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g3nosarchive · 3 years

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ok i genuinely think a lot of other people have this problem but stop inserting yourself when xyz issue is mentioned. when someone is telling you that a person, a celebrity, some franchise is harming their identity or anyone’s identity as a minority, or part of a certain race or religion or anything shut the fuck up and accept it.

they do not need to know your emotional attachment to said thing, your disbelief, your horror, your personal experience - we didn’t ask for all that. we know just how bad it is, cus yk it harms us maybe? we’ve already gone through the cycle of being angry and indignant and now we’re here trying to get you to understand in the hopes that as a friend you do what you’re meant to do when you became friends with us. we are not your constant ball of anger to use whenever you find something that’s “crazy, unbelievably, shockingly” once again, a hate crime, when you decide you want to feel angry and care about it.

more under the cut bc i talk too much

by doing that, you’re making an issue that you didn’t even know about suddenly yours. ask yourself, what is the purpose for telling anyone all that? to get them to sympathize with you personally so you can get a pass because you didn’t know? of course you don’t know, of course you’re unaware, that’s the whole reason why you’re being told in the first place. do not water down the issue or even try to play the ‘everything has some issue like this so there’s no point in going this far’ card. especially as a white person. the reason why you don’t know primarily is because it doesn’t affect you and it doesn’t cross your mind.

when you watch a show with a black character, you don’t care about how off the character design is or how stereotypical and borderline racist the comedy gag surrounding said character is. when you listen to your favorite white music artists or watch your favorite movie with a majority white cast, white staff, white team, and white theme, you don’t care to analyze just how outdated and stereotypical the way that token asian character is portrayed. some of y’all don’t understand and will never understand the mental struggle and awareness forever plugged into the brain of lgbt and/or poc, especially black people when we consume anything, when we go anywhere, when we meet new people, to constantly catch those micro aggressions and know what to avoid.

so when someone tells you insert classic hot mess is racist and you should stop supporting it, one of the worst things you can do beside outright rejecting it is to defend it and insinuate that we don’t know what we’re talking about, that we need 30 different sources to prove it all, that you don’t think (for example taylor swifts dream colonized africa mv) is bad. you try to say the thing or person that is actively promoting all this homophobia, racism, transmisogyny etc needs to be kindly educated, is trying their best, will learn soon enough, just wasn’t educated, will do better in the future (esp looking at u kpop stans). does their apparent regret but refusal to properly apologize actually matter? the damage has already been done.

that in itself is a privilege i could never have. i don’t even try being a fan of any major white celebrity or any kpop group because i guarantee if i search up their name with ‘racist’, ‘sexist’, ‘homophobic’, ‘transphobic’, ‘cultural appropriation’ behind it something or some image is bound to show up. you will all say “oh they haven’t done anything yet” but when it comes out that they did, they have, and they do not care about who it affects, suddenly it’s a bombshell dropped on you out of nowhere.

it’s not that hard to spot these things actually. if your fav is constantly putting themselves against people of color, saying shady shit about non cishets while being a cishet themself, saying one thing and doing another, or has been silent when their voice was expected to speak up, shouldn’t you notice? y’all will reblog all these posts but in reality only 10% are actually reading and listening and actually digesting this information for future use.

and i think the thing that pisses me off is this is all from personal experience where i’m speaking from. over the past 2 days the amount of times if i’ve heard about the “tea that dropped w meghan markle” is ridiculous and annoying. a girl texted me and i sat there and i realized that she does this on a daily basis to fuel my anger and get me to validate her own useless anger. of course i knew about it and i wasn’t surprised at all - she’s still a black woman.

almost every black blog on here, when they get big enough, deals with some sort of weird shit surrounding their blackness. if you get big on speaking about issues you are now this emotionless token ‘smart black person i can actually trust’ to use as your replacement for google. this is not to say asking questions is bad, but it is so easy to pull up some of the shit you guys ask for. some people get called slurs directly, targeted for being too black or not black enough, attacked for their features and etc and someone mentioned this before but the only people that care in those situations are other black people themselves. white people will have blm in their bio but turn the other way the minute some anon starts acting up in their mutuals’ inbox, calling them a dark1e because they felt confident enough to post some selfies. and then you get sad when we dont go to you for any kind of support?

i’ve stated sometimes that asking me questions on issues and things is okay, but one of the main reasons i say that is because whether i say it or not, i’ll be asked questions and expected to know everything and i am your personal walking encyclopedia and ofc it’s natural for me to have all this information in my head, as if i didn’t research it myself. but then i think about the numerous amounts of people that specifically say not to ask them this shit because it really does tire you out, that they don’t want to have to deal with this in any space but they still get them.

and then the ones that don’t even know themself so people will use them as an example and say “well this person didn’t know and they’re ‘marginalized identity’ so it should be fine for me too”. good god just apologize, show that you really care, change your behavior and move on. do you think it was fun being asked the statistics for george floyd’s and other black peoples death in class? that you were being inclusive and giving me a chance to show off my intelligence, to prove to others that i really had something up here and you were my greatest star eyes white friend that gave me that chance? i cant close my posts like this properly but i want you to think about that shit and actually ask yourself if you’d do that. a lot of you will read this and think “i’m not that type of racist” “i don’t have those deep seated prejudices in me” yes you do. you just haven’t been called out on it.

for all the shit ive dealt with above, if i’ve ever talked to you about this before dont come to me to apologize i do not need it and you are not the only person i’ve received this from. i guarantee you that there’s about 20 other people i’ve thought about while writing this post considering i’m a black person in the real world, so keep your guilt to yourself an deal with it

white people don’t add on to this

#important #antiblackness #george floyd #death mention #ok to rb #more than ok but #here it is 😇#ill rb this everyday if i have to

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fwoopersongs · 3 years

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何必诗债换酒钱 - Notes

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Clean version here and thoughts under the cut.

I saw the song translation notes made by @shelterfromrain a while back and thought, wow! what a fantastic idea it is to share the results of the rabbit holing (that you inevitably end up engaging in when doing this) and leave a record for your future self while at it too! Currently some of the song and poetry translations on fwoopersongs do have little notes, but those were casually written on the fly and after so long, the thought process behind certain choices often get forgotten, which is such a waste... Long story short - I’m doing it this way from now on!

This song was requested by @peerlesssqq on twitter - which may or may not have bumped it up by like a year on my list (yes, I’ve been sitting on it since 2018 and you’ll see why) - and I had WAY more fun than expected, so 谢啦 ~ It was a delight to receive your DM request. I was happy for days!

Some background: 《何必诗债换酒钱》 is the theme song of 【文定乾坤】- a collection of musical works that feature notable contributors to Chinese literature in ancient times, poets and the like. Oh, and I did notice that the MV on bilibili looks like it could be a promo for a webtoon or game. Who knows? I’ll be checking out the rest of the songs, that’s for sure!

The following part of this post will be my thoughts for first the title, then each section - the intro, verse 1 & 2 and the chorus, ending off with some final comments.

Disclaimer first though (otherwise later you read already then feel like beating me up): Everything in this post is only my interpretation of the song. I have quite limited familiarity with mainland literature and culture, so of course don’t expect much xD Here you’ll only find a story-loving banana who jiak-ed kantang too much in her youth and now regrets it a whole lot. 说好了哈 I’m pants at analysis, worse at Chinese, and am not at all good with words ok?

Title

So《何必诗债换酒钱》, let’s start off with the word here that’s unfamiliar to most of us:

诗债 | shī zhài or a debt of poems/poetry debt is a legit thing! - All you authors and artists out there might be familiar with it - It’s what you call the resulting debt when a poet promises to write something for another person but hasn’t done it yet. Procrastination has apparently always been the curse of content creators.

In fact, in the Bai Juyi’s poem that came up on the 诗债 baidu page《晚春欲携酒寻沉四著作先以六韵寄之》- possibly addressed to a friend he owes - he was complaining of illness, old age and writer’s block. But then oh, he goes on and then I passed by a party where they had drinks, and was quite up to my gills & totally out of it for some time, and THAT’S why I’ve done you dirty and owe you ever so many poems. I don’t really understand the last two lines but apparently he then offers to bring a drink for this person he’s talking to, mentions a wish to meet a winter goddess (????? pretty girl? or the snow? idk which), and starts reminiscing the times that were like a precious string of pearls they had singing at Yang Pass. Most likely farewells, but without context I just don’t get it. Anyway bribery and misdirection huh? I see what you did there bro, and I’m sure the person you attempted to distract saw it coming too...

何必 | hé bì, is a rhetorical question of Must you really? In the case of this word, 何 functions as roughly ‘is it that’ and 必 as ‘it must be so’.

换酒钱 | huàn jiǔ qián is of course, exchange for money to purchase wine.

‘Must you really promise poems in exchange for money to buy wine?’ then is the literal translation of 何必诗债换酒钱.

So here is the question: Is alcohol worth a poetry debt? Onwards to the answer!

Intro

生就诗骨算来三百篇 Born and already a poet to the bones, (with) three hundred works counting up to now.

浪掷秦淮长安风流李杜王白 Spending lavishly in Qinhuai and Chang’an, free/unrestrained as Li and Du, Wang and Bai;

余下十分便随意肩上担 whatever left is divided in ten parts, casually thrown over a shoulder

权作金玉铜板相谢好人间 and taken for jade, gold and coin, a big thank you to this good world!

I interpreted the 生 in the first line as 天生 i.e. innate, natural born talent, so this first line describes someone born with a gift for poetry with ‘three hundred’ works to their name. Although... that three hundred should not be taken too literally, it’s more likely to be an allusion to collected works like the 16th century anthology of poems, Three Hundred Tang Poems. After all, Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei and Bai Juyi are the most famous Tang Dynasty poets… and they were all name-dropped in the next line!

浪掷 | làng zhì was a new phrase for me, and means something like spending freely and lavishly or willfully wasted. Of course Chang’an was the capital during the Tang Dynasty and it was the world's most populous city at the time. One can only imagine how prosperous it must have been… and what fun things were there to spend your money on! The banks of Qinhuai river and that general area was once a gathering place for noble/wealthy families, scholars looking for a good time (and some say, the red light district xD). Though by Sui/Tang, that area was no longer doing as well due to political shifts. So the mental image I got from 浪掷秦淮长安 is of someone gallivanting through places of interest, from the bustling and prosperous to the dilapidated.

风流 | fēng liú is as always, hard to translate with no full equivalent in english. The feel it gives me ranges from, ‘cool, dashing bloke on a galloping horse with their cloak/robes/hair flowing elegantly in the wind’ to ‘pleasure seeking dandy who totally knows how to enjoy life, all the courtesans know him by courtesy name!’.

The third line started with 余下十分, which will not make any sense - why leftover? Divide what by ten? - until its put in context with the following:

Three hundred poems 算来三百篇 + 权作金玉铜板 pretend they are gold/jade/money (权作 | quán zuò just means to take one thing for another temporarily.)

The load thrown over the shoulder 肩上担

Spendthrift behaviour on tour 浪掷秦淮长安

The TITLE: bro so u wanna promise poetry in exchange for money to drink? why.

Let’s take those precious poems that can be exchanged for gold - a whole bagful of scrolls, and now I’m so rich I can scatter my money down the streets of entertainment districts and the capital! The very image of a 风流 poet, reckless and free spirited.

// Folks, please learn from this silly girl and do not read songs (or poems) line by line. They need to be appreciated at a distance, not one inch from your eyeballs.

Verse 1

两分与月劳烦身前打点 Two parts to the moon, (may I) trouble you to take care of me while I’m alive.

哪处巍峨峰峦当借我悬来观 Wherever there are majestic peaks and ranges, do lend me (your light) to hang and see by.

三分典高楼好与长风赴宴 Three parts pawned for the tall building, good for attending the banquet alongside the wind,

遍寻可爱星子唾手一把玩 searching for charming little stars, easily caught to play with.

Now we get to see how the poet is spending his ‘wealth’. This verse is a lot more literal as compared to the introduction, so there’s not much to say.

打点 used here is so interesting! Because it’s what you call bribing someone in a superior position to smoothen your path ahead (so to speak). Thanks to a childhood of tvb drama, I vaguely associate the type of people who would 打点 with rich merchant or minor noble fathers who want to give their sons an easier time at court. Either that or lower ranked officials with less moral scruples. Anyway, what’s being said in the song is something like: here is 20% dear moon, I’ll have to trouble you to bless me for the rest of this lifetime, and also please lend me your light to see by when I have need of it at scenic spots *for art*. The moon is a muse for many poets in all its forms after all… 明月, 圆月, 孤月, 残月, 冷月, 江月, 秋月 and so on.

Actually that whole sentence 劳烦身前打点 is so playful and fun that I put it in quotation marks to emphasize it. We’ve only just begun. Is the speaker already drunk?

And with the third line, 30% has been spent. Just noting here that 典 | diǎn can be read as pawn or mortgage. Another interesting thing to note would be that this imagery of ascending a tall building 高楼 and reaching out for stars 星子 in the last two lines of Verse 1 brings to mind one particular poem, famously attributed to Li Bai. Following translation by yours truly.

《夜宿山寺》- Overnight at the Mountain Temple 危楼高百尺 | dangerously towering a hundred feet high 手可摘星辰 | the stars are within reach 不敢高声语 | one dares not raise their voice 恐惊天上人 | for fear of disturbing the deities

Though the two probably have nothing to do with each other, doesn’t the reverence in the tone of this one bring out the playful irreverence of the other? So. Much. Fun. I adore the whole feel of 遍寻可爱星子唾手一把玩 SO MUCH.

Verse 2

两分与桥歇脚南北行船 Two parts to the bridge where travellers on foot and by boat from the north and south can rest,

欣然八方风物闲话半日茶碗 delighted by the scenery all around, idly chatting half the day away over bowls of tea.

三分典流水润色枯瘦石山 Three parts for the running water, moistening the gaunt stone mountains

又将天地一展伸手试浓淡 and again spreading heaven and earth wide, reaching out to test the viscosity (of the water).

It took a few listens, but in the end I really enjoyed the aesthetics here. And again, this verse is quite straight to the point albeit with two things I cannot understand.

The first point of confusion for me is why the lyricist chose to use 桥 | qiáo, a bridge as the place for people to rest on their journeys. I assumed here that this in reference to a pier or dock, assumed also that he is donating funds for this structure to be built or repaired. However, if that were the case 坞 | wù would have been enough - 船坞 was supposedly invented only in the Song Dynasty though, so maybe that’s why another word was chosen. But it’s not like there is any incidence of 桥 being used to mean ‘dock’ either!

The second thing that confuses me is the use of 典 for 流水. In verse one, that 典 was referring to the poetry works sold to reserve the venue for a banquet. That usage was apt. Here I suspect it might be for parallel structure, because there is no alternative reading for 典 that might allow one to use their 30% 三分 to do anything to flowing water 流水. That’s the literal reading, of course.

If we’re taking this a little less literally, it can be interpreted as borrowing the scenery (figuratively, since the place would not belong to anyone in the way you might own a property) to admire. It also expands on the second line’s mention of the surrounding view 欣然八方风物; there is running water which completes 润色 and brings the appearance of the gaunt and rocky mountains 枯瘦石山 closer to perfection.

润色 | rùn sè means to polish, to bring to greater heights. When you say something has been 润色 it is made more brilliant and closer to perfection by that addition. It can also mean moisten.

We always hear ‘rivers and mountains like a painting’ 江山如画 - originating from Su Dongpo’s《念奴娇·赤壁怀古》- used when the scenery is wonderful, because how often is real life as ideal as what we can imagine and depict? And that is exactly what is described here. The feeling out if the ‘water’ is concentrated or diluted 试浓淡 is used in answer to 一展 unfurling. 浓淡 of ink to 一展 of painting scroll. The land and sky seem like an ink wash painting, so beautiful that the viewer cannot help but reach out to run their hand through the water.

Chorus

Chorus Part 1

若趁游兴直到酣 If we take advantage of our wanderlust and go roaming till it is sated,

千字文章不值钱 classics and essays shan’t be worth a coin.

诗换花词换雪 A poem for a flower! A song for snow!

再作檄文斗天官 Another denunciation for those heavenly officials!

Starting off with three new terms for me: 游兴 | yóu xìng means enthusiasm for travel. 酣 | hān can mean having a great time drinking, or being very satisfied and satiated. 檄文 | xí wén is a type of official document written for important announcements, declaration of war, or denunciation and condemnation of certain people or actions.

While I still feel this need to go out to see the world, I shall keep on the road until I am satisfied. Who cares about writing, who cares for study, it’s all worthless to me. I do what I want. And what I want is to write a little poem in exchange for a flower, some lyrics for a flake of snow. I’ll even write a denunciation against those officials in heaven (immortals). Fight me!!!!

I point again at Verse 1 with climbing the tower to play with stars. It’s no longer just playing nearby, now he wants a go at the gods.

Among the four parts of the chorus, this one is the simplest for sure. The lines mean exactly what is said. It also feels the most chaotic and mischievous. Is the speaker drunk? Is he high on something? One thing’s for sure. He’s out of money.

Chorus Part 2

何愁不得一样我 Why feel troubled that (I) cannot have another just like me?

知交尽向话中添 for one who understands you and is understood, look entirely towards stories to fill that place

唐解元嵇中散 people like Tang Bohu (first in provincial examinations) and proud, upright and stubborn Ji Kang

且驰大梦任疯癫 Just chase that great dream, allow yourself to go mad.

I feel like the first two lines are quite straightforward, though they might not appear so on first reading: How could there be a need to feel sad or troubled that I have no like-minded equal. To find a true friend who understands you without need for words, and whom you understand in return, all you need to do is turn to those tales and stories 话中 for people to fill 添 that place.

唐解元 - People like Tang Yin, courtesy name: Bohu 唐寅, 字伯虎 (1470–1524 AD), noted painter, calligrapher and poet of the Ming Dynasty. Tang Yin led a life full of ups and downs that really cannot be covered in a paragraph’s worth of song translation notes. You can check out his wiki page if you’re curious though! There’s a little more on him where I cover the last line of this section. He is addressed as 解元 | jiè yuán here which is the term for the top scorer of the provincial examinations (second stage in the Imperial examination ladder). It is also an honorific for scholars. Tang Bohu is both.

嵇中散 - People like Ji Kang, courtesy name: Shuye 嵇康, 字叔夜, (223–262 AD), one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove - a group of friends who wisely kept themselves aloof from the dangerous politics of the Court, and devoted themselves to art, refinement and debate, of the Three Kingdoms period. He was a Daoist philosopher, musician, writer and poet.

An accomplished musician, the qin composition 廣凌散 | guǎnglíng sàn is attributed to Ji Kang, though some versions of the story claim he learned it from a ghost while stopping at a pavillion on his way home. 嵇中散 was one of the names he was known by because of his appointment to the position of Attendant Counsellor, 中散大夫 | zhōng sàn dàfū, a civil official unspecified duties in the court of Cao Wei.

When Ji Kang was sentenced to death for his attempt to testify for a wrongly accused friend, three thousand scholars petitioned for his pardon to no avail. It’s said that at the execution ground, while they waited for the appointed hour, he had his favourite qin brought out and played a brilliant interpretation of Guanglin San that is now forever lost.

Do go read about them both if you have the time!

I would like to point out for the last line that 任 is to allow, to indulge, and it’s just such a heady sensation to say 任疯癫 - indulge in the madness! throw yourself in and don’t look back!

There is an easter egg here too. A nod to a poem by Tang Yin which can be read as his stance on his lifestyle choice after the alleged accusations of bribery in the final step of the Imperial examinations left him disgraced, and unable to pursue a civil career. Thematically the line does not call back to the poem at all, similarities end with the choice of words: chasing the dream 驰大梦 and indulging madness 任疯癫. I leave an excerpt below. Translation again by me.

《桃花庵歌》- Song of a Plum Blossom Cottage // 若将花酒比车马 | if tawdriness and wine were compared against fine carriage and steed 他得驱驰我得闲 | he would have to drive and work hard for speed whilst I have my idle rest 别人笑我太疯癫 | others mock me for my madness 我笑他人看不穿 | i am amused for they do not perceive 不见五陵豪杰墓 | can’t you see that at the Emperors’ mausoleums and heroes’ graves 无花无酒锄做田 | there are no flowers, no wine, only land ploughed for farming

The second part of the chorus isn’t related to the first, but it has the same theme of showcasing the untamable (unhinged xD) spirit of the speaker. This time, the people he admires ‘intellectual equals’ and kindred spirits are featured, the 任性 feeling here has been pushed to greater heights.

Chorus Part 3

敢夸洒落何须酒 If one dares to boast of carefreeness, why, they hardly need wine.

不煮黄粱也称仙 Even without brewing millet they would still be called Immortal.

镜湖桌白梅盏 The tables in the mirror-like lake, white plum blossoms in the cups,

等来春风恰开宴 await the spring breeze which arrives just in time for the feast to start!

Li Bai is regarded as both the god of poetry 诗仙 and god of drunkards wine 酒仙 because he wrote some of his greatest poems while drinking. The first two lines seem to be gently poking fun at that. Like hey, if you dare to claim to be all groovy, surely you have no need for alcohol? Just like how an immortal would still be an immortal without wine, your writing talent should not need any stimulants. This would be the time to mention that 黄粱 | huáng liáng is also known as millet, a type of grain that can be used to brew wine.

洒落 | sǎ luò has a few meanings, like shower down or blame, but the relevant one here would be 洒脱 generous, uninhibited and open. For me it feels similar to 风流 in that there is that ‘free, and exhilaratingly unrestrained’ element. 洒落 is in the most positive sense, being always open to having a good time, but without that dissolute or vaguely whirlwind-romance like connotation of 风流.

It feels like the intensity is letting up a little here - this is a light-hearted and frivolous song all the way through, but the words 洒落, 称仙 and imagery of a clear lake, white plum blossoms and the crisp spring breeze are grounding and sweet. Spirited in a different way from before.

Chorus Part 4

四角天地也醺然 The four corners and heaven and earth are also tipsy,

醉极自有桃李搀 when I’ve overindulged, my students will be there to help.

快意只笔下讨 Gratification can only be claimed from beneath the brush;

何必诗债换酒钱 is falling into poetry debt worth that money for drink?

New words: 醺然 | xūn rán just means drunk. A new word for me though! 桃李 | táo lǐ is literally peach 桃 and plum 李 (李花, also known as 玉梅) flowers, and is a metaphor for students. The term originates from a story in 《韩诗外传》which was set in the Wei Kingdom of the Spring and Autumn period (771 to 476 BCE). There was once a highly ranked official who was sacked from his post and left for the north. He met another gentleman and remarked that the people he helped before did not lift a finger when he was in need. This person replied that, if someone were to plant peach and plum trees in spring, he could relax under their shade in the Summer and taste their fruit in the Autumn. But if that person were to plant weeds, nothing can be done with their leaves in Spring and there would only be burrs to hurt himself on in Autumn. Clearly the people the unfortunate gentlemen had helped before were not worth his effort. Students ought to be carefully selected and carefully cultivated as one would a tree.

Reading the four corners and heaven and earth 四角天地 are also tipsy 也醺然, I imagine the world sort of spinning around the speaker because he is drunk. But that’s okay, because his students (or the trees xD) will be there to support him.

快意 | kuài yì is the feeling of sudden relaxation, and then lightheartedness and joy. In this line, I felt like the intention would be closer to 畅快，爽快 and so chose gratification, because really writing is like scratching an itch isn’t it? Pleasure from satisfaction of a desire. Phrasing it as 笔下讨 is so very fitting though, because 讨 can be interpreted - somewhat contradicting - as either to demand or to beg. What could be more gratifying than having squeezed out the perfect sentence or word under your figurative pen?

So so so after all that, 何必诗债换酒钱? What do you think, is alcohol worth the poetry debt? Is Mr. Poet actually drunk and about to dig himself a deeper hole of owed poems to get even MORE drunk, or has he just been thinking about it all along? :)

Thoughts

This has been such a fun adventure following our madcap big spender from the shining Chang’an to the inviting Qinhuai, shadow of great poets in tow and all. We’ve done everything from talking to the moon and seeing the sights by her light, to boating down a river, dragging fingers through the water. It was sort of like being on a backpacking tour, except with with someone contemplating opening (or perhaps regretting opening this can of worms?) poetry commissions instead of singing in the streets?

Dear reader, if you’ve reached this point of my post, thank you. I hope you enjoy the song as much as I do now!

#何必诗债换酒钱 #translation notes #i made a new years resolution and this is step one #i had so many more things to say lol but it's like 1 am and i need to go to bed #this took way longer than i thought it might

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topweeklyupdate · 6 years

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TØP Weekly(/Monthly) Update #52: I’m Gonna Jumpsuit Out a Window (6/30/18)

When all the cryptic weirdness surrounding dmaorg.info sprung up nearly two months ago, everyone was extremely hyped. So much content! So many theories! It really felt like hiatus was over.

There was just one problem: there were no new songs licensed or registered under the band’s name, which meant nothing was coming out. Rabid music fans have known for years that there is truly no such thing as a “surprise” music release: for legal reasons, almost all song titles show up on online registries several days, if not weeks, before they are made available to the public. And, indeed, after the initial wave of teases wrapped up, the Clique returned to a quasi-hiatus state, punctuated only by the occasional addition to the Dema lore.

This Thursday, June 28, that all changed. Let’s talk about it.

This Week’s TØPics:

Finally, Some Good F*cking Food: Two New Song Titles Registered

Dema Recap: Cheetahs and Trenches and Cryptic Nonsense, Oh My!

One Year Later: What Do We Really Know About This Hiatus?

Editorial: When the Discourse Gets Too Much (and When It’s Just What We Need)

Major News and Announcements:

In the biggest piece of real news that we’ve received since the hiatus, two new song titles have been registered on the PPL music licensing database: “Nico and the Niners” and “Jumpsuit”. This is a highly reputable source, and not even truly a “leak” as so many have called it. The pages are managed directly by labels’ legal teams to ensure that anyone who wishes to play music in their media, advertisements, or establishments knows what songs are licensed to which artists and what steps to take to legally license them. “Heathens” was first spotted here over two years ago, not to mention countless other songs from various other artists. The two songs were just removed from the day after they were found listing, but Reddit detectives have already discovered untitled tracks with the same registration codes listed under an unknown Warner artist (ya’ll ain’t slick).

The fact that this posting was accompanied by further activity from the band only confirms that there’s some real nonsense going on. Not only did we get new Dema content (which we’ll get to) but, perhaps even more wild, Tyler Robert Joseph liked something on Instagram. Dude’s alive.

In all seriousness, Tyler Joseph’s social media habits do little to help us understand just what the hell “Nico and the Niners” is. The bigger story (and the one I’ve been slacking on reporting the last two months, my bad) is the sporadic updates to dmaorg.info. Back in early May, we got our first bit of content after the initial reveal in the form of a new letter from Clancy. The letter itself is a pretty well-written YA protagonist internal monologue, with Clancy yearning to find a place that truly feels like home outside the walls of Dema. But, Tyler being Tyler, there’s more to it than that: the date attached to the paragraph matches that of the band’s last social media post, and missing letters from throughout the note together spell out the coded message “You are still sleeping.”

The second update, posted in late May, is this lovely gif of a cheetah running under letters moving in a quick sequence. After slowing it down, the letters spell out the message “U still don’t know his real name do u?” Again, there’s much more to the post when you take the time to dig in. The listed date matches Josh’s appearance at the APMAs, the first mention of Dema. The file name for the gif is “3lurr” meaning the “he” in the question may in fact be Blurryface. Most significantly, the spaces between this message’s words were filled with letters that, when taken out separately and placed in sequence, repeatedly spell out “Nico,” perhaps answering the gif’s own rhetorical question.

So who is Nico? Well, it matches the names of one of the nine bishops in the “Compass” picture from April, which would seem to make him one of the ‘niners” who rule Dema. It’s increasingly looking like this album is really going to double down on covering a weird and fleshed out concept rife with metaphors, and I. Am. Here for it (as long as the music’s, ya know, good).

The final (for now) Dema post was released just yesterday in the wake of all of the sudden new activity. It is the first photo that seems to be wholly original, with no one as yet having tracked down where it’s from. It’s a pretty badass image, with twenty-one (goddammit) figures standing at the edge of some cliff or pit. Some have speculated that this could be album artwork, and it would certainly make for a very good cover. But that’s just the surface.

The image’s jpg name is an assortment of letters that, when deciphered using a basic alphabet sequence code, translates into “Trench”- possibly another new song? BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! Typing that jpg number sequence or “trench” into the “violation code” section of the dmaorg.info url reveals a heavily-distorted audio clip. Sound engineers on Twitter and Reddit have tried reversing and pitch correcting the snippet, but have not truly succeeded in deriving anything from it beyond that it seems to be Tyler singing “So did they obey/bury you?” But what he’s saying honestly doesn’t matter to me half as much as this fact: after over a year, we finally got to hear Tyler Joseph’s voice. That’s got me on Cloud Nine, baby.

Pictured: The Clique (I know I used this joke last time, sue me)

So what does all of this cryptic nonsense and Reddit deciphering ultimately tell us? Frankly, it’ll be hard to say until we actually have our hands and ears on new music. The Clique has compiled so many different theories about what these little snippets of photos and garbled words mean that there’s no way they can all be true. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that there was an actual plan for this roll-out stretching back at least a year and that Tyler is not (as some salty fans have suggested) just throwing out a bunch of “fake deep trash.” Each piece of the Dema content has matched up in some way with the lyrics from the shutting eyes last year:

“You’ll have to come and find me.” -> The original discovery of the website.

“My pretty sleeper.” -> The “You are still sleeping” hidden message.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could just lay down...” -> “...and wake up in Slowtown” (and slow down the cheetah gif).

“I will fear the night again...” -> “[I hope I’m] not my only friend.” (the caption for the cliff picture)

Beyond all of that, the revelation of “Nico and the Niners” being part of the actual album should be taken as a real source of validation for all of those Reddit warriors out there: At least some of this stuff means something. (Now wtf is “Jumpsuit” about...)

Other Shenanigans:

Potential leaks from radio stations and some common sense theories have pegged a single release for the band as coming in the next two weeks, either July 6th or 13th. With all that in mind, I thought we’d look back on the weird conspiracy chart I’ve been keeping in my closet and recap what exactly we know about the band’s activities over the last year.

The short answer is: not much. After Josh’s performance at the APMAs, there have been no interviews, no public appearances, no social media posts. Josh has certainly been much more active than Tyler, which just makes sense for his much-less introverted personality. He contributed drums to Lights’ last album (though those recordings were done well before the hiatus). He apparently hopped into the studio with Drake Bell, (though I have no idea if any of that music has seen the light of day). He’s been fine taking group photos with Fueled by Ramen colleagues, other friends from the music industry, and, of course, Debby, who he almost definitely is back with. As for Tyler... well, beyond a few Jenna photos from a few months back and the odd fan encounter, there’s been nothing, which is why that eight second audio clip hit me like a Mack truck.

There are a few other things the truly obsessed have been able to find that I don’t necessarily want to reward by reposting here- I really want to try to keep it about the art. But we can pretty safely guess from Jenna and Jordan’s social media that the duo have been in Columbus, LA, and New York together a few times the last few months, likely for studio sessions and label meetings. Perhaps we’ll find out more about what transpired during the “hiatus” in the weeks and months to come, perhaps not. One thing’s for sure: it’s finally, finally (almost) over.

Editorial:

The last note I wanted to leave everyone on is something a little different for this blog, but still something I still think is worth talking about. Anyone who has been visiting the Twenty One Pilots tags on any site over the last several months can tell that the fanbase has not been taking the band’s absence well. And I’m not just talking the usual overblown crying for new music or young kids worshiping their idols a little too much. That’s always been there. This is different.

A whole host of the old crowd- the update accounts, the podcast hosts, the quasi-groupies who got barricade every night- have turned pretty hard from the band, particularly from Tyler. Some just have no interest in the music of Twenty One Pilots in the year 2018 AD; they’ve discovered other topics, other genres, other artists that speak more personally to where they are in life, and have just moved on. Others have expressed deeply personal distaste for the band itself for a whole host of political and social reasons that I’m not going to get into here- that’s a debate for another time, and probably for another account.

The point is, digging through social media to try to find updates and memes has been difficult when the most dependable sources also pepper in jab at whether Tyler’s learned to carry burdens yet every few posts. And while those folks are certainly more than entitled to their opinions and feelings (I even agree with many of them), it’s hard to deny that there are large swathes of the Twenty One Pilots’ fandom that just aren’t much fun to be in right now, just like there’s large swathes of the world in general where it feels like we’re not permitted to assume the best in people and just be happy with the things that used to make us happy. For a few weeks, I’ve honestly been wondering if I wanted to keep running this account in the next era. I just wanted to go back to the time before I had to share Twenty One Pilots with the world, when this was just my band, the one that made me feel understood and valid and worthy at a time where nothing else really did

Sasha Geffen’s insightful and deeply personal piece on the band’s music for AV Club, which focuses on how Tyler Joseph depicts and discusses suicidal depression, helped bring me back to that time. Music journalists have frequently gotten everything wrong about Tyler Joseph’s songwriting, to the point where I have often felt like they were listening to different music than me. But Geffen gets it. She sees that Tyler does not talk down to his audience about the problems they’re dealing with; he’s always been right there with us, and always offering concrete and practical ways of getting through depression one day at a time. He’s an insightful and compassionate dude, way more than people give him credit for, and it shows in his art. I had almost forgotten that. I needed that reminder right now, before everything ramps up again. I hope that article offers some comfort for any of you who also want to remember why this band is still so special, all these years later.

See you all (hopefully) next week. Power to the local dreamer.

|-/

#twenty one pilots #tyler joseph #josh dun #dema #top weekly update #fueled by ramen #music #av club #bands

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pojkflata · 7 years

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all of them for embla!

I’m skipping questions that aren’t applicable

1. What’s their full name? Why was that chosen? Does it mean anything?

Embla Blomqvist. Embla means elm tree, and it’s also the name of the first woman in Norse mythology. It might not have an apparent meaning at the surface, but who knows? Maybe it’ll be significant at some point?

Blomqvist means flower-twig, continuing the plant theme. And with such a strong plant theme in her name, her personality and the fact that she’s a changeling, you’d think she’d be a log changeling, but she is in fact a troll changeling with a somewhat ironic name. Part of why I chose it was because rhytmically, it flows pretty well because of the two ‘bl’-sounds, at least if u ask me

3. Did they have a good childhood? What are fond memories they have of it? What’s a bad memory?

Her childhood was… decent. She grew up somewhat detached from people, and not always by choice, but she also didn’t have anything to compare with, so she didn’t actively suffer either. Things got better when she met Berri, tho

4. What is their relationship with their parents? What’s a good and bad memory with them? Did they know both parents?

This is where things get… complicated. Berri kind of acts like a parental figure, but aside from him, the closest thing Embla has to a parent is her adoptive mother who is not ideal. The mother is married to her job and constantly overachieves even though money is not an issue at all, so she usually leaves Embla to her own devices and has done so on a regular basis from a very young age.

Embla never met her biological parents and they are kind of an enigma. It’s hard for even me to pin them down, so let’s just say they’re kind of all over the place morally speaking

6. What were they like at school? Did they enjoy it? Did they finish? What level of higher education did they reach? What subjects did they enjoy? Which did they hate?

During the events of TFTF, Embla has just graduated 8th grade. Again, she’s not super good unfortunately. She does pick up a lot of facts and trivia, but she’s bad at contextualizing it in a lot of situations, meaning her school performance suffers. Her grades hover around Es and Ds depending on the subject, maybe a few Cs sometimes. Not sure what her fave subject is but she dislikes math and science in particular

7. Did they have lots of friends as a child? Did they keep any of their childhood friends into adulthood?

She doesn’t have a lot of friends but she likes it that way. She’s kind of a loner and people around her respect that without ignoring her (god I wish that were me). But at the beginning of TFTF, she has two close friends in Aminah and Berri, and she befriends more in the Faelands.

8. Did they have pets as a child? Do they have pets as an adult? Do they like animals?

It probably doesn’t count but with some good will, you can consider Berri to be a pet. She does like animals, dogs in particular.

9. Do animals like them? Do they get on well with animals?

It’s a 50/50 thing. Some animals like her, but some are frightened by her.

10. Do they like children? Do children like them? Do they have or want any children? What would they be like as a parent? Or as a godparent/babysitter/ect?

She’s not super fond of infants, but she definitely likes older kids and she’d probably like to have kids in the future!

12. What is their favourite food?

Okay so under normal circumstances, Embla usually eats very simple foods that somebody her age can easily cook, she is fond of anything fancy since those foods are kinda rare in her life

14. Do they have any specific memories of food/a restaurant/meal?

When Embla first met Tristan, one of the first things he did was offer her a freshly killed rabbit bc well, Tristan’s quirky like that. Embla initially declined but then reluctantly accepted the rabbit

15. Are they good at cooking? Do they enjoy it? What do others think of their cooking?

She’s decent, as I said she cooks on a regular basis. She doesn’t really cook for others, tho

18. What’s their favourite genre of: books, music, tv shows, films, video games and anything else

She likes anything that’s engaging honestly, no matter the genre

20. Do they like musicals? Music in general? What do they do when they’re favourite song comes?

If she’s in the mood, yeah? But since she’s rather stoic, she doesn’t do much more than just bob her head to a song she likes

21. Do they have a temper? Are they patient? What are they like when they do lose their temper?

She’s p patient, but if she’s pushed enough, her usual reaction involves rambling and yelling

22. What are their favourite insults to use? What do they insult people for? Or do they prefer to bitch behind someone’s back?

Embla is p feisty actually! If you annoy her or do something she doesn’t think makes sense, she will make jokes at your expense and snark at u

23. Do they have a good memory? Short term or long term? Are they good with names? Or faces?

Her memory is okay in most ways except faces, she can be awful at faces.

24. What is their sleeping pattern like? Do they snore? What do they like to sleep on? A soft or hard mattress?

She’s average I guess, she doesn’t usually remember her dreams, she doesn’t snore and she prefers soft mattresses

25. What do they find funny? Do they have a good sense of humour? Are they funny themselves?

She thinks it’s fun to make fun of ppl, not in a malicious way, but when she thinks they need to be taken down a notch. So some think her humor is a lil mean spirited

26. How do they act when they’re happy? Do they sing? Dance? Hum? Or do they hide their emotions?

She might hum sometimes, but as I said before, she’s p stoic. Not that she hides emotion, but she just doesn’t show clear signs of emotion all the time

27. What makes them sad? Do they cry regularly? Do they cry openly or hide it? What are they like they are sad?

She’ll usually just stay quiet when she’s particularily sad

28. What is their biggest fear? What in general scares them? How do they act when they’re scared?

She was initially pretty scared of the idea of going to the Faelands because yeah, her life may not be perfect, but she didn’t know what’d await her in the Faelands and she didn’t like the idea of giving up everything she’d known and stuff

She doesn’t really fear a lot after coming over it though

She gets kinda shaky and talks fast if she’s scared

29. What do they do when they find out someone else’s fear? Do they tease them? Or get very over protective?

Okay that kinda depends

Tristan is scared of corvids because valravn are a thing in the Faelands. Embla understands why somebody would be wary of murder ravens, but when Tristan’s fear gets the best of him and he jumps at the slightest sign of corvid activity with no way to prove it’s caused by valravn, Embla will tease him

30. Do they exercise? Regularly? Or only when forced? What do they act like pre-work out and post-work out?

She might take a stroll sometimes, and that’s so light of an exercise that she doesn’t have any special preparations or aftercare for it

31. Do they drink? What are they like drunk? What are they like hungover? How do they act when other people are drunk or hungover? Kind or teasing?

She’s a minor, so nah

32. What do they dress like? What sorta shops do they buy clothes from? Do they wear the fashion that they like? What do they wear to sleep? Do they wear makeup? What’s their hair like?

She wears p casual, plain clothing, usually in muted dull colors since bright colors tend to hurt her eyes.

She usually just wears her underwear to bed, she doesn’t wear makeup except on special occasions. Her hair is elbow-length and she usually doesn’t do anything special with it

33. What underwear do they wear? Boxers or briefs? Lacey? Comfy granny panties?

Lacey, most of the time. Also sport bras

34. What is their body type? How tall are they? Do they like their body?

She’s 173cm/5′8′’ and kind of average body type wise. She does have a soft tum though! Her self image fluctuates but it’s not bad, she might be a little insecure over her tum from time to time but she usually recovers quickly

36. What are they good at? What hobbies do they like? Can they sing?

She’s like. Real good physically speaking. Not that she’s athletic or anything, but in the Faelands she has to take some punches and she takes them alright, and learns to dish some out as well

Her hobbies involve the kinda stuff you’d see a contemporary teen enjoy, stuff like movies and video games, sometimes she likes casually enjoying nature.

She can sing, she’s average, she doesn’t really enjoy singing a lot.

37. Do they like to read? Are they a fast or slow reader? Do they like poetry? Fictional or non fiction?

She’s a p slow reader, and she is inclined to fictional stuff.

38. What do they admire in others? What talents do they wish they had?

She absolutely admires Aminah’s intelligence and she wishes she were closer to her level.

39. Do they like letters? Or prefer emails/messaging?

She prefers emails and IMs

40. Do they like energy drinks? Coffee? Sugary food? Or can they naturally stay awake and alert?

She’ll usually just go for a soda for her caffeine fix.

41. What’s their sexuality? What do they find attractive? Physically and mentally? What do they like/need in a relationship?

Embla is bi. She doesn’t have any real preferences physically, but she does like people with soft fluffy hair. Mentally, she’s attracted to kind, brave people, and she 100% needs a partner who makes her feel loved and cared for that poor baby girl

42. What are their goals? What would they sacrifice anything for? What is their secret ambition?

Her main goal is to find Aminah, since she’s gotten lost in the Faelands. She does get involved with helping others reach their goals too. She’s super loyal and her devotion to her friends can reach shonen protagonist levels sometimes

43. Are they religious? What do they think of religion? What do they think of religious people? What do they think of non religious people?

She’s not religious per se, and her opinions on religion boil down to “one of my best friends is a talking winged cat-dragon, this world can be so fucking weird that I can see why somebody would want to contextualize it with faith, you do you”

44. What is their favourite season? Type of weather? Are they good in the cold or the heat? What weather do they complain in the most?

She doesn’t have any strong preferences, as long as it’s not sunny she’s happy. Sunlight doesn’t hurt her per se, but she gets sunburns p easily and it can make her somewhat sluggish.

45. How do other people see them? Is it similar to how they see themselves?

People will usually see Embla as a loner, sometimes they think of her as hostile due to her wit, but she believes herself to just be an average joe

46. Do they make a good first impression? Does their first impression reflect them accurately? How do they introduce themselves?

Again, her wit might leave a bad taste in some people’s mouths, that or they might think of her as a stick in the mud. Yeah, those impressions aren’t too accurate

47. How do they act in a formal occasion? What do they think of black tie wear? Do they enjoy fancy parties and love to chit chat or loathe the whole event?

God she avoids formal stuff like the plague

48. Do they enjoy any parties? If so what kind? Do they organise the party or just turn up? How do they act? What if they didn’t want to go but were dragged along by a friend?

If she’s in the mood, yeah she might, but she’s still an introvert at heart and might just hang out on the sides with friends she already knows, and that still applies if she was forced to tag along.

50. If they could only take one bag of stuff somewhere with them: what would they pack? What do they consider their essentials?

She did this in canon! She packed clothes, basic hygiene equipment, a water bottle and a knife

#sorry this took so long lol #oc stuff #tftf #long post -#nboy

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theforkedspoon · 6 years

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Instant Pot Shredded Salsa Chicken Tacos (+ Video)

This post has been sponsored by Fresh Cravings. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Get ready to change the game this season with this fast, easy, and crowd-pleasing Instant Pot Shredded Salsa Chicken. Made possible thanks to Fresh Cravings Salsa from Walmart, these fun and flavor-filled tacos are ready in under 30 minutes start to finish.

Let's chat about salsa for a quick sec because it's pretty important. At least it's important to me and my 4-year-old who takes salsa eating very seriously. Don't worry, I'm not here to talk about my offsprings picky eating habits again...at least not for today.

So, salsa. There's everyone's favorite restaurant salsa, there's jarred salsa, and there's the in-between salsa. What do I mean by in-between? Basically, it's the salsa sold in stores that are supposed to taste like it came from your favorite restaurant. You know, the in-between. As someone who seriously eats a lot of salsa (one of my all-time favorite meals is scrambled eggs with salsa and avocado, or roasted vegetables with rice and salsa) I have tried my fair share of varieties over the years. So, when it comes to the "in-betweeners", I know when it's good. And I want good.

Sorry, not sorry.

So when I discovered this iBotta offer for Fresh Cravings Restaurant Style Salsa from Walmart, I figured why not? I am all for trying new things. Especially when they're convenient, affordable (just $2.98 for a 16-ounce container- plus an additional $1.00 savings with iBotta!) and salsa was already on my shopping list. I will admit, I was initially confused about where the salsa was actually located at my local Walmart store and may have walked in a few circles.

Unless you're trying to get extra steps in for the day, don't be like me. I'm going to make your life so easy right now. Head directly to the refrigerated section near the bagged salad and salad dressings. It's right there. In retrospect, the location is quite obvious, but apparently, I'm directionally challenged.

Or something...

So what exactly sets Fresh Cravings Salsa apart from other salsa?

Fresh Cravings Salsa is made from fresh, vine-ripened tomatoes and vegetables

It is NOT cooked!

It is not pasteurized.

It is affordable (oh wait, I already said that...)

It tastes authentic. You guys, it's the real deal.

It comes in Restaurant Style (so legit) and Chunky.

Salsa aside, who here loves their Instant Pot?

Confession- this was my second time ever using mine and I have no idea what took me so long! I've had a pressure cooker for years and never really got into it. I think, for that reason, I was so slow to jump on the Instant Pot bandwagon.

But, WHOA! I am on and it feels good! This entire meal, start to finish, took 30 minutes. The rice took the longest and if I had had a second Instant Pot, I would have used it because my mind is blown.

So, if you're ever wondering what to make for dinner one night or need an easy crowd-pleasing meal that doesn't stick you in the kitchen with a million dishes all day, take my advice- scrambled eggs with Fresh Craving Salsa and avocado for dinner and this Instant Pot Shredded Salsa Chicken Tacos for the crowd.

You can thank me later ;)

And don't forget to grab this iBotta offer to earn $1.00 back on your purchase and stock up!

CLICK HERE to learn more about Fresh Cravings Salsa and to find a store located near you!

Instant Pot Shredded Salsa Chicken Tacos with Cilantro Lime Rice

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 11-12 minutes Total Time: 26-30 minutes Yield: approximately 4-5 cups shredded chicken

Ingredients

For the chicken- 2 teaspoons chili powder 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1/2 teaspoon coriander 1-2 teaspoons salt 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper Zest from one large lime 2 teaspoons olive oil 4 large chicken breasts, approximately 2.5 pounds 5 cloves garlic, minced 1 (16 ounce) package Fresh Cravings Salsa, plus more for serving Juice from one large lime 1/2 cup freshly chopped cilantro

For the rice- 2 cups long grain white rice 2 1/2 cups water 1/2 cup fresh lime juice 1 teaspoon salt Zest from 1 lime 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, finely chopped

For the tacos- Flour or corn tortillas Cilantro Lime Rice (see recipe) 1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed Shredded cabbage Red onion, diced Shredded cheese Avocado, seeded and sliced Optional toppings- chopped green onion, cilantro, sliced radish, jalapeño, salsa

Instructions

FOR THE CHICKEN- Instant Pot:

In a medium bowl whisk together the chili powder, cumin, coriander, salt, pepper, and lime zest. Set aside.

Drizzle oil into Instant Pot and add the Chicken. Sprinkle the chicken with the minced garlic and half of the spice mixture. Use large tongs to flip the chicken over. Sprinkle remaining spice mixture over the chicken and pour Fresh Cravings Salsa over the chicken to cover completely. Drizzle with fresh lime juice.

Close lid to the Instant Pot and check to ensure that vent is sealed. If using the Instant Pot Ultra, set to "Ultra" on "High" for 11 minutes (this is the Instant Pot I own). For the more well known Instant Pot, set to "Poulty" and set timer for 13 minutes.

Once the cook cycle has completed, press the quick release button per manufacturer's instructions. Remove lid and allow the chicken to cool for 5 minutes. Remove chicken to a separate bowl and shred as desired (I used a hand mixer and it worked perfectly). Return chicken to the bowl with its juices and season to taste. Sprinkle with cilantro, if desired.

Slow Cooker:

Add ingredients for the chicken to slow cooker and cook on low for 6-7 hours or on high for 4 hours. Remove chicken to a separate bowl and shred as desired (I used a hand mixer and it worked perfectly). Return chicken to the bowl with its juices and season to taste. Sprinkle with cilantro, if desired.

FOR THE RICE-

Add water to a medium saucepan and bring to a low boil. Add fresh lime juice, salt, and rice to the pot. Cover and simmer over low heat until all liquid is absorbed. Remove pot from heat and fluff rice with a fork. Transfer rice to a large bowl and allow it to cool before mixing with fresh lime zest and fresh chopped cilantro.

ASSEMBLE

Build tacos. Start with shredded cabbage, followed by rice, black beans, shredded salsa chicken, cheese, avocado, and SALSA!

Enjoy!

Want to make this recipe but don't’ have a pressure cooker? You can also make this recipe in a slow cooker by following these instructions!

#Instant Pot #Salsa #Chicken #Chili Powder #Lime #Rice #tacos #black beans #cheese #cabbage #red onion #cilantro #Slow Cooker

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hotspreadpage · 6 years

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Scale Your B2B Content with Artificial Intelligence: Ideas and Tools Marketers Can Try

“Same house, right?” The question came via Facebook Messenger from a friend who was coming over for dinner. Under his message appeared two options: yes and no. With one touch of a fingertip, my answer appeared in a blue bubble as if I had typed y-e-s myself.

That experience, a first for me, was so logical, natural, convenient, and simple that I hardly noticed it. An app had recognized my friend’s message as a yes-no question and had presented me with ready-to-use replies. Nothing about the exchange shouted, “Hey! Check it out! Artificial intelligence at work!”

Only after I heard Paul Roetzer’s Content Marketing World talk did I realize that my experience represented exactly that: artificial intelligence at work.

In fact, artificial intelligence is at work all around us. And this “science of making machines smart” (Paul’s favorite definition, which comes from Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind) is beginning to open possibilities for B2B marketers who want to increase efficiency, boost performance, and create a competitive advantage.

If you take away only one thing from this post, let it be Paul’s mantra: “Try it!”

If you take away two things, let the second be “Don’t wait!”

Try #artificialintelligence in your B2B marketing and don’t wait, says @PaulRoetzer. #intelcontent Click To Tweet

This post covers highlights of Paul’s CMWorld talk, Machine-Assisted Narrative: How to Transform and Scale Your B2B Content With Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial intelligence: Part of everyday life

As a marketer, you’ll never have to understand artificial intelligence in depth. “You don’t have to know how it works. That’s irrelevant to you. You just have to know that there are AI-powered tools that do things you weren’t capable of doing before that can now start to inform your strategy,” Paul says.

For the record, he notes that artificial intelligence is an umbrella term for lots of related terms, including machine learning, deep learning, natural-language processing, natural-language generation, computer vision, and image recognition.

Image source

AI is part of everyday life in ways that you may not recognize. Examples:

Photo applications, such as Facebook and Apple Photos, outline people’s faces and prompt you to tag them by name.

Google and other search engines suggest text strings that you might have in mind as you type, and personalize your search returns based on your location and your past online behavior.

Phone and texting apps offer context-appropriate quick replies (like “I’m in a meeting”) for you to tap.

Netflix recommends shows based on your viewing history.

Amazon recommends products based on your buying history.

Online media, such as The Washington Post, recommend articles based on your reading history.

You get it. As Paul puts it, “Your life is already machine-assisted.” Less apparent is that your marketing will be too, Paul says.

How exactly? No one knows yet, but Paul has some ideas. Imagine, for example, you, as a content marketer, set up a system that knows enough about each visitor to surface precisely those nuggets of content from your site that make that person’s day. What would happen to your conversions?

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Cognitive Content Marketing: The Path to a More (Artificially) Intelligent Future

Caveat marketor

Caveat marketor. That could be Latin for best get ready. While no one knows the impact AI will have within marketing, inevitably some jobs will disappear and others will emerge. Knowledge work – your work – will be disrupted, Paul says.

No one knows the impact #AI will have. Some jobs will disappear & others will emerge. @PaulRoetzer Click To Tweet

Some big brands have high expectations of what will come of applying AI to activities that humans are paid to do today. For instance, according to one report Paul points to, Coca-Cola is “ditching flesh and blood creatives in favor of software algorithms in an experiment to see whether AI bots have what it takes to beat their human masters.”

Similarly, in October 2016, the lingerie retailer Cosabella replaced its digital agency with an AI platform named Albert. “It has more than tripled its ROI and increased its customer base by 30%,” as reported in this article in March 2017. The brand claims that it “will never go back to humans.”

.@shopcosabella replaced its digital agency w/ an AI platform & more than tripled its ROI. @CampaignLiveUS Click To Tweet

So yes, caveat. Beware. But don’t panic. Paul suggests looking at the situation this way:

For the foreseeable future, humans are uniquely capable of creative, emotion-based functions. If it’s a task that is data-driven or can be executed by defining a set of rules, a machine will eventually outperform humans at it. All it takes is for someone to have the vision, desire, ability, and funding to build it.

In short, take the initiative to look for ways machines can help marketers do what machines do best, and keep doing the things that humans do best.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Why Automation Is the Future of Content Creation

How to get started

As you review all the possibilities mentioned below, you may be overwhelmed. Where’s a marketer to begin?

Paul’s advice: Pick one use case, a task that eats up a lot of time, some administrative or tactical thing your team hates to do. Assume a tool either exists or is being built that can enhance what you do in that area. Get a basic understanding of what’s possible. What you learn “will give you superpowers that others don’t have,” Paul says.

If you pick a couple of tools and start doing some of these things, no one’s going to understand what you’re doing. It’ll be magic to people in your company. It can be your competitive advantage.

As you read this article, look for an idea that has your name on it – the one thing you’d like to try.

Experiment with #AI to automate your most time-consuming #marketing tasks, says @PaulRoetzer. #intelcontent Click To Tweet

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An AI framework for marketers: The five Ps

Paul, who created the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute about a year ago, has developed a framework of five Ps:

Planning

Production

Personalization

Promotion

Performance

This framework outlines ways that marketers might take advantage of AI today and in the future.

Planning

Planning, the first category of the AI framework, relates to marketing activities like predicting consumer behaviors, defining strategies, prioritizing activities, and determining allocation of resources.

In this area, not much AI technology is available yet.

Topic clusters

One example of AI-supported planning is HubSpot’s ability to build topic clusters (as shown below), which gives content teams a way to discover topics they might want to write more about.

Topic clusters give #content teams a way to discover topics they might want to write more about. @PaulRoetzer Click To Tweet

Image source

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How Topic Modeling Can Strengthen Your SEO and Content Marketing Strategy

Monitoring competitors’ digital footprints

You can support your planning by using tools like Crayon and Pathmatics (shown below), which enable you to monitor the digital footprint of your competitors, giving you information to use when forming your content marketing strategy.

Tools like @Crayon ‏& @Pathmatics enable you to monitor digital footprint of competitors.‏ @PaulRoetzer Click To Tweet

Analyzing content

Marketing planning often involves analyzing content as a basis for making decisions about future content. One free AI tool anyone can use for this purpose is IBM Watson Analytics. You import any dataset – for example, a CSV file – and explore it.

Paul gave IBM Watson Analytics a try. He used BuzzSumo to export analytics data from the previous 12 months on CMI’s website: titles, URLs, total shares, word count, etc. He hit export, cleaned up the spreadsheet a bit (shown below), and imported it into IBM Watson Analytics.

Click to enlarge

“I don’t know how it works, but I know it’s an AI tool,” he says. “I just threw the spreadsheet in there and watched what happened.”

Paul typed in “total_shares,” and Watson Analytics came up with a set of questions that it predicted people might want to ask (shown below).

Click to enlarge

“Instead of me trying to figure out what to do with this data, Watson recommends things to look at, questions to ask of this dataset,” Paul says. “I don’t have to be a data scientist. I don’t have to be an analytics expert.”

From the set of generated questions, Paul picked, “What is the breakdown of total_shares by author_name?” – a question he hadn’t even considered asking. Instantly, Watson Analytics delivered the breakdown in a stunningly simple visual: a bunch of blue boxes, one per author, packed into a big rectangle in order of the number of times that author’s CMI posts have been shared in the past year (shown below).

Click to enlarge

At a glance, Paul could see that nine authors – those whose boxes take up the left half of the big blue rectangle – account for about half of all shares of CMI content. (Whoa … there’s my name, fifth. Thanks, all of you who have shared my posts. And thanks, Watson Analytics, for the rush.)

Paul suggests that content marketers get out of their comfort zones and try tools like BuzzSumo and Watson Analytics to increase their insight into questions like: How are your authors performing? How do your articles perform based on word count? How does your content perform within specific channels?

Content marketers: Use tools like @BuzzSumo & @watsonanalytics to increase insight. @PaulRoetzer Click To Tweet

“I imported a free dataset into a free analytics tool and used AI to help me crunch this,” Paul says. “It’s a simple use case with tools that are readily available to anybody.”

Production

Production, the second category of the AI framework, relates to marketing activities like these: creating, curating, and optimizing content, including blog posts, emails, landing pages, videos, and advertisements.

In this area, “we’re not that far along,” Paul says. Yet he touches on several production-related use cases, as described here.

Curating content

Tools use AI to help people surface the right content to share across a network or to enhance a blog. You may even be using a curation tool – Curata (shown below) or Scoop.it, for example – and not realize that you’re using AI.

Use content curation tools like @curata or @scoopit to surface the right content to share, says @PaulRoetzer. Click To Tweet

Image source: Curata

Writing email subject lines

One new tool – Phrasee – creates email subject lines that can result in more opens, clicks, and conversions than subject lines written by people. This software uses AI to evaluate email content and recommend 10 subject lines based on scores (as shown below) that indicate how each is likely to perform.

Use @phrasee to create email subject lines that can result in more opens & conversions. @PaulRoetzer Click To Tweet

Image source

A company video says that Phrasee “understands the emotions, sentiments, and phrases that resonate with your audience. Your past, present, and future results drive advanced algorithms that generate better subject lines than humans can, all tailored to your brand’s voice.”

Paul urges you to compare how the machine-generated subject lines do against your own in A/B tests. “Try it,” he says. To listen to Paul is to hear those two little words over and over.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Deliver Emails That Will Increase Reach, Impact, and Subscriber Satisfaction

Analyzing text

Tools that analyze text for grammar, sentiment, style, and tone of voice include Acrolinx, Grammarly, and AtomicReach. Acrolinx, which has been doing this kind of AI for enterprise companies since 2004, offers software that integrates into authoring tools and can assess content in multiple languages against organization-specific guidelines.

Use tools like @Acrolinx, @Grammarly, @Atomic_Reach ‏for grammar, sentiment, style & tone. @PaulRoetzer Click To Tweet

Image source

Creating data-driven content

Data-intensive content (based on financial info, analytics, product info, etc.) lends itself to automation. A human creates a template, and machines do all the rest at scale, spitting out updates as often as you please. While fill-in-the-blanks automation isn’t AI – the computer isn’t learning as it goes – Paul includes it in his AI talk as a step in that direction.

Here’s an example of this type of natural-language generation (NLG) as executed using the Automated Insights tool called Wordsmith, which companies in over 50 industries used to generate over 1.5 billion “NLG-powered narratives” – reports, articles, etc. – last year.

Image source

This approach strikes me as a Mad Libs®–type exercise without the “mad.” A number here, a noun there … voilà! Natural-sounding sentences and paragraphs.

Automate your reports Mad Libs® style using @AInsights #Wordsmith, says @MarciaRJohnston via @PaulRoetzer. Click To Tweet

It was this type of automation that inspired Paul in 2012 to dig into the possibilities of AI for marketers. He was attending a conference where the managing editor of The Associated Press and the CEO of Automated Insights were on a panel. They told the story of how The Associated Press had automated its earnings reports using Automated Insights tools. They went from humans writing 300 earnings reports per quarter to machines generating 3,000 reports per quarter.

“I sat there as a content marketer at heart and thought, ‘This could change everything,’” Paul says. “Can you actually write content with machines?”

He took on that question himself. His agency now uses Automated Insights with Google Analytics to automatically generate most of the text for their clients’ website reports. Where his team used to spend eight hours creating each report, it now simply adds insights and recommendations to the generated report, which takes less than an hour. The automated approach has cut analysis and production time by more than 80%.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Content Creation Robots Are Here [Examples]

Recognizing and auto-tagging images

In a tool like Clarifai, an algorithm assesses images – for example, items of apparel – and tells how likely each image is to be one type of thing or another. The example below shows that Clarifai is 97.9% sure that the image is of a turtleneck. As humans work in the background to confirm or correct the machine’s guesses, the machine gets more accurate.

Image source

Personalization

Personalization, the third category of the AI framework, relates to the one-to-one tailoring of people’s experiences through intelligently automated content, such as emails, product recommendations, web content, and augmented-reality and virtual-reality experiences.

Paul calls this the “Amazonification” of content marketing. This is probably where most of the money has gone so far, he says.

Like data-driven content, personalized content doesn’t always qualify as AI. Still, Paul talks about personalization in the context of AI for marketers because automation is a big part of content’s evolution. And personalization sometimes contains elements of AI, with the machine getting smarter on its own without a human telling it how to do it.”

The NBA basketball team Orlando Magic, for example, personalizes some of its emails. The example below shows an email to a season ticket holder who was reselling tickets. It was created and sent by the Wordsmith tool; no human was involved (beyond setting up the rules). Basically, the message says, “Your tickets aren’t going to sell tonight. You can either waste them or trade them in for Magic Money.”

Image source

The personalized emails are “boosting fan engagement and season ticket renewals,” Paul says. Those results spell real money.

Promotion

Promotion, the fourth category of the AI framework, relates to AI for social media. Paul describes it as managing cross-channel and cross-device promotions to drive engagement and actions, including audience targeting, social publishing, and management of digital paid media.

In this area, too, Paul says, not much is happening yet, although a lot of companies are experimenting.

Cortex is one such company. Its software, also called Cortex, makes recommendations for content headed for social media. (Like many of these startups, Cortex comes out of Boston. “MIT has a little bit to do with AI development right now,” Paul says.) This software, according to a company video, helps marketers create the images, text, and videos that “inspire consumers to take action” yielding a 40% to 500% increase in marketing results while saving an average of 8.5 hours per week.

.@meetcortex is a tool that makes recommendations for #content headed for #socialmedia, says @PaulRoetzer. Click To Tweet

Cortex suggests colors, hashtags, keywords, image types, and publication dates and times. You can set it up to make these choices automatically.

Image source

Performance

Performance, the fifth category of the AI framework, relates to marketing activities – activities like turning data into intelligence through automated narratives and insights and then using that intelligence to optimize performance.

Today’s tools are “not very smart yet” when it comes to reporting on performance, but they can answer questions like how was traffic in August.

Paul predicts the tools will get smarter faster, especially since Google has jumped in with its recent release of Google Analytics Solutions. If you have a list of questions you want answered every month, you can set up this tool to ask Google those questions (as shown below) instead of asking a data analyst. “Google’s probably going to tell you better than the data analyst – and instantly,” Paul says.

Image source

While we’re on the subject of AI and performance, think back to Paul’s story, told earlier in this article, of his agency automating its clients’ analytics reports – cutting its analysis and production time by more than 80%, from eight hours to less than an hour per report. Where could you use that kind of boost in performance?

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: The Challenges Facing Tomorrow’s Marketer: 3 Biggest Themes From Intelligent Content Conference

Conclusion

You don’t need an AI algorithm to conclude that Paul’s main message is “Try something now.” The technology may be young, but it’s evolving fast. Don’t wait.

Which AI tools have you and your teams tried? What have you learned?

Here’s an excerpt from Paul’s talk:

youtube

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Should You Trust Artificial Intelligence to Drive Your Content Marketing?

Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

Want to view Paul’s Content Marketing World presentation in full to learn about more tools and examples, and watch more presentations from hundreds of other experts from the 2017 event? Secure your video-on-demand subscription today.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post Scale Your B2B Content with Artificial Intelligence: Ideas and Tools Marketers Can Try appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

Scale Your B2B Content with Artificial Intelligence: Ideas and Tools Marketers Can Try syndicated from http://ift.tt/2maPRjm

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ashleyjacksonblog · 7 years

Text

Chrissy Teigen’s Reaction To John Tweeting But Not Texting Back Is Literally All Of Us

I am a terrible texter. I’m that annoying person who reads your text and completely forgets to respond to it. This wouldn’t be as big of an issue as it currently is if it wasn’t for social media. You see, I can’t pull the “OMG, sorry, just looking at my phone now!” excuse when the person who texted me five hours ago saw the Snapchat story I posted literally four minutes after they texted me. Apparently, John Legend and I share this trait. And Chrissy Teigen could do without it. Don’t believe me? Well, then, let me tell you about Chrissy Teigen’s reaction to John Legend not texting back.

So here’s a little back story for you. Basically, Chrissy Teigen texted her husband, John Legend. I’m not married, but I feel like it’s safe to venture to say that, when you text your spouse, you expect them to respond. So Chrissy, much like other normal humans in relationships, expected her husband to respond. But, alas, he did not. Now, I’m going to go ahead assume that maybe Chrissy just thought John hadn’t checked his phone, and that’s why he didn’t respond. But then, apparently, to her horror (OK, maybe not horror), she opened up Twitter and saw he TWEETED instead of texting her back. RUDE.

Giphy

And, no, the tweet wasn’t even to her. Granted, John did post a well-stated political tweet,

Trump is only consistently loyal to white supremacists and Putin.

Chrissy had a few options here. She could silently fume and be passive aggressive to him the next time he reached out, she could text him again with a screenshot of the tweet to privately call him out, she could call him and leave an angry voicemail, OR she could publicly call him out in front of everyone because she is hilarious and everything to everyone. Luckily for us, she chose the latter.

Oh so you can tweet but not text

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) September 23, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

CALLED THE EFF OUT.

In defense of my boy John, this happens to me all the time. And it SUCKS when someone calls you out for it. It was an honest mistake — you just forgot to respond! And suddenly, you look like a giant dick. Luckily for me, I’m not one of the world’s biggest celebrities, and I usually don’t get called out in front of my millions of loyal fans and followers. But frankly, John should be used to being called out by now.

You see, this isn’t the first time Chrissy has called her man out for neglecting her. In fact, just six short days ago, she also took to Twitter to call him out for not answering his phone. John, literally when will you learn?

@johnlegend hey I'm alive it's fine you don't have to answer your phone I WOULDNT WANT U TO WORRY

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) September 19, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Six years ago, on Sept. 8, 2011, when I was just a mere little freshman in college and Chrissy and John weren’t even married yet, John tried to pull another one of those tweet-without-texting-back maneuvers, and Chrissy put it in terms clear as day: She REALLY doesn’t like it when he does that.

I mean, she literally told him, “I do not appreciate it when you tweet and do not text me back.”

@johnlegend I do not appreciate it when you tweet and do not text me back.

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) September 8, 2011

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The difference 6 years can make between @chrissyteigen and @johnlegend http://pic.twitter.com/NsKA3G4VyA

— Hugh Jassdicc (@ETlHAN) September 24, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Like, COME ON, JOHN. She explicitly warned you six years ago! You also know she’s low-key prepared for literally anything.

I always have a note in my pocket that says "john did it" just in case I'm murdered because I don't want him to remarry #truelove #tips

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) August 30, 2014

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Really, John? You’re really going to mess with the woman who loves you so much, she’ll willingly frame you for murder so you never love anyone else except her?!

Getty Images

My only remaining question here is WHAT was the text he didn’t respond to? Also, what’s it like to text Chrissy Teigen? I feel like she would be hilarious.

Maybe she sent him one of those texts that don’t necessarily warrant a response, like a quick “haha” or a nonchalant “nbd.” Either way, I hope for John’s own sake that he responds to her ASAP. You don’t leave Chrissy hanging like that.

Check out the entire Gen Why series and other videos on Facebook and the Bustle app across Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire TV.

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Check out the “Best of Elite Daily” stream in the Bustle App for more stories just like this!

Subscribe to Elite Daily’s official newsletter, The Edge, for more stories you don’t want to miss.

Chrissy Teigen’s Reaction To John Tweeting But Not Texting Back Is Literally All Of Us

from Meet Positives http://ift.tt/2wTksf8 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Meet Positives

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chadpetersondatingblog · 7 years

Text

Chrissy Teigen’s Reaction To John Tweeting But Not Texting Back Is Literally All Of Us

Giphy

And, no, the tweet wasn’t even to her. Granted, John did post a well-stated political tweet,

Trump is only consistently loyal to white supremacists and Putin.

Oh so you can tweet but not text

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) September 23, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

CALLED THE EFF OUT.

@johnlegend hey I'm alive it's fine you don't have to answer your phone I WOULDNT WANT U TO WORRY

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) September 19, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

I mean, she literally told him, “I do not appreciate it when you tweet and do not text me back.”

@johnlegend I do not appreciate it when you tweet and do not text me back.

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) September 8, 2011

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The difference 6 years can make between @chrissyteigen and @johnlegend http://pic.twitter.com/NsKA3G4VyA

— Hugh Jassdicc (@ETlHAN) September 24, 2017

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Like, COME ON, JOHN. She explicitly warned you six years ago! You also know she’s low-key prepared for literally anything.

I always have a note in my pocket that says "john did it" just in case I'm murdered because I don't want him to remarry #truelove #tips

— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) August 30, 2014

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Really, John? You’re really going to mess with the woman who loves you so much, she’ll willingly frame you for murder so you never love anyone else except her?!

Getty Images

My only remaining question here is WHAT was the text he didn’t respond to? Also, what’s it like to text Chrissy Teigen? I feel like she would be hilarious.

Check out the entire Gen Why series and other videos on Facebook and the Bustle app across Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire TV.

youtube

Check out the “Best of Elite Daily” stream in the Bustle App for more stories just like this!

Subscribe to Elite Daily’s official newsletter, The Edge, for more stories you don’t want to miss.

Chrissy Teigen’s Reaction To John Tweeting But Not Texting Back Is Literally All Of Us

from Meet Positives http://ift.tt/2wTksf8 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Meet Positives

0 notes