Saturday, March 16, 2024

Bought a few (7) Dungeons and Dragons books and going to the Dork Den for battle

 I can’t get into paper books unless it’s PDF off archive.org. Mom says no. My certification books are outdated. Still have all my college books. I have some novels like those ones on goodreads.com. Now I collect Dungeons and Dragons books now like the Players manual, monster manual, Xanathar book of everything, Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition, Eberron: Rising from the Last War. and Streams of Silver. and the famous Icewind Dale Crystal Shard. There is the Dork Den in Mankato, Minnesota. I go there for D&D groups, but the books there cost $50 new so I find second hand D&D books at $11 to $27. Saving for visitors. This better make me friends. In the 2000s, Game Quest and D&D books, but during that era I was collecting N64, Genesis, Super Nintendo, Playstation 2, and Gamecube. And I’m 8 months away from age 40.  On okcupid, Amanda who superliked me told me to get into Dungeons and Dragons. i was a member of okcupid for decades.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Is Anime 'Cool' Now?

 

n my senior year of high school, I became a fan of anime. I was not uncool as a suburban teen—which is to say that I wasn’t a loser, but also everyone thought (half-correctly) that I was a witch who did BDSM spells in my basement and approached me with a sense of general trepidation as a result. Because I was not uncool, I did not advertise my interest in the oft-maligned medium; I would come home from school and watch literal hours of Naruto, a show about adolescent ninjas primarily targeted at boys age 13 to 18, and set my AIM away message to something like “outtttt, hit my cell.”

It has come to my attention in recent days that anime is cool now. I first began to suspect this stunning reversal of fortune a few weeks ago, when I saw several clips of Michael B. Jordan professing his love for the highly stylized form of animated entertainment, and then did a search for every time he had tweeted “Naruto,” as any diligent reporter would. His stance on the genre could not be any clearer: In March of 2011, he tweeted, “Yea I’m into anime I love this shit!”

For the next two years, the Black Panther actor would periodically post updates on the Naruto manga series, mostly reacting with shocked faces—a sentiment I can relate to, as someone who never expected Gaara of the Sand to ascend to the illustrious position of Kazekage. “Sooo Naruto 627,” he tweeted in 2013, which would indicate that he has read literally 627 volumes of a comic book that follows the exploits of a young and impulsive warrior attempting to prove himself to his ninja peers, despite having a demon sealed in his torso. Jordan posted another update shortly afterwards: “Naruto 631,” he wrote, with a thumbs-up. Hell yeah. Still, one could not help but notice the utter paucity of Naruto-related tweets after May of 2013. “He became a heartthrob and had to stop tweeting about anime,” I mused, feeling sympathetic, to a friend.

But I was wrong to be so cynical. A mere week later, Jordan professed his love openly. In response to a tweet accusing him of being 5’9”, living with his parents, and watching anime, he issued a stunning correction: “First of All I’m 6ft and they live with ME, put some respeck on my name. LOL,” he wrote, adding, “aaaand goku & naruto are real ones.” (Facing a subsequent accusation of only liking “mainstream anime,” he nobly replied, “Nah that was a softball for the anime uneducated.”)

As notable as this development may have been, it wouldn’t necessarily make anime cool for the layperson, the same way that normcore didn’t make sweatpants and Tevas fashionable unless you look exactly like a model and are already invited to all the cool parties. Michael B. Jordan liking anime is cool because Michael B. Jordan is extremely cool; as Miles Klee at Mel Magazine put it, “Become not only rich and famous, but one of the most popular stars in Hollywood, all while remaining grounded and humble, but also really good-looking, and you, too, could be a cool anime fan who lives with their parents.”

Jordan’s response to the allegations of loving anime pleased the internet, which promptly settled back into its daily routine of being roiled by fleeting, all-consuming passions and soothed by a procession of memes in turn. Then the unthinkable happened. On Februray 28, 2018, Kim Kardashian proclaimed, “I am obsessed with anime,” sending the anime fans of the world into a frantic state of existential crisis. (“First Michael B. Jordan and now Kim Kardashian.. you can’t take anime from us like this,” one user lamented. “Now that Kim Kardashian and Michael B. Jordan have confirmed that they love anime, normies will try to take it from us,” another warned.)

On her app, Kardashian elaborated on her newfound object of fascination: “The inspo for my pink hair is Japanese anime. I always thought that look was super cute,” she effused in her typical, brightly flat affect. A few days later, she took it to Instagram, writing, “My hair inspo” beneath an extremely sexy image of the character Zero Two from the 2018 series Darling in the Franxx, which comicbook.com describes as “a deep cut.” (This particular show, which follows a boy fighting rapacious beasts by piloting a woman-shaped mecha, was reportedly banned in China for “suggestive situations,” including the fact that “in order to pilot the series' titular Franxx mechs, a boy must grab his female partner's rear end to use the controls.”)

These two are far from the first celebrities to enjoy anime—Kanye West, for instance, once famously tweeted, “No way Spirited Away is better than Akira…NOOO WAY… sorry was just looking through a youtube of top 10 anime films”—but the Kardashian family occupies an unusual place within the matrix of influencers who teach us, as consumers, what to desire, or conversely exasperate and infuriate us by nibbling away at our identities to nourish their own brands like the vultures eternally besieging Prometheus in the days of old. Whenever a Kardashian expresses public interest in something, it’s always for a strategic brand reason; Kim is not the type to update her app just because she believes Goku is a real one. I had to wonder: Now that everyone is suddenly extremely into those tiny Matrix glasses previously beloved by men who wear fedoras when they’re feeling flirty, is liking anime the next big thing?

Confused and tormented, I reached out to a trend forecaster for insight. Is anime cool now? I demanded over email of Kristin Castillo, the VP of strategy at Trendera. “Despite it being around for decades, anime is beginning to gain relevance stateside—although it is still somewhat niche,” she breezily explained. She further characterized “anime culture” as “a bit quirky, but definitely getting cooler.”

With influencers like Kim Kardashian latching onto the trend, she continued, it’s likely that it will spread quickly—especially since Trendera’s 2018 forecast sees “a shift away from subdued minimalist fashion and towards over-the-top maximalism styles” as well as the widespread embrace of “louder, statement-making, globally-inspired fashion.” But Castillo’s prediction came with a caveat: “A possible consequence is that anime may become a less exotic/interesting hobby for long-term fans.”

This would be an obvious and unfortunate tragedy. For now, however, the two camps—Kardashian and anime fan—seem to have reached an uneasy peace. “Whoa,” one user, who goes by hamilton_anime, commented on her photo. “I didn’t know famous people like her actually take the time of day to look at anime.” “It’s almost as if they were normal human beings,” another replied sagely.

‘The Balloon Deflated’: What’s Next for Dance Music After the EDM Era

 

After ­performing his usual flashy, bass-filled set at a Milwaukee club in February, Destructo found himself at a backyard afterparty, where kids he had never heard of were blasting dance mixes to 40 or 50 freezing revelers. “They’re not thinking, ‘How can we turn this into some big fucking festival to make a bunch of money?’ ” recalls the longtime DJ, also known as Gary Richards, North American president of dance music promoter LiveStyle and founder of festival specialist HARD Events. “It’s just got to be fun — when it gets too scientific and too researched and too business-oriented, it just becomes another random business.”

To Richards and other dance music veterans, EDM — the genre of Marshmello, Calvin Harris and The Chainsmokers — has been booming for so many years that it finally dipped into a financial correction. Last summer, the International Music Summit reported that the 10 highest-earning DJs’ salaries had dropped to their lowest total since 2013; Las Vegas club and pool-party attendance declined; and dance music’s share of the U.S. recorded-music market dipped from 4% to 3% over two years. None of this data suggests an all-out crash; Electric Daisy Carnival still sold 90% of its tickets in five hours last fall. But managers, agents and promoters say EDM — the most lucrative and prominent segment of contemporary dance music — is finally retrenching after reaching its commercial and cultural peaks in the 2010s. The biggest stars are fine, but those on lower tiers may have to evolve if they want to return to big streaming numbers and ticket sales. “That sound that was so big in 2017 definitely has peaked out,” says Ultra Records founder/president Patrick Moxey. “And new things are on the rise.”

“It has just been a reset. The balloon deflated,” says Dean Wilson, manager of deadmau5 and CEO of Seven20, whose clients include Luke Wylde and Qrion. “It had that moment, and now it’s back to some kind of reality.” Adds Will Runzel, co-founder of Prodigy Artists, which manages Nghtmre, Slander and Joyryde: “Dance music has plateaued. It’s just kind of wiggling in its place. I do not anticipate it dropping any farther, and I wouldn’t anticipate a second boom.”

Even before the coronavirus ravaged Asian music festivals, many in the EDM business had been bracing for some kind of economic slowdown. Top DJs still command high-end Vegas salaries, but the shuttering of the nightclub KAOS last November following the cancellation of its reported two-year, $60 million deal with Marshmello suggested the market for pricey, flashy parties wasn’t what it used to be. Vegas-style nightclubs tend to look and feel the same, while the Instagram generation in recent years has sought travel and adventure opportunities over bottle service. “It’s not that exciting to show off in a nightclub where you spent $50,000 and there’s a DJ and some confetti,” says Lee Anderson, the Paradigm agent who represents Skrillex, Zedd, Disclosure and others.

Music cycles may be contributing to EDM’s business dip. Not so long ago, EDM evolved from an out-of-the-mainstream niche to the dominant sound in pop music, with hits from David Guetta and Daft Punk as well as crossover production styles used by Britney Spears and Lady Gaga. Anderson says EDM blew up to the point that “the captain of the football team/valedictorian/class president was all of a sudden in neon and attending all these exciting EDM raves.” But the dance music genre has declined in streaming, from 4.4% of the market in 2017 to 3.8% last year, according to MRC Data. As SoundCloud rap and other styles of hip-hop have grown, says Anderson, EDM is no longer “the new toy.” Adam Alpert, CEO of Disruptor Records, a joint Sony Music venture and home of The Chainsmokers, agrees: “Hip-hop is the dominant genre by far right now, and thus every [other] genre is suffering.”

The sound that Moxey refers to as “EDM frothy” — the pumped-up bass drops and whizzing synths that dominated dance music for much of the decade — is giving way to other, less easily recognizable sounds, like future bass and tech house, while older, more soulful styles are coming back thanks to new global festival headliners like DJs Hernan Cattaneo of Argentina and Amelie Lens of Belgium. “I see a downturn coming, but I’m not nervous. Things are going to get more creative,” says Marci Weber, co-owner of MDM Artists. “How many times can you see the same thing over and over — the lights, the smoke, the pyro?”

Top EDM events remain strong, particularly Electric Daisy Carnival, which sold 450,000 tickets in total over three days last year, and Harris, Bassnectar and Illenium have high billings at major festivals like Coachella, Bonnaroo and Firefly. Still, James Estopinal, co-founder/CEO of festival producer Disco Donnie Presents, has gradually reduced his holdings from six festivals in 2016 to just two this year: “A lot of festivals have gone away. You saw the EDM scene staggering a bit.” He adds, though, that his remaining festivals are selling better this year than they did in 2019.

Not everyone sees a correction on the horizon. Promoters in individual cities are finding success with more adventurous music — in San Francisco, newer acts such as San Holo, Slander and Nghtmre will headline the 8,500-capacity Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in coming months, while promoter Another Planet Entertainment increased its dance music events at the venue from two in 2011 to 25 last year. “Our business is as strong as ever,” says APE vp concerts Bryan Duquette. Detroit’s influential Movement Electronic Music Festival in May has boosted ticket sales by 1,500 — “the best campaign we’ve ever had,” says director Jason Huvaere.

Huvaere thinks EDM fans haven’t gone away — they’ve just evolved into more sophisticated dance music aficionados to whom the all-night parties don’t necessarily appeal. That has led many attendees back to styles like techno: “Everybody’s starting to realize, ‘Oh, shit, techno is really cool, it has been here the whole time, and I need to get me some cool,’ ” says Huvaere. The shift includes superstars: Calvin Harris has so far spent 2020 departing from his usual high-profile collaborations to release old-school rave music, complete with R&B and funk samples, under the name Love Regenerator.

“People are craving soulfulness and feeling. There’s more emotion in dance music today,” says Moxey. “The EDM business is probably flat to slightly down. The good thing is, the business that I’m in is the dance and electronic music business. To us, EDM is a flavor.”

House Democrats Create Task Force Focused on Border Security

 

A group of House Democrats have created a task force focused on securing the southern border, according to a report from NBC News.

The “Democrats for Border Security” task force is co-chaired by Rep. Henry Cuellar (TX) and Rep. Tom Suozzi (NY). Suozzi reportedly flipped a Republican-held district after he campaigned on toughening U.S. immigration laws (via NBC):

One thing they have in common: They're fed up with the party's leftward turn on immigration over the last decade and want a course change to emphasize enforcement. Cuellar's calls for tougher immigration laws date back years. Then Suozzi successfully deployed it in the suburbs of New York. They both say Democrats must do the same to win competitive House districts and defeat former President Donald Trump this November.

[...]

A late-January NBC News poll found that Trump has a 35-point advantage over Biden among voters asked who they believe would do a better job at "securing the border and controlling immigration." 

[...]

The new caucus has 26 members, including a host of Democrats in tough districts, including Reps. Matt Cartwright, D-Pa.; Angie Craig, D-Minn.; Jared Golden, D-Maine; Susie Lee, D-Nev.; Steven Horsford, D-Nev.; Mike Levin, D-Calif.; Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla.; and Mary Peltola, D-Alaska. It also includes Reps. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., and Colin Allred, D-Texas, who are running for the Senate in border states where immigration looms large for their electorates.

“I think it’s a pretty good pathway for Democrats. Don’t cede the narrative to Republicans when it comes to border security," Cuellar said in an interview with the outlet. “It doesn’t matter if we’re Hispanics. We want to see order. We want to see security."

In addition, Suozzi said that he thinks Democrats are “already changing” their tune on border security. 

“Democrats have always been concerned about border security, but now they’re being more vocal about it and proactive about it. And I think the president is doing that,” he told the outlet.

Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego added, “The Arizona border leaders and law enforcement I’ve met with are tired of it. We need to cut through the noise and get a border security bill done.”

This week, Leah covered how with the help of 14 Democrats, House Republicans on Tuesday passed a resolution denouncing the Biden administration's immigration policies.  

"The current state of our nation's border security is unsustainable," said Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-TX), who authored the resolution. "The policies put forth by the Biden administration have resulted in the worst border security crisis in our nation's history, endangering our communities and straining our resources."

Not One Democrat Witness Agreed That Only U.S. Citizens Should Vote In Elections

 

In nearly four years that the Biden Administration has been in office, they have refused to enact any sort of border policy that would keep illegal immigrants out of the U.S. and force those already here to go back to their own country. 

Advertisement

For nearly four years, the Democratic Party has rolled out the red carpet and handed out freebies such as identification cards, pre-paid credit cards, and health insurance to illegal aliens, incentivizing them to stay illegally in the United States. 

Why? So that illegal immigrants can vote in the next presidential election and elect the candidate who is allowing them to live freely in the U.S. 

And Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Hearing proved just that. 

During the hearing, not a single Democrat witness believed that only U.S. citizens should be able to vote in federal elections. 

Not One. 

Republican Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) asked the witnesses to provide a basic “yes” or “no” answer to a series of questions about non-citizens voting.

In response, the Democrat witnesses refused to say that only citizens of the United States should have the right to vote in elections. 

We don’t have a position about non-citizens voting in federal elections, we believe that’s what the current laws are, and so we’re certainly fighting for everyone who is eligible under current law to vote,” Executive Director of The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Damon T. Hewitt said.

“That’s a decision of the state law but I want to emphasize –” President of Southwest Voter Registration Education Project Lydia Camarillo said.

“It’s a decision of state law as to who should vote in federal elections?” Lee interjected.

“States decide who gets to vote in various elections, and in federal elections, I believe that we should be encouraging people to naturalize and then vote,” Camarillo said.

“Okay, but you’re saying that the federal government should have no say in who votes in a federal election?” Lee pressed.

“I don’t have a position on that,” Camarillo responded.

Director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project Sophia Lin Lakin told Lee, “Federal law prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections and our focus is on enabling all eligible voters to be able to vote and cast their ballot.” — Via The Federalist

In a follow-up question, Lee asked the witnesses if people registering to vote should be required to provide documentary proof of their citizenship to register to vote.

All respondents declined to agree with Lee’s question.