead singer, and lip syncing the words to the song:

Some lyrics to the song include:

All of my friends say I should move on She's just another girl, don't let her stick it to your heart so hard And all of my friends say it wasn't meant to be And it's a great big world, she's just another girl

I could be reeling them in left and right Something's got a hold on me, tonight Well maybe all of my friends should confront The fact that I don't want another girl

I think it’s at least possible that Dianna was drawn to this project because the lyrics resonated to her given what she was going through with Taylor at the time.

November 12, 2013 - Day of Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show rehearsals and Dianna posts this (now deleted) picture:

November 13, 2013 - Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show where Taylor performs and Karlie Kloss walks the runway.

Dianna posts this picture (now deleted) of her at Emma Stone’s birthday party from 11 months previous:

It’s likely she’s looking at Taylor in this photo who was seated across from her.

It’s a very random picture to post.  It wasn’t titled as a throwback and it wasn’t an exact year after the picture was taken (prompting some kind of happy birthday shout out to Emma Stone or anything) - just a random picture of Dianna smiling, likely at Taylor. 

November 17, 2013 - Dianna posts a (now deleted) photo about missing someone:

November 21, 2013 - Taylor posts lyrics from a hopeful love song about a troubled relationship:

Lyrics:

December 9, 2013 - Dianna listens to Pale Blue Eyes

Lyrics are about being emo over a lost love with Blue Eyes:

Sometimes I feel so happy Sometimes I feel so sad Sometimes I feel so happy But mostly you just make me mad Baby, you just make me madLinger on your pale blue eyes Linger on your pale blue eyes

Thought of you as my mountaintop Thought of you as my peak Thought of you as everything I've had, but couldn't keep I've had, but couldn't keep

Linger on your pale blue eyes Linger on your pale blue eyes

If I could make the world as pure And strange as what I see I'd put you in the mirror I put in front of me I put in front of meLinger on your pale blue eyes Linger on your pale blue eyes

Skip a life completely Stuff it in a cup She said, "Money is like us in time It lies, but can't stand up" Down for you is upLinger on your pale blue eyes Linger on your pale blue eyesIt was good what we did yesterday And I'd do it once again The fact that you are married Only proves you're my best friend But it's truly, truly a sinLinger on your pale blue eyes Linger on your pale blue eyes

December 11, 2013 - You know the drill...Dianna posts a now deleted photo to Instagram:

December 13, 2013 - Dianna posts an attention grabbing photo on Taylor’s Birthday

Conclusions - Swiftgron very clearly goes through a rough breakup due to being outed. 

Then they attempt some sort of reconciliation - even hanging out (date night?) on the second anniversary of their Fairfax Flea Market meetcute, but it goes wrong.  

Taylor is on tour for much of this time and Dianna is posting angst ridden and peculiar Instagram posts exactly at the time Taylor meets Karlie.

Click here to keep reading!

[sta-bright]

My First Tumble

Hi Tumblr,

I was inspired to get a Tumblr account, believe it or not, from Netflix's 2021 four-part docu-series "Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel." Although I highly doubt anyone cares enough to read any of my posts or has the attention span to read anything longer than a few sentences written by a 23 year old with her boobs out, *just in case,* SPOILER ALERT.

The (main) topic of the show focuses around Elisa Lam, who vanished in early 2013 when she was staying at the Cecil Hotel and was then found dead in one of the four water tanks on the roof 19 days after being reported missing (I think I have that correct but don't hold me to it, imaginary readers. It was something like that.).

Anyway, "...to make a long story short"... "too late" #cluereference, Elisa had a Tumblr blog. It seemed to be a good setup for how she was writing very personally, which is what I want to do, so here we go. I have a blog page for the business I own, but to be honest, it's geared more toward, well, business, so I don't feel like I can write freely, or only like the "good" or "normal" part of myself, the good stuff geared at an audience without scaring people away or whatever. So for this one, I don't really care as much about proper grammar or spelling, just somewhere to write my real thoughts if and when I can focus enough to sort them out enough to put them down. I have a bunch of journals, but they are all over the place and I can't write fast enough, so I'm going to try this out. I have a lot to say, and I think even just putting it out there even though I know no one cares might help me feel a little bit of relief, even if anyone does read it and might think I'm an idiot or whatever.

I wasn't sure what to name my blog, and I'm not sure if there's a way to change it in the future, but for now I have decided on "Sta-Bright." Most of my family and some of my close friends call me "Sta" and my partner David calls me Sta Bright, which I think is really cute and makes me happy, so here we are. I use the word partner because I think the word boyfriend is a little too young for us and our relationship warrants a higher level than that. ANYWAY, there is the background information for you, my new friend, Tumblr. I already feel better.

So, this show really pissed me off for a few (many) reasons. I've legitimately been pacing around all morning. First, even the title of the show is misleading. The death of Elisa Lam was not a "crime." It was a devastating incident of accidental death highly likely (as confidently confirmed by all professionals involved) related to a psychotic episode of her mental illness, Bipolar I, which I also happen to have. Netflix using the title "Crime Scene" to lure watchers in is disgusting within itself. Good for you, Netflix. Holla for the dollas! Make that money, baby.

Then, beyond the fact Netflix milked four episodes out of a glamorized case that was ruled an accidental death for this reason not even long after finding Elisa, it is the whole ordeal of the reality and dramatizing of this saga that is so sad.

Upon the release of the famous elevator footage the day she went missing, it went viral almost instantaneously.

*Hold please* I actually just read an article by BBC.com where director of the series, Joe Berlinger, says, "For the average viewer it's another compelling story you watch and then move on to the next. But for who this happened to, it's the worst moment in their life. It's a real tragedy for that person and that family." LOLOLOLOL OKAY JOE!!!! Is this why you spent FOUR EPISODES talking about bullshit theories to keep people hooked and open more discussion? You know that this is not out of respect. Shame on YOU!

"If you look at the other tellings of the story, you'd see she's the victim of some horrible, evil presence that took control of her.

"Those kinds of narratives, I think, are incredibly disrespectful and probably why the family just didn't want to deal with another show that was going to exaggerate the circumstances of the tragedy."

So is this why you made a show exaggerating the circumstances of the tragedy? Lol. "We need to talk about the ghost stories" Or do you need to talk about them to open a can of worms to more losers who fixate on the case? OR IS THAT JUST ME? I don't know. Lemme tell ya what. If anything ever happens to me, please make sure this Joe Schmuck doesn't make a pathetic docuseries about it.

Then, aside from the pathetic profit of Netflix, the actual details of what happened and how society and the "web sleuths" investigated, obsessed, and chimed in on this case is a whole other ballpark about society's minimization and lack of knowledge or respect for mental illness on its own.

THEN, there is a quote by Amy Price, the manager of the hotel during the incident, who is now profiting on a book she is writing about HER experience:

"I want to share my story," she says.

"But this isn't a horror story or anything like that. This is a story about struggle."

Okay, Amy. Whose fucking struggle are you writing about here? I legitimately don't know if she is referring to hers or Elisa's, but either way, it's gross.

It makes me so sad that this whole situation warranted MILLIONS of theories, millions of internet trolls writing articles about the "BIZARRE" death of this girl. This case is not fucking bizarre. It is unfortunate but it is not bizarre. This case was plastered all over internet lists with the titles "bizarre, unexplained cases of missing people." It's not unexplained, and it only was not for long.

These "web sleuths" were busy having a blast, going to the crime scene, smiling as they recorded, posting videos about their stupid theories. Trolls posting their dumb, far-fetched theories without knowing all of the facts, thinking they know better than the professionals, who DO have the findings, did do the labs, did do the investigations. And people still insist that THERE HAS TO BE MORE.

Of course, I don't know all the facts either. BUT, according to the actual professionals involved rather than the entire population of people who love a good "mystery," Elisa's toxicology results showed that her levels of the medications she was supposed to be on signified she had not been taking them as she should have been. They also found bottles of her medicine that had more pills than prescribed, also showing that she had not been taking them.

THEN, she was removed from the room she had been sharing with a few others due to "odd behavior" leaving weird post-its telling them to go away, or whatever. THEN, apparently going into the hotel lobby and screaming "I'm crazy!" or whatever it was.

Although all experiences with mental illnesses are unique, all of these details plus the footage, both detailing erratic behavior, leave no doubt in my mind that the professionals, SHOCKINGLY, CRAZILY, may be right! Who thunk it! I have legitimately acted in the ways described and shown in the video. I don't and couldn't understand HERS, but I understand MY paranoia, hallucinations, experiences I have had, and the actions that are presented, and I guarantee some would look very similar to that footage. Ask the few people who know me best what it's like when I'm not on my meds or fuck them up. I legitimately saw myself in her actions.

Yet, the internet losers had to fixate on a death metal artist who had stayed in the hotel for a few days A YEAR before any of this happened and legitimately ruined his life. His alibi was completely valid and he was dismissed by investigators. He was out of the country, he had tons of substantial paperwork and proof that he was, but that didn't matter.

Because no one takes bipolar disorder seriously, dismissing it as just mood swings, people being dramatic, seeking attention, being lazy, and everyone needs something more sensational, THIS wasn't even an option. They needed to fixate on crazy, fun conspiracy theories, watching the footage over and over and over again, sitting in their caves with their thumbs up their asses writing about their ballpark theories, internet bullying innocent people instead of doing any research on bipolar disorder, instead of defending or considering that it was a psychotic episode, which literally all of the official facts and footage present.

Clearly I'm not a professional either, but like... watch the show and you tell me. You tell me what you think is likely. You tell me what the professionals agree on. But before you make that call, try reading a little bit about bipolar disorder. Try reading about the psychotic episodes that can come with it. It probably won't change your mind, but oh well. It probably is just the hotel being haunted, ya know. Right? This is just my little rant that doesn't matter.

If you want to think it was a ghost, a demon, if it was a murder even though she literally had zero signs of any physical violence and there was zero evidence of it and all evidence the other way, you do that, boo. Have a blast. Hey, I 100% could be wrong, right? Absolutely. Who am I? Just a little dramatic, stupid, crazy nobody.

That's just my take, no better than any other internet trolls, I suppose. When all is said and done, in my little fantasy world, I guess people would just take bipolar disorder seriously and understand the severity of it. People would take it to consideration for the actions and words of those who have it. That's not fun, though. Everyone loves money, everyone loves a good story. Everyone loves making fun of people. Everyone loves a disability you can see. Everything I do is just me being an oddball. Everyone loves to be an internet bully.

I'm sorry for Elisa and her family who have had to deal with years of this. Years of people dismissing the severity of mental illness and obsessing over ghost stories, obsessing over the number of likes or views they get, money they make off of it.

Wow, that was a blast. I'm fairly confident no one will read this, but I feel a lot better that I put that out there. Again, I'm a little nobody, so nothing I say matters, but that's just my take on all of it. I've given up trying to convince anyone that I'm anything but weird, because I know no one will care or accept that. I'll just keep making people feel uncomfortable and keep looking like an idiot. Woe is me, am I right?

You have a blessed day now.

#mental health #mentalhealthmatters #bipolar disorder #bipolar 1 #fuck you netflix

[wtffundiefamilies]

For those of you who missed this, this is the doctor whose genius Trump is praising.  As always, bolding is mine for emphasis.

A Houston doctor who praises hydroxychloroquine and says that face masks aren’t necessary to stop transmission of the highly contagious coronavirus has become a star on the right-wing internet, garnering tens of millions of views on Facebook on Monday alone. Donald Trump Jr. declared the video of Stella Immanuel a “must watch,” while Donald Trump himself retweeted the video.

Before Trump and his supporters embrace Immanuel’s medical expertise, though, they should consider other medical claims Immanuel has made—including those about alien DNA and the physical effects of having sex with witches and demons in your dreams.

Immanuel, a pediatrician and a religious minister, has a history of making bizarre claims about medical topics and other issues. She has often claimed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches.

She alleges alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments, and that scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. And, despite appearing in Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress on Monday, she has said that the government is run in part not by humans but by “reptilians” and other aliens.

Immanuel gave her viral speech on the steps of the Supreme Court at the “White Coat Summit,” a gathering of a handful of doctors who call themselves America’s Frontline Doctors and dispute the medical consensus on the novel coronavirus. The event was organized by the right-wing group Tea Party Patriots, which is backed by wealthy Republican donors.

In her speech, Immanuel alleges that she has successfully treated hundreds of patients with hydroxychloroquine, a controversial treatment Trump has promoted and says he has taken himself. Studies have failed to find proof that the drug has any benefit in treating COVID-19, and the Food and Drug Administration in June revoked its emergency authorization to use it to treat the deadly virus, saying it hadn’t demonstrated any effect on patients’ mortality prospects.

“Nobody needs to get sick,” Immanuel said. “This virus has a cure.”

Immanuel said in her speech that the supposed potency of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment means that protective face masks aren’t necessary, claiming that she and her staff had avoided contracting COVID-19 despite wearing medical masks instead of the more secure N95 masks.

“Hello, you don’t need a mask. There is a cure,” Immanuel said.  

Toward the end of Immanuel’s speech, the event’s organizer and other participants can be seen trying to get her away from the microphone. But footage of the speech captured by Breitbart was a hit online, becoming a top video on Facebook and amassing roughly 13 million views—significantly more than “Plandemic,” another coronavirus disinformation video that became a viral hit online in May, when it amassed roughly 8 million Facebook views.

“Hydroxychloroquine” trended on Twitter, as Immanuel’s video was embraced by the Trumps, conservative student group Turning Point USA, and pro-Trump personalities like Diamond & Silk. But both Facebook and Twitter eventually deleted videos of Immanuel’s speech from their sites, citing rules against COVID-19 disinformation. The deletions set off yet another round of complaints by conservatives of bias at the social-media platforms.

Immanuel responded in her own way, declaring that Jesus Christ would destroy Facebook’s servers if her videos weren’t restored to the platform.

“Hello Facebook put back my profile page and videos up or your computers with start crashing till you do,” she tweeted. “You are not bigger that God. I promise you. If my page is not back up face book will be down in Jesus name.”

Immanuel is a registered physician in Texas, according to a Texas Medical Board database, and operates a medical clinic out of a strip mall next to her church, Firepower Ministries.

Immanuel was born in Cameroon and received her medical degree in Nigeria. In a GoFundMe legal defense fund, which swelled from just $90 to $1,616 hours after her speech, Immanuel claims without offering any proof that members of a Houston networking group for women physicians are scheming to take her medical license away over her support for hydroxychloroquine.

It’s not clear whether anyone is actually trying to take Immanuel’s license. But many of her earlier medical claims are definitely ludicrous.

In sermons posted on YouTube and articles on her website, Immanuel claims that medical issues like endometriosis, cysts, infertility, and impotence are caused by sex with “spirit husbands” and “spirit wives”—a phenomenon Immanuel describes essentially as witches and demons having sex with people in a dreamworld.

“They are responsible for serious gynecological problems,” Immanuel said. “We call them all kinds of names—endometriosis, we call them molar pregnancies, we call them fibroids, we call them cysts, but most of them are evil deposits from the spirit husband,” Immanuel said of the medical issues in a 2013 sermon. “They are responsible for miscarriages, impotence—men that can’t get it up.”

In her sermon, Immanuel offers a sort of demonology of “nephilim,” the biblical characters she claims exist as demonic spirits and lust after dream sex with humans, causing all matter of real health problems and financial ruin. Immanuel claims real-life ailments such as fibroid tumors and cysts stem from the demonic sperm after demon dream sex, an activity she claims affects “many women.”  

“They turn into a woman and then they sleep with the man and collect his sperm,” Immanuel said in her sermon. “Then they turn into the man and they sleep with a man and deposit the sperm and reproduce more of themselves.”

According to Immanuel, people can tell if they have taken a demonic spirit husband or spirit wife if they have a sex dream about someone they know or a celebrity, wake up aroused, stop getting along with their real-world spouse, lose money, or generally experience any hardship.

Alternately, they could just be having dream-sex with a human witch instead of a demon, she posits.

“There are those that are called astral sex,” Immanuel said in the sermon. “That means this person is not really a demon being or a nephilim. It’s just a human being that’s a witch, and they astral project and sleep with people.”

Immanuel’s bizarre medical ideas don’t stop with demon sex in dreams. In a 2015 sermon that laid out a supposed Illuminati plan hatched by “a witch” to destroy the world using abortion, gay marriage, and children’s toys, among other things, Immanuel claimed that DNA from space aliens is currently being used in medicine.

“They’re using all kinds of DNA, even alien DNA, to treat people,” Immanuel said.

Immanuel’s website offers a prayer to remove a generational curse originally received from an ancestor but transmitted, in Immanuel’s telling, through placenta. Immanuel claimed in another 2015 sermon posted that scientists had plans to install microchips in people, and develop a “vaccine” to make it impossible to become religious.

“They found the gene in somebody’s mind that makes you religious, so they can vaccinate against it,” Immanuel said.

Immanuel elaborated on her fascination with witchcraft in her 2015 Illuminati sermon, claiming that witches were intent on seizing control of children.

In her 2015 sermon on the Illuminati’s supposed agenda to bring down the United States, Immanuel argues that a wide variety of toys, books, and TV shows, from Pokémon—which she declares “Eastern demons”—to Harry Potter and the Disney Channel shows Wizards of Waverly Place and That’s So Raven were all part of a scheme to introduce children to spirits and witches. Immanuel warned that the Disney Channel show Hannah Montana was a gateway to evil, because its character had an “alter ego.” She has claimed that schools teach children to meditate so they can “meet with demons.”

In the sermon, Immanuel preserved special vitriol for the Magic 8-Ball, a toy that can be shaken up to “reveal” any answer. Immanuel claims the otherwise innocuous Magic 8-Ball was in fact a scheme to get children used to witchcraft.

“The 8-Ball was a psychic,” she said.

Immanuel’s oddball claims about the world extend to politics. She didn’t bring up this allegation publicly in Washington, but she has claimed that the American government is run in part by non-human reptilians.

“There are people that are ruling this nation that are not even human,” Immanuel said in her 2015 Illuminati sermon, before launching into a conversation she had with a “reptilian spirit” she described as “half-human, half-ET.”

Immanuel has also used her pulpit to preach hatred of LGBT people. Shortly before the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, Immanuel warned her flock that gay marriage meant that “very soon people are going to be seeking to marry children” and accused gay Americans of practicing “homosexual terrorism.” In the same sermon, she praised a father’s decision to not love his transgender son after a gender transition.

“You know the crazy part?” Immanuel said. “The little girl demands he must love her anyway. Really? You will not get it from me, I’d be like ‘Little girl, when you come back to be a little girl again, but you talk—for now, I’m gone.’”

Unusually for a pediatrician, Immanuel has praised corporal punishment for children. The American Academy of Pediatrics opposes corporal punishment, and claims that the “vast majority” of pediatricians do not recommend it.

“Children need to be whipped,” she declared in a 2015 sermon, before adding that she didn’t think children should be “abused.”

It’s also not clear that Immanuel has abided by her claims that face masks aren’t necessary. In her Washington speech, Immanuel claimed that she and her medical staff had avoided any COVID-19 infections while wearing only medical masks. But in two videos shot at her clinic, Immanuel appears to be wearing an N95 mask, which offers more protection.

Immanuel has also alleged that masks of all kinds are superfluous, because she says COVID-19 can be easily cured with hydroxychloroquine. But in a Facebook video advertising her clinic, Immanuel said anyone seeking treatment should wear a face mask before entering the clinic.

“Wear a mask, or a scarf, or anything to cover your face,” Immanuel said in the video.

Immanuel has seized on her newfound celebrity, tweeting a video demanding that CNN hosts and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief Anthony Fauci give her jars of their urine so she can test if they’re secretly taking hydroxychloroquine even as they caution against its use.

“I double dog dare y’all give me a urine sample,” Immanuel tweeted in her challenge.

Now Immanuel is angling for the key rite of passage for any budding MAGA-world personality: a visit to the Trump White House. Late Monday night, Immanuel tweeted that she was open to meeting the president.

“Mr President I’m in town and available,” she tweeted. “I will love to meet with you.”

#stella immanuel #donald trump jr #donald trump #science is fake news #'family values' #white coat summit #tea party #turning point usa #diamond & silk #faux news

[sugarycloud]

What Caroline meant to me

Hi. So I haven’t posted in a while, and if I did it was always just fic. Honestly I was planning on never posting on here ever again. I was even for a moment gonna delete everything, cos it felt disrespectful or something to leave all of it up. But I couldn’t, and then I got my blog stats for the week and saw that I’d had over a thousand pageviews, something that hasn’t happened in years. So I felt I had to say something. In case anyone wanted to read it.

Firstly, I am so utterly devastated about Caroline’s death. She was the best person, a beautiful and kind soul, and it’s so tragic and unfair that she thought the only way out was to take her own life. It still doesn’t feel real, and honestly I’m not sure it ever will.

I know there are so many people to blame, the press and the media, and social media, and the CPS. But I don’t want to focus on that, because to me, I’m sad either way, I’m devastated either way. And I don’t have it in me to tunnel all my energy into anger and justice, right now all I have is sadness, deep and complete sadness.

Caroline was so many things to me, she was a crush, and an idol. She was one half of my OTP. She was a person who made me want to believe in myself more, love myself more and give less fucks. She got me into writing. She was the reason I know some of my favourite people in the world. And somehow, she was someone I knew.

I first became a fan of Caroline’s in 2011, like so many of this fandom, because of Carolly, because of Xtra Factor, because, and I still believe this, those two were soulmates, and it was clear as day to all of us.

We watched them and fell in love with them, and they made us so happy, besides when we were yelling at me for being idiots. Caroline was always my favourite out of the two, whether it be because I fancied her and not Olly, or because she had the most infectious personality. She was the type of person I could imagine going to the pub with, someone I’d want to be mates with, because she sparkled.

I started writing fic in 2012 and on it sailed from there, I wrote my last fic in November 2019, seven years of being in her and Olly’s heads, and making up all sorts of happy endings for them. It breaks my heart that they never got one, that Caz never got one.

I first met Caroline on December 1st 2013. She was in a car and she stopped and chatted to me and my friend. The driver kept trying to drive away and she kept telling him to stop. She said she liked my coat, and I got the worst pictures ever. But she was amazing and I was so happy.

I next met her at Viral Tap in 2014. I met Jo and Chris. I gave her a burger necklace(‘Oh my god! This is the best thing anyone’s ever got me! I’m gonna put it on!). We chatted for ages, got much better pictures, and she was so lovely, funny, and genuine.

Then I didn’t see her until during X Factor 2015. I saw her plenty before that, I saw Strictly live, both the actual show and the tour, plus A Night With Olly Murs, and I basically lived at X Factor. But I hadn’t actually met her in a year and a half.

It was her book signing, I was really nervous, she had unfollowed me on Twitter after I drunkenly insulted her boyfriend on there. Course she didn’t remember that. She didn’t remember meeting me before but did after a bit of prompting. We talked about Strictly (‘You won six hundred pounds cos I won Strictly?! *turns to her team* ‘She won 600 pounds cos I won Strictly!) and her book (‘I read it in a day’ ‘What was your favourite bit?’ ‘Any bit with Olly’ ‘Of course’), I kept calling her Caz (‘I love that you call me Caz!) and we took our first selfies. She signed my book ‘Lovely to meet you AGAIN’ and in one for my mum wrote ‘You have a wonderful daughter’.

I saw her at XF soon after that and the first thing she said to me was ‘I’ve met you before!’ before much Olly chat and XF chat and how brilliant she was chat. She always chatted to you like you were her mate, telling us about her mum coming to visit and what Olly got for her birthday(‘A coat and a purse’ ‘What brand?’ ‘Yves Saint Laurent… who needs a boyfriend when you have Olly Murs’) my poor heart could barely handle it.

The weekend of the X Factor final, I got about 5 hours sleep and saw them kiss on the stage, still one of the best weekends of my life.

Next time I saw her was April 2016, outside of BBC, there was 3 of us there and we all talked for ages. I remember saying something, maybe about having met her before, and she went ‘I do know who you are!’, I never worried she didn’t after that. Also thus began the habit of her taking my phone and taking selfies from all the angles whenever I saw her.

Honestly after that it starts to meld together, I served her at work in 2017(‘Oh my god it’s you! I haven’t seen you in ages!’) at her radio show where she was about to get in her car, turned around and saw me and got back out again. There was all the times at Chicago and the one time at stage door for Crazy for You, chatting to her at Aftersun, and even when I was at the back of the room, seeing me, pointing and waving.

The last time I saw her was last year at her River Island launch. It was so nice. There was a big queue to see her and when I got to the front she hugged me and went ‘Hey you’. We were chatting for a while about Olly and how I was seeing Take That a lot right at that moment in time (How many times?’ ‘20’ ’20!!’), I told her I couldn’t afford any of her collection and she went all whispery ‘Don’t worry, I’ll send you some’ (she never actually did but still a very sweet gesture). There was a queue forming behind me so she said she’d catch me a in a bit.

I sat down on the sofa and after a while, she came and sat down next to me (‘Is it just me and a load of Instagrammers?’ ‘Yeah’ ‘Do you know anyone else here?’ ‘No’). We took some more pictures (‘Oh my god the camera on your phone is so good’) and chatted about Love Island and the rest. Eventually I left after the place emptied out and she had to go do some promotion pictures. I can’t believe it’s the last time I ever got to talk to her, I’m so glad it was so good. I have not one bad memory of meeting her and I will treasure every second of it all always.

She wasn’t my friend, but she knew me, she followed me on Twitter and Instagram, and always asked about my work (she always remembered where I worked after I served her) and how I was. She knew me and I knew her. I always used to say ‘We’re not friends but we’re friendly’ when people at work would take the piss and call her my mate.

My work, honestly, have been so understanding. I found out at work, someone took me aside and told me, and took me home. I wasn’t in for 4 days and when I did go back I couldn’t stop crying. I cried on so many people. But they got it, they all got it, how much she meant to me and how much I loved her and cared about her and knew her. They didn’t dismiss it just because she was famous, they understood completely.

Honestly, ever since Caz died, I have never known such kindness and love in all my life. I had about 200 messages from people the night it happened, and people who have been checking how I am every day. I couldn’t sleep for a week, I’m still struggling to eat, and there are so many tears. But having so much support and being surrounded by love has helped so much. I only wish Caz had known how loved she was, I hope she did know, that she was so so loved by so so many. I can’t stop thinking about her family, about Jo and Chris, and her friends, poor poor Lou, and Sam, and Olly. I can’t even imagine how they feel, and I can do nothing but hope beyond anything that eventually they will be ok.

It’s hard as a person who doesn’t believe in heaven or the afterlife to find any solace in this. People find comfort in that, that’s she ‘in a better place’ and ‘at peace now’ and ‘looking down on us’. I get that helps people, but to me, there’s no better place, the place for her was here. And now all we have is memories, and thinking of her sad and alone, and it breaks my heart time and time again.

Caz was an amazing person, she was kind and generous and funny. She had a good word to say about everybody and no matter who you were, treated you just the same. She wore her heart on her sleeve, loved so deeply, felt everything so much. She was one of a kind, a good soul and the most beautiful person, inside and out and this world is a poorer one for her no longer being in it.

So what did Caroline mean to me? She meant the absolute world, and I’m gonna miss her so very very much.

#so i'm never posting again after this #if you want to talk send me your twitter or insta @ #love to you all #i hope everyone is ok as can be

[totalconway]

Drinks at the Pub, ends in short film opportunity...

So a little back story first, I started performing stand up comedy in 2012 and by 2013 I was lucky enough to win the state leg of Australia’s largest open mic competition Triple J RAW Comedy and headed to Melbourne to perform on the ABC.

Following that experience I was given a lot of opportunities to perform support spots purely based on that RAW comedy credit.

One case of this was performing at Rottnest Island for their Rottofest summer comedy which was held every Friday during the summer. Rottnest Island is a hot bed of local and international tourist, and the Island’s Gov’s Tavern where the gig is held would often sell out (120+ People) the crowd was always a mix of high profile people and obnoxious drunks (most of the time both)

On one particular Friday night, I was performing, and not to brag blowing the roof off the joint and in the crowd was none other then the President of my favorite sporting team the Fremantle Dockers Football Club.

At the time, the Fremantle Dockers board was facing backlash from the supporter base because they wanted to move the Dockers training ground from their spiritual home of Fremantle Oval to a state of the art, purpose built training facility in Cockburn (Yes Cock Burn) which is about a 30 minute drive up the road.

So after the gig on Rottnest Island, I get introduced to the president of the Dockers with the intro line “Hey Sean, tell him what you think of the Cockburn move” and you can see his look go from chilled and calm to “I seriously got to deal with this shit on my holiday”. I just told him “I’m pumped for it” and I was, its been a good move for the Dockers and I started reeling off the benefits for the move etc etc. We hung out had a few beers and the whole night I was spun out that I was hanging with the president of the Dockers.

I went back to work on Monday telling people I got to hang out with the President of the Dockers, with a bit of fake bravado swagger to jokingly let them know I only hang with A-Listers now! After a couple of days I didn’t think anything of it and went back to gigging and working.

A few months down the track I get an email from the booker of Rottofest Summer comedy asking if I’d be keen to Star in a short film for the Dockers. Its not paid but if the film is one of three winners of the competition I’d receive one of the tickets to the USA which was up for grabs. Honestly, they had me at “Star in Dockers short film”. 

Apparently the opportunity was between myself and a Perth duo called Henry & Aaron. Henry & Aaron are film makers/comic actors who pretty much went viral on youtube with every film they made (Talking millions and millions of views) and they lost out to my RAW comedy set that had about 12 views purely because I had a few too many beers with the president of the Dockers. 

When I got the call to go meet them about the project I was incredibly nervous. I had a whole pitch prepared about why I was the best candidate for the job “I fucking bleed purple” because I was still thinking I had to audition for the film but essentially I had already been cast in the film. Their only concern was whether or not I could fit in the costume because I’m a big fat dude they had to see if I would be able to squeeze into it. The whole time I was terrified of ripping it because it’s a $3-$4K costume.

Once the costume fit (just) it was straight to work. It was a great project to work on because they gave me a lot of creative control of my character, and I really wanted to portray a David Brent (The Office) like character, like a really fat black sheep in a white herd.

So we started filming in September of 2013, just after the Dockers had beaten Geelong in an away game in the first week of the finals. So the Dockers had a weeks break before they played Sydney in Fremantle’s first home preliminary final in two weeks time. This was a huge moment for the club because If we win this it will be the first Grand Final the Dockers have ever been in. 

The first day of shooting was super intimidating, not because I was meeting some of my football idols but because the night before the first day of shooting I watched a documentary called Catching Hell about the Chicago Cubs fan Steve Bartman who was blamed for the Chicago Cubs not winning a game that would of sent them to the world series. Not the best film to watch when you’re about to work with you’re sporting idols on the eve of the biggest game in the clubs history. To say it made me super paranoid the whole shoot is an understatement, and it didn’t help that the first shot of the day was with the Dockers marquee player Matthew Pavlich. The scene was me jumping on his back, FUCK RIGHT OFF. I’m twice the size of Pavlich and you’re dreaming if you think I’m jumping on his back. If you watch the scene I take the “mark” and I’m nowhere near Pavlich.

It was a great shoot because everything was time sensitive, the players had their other appointments so we literally only had 10 minutes for each shot with the players so we flew through the script. 

I got to meet a lot of the players I was fans of like Ryan Crowley, Nat fyfe, I didn’t get to meet Michael Walters but the scene he’s in, my fat is hanging out of my footy jersey and I did hear him say to David Mundy “That dude looks like a bag of oranges” which was funny, but Ideally I would of preferred he made the joke to me so I could of gained a fan when I busted his balls back, but unfortunately it wasn’t to be.

The last shot of the film was me gate crashing a press conference with Michael Barlow . Barlow did the interview and the CEO at the time did a big speech thanking the media for their support throughout the year and if they wouldn’t mind hanging around for 10 minutes so we could get our last shot. We smashed out the shot in 2 takes, boom we’re finished, I’m told not to tell anyone about the film until it airs the following week, easy enough right.

Wrong, the next day I’m back at work and people are looking at me like I’m the biggest piece of shit in the world, because one of the media outlets had filmed me gate crashing the Michael Barlow press conference, and passed it off like I was genuinely gate crashing the press conference. 

I had to tell people it was for a film which didn’t help the situation because they thought because I do comedy it must have been some Jackass type movie I was doing. It also didn’t help the situation that Radio talk back shows were crucifying me saying how unfunny I was and how big of a dickhead I was for gate crashing the Barlow press conference, but I didn’t care too much because I knew the film was coming out the following week. It didn’t stop my Mum and my sister writing a long scathing letter to the radio station about how they should do their research before they try to shame their baby boy on the radio. Luckily I was able to stop them from sending it out.

The film came out the following week as well as the entries for the other films that we were competing against, the winners would be based on who had the most likes, shares and views. The first film we were up against was by the St Kilda Saints who managed to get Eric Bana to star in their film, it still makes me chuffed to think I starred in a film that went head to head with an Eric Bana film. The second film was by the Melbourne Demons which was a documentary about a child fan who was very sick, third place was us, and the rest of the films were Essendon Bombers which was fucking terrible and a few other teams who I can’t remember.

The film was released the night the Fremantle Dockers played Sydney Swans in a game which would determine who would be playing Hawthorn in the grand final the following week. Literally the clubs biggest game in their history at that point so the game was sold out and 50,000 people got to see me make an ass out of myself and it was humbling how much the Dockers supporters loved it.                     But more importantly the Dockers smashed the Swans and were headed for their first ever Grand Final.

Being the Dockers fan I am, there was no chance in hell we were missing out on seeing the Dockers play in their first Grand Final. I had cousin’s overseas who cut their holiday short to make it back in time for the Grand Final. It was such an amazing experience heading over for the grand final, and thanks to the film I was a bit of a star amongst Dockers supporters. I was flying over with my dad and at the same time One Direction were flying in and all these young preteen girls were waiting for them with signs and screaming for One Direction. I’m chilling with my dad waiting to board our flight and a family of Dockers fans came over and asked for a photo. All of these young preteen girls were looking at me with a confused look on their face wondering who I was and while they were distracted by me, One Direction walked past the crowd of fans with out any of them noticing.

The morning after we arrived in Melbourne we went straight to the Grand Final Parade which is one of the biggest events of the AFL Grand Final week. All the fans line the street to watch the two competing teams drive through the streets of Melbourne and ends with a big speech on the government steps and the captains of each club holding the trophy in front of their screaming fans. When the event finished all the Dockers fans turned to walk away and saw me in the street. Everyone stopped to shake my hand and to get photos, treating me like a full blown celebrity, even a girl who I had a crush on in High school asked me for a photo and I got to experience all this with my family watching. It was a very surreal and amazing experience to say the least.

The next day was the Grand Final, all the Dockers fans met at Federation Square before the game so we could march to the Melbourne Cricket Ground like soldiers marching to war. It was a sight that Melbourne people have never seen by an interstate club, which made me incredibly proud to be a Dockers fan. Being apart of the film, Dockers fans continued to stop and cheer me as we all marched to the MCG. 

When we got to the MCG I was starting to get anxious for the game, my cousins could see me becoming more anxious, which is why they started screaming out "Look it’s the Unsung Docker” every 5 minutes. I had Dockers fans lining up to get a photo with me and then Hawthorn supporters and famous AFL commentators would walk past with a look on their face like “Who the fuck is this guy”

The Dockers ended up losing the Grand Final and we headed to the Dockers after party which felt more like a wake. After the Dockers lost the game I also found out that we also finished fourth in the film competition behind the Essendon Bombers who got the fucking Janoskians to pump out their film amongst their fans and got their views up with comments like “I’m only here because I like the Janoskians” (I’m still bitter about it). In one afternoon I managed to see my favourite team lose the ultimate prize and have my payment for the film pinched from me by some shit head kids, it was a rough way to end what was otherwise a truly amazing experience.

I wasn’t too disappointed though, the film helped me get an acting agent in Sydney which has lead to some amazing acting opportunities. I’ll share some more stories down the track. The Dockers unfortunately haven’t made it to another Grand Final since 2013, but hopefully one day I’m at the right bar at the right time to have a drink with the new president of the Dockers and we can get the wheels moving on The Unsung Docker 2 

#afl #fremantle #fremantledockers #films #youtube #shortfilms #comedy #standupcomedy #careers #acting #lucky #drinking #rottnestisland #perth

[anastasiamalan98]

Fan communities and activism

As you can see from the video, the staples center was packed with the fans of The Ace Family (sold out in 3 minutes), a youtuber, from all over the world for the basketball charity event hosted in LA, California. 

Before going through more examples of fandom and activism, lets understand a little bit more on the academic aspects of fandom. Jenkins (1992) says that it is a form of social community, where Hills (2002) stressed that its an obsession towards a particular person, shows, bands, music and more.  Most of us who are in the fandom communities, it always feels like we have multiple identities for different things that we’re fan of or even our own self in real life. As stated by Jenkins (1992), we negotiate our multiple identities with who we are and how we would act with different group of fans. 

Fandom as a community itself consists of different level from more of reception to critical and interpretive practices where fans started to learn to be a fan. it goes on to be a consumer activism (e.g. boycotting things their fandom does not like, joining a campaigns) to getting involve in production of fan fiction and fan art. Lastly is to participate both online and offline. 

From the video above, it shows that the fans get together at staples center to support The Ace Family event regardless of how expensive it may cost them or how much difficulties they might go through in order to just be there. It all started from YouTube where The Ace Family built this fan communities of theirs. It is all about affordances where the digital technology allowing us to shared our interest with other people. Which I agree with Jenkins, Ford and Green (2013) it is rather spreadable than viral as I discover The Ace Family from a friend of mine where she shared their videos in Facebook and I seems to love their content.

Besides turning on the notification on YouTube (so that i wont miss their recent upload), I followed them on Instagram and I followed most the fan accounts about them. Their videos are funny and enjoyable to watch, they spread positivities and always is very supportive of their fans. It was a very positives community, can get to know other people with the same interest, eventually it allows interactions among different people from country. Everyone participate in doing something that The Ace Family had organized, for instance, charity event 2 years in a row (cant wait for next year tho). 

However, sometimes, fans has acted way to far by invading their home, mobbed them in public and more. It is all healthy and calm at first until they've become more established with over 17 millions subscribers. The video below shows few of their fans invades their privacy and property which make them feel overwhelmed(especially their kids) and unsafe especially when they were still recovering from their old house robbery. The fans.. should really educate themselves about boundaries. Hurmm.... 

This video shows how anxious Catherin Paiz is by the crowd but trying to remain calm and be nice with the fans. 

The old house (moved out due to the robbery)

The new house (moved out to another new house)

#mda20009 #week 9 #digital communities #fandom and activism #the ace family

[dynamic-instability]

In one of my classes we have to write weekly personal narratives about an experience with illness. This week, mine turned into this. It’s probably too personal, and too... immediate?? to turn in to a professor without cutting out a lot of stuff, but not too personal to post online I guess lol

_____________________________

It’s November again.

In 2009 the lights were too bright. Mid-October one morning I woke up to my dad turning on my lights and it was like having to look into the sun while posing for a photo—my eyes wouldn’t stay open, if I forced them to, they couldn’t stay pointed in one direction, they spasmed and hurt. When the light was dimmed, I still saw double. That morning, I showered in the dark, and I remember being scared. They gave me eyedrops that paralyzed my accommodative muscles. In November my pupils were giant discs and I wore reading glasses over sunglasses to look at the computer, and when it was all said and done, the lights were still too bright, and I still saw double.

In 2011 I was tired. There’s fatigue and then there’s fatigue, I learned that Fall. In May of that year I had pulled two all-nighters in a week, and that was the only other time I’d felt this kind of tired, a sensation in about the 30th hour of the second time where it’s like my brain itched. I once saw someone else online describe it as “nausea, but in your head and eyes instead of in your throat and stomach” and that’s the closest anyone else has come to describing it. By November this was happening more and more often. I remember laying down in the corner of the room during a break of Citywide choir and thinking what the hell is wrong with me? I got a cold the next week, and I thought that maybe that was all it was. It wasn’t.

In 2013 I went to the ER for the fifth time in three months of college, and when I wanted to leave before waiting another couple of hours to eventually see a doctor who would tell me once again that they couldn’t do anything to help me, the woman from student life who was there to drive me back to campus made me call my parents on speaker phone and get their permission to leave before she would turn on the car. I had missed more chemistry labs than I could afford to miss without failing, passed out in a voice lesson, was asked by the director to drop out of choir because watching me was distraction when I looked like I was in pain, and if I passed out it would have ruined the concert for everyone. I remember leaving calculus in the mornings mid-class to go to the bathroom and lay on the floor and cry. I remember not being able to lift my hand off the mattress of my dorm room bed. I withdrew from half of my classes on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, and took the Spring semester off.

In 2014 I had made a promise to myself that I would come back to college full time for that Fall semester just to see if I could do it, and then if I couldn’t I would drop out for good. There was one week where I thought that might be happening. Mid-November. The girls in my dorm had made a fort in the lounge out of sheets and blankets and colorful scarves and I remember laying on the couch through the green-filtered light and feeling the world spin and thinking oh god I still can’t do this. The door opened with a rush of cold air and my friends came in with food for me, since I’d been too sick to go to dinner. They sat with me and helped me with chemistry, offered to type up a paper if I dictated it, told jokes and made me laugh. I took an incomplete in one class, but I passed everything else, just barely scraped through, and came back in January.

In 2015 I just wanted to sleep. I passed out in an elevator and heard familiar voices, concerned voices, as I came to, and I stayed there laying motionless for another minute longer, because as long as I wasn’t awake I didn’t have to keep pushing. I wrote whole pages of completely unreadable ochem notes because my hand wasn’t working any better than my brain, and woke up on the floor and was wheeled out on a stretcher crying. It was dark all the time. My cane slipped on wet leaves and I felt my wrist crunch and there it was, one too many missed organic chemistry labs. I couldn’t stand for an entire choir rehearsal because breathing to sing made me lightheaded. I slept for 16 hours a day. The week before Thanksgiving, I called my mother to tell her I had decided to take another hardship withdrawal, and she sighed. I had applied to transfer schools during my much more optimistic Spring semester and Summer, and the week I left was also the week I found out I’d been accepted.

And so okay now it’s 2019, and it’s October and now November again, semester plan again, dark again. My reading is piling up again, feeling overwhelmed again, laying on my kitchen floor again. But here’s the thing—my health is… fine? Midterm week I didn’t sleep, and yes I passed out twice, but no ER. For the past 18 months, I can count on one hand the number of mornings I’ve been unable to get out of bed because of fatigue. My heart still pounds too hard but my head doesn’t swim every time I sit up. I walk the streets of New York City like mobility has never been a problem. I always take the stairs. My brain doesn’t itch until it’s been 30 hours no sleep.

I couldn’t go to class last week. I lay on the floor of my kitchen and stared up at the ceiling and tried to get up, tried to type out an email to my professors, and I couldn’t do it. I was not too tired. I was not too weak. I was not in pain. I could not move. I try to write and try to write and try to write and the words don’t come. I eat instant oatmeal at 9 PM because I haven’t been to the store in a month. I have lost nearly 15 pounds since moving to New York. I clean the stove for two and a half hours but can’t bring myself to take the dead spider off the side of the bathtub. I check the door lock one-two-three times, pace the floor, sit back down. I do not read Austerlitz. I write a Canvas post for Self and Other but it’s nonsense. I do not write a Canvas post for Accounts of Self. I do not write a Canvas post for Applied Writing. I write a Canvas post for Illness and Disability and somehow forget to post it, the one thing I’ve actually done, because I’m too busy feeling sick at everything I haven’t. I shadow a doctor for the clinical witnessing assignment and everything is fine but when I try to write it up I have a panic attack that leaves me sobbing on my couch and the assignment nine days late and counting. It takes me eight hours to write two pages. I watch 18 hours of YouTube video essays discussing drama about creators I don’t even watch and play a stupid game on my phone for an entire weekend until I’ve spent $25+ in a labyrinth of microtransations and every time I close my eyes I see the moving dots.

In November of 2015 I had three overdue essays for Global Literature, and two more due in the next two weeks. More than half were on books I had not read. My pre-lab wasn’t done for organic chemistry, and I wondered for a moment, if I pretended to pass out, if that would be easier. I stayed up until 4 AM laying on my floor and listening to Hamilton. I was sick, that much is true, but when I felt okay I still sat at my computer and could not bring myself to write.

In 2011 I had so many unfinished assignments for my college-level English class that I resigned myself to failing and I went to school the morning of the final class, but I hid in the stairwell by the choir room until I heard the bell, and I never went back to that class.

2009 was the year my dad stopped being able to yell at me for not doing my homework, because no one, including me, could tell whether it was actually my eyes stopping me.

In 2008 I wrote 6 essays in the 5 days of Thanksgiving break because I had not done any work for Intro to Lit all semester. I pulled it off, somehow, even aced the class because of an unusually lenient late work policy, but what I most remember is the sick feeling of dread as I lay on the floor in the living room staring up at the Christmas tree and feeling invisible sand slip through an invisible hourglass and a vice tightening in my chest.

In 2006 I stayed up almost all night writing a paper and crying my eyes out because I couldn’t find the words to explain to anyone why it had been so impossible for me to get the work done, that I wasn’t being lazy or distracted, I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t necessarily reading YA novels or watching TV or IMing my friends instead of working, I could sit and stare at a blank word document for 6 hours straight and still it would not get done. Everyone talked about potential, talked about how smart I was, but a gradebook that is half 100’s and half 0’s still averages out to an F. No one, including me, could explain the discrepancy. The logic of that simple math was not lost on me, the knowledge that turning in half-finished or not very good work was mathematically better than not doing it, but that didn’t mean I could do it. Words failed me when I tried to explain the illogic of my particular suffering.

I didn’t hear the term executive dysfunction until I was in my 20s. In retrospect I was tentatively told at 16 that I had “probably some ADHD and OCD”, but that psychiatrist was someone I’d been sent to by a neurologist because he thought she could fix my eyes, and when she said she couldn’t, I stopped making appointments. After I got sick, physically sick, the lines blurred between what was causing what, to the point where even I have no idea. Two of the Novembers missing here are ones I spent at CC, on the block plan where I only took one class at a time. My physical health arguably improved a little after transferring in January of 2016, but mostly it didn’t, not until Spring of 2018 at least. And you can see that evidence in dropped blocks, concussions from passing out onto hard surfaces, a couple of incompletes taken when viral illnesses (or concussions) compounded my other problems. What the block plan changed was the way things pile up, lessened the struggle of constant task switching between classes. (Admittedly, I also had fewer papers when taking mostly science classes. Writing takes much more energy, and it’s much harder to convince myself it doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth submitting.) At CC nothing ever really reached the level of catastrophe. Some of that is purely the ability to drop a single block, meaning when it was my physical health that was the problem, I didn’t lose a whole semester, just one class, then reset. But I should have realized sooner that the block plan wouldn’t account for the level of improvement if my physical health had really been the only barrier.

So we’re back to now. Grad school. November again. Dark again. Semester plan again. Too much writing again. Crushing dread again. Dysfunction again. Panic attack in the middle of the night increasingly elaborate organizing rituals scream of the subway tracks in my mind can’t stop can’t start can’t breathe can’t move burnout again. This time without the explanation of chronic fatigue to fall back on.

I have my tricks, have actually learned somewhat to cope in the past 18 years. Schedules help, break tasks into pieces that are as small as possible. Mindfulness meditation. Forgive yourself when it’s not perfect. Get started with something easy, set a timer for 20 minutes and only work for those 20 minutes and then let yourself stop if you want to (and surprisingly often, you won’t want to, sometimes that momentum is all it takes). If you work better in the night, work in the night, who cares what society says your sleep schedule should be. When switching tasks, physically get up and move to a different location. Allow yourself to procrastinate on work with other work if that’s what you have to do. Delete the stupid games from your phone. One or two missed assignments are not actually the end of the world, if you let yourself view it as piling up, you won’t be able to get anything done, so if you absolutely have to, just move through and move on.

It’s not a catastrophe, this November. It’s a fight, but it’s not a catastrophe. I read Austerlitz and forgive myself for skimming it. I write a Canvas post and forgive myself when it’s only 500 words and doesn’t make complete sense. I read Toni Morrison and Édouard Louis and classmates’ discussion posts about Deaf culture and identity and remember why this matters in the first place, that it’s not just a series of assignments to overwhelm me, it’s a series of interesting complicated exhausting important thoughts and questions. I get it done. Some of it. Most of it. I let myself sleep. I breathe. I remember to be grateful because I can get out of bed in the mornings and take the stairs. I am okay.

#chronic illness #executive dysfunction #chronic fatigue #College and chronic illness #personal lol

[nordic-breeze]

tag 20 followers you’d like to get to know better <3

Tagged by @moonshinecowboah and @vaniri <3

Nickname: none really but my bf calls me ‘nurk’ sometimes ending with an ‘i’ which I can’t really translate. We don’t really use nicknames much where I’m from.

Gender: Female

Astrological sign: Cancer

Height: 1.62 meters

Sexuality: Straight

Hogwarts house: Ravenclaw

Favourite animal(s): tigers, elephants, dolphins, butterflies

Number of blankets: Many. I lost count after 8 - we get really cold winters here okay. But I use the same two like 90% of the time.

Where I’m from: South-East of Norway

Dream Trip: Euro Disney with my nieces would be dope. Also, Japan to experience the culture there or someplace tropical and exotic but preferably an island in the caribbean or Indian Ocean to minimie the risk of Malaria.

When I created this account: October 2013

Why I started this account: It was after the fox song went viral - you know ‘What Does The Fox Say?’ and I became a huge fan of Ylvis and created a tumblr to see pictures and gifs.

Specifically, a challege they did with a friend where they had to keep their hands in icey water for as long as they could. They were testing if swearing helps alleviate pain. One had to be quiet, one could shout but no profanity, and the third could yell all the obsceneties he wanted. The result was pure hilarity, especially when the ‘dog goes woof, cat goes meow’ guy started screaming SUNFLOWER repeatedly at the top of his lungs, his face all red. I wanted to use gifs from that as reaction gifs, or to just laugh at and so this account was made.

It stayed an Ylvis account for quite some time, eventually turning into an Ylvis/gaming account. Now I just reblog stuff I like, think is funny, pretty or cute, can relate to or want to spread awareness of.

For anyone still following me from the Ylvis days, I hope you are well. It was a fun time. Crazy at times but fun. I do miss the guys and I do miss the fandom. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to be as dedicated as I was but if they were to be more active again and (hopefully) have something for a paying audience I will be there.

I can’t tag 20 new accounts but do this if you feel like it =)

#about me #long post #ylvis-related kind of

[full0fwine-blog]

Fashion Week developed into fight club on Sept. 7 when Cardi B and Nicki Minaj got into a now-infamous heated run-in at the Harper's Marketplace Icons party, with pictures of the "Bodak Yellow" rap artist being escorted out of the place shoeless and with a big mark over her left eye immediately going viral. The greatest eliminate from NYFW Spring 2019? Style Week is not for the weak. After the shocking fight, a source informed E! News that "event staffers were mortified" about the fight. The insider added that the Icons gala is expected to be "the most unique and glamorous celebration," however their scuffle "eclipsed months of effort and an otherwise amazing night." Ah, don't you simply like the smell of elitism at the end of summer season? " I was sitting ideal next to her. She tumbled over in my lap," Style Calendar released Ruth Finley informed the Associated Press. "The show was just starting. I believed she passed out. 2 males brought her out.". However the saddest NYFW of all occurred in 2012, when 95-year-old socialite Zelda Kaplan died after collapsing at designer Joanna Mastroianni. And just this previous NYFW, the current lineup of New york city women obviously were triggering somewhat of a scene at Pamella Roland's show, per the gospel inning accordance with Page 6. At least the RHONY girls' presence at a show ever got somebody fired, which is what happened to Kelly Cutrone, she of The Hills' frightening employer girl popularity, when she had Ashley Dupre participate in the Yigal Azrouël program in 2009. However here's the thing: Minaj and Cardi B's battle is far from the first "unsightly" event to go down throughout NYFW, with the semi-annual occasion having a long history of battles, showdowns and places falling apart, hurting well-dressed attendees. " It was dreadful, but I returned up," the Oscar winner informed E! News after the frightening incident, which was captured on-camera. "It can be scary," she included of the paparazzi's often invasive ways. Somebody who was a little upset after an incident at Fashion Week? Nicole Kidman, with very good reason: she was being knocked over by a paparazzo on a bicycle outside of her hotel in 2013. Cutrone, cool as a cucumber as ever, informed the paper, "I've been fired before, and I'll be fired again. It's the nature of our industry, and it does not distress me.". " Some visitors left to attend her show. It wasn't a mass exodus, but it was obvious," The Daily Monster reported of Jacobs' show starting an hour and a half later than originally set up. Kors' isn't the only significant designer to deal with venue concerns, as several visitors were hurt when they were struck by falling lighting equipment throughout Diane Von Furstenberg's program in 2005. " The way they went by taking a look at this disgusting turmoil, I will always remember," she recalled. "I was mortified." It wasn't PETA's very first time crashing the event in protest of the use of animal fur and skin, as they also tossed red paint on the runway at Randolph Duke's show in 2000, an event that likely influenced the paint-throwing scene in the Sex and the City movie. (God, Samantha missed New york city!). But Frankel's Fashion Week drama wasn't done right now, as she was then seated beside co-star/enemy Kelly Killoren Bensimon. Awkward tension and a name-drop off right away occurred! While he didn't address the Rihanna rumors directly, Jacobs took to Instagram to "seriously say sorry" for and discuss his tardiness, including a list of truths, not "excuses.". A Cosmopolitan fashion market director who needed stitches after being struck in the head took legal action against the designer for medical payment along with payment for pain and suffering. In 2008, Jill Zarin stormed out of a Luca show due to the fact that she was NOT seated in the front row. She later attempted to explain her behavior, stating, "I was having a bad day, was not in an excellent state of mind," which she wanted to be the home of see her child after her very first day of school. Obviously, you cannot relive previous NYFW drama without bringing some Real Homemakers into the mix, and the girls of RHONY have certainly had their fair share of front row concerns. Scandal would strike again for Kors, a previous Project Runway judge, in 2003, when PETA crashed his program to throw tofu pies at Wintour and (gasp!) Sarah Jessica Parker. At the Pamella Roland show in 2010, Bethenny Frankel and Luann de Lesseps entered a heated argument when the Skinnygirl mogul believed Lu was taking some digs at her over her feud with Zarin. "I don't like you and I think you're a snake," Frankel simmered. The Countess' response? "You're nasty and I'm not going to do this here.". When Minaj broke her silence about the occurrence on her Queen Radio program on Apple Music's Beats 1, she said it was "so humiliating" to go through that in front of such an "upper tier" crowd. " Following the showing of his Fall Winter Season 2009 Collection, Yigal Azrouël has decided to fire front-of-house PR Business, People's Revolution, for mismanagement," a news release sent after the event said, per the NY Daily News. Don't remember who Duprel is? Well, get ready for a blast from political scandal past as she was the call woman who infamously hooked up with then NY governor Eliot Spitzer, so fashion insiders were aghast. In reality, drama can decrease behind-the-seams, as reports recently appeared that Marc Jacobs actively postponed the start of his show (which is always among the most punctual) in order to avoid them from attending Rihanna's Savage x Fenty underwear program, which took the grand ending slot far from him. Dorinda Medley, Ramona Vocalist, Sonja Morgan and Tinsley Mortimer were all reportedly recording for the program, which was "disruptive" to the remainder of the attendees. No word yet if Singer yelled for everybody to "Take a Xanax! Calm down!". The very first significant dust-up of record that occurred was way back in 1990 at a Michael Kors' program, which was kept in a loft area ... which was clearly unfinished as plaster literally fell from the ceiling onto a few of the market's leading critics, with THE Anna Wintour even helping to pick plaster from their heads, per Elle. Can you just imagine that taking place today? (Oh, the memes we might've had.). " It was my wishful thinking that we could achieve all that had to be provided for this show with the circumstances we dealt with," he wrote as one of the facts. "I was wrong. Not due to the fact that everyone didn't strive or offer it their all and more, life is just that way sometimes.".

[wikibious]

Who is Abigail Elphick? Wiki, Biography, Age, Family, Video, Instagram

Abigail Elphick Wiki - Abigail Elphick Biography

Abigail Elphick is the New Jersey woman nicknamed "Victoria's Secret Karen." Video of an incident involving her at the Short Hills Mall has gone viral. The 25-year-old woman was seen in a video charging a black woman, Ijeoma Ukenta, and later claiming to be the victim. Ukenta posted videos of the incident on TikTok and YouTube. On Twitter, some people criticized the Millburn Police Department and mall security for not doing more to protect Ukenta. “There were many egregious violations of her rights and general welfare by both the Millburn Police Department and Short Hills Mall security. Abigail Elphick should have been arrested {and still needs to be arrested} and at least charged with assault and intent. of theft, ”wrote one Twitter user. NJ.com reported that the incident began when Ukenta, 38, of Newark asked Elphick to move six feet away from her. At one point, Elphick appears to raise his hand towards Ukenta in the video. The police report says this caused Elphick "to have a panic attack, at which point she followed her to stop recording her," according to the news site. The police did not make any arrests. "Pending further review, the Millburn Police Department believes that our officers acted in a professional and competent manner to defuse the situation and restore calm and order," the police statement reads to NJ.com. “I was banned from Tik Tok, yet everyone else was able to tell my story. I'm traumatized, ”Ukenta wrote on Twitter. Victoria's Secret issued a statement saying that “the safety of associates and customers is our top priority and we are committed to creating a safe and welcoming environment for all. The video taken at our store is disturbing and we have launched a full investigation. Our associate followed our protocols and immediately called our Emergency Operations Center, as well as mall security, to provide support during the altercation between our clients. We are dedicated to continuing this critical conversation and demonstrating our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion through our actions and our words. "

Abigail Elphick Age

Abigail Elphick is 25 years old.

Elphick can be seen in uploading videos

The video series begins with Elpnick charging at Ukenta and trying to hit her and the camera. She backs off when Ukenta says, “My God. Oh, Lord. See this? Oh, Lord. I never thought anything like this would happen to me. She tried to run and hit. "Elphick then crouches down, holding her head in her crying hands, and says," No, I didn't. "She says," I don't want to be recorded. " Ukenta tells other customers and workers: “Did you see that? … Karen had a nervous breakdown. She tried to hit me. "Elphick again states that she did not try to hit Ukenta and says," I don't want to be recorded, "while crying. While Elphick continues to cry, Ukenta, holding a coupon in front of the camera, says:" I tried to come to get my free panties. "Elphick then yells," Why aren't you defending me? I just don't want to be recorded. " Elphick then yells and yells, "Don't record my mental breakdown, please. Please please please." The second video begins with Elphick lying on the ground, screaming and kicking. "She's recording me. Tell her to stop," she squeals. "You keep lying saying I'm threatening you, so I'm filming to protect myself," Ukenta replies. She doesn't seem to be very close to Elphick. The video shows Elphick yelling and running towards Ukenta, who was filming the scene. Ukenta kept repeating that she was concerned that the police would believe Elphick if she claimed that Ukenta attacked her when the video shows Elphick charging at Ukenta and Ukenta doing nothing more than recording the scene. "She's trying to attack me, no, no, no," Ukenta says at one point. "Once the law comes, who are they going to believe?" She says that she is concerned that the police will believe Elphick about Ukenta because Elphick is white and Ukenta is black. Elphick, who makes a phone call at one point, yells, “Stop her so she doesn't record. ... She is recording my mental breakdown. ... My heart races ". Ukenta narrates: "She's lying on the phone. I don't give a damn if she's sick. I'm worried about myself. This is real. This is really happening to me. She's on the phone with the police for me and she was chasing me around the damn thing. store ". At another point, Ukenta says, "I just came to get a free panty, that's all.… This lady chasing me. Now she's calling the police. I can't believe security isn't here. This is how black people die. Do you see what these people do? They call the police and they call in a panic and tell the police that you are doing something to them when clearly she was chasing me around the store. " She also says, "I don't want to turn my back on this white lady, sorry. She's crazy. Did you see her trying to accuse me again? That's the third time." The video does not show Ukenta attacking or making any moves towards Elphick. Read Also: Who is Angela Alberts? Wiki, Biography, Age, Trev Alberts’s Wife, Children, Instagram

GoFundMe campaign

Ukenta created a GoFundMe page that had raised over $ 38,000 as of July 13, 2021, a day after it was created. "I am a black Muslim Nigerian AM and I was treated like it was 1920 in Short Hills Mall. I was assaulted and harassed by a white woman and neither security nor police did anything," she wrote on the page. “I am looking to hire an excellent lawyer who can help me clear up this problem. All videos and updates on the situation are on my YouTube channel: Mama Africa Muslimah. They threw me a TikTok for posting what happened to me and they let someone else post and get millions and millions of views, however, they deleted 2 of my accounts. … One that I have for my garden that was my original account and another 1 that I created after my main account was deleted. I have been harmed by Abigail Elphick (Karen in my videos), Short Hills Mall security, the Millburn Police Department, and most of all, humanity. Please help!"

Elphick told officers that he wanted the video to be recorded

In a video, Ukenta read what he said was a police report: I spoke to the "crazy lady" and told her that she had spoken with the store clerk and that they replied that what Miss Ukenta had said had happened. Miss Elphick seemed to admit that she was wrong and she said she was worried about losing her job and her apartment if the video was posted online. She was having a panic attack from the video recording. I told you that Miss Ukenta has the right to videotape. I asked her several times if she was okay and if she needed an ambulance. And she repeatedly refused. She kept expressing her concern for her job and her apartment. She finally said that she was going home, I asked her if she could drive and she answered yes. At this time, Ms. Elphick voluntarily left the mall with mall security. Ukenta says in a video update: “I see everyone asking me for an update. I'm at the police station. I have the police report, which is somewhat true, but very, very long. I'm happy I recorded because even the officers said that I only showed him the video of her lying on the floor when I showed it to him. Of course, first, they took a statement because she, of course, she called the police. And she completely lied. She is trying to say that I started recording her, which triggered a panic attack, at which point she followed me to try to get me to stop recording. " She adds: So, I am filing a complaint against the two officers who responded. I did not feel protected. I am also filing a complaint against the mall security. Victoria's Secret, in my opinion ... what can we expect? Grab this woman? The manager even sent someone to walk to get security because they were taking too long. So, I really don't have a problem with them ... not at the moment. Now if they give us trouble getting the video, we'll talk about that. That will be another story. "The Internal Affairs Division is now investigating the matter to assess how the officers behaved," the police department said in a statement to NJ.com. "The second woman who was filming much of the incident asked officers to remove the first woman from the mall because she felt threatened," NJ.com said, as described in the police report. "The officers explained that they did not have the authority to do that because they had no indication that a crime had been committed or a crime that could be arrested." Heavy has contacted the Millburn police to get her response as well as police reports, both of which will be added to this story if received.

Elphick says she has worked as a teacher's aide

Elphick posted a short biography on a site that lists people who have a colostomy. In it, she said that she is a teacher's aide. "My name is Abby Elphick," she wrote. “I was diagnosed with chronic constipation and pelvic floor dysfunction. I am a 24-year-old woman who has a colostomy. I am a paraprofessional assistant/teacher who works with children. I love walking outside, shopping, eating out at restaurants! I want to feel comfortable with people who have an ostomy like me to know that I am not alone! " Online records show that she has ties to Cedar Grove and Newark, NJ. The Cedar Grove School District has denied that she is an employee there, writing in a note at the top of its home page: “The person involved in the Mall at Short Hills that took place on July 11, 2021, is missing and she has never been employed by the Cedar Grove Board of Education. " Elphick wrote on a Classmates.com profile: “I am 24 years old and I am going to school to become a Child Development Associate in teaching preschool-age students. I graduated in June 2014 from Cedar Grove High School when I was 18. " She stated on the profile, "I got good grades" and "wrote a book." The Verona-Cedar Grove Times mentioned Elphick in a 2013 article about her brother with a developmental disability and indicated that she had a colostomy. Elphick appears in a photo with her brother and her parents, Kim and Andrew Elphick. There is no state professional license for Elphick listed in the New Jersey state database.

Elphick is not related to a Secaucus

A police lieutenant created a Twitter account just to counter what she wrote were false accusations that Elphick is related to her. "Wrong. This is me and I have no kids. I also have no idea who Abigail is," she wrote in response to one such statement on Twitter. Police Lt. Kim Elphick added: “Additionally, this incident occurred at the Short Hills Mall, which is covered by the Millburn Police Department. Secaucus has no relevance to this case at all, other than the last name. " She added: “Because I am the officer that everyone says is my daughter. I don't have children and I have no idea who Abigail is. Coincidentally, I have the same name. " She concluded: “I received personal messages about what was being published. I created this account to fix it. It spread too fast to get ahead of me and tackle it. Feel free to call the agency tomorrow and I'll be more than happy to verify my identity. " FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK Read the full article

#AbigailElphick #AbigailElphickage #AbigailElphickbio #AbigailElphickbiography #AbigailElphickfacebook #AbigailElphickfacts #AbigailElphickfamily #AbigailElphickgofundme #AbigailElphickheight #AbigailElphickinvestigation #AbigailElphickmanymorefactsyouneedtoknow #AbigailElphickvideo #AbigailElphickwiki #AbigailElphickwikipedia

[caffeinatedreviewer1]

LifeStraw Personal Water Filter for Hiking, Camping, Travel

Update! As a result of this review, Eartheasy, the North American distributor of the Lifestraw, sent me a few products to try out, and I appreciate when a company is willing to stand behind its products like that. I still feel that the Lifestraw itself is less useful than its fans make it out to be, and that the bottled version is the only version hikers and travelers should consider purchasing. I’ve given specific comments on the bottled version down below, which is worth a look as a portable filter for hiking and other outdoor activities.

As many of you may know, clean drinking water is kind of a big deal. The fact that nowadays we can get drinkable water, right at home, practically for free, is a downright revolutionary (and thoroughly recent) development, and one which remains entirely out of reach for billions throughout the world.

Enter the Lifestraw: A small, lightweight, portable, durable, relatively inexpensive filtration device that can hang around your neck like a necklace, providing you with filtered water wherever you go. It has won an endless string of accolades, and has even been called “one of the ten things that will change the way we live,” with legions of adoring fans singing its praises, swearing by its use in situations of all sorts.

Unfortunately, I think it’s bizarrely overrated.

https://amzn.to/3gpvGxC

The Lifestraw is a hollow-membrane filter built into a straw. You place the straw into the water, and drink. Sucking the water up through the straw forces it through the filter, which removes 99.9999% of bacteria, and 99.9% of protozoa, down to 0.2 microns, with a filter that lasts for 1000 liters, for about $20. Not bad, right?

That’s pretty good, but on the downside, it won’t remove microscopic minerals, chemicals, or viruses.

This isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker, since most water will be fine, especially if you’re just filtering river water to avoid getting sick…but this thing was designed for the third world, with viruses all over the place, meaning you’d need iodine or other methods to eliminate the potential threat of viral diseases.

It’s certainly better than nothing, and preventing most water-borne diseases is better than preventing none. The Lifestraw was designed to provide excellent filtration at a reasonable cost, which is probably more effective than providing perfect filtration at a high cost, which could very well be too expensive to accomplish its own goals of third world disease reduction. Again, missing the viruses isn’t a deal-breaker, and it can prevent a huge number of water-borne diseases from infecting at-risk populations, but people talk about this thing like it’s the messiah of water filters.

But that’s not even the most annoying part.

The weird problem no Lifestraw review ever seems to mention

I have gone over this problem again and again in my head, looking at the endless cavalcade of glowing Lifestraw reviews, “Invention of the Century” accolades, and legions of ardent fans, and cannot fathom why no one seems to notice or care.

Take a look at the snazzy in-action shot of a guy using the Lifestraw out in the real world:

What happens when you walk away from the water?

No more water.

So if you’re heading into riverless mountains, or the desert, or a 12 hour bus ride in body-temperature heat, or any other situation in which you won’t have access to water, you’ll have to fill up a water bottle ahead of time, and whenever you want a drink of water, you have to:

Open the bottle

Open the Lifestraw’s top cap

Open the Lifestraw’s bottom cap

Stick the Lifestraw inside

Drink

Take it out

Expel the remaining water

Close the top cap

Close the bottom cap

Close the bottle.

And then…you’ve got a wet Lifestraw, so you’ll probably end up with wet clothes. Sexy!

People talk about how “simple” this is, as if handling three caps instead of one is somehow…simple?

On a related note, imagine traveling with this thing, and trying to fill up from a sink. You’d have to plug the sink, fill it up, wait for it to get deep enough to drink, then take a few sips, unplug the sink, and walk away. Imagine being incredibly thirsty and trying to do this in a hurry. Now imagine you’re about to get on a 12 hour bus ride through midday temperature highs, and all you had ahead of time was a quick sip from the sink, and that’s all you’ll have until the next time you get to another sink, when you’d begin the sink plug process anew. Just for one sip.

Seriously, has anyone actually used this thing?

What the Lifestraw should have been

So here we finally are, at a product that’s actually recommendable. The Lifestraw Go. They took the Lifestraw and stuck it inside a water bottle, which eliminates the pointless inconvenience of only being able to drink with water nearby, or having to deal with three different caps and two separate objects for every sip.

But damn…the Lifestraw has been around since about 2005, and this bottled version only started shipping around 2013. This means that for 8 long years, nobody ever bothered asking “Dude, what if you walk away from the river but you’re still thirsty?” Sigh.

This bottled version was designed for the consumer market, which makes a lot of sense, and it’s true that shipping a million regular Lifestraws to disaster zones or poverty-stricken rural areas is logistically easier than shipping a million bottled Lifestraws, as they’d need maybe 5 or 6 times as many shipments due to the size, but damn…how does anyone use the regular one more than a few times without going crazy?

While it’s true that the original Lifestraw was designed for simplicity, portability, durability, and ease of use (and somewhat succeeds), I just can’t see many good reasons not to stick it inside a water bottle in the first place. Particularly from a consumer standpoint, the bottled version is clearly the correct answer here.

Update: I can think of ONE situation in which the straw by itself might be more useful than a bottle: Trail running, near a river. You can strap it to your leg, so it doesn’t bounce around, and you’re always near an outdoor water source, which would only need this type of filtration, and wouldn’t need a bottle.

But, ranting aside, is it a good filter? Is it a cost-effective solution to commonplace water purification needs, third world or otherwise? Could this be the one and only water purification method you employ, whether hiking in the mountains, or adventuring throughout the developing world?

Well…maybe.

Remember, it still can’t filter viruses, which is what you’d want in developing countries.

That’s not to say it’s not useful. A $35 water bottle that provides 0.2 micron filtration which lasts for 1000 liters certainly isn’t bad.

But on the other hand, you can just get the Sawyer Water Bottle, which manages 0.1 micron filtration for a guaranteed 3.7 million liters for a one-time cost of $50.

Um…tell me again, why is the Lifestraw so popular?

It has been claimed that the Lifestraw’s lifespan estimates are intended to be a little on the safe side, using low-quality water for all of its tests, which is good (and Sawyer’s lofty claims were put to the test, and were sadly shown to come up short, so the performance difference is likely to be smaller than what is claimed). And again, it’s not that it’s bad, and the filtration quality will probably work just fine if you’re hiking in North America, and you could supplement it with iodine tablets if you ever take it with you to Mexico, or wherever else you might want anti-viral protection. And if you’re drinking a liter of water per day, a $35 Lifestraw Go will last almost 3 years, which isn’t bad at all, and if you’re only using it for camping trips on weekends, it’ll last much longer. I also think it looks nicer than the Sawyer. So it’s definitely good; it’s just not necessarily the best, neither on filtration quality, nor on cost-effectiveness.

Update: After receiving and using the Lifestraw Go, I can say that it’s a pretty good product for hikers who plan on filling up from a river and just want a simple water bottle filter to do the job. Its filtration performance isn’t as strong as the Sawyer, nor is it as cost-effective, but it’s still effective and affordable, for non-viral filtration. Keep in mind it’s supposed to filter biological contaminants rather than chemical, meaning it’s more suited to filtering clear river water than tap water, which is more likely to have chemicals of some sort.

Two issues: Firstly, the Lifestraw Go does not use the regular Lifestraw as a replacement filter, but instead uses a slightly modified version. This means you cannot replace the filter inside the Lifestraw Go with a regular Lifestraw, and, at the moment anyway, you cannot buy just the replacement filter by itself. When your Lifestraw Go reaches the end of its life, you’ll have to buy an entirely new bottle. I expect that if the product is successful that they will offer those replacement filters by themselves, but it’s worth being aware of this issue.

Secondly, when the bottle is shut and the straw is folded down, it protrudes slightly beyond the edge of the lid, and it’s easy to get your grubby hands all over the straw when you pick up the bottle, potentially getting the straw a little dirty and thus defeating the purpose of drinking filtered water. This could be easily fixed, and I hope they do it. Second update: THEY DID!

If you think it’s for you, check it out here.

But again, neither of these devices will provide chemical or viral filtration. If you want to get rid of viruses, then you’ll need iodine tablets, or a UV light, or upgrade to a water bottle that actually gets rid of viruses, too.

What if I need serious purification?

For most people, high-quality filtration works just fine. If you’re hiking in North America or filtering tap water while traveling through modern countries, you probably don’t need virus removal to be safe. But if you’re traveling in developing countries with incredibly questionable tap water, you might want to take some extra precautions.

And yes, you can fit a whole purifier right inside a water bottle, like these do:

So why does everyone love the Lifestraw?!?!

Well, I don’t really know. It was even called the “Invention of the Century,” from a publication I otherwise enjoy, despite lower performance and higher long-term cost than competing options that have been on the market for years.

Again, it’s not bad, and the bottled version solves quite a bit of the silly ridiculousness of the straw-only version, but everyone adores the straw-only version, as a consumer product, which is absolutely inexplicable to me.

But I have a theory:

At $13, it’s cheaper than many other filters, and, admittedly, its filtration capability is pretty good, and a lot better than most of what I’ve seen for the same initial cost. It has a nice impulse-buy price point that gets people interested, and its unique design sets it apart in a world of filtered pitchers, faucet adapters, and so on. And when it arrives in the mail, people give it a try, drinking from a cloudy glass of water, and impressing some friends. Buyers are left happy.

And then they never use it.

Seriously. If you read the Lifestraw reviews on Amazon, you’ll see lots and lots of people talking about how great it is, who stuffed it into an emergency preparedness kit and never bothered with it again. They’re rating the product on how cool they think it is, not how practical it is in real-world use.

People actually love it so much that they videotape themselves drinking from jars of water full of feces…which is explicitly something the Lifestraw cannot handle, because water contaminated this way can easily have viruses inside, which the Lifestraw is incapable of removing. There’s a level of enthusiasm for this product that is literally dangerous.

So is the Lifestraw useful at all?

I would like to clarify that I am examining the Lifestraw from a consumer standpoint, rather than from a disaster-relief or third world disease alleviation product. It offers plenty of functionality in those situations, especially the Lifestraw Family, which is a larger (though still portable) filter intended for home use that does remove viruses. Most of my annoyance should be directed toward the overrating fanboys, who post videos of people drinking toilet water, and then resort to third-grade name-calling if anyone ever criticizes its performance or design.

So it’s certainly not horrible, particularly the bottled version, which is the only one you should bother looking at. Its filtration capability is actually quite good, and it’s pretty convenient. I just think it has been played up way too much in the media, and people salivate over it like it’s this work of art that no disaster-preparedness kit should ever be without.

Just remember that it is incapable of handling chemical and viral contamination, meaning you should only use it within a narrow band of circumstances; outdoor recreation, in North America (and similar settings), where the water you come across has neither chemicals nor viruses.

So it’s certainly worth a look, but I can’t say it’s the best. Competing products provide better filtration at a more cost-effective price, while other devices handle viruses as well, which is what you’d want in developing countries.

#lifestraw #leatherman #senamfit #touringmadness #ufl #alwasayetadventure #my #hiddenplace #wonderlust #maxtron #hiking #nature #mountains #adventure #travel #naturephotography #landscape #outdoors #hikingadventures #mountain #naturelovers #outdoor #camping #explore #hike #wanderlust #photography #trekking #landscapephotography #travelphotography

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Download Grand Theft Auto V For Windows

Obviously, OneSync will empower new, better methods for doing certain things that you do on your scripts, so you may want to benefit from these if they are released. FiveM doesn't interact with all the Rockstar Online Services other than to confirm your game duplicate the very first time you launch it. This investigation emulates the game's interaction, and can't be discovered by Rockstar. We place the community -- both players, server owners, along with the greater GTA modding network -- original. In case you have problems running or installing the game, do not forget to define your supply, (+ version and structure ), your pictures chipset model along the driver employed. Soundtrack musicians The Alchemist and No yield as hosts of this radio channel, The Laboratory FM. The channel features new and exclusive music in the production duo based on and motivated by the game's original soundtrack. Read More Download GTA 5

It turned into the second-ever western designed game to be given a perfect score in the Western video game magazine Famitsu. They published its debut preview one week after, with an official press release acknowledging its own setting. Journalists noted the statement sparked widespread expectancy within the gambling business, they surrendered to the cultural importance of the series. The game missed its first projected Q release date, pushed straight back into 17 September to allow for additional polishing. To Enhance pre-order game earnings, Rockstar collaborated with many retail outlets to create a special edition with additional in-game features. They conducted a viral marketing plan using a site for a literary religious cult, "The Epsilon Program", which provided users the opportunity to incorporate in the game as members of their cult. A contrast of the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 versions of this game.

So as to accomplish this, visit your accounts, click the Password & Security tab, and pick the 2FA alternative you would like. A whole lot of high-profile games are given out on the Epic Games Store because 2018, from Watch Dogs to only Cause 4 to Assassin's Creed Syndicate, but not one caused just as much of a stir as GTA5. The shop really crashed around the time that the free GTA5 deal was anticipated to go live. The Epic Games Store was giving away free PC games because late 2018, but Grand Theft Auto 5 is undoubtedly the biggest name to be contained in the program thus far. Yes, GTA5 may also be performed on PlayStation three and PlayStation five. They are easy to check at but may challenge you after you start playing with them. Read More GTA 5 Is Free To Download And Keep Forever Right Now

After all, that is what happened in virtually every other GTA game. This mod corrects that oversight by sending in the army cavalry if your lawless rampages achieve their apex. Just be ready to run to your life as tanks and army fighter jets search you down.

Chris Thursten called the game"the most lovely, grand, and generous" of this series. The first of these weekly drops is Grand Theft Auto V, the 2013 action-adventure game by Rockstar Games, which is free on PC till May 21. Should you require a manual about the best way best to turn on two-factor authentication to your accounts, Epic has one you can follow along with here. You start by making an avatar, altering its looks, sex, clothes, and other things. The open-world facet was stored in position, so you could freely select how you would like to live your online presence. On Wednesday, the business announced another version of its game engine, Unreal Engine 5.

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The group accredited over 241 monitors shared between fifteen radio channels, with an extra two channels providing discussion radio. A few of the tracks were composed especially for the game, for example, rapper and producer Flying Lotus's authentic work written for its FlyLo FM radio channel he hosts. Back in 2004, Michael Townley, Trevor Philips, and Brad Snider partake in a botched robbery in Ludendorff, North Yankton, leading to three being presumed deceased.

Given the compliments obtained by GTA V since its launch in 2013 on PS3 and Xbox 360, this can be a huge surprise in Epic Games. Wish to have the ability to play GTA on my PS5 but that I had a disk for PS4 and an electronic edition PS5. I'd GTA about the external drive in my ps4, I disconnect and transfer the outside drive to PS5 and perform there and it is good for me. We do not know if we need the GTA series to go complete RPG in the not too distant future, yet this mod provides a peek at the exciting possibility of the idea. From trees into enlarged character storylines, this mod stipulates how nicely the GTA 5 frame lends itself to some more customary role-playing encounter. The mod itself is a work in progress, however, it is fun and impressive even in its somewhat demanding condition. You have got to appreciate a fantastic idea that is well-executed, and that is pretty much what you get here.

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The game is played from a third-person or first-person standpoint, and its world is navigated on foot and by car. Players control the 3 lead protagonists throughout single-player and change one of them, both through and external missions. The story is centered on the heist sequences, and lots of missions involve driving and shooting gameplay. A"desired" system modulates the aggression of law enforcement reaction to players who perpetrate crimes. Grand Theft Auto Online, the game's online multiplayer mode, lets up to 30 players take part in a number of different combined and aggressive game modes. GTA V Mod APK has amazing features that attract tens of thousands of mad fans to set up and play the game immediately without believing a moment.

Please make sure that you update your game to the newest version of GTA V before playing with this brand new version of LSPDFR 0.4.8, which you may find as standard on the primary LSPDFR page. The method to download and set up GTA V on your own Android phone is quite straightforward. To start with, you want to ensure there is sufficient storage space in your telephone so you may play the game with no lag. Since it's a third-party program so that it is going to need your consent to set up in the unidentified sources so that you have to visit your phone's settings and permit the document to install from unidentified sources. The deal launched on Thursday and also the quantity of traffic has crashed the website.

In conclusion, Grand Theft Autio V would be your game that has set opponents a top goal and it's thought to be the best game of all time. Grand Theft Auto V for PC additionally brings the introduction of this Rockstar Editor, a strong suite of innovative applications to quickly and easily capture, edit and discuss game footage from inside Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online. The Rockstar Editor's Director Mode enables players the capability to point their own scenes with notable story characters, pedestrians, as well as creatures to bring their vision to life. Completed videos may be uploaded straight in the Rockstar Editor into YouTube along with also the Rockstar Games Social Club for Simple sharing. GTA 5 is not one of Rockstar's biggest open-world games of all time. GTA 5 is among the most bountiful games made from a pure content standpoint.