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storydays · 3 years

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Season 1, ep3, p2

"Your best friend is a.....polar bear dog." Mako started wearily, before smiling fondly at Neo, who grunted. "Somehow that makes perfect sense, considering." "I'll take that as a compliment, city boy." A few minutes later, they arrived to town square, looking around and didn't see a sign of you or Bolin. Neo stopped near Firelord Zuko's statue from his early days, looked up and barked. "Well, this is Bo's normal hang out spot, and Neo seems to have missed (Y/-" Mako was cut off by Neo running over to the kids playing nearby, licking one of the boys.

Laughing, the kids crowded around him and Naga, who followed her brother, ignoring the two approaching figures behind the two animals. "You guys seen my brother around here today?" Mako called, as the oldest turned towards them. "Perhaps. My memory's a little...foggy. Maybe you can help clear it up." The child sniffed, before holding his hand out. "You're good, Skoochy. A real pro." Mako chuckled, before handing the child a few coins. "Yeah, I've seen him." "When?" demanded the firebender. "About noon." "What was he doing?" A frown came onto Skoochy's face, as he recalled the earlier event. "He was performing some kind of monkey-rat circus, and then..." Turning, the kid held his hand out for more.

Skoochy yelped as a giant water hand picked him up, and brought him face to face with an unimpressed you. Chuckling sheepishly, he grinned at your raised eyebrow. "H-Hey, (Y/F/N)! How you doing?" "Skoochy, take the kids back to the Rosario, and do not come out without Mika." You said sternly, placing the child down and watching them run off. "Hey, come back here!" Mako called, before glaring up at a casual you, Korra laughing at you shrugging carelessly.

"I got a lead on where Bolin is," you jumped down in front of the two, sliding your glider into your holster on your back. "The Triple Threats, the Red Monsoons, the Agni Kais..all the triads are muscling up for something big..." "Meaning there's a turf war brewing, and Bolin's about to get caught right in the middle of it." Mako frowned, rubbing his forehead. "Yup, follow me. I managed to track him down, but it wouldn't hurt to have some backup; let's go."

Hopping onto Neo, you told him to go to the Triad's hideout, waited for Mako to get on, and the three of you take off on the Water Tribe animals, and cross the river, when Naga stopped and starting chasing a small animal. "Wait, Naga!" "That's Pabu!" Korra and Mako said at the same time. "No, Naga, Pabu is a friend, not food." Korra said sternly, as the two bumped noses and Pabu crawled onto Mako's shoulder. "We gotta hurry." reminded the firebender.

*At the hideout*

"Something's not right..there are usually thugs posted out front. We need to be--" Mako trailed off as Korra kicked the door in. Mako deadpanned as you strolled in, hands behind your head, looking around curiously at the trashed hideout. "Bolin? You here?" Mako called, looking around. You sensed Bolin's presence outside, and hurried outside, with water skin arms forming around your arms. You called out to the other two. "I've got visual on them! Let's go!" You realized that following them in plain view wasn't the best idea. "Neo, help Korra and Mako! I'm going solo!"

You veered right heading towards the rooftops, keeping an eye on the van and your surroundings. Mako fired a blast of fire towards the bikes, Korra used her earthbending but the kidnapper jumped over the earth, and another fired two ball traps toward the polar bear dogs, making the animals trip and send the Avatar and firebender to the ground. "Oh man." You stopped chasing Bolin and jumped down to protect Korra and Mako from the incoming enemy.

It was three on one with Korra getting neutralized early in the fight followed by Mako getting knocked down. You stood in front of them protectively, before using your waterbending to make a ice barrier, making the enemies send out canisters of gas and got back on their bikes zooming off.

Korra groaned, Naga helping her stand up, before trying to firebend. "Ugh! I can't bend! I can't bend!" She panicked. "Calm down, Korra." You stated, helping Mako up before Neo cuddled into your back. "It'll wear off. Those guys were chi blockers. They're Amon's henchmen." continued Mako stretched his arm out, as Korra did the same. "Amon? That anti-bending guy with the mask?"

You sat down on Neo's back cross-legged, closed your eyes and began searching for Bolin's spirit. "Yeah, he's the leader of the Equalists." "But what do they want with the Triple Threats?" wondered the Water Tribe girl. "Whatever it is..it can't be good. I can't believe Bolin got himself into this mess. " Mako pinched the bridge of his nose, and sighed in annoyed concern. "Mako, we're going to save your brother, I promise you that." Korra and Mako stared into each other's eyes.

Neither noticed (e/c) eyes staring at them, before their owner smirked. You grabbed Neo's reigns, and coughed. They turned to him. "If you two are done with your romantic stare down.."They sputtered at him as he continued breezily. "I've found Bo again, but we need to go." Mako cleared his throat and hopped onto Neo's back. "Neo, let's go." You urge, heading towards the other side of town.

*timeskip*

You let Neo, Naga and Pabu rest near the warehouse, and threw clothes at Korra and Mako. "Hey, what are these for (Y/N)?" Korra asked, just as Mako asked, "How'd you get our measurements?" You scoff, tying your hair back, and pulling a headband on to hide your arrow. "Please, have you guys met hyper active airbenders? Instead of chasing them, I learned how to take measurements discretely. Anyway, we need those to get in to where they're keeping Bolin." They shrugged and went to go get change.

"You guys go first, and wait for me near the entrance. I'll enter after you guys." You watched as Korra wrapped her arm around Mako. You starred at them, looked at Neo, before laughing at the scene in front of you, your polar bear dog laughing aside you. "O-Okay," you snickered before sobering up. "Wait here for me boy, we'll be back." Neo nudged you, as you adjusted your coat, and heading towards the entrance.

"This is a private event, no one gets in without a invitation." The guard crossed his arm before you showed him a flyer you grabbed from the man in the park. "The revelation is upon us my brother. Enjoy." He stepped aside and let you in. You walked towards Korra and Mako and gasped at the insane of amount of people gathered.

"I knew a lot of people hated benders but I've never seen so many in one place." Mako mumbled. "Okay, Korra, you know what to do. Mako and I will go into the crowd and watch for Bolin. Stay safe." You all nodded, before splitting up. "And now, please welcome your hero, your savior, Amon!" an announcer called out, as said figure rose up from below the stage. You felt tremors running down your back seeing the masked man again.

'I'm not afraid of him. I'm prepared for him this time.' "My quest for equality began many many years ago. When I was a boy, my family and I lived on a small farm. We weren't rich, and none of us were benders. This made us very easy targets for the firebender who extorted my father. One day, my father confronted this man, but when he did, that firebender took my family from me, then he took my face."

Amon turned towards the crowd in front of him. "I've been forced to hide behind a mask, ever since. As you know, the Avatar has recently arrived in Republic City." Suddenly everyone began booing and jeering at the mention of Korra. "And if she were here, she would tell you that bending brings balance to the world, but she is wrong. The only thing bending has brought to the world is suffering."

You clenched your fists at this accusation. "It has been the cause of every war in every era, but that is about to change.I know you've been wondering what this whole 'revelation?' You are about to get your answer." You and Mako looked at each other in concern, before turning back to the stage. "Since the beginning of time, the spirits have acted as guardians of our world, and they haven spoken to me." 'Pfft, what a load of bison crap.' You snickered to yourself.

"They say the Avatar has failed humanity, that's why the spirits have chosen me to usher a new era of balance. They have granted me a power that will make equality a reality--The power to take away a person's bending away.....permanently." You couldn't help but gasp along with the crowd. "T-That's imp-possible. T-This guy is insane!" Mako raised an eyebrow at your stuttering, and wrapped an arm around your shoulders in comfort, like he does with Bolin.

"Now for a demonstration. Please welcome, "Lightning Bolt" Zolt leader of the Triple Triad, and one of the most notorious criminals in Republic City." You watch as said criminal scowled at the crowd. The normals began booing him which resulted him saying back, "Ah, boo yourself!" You laugh at his sarcastic attitude. You watched as other members of the Triple Triad and Bolin be forced to kneel. "There's Bolin." You muttered to Mako. "What's taking Korra so long?" Mako muttered.

"Zolt has amassed a fortune by extorting and abusing non-benders but his reign of terror is about to come to an end. However, in the interest of fairness, I will give Zolt the chance to fight to keep his bending." The two backed up to give each other space, for a proper battle. "You're going to regret doing that, pal." Zolt smirked before they began fighting back and forth with Zolt getting more and more frustrated and finally began shooting lighting at Amon who moved quickly.

Amon grabbed Zolt by the back of his neck, and began doing something to him, you started shivering under Mako's arm. The lightning died down, and a burst of flame came from Zolt's hand, before he collapsed. ' W-what was that?' you thought as Zolt staggered to his feet. "What did you do to me?" he demanded. "Your firebending is gone...forever." Amon turned to the crowd and said strongly: "The era of bending is over. A new era of equality has begun." He raised his fist as the crowd around you begun shifting uncomfortably. "Not yet, (Y/N). We need to wait for Korra." Mako whispered, grabbing your hand stopping you from exposing yourselves. "B-But I can't just sit here and watch these other benders lose--" "I know, but unfortunately we have no choice," he hissed, mentally cursing your need to help others at this moment.

It was at that moment that steam entered the room, causing people to freak out. "Let's go." whispered Mako before you took to the stage, making icicles pop up entrapping Amon and his guards in place. Mako grabbed Bolin while Amon called to you, "You can try and resist all you want (Y/N) but I assure you, you will see things my way." You didn't reply but bended the steam to hide your escape.

You all run into the alleyway, discarding your clothes. But then heard Neo howling in pain and growling aggravation at the Equalists trying to tame him. You were torn between helping your friends, and helping your animal buddy. Then an Equalist slashed Neo with a knife and that was when you made your decision. You used nearby water to push yourself into the air and used the momentum to kick the enemies away and encased them into ice before sending them into the empty building nearby, effectively knocking him out. You exhaled sharply before turning to Neo's whimpering form, and your friends approaching you, from atop of Naga. You pulled water from you emergency pouch and began moving it across the wound.

Neo whinned in annoyance and you hummed in acknowledgement. "Sorry boy, I'm almost done. Are you guys okay?" You asked, not allowing yourself to stop healing. "Yes, we're fine. These two are a little fried but otherwise we're good." Neo licked you and stood up, stretching his leg carefully. Naga nudged him with snout before the two were ready to go. "Bo, you can ride with me." You offered a hand to the weary Earthbender. "Thanks for finding me (Y/N)." he mumbled sleepily, as you all escaped.

*Timeskip*

You walked wearily behind Korra, shaken from what you witnessed. "Thank goodness, I was just about to send out a search party. Are you two all right?" He placed a hand on both of your shoulders. "Mm-mm." "N-No Uncle." You looked over the ledge before jumping down, using the water to soften your fall, and running off to your mother's tree, exhaling heavily. You didn't blink when you felt the air move behind you.

"Uncle, when Amon took away the other's bendings, I felt their pain, surprise, and their sorrow, like nothing I've felt before." You turned around and sunk to your knees, feeling small. He sat next to you, draping his cloak over you. "That is because you are an empath, like your mother. She was connected with the spirits in a similar manner. Perhaps it's best if you talk to your gran-gran about this, try and get your mind back in the right place." You peek at him from under your bangs as Nevermore landed near you, and tilted her head curiously.

"Yeah, maybe."

#legend of korra #lok imagine #legend of korra x reader #male reader x legend of korra #legend of korra imagine

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secretradiobrooklyn · 3 years

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Get In Moses Edition | 2.13.21

Secret Radio | 2.13.21 | Hear it here.

art by Paige, liner notes mostly by Evan, *means Paige

1. Chantal Goya - “Tu m’as trop menti”

From the movie “Masculin feminin,” a DVD we borrowed from Tim. This is the film where Godard was whispering the lines into a headset of the actor, so they were learning their lines literally as they were saying them. This is the opening song. Not particularly Valentine’s Day, in that it’s about lying too much… but still there’s a dissatisfaction that is undeniably a part of French romance.

2. Human League - “(Keep Feeling) Fascination”

Such a square song! But the keys hook is so immortally beautiful, with its crucial warble. The rest of the song is sweetly and innocently ‘80s. It reminds me of being in art class in high school, fully participating in the aesthetic crimes of the era.

3. Marijata - “Break Through” - “Afro-Beat Airways”

Analog Africa is just now releasing a repress of this long sold-out collection. I’d listened to it before, but I guess that was before I knew about Marijata (thanks again, Jeffrey!) because it was a shock to discover a track by one of our very favorite Ghanaian discoveries. So far as I knew, Marijata only released one album of four songs — which is fantastic — and then eventually started backing a guy named Pat Thomas. Those records, unfortunately, are nowhere near as vital and fascinating as their own record. So finding this song was a welcome revelation! I should also say that, no surprise, the whole collection is a banger from front to back, and will definitely show up again on the show.

4. Philippe Katerine (avec Gérard Depardieu) - “Blond”

This strange guy is a kind of joker songwriter in French pop, as far as I can tell. This song is all about what one can get away with if one is blond. He’s a really fascinating character, a tiny bit like Beck maybe, in the sense that he seems to have made a successful career of taking unexpected directions. He’s also an actor, working with Claire Denis (!), Jonathan Demme and Gille Lellouche among many others. He was also in “Gainsbourg - A Heroic Life,” which is an excellent movie that we highly recommend. (We had no idea who he was when we saw it at the St. Louis Film Festival.) Also, he appears to be married to Gérard Depardieu’s daughter, which would seem to explain this particular guest star.

- The Texas Room - “Cielito Lindo”

Several years ago, a producer in St. Louis put together the amazing album known as “The Texas Room,” which brought together immigrants from all over the world who currently lived in St. Louis. That meant Bosnians, Cameroonians, Mexicans, and native-born Americans… including Andy Garces, a fellow Paige went to high school with — His mom was Paige’s voice teacher as a matter of fact — who recorded this strange and excellent version of “Cielito Lindo.” The release party for the album was one of the greatest nights we spent in that or any city, dancing our faces off to all kinds of music. At one point the Bosnians got so excited they took over the room, shouting along and hoisting up their guy in the air. Basil Kincaid did the art for the album, and I think that’s the night we finally met. We have one of his collages on our studio wall right now — right over there!

5. The Modern Lovers - “I’m Straight” *

When we got the current SK van (circa 2015) we were super excited because we could finally bring out other musicians on the road and we could also have folks from other bands that we were out with jump in the van with us for a stretch. That February we were on tour with Jamaican Queens, and our friend Andy Kahn came out with us to play guitar. Not only is Andy a rad musician and great guy to be around, but he was an excellent road DJ. Somehow I made it to 30 without getting into The Modern Lovers (I know, crazy!) Andy has great taste and had a well appointed iPod so he was the official van DJ pretty much right away. He put on this record one day and I just lost it. The thing is, after that I was like “Play ‘Roadrunner’ again!” all the time. When I hear this record I still think of that tour. Andy in the back seat DJing, Ben and Erik jumping in the van to come with to Baltimore, graduating to “truck” in the Holland Tunnel queue, so much snow, host Bentley, “Go cats?”, Aaaaaahhhhh!

6. Frances Carroll & the Coquettes - “Coquette / When I Swing My Stick / Jitterbug Stomp”

I think we learned about this band last year, when Coquettes drummer Viola Smith died at 107 years old (in Costa Mesa, not Silverlake, Paige would like you to know — her bad). The video link below is highly recommended — the whole band swings hard, and the interaction between them and Frances Carroll is well worth the watch. They were considered a curiosity at the time, being an all-female band, and man they could play. Viola Smith in particular had an insanely long career, playing from the 1920s straight through into 2019! She played with Ella Fitzgerald and Chick Webb, and in the original Broadway production of “Cabaret.” Her particular innovation was having two toms at shoulder height, on either side of her head, which she would roll and ricochet shots off. Very cool style, never copied.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFDD_NxtKZ4

7. Pierre Sandwidi - “Boy Cuisinier”

Born Bad Records is one of the world’s coolest record labels, with a huge array of vintage discoveries as well as African albums as well as contemporary pop and noise bands. “Boy Cuisinier” is off Pierre Sandwidi’s album with them. It bears some definite relation to Francis Bebey but takes its own turns just as often. Sandwidi hails from Burkina Faso, known as the Upper Volta when he was growing up. We’re just now learning about him and his scene — I confess I didn’t even know Upper Volta was African; I thought it was Slavic — so I wouldn’t be surprised if some more Voltaic music shows up here soon.

8. Evan Sult avec Tracy Brubeck - “The Cats Won’t Stay In”

Paige’s mom Tracy called while we were in the middle of the show, and they paused to have a conversation about, you know, whatever — the snowstorms, the neighbors, the news. She was on speakerphone so that we could all talk, and eventually I just started taking notes as fast as I could. This is the result. I find it fascinating. That’s Paige singing lead on the Marty Robbins tune.

9. Kil Monnower Alimunna, Grup Hindustanbul - “Tadap Tadap”

Years ago I saw the movie “Monsoon Wedding” by the director Mira Nair. It really stuck with me, particularly the gorgeous opening credits in maroon and orange and sky blue. I was trying to tell Paige about that sequence, so just in case we could catch a glimpse of those colors, we watched the trailer. This song is the soundtrack to the trailer. It’s really an amazing track — so Indian, of course, but with definite Western points of contact, like when it goes to the major chords unexpectedly in the post-chorus, which sounds practically American. And the final outro minute or so is full of delayed, reverbed vocals in a psychedelic style, til it reaches the strange and intoxicating sound that he makes with his voice as the song fades into the distance.

- Martial Solal “New York Herald Tribune” - “A bout de souffle” soundtrack

10. Gillian Hills - “Tut Tut Tut Tut”

Gillian Hills, probably more famous for “Zou Bisou Bisou.” This track is great, listen for those syrupy slides and harmonies. I just learned that she is English, and the music video for this song is definitely shot in Angleterre. Full of famous red phone booths (now famous little free libraries.) When we were doing this week’s show I asked Evan “Is this song too obvious?” He said no, it wasn’t too obvious. If you know why I’m asking, then you know. So is it?

11. Jacques Dutronc “La Compapade”

We’ve been into Jacques Dutronc for many years now, because he’s a brilliant French songwriter and composer. But this one track has been a baffler for many years now. It shows up out of nowhere and sounds like… what? What the hell IS that? Is it African? It sounds African, but — is it? Is it just some strange lark on his part? Paige was apprehensive about playing it on the show, even though we both really enjoy it, because we couldn’t tell if it was somehow demeaning to someone. But eventually I argued that we don’t know what the hell most of the singers are saying in the songs we play, or which cultural taboos they’re transgressing, and the same is true in this case. If it is somehow offensive to anyone, I hope it’s clear that wasn’t our intention. But… I don’t know. I don’t think it is. I think it just comes from a cultural heritage and context that is French in a way Americans cannot understand or appreciate. In any case, it’s an amazing performance and recording!

12. K. Frimpong & His Cubanos Fiestas - Me Da A Ɔnnda”

Research into African rock and styles eventually brought us to K. Frimpong and His Cubanos Fiestas, which has turned out to be a satisfying step into the Ghanaian highlife/Cuban scene. I love the keyboard hooks in this one and the way the patterns just roll on and on with each other like a river, in no hurry but pulled forward by their own currents. He was also a visual artist — his art appeared on the cover of last episode’s Nyame Bekyere album. This was also the first time I’ve encountered the character “Ɔ” in the wild. I have zero idea how it is pronounced.

13. They Might Be Giants - “Birdhouse In Your Soul”

“Not to put too fine a point on it / Say I’m the only bee on your bonnet / Make a little birdhouse in your soul.” I remember when I first realized that was a feeling I was feeling — hoping to build a birdhouse in the soul of another, to be inside one another in a little protected place. The rest of the song is a nerd-rock dream palace I love as much as any other nerd, but the chorus is where I discovered an emotion I hadn’t suspected was there when I first heard and fell for this song and this band in high school (thanks, Jeremy Peterson!).

Paige adds: This song is blowing my mind. I don’t like writing lyrics, my ratio of melodies and harmonies to lyrics way out of whack. Evan brought this song back into our lives this week when Sleepy Kitty was asked what our favorite love songs are on a real radio show. We’ve been listening to it a bunch since Thursday and damn, these lyrics are good. It’s really reminding me that you can write about ANY.THING. Blue Canary in the freakin’ outlet by the light switch. Looking at the lighthouse picture. It’s a clinic. I learned something, and I can go home.

On the original topic, I love thinking of this as a love song. If you hear a love song, it’s a love song. It’s a love song.

14. Sleepy Kitty - “Tu veux ou tu veux pas” *

I took two years of French in high school and missed out junior and senior year because of a scheduling lulu that made 3rd and 4th year French conflict with advanced painting which was the primary reason I was taking French in the first place. I’m still not over it. Years later, I’m at Electropolis (in my memory) and I hear this Brigitte Bardot song on Tim’s excellent sound system and I can understand…most?…some…of it! I fell in love with this song and with French again and started stumbling, scrabbling at it again. We started working up this cover. Thank you Suzie Gilb for helping with the pronunciation. We did a 7” of this song and it’s a rare SK track with me playing trombone on it.

15. The Velvet Underground - “I Love You” *

I don’t really have much to say about this track except that it reminds me of flying to Germany because I got the 5 Disc set with all the extras on it a few days before leaving for a high school foreign exchange program. I was so happy to have those discs to absorb on the long flight, and come to think of it, it really inflected the whole trip.

16. Secret Song - “African Scream Contest”

The genesis of our love for African rock/funk/whatever (if for a moment we don’t count the profoundly influential “Graceland”) is the immortal collection “Legends of Benin,” put out by Analog Africa. As soon as we dug further for our favorites from that collection, we found “African Scream Contest” vols 1 and 2. I was drawn to the second one because it had a killer track by our hero Antoine Dougbé, but eventually spent as much time with the first volume. Both are absolutely fantastic. Part of what I love so much about them is learning how much of an impact James Brown and his band had on African music, which is super apparent throughout these collections and especially this track. The drums and the grunts and the hard stops and the horn blasts — it’s all there.

One of the finest elements of these records is the hidden track at the end, tucked five or so minutes back from the last song. These are often some of the hottest tracks on the album, well worth the wait, and this mystery song is no exception. Unfortunately, though, that means we don’t know who made this track or what it’s called. Oh well — that only makes it cooler!

- Adrian from Brooklyn

17. The Beatles - “Dizzy Miss Lizzy”

We watched “The Beatles: Eight Days a Week” recently (totally worth a watch), and we were struck all over again by how insane their lives must have been at that time. Yes fame, yes sudden fortune, yes global supremacy, yes yes yes — the thing that I can’t get over is the shrieking, and how it wasn’t just present at their shows, it was EVERYWHERE THEY WENT, AT ALL TIMES ON ALL DAYS, EVERY SECOND THEY WERE OUTSIDE. How completely unsettling that must have been, to be the center of that howl, day after day, year after year.

18. The Fall - “Sing! Harpy”

Dedicated to Adrian from Brooklyn and all those young women and men losing their minds over the Beatles so completely that all they could do was shriek, even at shows where the crowd’s sound completely obliterated the sound of the band they so desperately loved and came to hear.

(This is also some of my favorite violin playing in any rock music, right up there with “Boys Keep Swinging” and The Ex’s “State of Shock.” I would LOVE to work with a violinist in this mode.)

19. T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo - “Gnon a Gnon Wa”

So intense! That constant chord strike throughout the song is a kind of high-note drone that we find ourselves drawn to. It kind of reminds me of the sound of a casino, where you walk in and all of the machines are chiming the same note, promising to just take your mind away and keep it safe until you need it again.

- Tommy Guerrero - “El Camino Negro” - “Road to Nowhere”

20. Black Dragons de Porto Novo - “Se Djro” What a slinky number! I love how spare the instrumentation is, but how much power is contained in that one guitar part. This is side A of a 7” put out on Albarika Store, the label that T.P. Orchestre called home for many albums.

21. Helen Nkume and Her Young Timers - “Time” This is (so far) the closest we’ve gotten to reggae on WBFF. I know nothing about the band or the music other than their fantastic name and sound — oh, and the fact that she is known elsewhere as Prophetess Helen Nkume. She appears to be Nigerian, or anyway her record label is. I love the guitar hook on this song, it just sneaks in and steals the show.

22. Anne Sylvestre - “Les Gens Qui Doutent”

23. Parvati Khan - “Jimmi Jimmi Jimmi Aaja Aaja Aaja Re Mere” A lucky find! Someone in one of my Facebook groups posted a video from this album, so I took note and returned later to check it out. This is from an Indian movie called “I’m a Disco Dancer” that looks like a real kooky thrill. The actors appear to have only the vaguest sense of what “disco” might be — or what a guitar might be, for that matter. It kind of looks like someone saw a single photo of a disco night and extrapolated a whole movie from it. Nonetheless, Parvati Khan is entrancing in the song and in the video, and we HAVE to see this movie, with or without subtitles. The smoldering look alone really requires investigation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUdJQSUcK_Y

24. Nancy Sit - “Love Potion #9” * One thing I’ve always known about Evan is that he doesn’t like the song “Love Potion #9.” When we stumbled across this, I thought it was awesome but I didn’t want to make Evan listen to a song he doesn’t like on Valentine’s Day! Evan says this song has little to do with “Love Potion #9” which makes me wonder, Evan, what’s the part you don’t like about “Love Potion #9”?

Evan adds: I honestly can’t remember what my issue with this song was. I swear, it was like… it was around the time of “Melt With You,” which I also found inexplicably irritating (and still do). I suspect now that there was an inept cover version that first steered me wrong… but luckily there’s a strange Chinese version to steer me right again! Oh life.

- Michel Legrand - “Solange’s Song (Instrumental)” - “The Young Ladies of Rocheforte”

25. The Velvet Underground - “I’ll Be Your Mirror” * This is the song that I said was the best love song of the western world on the real radio. I think it’s so beautiful and so adult. I don’t even know if I would have thought of this as love song a few years ago. When first got into the V.U. I thought it was a pretty song – a neat song, but I didn’t really know what it meant, what it could mean. What’s funny is when I think of this song, I have a Lou Reed version in my head – his voice, the harmonies. When I revisited the Max’s Kansas City live version (which as far as I know is the only one besides other more recent live versions and surely what I’m thinking of?) I realized that the version in my head is essentially that one but cleaned up, remastered, different EQ, and as far as I know entirely imagined.

Evan adds: (Paige has been playing this song recently around the apartment. I don’t even have to tell you how lovely it is.)

*p.s. If you want to hear the piece about musicians talking about favorite love songs on KWMU it’s here: https://news.stlpublicradio.org/show/st-louis-on-the-air/2021-02-11/listen-love-songs-to-keep-you-warm-on-cold-winter-nights

Super fun getting to talk about this stuff and in such good company!

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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What’s Behind the Shootings? – The New York Times

Want to get The Morning by email? Here’s the sign-up.

Good morning. A heat wave is pounding the South. Fauci responds to his White House critics. And crime is rising in several major cities.

Gun violence has been rising lately in some of the biggest American cities. It’s happened in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and, perhaps most notably, Minneapolis, the scene of the brutal killing of George Floyd and the intense protests that followed.

The trend raises a question: Is it possible to change the nature of policing in the United States — and to make it less violent, as protesters are demanding — without unleashing other kinds of violence?

Some opponents of police reform say no. Some advocates of police reform claim that the recent crime increase is a meaningless blip.

To make sense of it, I talked with Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist who’s written perhaps the clearest explanation of the great crime decline of the past few decades, a book called “Uneasy Peace.” He offers two main answers:

First, the crime increase is not just statistical noise. It’s real, even if there are sometimes multiple causes, depending on the city. “It is a pattern,” Sharkey said. “When there have been large-scale protests against police, it is pretty clear that some police have stopped doing their jobs, and that’s destabilizing.”

Before this year, the biggest examples were in 2015, in Baltimore and in Ferguson, Mo., where crime also rose after protests. “I worry this is going to be a violent summer in a lot of cities,” Sharkey added.

But a second point is also vital: The rise in violence is not inevitable.

It happens because some police officers respond to criticism by staging a work slowdown — and because the U.S. relies on the police to fulfill so many roles that other civic organizations could accomplish. That reliance also has huge downsides.

“Police are effective at controlling violence, but there are all these costs,” Sharkey said. They include mass incarceration and widespread violence committed by the police, often against Black men.

“But there are alternatives that maintain safe streets without the costs,” says Sharkey, who was previously the scientific director of Crime Lab New York and is now a Princeton professor. “There is now a body of evidence showing these are not just feel-good stories. The effects are very real.”

The alternatives include conflict-resolution counselors, addiction and mental-health programs, summer-jobs and after-school programs and more. The Cure Violence program, in Chicago, New York and elsewhere, is an example. (For more detail, read this 2017 Times article.)

“We’ve asked police departments to be the primary force that responds to many situations,” Sharkey said. That’s not the only option, of course. But when it’s the approach that cities take — and when police then respond to protests by pulling back — violence often does increase.

For more: The Times’s Ashley Southall looks in depth at the recent crime increase in New York.

FOUR MORE BIG STORIES

1. Where the protests haven’t stopped

In Louisville, Ky., protesters continue to hit the streets demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was shot and killed at her home by the police. The Times has put together a visual story about the daily demonstrations.

On Tuesday, 87 demonstrators were arrested and charged with a felony after gathering outside the home of Kentucky’s attorney general to demand action in Taylor’s case. None of the officers involved in the shooting have been charged.

In Minneapolis: Journalists were allowed to watch the police body camera footage from the killing of George Floyd for the first time. In the video, “the officers seemed to be more concerned with controlling his body than saving his life,” Times reporters write.

2. Fauci responds to attacks

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most prominent scientist on the White House coronavirus task force, pressed back against criticism that some Trump administration officials have recently leveled at him. “I cannot figure out in my wildest dreams why they would want to do that,” Fauci said in an interview with The Atlantic. “It’s only reflecting negatively on them.”

Trump aides have criticized Fauci for underplaying the virus, and Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser, has called him “wrong about everything.” In truth, Fauci’s predictions about the virus — and his warning about its seriousness — have proven more accurate than the president’s remarks in recent months.

In Oklahoma: Gov. Kevin Stitt announced yesterday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus, a first for a U.S. governor.

3. A heat wave hits the South

4. U.S. considers barring many Chinese

The Trump administration is considering a sweeping ban on travel to the United States by members of the Chinese Communist Party and their families, The Times’s Paul Mozur and Edward Wong report. About 92 million Chinese citizens belong to the party.

Administration officials have loudly denounced China for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak and its crackdown on Hong Kong.

Elsewhere: TikTok, which is owned by a company based in China, has hired a small army of lobbyists to convince lawmakers of its allegiance to the U.S.

Here’s what else is happening

President Trump demoted his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, last night, in an effort to lift a re-election effort that is trailing in the polls.

Hackers hijacked the Twitter accounts of a number of major figures, including Barack Obama, Kanye West and Bill Gates, and posted messages asking followers to send them Bitcoin. (Unaffected was Trump’s account, which is under a special kind of lock-and-key after past incidents.)

Deadly monsoons across southern Asia have displaced millions of people, destroying homes and drowning villages. Scientists say global warming has increased the frequency of extreme rains that cause flooding.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 87, was released from the hospital yesterday, a day after she was admitted for a possible infection.

Lives Lived: Like Walt Disney, Blaine Kern was an artist, a businessman and a showman all in one. As the designer of innovative and spectacular parade floats, he helped turn Mardi Gras from a New Orleans institution into a worldwide phenomenon. Kern died at 93.

Subscribers help make Times journalism possible. To support our efforts, please consider subscribing today.

PLAY, WATCH, EAT, GARDEN

Get gardening

Gardening makes Samin Nosrat happier. Yanking out weeds, composting for hours at a time and planting seeds have become a kind of solace, “regenerating both the soil and something deep in myself,” she writes.

Green coriander seed — the fresh seed of the cilantro plant — is Nosrat’s favorite thing to grow. Intensely fragrant and slightly citrusy, it can be used interchangeably with cilantro in stews, marinades, dressings and more. Try it in her recipe for corn on the cob with green coriander butter.

For more on gardening: Read the fascinating history of victory gardens in the Times Magazine.

A star director gets her due

Best known for intimate dramas like “Love & Basketball” and “Beyond the Lights,” the director Gina Prince-Bythewood is trying her hand at something new: a summer blockbuster.

Netflix has released “The Old Guard,” starring Charlize Theron, which makes Prince-Bythewood the first Black woman to helm a big-budget comic book movie. Read this interview with her, in which she talked about the perils of the Netflix algorithm, sexism in the film industry and the future of independent films.

The show goes on, at a distance

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. This was supposed to be the week of the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee. But there’s still plenty of politics to talk about. Join several Times reporters — plus Julián Castro — for a conversation today at 5 p.m. Eastern.

You can see today’s print front page here.

Today’s episode of “The Daily” revisits a restaurant owner in Baton Rouge, La., who struggled to decide whether to reopen. On “The Argument,” Times Opinion columnists interview Senator Tammy Duckworth, a potential running mate for Joe Biden.

Ian Prasad Philbrick, Sanam Yar, Gus Wezerek and Lauren Leatherby contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at [email protected].

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ntrending · 5 years

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What avocados and clownfish have in common, sexually speaking

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/what-avocados-and-clownfish-have-in-common-sexually-speaking/

What avocados and clownfish have in common, sexually speaking

Three fuerte avocados, from the Annual Report of the California Avocado Association for 1916 (Internet Archive Book Images/)

I recently learned that avocados change sex daily, and I need you to know about this too. Some avocados spend their mornings as females, then close up their flowers only to re-open as males the following afternoon. Others laze about until the afternoon, when they’re female, then close down for the night and wake up as males the next day. This gender fluidity has some wild implications for avocado farms. But before we get into that: Let’s talk about sex, baby.

Let’s talk about you and me. We are humans, and as humans, we’re mostly born as one of two biological sexes. Most of us are born with either a penis or a vagina, which usually corresponds to having either an X and a Y chromosome or two X’s. Some of us, though, have just one sex chromosome or kick it with three (XXX, XYY, or XXY). A few people are even born XX with just a teensy bit of a Y chromosome that makes them, for the most part, present as outwardly male.

In summary, human sex is way more complex than most people think (and only gets more complicated because of our species’ long history of conflating it with gender identity). But fish—hundreds of species, in fact—turn the whole idea of sex on its head by swapping from one to another with ease. Moon wrasses, a type of fish native to the Indian and western Pacific Oceans, all start off female and become males over the course of 10 days based on a complex dominance system. Other fish simply spend a certain number of years as one sex and then switch as a kind of maturation.

Having this kind of sexual transition is called sequential hermaphroditism, or sequential dichogamy if you’re talking about plants, and it suggests that binaries are far from a rule in nature. Plenty of critters are plain ‘ol hermaphrodites, meaning they’re always able to fulfill either the male or female role in mating, as are the vast majority of plants (most flowers have male and female bits all in one). Those species that do it sequentially are just a little more special.

Here are some more organisms that prove sex is anything but fixed.

Avocados

We hinted at it before, but here’s the whole story: most plants have their sexual organs all in one flower, so that the pollen (think plant sperm) can fall into or onto the stigma, which is a sticky bit at the top of the female reproductive parts. The stigma catches the pollen and starts it on the journey to fertilizing the ovules. Others—like avocados—have some male flowers and some female flowers on the same plant, or have male versus female plant individuals. But avocados go ahead and make it more complicated by only opening one type of flower at a time. Type A plants start off female in the morning, and type B are female in the afternoon (and of course vice versa for their male periods).

Pollinators can still fertilize avocados—they just have to do it over the course of two days rather than minutes or hours. That’s not generally good enough for avocado farmers, though. You may only see Hass avocados in stores, but in the orchard, they’re grown alongside B cultivars. Hass avocados are an A type themselves, which means the flowers are complimentary—you always have male and female open at the same time, just on different trees. This helps the avocado trees to be more productive, even if there’s just a smattering of B types mixed in with the Hass varieties. You can sometimes find them at a farmer’s market with weird names like Bacon, Walter Hole, and Fuerte.

Clownfish

Perhaps the most famous sequential hermaphrodite, clownfish are born exclusively male. That’s because clownfish have a female-dominated society, where the most aggressive female only mates with one male in her little group. When she dies, the breeding male takes her place, and one of the juvenile males goes through a growth spurt to take that vacant spot as consort. Most sequentially hermaphroditic fish start off female and work in the other direction, so clownfish are part of the minority here.

Why bother with this strange conga line of shifting sexes? For one, it massively reduces competition between males. In general, though, biologists aren’t always sure why sequential hermaphroditism evolves. It seems to be evolutionarily helpful to some species, but it’s clearly not so helpful that everyone evolved this way.

Whatever the reason, know that the eventual remake of Finding Nemo should include Marlin’s sexual transition at the beginning of the film. In fact, a lot of those fish should have gone through sex changes. Roughly 500 species of fish are sequentially hermaphroditic, from groupers to wrasses.

Frogs, sometimes

Most of the time, frogs live pretty standard lives, sexually speaking. They’re born male or female and breed in a fairly standard manner.

But sometimes they switch sex partway through life. One 1989 paper documents 7 out of 24 female adult reed frogs becoming male, seemingly without any intervention. Mostly this kind of hermaphroditism in frogs is limited to their juvenile stage, when environmental factors can still impact their sexual development, but there seem to be a few wild cases where some frogs undergo a sudden, unexpected change.

Unfortunately, we also know that atrazine, one of the most widely used pesticides in the world, can also force a shift from male to female. It chemically castrates most of the males exposed to the chemical, but one in ten of them doesn’t just lose their testosterone production—they effectively become female. They can now mate with male members of their species, though because they’re still genetically male they can only produce more male offspring.

A single species of Australian tomato

Solanum plastisexum perplexed researchers for years: it seemed every time they visited out in the Australian Monsoon Tropics, it was a different sex. You can read more here about one plant biologist’s quest to identify this tomato plant’s sex, but suffice to say this nightshade doesn’t limit itself. It switches from female to male to hermaphrodite fluidly (and we applaud it).

Bonus case: butterflies

This one doesn’t quite fit the hermaphroditic bent, but some butterflies—and actually, some birds and crustaceans—can occasionally be born half-male, half-female. It seems to happen when an egg has two nuclei, and thus gets double-fertilized. The embryo that grows from that egg can end up as half of each sex, often split bilaterally down the middle.

In species of butterflies and birds, which often have significant visual differences between the sexes, this can look really wild. Gynandromorphic cardinals are half-red, and butterflies can end up with two different patterns on each wing. We don’t know much of anything about their behavior or reproduction since they’re so rare, but a cardinal found in Illinois in 2008 didn’t seem to sing a song or ever have a mate.

Written By Sara Chodosh

#Environment

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theliterateape · 6 years

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Playing "What If?" Can Save Your Sanity

By Don Hall

“Can I tell you something that you won’t judge me on?”

Always a loaded question. Not hard to answer because he is 22 years old and is looking for some wisdom (not that wisdom is necessarily my forte but with 30 more years of screwing things up than he, I might have something to offer.)

“Sure.”

“I think my girlfriend might be pregnant. It’s kind of freaking me out. I mean, we both have college and she just got started. I don’t want to be selfish but this would destroy my life, you know?”

I take a breath. For him, this is a big one. This is one of those scenarios where his life up to this point meets the potential of life going forward in a game changing way, so I want to be careful and I want to be right.

“What’s the worst possible outcome in this situation? In your view.”

“Huh? Uh... she’s pregnant?”

“No. Dig deeper. What’s worse than that?”

“I don’t know...”

“OK. How about she’s pregnant and you find out that the baby is stricken with some sort of physical malady that will require all sorts of medical assistance to keep alive and a lifetime of care taking even into the child’s adult life. And then your girlfriend dies giving birth.”

“Jesus! That’s dark, man! Fuck...”

“Yeah. What is the likelihood of that specific circumstance happening?”

“I don’t know. Pretty slim, I suppose.”

“What would you do — what actions can you control — if that happened?”

“I don’t understand.”

I explain to him that somewhere down the line I found it helpful in times of massive change or incredible risk to assess the worst possible outcome, make a list of what I could do in that situation, what my options were, make a plan then set it aside. Then go on to the next possible outcome (just slightly less worse) and do the same thing.

In these situations, and we all endure them over and over, the fear of things being out of our control is what causes the most anxiety. Most of life is completely outside of our ability to effect it. A hurricane bearing down on your home. Cancer. A kid getting hammered and plowing into your parked car at 1 a.m. in his mother’s uninsured SUV. A megalomaniacal shitstain of a barely recognizable human getting elected (via the Electoral College) to the highest office in the land. Taxes. And, of course, the daily ticking of the personal demise clock inching you closer to the final curtain.

Sometimes the worst possible outcome happens just as you feared it would, but 99.9 percent of the time it doesn’t. It gives one a sense of controlling those things that are under one’s control to visualize the worst and the next less worst and the next, and then predict those elements in those scenarios one can control.

One thing that is wholly out of our control is the behavior and reactions of other people. We start the process of finding some way to control people by first assuming motivations and biases. Based upon nothing more than a biological sense of stereotyping, a narrative sense that comes mostly from film and television, and a self-centered belief that by fully empathizing with others we can glean some cognizant understanding of why they behave the way they do, we set out to either convince or shame folks into doing what we want. It helps to have an unbendable view of Right and Wrong, Good and Evil, primarily derived from stories that reduce all conflict to that binary. The obvious problem with this approach is, well, life among the sapiens isn’t quite so two-sided. And those who see the world in two opposing sides — Good vs. Evil, Oppressor vs. Oppressed, Dark Side vs. Light Side — are morons and zealots.

Control yourself first. Control your reactions, control which choices are the best strategically, control the things you have a fighting chance controlling. For chrissakes, control your emotions. Don’t throw your fucking tennis racket, resist the temptation to scream at those you disagree with, be a grown up and stop yourself from losing your shit.

Once you start to get a grip on yourself, you begin to see things not in hyperbolic monsoons destroying your ramshackle man-cave but as the passing winds of change. You start to see the Trump administration as a more Monty Python version of the Bush Jr. administration without that messy pre-emptive war. Maybe that Uber driver who asked you out for a drink is not actually an example of rape culture. Perhaps those micro-aggressions are, in fact, micro rather than avatars of white supremacy.

“Well,” I said. “What will you do if she is pregnant?”

“Oh, fuck, Don. Don’t ask me that...”

“I am asking because it’s the question you should be asking. If you take some time and go through things, you might figure out that her being pregnant is not the worst possible outcome. That there are a host of worse outcomes to catalogue. If you get a rough game plan for the cascading horrors of those things worse than your girlfriend getting pregnant, then you can totally get one for that, yes?”

“Yeah. I guess so. You think I’m stupid, huh.”

“Nope. Just young, dude. The dumbest thing I ever believed was that when I was in my twenties I thought I had it figured out. Turns out, I was as much a dipshit as just about everyone else in his or her twenties. But the best possible outcome of getting older is that maybe — maybe — you learn a few things along the way.”

“What’s the worst possible outcome of getting older?”

“Immortality. That or never making any mistakes.”

#outcomes less important than opportunities #fear #control

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ad7803 · 7 years

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new audio transcript very rough:

Previously I’ve mentioned about some extremes of whether that require certain conditions. One of the most dramatic ones, thunderheads.

Thunderhead basically is where warm air meets cold air and it forms very very dense heavy clouds that are absolutely saturated in water they are called cumulous nimbus clouds. Weather conditions that come from those clouds are extreme if you are looking at something like your African plains, Serengeti, things like that, the thunderhead clouds will roll in as a pre curser to monsoon season, rain falls can be up to 12 inches in an hour.

When these thunderheads roll over the tops of things like volcanos, where you’ve got super-heated air meeting super cold air, you get absolutely incredible things. Hail stones the size of golf balls, sheet lightning, there will be fork lightening, the rain will be horrendous. They tend to also cause an awful lot of darkness; the whole landscape will become very very dark. In these sort of situations, a lot of different areas know when to roughly expect them, because they will have these kind of things in certain times of the year, but occasionally other areas that don’t normally get them, they will catch them out completely.

Some parts of America a thunderhead will roll in and hurricanes will follow them, tornados will follow them, whatever whether is coming with thunderhead is not going to be good. They’ll be really violent, but they can also be really beautiful to see. Sometimes thunderheads roll in when you have a sunset behind them and the visual effects are incredible, bright reds and oranges with the lightening streaking through the sky, and hail stones falling, then it will turn to the very heavy heavy rain.

but now going back to where we covered before about tribes and things, your north American Indians, and all your tribes, you’ll have your witch doctors, medicine men people like that, they pretty much know when they’re expecting them[thunderheads] and they will watch the sky for a build in the clouds and then when they know that the thunderheads are due that’s when the residencies will send their men out to do their rain dances because you know the medicine men wants to be sending out the warriors for a rain dance and no rain come because he needs to be the big one that is shown as being all knowledge and knows everything about what’s gonna happen so he will get his rain will come which will reinforce him as being the biggest the best that has ever been

You do get other freak whether conditions but the thunder heads will come along with um over large expanses of water it’s a slightly different thing because it is water that has been picked up off the sea and that has waterlogged the clouds as opposed to it being a pure heat thing where you’ve got the ? ? of the wind the actual water vapours has spun into theses clouds these clouds almost look solid they don’t actually look like they are clouds they look like a solid object some pictures of thunderclouds almost look like mushroom cloud that come off an atomic bomb That should give you some idea of the force of these things come in

Natural geysers and volcanos produced the absolutely most fantastic and that’s because the volume of heat coming up from bottom to meet the cold air up at the top um all your, your desserts and planes and things like that there thunderheads are good because the sun has heated the ground to really high temperature So the thunderheads will be different and over waterlogged areas they will also be darker if they’re over the seas but they can cause massive waves in the sea where they’re towering 10 12 feet high um and Ultimately big enough thunderheads will arrive with your horrible stuff like your tsunamis because they’ll have helped to push it all along the direct force of the thunderhead will hit the land or will hit the sea and it will cause all kinds of things 9 times out of 10 um earthquakes and things like that will of been accompanied by thunderheads the big um flood with new Orleans that was thunderheads but thunderheads normally don’t last very long but because they lasted for a matter of days the water that came through Orleans, new Orleans had no choice they absolutely flooded through lots of people died pure devastation typhoon come along with them basically your thunderheads is 0 our way knowing that the worst whether on planets is about to happen so if you see something like that you need to take cover

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