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Asira – As Ink in Water Review
By Killjoy
I get the sense that the members of Asira are particularly meticulous. The last time we heard from this post/prog group from Reading, UK was back in 2017. In his review of their debut album, Efference, El Cuervo asserted that Asira was on the cusp of being the next Big Deal. Just four months later, he decided that they already were, invoking Contrite Metal Guy powers to amend Efference’s score from 3.5 to 4.5 (a Big Deal, indeed!). Perhaps Asira felt some pressure, because they took their time to craft the best possible follow-up. As Ink in Water is an effervescent opus about the breadth and depth of human emotion, it was worth the wait.
One way that Asira describes their music is “gold-tinged black metal,”1 but I would be more inclined to call it black-tinged gold metal. As Ink in Water is resplendent in like manner to Deadly Carnage’s Endless Blue, both of which are buoyed by similarly soaring vocals. Jack Reynolds has some of the best cleans in the business, harmonizing neatly with Martin and Lydia Williams when the occasion calls for it. The smooth, invigorating guitars have carried over from Efference, particularly during the more tranquil moments, but most vestiges of blackgaze have evaporated. The remaining black metal influence on As Ink in Water comes when the vocals sometimes switch to sharp rasps. In less scrupulous hands, these opposites could have easily clashed unpleasantly.
Luckily, Asira has an incredibly strong mastery of the art of contrast. The verses of “Cauterise” are commanded by wild blast beats and furious growls, yet they willingly give way to the glowing, clean-sung choruses like the night yielding to the rising sun. Speaking of which, “In Sunrise” is, in my estimation, the crown jewel of As Ink in Water. While mainly consisting of bright guitar arpeggios and infectious melodies, the juxtaposition of Reynolds’ snarls and Lydia Williams’ soprano at the midpoint is chill-inducing. This polarity also exists between the individual songs; the fact that the aggression of “Cauterise” and the tenderness of “Clarity” can sound like they belong on the same record is a testament to Asira’s skill as songwriters.
It’s clear that Asira put a great deal of thought and care into the compositions of As Ink in Water. El Cuervo’s wish for less repetition and more variety in the quieter parts of Efference has been granted. No matter the intensity, the songs never stall or stop moving forward. Even those that appear unassuming on the surface manifest important details upon closer listening, such as the delicate bass grooves in “Clarity” or the deliberate arrangement of backing vocals in “Still.” These songs might require a bit more patience than the others, but they are just as important to the overall canvas of color. The only tracks that don’t add much are the twin interludes, “Descent” and “Ascent,” though at just one minute apiece, this is easy to forgive.
Asira has fashioned a truly unique and heartwarming work of art that defies easy description. As the title of As Ink in Water implies, the light and dark elements may seem disparate at first, but over time, they mix perfectly together. Asira set out to portray the universal human experiences of “anxiety, grief, fury, compassion, and healing,” all of which can easily be both heard and felt. I find myself emotionally invested in As Ink in Water to the point where multiple 11-minute songs seem to vanish in the blink of an eye. Although this year is getting late, I feel confident that this special record will stick with me into and beyond the next.
Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: PCM
Label: Self-Release
Websites: asira.bandcamp.com | asira-band.com | facebook.com/asirauk
Releases Worldwide: November 14th, 2025#2025 #40 #asInkInWater #asira #blackMetal #britishMetal #deadlyCarnage #nov25 #postRock #progressiveMetal #progressiveRock #review #reviews #selfRelease
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Asira – As Ink in Water Review
By Killjoy
I get the sense that the members of Asira are particularly meticulous. The last time we heard from this post/prog group from Reading, UK was back in 2017. In his review of their debut album, Efference, El Cuervo asserted that Asira was on the cusp of being the next Big Deal. Just four months later, he decided that they already were, invoking Contrite Metal Guy powers to amend Efference’s score from 3.5 to 4.5 (a Big Deal, indeed!). Perhaps Asira felt some pressure, because they took their time to craft the best possible follow-up. As Ink in Water is an effervescent opus about the breadth and depth of human emotion, it was worth the wait.
One way that Asira describes their music is “gold-tinged black metal,”1 but I would be more inclined to call it black-tinged gold metal. As Ink in Water is resplendent in like manner to Deadly Carnage’s Endless Blue, both of which are buoyed by similarly soaring vocals. Jack Reynolds has some of the best cleans in the business, harmonizing neatly with Martin and Lydia Williams when the occasion calls for it. The smooth, invigorating guitars have carried over from Efference, particularly during the more tranquil moments, but most vestiges of blackgaze have evaporated. The remaining black metal influence on As Ink in Water comes when the vocals sometimes switch to sharp rasps. In less scrupulous hands, these opposites could have easily clashed unpleasantly.
Luckily, Asira has an incredibly strong mastery of the art of contrast. The verses of “Cauterise” are commanded by wild blast beats and furious growls, yet they willingly give way to the glowing, clean-sung choruses like the night yielding to the rising sun. Speaking of which, “In Sunrise” is, in my estimation, the crown jewel of As Ink in Water. While mainly consisting of bright guitar arpeggios and infectious melodies, the juxtaposition of Reynolds’ snarls and Lydia Williams’ soprano at the midpoint is chill-inducing. This polarity also exists between the individual songs; the fact that the aggression of “Cauterise” and the tenderness of “Clarity” can sound like they belong on the same record is a testament to Asira’s skill as songwriters.
It’s clear that Asira put a great deal of thought and care into the compositions of As Ink in Water. El Cuervo’s wish for less repetition and more variety in the quieter parts of Efference has been granted. No matter the intensity, the songs never stall or stop moving forward. Even those that appear unassuming on the surface manifest important details upon closer listening, such as the delicate bass grooves in “Clarity” or the deliberate arrangement of backing vocals in “Still.” These songs might require a bit more patience than the others, but they are just as important to the overall canvas of color. The only tracks that don’t add much are the twin interludes, “Descent” and “Ascent,” though at just one minute apiece, this is easy to forgive.
Asira has fashioned a truly unique and heartwarming work of art that defies easy description. As the title of As Ink in Water implies, the light and dark elements may seem disparate at first, but over time, they mix perfectly together. Asira set out to portray the universal human experiences of “anxiety, grief, fury, compassion, and healing,” all of which can easily be both heard and felt. I find myself emotionally invested in As Ink in Water to the point where multiple 11-minute songs seem to vanish in the blink of an eye. Although this year is getting late, I feel confident that this special record will stick with me into and beyond the next.
Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: PCM
Label: Self-Release
Websites: asira.bandcamp.com | asira-band.com | facebook.com/asirauk
Releases Worldwide: November 14th, 2025#2025 #40 #asInkInWater #asira #blackMetal #britishMetal #deadlyCarnage #nov25 #postRock #progressiveMetal #progressiveRock #review #reviews #selfRelease
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Asira – As Ink in Water Review
By Killjoy
I get the sense that the members of Asira are particularly meticulous. The last time we heard from this post/prog group from Reading, UK was back in 2017. In his review of their debut album, Efference, El Cuervo asserted that Asira was on the cusp of being the next Big Deal. Just four months later, he decided that they already were, invoking Contrite Metal Guy powers to amend Efference’s score from 3.5 to 4.5 (a Big Deal, indeed!). Perhaps Asira felt some pressure, because they took their time to craft the best possible follow-up. As Ink in Water is an effervescent opus about the breadth and depth of human emotion, it was worth the wait.
One way that Asira describes their music is “gold-tinged black metal,”1 but I would be more inclined to call it black-tinged gold metal. As Ink in Water is resplendent in like manner to Deadly Carnage’s Endless Blue, both of which are buoyed by similarly soaring vocals. Jack Reynolds has some of the best cleans in the business, harmonizing neatly with Martin and Lydia Williams when the occasion calls for it. The smooth, invigorating guitars have carried over from Efference, particularly during the more tranquil moments, but most vestiges of blackgaze have evaporated. The remaining black metal influence on As Ink in Water comes when the vocals sometimes switch to sharp rasps. In less scrupulous hands, these opposites could have easily clashed unpleasantly.
Luckily, Asira has an incredibly strong mastery of the art of contrast. The verses of “Cauterise” are commanded by wild blast beats and furious growls, yet they willingly give way to the glowing, clean-sung choruses like the night yielding to the rising sun. Speaking of which, “In Sunrise” is, in my estimation, the crown jewel of As Ink in Water. While mainly consisting of bright guitar arpeggios and infectious melodies, the juxtaposition of Reynolds’ snarls and Lydia Williams’ soprano at the midpoint is chill-inducing. This polarity also exists between the individual songs; the fact that the aggression of “Cauterise” and the tenderness of “Clarity” can sound like they belong on the same record is a testament to Asira’s skill as songwriters.
It’s clear that Asira put a great deal of thought and care into the compositions of As Ink in Water. El Cuervo’s wish for less repetition and more variety in the quieter parts of Efference has been granted. No matter the intensity, the songs never stall or stop moving forward. Even those that appear unassuming on the surface manifest important details upon closer listening, such as the delicate bass grooves in “Clarity” or the deliberate arrangement of backing vocals in “Still.” These songs might require a bit more patience than the others, but they are just as important to the overall canvas of color. The only tracks that don’t add much are the twin interludes, “Descent” and “Ascent,” though at just one minute apiece, this is easy to forgive.
Asira has fashioned a truly unique and heartwarming work of art that defies easy description. As the title of As Ink in Water implies, the light and dark elements may seem disparate at first, but over time, they mix perfectly together. Asira set out to portray the universal human experiences of “anxiety, grief, fury, compassion, and healing,” all of which can easily be both heard and felt. I find myself emotionally invested in As Ink in Water to the point where multiple 11-minute songs seem to vanish in the blink of an eye. Although this year is getting late, I feel confident that this special record will stick with me into and beyond the next.
Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: PCM
Label: Self-Release
Websites: asira.bandcamp.com | asira-band.com | facebook.com/asirauk
Releases Worldwide: November 14th, 2025#2025 #40 #asInkInWater #asira #blackMetal #britishMetal #deadlyCarnage #nov25 #postRock #progressiveMetal #progressiveRock #review #reviews #selfRelease
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Quick Review: Dendera – Mask of Lies
Due to the pressures of "real life" (exam marking, coursework, etc.) I've fallen behind on reviewing quite a few releases that you really need to know about. On the cusp of its release, here's a very brief rundown of what's just about to arrive from British metal stalwarts Dendera.
Their 2013 release The Killing Floor still rat
https://www.moshville.co.uk/reviews/album-review/2024/06/quick-review-dendera-mask-of-lies/
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Excited to share that I'll be speaking at #SatRdays London on April 27th!🎉📊🌟
Join me for an engaging discussion on R, Quarto, LaTeX, and Typst! Huge thanks to @jumpingrivers, CUSP London and @RConsortium for making this event possible.
Can't wait to connect with fellow data enthusiasts and share knowledge at this amazing event!🧠 See you there!
Reserve your tickets now 🎟👇
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/satrdays-london-2024-registration-758588196717 -
Excited to share that I'll be speaking at #SatRdays London on April 27th!🎉📊🌟
Join me for an engaging discussion on R, Quarto, LaTeX, and Typst! Huge thanks to @jumpingrivers, CUSP London and @RConsortium for making this event possible.
Can't wait to connect with fellow data enthusiasts and share knowledge at this amazing event!🧠 See you there!
Reserve your tickets now 🎟👇
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/satrdays-london-2024-registration-758588196717 -
Excited to share that I'll be speaking at #SatRdays London on April 27th!🎉📊🌟
Join me for an engaging discussion on R, Quarto, LaTeX, and Typst! Huge thanks to @jumpingrivers, CUSP London and @RConsortium for making this event possible.
Can't wait to connect with fellow data enthusiasts and share knowledge at this amazing event!🧠 See you there!
Reserve your tickets now 🎟👇
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/satrdays-london-2024-registration-758588196717 -
Excited to share that I'll be speaking at #SatRdays London on April 27th!🎉📊🌟
Join me for an engaging discussion on R, Quarto, LaTeX, and Typst! Huge thanks to @jumpingrivers, CUSP London and @RConsortium for making this event possible.
Can't wait to connect with fellow data enthusiasts and share knowledge at this amazing event!🧠 See you there!
Reserve your tickets now 🎟👇
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/satrdays-london-2024-registration-758588196717 -
I can remember when I was a child listening to my sister Grace playing Fur Elise on the piano in our family’s front room, and I was so impressed. I also recall that two of my sisters and I all sang in the Hayes Girls Choir under the directorship of Mr. Brian Trant. We didn’t realize then that we were on the cusp of a new musical generation. As we were learning to sight-read music and to play musical instruments, the world was moving on to music recorded electronically.
Kimball Upright Piano via Pinterest.caWe lived in the same town as Electronic Musical Industries (EMI) which was about to change everyone’s perception of how music was made. It was going to be made in studios, recorded on vinyl, and purchased in record stores. Our corporate neighbour unknowingly helped in the demise of our family’s cautious ventures into music-making.
The singers in my family never stopped singing, but none of us continued to play musical instruments after a year or two. We all enjoyed listening to music on the radio, which then was primarily via the BBC. That entertainment was all-inclusive. It gave us information, discussion, comedy, music, drama, and news, all without anyone needing to find new apps. Their music was eclectic, too. Through the BBC I listened to classical music, show tunes, opera, pop songs, and humorous musical hall ditties.
Music Notes via RawPixel.comWhen I was in my teenage years, music took a new stylistic turn. The BBC wasn’t ready for competition and was slow to take on board the evolving approaches. Consequently, the new music found alternative resources in off-shore vessels that were close enough to the UK to broadcast to most of the country. Radio Caroline, Tony Blackburn, Dave Lee Travers, and others opened up to me and to the rest of Britain a whole new world of music. Through pirate radio I heard more rock n’ roll, more rhythm and blues, more saucy language, and more regional accents than I ever heard on the BBC.
Cassette Tape via PickPik.comSince then, I have tried to keep up with multiple technological changes. The vinyl collection was supplemented and overtaken by an audiotape collection, which then became an Apple iPod Nano collection, and then a CD collection. The CD collection became an iTunes collection, and the iTunes collection became an Apple Music collection, so that now I seem to be paying monthly for the privilege of listening to albums I have already paid for.
I still have a CD player, but very few CDs. I no longer have a record player or vinyl records, but I do have most of my favourite albums on iTunes/Apple via my laptop. I even kept the iPod Nano because it was the best, but it no longer works. Recently, I subscribed to Spotify because it provides an easy two hours of music they think I might like. I find, though, that I don’t listen to any of those technologies much these days. Where once there was always music in my background, now there is often silence, sometimes audiobooks, and regularly television. But the music is mostly gone, and I miss it.
You are probably wondering why I don’t just play the music I have saved on iTunes or the music that the Spotify algorithm chooses for me, and I wonder why, too. It just doesn’t seem the same. Part of me wants to go back to the days when I had only one channel and it provided me with all kinds of different music whether I liked it or not. In those days I thought it would be great to be able to listen only to my preferred sounds, but now I realize I was wrong.
I have gone from listening to the BBC’s wide and deep variety, through genre-specific broadcasting, through algorithms that think they know me, to days without any music at all. I’m sure there is an answer to this dilemma, but for now I’m just remembering how good it used to feel to live with all sorts of music occupying part of my mind most of the time.
https://snowbirdofparadise.com/2023/11/12/once-i-listened-to-music/
#audioTapes #BBC #CDs #choir #EMI #iPodNano #music #pirateRadio #technology #uprightPiano #vinylAlbums
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I can remember when I was a child listening to my sister Grace playing Fur Elise on the piano in our family’s front room, and I was so impressed. I also recall that two of my sisters and I all sang in the Hayes Girls Choir under the directorship of Mr. Brian Trant. We didn’t realize then that we were on the cusp of a new musical generation. As we were learning to sight-read music and to play musical instruments, the world was moving on to music recorded electronically.
Kimball Upright Piano via Pinterest.caWe lived in the same town as Electronic Musical Industries (EMI) which was about to change everyone’s perception of how music was made. It was going to be made in studios, recorded on vinyl, and purchased in record stores. Our corporate neighbour unknowingly helped in the demise of our family’s cautious ventures into music-making.
The singers in my family never stopped singing, but none of us continued to play musical instruments after a year or two. We all enjoyed listening to music on the radio, which then was primarily via the BBC. That entertainment was all-inclusive. It gave us information, discussion, comedy, music, drama, and news, all without anyone needing to find new apps. Their music was eclectic, too. Through the BBC I listened to classical music, show tunes, opera, pop songs, and humorous musical hall ditties.
Music Notes via RawPixel.comWhen I was in my teenage years, music took a new stylistic turn. The BBC wasn’t ready for competition and was slow to take on board the evolving approaches. Consequently, the new music found alternative resources in off-shore vessels that were close enough to the UK to broadcast to most of the country. Radio Caroline, Tony Blackburn, Dave Lee Travers, and others opened up to me and to the rest of Britain a whole new world of music. Through pirate radio I heard more rock n’ roll, more rhythm and blues, more saucy language, and more regional accents than I ever heard on the BBC.
Cassette Tape via PickPik.comSince then, I have tried to keep up with multiple technological changes. The vinyl collection was supplemented and overtaken by an audiotape collection, which then became an Apple iPod Nano collection, and then a CD collection. The CD collection became an iTunes collection, and the iTunes collection became an Apple Music collection, so that now I seem to be paying monthly for the privilege of listening to albums I have already paid for.
I still have a CD player, but very few CDs. I no longer have a record player or vinyl records, but I do have most of my favourite albums on iTunes/Apple via my laptop. I even kept the iPod Nano because it was the best, but it no longer works. Recently, I subscribed to Spotify because it provides an easy two hours of music they think I might like. I find, though, that I don’t listen to any of those technologies much these days. Where once there was always music in my background, now there is often silence, sometimes audiobooks, and regularly television. But the music is mostly gone, and I miss it.
You are probably wondering why I don’t just play the music I have saved on iTunes or the music that the Spotify algorithm chooses for me, and I wonder why, too. It just doesn’t seem the same. Part of me wants to go back to the days when I had only one channel and it provided me with all kinds of different music whether I liked it or not. In those days I thought it would be great to be able to listen only to my preferred sounds, but now I realize I was wrong.
I have gone from listening to the BBC’s wide and deep variety, through genre-specific broadcasting, through algorithms that think they know me, to days without any music at all. I’m sure there is an answer to this dilemma, but for now I’m just remembering how good it used to feel to live with all sorts of music occupying part of my mind most of the time.
https://snowbirdofparadise.com/2023/11/12/once-i-listened-to-music/
#audioTapes #BBC #CDs #choir #EMI #iPodNano #music #pirateRadio #technology #uprightPiano #vinylAlbums
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I can remember when I was a child listening to my sister Grace playing Fur Elise on the piano in our family’s front room, and I was so impressed. I also recall that two of my sisters and I all sang in the Hayes Girls Choir under the directorship of Mr. Brian Trant. We didn’t realize then that we were on the cusp of a new musical generation. As we were learning to sight-read music and to play musical instruments, the world was moving on to music recorded electronically.
Kimball Upright Piano via Pinterest.caWe lived in the same town as Electronic Musical Industries (EMI) which was about to change everyone’s perception of how music was made. It was going to be made in studios, recorded on vinyl, and purchased in record stores. Our corporate neighbour unknowingly helped in the demise of our family’s cautious ventures into music-making.
The singers in my family never stopped singing, but none of us continued to play musical instruments after a year or two. We all enjoyed listening to music on the radio, which then was primarily via the BBC. That entertainment was all-inclusive. It gave us information, discussion, comedy, music, drama, and news, all without anyone needing to find new apps. Their music was eclectic, too. Through the BBC I listened to classical music, show tunes, opera, pop songs, and humorous musical hall ditties.
Music Notes via RawPixel.comWhen I was in my teenage years, music took a new stylistic turn. The BBC wasn’t ready for competition and was slow to take on board the evolving approaches. Consequently, the new music found alternative resources in off-shore vessels that were close enough to the UK to broadcast to most of the country. Radio Caroline, Tony Blackburn, Dave Lee Travers, and others opened up to me and to the rest of Britain a whole new world of music. Through pirate radio I heard more rock n’ roll, more rhythm and blues, more saucy language, and more regional accents than I ever heard on the BBC.
Cassette Tape via PickPik.comSince then, I have tried to keep up with multiple technological changes. The vinyl collection was supplemented and overtaken by an audiotape collection, which then became an Apple iPod Nano collection, and then a CD collection. The CD collection became an iTunes collection, and the iTunes collection became an Apple Music collection, so that now I seem to be paying monthly for the privilege of listening to albums I have already paid for.
I still have a CD player, but very few CDs. I no longer have a record player or vinyl records, but I do have most of my favourite albums on iTunes/Apple via my laptop. I even kept the iPod Nano because it was the best, but it no longer works. Recently, I subscribed to Spotify because it provides an easy two hours of music they think I might like. I find, though, that I don’t listen to any of those technologies much these days. Where once there was always music in my background, now there is often silence, sometimes audiobooks, and regularly television. But the music is mostly gone, and I miss it.
You are probably wondering why I don’t just play the music I have saved on iTunes or the music that the Spotify algorithm chooses for me, and I wonder why, too. It just doesn’t seem the same. Part of me wants to go back to the days when I had only one channel and it provided me with all kinds of different music whether I liked it or not. In those days I thought it would be great to be able to listen only to my preferred sounds, but now I realize I was wrong.
I have gone from listening to the BBC’s wide and deep variety, through genre-specific broadcasting, through algorithms that think they know me, to days without any music at all. I’m sure there is an answer to this dilemma, but for now I’m just remembering how good it used to feel to live with all sorts of music occupying part of my mind most of the time.
https://snowbirdofparadise.com/2023/11/12/once-i-listened-to-music/
#audioTapes #BBC #CDs #choir #EMI #iPodNano #music #pirateRadio #technology #uprightPiano #vinylAlbums
-
I can remember when I was a child listening to my sister Grace playing Fur Elise on the piano in our family’s front room, and I was so impressed. I also recall that two of my sisters and I all sang in the Hayes Girls Choir under the directorship of Mr. Brian Trant. We didn’t realize then that we were on the cusp of a new musical generation. As we were learning to sight-read music and to play musical instruments, the world was moving on to music recorded electronically.
Kimball Upright Piano via Pinterest.caWe lived in the same town as Electronic Musical Industries (EMI) which was about to change everyone’s perception of how music was made. It was going to be made in studios, recorded on vinyl, and purchased in record stores. Our corporate neighbour unknowingly helped in the demise of our family’s cautious ventures into music-making.
The singers in my family never stopped singing, but none of us continued to play musical instruments after a year or two. We all enjoyed listening to music on the radio, which then was primarily via the BBC. That entertainment was all-inclusive. It gave us information, discussion, comedy, music, drama, and news, all without anyone needing to find new apps. Their music was eclectic, too. Through the BBC I listened to classical music, show tunes, opera, pop songs, and humorous musical hall ditties.
Music Notes via RawPixel.comWhen I was in my teenage years, music took a new stylistic turn. The BBC wasn’t ready for competition and was slow to take on board the evolving approaches. Consequently, the new music found alternative resources in off-shore vessels that were close enough to the UK to broadcast to most of the country. Radio Caroline, Tony Blackburn, Dave Lee Travers, and others opened up to me and to the rest of Britain a whole new world of music. Through pirate radio I heard more rock n’ roll, more rhythm and blues, more saucy language, and more regional accents than I ever heard on the BBC.
Cassette Tape via PickPik.comSince then, I have tried to keep up with multiple technological changes. The vinyl collection was supplemented and overtaken by an audiotape collection, which then became an Apple iPod Nano collection, and then a CD collection. The CD collection became an iTunes collection, and the iTunes collection became an Apple Music collection, so that now I seem to be paying monthly for the privilege of listening to albums I have already paid for.
I still have a CD player, but very few CDs. I no longer have a record player or vinyl records, but I do have most of my favourite albums on iTunes/Apple via my laptop. I even kept the iPod Nano because it was the best, but it no longer works. Recently, I subscribed to Spotify because it provides an easy two hours of music they think I might like. I find, though, that I don’t listen to any of those technologies much these days. Where once there was always music in my background, now there is often silence, sometimes audiobooks, and regularly television. But the music is mostly gone, and I miss it.
You are probably wondering why I don’t just play the music I have saved on iTunes or the music that the Spotify algorithm chooses for me, and I wonder why, too. It just doesn’t seem the same. Part of me wants to go back to the days when I had only one channel and it provided me with all kinds of different music whether I liked it or not. In those days I thought it would be great to be able to listen only to my preferred sounds, but now I realize I was wrong.
I have gone from listening to the BBC’s wide and deep variety, through genre-specific broadcasting, through algorithms that think they know me, to days without any music at all. I’m sure there is an answer to this dilemma, but for now I’m just remembering how good it used to feel to live with all sorts of music occupying part of my mind most of the time.
https://snowbirdofparadise.com/2023/11/12/once-i-listened-to-music/
#audioTapes #BBC #CDs #choir #EMI #iPodNano #music #pirateRadio #technology #uprightPiano #vinylAlbums
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Ba’al – The Fine Line between Heaven and Here Review
By Angry Metal Guy
By: Nameless_n00b_605
Post-anything is a tough genre to pin down. Does the music eschew genre trappings, rightfully identifying as post in the way it challenges previous norms? Or does it draw from the well that identifies as post, infusing itself with spacey tremolo riffs, heavy atmosphere, and lengthy, non-traditional tracks? If the Sheffield UK post-metallers Ba’al have anything to say, it is the latter. Ba’al showcases some real talent and variety with epic song structures and quality attempts at sampling numerous genres throughout this LP. But, with The Fine Line between Heaven and Here, I ask myself after each track, if variety is the spice of life, why does this album end up sounding so predictable?
Ba’al as a unit is impressive. Nick Gosling’s guitar work is superb, deftly switching genres on the fly, and there is skill to Ba’al’s ability to be a chameleon. Joe Stamp’s vocals are equally agile, as he seamlessly transitions from throat-searing black metal screeches to raspy death metal howls, all while infusing the more emotive elements of the album with heart. Each of these is served well by The Fine Line between Heaven and Here’s production, allowing the post-rock interludes to breathe while the massive riffs hit hard. My only real qualm is that the lovely bass that is present on their previous LP Ellipsism, is hiding away beside standout moments such as on “The Ocean That Fills a Wound.” While all the individual elements are strong and make for a cohesive track filled with variety, the band continuously returns to that same well across the album. Tracks begin to blend into one, amorphous serving of genre-blended pea soup. The first track feels the same as the last from an emotional perspective, leaving the album feeling one-note despite the variety on display.
Ba’al consistently combines black metal, post-rock, and death metal infused with hardcore (think Fuming Mouth, Gatecreeper, and Creeping Death, etc.), and even some indie rock musings across their second LP. The previously mentioned opening track, “Mother’s Concrete Womb,” encapsulates what Ba’al is doing and sets expectations for the rest of the album. Emotional piano and post-rock musings lead into more typical black metal sections that bring to mind blackgaze stalwarts Deafheaven. Ba’al surprises and delights with the sudden introduction of the aforementioned hardcore death elements. These moments are a highlight, and massive, chunky riffs make frequent appearances across the album.
The track “Well of Sorrows” is a perfect microcosm of how The Fine Line between Heaven and Here misses the mark. Eleven minutes long and sandwiched with interstitial post-rock that feels part Russian Circles and part God Is an Astronaut. No particular element hits as hard as its genre inspirations. The black metal sections are competent, the death metal riffs are groovy but lack memorable hooks, and to tie a neat bow on all of this, Ba’al consistently resorts to emotional clean singing and borderline spoken-word segments that made me think more of The National’s Alligator and Boxer era. The clean moments are effective in tracks like “Mother’s Concrete Womb,” “Wax Gorgon,” and “The Ocean That Fills a Wound,” but they can be grating and… very British (Joe Stamp’s accent comes through heavily here), for lack of a better word. This part of the album will be divisive, I imagine, and your mileage may vary.1
Ba’al is not without talent or promise; The Fine Line between Heaven and Here is a hair’s breadth away from greatness, a fact that only highlights where it falters. The Tracks “Legasov,” and “Waxwork Gorgon” are examples of tighter song structures that get right into the good stuff with memorable opening riffs and a lot of the fat trimmed from the post-rock and black metal elements. The album could cut at least fifteen minutes to give it more impact. Even the cleans should stay, but I would love to see them lean more into melody and less into spoken word or downright wailing like on “Well of Sorrows.” The intro of “The Ocean That Fills a Wound” starts in the right place with lulling, rhythmic vocals leading into a brutal explosion of blasting black metal.
The variety and talent end up being a double-edged sword for Ba’al, as what starts as impressive quickly grows predictable. If you like what Ba’al is serving up, you will have a nearly 63-minute slab of post-black metal to nourish you, but if the initial track isn’t for you, don’t expect the rest of the album to change your mind. Despite my negativity, it is from a place of love. Ba’al is an undoubtedly talented band on the cusp of true greatness. If they can edit their songs a little and lean into their best qualities, the next album may be a genre great.2
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Road to Masochist
Websites: baalbanduk.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/baalbanduk | instagram.com/baalbanduk
Releases Worldwide: July 18th, 2025#2025 #30 #BaAl #BlackMetal #BritishMetal #CreepingDeath #Deafheaven #FumingMouth #Gatecreeper #GodIsAnAstronaut #Hardcore #Jul25 #Metalcore #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #RoadToMasochist #RussianCircles #TheFineLineBetweenHeavenAndHere #TheNational
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Ba’al – The Fine Line between Heaven and Here Review
By Angry Metal Guy
By: Nameless_n00b_605
Post-anything is a tough genre to pin down. Does the music eschew genre trappings, rightfully identifying as post in the way it challenges previous norms? Or does it draw from the well that identifies as post, infusing itself with spacey tremolo riffs, heavy atmosphere, and lengthy, non-traditional tracks? If the Sheffield UK post-metallers Ba’al have anything to say, it is the latter. Ba’al showcases some real talent and variety with epic song structures and quality attempts at sampling numerous genres throughout this LP. But, with The Fine Line between Heaven and Here, I ask myself after each track, if variety is the spice of life, why does this album end up sounding so predictable?
Ba’al as a unit is impressive. Nick Gosling’s guitar work is superb, deftly switching genres on the fly, and there is skill to Ba’al’s ability to be a chameleon. Joe Stamp’s vocals are equally agile, as he seamlessly transitions from throat-searing black metal screeches to raspy death metal howls, all while infusing the more emotive elements of the album with heart. Each of these is served well by The Fine Line between Heaven and Here’s production, allowing the post-rock interludes to breathe while the massive riffs hit hard. My only real qualm is that the lovely bass that is present on their previous LP Ellipsism, is hiding away beside standout moments such as on “The Ocean That Fills a Wound.” While all the individual elements are strong and make for a cohesive track filled with variety, the band continuously returns to that same well across the album. Tracks begin to blend into one, amorphous serving of genre-blended pea soup. The first track feels the same as the last from an emotional perspective, leaving the album feeling one-note despite the variety on display.
Ba’al consistently combines black metal, post-rock, and death metal infused with hardcore (think Fuming Mouth, Gatecreeper, and Creeping Death, etc.), and even some indie rock musings across their second LP. The previously mentioned opening track, “Mother’s Concrete Womb,” encapsulates what Ba’al is doing and sets expectations for the rest of the album. Emotional piano and post-rock musings lead into more typical black metal sections that bring to mind blackgaze stalwarts Deafheaven. Ba’al surprises and delights with the sudden introduction of the aforementioned hardcore death elements. These moments are a highlight, and massive, chunky riffs make frequent appearances across the album.
The track “Well of Sorrows” is a perfect microcosm of how The Fine Line between Heaven and Here misses the mark. Eleven minutes long and sandwiched with interstitial post-rock that feels part Russian Circles and part God Is an Astronaut. No particular element hits as hard as its genre inspirations. The black metal sections are competent, the death metal riffs are groovy but lack memorable hooks, and to tie a neat bow on all of this, Ba’al consistently resorts to emotional clean singing and borderline spoken-word segments that made me think more of The National’s Alligator and Boxer era. The clean moments are effective in tracks like “Mother’s Concrete Womb,” “Wax Gorgon,” and “The Ocean That Fills a Wound,” but they can be grating and… very British (Joe Stamp’s accent comes through heavily here), for lack of a better word. This part of the album will be divisive, I imagine, and your mileage may vary.1
Ba’al is not without talent or promise; The Fine Line between Heaven and Here is a hair’s breadth away from greatness, a fact that only highlights where it falters. The Tracks “Legasov,” and “Waxwork Gorgon” are examples of tighter song structures that get right into the good stuff with memorable opening riffs and a lot of the fat trimmed from the post-rock and black metal elements. The album could cut at least fifteen minutes to give it more impact. Even the cleans should stay, but I would love to see them lean more into melody and less into spoken word or downright wailing like on “Well of Sorrows.” The intro of “The Ocean That Fills a Wound” starts in the right place with lulling, rhythmic vocals leading into a brutal explosion of blasting black metal.
The variety and talent end up being a double-edged sword for Ba’al, as what starts as impressive quickly grows predictable. If you like what Ba’al is serving up, you will have a nearly 63-minute slab of post-black metal to nourish you, but if the initial track isn’t for you, don’t expect the rest of the album to change your mind. Despite my negativity, it is from a place of love. Ba’al is an undoubtedly talented band on the cusp of true greatness. If they can edit their songs a little and lean into their best qualities, the next album may be a genre great.2
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Road to Masochist
Websites: baalbanduk.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/baalbanduk | instagram.com/baalbanduk
Releases Worldwide: July 18th, 2025#2025 #30 #BaAl #BlackMetal #BritishMetal #CreepingDeath #Deafheaven #FumingMouth #Gatecreeper #GodIsAnAstronaut #Hardcore #Jul25 #Metalcore #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #RoadToMasochist #RussianCircles #TheFineLineBetweenHeavenAndHere #TheNational
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Ba’al – The Fine Line between Heaven and Here Review
By Angry Metal Guy
By: Nameless_n00b_605
Post-anything is a tough genre to pin down. Does the music eschew genre trappings, rightfully identifying as post in the way it challenges previous norms? Or does it draw from the well that identifies as post, infusing itself with spacey tremolo riffs, heavy atmosphere, and lengthy, non-traditional tracks? If the Sheffield UK post-metallers Ba’al have anything to say, it is the latter. Ba’al showcases some real talent and variety with epic song structures and quality attempts at sampling numerous genres throughout this LP. But, with The Fine Line between Heaven and Here, I ask myself after each track, if variety is the spice of life, why does this album end up sounding so predictable?
Ba’al as a unit is impressive. Nick Gosling’s guitar work is superb, deftly switching genres on the fly, and there is skill to Ba’al’s ability to be a chameleon. Joe Stamp’s vocals are equally agile, as he seamlessly transitions from throat-searing black metal screeches to raspy death metal howls, all while infusing the more emotive elements of the album with heart. Each of these is served well by The Fine Line between Heaven and Here’s production, allowing the post-rock interludes to breathe while the massive riffs hit hard. My only real qualm is that the lovely bass that is present on their previous LP Ellipsism, is hiding away beside standout moments such as on “The Ocean That Fills a Wound.” While all the individual elements are strong and make for a cohesive track filled with variety, the band continuously returns to that same well across the album. Tracks begin to blend into one, amorphous serving of genre-blended pea soup. The first track feels the same as the last from an emotional perspective, leaving the album feeling one-note despite the variety on display.
Ba’al consistently combines black metal, post-rock, and death metal infused with hardcore (think Fuming Mouth, Gatecreeper, and Creeping Death, etc.), and even some indie rock musings across their second LP. The previously mentioned opening track, “Mother’s Concrete Womb,” encapsulates what Ba’al is doing and sets expectations for the rest of the album. Emotional piano and post-rock musings lead into more typical black metal sections that bring to mind blackgaze stalwarts Deafheaven. Ba’al surprises and delights with the sudden introduction of the aforementioned hardcore death elements. These moments are a highlight, and massive, chunky riffs make frequent appearances across the album.
The track “Well of Sorrows” is a perfect microcosm of how The Fine Line between Heaven and Here misses the mark. Eleven minutes long and sandwiched with interstitial post-rock that feels part Russian Circles and part God Is an Astronaut. No particular element hits as hard as its genre inspirations. The black metal sections are competent, the death metal riffs are groovy but lack memorable hooks, and to tie a neat bow on all of this, Ba’al consistently resorts to emotional clean singing and borderline spoken-word segments that made me think more of The National’s Alligator and Boxer era. The clean moments are effective in tracks like “Mother’s Concrete Womb,” “Wax Gorgon,” and “The Ocean That Fills a Wound,” but they can be grating and… very British (Joe Stamp’s accent comes through heavily here), for lack of a better word. This part of the album will be divisive, I imagine, and your mileage may vary.1
Ba’al is not without talent or promise; The Fine Line between Heaven and Here is a hair’s breadth away from greatness, a fact that only highlights where it falters. The Tracks “Legasov,” and “Waxwork Gorgon” are examples of tighter song structures that get right into the good stuff with memorable opening riffs and a lot of the fat trimmed from the post-rock and black metal elements. The album could cut at least fifteen minutes to give it more impact. Even the cleans should stay, but I would love to see them lean more into melody and less into spoken word or downright wailing like on “Well of Sorrows.” The intro of “The Ocean That Fills a Wound” starts in the right place with lulling, rhythmic vocals leading into a brutal explosion of blasting black metal.
The variety and talent end up being a double-edged sword for Ba’al, as what starts as impressive quickly grows predictable. If you like what Ba’al is serving up, you will have a nearly 63-minute slab of post-black metal to nourish you, but if the initial track isn’t for you, don’t expect the rest of the album to change your mind. Despite my negativity, it is from a place of love. Ba’al is an undoubtedly talented band on the cusp of true greatness. If they can edit their songs a little and lean into their best qualities, the next album may be a genre great.2
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Road to Masochist
Websites: baalbanduk.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/baalbanduk | instagram.com/baalbanduk
Releases Worldwide: July 18th, 2025#2025 #30 #BaAl #BlackMetal #BritishMetal #CreepingDeath #Deafheaven #FumingMouth #Gatecreeper #GodIsAnAstronaut #Hardcore #Jul25 #Metalcore #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #RoadToMasochist #RussianCircles #TheFineLineBetweenHeavenAndHere #TheNational
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Ba’al – The Fine Line between Heaven and Here Review
By Angry Metal Guy
By: Nameless_n00b_605
Post-anything is a tough genre to pin down. Does the music eschew genre trappings, rightfully identifying as post in the way it challenges previous norms? Or does it draw from the well that identifies as post, infusing itself with spacey tremolo riffs, heavy atmosphere, and lengthy, non-traditional tracks? If the Sheffield UK post-metallers Ba’al have anything to say, it is the latter. Ba’al showcases some real talent and variety with epic song structures and quality attempts at sampling numerous genres throughout this LP. But, with The Fine Line between Heaven and Here, I ask myself after each track, if variety is the spice of life, why does this album end up sounding so predictable?
Ba’al as a unit is impressive. Nick Gosling’s guitar work is superb, deftly switching genres on the fly, and there is skill to Ba’al’s ability to be a chameleon. Joe Stamp’s vocals are equally agile, as he seamlessly transitions from throat-searing black metal screeches to raspy death metal howls, all while infusing the more emotive elements of the album with heart. Each of these is served well by The Fine Line between Heaven and Here’s production, allowing the post-rock interludes to breathe while the massive riffs hit hard. My only real qualm is that the lovely bass that is present on their previous LP Ellipsism, is hiding away beside standout moments such as on “The Ocean That Fills a Wound.” While all the individual elements are strong and make for a cohesive track filled with variety, the band continuously returns to that same well across the album. Tracks begin to blend into one, amorphous serving of genre-blended pea soup. The first track feels the same as the last from an emotional perspective, leaving the album feeling one-note despite the variety on display.
Ba’al consistently combines black metal, post-rock, and death metal infused with hardcore (think Fuming Mouth, Gatecreeper, and Creeping Death, etc.), and even some indie rock musings across their second LP. The previously mentioned opening track, “Mother’s Concrete Womb,” encapsulates what Ba’al is doing and sets expectations for the rest of the album. Emotional piano and post-rock musings lead into more typical black metal sections that bring to mind blackgaze stalwarts Deafheaven. Ba’al surprises and delights with the sudden introduction of the aforementioned hardcore death elements. These moments are a highlight, and massive, chunky riffs make frequent appearances across the album.
The track “Well of Sorrows” is a perfect microcosm of how The Fine Line between Heaven and Here misses the mark. Eleven minutes long and sandwiched with interstitial post-rock that feels part Russian Circles and part God Is an Astronaut. No particular element hits as hard as its genre inspirations. The black metal sections are competent, the death metal riffs are groovy but lack memorable hooks, and to tie a neat bow on all of this, Ba’al consistently resorts to emotional clean singing and borderline spoken-word segments that made me think more of The National’s Alligator and Boxer era. The clean moments are effective in tracks like “Mother’s Concrete Womb,” “Wax Gorgon,” and “The Ocean That Fills a Wound,” but they can be grating and… very British (Joe Stamp’s accent comes through heavily here), for lack of a better word. This part of the album will be divisive, I imagine, and your mileage may vary.1
Ba’al is not without talent or promise; The Fine Line between Heaven and Here is a hair’s breadth away from greatness, a fact that only highlights where it falters. The Tracks “Legasov,” and “Waxwork Gorgon” are examples of tighter song structures that get right into the good stuff with memorable opening riffs and a lot of the fat trimmed from the post-rock and black metal elements. The album could cut at least fifteen minutes to give it more impact. Even the cleans should stay, but I would love to see them lean more into melody and less into spoken word or downright wailing like on “Well of Sorrows.” The intro of “The Ocean That Fills a Wound” starts in the right place with lulling, rhythmic vocals leading into a brutal explosion of blasting black metal.
The variety and talent end up being a double-edged sword for Ba’al, as what starts as impressive quickly grows predictable. If you like what Ba’al is serving up, you will have a nearly 63-minute slab of post-black metal to nourish you, but if the initial track isn’t for you, don’t expect the rest of the album to change your mind. Despite my negativity, it is from a place of love. Ba’al is an undoubtedly talented band on the cusp of true greatness. If they can edit their songs a little and lean into their best qualities, the next album may be a genre great.2
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Road to Masochist
Websites: baalbanduk.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/baalbanduk | instagram.com/baalbanduk
Releases Worldwide: July 18th, 2025#2025 #30 #BaAl #BlackMetal #BritishMetal #CreepingDeath #Deafheaven #FumingMouth #Gatecreeper #GodIsAnAstronaut #Hardcore #Jul25 #Metalcore #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #RoadToMasochist #RussianCircles #TheFineLineBetweenHeavenAndHere #TheNational
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Ba’al – The Fine Line between Heaven and Here Review
By Lavender Larcenist
Post-anything is a tough genre to pin down. Does the music eschew genre trappings, rightfully identifying as post in the way it challenges previous norms? Or does it draw from the well that identifies as post, infusing itself with spacey tremolo riffs, heavy atmosphere, and lengthy, non-traditional tracks? If the Sheffield UK post-metallers Ba’al have anything to say, it is the latter. Ba’al showcases some real talent and variety with epic song structures and quality attempts at sampling numerous genres throughout this LP. But, with The Fine Line between Heaven and Here, I ask myself after each track, if variety is the spice of life, why does this album end up sounding so predictable?
Ba’al as a unit is impressive. Nick Gosling’s guitar work is superb, deftly switching genres on the fly, and there is skill to Ba’al’s ability to be a chameleon. Joe Stamp’s vocals are equally agile, as he seamlessly transitions from throat-searing black metal screeches to raspy death metal howls, all while infusing the more emotive elements of the album with heart. Each of these is served well by The Fine Line between Heaven and Here’s production, allowing the post-rock interludes to breathe while the massive riffs hit hard. My only real qualm is that the lovely bass that is present on their previous LP Ellipsism, is hiding away besides standout moments such as on “The Ocean That Fills a Wound.” While all the individual elements are strong and make for a cohesive track filled with variety, the band continuously returns to that same well across the album. Tracks begin to blend into one, amorphous serving of genre-blended pea soup. The first track feels the same as the last from an emotional perspective, leaving the album feeling one-note despite the variety on display.
Ba’al consistently combines black metal, post-rock, and death metal infused with hardcore (think Fuming Mouth, Gatecreeper, and Creeping Death, etc.), and even some indie rock musings across their second LP. The previously mentioned opening track, “Mother’s Concrete Womb,” encapsulates what Ba’al is doing and sets expectations for the rest of the album. Emotional piano and post-rock musings lead into more typical black metal sections that bring to mind blackgaze stalwarts Deafheaven. Ba’al surprises and delights with the sudden introduction of the aforementioned hardcore death elements. These moments are a highlight, and massive, chunky riffs make frequent appearances across the album.
The track “Well of Sorrows” is a perfect microcosm of how The Fine Line between Heaven and Here misses the mark. Eleven minutes long and sandwiched with interstitial post-rock that feels part Russian Circles and part God Is an Astronaut. No particular element hits as hard as its genre inspirations. The black metal sections are competent, the death metal riffs are groovy but lack memorable hooks, and to tie a neat bow on all of this, Ba’al consistently resorts to emotional clean singing and borderline spoken-word segments that made me think more of The National’s Alligator and Boxer era. The clean moments are effective in tracks like “Mother’s Concrete Womb,” “Wax Gorgon,” and “The Ocean That Fills a Wound,” but they can be grating and… very British (Joe Stamp’s accent comes through heavily here), for lack of a better word. This part of the album will be divisive, I imagine, and your mileage may vary.1
Ba’al is not without talent or promise; The Fine Line between Heaven and Here is a hair’s breadth away from greatness, a fact that only highlights where it falters. The Tracks “Legasov,” and “Waxwork Gorgon” are examples of tighter song structures that get right into the good stuff with memorable opening riffs and a lot of the fat trimmed from the post-rock and black metal elements. The album could cut at least fifteen minutes to give it more impact. Even the cleans should stay, but I would love to see them lean more into melody and less into spoken word or downright wailing like on “Well of Sorrows.” The intro of “The Ocean That Fills a Wound” starts in the right place with lulling, rhythmic vocals leading into a brutal explosion of blasting black metal.
The variety and talent end up being a double-edged sword for Ba’al, as what starts as impressive quickly grows predictable. If you like what Ba’al is serving up, you will have a nearly 63-minute slab of post-black metal to nourish you, but if the initial track isn’t for you, don’t expect the rest of the album to change your mind. Despite my negativity, it is from a place of love. Ba’al is an undoubtedly talented band on the cusp of true greatness. If they can edit their songs a little and lean into their best qualities, the next album may be a genre great.2
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Road to Masochist
Websites: baalbanduk.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/baalbanduk | instagram.com/baalbanduk
Releases Worldwide: July 18th, 2025#2025 #30 #BaAl #BlackMetal #BritishMetal #CreepingDeath #Deafheaven #FumingMouth #Gatecreeper #GodIsAnAstronaut #Hardcore #Jul25 #Metalcore #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #RoadToMasochist #RussianCircles #TheFineLineBetweenHeavenAndHere #TheNational
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Wednesday Reads: Iran War, SCOTUS, and Other News
Good Afternoon!!
Trump is struggling to deal with his losing war in Iran. He is supposed to give a speech to the nation about it tonight, something he should have done before he started dropping bombs. He is also threatening to pull the U.S. out of NATO. Here’s the latest.
The Telegraph: Trump interview: I am strongly considering pulling out of Nato.
Donald Trump has told The Telegraph he is strongly considering pulling the United States out of Nato after it failed to join his war on Iran.
The US president labelled the alliance a “paper tiger” and said removing America from the defence treaty was now “beyond reconsideration”.
It is the strongest sign yet that the White House no longer regards Europe as a reliable defence partner following the rejection of Mr Trump’s demand that allies send warships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Mr Trump was asked if he would reconsider the US’s membership of Nato after the conflict.
He replied: “Oh yes, I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by Nato. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.” [….]
Mr Trump added: “Beyond not being there, it was actually hard to believe. And I didn’t do a big sale. I just said, ‘Hey’, you know, I didn’t insist too much. I just think it should be automatic.
He is single-handedly wrecking the international alliances that have maintained relative peace since the end of WWII. The rest of the interview consisted mostly of insults to the UK and Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn’t our problem. It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren’t there for us.”
Singling out the UK, the US president rebuked Sir Keir Starmer for refusing to get involved in the American-Israeli war against Iran, suggesting that the Royal Navy was not up for the task.
“You don’t even have a navy. You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work,” he said, referring to the state of Britain’s fleet of warships.
Asked whether the Prime Minister should spend more on defence, Mr Trump added: “I’m not going to tell him what to do. He can do whatever he wants. It doesn’t matter. All Starmer wants is costly windmills that are driving your energy prices through the roof.”
After speaking to The Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr Trump had raised the issue of withdrawing from Nato with White House aides.
The newspaper said he had made comments to Mr Rubio and others in private but had made no final decision on the future of the alliance.
No one seems to know what Trump is going to say tonight in his overdue “speech to the nation.” It seems likely he will try to bring an end to U.S. involvement, and leave the mess he created for other countries to clean up In addition to the threat to pull out of Nato, according to the AP:
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday claimed that Iran’s president wanted a ceasefire ahead of his speech to the American people. Trump made the claim on his Truth Social website. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman sIsraid Trump’s remarks were “false and baseless.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, gave an interview to Al Jazeera: War on Iran: Three key takeaways from Araghchi’s interview with Al Jazeera.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has confirmed direct contact with
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says the Strait of Hormuz falls under the territorial control of Iran and Oman File, Khaled Elfiqi AP Photo
Araghchi confirmed that he had held conversations with Witkoff, Trump’s trusted envoy for peace negotiations around the world, during the current conflict.
But the Iranian foreign minister downplayed that contact.
“I receive messages from Witkoff directly, as before, and this does not mean that we are in negotiations,” he said.
“There is no truth to the claim of negotiations with any party in Iran. All messages are conveyed through the Foreign Ministry or received by it, and there are communications between security agencies,” he added.
Araghchi explained that they have never had a “good experience” negotiating with the US, referring to Washington’s decision to withdraw from the Barack Obama-era nuclear deal during Trump’s first term. The US has also twice attacked Iran during negotiations over the past nine months — in June 2025 and with the current war, which began on February 28, at a time when Oman, the mediator between the two sides, had said they were on the cusp of a breakthrough over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
“We do not have any faith that negotiations with the US will yield any results. The trust level is at zero,” Araghchi said, adding: “We don’t see honesty.”
Sounds about right. On the Strait of Hormuz:
In the interview, Araghchi argued that the waters of the Strait of Hormuz fall under the territorial control of Iran and Oman, and that once the war is over, it is these two countries who would decide the future of the waterway.
But he added that the strait should be a “peaceful waterway”.
Gulf nations, including Qatar, have, however, insisted that they be included in any talks to decide the future of the strait.
Araghchi also insisted in the interview that, from Iran’s perspective, the strait is open for ships from most nations.
“Only for the ships of those who are at war with us, this strait is closed. That is normal during war – we cannot let our enemies use our territorial waters for commerce,” he explained.
Read more at the link.
But what about Netanyahu? Will he be OK with Trump wimping out of their war?
Haretz: Netanyahu Declines to Set Timeline for Ending Iran War in pro-Trump Outlet.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel and the United States are “beyond the halfway point in terms of success” in their war against Iran, saying that the joint strikes are focusing on the country’s nuclear material.
He added that he doesn’t want to “put a schedule on” the timeline for ending the war with Iran.
In an interview with the right-wing American media outlet Newsmax, Netanyahu said the Iranian regime is “pursuing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to American cities,” adding, “That’s what this war is about – preventing that outcome.”
The Israeli prime minister also said that the attacks have “already degraded their missile capabilities, destroyed factories, and eliminated key nuclear scientists.”
He appeared to be sending messages to Trump in the interview:
Iran “killed and maimed more Americans than any other force in recent decades,” Netanyahu told Newsmax, saying Tehran also tried to assassinate U.S. President Donald Trump. “Thousands and thousands killed and maimed in Afghanistan by Iranian IEDs. They bombed our embassies. They tried to kill President Trump twice. They’re still trying to kill him.”
According to Netanyahu, Iran has openly shown it is a threat to the West. “Most importantly, is they they chant ‘Death to America.’ They also say ‘Death to Israel.’ But they say America is the Great Satan. They’re religious zealots, and they have to wipe out Western culture led by America,” he said.
Netanyahu also said Iran is more dangerous to the United States than North Korea, China and Russia. “I don’t hear North Korea chanting ‘Death to America.’ I don’t hear China chanting … I don’t hear Russia,” he said.
I guess we’ll find out something about Trump’s plans tonight in his speech–if he makes any sense, which is unlikely.
According to Marc Caputo and Barak Ravid at Axios: Trump’s mixed messages on Iran perplex his own team.
President Trump isn’t just befuddling foreign leaders and financial markets with his mixed signals on Iran. Advisers who speak regularly with the president tell Axios they’re just as uncertain.
Why it matters: Trump’s off-the-cuff musings and Truth Social postings can have life-or-death consequences for the war, and massive implications for the market. Then the cycle restarts without any lasting clarity.
Between the lines: Some Trump aides and allies say he’s mostly improvising rather than following any clear plan.- He likes to keep his options open, spitball with different audiences, then capitalize if he thinks he sees an opportunity, they say.
- Aides have been convinced at various points that Trump was leaning toward a major escalation, and at others that he was eager for a swift resolution. “Nobody knows in the end what he’s really thinking,” a senior adviser said.
- “They had a plan for the first week and since then, they are making the plan up as they go along,” a former U.S. official said.
Others claim it’s all by design. “That’s the plan — for you to not have a clue,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who spoke to Trump on Monday, told Axios.
Read more at Axios.
Keir Starmer
One more bit of Iran news from The Guardian: Britain to host 35 countries for strait of Hormuz talks, says Starmer.
The UK will convene 35 countries – excluding the US – to explore ways to reopen the strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping route for oil and gas that has been blocked by Iran.
Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said the next phase of discussions in the joint British and French efforts to secure the waterway would be held on Thursday, with Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, alongside international leaders….
Starmer said on Wednesday the meeting would bring together 35 countries to “assess all viable diplomatic and political measures we can take to restore freedom of navigation, guarantee the safety of trapped ships and seafarers and to resume the movement of vital commodities”.
In other news, Trump attended the Supreme Court session his morning on his efforts to end birthright citizenship. No other president has done that.
The Washington Post: Supreme Court heard birthright citizenship case with Trump in attendance.
The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday over the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s effort to ban birthright citizenship. The justices questioned the attorneys about the definition of “domicile,” core to the government’s argument that only children of immigrants who are domiciled in the United States should receive birthright citizenship. In an indication of the political stakes in the case, Trump attended the hearing while Solicitor General D. John Sauer made his arguments, the first time a sitting president is known to have done so. Arguments concluded after Sauer made his rebuttal.
American Civil Liberties Union Legal Director Cecillia Wang argued for the plaintiffs, immigrants using pseudonyms. The ACLU and other groups challenged Trump’s order, saying it violates the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to “all persons” born or naturalized in the United States.
In the hearing, Sauer argued that children born to parents without permanent immigration status should not be granted citizenship, upending the long-settled principle that nearly everyone born on U.S. soil is automatically a citizen.
A ruling upholding Trump’s order could have sweeping political, economic and social ramifications….
ACLU Legal Director Cecillia Wang said the 14th Amendment does not allow Congress to add more exceptions to the birthright citizenship rule.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh replied: “I guess the answer you just gave means they don’t have any authority to look at this, even if they passed it 435 to 0 in the House and 100 to 0 in the Senate. Your point is, no, they’re closed. They’re frozen forever.”
“Correct,” Wang said….
Arguments concluded after Solicitor General John D. Sauer made his rebuttal.
Congress “in 1866 had a very, very clear understanding that the children of the newly freed slaves have the requisite allegiance to the United States,” he said in his closing remarks. “This was all about overruling the grave injustice of Dred Scott and making sure that allegiance was granted to the children of slaves.”
“Thank you, counsel, general. The case is submitted,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said, as he does when arguments end in every case.
At AP, Mark Sherman analyzed the court session: Supreme Court casts doubt on Trump’s bid to limit birthright citizenship as he attends arguments.
The Supreme Court is casting doubt on President Donald Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship in a consequential case that was magnified by Trump’s unparalleled presence in the courtroom.
Conservative and liberal justices on Wednesday questioned whether Trump’s order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens comports with either the Constitution or federal law.
Trump, the first sitting president to attend arguments at the nation’s highest court, spent just over an hour inside the courtroom for arguments made by the Republican administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, Solicitor General D. John Sauer. The president departed shortly after lawyer Cecillia Wang began her presentation in defense of broad birthright citizenship.
Trump heard Sauer face one skeptical question after another. Justices asked about the legal basis for the order and voiced more practical concerns.
“Is this happening in the delivery room?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked, drilling down into the logistics of how the government would actually figure out who’s entitled to citizenship and who’s not….
“How much of the debates around the 14th Amendment had anything to do with immigration?” Thomas asked, pointing out that the purpose of the amendment was to grant citizenship to Black people, including freed slaves.
The justices are hearing Trump’s appeal of a lower-court ruling from New Hampshire that struck down the citizenship restrictions, one of several courts that have blocked them. They have not taken effect anywhere in the country.
The case frames another test of Trump’s assertions of executive power that defy long-standing precedent for a court that has largely ruled in the president’s favor — but with some notable exceptions that Trump has responded to with starkly personal criticisms of the justices. A definitive ruling is expected by early summer.
Yesterday the Supreme Court voted 8-1 that conversion therapy cannot be banned in Colorado.
Chris Geidner at Law Dork: Supreme Court holds that Colorado’s conversion therapy ban “censors” talk therapists.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday held, on an 8-1 vote, that Colorado’s law banning therapists from engaging in conversion therapy with minor patients is presumptively unconstitutional as to talk therapy, deeming the law “an egregious form“ of speech regulation that almost always violates the First Amendment.
Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the court’s decision — warning that the court might have made talk therapy “effectively unregulatable” and that the “fallout could be catastrophic.“ Taking the rare step of announcing her dissent from the bench, Jackson declared that the majority got it “wrong as a matter of precedent, first principles, and history.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the court’s majority opinion, holding that lower courts had applied the wrong standard for addressing Kaley Chiles’s First Amendment challenge to the state’s ban on conversion therapy — efforts to change a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
As with his opinion in the wedding website case in 2023, 303 Creative v. Elenis, Gorsuch waved broadly at his purpose being to protect free speech and to stop, as he wrote on Tuesday, “censorious governments.“
The proper standard to be applied in Chiles’s case, the court held, is a particularly skeptical form of strict scrutiny because the law is a content-based regulation and, further, includes “viewpoint restrictions” by banning efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity and allowing efforts to affirm a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Gorsuch wrote that Chiles’s challenge would likely succeed when the case goes back to the lower courts because “Ms. Chiles seeks to engage only in speech, and as applied to her the law regulates what she may say.“
I guess the solution is public education about the research that shows conversion therapy doesn’t work. But that might not protect children in right wing religious families, especially if they are home schooled.
A few more stores of possible interest:
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Artemis II commander, from left, Victor Glover, Artemis II pilot, Christina Koch, Artemis II mission specialist, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, Artemis II mission specialist, right, in a group photograph as they visit NASA’s Artemis II SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft. (Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP)
AP: NASA begins fueling rocket to launch astronauts on the first lunar trip in half a century.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA began fueling its moon rocket Wednesday for humanity’s first lunar trip in more than half a century, aiming for an evening liftoff with four astronauts.
Tensions were high as hydrogen fuel started flowing into the rocket hours ahead of the planned launch. Dangerous hydrogen leaks erupted during a countdown test earlier this year, forcing a lengthy flight delay.
By mid-morning, no leaks had been reported.
The launch team needs to load more than 700,000 gallons of fuel (2.6 million liters) into the 32-story Space Launch System rocket on the pad before the Artemis II crew can board.
Read more at the link. I had no idea this was happening until I got a message from JJ this moring.
The New York Times: Federal Judge Approves Trump Effort to Obtain List of Jews From Penn.
The Trump administration was within its rights to demand that the University of Pennsylvania turn over information about Jews on campus as part of a federal investigation into discrimination at the school, a federal judge decided Tuesday.
The government’s investigation had united Penn leaders with Jewish students and faculty members as they opposed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s subpoena. Many on campus drew parallels between the government’s approach and methods deployed in Nazi Germany.
But the Trump administration has said that its request was typical for discrimination investigations to seek potential victims and witnesses, and Judge Gerald J. Pappert of Philadelphia’s Federal District Court agreed on Tuesday. He gave Penn until May 1 to comply with the administration’s subpoena, though the ruling appeared unlikely to quell the debates around how the administration has pressured top American universities.
Judge Pappert, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, appeared to hint at the discomfort that the government’s subpoena had prompted and at the accusations that the E.E.O.C. had gone too far with its tactics, especially a demand for information tied to groups “related to the Jewish religion.”
“Though ineptly worded, the request had an understandable purpose — to obtain in a narrowly tailored way, as opposed to seeking information on all university employees, information on individuals in Penn’s Jewish community who could have experienced or witnessed antisemitism in the workplace,” Judge Pappert wrote in his 32-page opinion, issued three weeks after he heard oral arguments.
I don’t know. This sounds pretty creepy to me.
One more from Shawn McCreesh at The New York Times (gift link): In South Dakota, Neighbors Feel Sorry for Kristi Noem’s Husband.
That couldn’t be him, could it?
The cartoonishly large breasts. The pink spandex. The come-hither stare.
Byron Noem
“Must be A.I.,” a burly cattle rancher named Kevin Ruesink said as he inspected pictures of his neighbor Bryon Noem that had been published by The Daily Mail on Tuesday morning. The rancher was playing pinochle in the back of a convenience store with five other men in the tiny town of Castlewood, S.D., not far from the Noem family farm.
These men all knew Bryon Noem as the nice, tall insurance salesman who married Kristi Arnold, the town beauty queen who grew up to be governor. But now there were these pictures.
The rancher squinted at them with a mixture of suspicion and pity. “I grew up playing ball with Bryon,” he said. “I’ve never known him to be part of stuff like that. I don’t believe that at all.”
The British tabloid report on Tuesday was the latest and most dramatic development in the saga of Kristi Noem, who was sacked as homeland security chief earlier this month, the first Trump cabinet member to get the old heave-ho this term. She quickly put out a statement saying that she was “devastated” by the images of her husband and that “the family was blindsided by this.”
In response to multiple requests for an interview, Mr. Noem wrote in a text message on Tuesday: “I will at some point. Today is not the day. I appreciate your heart.”
While the pictures of Ms. Noem’s husband with what appear to be enormous inflated balloons under his spandex shirt ricocheted across the internet, becoming a political punchline for her many, many enemies, the reaction back on the proverbial ranch was a little more … tenderhearted.
That’s kind of a refreshing response from the townsfolk. Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested.
Those are the stories that caught my attention this morning. What stories have you been following?
#BenjaminNetanyahu #BirthrightCitizenship #ByronNoem #Colorado #conversionTherapy #DonaldTrump #IranForeignMinisterAbbasAraghchi #IranWar #israel #KeirStarmer #NASA #NATO #StraitOfHormuz #SupremeCourt -
Wednesday Reads: Iran War, SCOTUS, and Other News
Good Afternoon!!
Trump is struggling to deal with his losing war in Iran. He is supposed to give a speech to the nation about it tonight, something he should have done before he started dropping bombs. He is also threatening to pull the U.S. out of NATO. Here’s the latest.
The Telegraph: Trump interview: I am strongly considering pulling out of Nato.
Donald Trump has told The Telegraph he is strongly considering pulling the United States out of Nato after it failed to join his war on Iran.
The US president labelled the alliance a “paper tiger” and said removing America from the defence treaty was now “beyond reconsideration”.
It is the strongest sign yet that the White House no longer regards Europe as a reliable defence partner following the rejection of Mr Trump’s demand that allies send warships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Mr Trump was asked if he would reconsider the US’s membership of Nato after the conflict.
He replied: “Oh yes, I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by Nato. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.” [….]
Mr Trump added: “Beyond not being there, it was actually hard to believe. And I didn’t do a big sale. I just said, ‘Hey’, you know, I didn’t insist too much. I just think it should be automatic.
He is single-handedly wrecking the international alliances that have maintained relative peace since the end of WWII. The rest of the interview consisted mostly of insults to the UK and Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn’t our problem. It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren’t there for us.”
Singling out the UK, the US president rebuked Sir Keir Starmer for refusing to get involved in the American-Israeli war against Iran, suggesting that the Royal Navy was not up for the task.
“You don’t even have a navy. You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work,” he said, referring to the state of Britain’s fleet of warships.
Asked whether the Prime Minister should spend more on defence, Mr Trump added: “I’m not going to tell him what to do. He can do whatever he wants. It doesn’t matter. All Starmer wants is costly windmills that are driving your energy prices through the roof.”
After speaking to The Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr Trump had raised the issue of withdrawing from Nato with White House aides.
The newspaper said he had made comments to Mr Rubio and others in private but had made no final decision on the future of the alliance.
No one seems to know what Trump is going to say tonight in his overdue “speech to the nation.” It seems likely he will try to bring an end to U.S. involvement, and leave the mess he created for other countries to clean up In addition to the threat to pull out of Nato, according to the AP:
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday claimed that Iran’s president wanted a ceasefire ahead of his speech to the American people. Trump made the claim on his Truth Social website. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman sIsraid Trump’s remarks were “false and baseless.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, gave an interview to Al Jazeera: War on Iran: Three key takeaways from Araghchi’s interview with Al Jazeera.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has confirmed direct contact with
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says the Strait of Hormuz falls under the territorial control of Iran and Oman File, Khaled Elfiqi AP Photo
Araghchi confirmed that he had held conversations with Witkoff, Trump’s trusted envoy for peace negotiations around the world, during the current conflict.
But the Iranian foreign minister downplayed that contact.
“I receive messages from Witkoff directly, as before, and this does not mean that we are in negotiations,” he said.
“There is no truth to the claim of negotiations with any party in Iran. All messages are conveyed through the Foreign Ministry or received by it, and there are communications between security agencies,” he added.
Araghchi explained that they have never had a “good experience” negotiating with the US, referring to Washington’s decision to withdraw from the Barack Obama-era nuclear deal during Trump’s first term. The US has also twice attacked Iran during negotiations over the past nine months — in June 2025 and with the current war, which began on February 28, at a time when Oman, the mediator between the two sides, had said they were on the cusp of a breakthrough over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
“We do not have any faith that negotiations with the US will yield any results. The trust level is at zero,” Araghchi said, adding: “We don’t see honesty.”
Sounds about right. On the Strait of Hormuz:
In the interview, Araghchi argued that the waters of the Strait of Hormuz fall under the territorial control of Iran and Oman, and that once the war is over, it is these two countries who would decide the future of the waterway.
But he added that the strait should be a “peaceful waterway”.
Gulf nations, including Qatar, have, however, insisted that they be included in any talks to decide the future of the strait.
Araghchi also insisted in the interview that, from Iran’s perspective, the strait is open for ships from most nations.
“Only for the ships of those who are at war with us, this strait is closed. That is normal during war – we cannot let our enemies use our territorial waters for commerce,” he explained.
Read more at the link.
But what about Netanyahu? Will he be OK with Trump wimping out of their war?
Haretz: Netanyahu Declines to Set Timeline for Ending Iran War in pro-Trump Outlet.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel and the United States are “beyond the halfway point in terms of success” in their war against Iran, saying that the joint strikes are focusing on the country’s nuclear material.
He added that he doesn’t want to “put a schedule on” the timeline for ending the war with Iran.
In an interview with the right-wing American media outlet Newsmax, Netanyahu said the Iranian regime is “pursuing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to American cities,” adding, “That’s what this war is about – preventing that outcome.”
The Israeli prime minister also said that the attacks have “already degraded their missile capabilities, destroyed factories, and eliminated key nuclear scientists.”
He appeared to be sending messages to Trump in the interview:
Iran “killed and maimed more Americans than any other force in recent decades,” Netanyahu told Newsmax, saying Tehran also tried to assassinate U.S. President Donald Trump. “Thousands and thousands killed and maimed in Afghanistan by Iranian IEDs. They bombed our embassies. They tried to kill President Trump twice. They’re still trying to kill him.”
According to Netanyahu, Iran has openly shown it is a threat to the West. “Most importantly, is they they chant ‘Death to America.’ They also say ‘Death to Israel.’ But they say America is the Great Satan. They’re religious zealots, and they have to wipe out Western culture led by America,” he said.
Netanyahu also said Iran is more dangerous to the United States than North Korea, China and Russia. “I don’t hear North Korea chanting ‘Death to America.’ I don’t hear China chanting … I don’t hear Russia,” he said.
I guess we’ll find out something about Trump’s plans tonight in his speech–if he makes any sense, which is unlikely.
According to Marc Caputo and Barak Ravid at Axios: Trump’s mixed messages on Iran perplex his own team.
President Trump isn’t just befuddling foreign leaders and financial markets with his mixed signals on Iran. Advisers who speak regularly with the president tell Axios they’re just as uncertain.
Why it matters: Trump’s off-the-cuff musings and Truth Social postings can have life-or-death consequences for the war, and massive implications for the market. Then the cycle restarts without any lasting clarity.
Between the lines: Some Trump aides and allies say he’s mostly improvising rather than following any clear plan.- He likes to keep his options open, spitball with different audiences, then capitalize if he thinks he sees an opportunity, they say.
- Aides have been convinced at various points that Trump was leaning toward a major escalation, and at others that he was eager for a swift resolution. “Nobody knows in the end what he’s really thinking,” a senior adviser said.
- “They had a plan for the first week and since then, they are making the plan up as they go along,” a former U.S. official said.
Others claim it’s all by design. “That’s the plan — for you to not have a clue,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who spoke to Trump on Monday, told Axios.
Read more at Axios.
Keir Starmer
One more bit of Iran news from The Guardian: Britain to host 35 countries for strait of Hormuz talks, says Starmer.
The UK will convene 35 countries – excluding the US – to explore ways to reopen the strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping route for oil and gas that has been blocked by Iran.
Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said the next phase of discussions in the joint British and French efforts to secure the waterway would be held on Thursday, with Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, alongside international leaders….
Starmer said on Wednesday the meeting would bring together 35 countries to “assess all viable diplomatic and political measures we can take to restore freedom of navigation, guarantee the safety of trapped ships and seafarers and to resume the movement of vital commodities”.
In other news, Trump attended the Supreme Court session his morning on his efforts to end birthright citizenship. No other president has done that.
The Washington Post: Supreme Court heard birthright citizenship case with Trump in attendance.
The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday over the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s effort to ban birthright citizenship. The justices questioned the attorneys about the definition of “domicile,” core to the government’s argument that only children of immigrants who are domiciled in the United States should receive birthright citizenship. In an indication of the political stakes in the case, Trump attended the hearing while Solicitor General D. John Sauer made his arguments, the first time a sitting president is known to have done so. Arguments concluded after Sauer made his rebuttal.
American Civil Liberties Union Legal Director Cecillia Wang argued for the plaintiffs, immigrants using pseudonyms. The ACLU and other groups challenged Trump’s order, saying it violates the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to “all persons” born or naturalized in the United States.
In the hearing, Sauer argued that children born to parents without permanent immigration status should not be granted citizenship, upending the long-settled principle that nearly everyone born on U.S. soil is automatically a citizen.
A ruling upholding Trump’s order could have sweeping political, economic and social ramifications….
ACLU Legal Director Cecillia Wang said the 14th Amendment does not allow Congress to add more exceptions to the birthright citizenship rule.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh replied: “I guess the answer you just gave means they don’t have any authority to look at this, even if they passed it 435 to 0 in the House and 100 to 0 in the Senate. Your point is, no, they’re closed. They’re frozen forever.”
“Correct,” Wang said….
Arguments concluded after Solicitor General John D. Sauer made his rebuttal.
Congress “in 1866 had a very, very clear understanding that the children of the newly freed slaves have the requisite allegiance to the United States,” he said in his closing remarks. “This was all about overruling the grave injustice of Dred Scott and making sure that allegiance was granted to the children of slaves.”
“Thank you, counsel, general. The case is submitted,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said, as he does when arguments end in every case.
At AP, Mark Sherman analyzed the court session: Supreme Court casts doubt on Trump’s bid to limit birthright citizenship as he attends arguments.
The Supreme Court is casting doubt on President Donald Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship in a consequential case that was magnified by Trump’s unparalleled presence in the courtroom.
Conservative and liberal justices on Wednesday questioned whether Trump’s order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens comports with either the Constitution or federal law.
Trump, the first sitting president to attend arguments at the nation’s highest court, spent just over an hour inside the courtroom for arguments made by the Republican administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, Solicitor General D. John Sauer. The president departed shortly after lawyer Cecillia Wang began her presentation in defense of broad birthright citizenship.
Trump heard Sauer face one skeptical question after another. Justices asked about the legal basis for the order and voiced more practical concerns.
“Is this happening in the delivery room?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked, drilling down into the logistics of how the government would actually figure out who’s entitled to citizenship and who’s not….
“How much of the debates around the 14th Amendment had anything to do with immigration?” Thomas asked, pointing out that the purpose of the amendment was to grant citizenship to Black people, including freed slaves.
The justices are hearing Trump’s appeal of a lower-court ruling from New Hampshire that struck down the citizenship restrictions, one of several courts that have blocked them. They have not taken effect anywhere in the country.
The case frames another test of Trump’s assertions of executive power that defy long-standing precedent for a court that has largely ruled in the president’s favor — but with some notable exceptions that Trump has responded to with starkly personal criticisms of the justices. A definitive ruling is expected by early summer.
Yesterday the Supreme Court voted 8-1 that conversion therapy cannot be banned in Colorado.
Chris Geidner at Law Dork: Supreme Court holds that Colorado’s conversion therapy ban “censors” talk therapists.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday held, on an 8-1 vote, that Colorado’s law banning therapists from engaging in conversion therapy with minor patients is presumptively unconstitutional as to talk therapy, deeming the law “an egregious form“ of speech regulation that almost always violates the First Amendment.
Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the court’s decision — warning that the court might have made talk therapy “effectively unregulatable” and that the “fallout could be catastrophic.“ Taking the rare step of announcing her dissent from the bench, Jackson declared that the majority got it “wrong as a matter of precedent, first principles, and history.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the court’s majority opinion, holding that lower courts had applied the wrong standard for addressing Kaley Chiles’s First Amendment challenge to the state’s ban on conversion therapy — efforts to change a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
As with his opinion in the wedding website case in 2023, 303 Creative v. Elenis, Gorsuch waved broadly at his purpose being to protect free speech and to stop, as he wrote on Tuesday, “censorious governments.“
The proper standard to be applied in Chiles’s case, the court held, is a particularly skeptical form of strict scrutiny because the law is a content-based regulation and, further, includes “viewpoint restrictions” by banning efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity and allowing efforts to affirm a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Gorsuch wrote that Chiles’s challenge would likely succeed when the case goes back to the lower courts because “Ms. Chiles seeks to engage only in speech, and as applied to her the law regulates what she may say.“
I guess the solution is public education about the research that shows conversion therapy doesn’t work. But that might not protect children in right wing religious families, especially if they are home schooled.
A few more stores of possible interest:
NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Artemis II commander, from left, Victor Glover, Artemis II pilot, Christina Koch, Artemis II mission specialist, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, Artemis II mission specialist, right, in a group photograph as they visit NASA’s Artemis II SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft. (Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP)
AP: NASA begins fueling rocket to launch astronauts on the first lunar trip in half a century.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA began fueling its moon rocket Wednesday for humanity’s first lunar trip in more than half a century, aiming for an evening liftoff with four astronauts.
Tensions were high as hydrogen fuel started flowing into the rocket hours ahead of the planned launch. Dangerous hydrogen leaks erupted during a countdown test earlier this year, forcing a lengthy flight delay.
By mid-morning, no leaks had been reported.
The launch team needs to load more than 700,000 gallons of fuel (2.6 million liters) into the 32-story Space Launch System rocket on the pad before the Artemis II crew can board.
Read more at the link. I had no idea this was happening until I got a message from JJ this moring.
The New York Times: Federal Judge Approves Trump Effort to Obtain List of Jews From Penn.
The Trump administration was within its rights to demand that the University of Pennsylvania turn over information about Jews on campus as part of a federal investigation into discrimination at the school, a federal judge decided Tuesday.
The government’s investigation had united Penn leaders with Jewish students and faculty members as they opposed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s subpoena. Many on campus drew parallels between the government’s approach and methods deployed in Nazi Germany.
But the Trump administration has said that its request was typical for discrimination investigations to seek potential victims and witnesses, and Judge Gerald J. Pappert of Philadelphia’s Federal District Court agreed on Tuesday. He gave Penn until May 1 to comply with the administration’s subpoena, though the ruling appeared unlikely to quell the debates around how the administration has pressured top American universities.
Judge Pappert, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, appeared to hint at the discomfort that the government’s subpoena had prompted and at the accusations that the E.E.O.C. had gone too far with its tactics, especially a demand for information tied to groups “related to the Jewish religion.”
“Though ineptly worded, the request had an understandable purpose — to obtain in a narrowly tailored way, as opposed to seeking information on all university employees, information on individuals in Penn’s Jewish community who could have experienced or witnessed antisemitism in the workplace,” Judge Pappert wrote in his 32-page opinion, issued three weeks after he heard oral arguments.
I don’t know. This sounds pretty creepy to me.
One more from Shawn McCreesh at The New York Times (gift link): In South Dakota, Neighbors Feel Sorry for Kristi Noem’s Husband.
That couldn’t be him, could it?
The cartoonishly large breasts. The pink spandex. The come-hither stare.
Byron Noem
“Must be A.I.,” a burly cattle rancher named Kevin Ruesink said as he inspected pictures of his neighbor Bryon Noem that had been published by The Daily Mail on Tuesday morning. The rancher was playing pinochle in the back of a convenience store with five other men in the tiny town of Castlewood, S.D., not far from the Noem family farm.
These men all knew Bryon Noem as the nice, tall insurance salesman who married Kristi Arnold, the town beauty queen who grew up to be governor. But now there were these pictures.
The rancher squinted at them with a mixture of suspicion and pity. “I grew up playing ball with Bryon,” he said. “I’ve never known him to be part of stuff like that. I don’t believe that at all.”
The British tabloid report on Tuesday was the latest and most dramatic development in the saga of Kristi Noem, who was sacked as homeland security chief earlier this month, the first Trump cabinet member to get the old heave-ho this term. She quickly put out a statement saying that she was “devastated” by the images of her husband and that “the family was blindsided by this.”
In response to multiple requests for an interview, Mr. Noem wrote in a text message on Tuesday: “I will at some point. Today is not the day. I appreciate your heart.”
While the pictures of Ms. Noem’s husband with what appear to be enormous inflated balloons under his spandex shirt ricocheted across the internet, becoming a political punchline for her many, many enemies, the reaction back on the proverbial ranch was a little more … tenderhearted.
That’s kind of a refreshing response from the townsfolk. Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested.
Those are the stories that caught my attention this morning. What stories have you been following?
#BenjaminNetanyahu #BirthrightCitizenship #ByronNoem #Colorado #conversionTherapy #DonaldTrump #IranForeignMinisterAbbasAraghchi #IranWar #israel #KeirStarmer #NASA #NATO #StraitOfHormuz #SupremeCourt -
Good Day!!
Boston Sunrise this morning, 12-27-2023
I’m going to try to be upbeat today, although I will still have to include Trump-related stories. I can’t handle the war news today, though.
I’ll begin with a post by Simon Rosenberg, who is a very optimistic political commentator. He was one of the few poll-watchers who predicted the Democratic sweep in the 2022 midterms.
According to Wikipedia, Rosenberg is “founder of New Democrat Network and the New Policy Institute, a liberal think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.” He publishes at his website, Hopium Chronicles. You may have seen him on MSNBC last night.
Rosenberg’s latest post is at MSNBC.com: Biden’s 2024 chances are much stronger than people realize.
As we head into 2024, the conventional wisdom is that Democrats are on the back foot for next year’s elections. But there are three reasons I am optimistic that 2024 is going to be a good year for Democrats:
First, PresidentJoe Biden has kept his central promise in the 2020 election: that he would lead the nation to the other side of Covid, successfully. The pandemic has receded. Our economic recovery has been better than any other G7 nation. GDP grew at an annual rate of 4.9% last quarter, and more than 3% for the Biden presidency. We have the best job market since the 1960s and the lowest uninsured rate in U.S. history. The Dow Jones broke 37,000 this month for the first time. Wage growth, new business formation and prime-age labor participation rates are all at historically elevated levels. Prices fell — yes, fell — last month. Rents are softening, and gas prices and crime rates are falling. Domestic oil and renewable production are at record levels. The annual deficit, which exploded under Trump, is trillions less today.
Consumer sentiment has risen sharply in recent weeks, and measures of life, job and income satisfaction are remarkably high. There is no doubt that recent years have been hard — Covid, an insurrection at the Capitol, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, repeated OPEC price hikes, global and domestic inflation — but it is increasingly clear that America is getting to the other side of this challenging period, and are in a far better place than when President Biden took office.
And the Democratic party is historically strong.
Second, the strength of the president’s record is only matched by the strength of his party. I don’t think it is widely understood how strong the Democratic Party is right now. The party has won more votes in seven of the past eight presidential elections, something no party has done in modern American history. Over the last four presidential elections, Democrats have averaged 51% of the popular vote, their best showing over four national elections since the 1930s.
In both 2022 and 2023, Democrats prevented the historical down ballot struggle of the party in power and had two remarkably successful elections. In the 2022 midterms, Democrats’ statewide margins were greater than the 2020 presidential margins in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — all recent battleground states. That showing led the party to pick up a Senate seat, four state legislative chambers and two governorships, and helped keep the House of Representatives close, making it far more likely Republicans lose it in 2024.
What was visible of fog-bound Boston from the air yesterday, 12-26-2023
This year, Democrats flipped a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin; defeated a six-week abortion ban in Ohio; kept the Virginia state house, debunking the idea that Republicans could hide behind a 15-week abortion ban; and took state legislative seats, municipalities and school board seats across the country. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, grew his margin of victory from 2019, and Republicans lost mayoral elections in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Jacksonville, Florida, two of the largest GOP-controlled cities in the country. And in over three dozen state legislative special elections around the country, Democrats outperformed 2020– an election we won by 4.5 percentage points — by an average of 5 percentage points.
While in 2022, Republicans could point to gains in New York and California to offset their losses in the battleground states, there were no places in 2023 where they outperformed expectations. A blue wave washed across the U.S. in 2023, and this ongoing strong performance of the Democratic Party in election after election, in all parts of the country, should fill Biden’s supporters with confidence.
Finally, while Democrats keep winning, conventional wisdom continues to overly discount Trump’s historic baggage and MAGA’s repeated electoral failures. Despite these repeated failures, Republicans are on the cusp of nominating Trump again, who this time is an even more degraded and dangerous version of MAGA than he was in 2020.
I hope you’ll read the rest at the MSNBC link. It’s well worth your time.
Next, a couple of stories about House elections:
Sahil Kapur at NBC News: Democratic group makes a $5.9 million bet on flipping George Santos’ House seat.
The Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC is putting down $5.2 million in initial reservations for TV and digital ads to try to win the House special election to replace the expelled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., the group told NBC News.
The group said it will spend $3.7 million on TV and $1.5 million on digital platforms, along with $700,000 on mail ads, in the weeks ahead of the Feb. 13 contest in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. The election pits Democrat Tom Suozzi, a former congressman eying a comeback, against Republican nominee Mazi Melesa Pilip, a Nassau County legislator.
The competitive district, which includes parts of Long Island and Queens, voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 before it elected Santos in 2022. But his subsequently unearthed biographical fabrications and sweeping federal indictment prompted the House to expel him on Dec. 1. It is the type of district that will be heavily contested next November, and it could determine which party wins the chamber, which Republicans now narrowly control.
The contest “represents the first step to Democrats taking back the House in 2024,” House Majority PAC President Mike Smith said in response to written questions. “A resurgence in New York represents House Democrats’ best path to the majority.”
The Make Way for Ducklings statues in Christmas attire.
Jake Swearingen at Business Insider: An avalanche of money is coming to kick Lauren Boebert out of Congress.
Lauren Boebert is facing a brutal and very expensive reelection fight in 2024.
Adam Frisch, the main Democratic challenger to the lightning-rod Republican congresswoman from Colorado’s 3rd District, has been raking in jaw-dropping amounts of campaign cash.
According to the Federal Election Commission, Frisch’s campaign has raised over $7.7 million so far, making him one of the top fundraisers in the 2024 House races. As spotted by the Time reporter Mini Racker, that’s enough to put him behind Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy and the Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries in total funds raised.
Frisch came close to unseating Boebert in 2022, falling short by just 546 votes in what was considered a safe Republican district. That electoral performance was before the litany of controversies that have made Boebert a tabloid favorite, including a scandal this summer when she was booted from a Denver theater after vaping and groping her date during a performance of “Beetlejuice.”
Boebert has raised $2.4 million for her campaign this cycle. The money gap becomes even starker when you compare totals for just the third quarter, July 1 to September 30, the latest reporting period available from the FEC: Frisch pulled in $3.4 million, while Boebert managed just $854,000.
There’s a chance Frisch’s fundraising may not even be used against Boebert. She’s facing a substantial primary challenge from the Republican attorney Jeff Hurd, who raised over $412,000 in the third quarter, though his campaign launched only in August.
In Trump-related stories:
Danny Hakim at The New York Times: A Fake Trump Elector in Michigan Told Prosecutors of Regret, Anger.
One of the Republicans in Michigan who acted as a fake elector for Donald J. Trump expressed deep regret about his participation, according to a recording of his interview with the state attorney general’s office that was obtained by The New York Times.
The elector, James Renner, is thus far the only Trump elector who has reached an agreement with the office of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, which brought criminal charges in July against all 16 of the state’s fake Trump electors. In October, Ms. Nessel’s office dropped all charges against Mr. Renner after he agreed to cooperate.
Newbury Street (a downtown shopping district) on Christmas
Mr. Renner, 77, was a late substitution to the roster of electors in December 2020 after two others dropped out. He told the attorney general’s office that he later realized, after reviewing testimony from the House investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, that he and other electors had acted improperly.
“I can’t overemphasize how once I read the information in the J6 transcripts how upset I was that the legitimate process had not been followed,” he said in the interview. “I felt that I had been walked into a situation that I shouldn’t have ever been involved in.”
Charges have now been brought against fake electors in three states — Georgia, Michigan and Nevada — and investigations are underway in other states, including Arizona and New Mexico. In Georgia, prosecutors in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, have looked far beyond the electors themselves and charged Mr. Trump, the former president, and many of his key allies over their efforts to keep him in power despite his loss in 2020. Mr. Trump also faces charges over election interference from Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
In Michigan, Ms. Nessel, a Democrat, has only charged the electors, but has said her investigation is still open. During their interview of Mr. Renner, her investigators asked about a number of other people involved, including Shawn Flynn, a lawyer who worked with the Trump campaign on the ground in Michigan, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer. (Mr. Giuliani is among those charged in Georgia; both he and Mr. Trump have pleaded not guilty.)
Jose Pagliery at The Daily Beast: Trump Is Testing the Bounds of Presidential Immunity—and Losing.
For years, Donald Trump has hid behind the presidential seal—a claim of immunity that he continues to make to this day to avoid legal jeopardy. But as Trump’s cases proceed, he’s increasingly finding that the protections he was afforded as president don’t exist for a former president.
In criminal and civil cases across the country this month, judges have issued critical opinions chipping away at Trump’s attempt to shield himself. Their rulings are leaving him exposed to potential prison time and massive financial penalties, potentially ruining his 2024 re-election campaign and destroying the billionaire’s famed wealth.
And the most definitive answer could be just weeks away.
Boston official Christmas tree, 2023
The legal maelstrom underway in the District of Columbia, Georgia, Florida, New York and elsewhere will be settled at the Supreme Court, which earlier this month agreed to review the immunity issue raised in Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against the former president for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The question is seemingly simple: Can an American president commit crimes while in office without ever facing criminal charges?
“It’s kind of ridiculous,” said Paul Saputo, a Texas defense lawyer. “We’re not even going to have a 5-4 decision. I don’t think it’s going to be a close call. They realize that in order for them to really keep the country together, it’s got to be pretty unanimous.”
The growing consensus by legal scholars is that the Supreme Court will lean conservative—in the traditional American sense, not a political one—starkly setting limits on executive power that will leave Trump in the cold. And that’s despite the liberal public’s concerns that Trump will benefit from the current roster at the nation’s highest court, where a third of the nine justices were appointed by the man himself.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
A Guest essay at The New York Times, by Norman Eisen, Celinda Lake and Anat Shenker-Osorio: A Trump Conviction Could Cost Him Enough Voters to Tip the Election.
Recent general-election polling has generally shown Donald Trump maintaining a slight lead over President Biden. Yet many of those polls also reveal an Achilles’ heel for Mr. Trump that has the potential to change the shape of the race.
It relates to Mr. Trump’s legal troubles: If he is criminally convicted by a jury of his peers, voters say they are likely to punish him for it.
A trial on criminal charges is not guaranteed, and if there is a trial, neither is a conviction. But if Mr. Trump is tried and convicted, a mountain of public opinion data suggests voters would turn away from the former president.
Still likely to be completed before Election Day remains the special counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecution of Mr. Trump for allegedly scheming to overturn the 2020 election. That trial had been set to start on March 4, 2024, but that date has been put on hold, pending appellate review of the trial court’s rejection of Mr. Trump‘s presidential immunity. On Friday the Supreme Court declined Mr. Smith’s request for immediate review of the question, but the appeal is still headed to the high court on a rocket docket. That is because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hear oral argument on Jan. 9 and will probably issue a decision within days of that, setting up a prompt return to the Supreme Court. Moreover, with three other criminal cases also set for trial in 2024, it is entirely possible that Mr. Trump will have at least one criminal conviction before November 2024.
“Jingle Bells Composed Here”
The authors look at the polls:
The negative impact of conviction has emerged in polling as a consistent through line over the past six months nationally and in key states. We are not aware of a poll that offers evidence to the contrary. The swing in this data away from Mr. Trump varies — but in a close election, as 2024 promises to be, any movement can be decisive.
To be clear, we should always be cautious of polls this early in the race posing hypothetical questions, about conviction or anything else. Voters can know only what they think they will think about something that has yet to happen.
Yet we have seen the effect in several national surveys, like a recent Wall Street Journal poll. In a hypothetical matchup between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump leads by four percentage points. But if Mr. Trump is convicted, there is a five-point swing, putting Mr. Biden ahead, 47 percent to 46 percent.
In another new poll by Yahoo News and YouGov, the swing is seven points. In a December New York Times/Siena College poll, almost a third of Republican primary voters believe that Mr. Trump shouldn’t be the party’s nominee if he is convicted even after winning the primary.
The damage to Mr. Trump is even more pronounced when we look at an important subgroup: swing-state voters. In recent CNN polls from Michigan and Georgia, Mr. Trump holds solid leads. The polls don’t report head-to-head numbers if Mr. Trump is convicted, but if he is, 46 percent of voters in Michigan and 47 percent in Georgia agree that he should be disqualified from the presidency.
Those are often places where a greater number of conflicted — and therefore persuadable — voters reside. An October Times/Siena poll shows that voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania favored Mr. Trump, with Mr. Biden narrowly winning Wisconsin. But if Mr. Trump is convicted and sentenced, Mr. Biden would win each of these states, according to the poll. In fact, the poll found the race in these six states would seismically shift in the aggregate: a 14-point swing, with Mr. Biden winning by 10 rather than losing by four percentage points.
There’s more interesting number crunching at the NYT link.
I’ll end with one more positive story about a man in a desperate situation, rescued by good Samaritans. Fox News: Indiana man found by good Samaritans rescued from car wreck after 6 days trapped in vehicle: ‘A miracle.’
An Indiana man who crashed his truck and had been trapped inside it for nearly a week was found alive on Tuesday by two fishermen who happened to spot the wrecked vehicle.
The fishermen – Nivardo Delatorre and his father-in-law Mario Garcia – noticed the crashed truck under an overpass on Interstate 94 as they were walking along Salt Creek in Portage, Indiana, looking for fishing holes. They initially believed they had seen a dead person inside the vehicle until one of them touched the body and the man turned his head and spoke to them.
Christmas in Boston
“I went to touch it, and he turned around,” Garcia said at a press conference. “And it almost killed me there because it was kind of shocking.”
“He was alive, and he was very happy to see us — I’ve never seen a relief like that,” he added. “He says that he tried yelling and screaming, but nobody would hear him. It just was quiet, just the sound of the water.”
The two good Samaritans called 911 and first responders rushed to the scene at about 3:45 p.m. Tuesday. The driver told the fisherman he had been stranded and paralyzed in place since Dec. 20.
The driver, identified as 27-year-old Matthew Reum, was heading westbound on Interstate 94 when his truck left the roadway for unknown reasons, Indiana State Police said in a news release.
The vehicle was driven into a ditch before making it into a creek and stopping under the bridge. Reum was pinned inside the vehicle and was unable to reach his cellphone to call for help.
The Portage Fire Department and Burns Harbor Fire Department were able to cut Reum from the vehicle using heavy machinery. He was then flown to a hospital in critical condition for treatment of severe, life-threatening injuries.
I hope he recovers.
That’s all I have for you today. What stories are you following?
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MDA Presentation
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2009/06/mda-presentation/
I was deeply honoured to be asked to present the keynote address at the Mobile Data Association's "Monetising The Mobile Internet in Tough Times". I was a last minute stand-in for Henry Stevens of the GSMA.
You can download the day's presentations directly, but as slides only tell half the story, I've written a brief commentary to what I was presenting. Naturally a presentation or blog post cannot capture all the questions & and answers (nor my "inimitable style") but I'll do my best.
Overview of the Mobile Internet and its current usage
We think that we are living in interesting times.
All of this has happened before...
Mobile data is blooming. We're at the start of a glorious adventure.
Literally anything we can conceive will come to pass. I want to show you a concept advert that we've been working on to explain why mobile data is so important.
As all of you know, Palm is preparing to release a phone which will revolutionise mobile data access.
I've got a very special treat for you ladies and gentlemen. May I present The Palm....
Treo 180. 16 MB of internal memory and a 33 MHz Dragonball CPU.
Touch screen. Handwriting recognition. Full access to emails. An application store with hundreds of thousands of free and premium application. The ability to play music and view your photos.
With GPRS, you'll be able to access the internet at a faster speed than your home connection. The Blazer web browser works with WAP,HTML and i-mode.
...And All Of This Will Happen Again
Mobile data is blooming. We're at the start of a glorious path. Literally anything we can conceive will come to pass.
I want to show you a concept advert that we've been working on to explain why mobile data is so important.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmM2zKDu7yU
As all of you know, Palm is preparing to release a phone which will revolutionise mobile data access.
I've got a very special treat for you ladies and gentlemen. May I present The Palm....
Palm Pre
Pre.
Touch screen. Handwriting recognition. Full access to emails. An application store with hundreds of thousands of free and premium application. The ability to play music and view your photos.
With HSDPA, you'll be able to access the internet at a faster speed than your home connection.
I think you get the point. To understand where we are now, we need an appreciation of where we've come from and where we want to be.
I want to focus this morning on where we are right now.
Vodafone Results
Vodafone Data Report
There has been an astonishing rise in data revenues. Data revenues are now where SMS was 3 years ago.Undoubtedly, high end phones are important - but of a far greater impact, in my personal opinion, is pricing is an issue. Moving to flat rate & bundles has increased data usage and revenues just as it did for text & voice.We still have the "Unlimited" issue... Customers find it very hard to know what a MB is - or how much of one they've downloaded. Various companies have experimented with time based charging, session charging and even page charging. I think that "Unlimited" may be the way forward - but only if us geeks get to know what the "Fair Use" policy is.
Devices
Vodafone Device Date
Personally, I find it disappointing that only 44% 3G. Having said that, good devices are useful but NOT essential.
UK Usage
The ONS has a wealth of data on UK Internet usage - here's a sample.
Shockingly low, but growing.
Lessons From Voice
We've been on the cusp of a mobile data revolution for several years now. To understand what's driving it, we have to understand whatdrives people to use data.
So, slightly counter intuitively, let's look at voice.
Who here knows what the killer app for voice is?
The killer app for voice is......your mother!...pregnant wife!...Women in general.
Essentially - talking to people all the time is a great driver to use voice as much as possible.
In the same way, the killer app for mobile data is... fixed line data. Getting great services which people want to use with their fixed line is a key driver to getting people on to mobile data. It only takes a few missed emails, Facebook pokes, etc., to make people desperate for connectivity where ever they go.
Is your mum on Twitter
Once people have experienced web, IM and email, they want to continue using those services. Bus stop, train journeys, in the toilet.
Woman using a mobile while on the loo
30% browse the internet on the loo. Who knows what percentage wash their hands afterwards? Because 21% browse at the dinner table.
People want data so much, they'll take it everywhere with them.
Popular Handsets
The GX-10. This was the first Vodafone live handset. GPRS, 16 colour screen. Basic HTML browser. It's a dog. It's decrepid. It's old. Obsolete. It's still used by several thousand people every month.The Nokia 6300 - outsells everything in the UK. It's several times more popular than the iPhone.
Eastern Europe
Several parts of Eastern Europe have very little land-line infrastructure. This means that for many the first experience of the Internet is mobile. And it's a pretty good experience.
Emerging Markets
Vodafone India recently reported that it signs up 1,600,000 new customers every month. Other markets report similarly startling growth.
Vodafone Egypt also has caught the data bug
But many - not all, but many - of the handsets there are cheap. They are low-tier devices with low feature-sets. Generally GSM, small screens - not always colour.
Opera
In a trial with Vodafone Egypt there were 400,000 installs in a single month.
Opera Mini Screenshots
This is software which will eventually be installed by default on Very Low Cost ($25) handsets. This opens the Mobile Data market to a huge and previously neglected segment.
Now, no one is saying that the Opera software turns a cheap and nasty device into an iPhone - but that's not what it's there for. It's to connect the previously unconnected.
So, Where Are We?
There are currently 3,804,064,939 mobile phone connections in the world. (Data supplied by GSMA Mobile Infolink on 22/09/08)
Go and visit the site - see how many 3G devices there are. See where the connections are located around the world. It may surprise you.
We Have Been Here Before
We like to think that the latest craze we've invented is somehow original. We couldn't be more wrong.
Games consoles with downloadable games
Gameline is a revolutionary new system. You plug your games console in to your telephone line and you can download as many new games as you want! (1983)
XBAND is a revolutionary new system. You plug your games console in to your telephone line and you can download as many new games as you want!(1994)
Xbox Live is a revolutionary new system. You plug your games console in to your telephone line and you can download as many new games as you want! (2005)
This Is The Year Of The Mobile Internet
We need to break the cycle. We need to make sure that, this time, it works.
There is a Global Critical Mass of ~3,805,374,038 Global GSM and 3GSM Mobile Connections.
There are more internet phones than internet PC / Laptops
(GSMA)
How do we do that? That's up to you.
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On the Cusp: Days of ’62 by David Kynaston
According to the Big 60s Sort Out podcast, the Sixties began in 1960. According to me, a pedant, they began in 1961 because we don’t count from zero (and they ended in 1970). According to Phillip Larkin, they began in 1963, while proponents of “the Long Sixties” argue that they began in 1956 and ended in 1973. My current read, by Christopher Bray, makes the case for 1965 as “the year modern Britain began”, but my previous read, by David Kynaston (him again) zooms in on the summer of 1962.
Here we are. I declare my interest: this is the year I was born, though in December, so after the events of this book. What is this book? It has the feel of a lockdown project. It’s part of Kynaston’s history of modern Britain series, which begins with Austerity Britain and then moves on through Family Britain (1951-57), Modernity Britain (57-62), and A Northern Wind (62-65). So what is this? Both Modernity Britain and A Northern Wind cover 1962, so why publish a book in the middle called On the Cusp?
Well, I suppose there’s a clue in the title. The series as a whole is called ‘Tales of a New Jerusalem’, but in my mind it has the same title as that Moody Blues album Days of Future Passed. On the Cusp implies that we’ve reached a tipping point and that the author has decided to take stock around that tipping point before proceeding. He is, in effect, arguing that 1962 is the year that modern Britain began.
I’m interested in the publication dates, and convinced that lockdown had something to do with this. The previous volume, Modernity Britain, came out in 2015. This appeared in 2022, and A Northern Wind was published in 2024. So, he’s working on A Northern Wind for nearly 10 years, and possibly finds himself wrestling with its length. (I wonder how Mark Lewisohn is getting on with the second volume of he ‘All These Years’ series?) Presumably, the publishers want the book to be around 7-800 pages, so what is he to do with this 200-page section about the summer of 1962? And what would the reader make of a book that promised to take you up to 1965, but spends its first 200 pages leading up to the Beatles first single? Oh, and that first James Bond film, a coincidence John Higgs already wrote about in Love and Let Die.
And then lockdown happens, and the solution must have presented itself. I’ll just do a separate book, which can be published sooner, and give me a bit more time to work on the rest.
Here we are. That’s what this book is: an almost day-by-day account of the events of summer 1962. The cricket season, the last Gentlemen v. Players games, Steptoe and Son on the telly, the BBC hesitating over the pilot episodes of That Was The Week That Was, The Beatles on the radio, playing gigs around the country, the Rolling Stones presenting themselves as a blues band. It’s written in the style of one of those newspaper gossip columns, or the NME’s back-page “Teazers” column, with its anthropomorphised three little dots. Sometimes events get just a sentence, or a clause. And then sometimes Kynaston pauses and spends some time discussing what the politicians were up to, or how people reacted to an event. There’s very little mention of Harold Wilson, which is fascinating – because he is months away from becoming Labour leader when Hugh Gaitskell suddenly dies. A weird parallel to the way Tony Blair succeeded John Smith.
I remember my mum talking about certain cricketers as ‘gentlemen’ or ‘players’ and I remember thinking, what are you on about? And of course the reason I didn’t know was because that whole silly thing died its death a few months before I was born.
The book finishes, in true “Teazers” style, with several lists. There are 10 establishment figures whose day is done; and then 10 “new establishment” figures whose day is to come. And then a long old list, a record-breaking sentence, telling us all about the significant characters who will impact the next few years, and what they are doing on that fateful day when “Love Me Do” hit the shops.
Why did I pick this up when I haven’t read the previous two books yet. I plan to, but then this was only 200 pages, and I picked it up with British Summer Time Begins and 1965. I think I wanted to read about the world I vaguely knew but barely remember, the world of paraffin heaters and black and white telly. Interestingly (for me, I mean) 1965 begins with Winston Churchill’s funeral, which I do remember even though I had only just turned 2 when it took over the television and was on instead of Watch with Mother.
Anyway, it’s good, this. But you should probably, unlike me, read the books in the correct chronological order.
#1960s #1962 #60s #Beatles #BritishCulture #BritishHistory #history #Kynaston #Sixties
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On the Cusp: Days of ’62 by David Kynaston
According to the Big 60s Sort Out podcast, the Sixties began in 1960. According to me, a pedant, they began in 1961 because we don’t count from zero (and they ended in 1970). According to Phillip Larkin, they began in 1963, while proponents of “the Long Sixties” argue that they began in 1956 and ended in 1973. My current read, by Christopher Bray, makes the case for 1965 as “the year modern Britain began”, but my previous read, by David Kynaston (him again) zooms in on the summer of 1962.
Here we are. I declare my interest: this is the year I was born, though in December, so after the events of this book. What is this book? It has the feel of a lockdown project. It’s part of Kynaston’s history of modern Britain series, which begins with Austerity Britain and then moves on through Family Britain (1951-57), Modernity Britain (57-62), and A Northern Wind (62-65). So what is this? Both Modernity Britain and A Northern Wind cover 1962, so why publish a book in the middle called On the Cusp?
Well, I suppose there’s a clue in the title. The series as a whole is called ‘Tales of a New Jerusalem’, but in my mind it has the same title as that Moody Blues album Days of Future Passed. On the Cusp implies that we’ve reached a tipping point and that the author has decided to take stock around that tipping point before proceeding. He is, in effect, arguing that 1962 is the year that modern Britain began.
I’m interested in the publication dates, and convinced that lockdown had something to do with this. The previous volume, Modernity Britain, came out in 2015. This appeared in 2022, and A Northern Wind was published in 2024. So, he’s working on A Northern Wind for nearly 10 years, and possibly finds himself wrestling with its length. (I wonder how Mark Lewisohn is getting on with the second volume of he ‘All These Years’ series?) Presumably, the publishers want the book to be around 7-800 pages, so what is he to do with this 200-page section about the summer of 1962? And what would the reader make of a book that promised to take you up to 1965, but spends its first 200 pages leading up to the Beatles first single? Oh, and that first James Bond film, a coincidence John Higgs already wrote about in Love and Let Die.
And then lockdown happens, and the solution must have presented itself. I’ll just do a separate book, which can be published sooner, and give me a bit more time to work on the rest.
Here we are. That’s what this book is: an almost day-by-day account of the events of summer 1962. The cricket season, the last Gentlemen v. Players games, Steptoe and Son on the telly, the BBC hesitating over the pilot episodes of That Was The Week That Was, The Beatles on the radio, playing gigs around the country, the Rolling Stones presenting themselves as a blues band. It’s written in the style of one of those newspaper gossip columns, or the NME’s back-page “Teazers” column, with its anthropomorphised three little dots. Sometimes events get just a sentence, or a clause. And then sometimes Kynaston pauses and spends some time discussing what the politicians were up to, or how people reacted to an event. There’s very little mention of Harold Wilson, which is fascinating – because he is months away from becoming Labour leader when Hugh Gaitskell suddenly dies. A weird parallel to the way Tony Blair succeeded John Smith.
I remember my mum talking about certain cricketers as ‘gentlemen’ or ‘players’ and I remember thinking, what are you on about? And of course the reason I didn’t know was because that whole silly thing died its death a few months before I was born.
The book finishes, in true “Teazers” style, with several lists. There are 10 establishment figures whose day is done; and then 10 “new establishment” figures whose day is to come. And then a long old list, a record-breaking sentence, telling us all about the significant characters who will impact the next few years, and what they are doing on that fateful day when “Love Me Do” hit the shops.
Why did I pick this up when I haven’t read the previous two books yet. I plan to, but then this was only 200 pages, and I picked it up with British Summer Time Begins and 1965. I think I wanted to read about the world I vaguely knew but barely remember, the world of paraffin heaters and black and white telly. Interestingly (for me, I mean) 1965 begins with Winston Churchill’s funeral, which I do remember even though I had only just turned 2 when it took over the television and was on instead of Watch with Mother.
Anyway, it’s good, this. But you should probably, unlike me, read the books in the correct chronological order.
#1960s #1962 #60s #Beatles #BritishCulture #BritishHistory #history #Kynaston #Sixties
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On the Cusp: Days of ’62 by David Kynaston
According to the Big 60s Sort Out podcast, the Sixties began in 1960. According to me, a pedant, they began in 1961 because we don’t count from zero (and they ended in 1970). According to Phillip Larkin, they began in 1963, while proponents of “the Long Sixties” argue that they began in 1956 and ended in 1973. My current read, by Christopher Bray, makes the case for 1965 as “the year modern Britain began”, but my previous read, by David Kynaston (him again) zooms in on the summer of 1962.
Here we are. I declare my interest: this is the year I was born, though in December, so after the events of this book. What is this book? It has the feel of a lockdown project. It’s part of Kynaston’s history of modern Britain series, which begins with Austerity Britain and then moves on through Family Britain (1951-57), Modernity Britain (57-62), and A Northern Wind (62-65). So what is this? Both Modernity Britain and A Northern Wind cover 1962, so why publish a book in the middle called On the Cusp?
Well, I suppose there’s a clue in the title. The series as a whole is called ‘Tales of a New Jerusalem’, but in my mind it has the same title as that Moody Blues album Days of Future Passed. On the Cusp implies that we’ve reached a tipping point and that the author has decided to take stock around that tipping point before proceeding. He is, in effect, arguing that 1962 is the year that modern Britain began.
I’m interested in the publication dates, and convinced that lockdown had something to do with this. The previous volume, Modernity Britain, came out in 2015. This appeared in 2022, and A Northern Wind was published in 2024. So, he’s working on A Northern Wind for nearly 10 years, and possibly finds himself wrestling with its length. (I wonder how Mark Lewisohn is getting on with the second volume of he ‘All These Years’ series?) Presumably, the publishers want the book to be around 7-800 pages, so what is he to do with this 200-page section about the summer of 1962? And what would the reader make of a book that promised to take you up to 1965, but spends its first 200 pages leading up to the Beatles first single? Oh, and that first James Bond film, a coincidence John Higgs already wrote about in Love and Let Die.
And then lockdown happens, and the solution must have presented itself. I’ll just do a separate book, which can be published sooner, and give me a bit more time to work on the rest.
Here we are. That’s what this book is: an almost day-by-day account of the events of summer 1962. The cricket season, the last Gentlemen v. Players games, Steptoe and Son on the telly, the BBC hesitating over the pilot episodes of That Was The Week That Was, The Beatles on the radio, playing gigs around the country, the Rolling Stones presenting themselves as a blues band. It’s written in the style of one of those newspaper gossip columns, or the NME’s back-page “Teazers” column, with its anthropomorphised three little dots. Sometimes events get just a sentence, or a clause. And then sometimes Kynaston pauses and spends some time discussing what the politicians were up to, or how people reacted to an event. There’s very little mention of Harold Wilson, which is fascinating – because he is months away from becoming Labour leader when Hugh Gaitskell suddenly dies. A weird parallel to the way Tony Blair succeeded John Smith.
I remember my mum talking about certain cricketers as ‘gentlemen’ or ‘players’ and I remember thinking, what are you on about? And of course the reason I didn’t know was because that whole silly thing died its death a few months before I was born.
The book finishes, in true “Teazers” style, with several lists. There are 10 establishment figures whose day is done; and then 10 “new establishment” figures whose day is to come. And then a long old list, a record-breaking sentence, telling us all about the significant characters who will impact the next few years, and what they are doing on that fateful day when “Love Me Do” hit the shops.
Why did I pick this up when I haven’t read the previous two books yet. I plan to, but then this was only 200 pages, and I picked it up with British Summer Time Begins and 1965. I think I wanted to read about the world I vaguely knew but barely remember, the world of paraffin heaters and black and white telly. Interestingly (for me, I mean) 1965 begins with Winston Churchill’s funeral, which I do remember even though I had only just turned 2 when it took over the television and was on instead of Watch with Mother.
Anyway, it’s good, this. But you should probably, unlike me, read the books in the correct chronological order.
#1960s #1962 #60s #Beatles #BritishCulture #BritishHistory #history #Kynaston #Sixties
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On the Cusp: Days of ’62 by David Kynaston
According to the Big 60s Sort Out podcast, the Sixties began in 1960. According to me, a pedant, they began in 1961 because we don’t count from zero (and they ended in 1970). According to Phillip Larkin, they began in 1963, while proponents of “the Long Sixties” argue that they began in 1956 and ended in 1973. My current read, by Christopher Bray, makes the case for 1965 as “the year modern Britain began”, but my previous read, by David Kynaston (him again) zooms in on the summer of 1962.
Here we are. I declare my interest: this is the year I was born, though in December, so after the events of this book. What is this book? It has the feel of a lockdown project. It’s part of Kynaston’s history of modern Britain series, which begins with Austerity Britain and then moves on through Family Britain (1951-57), Modernity Britain (57-62), and A Northern Wind (62-65). So what is this? Both Modernity Britain and A Northern Wind cover 1962, so why publish a book in the middle called On the Cusp?
Well, I suppose there’s a clue in the title. The series as a whole is called ‘Tales of a New Jerusalem’, but in my mind it has the same title as that Moody Blues album Days of Future Passed. On the Cusp implies that we’ve reached a tipping point and that the author has decided to take stock around that tipping point before proceeding. He is, in effect, arguing that 1962 is the year that modern Britain began.
I’m interested in the publication dates, and convinced that lockdown had something to do with this. The previous volume, Modernity Britain, came out in 2015. This appeared in 2022, and A Northern Wind was published in 2024. So, he’s working on A Northern Wind for nearly 10 years, and possibly finds himself wrestling with its length. (I wonder how Mark Lewisohn is getting on with the second volume of he ‘All These Years’ series?) Presumably, the publishers want the book to be around 7-800 pages, so what is he to do with this 200-page section about the summer of 1962? And what would the reader make of a book that promised to take you up to 1965, but spends its first 200 pages leading up to the Beatles first single? Oh, and that first James Bond film, a coincidence John Higgs already wrote about in Love and Let Die.
And then lockdown happens, and the solution must have presented itself. I’ll just do a separate book, which can be published sooner, and give me a bit more time to work on the rest.
Here we are. That’s what this book is: an almost day-by-day account of the events of summer 1962. The cricket season, the last Gentlemen v. Players games, Steptoe and Son on the telly, the BBC hesitating over the pilot episodes of That Was The Week That Was, The Beatles on the radio, playing gigs around the country, the Rolling Stones presenting themselves as a blues band. It’s written in the style of one of those newspaper gossip columns, or the NME’s back-page “Teazers” column, with its anthropomorphised three little dots. Sometimes events get just a sentence, or a clause. And then sometimes Kynaston pauses and spends some time discussing what the politicians were up to, or how people reacted to an event. There’s very little mention of Harold Wilson, which is fascinating – because he is months away from becoming Labour leader when Hugh Gaitskell suddenly dies. A weird parallel to the way Tony Blair succeeded John Smith.
I remember my mum talking about certain cricketers as ‘gentlemen’ or ‘players’ and I remember thinking, what are you on about? And of course the reason I didn’t know was because that whole silly thing died its death a few months before I was born.
The book finishes, in true “Teazers” style, with several lists. There are 10 establishment figures whose day is done; and then 10 “new establishment” figures whose day is to come. And then a long old list, a record-breaking sentence, telling us all about the significant characters who will impact the next few years, and what they are doing on that fateful day when “Love Me Do” hit the shops.
Why did I pick this up when I haven’t read the previous two books yet. I plan to, but then this was only 200 pages, and I picked it up with British Summer Time Begins and 1965. I think I wanted to read about the world I vaguely knew but barely remember, the world of paraffin heaters and black and white telly. Interestingly (for me, I mean) 1965 begins with Winston Churchill’s funeral, which I do remember even though I had only just turned 2 when it took over the television and was on instead of Watch with Mother.
Anyway, it’s good, this. But you should probably, unlike me, read the books in the correct chronological order.
#1960s #1962 #60s #Beatles #BritishCulture #BritishHistory #history #Kynaston #Sixties
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Fly me into the hedge please!
The end of the runway is in sight.
Sadly we are still at 400 feet and on a glidepath that will take us beyond the hedge at the far end of the runway.
“What are you thinking?” I enquire optimistically as my student wrestles internally with the decision making process that should really go something like this:
“Dan’s asked me what I’m thinking. That probably means that this approach is not very good. I should go around.”
“I think its ok.” is the optimistic reply I get.
With a sigh I command, “Ok, full power go-around.”
This type of exchange happens from time to time and its usually when the student has been ‘circuit bashing’, or practising repeated take offs and landings for some time without success. However, it’s also usually around this point that the student is right on the cusp of ‘getting it’.
Yep, definitely looking a little high here…Getting it: that joyful moment when something that someone has been struggling with suddenly clicks. It happens all the time in life, from the moment you take your first steps (although granted, its likely you can’t remember those), to the time your dad ran along behind you pretending to hold the bike seat as you rode without your stabilisers the first time. Or what about the time you finally swam without your armbands?
Flying, and in particular landing, is no different. Once you understand what you are trying to achieve, and get it, you will never forget.
Spoiler alert, you will still make some shit landings!
But, you will at least be able to work out why it went wrong, and more importantly, what you can do differently next time to address it.
It’s one of the greatest joys of my job as a flight instructor to see someone ‘get it’ – in fact it’s probably more rewarding than seeing someone’s first solo, as I’m just generally just like a mother hen during that particular milestone, fussing and worrying (unnecessarily I might add). The ‘getting it’ moments are just as big in my eyes, as that is when people start to fly the plane, rather than being flown by the plane.
And that moment, when someone flies a stable glide approach, to the aiming point, rounds out at just the right height, holds the plane in the air until the speed has bled off, and does NOT attempt to fly it into the runway, erm, I mean land it, that moment is one of the most satisfying moments there is when teaching people to fly.
The secret to landing, paradoxically, is to try not to land. And as soon as my students not only realise that, but actually believe it, that’s when they begin to make real progress.
That’s when they can judge the angle of the approach more accurately, and at 400ft over the middle of the runway, we’d already be at full power on the go-around without me needing to utter a single syllable.
That’s when they ‘get it’.
#AttitudeAirsports #Aviation #BMAA #FlightInstructor #Flying #Humour #Landing #LearningToFly #Microlights #Pilot #StudentPilot #Ultralights
-
Fly me into the hedge please!
The end of the runway is in sight.
Sadly we are still at 400 feet and on a glidepath that will take us beyond the hedge at the far end of the runway.
“What are you thinking?” I enquire optimistically as my student wrestles internally with the decision making process that should really go something like this:
“Dan’s asked me what I’m thinking. That probably means that this approach is not very good. I should go around.”
“I think its ok.” is the optimistic reply I get.
With a sigh I command, “Ok, full power go-around.”
This type of exchange happens from time to time and its usually when the student has been ‘circuit bashing’, or practising repeated take offs and landings for some time without success. However, it’s also usually around this point that the student is right on the cusp of ‘getting it’.
Yep, definitely looking a little high here…Getting it: that joyful moment when something that someone has been struggling with suddenly clicks. It happens all the time in life, from the moment you take your first steps (although granted, its likely you can’t remember those), to the time your dad ran along behind you pretending to hold the bike seat as you rode without your stabilisers the first time. Or what about the time you finally swam without your armbands?
Flying, and in particular landing, is no different. Once you understand what you are trying to achieve, and get it, you will never forget.
Spoiler alert, you will still make some shit landings!
But, you will at least be able to work out why it went wrong, and more importantly, what you can do differently next time to address it.
It’s one of the greatest joys of my job as a flight instructor to see someone ‘get it’ – in fact it’s probably more rewarding than seeing someone’s first solo, as I’m just generally just like a mother hen during that particular milestone, fussing and worrying (unnecessarily I might add). The ‘getting it’ moments are just as big in my eyes, as that is when people start to fly the plane, rather than being flown by the plane.
And that moment, when someone flies a stable glide approach, to the aiming point, rounds out at just the right height, holds the plane in the air until the speed has bled off, and does NOT attempt to fly it into the runway, erm, I mean land it, that moment is one of the most satisfying moments there is when teaching people to fly.
The secret to landing, paradoxically, is to try not to land. And as soon as my students not only realise that, but actually believe it, that’s when they begin to make real progress.
That’s when they can judge the angle of the approach more accurately, and at 400ft over the middle of the runway, we’d already be at full power on the go-around without me needing to utter a single syllable.
That’s when they ‘get it’.
#AttitudeAirsports #Aviation #BMAA #FlightInstructor #Flying #Humour #Landing #LearningToFly #Microlights #Pilot #StudentPilot #Ultralights
-
Fly me into the hedge please!
The end of the runway is in sight.
Sadly we are still at 400 feet and on a glidepath that will take us beyond the hedge at the far end of the runway.
“What are you thinking?” I enquire optimistically as my student wrestles internally with the decision making process that should really go something like this:
“Dan’s asked me what I’m thinking. That probably means that this approach is not very good. I should go around.”
“I think its ok.” is the optimistic reply I get.
With a sigh I command, “Ok, full power go-around.”
This type of exchange happens from time to time and its usually when the student has been ‘circuit bashing’, or practising repeated take offs and landings for some time without success. However, it’s also usually around this point that the student is right on the cusp of ‘getting it’.
Yep, definitely looking a little high here…Getting it: that joyful moment when something that someone has been struggling with suddenly clicks. It happens all the time in life, from the moment you take your first steps (although granted, its likely you can’t remember those), to the time your dad ran along behind you pretending to hold the bike seat as you rode without your stabilisers the first time. Or what about the time you finally swam without your armbands?
Flying, and in particular landing, is no different. Once you understand what you are trying to achieve, and get it, you will never forget.
Spoiler alert, you will still make some shit landings!
But, you will at least be able to work out why it went wrong, and more importantly, what you can do differently next time to address it.
It’s one of the greatest joys of my job as a flight instructor to see someone ‘get it’ – in fact it’s probably more rewarding than seeing someone’s first solo, as I’m just generally just like a mother hen during that particular milestone, fussing and worrying (unnecessarily I might add). The ‘getting it’ moments are just as big in my eyes, as that is when people start to fly the plane, rather than being flown by the plane.
And that moment, when someone flies a stable glide approach, to the aiming point, rounds out at just the right height, holds the plane in the air until the speed has bled off, and does NOT attempt to fly it into the runway, erm, I mean land it, that moment is one of the most satisfying moments there is when teaching people to fly.
The secret to landing, paradoxically, is to try not to land. And as soon as my students not only realise that, but actually believe it, that’s when they begin to make real progress.
That’s when they can judge the angle of the approach more accurately, and at 400ft over the middle of the runway, we’d already be at full power on the go-around without me needing to utter a single syllable.
That’s when they ‘get it’.
#AttitudeAirsports #Aviation #BMAA #FlightInstructor #Flying #Humour #Landing #LearningToFly #Microlights #Pilot #StudentPilot #Ultralights
-
Fly me into the hedge please!
The end of the runway is in sight.
Sadly we are still at 400 feet and on a glidepath that will take us beyond the hedge at the far end of the runway.
“What are you thinking?” I enquire optimistically as my student wrestles internally with the decision making process that should really go something like this:
“Dan’s asked me what I’m thinking. That probably means that this approach is not very good. I should go around.”
“I think its ok.” is the optimistic reply I get.
With a sigh I command, “Ok, full power go-around.”
This type of exchange happens from time to time and its usually when the student has been ‘circuit bashing’, or practising repeated take offs and landings for some time without success. However, it’s also usually around this point that the student is right on the cusp of ‘getting it’.
Yep, definitely looking a little high here…Getting it: that joyful moment when something that someone has been struggling with suddenly clicks. It happens all the time in life, from the moment you take your first steps (although granted, its likely you can’t remember those), to the time your dad ran along behind you pretending to hold the bike seat as you rode without your stabilisers the first time. Or what about the time you finally swam without your armbands?
Flying, and in particular landing, is no different. Once you understand what you are trying to achieve, and get it, you will never forget.
Spoiler alert, you will still make some shit landings!
But, you will at least be able to work out why it went wrong, and more importantly, what you can do differently next time to address it.
It’s one of the greatest joys of my job as a flight instructor to see someone ‘get it’ – in fact it’s probably more rewarding than seeing someone’s first solo, as I’m just generally just like a mother hen during that particular milestone, fussing and worrying (unnecessarily I might add). The ‘getting it’ moments are just as big in my eyes, as that is when people start to fly the plane, rather than being flown by the plane.
And that moment, when someone flies a stable glide approach, to the aiming point, rounds out at just the right height, holds the plane in the air until the speed has bled off, and does NOT attempt to fly it into the runway, erm, I mean land it, that moment is one of the most satisfying moments there is when teaching people to fly.
The secret to landing, paradoxically, is to try not to land. And as soon as my students not only realise that, but actually believe it, that’s when they begin to make real progress.
That’s when they can judge the angle of the approach more accurately, and at 400ft over the middle of the runway, we’d already be at full power on the go-around without me needing to utter a single syllable.
That’s when they ‘get it’.
#AttitudeAirsports #Aviation #BMAA #FlightInstructor #Flying #Humour #Landing #LearningToFly #Microlights #Pilot #StudentPilot #Ultralights
-
Fly me into the hedge please!
The end of the runway is in sight.
Sadly we are still at 400 feet and on a glidepath that will take us beyond the hedge at the far end of the runway.
“What are you thinking?” I enquire optimistically as my student wrestles internally with the decision making process that should really go something like this:
“Dan’s asked me what I’m thinking. That probably means that this approach is not very good. I should go around.”
“I think its ok.” is the optimistic reply I get.
With a sigh I command, “Ok, full power go-around.”
This type of exchange happens from time to time and its usually when the student has been ‘circuit bashing’, or practising repeated take offs and landings for some time without success. However, it’s also usually around this point that the student is right on the cusp of ‘getting it’.
Yep, definitely looking a little high here…Getting it: that joyful moment when something that someone has been struggling with suddenly clicks. It happens all the time in life, from the moment you take your first steps (although granted, its likely you can’t remember those), to the time your dad ran along behind you pretending to hold the bike seat as you rode without your stabilisers the first time. Or what about the time you finally swam without your armbands?
Flying, and in particular landing, is no different. Once you understand what you are trying to achieve, and get it, you will never forget.
Spoiler alert, you will still make some shit landings!
But, you will at least be able to work out why it went wrong, and more importantly, what you can do differently next time to address it.
It’s one of the greatest joys of my job as a flight instructor to see someone ‘get it’ – in fact it’s probably more rewarding than seeing someone’s first solo, as I’m just generally just like a mother hen during that particular milestone, fussing and worrying (unnecessarily I might add). The ‘getting it’ moments are just as big in my eyes, as that is when people start to fly the plane, rather than being flown by the plane.
And that moment, when someone flies a stable glide approach, to the aiming point, rounds out at just the right height, holds the plane in the air until the speed has bled off, and does NOT attempt to fly it into the runway, erm, I mean land it, that moment is one of the most satisfying moments there is when teaching people to fly.
The secret to landing, paradoxically, is to try not to land. And as soon as my students not only realise that, but actually believe it, that’s when they begin to make real progress.
That’s when they can judge the angle of the approach more accurately, and at 400ft over the middle of the runway, we’d already be at full power on the go-around without me needing to utter a single syllable.
That’s when they ‘get it’.
#AttitudeAirsports #Aviation #BMAA #FlightInstructor #Flying #Humour #Landing #LearningToFly #Microlights #Pilot #StudentPilot #Ultralights