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Preventative Medicine, or the Manufacture of Patients?
There is a sentence every American patient has heard at the dentist’s chair, the cardiologist’s office, the primary-care visit, and the pharmacy counter. It arrives in a tone of grave responsibility: We caught this early. What follows is a crown, an echocardiogram, a statin, a stress test, a referral, a follow-up appointment, and a copay. The word “preventative” has come to function as a moral shield around a billing code. To question whether the recommended intervention is necessary is treated as ingratitude toward a profession that, the implication goes, only wants to keep you alive.
The trouble is that the evidence for many of these interventions is weaker than the assured tone of the recommending clinician suggests, and the financial structure of American medicine rewards the recommendation regardless of whether the evidence supports it. A 2019 JAMA review by Shrank and colleagues estimated annual waste in U.S. health spending at $760 billion to $935 billion, roughly a quarter of total expenditures, with overtreatment and low-value care alone accounting for $76 billion to $101 billion of that figure. Administrative complexity contributes another $266 billion. Pricing failures contribute $230 to $241 billion. These are the numbers in the system’s own peer-reviewed literature, produced by health-services researchers reading their own data.
Consider the dental crown. A 2020 study by Holden and colleagues, published in Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, surveyed dentists who reported widespread peer-observed overtreatment driven by what the authors called the “selling culture” of practice-management courses that teach acceptance-rate optimization. KFF Health News documented Medicaid reimbursement structures that pay three to six times more for nickel-chromium steel crowns than for fillings, an obvious incentive to crown rather than restore. Two of the largest American dental chains, operating under the Kool Smiles and Small Smiles brands, settled federal whistleblower lawsuits alleging unnecessary root canals on Medicaid-enrolled children for roughly $24 million each. The pattern is documented in the Department of Justice settlement record. A three-year-old boy named Gregory, examined by a North American Dental Group office in Ohio, was diagnosed with seven needed root canals; four of the teeth treated were later extracted. The Medicaid bill came to $1,273 against the $61 a check-up and cleaning would have cost. Gregory paid in tooth count. The chain paid a settlement years later, after the journalism caught up with the billing.
Echocardiograms tell the same story in higher-resolution format. The American College of Cardiology, through the Choosing Wisely campaign launched in 2012, listed five cardiac procedures routinely overused, three of which concerned imaging and stress-testing patients without symptoms. The American Society of Echocardiography itself recommends against repeat echocardiograms in stable, asymptomatic patients with a previously normal exam, against echocardiography for preoperative assessment in patients with no cardiac history, and against stress echocardiograms in low-risk asymptomatic adults. A multicenter trial cited by the Journal of Nuclear Cardiology found that 15% of cardiac SPECT studies were inappropriate by the ACC’s own appropriate-use criteria, with the largest single category being detection of coronary artery disease in asymptomatic low-risk patients. A Choosing Wisely Canada review found that asymptomatic low-risk patients account for up to 45% of unnecessary cardiac screening. The professional society of the field that performs the test acknowledges that close to half of its screening volume should not occur. The volume occurs because the equipment is amortized, the slot is scheduled, and the reimbursement code clears.
Salt deserves a more careful answer because the original advice was honest, the science evolved, and the medical establishment has not communicated the evolution well to patients trained to fear the salt shaker. A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis in Cureus by Alqurain and colleagues, drawing on twenty studies and 306,019 participants, found that sodium restriction reduces mortality risk in patients with essential hypertension, which confirms the original logic for that population. In observational cohorts, however, low sodium intake associates with increased mortality, supporting a J-shaped relationship at the lower extreme. In heart-failure populations specifically, aggressive restriction shows a non-significant trend toward harm. The 2024 European Society of Cardiology guidelines responded to this evidence by setting the sodium target at less than 2 grams per day, framed as realistic and sustainable, and acknowledged that the J-curve effect appears at intakes below that threshold. The honest answer to the question is that the old blanket prohibition was overdrawn, the current evidence supports moderation rather than minimization, and the simplistic counter-claim that “more salt is better” is also wrong. Hypertensives still benefit from reduction. Severely sodium-depleted patients on aggressive diuretics may be harmed by it. Medicine has walked back a categorical claim quietly, without retracting the decades of advice that produced an entire processed-food category labeled “low sodium” and a generation of patients trained to feel guilty about a pinch.
Threshold creep is the marketing arm of preventative medicine, and the documentation of it is now its own academic literature. In May 2003, the Joint National Committee’s seventh report introduced “prehypertension” as a diagnostic category covering blood pressure between 120 and 139 systolic or 80 and 89 diastolic, redrawing the line of disease in a single committee meeting and producing millions of new patients overnight without anyone’s actual blood pressure changing. The American Diabetes Association lowered the hemoglobin A1c threshold for prediabetes to 5.7% in 2010, expanding the population eligible for diabetic surveillance and pharmaceutical preprescription by tens of millions. AbbVie spent more than $75 million on AndroGel marketing in 2012, running an unbranded “Is It Low T?” awareness campaign that, according to a 2017 JAMA Internal Medicine analysis, drove measurable rises in testosterone testing in regions with heavier advertising exposure. The company’s claimed hypogonadism prevalence climbed from roughly one million American men at AndroGel’s FDA approval in 2000 to twenty million at the peak of the campaign, a twentyfold inflation in twelve years that left the actual incidence of medical hypogonadism unchanged and reached well past it into the population of aging men whose declining testosterone is part of normal physiology. JAMA itself published the takedown under the title “Low T as a Template: How to Sell a Disease.” GlaxoSmithKline ran the parallel campaign for restless legs syndrome beginning in 2003, two years before Requip’s FDA approval; sales doubled within a year, climbing from $165 million in 2005 to $330 million in 2006, and the Restless Legs Syndrome Foundation received roughly 45% of its 2005 revenue from the drug companies whose products it was positioned to validate. Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels named the framework in 2005 in Selling Sickness, which the April 2006 special issue of PLoS Medicine on disease mongering then developed across eleven peer-reviewed articles. The phenomenon is not exotic. The eye doctor who tells the patient with stable elevated intraocular pressure that the chart now reads “pre-glaucoma” is following the same logic, and the rest of the chain follows automatically: category extends, patient enrolls, visit recurs. Nothing about the patient has changed except the box checked on the form.
Colonoscopy is the case where every thread in the argument crosses. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended initiating screening at age 50 from its 1996 guideline through 2020, then lowered the threshold to 45 in May 2021 in response to documented rises in younger-onset colorectal cancer; the American Cancer Society had already moved earlier, in 2018. The threshold change added roughly 21 million newly eligible Americans to the screening pool. Modeling cited in the USPSTF’s own evidence review estimated that lowering the screening age from 50 to 45 requires 810 additional colonoscopies per 1,000 persons screened in a colonoscopy-based strategy. The procedural revenue for the gastroenterology specialty is substantial, and the financial alignment with maintaining colonoscopy as the preferred modality is direct, even though the USPSTF itself lists fecal immunochemical testing, stool DNA testing (Cologuard from Exact Sciences), and, since the FDA approval of Guardant Health’s Shield in July 2024, plasma-based screening as recommended alternatives. Patients dislike colonoscopy for documented reasons that the marketing apparatus does not address: the day-long bowel preparation is psychologically and physically demanding, the procedure itself requires sedation and a driver, and the complication rate, while small in absolute terms at roughly four perforations and eight major bleeding events per ten thousand procedures, is non-zero on a population that now includes twenty million additional people. Most consequentially, the randomized trial evidence underwriting the marketing is more modest than the marketing suggests. The Nordic-European Initiative on Colorectal Cancer trial, called NordICC, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in October 2022 by Bretthauer and colleagues, randomized 84,585 adults aged 55 to 64 in Poland, Norway, and Sweden either to receive a one-time invitation to colonoscopy or to receive no invitation. At ten years, the intention-to-screen analysis found an 18% relative reduction in colorectal cancer incidence, considerably less than the 50% the trialists had originally hypothesized, and the reduction in colorectal cancer-specific mortality was not statistically significant, with a relative risk of 0.90 and a confidence interval that crossed one. Per-protocol analyses of those who actually attended their colonoscopy were more favorable, but the trial’s headline finding sent a different signal than the volume of screening recommendation would suggest. None of this argues against any individual person choosing colonoscopy. The mass-screening case for choosing colonoscopy at age 45 over the non-invasive alternatives, on a procedure patients dislike with a complication profile that scales with volume, is weaker than the gastroenterology revenue stream depending on it would suggest.
Statins offer a sharper case because the harm signal is undisputed within the literature, including the manufacturers’ own pooled trial data. The 2024 individual-participant-data meta-analysis published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology by the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ Collaboration confirmed what previous summary-level analyses had shown: statin therapy produces a moderate, dose-dependent increase in new diagnoses of type 2 diabetes. The earlier Sattar meta-analysis, with 91,140 participants across thirteen trials, put the relative risk increase at 9%. Preiss and colleagues, comparing high-intensity to moderate-intensity statins across five trials with 32,752 participants, found a 12% increase. Cai and colleagues stratified by LDL-c target and found that when the target was set below 1.8 millimoles per liter, the risk of new-onset diabetes rose by 33%. The Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study, with 3,234 high-risk participants followed for ten years, recorded a 36% cumulative incidence of diabetes among statin users compared with 20% in placebo. Observational meta-analyses, which capture longer follow-up and broader populations than the trials, place the increase as high as 44 to 55%. Statins lower cardiovascular events in patients with established disease. They also produce diabetes in a measurable fraction of users, with the risk concentrated in patients who already carry metabolic risk factors. Both statements are true. Weighing them honestly per patient is the clinical task. The marketing posture, which presented the drugs as harmless tools to be deployed broadly on the basis of a single number called LDL-c, was always incomplete. As the LDL-c target was driven downward more aggressively, the regimen produced more diabetes. This is on record. It has not produced a corresponding pullback in prescribing volume because the prescribing volume is shaped by guideline thresholds, quality metrics tied to insurer reimbursement, and patient anxiety, none of which respond directly to the diabetes incidence data.
The structural question follows from the four clinical cases. Is the American medical system broken, or did it never work? The honest answer is the second. The system was assembled from incompatible parts during the postwar period: a tax-deductible employer-insurance model designed during wartime wage controls, a Medicare program designed to extend Blue Cross logic to the elderly, a Medicaid program designed as charity for the poor, a private fee-for-service architecture designed for solo practitioners, and a hospital-based academic medicine designed for rare disease and surgery. None of these components were designed together. None share an objective function. The result is an apparatus that bills with great competence, codes with great competence, and produces health outcomes that are mediocre by every international comparison the United States has been willing to publish. Life expectancy at birth in the United States is below that of Costa Rica. Maternal mortality runs more than 50% higher than in the next closest wealthy nation. The system is performing as designed; the design has always rewarded volume of billable encounters, and the financial structure pays out for that volume regardless of whether the volume corresponds to improved health.
This is where the moral question becomes unavoidable. Should there be profit in having a healthy body? Some forms of profit are morally legible. A surgeon who removes a tumor has earned compensation. A pharmaceutical firm that develops a drug from molecule to market has earned a return on capital. An infectious-disease specialist who diagnoses a rare presentation has earned the consultation fee. These are professional earnings against a discrete service rendered. The trouble is that American medicine has migrated, over four decades, from the model of compensated service toward the model of recurring revenue extraction. A patient enters a clinical panel. The panel is screened on a schedule. Screening reveals an incidental finding, which generates a workup, which generates a procedure, which generates a follow-up, which generates a maintenance medication, which generates a side effect, which generates a referral. At no point in this chain does anyone need to act in bad faith for the patient to be subjected to a sequence of interventions whose net benefit, as measured by years of life or quality of life, is negligible or negative. The clinician is paid by relative-value-unit production, the hospital by case-mix index, the insurer by per-member-per-month premiums, the drug company by prescription volume. The patient pays a copay at every node and a premium at the front of the chain.
Consider how the mechanism operates without anyone choosing it. The dentist who recommends a crown the tooth does not require is rarely acting in bad faith. The practice-management system quantifies daily production targets and benchmarks the doctor’s work against peer averages, and a clinician below the benchmark has uncomfortable conversations with the practice owner. A cardiologist who orders surveillance echocardiograms in stable asymptomatic patients follows a referral pattern that the practice’s billing coordinator built into the appointment template. A primary-care physician who titrates a statin to a more aggressive LDL-c target works from a quality measure that determines a portion of the practice’s reimbursement. None of these clinicians wakes up wanting to harm the patient. The structure does the harming for them, by making the path of least resistance the path of maximum billing. Preventative medicine, in the modern American sense, has become a euphemism for a procedure pipeline disguised as moral concern.
The technologies themselves have legitimate uses. Statins prevent secondary cardiovascular events in patients who have already had a heart attack, and the evidence for that use case is strong. Echocardiograms in symptomatic patients are diagnostic instruments without which cardiology could not function. Crowns on actually fractured teeth save the tooth and the bite. The correct critique is of population-level deployment without symptom-based indication, of marketing the diagnostic machinery as a moral good when it operates as a revenue mechanism, and of presenting the patient with a recommendation that the system has produced before the clinician walked into the room.
Real prevention exists, and it is recognizable by the absence of profit attached to it. Hand-washing prevents postsurgical infection. Vaccines reduce measles, pertussis, and cervical cancer to historical curiosities. Smoking cessation lowers lung-cancer, stroke, and heart-disease risk. Exercise interrupts nearly every chronic-disease cascade. Sleep allows metabolic recovery. Adequate nutrition starves the inflammatory base state on which most chronic disease feeds. None of these interventions generates significant revenue for the medical system, which is why none of them receives the marketing attention that statins and stress tests and crowns receive. The cheapest preventive measures, which are also the most effective, sit unmarketed because no one profits from them. The most expensive interventions, which range from genuinely beneficial to actively harmful depending on the patient, are heavily marketed because the entire revenue chain depends on their continued use.
A patient who walks into an American clinical encounter today operates in an information environment in which the recommending professional has financial reasons to recommend, the institution has financial reasons to perform, the insurer has financial reasons to negotiate, and no one in the room has direct financial reasons to leave the patient alone. The patient is the only party in the room without a billing code, the substrate on which the codes are inscribed. Until the financial structure changes, the recommendation to question every preventative procedure deserves to be called sober self-interest, supported by the system’s own published evidence about its own published failures. The question to ask the dentist, the cardiologist, the primary-care physician, and the pharmacy counter is the one the system makes hardest to ask: What happens to me if I do nothing? The answer is sometimes serious, sometimes neutral, and sometimes far better than the answer that follows the recommended intervention. Knowing the difference is the work of an adult patient in a system that prefers the patient remain a child.
#bloodPressure #cardiac #dentist #doctor #echocardiogram #glaucoma #health #healthcare #healthyBody #preventativeMedicine #screening #statins -
Spotlight on #MudSnakes: Study unveils evolutionary secrets of enigmatic #snake family from Southeastern Asia https://phys.org/news/2023-09-spotlight-mud-snakes-unveils-evolutionary.html
#Phylogenomics of Fresh and Formalin Specimens Resolves the #Systematics of Old World Mud #Snakes (#Serpentes: #Homalopsidae) and Expands Biogeographic Inference https://ssbbulletin.org/index.php/bssb/article/view/9393
"Species of #MudSnake can inhabit fresh, #brackish or saltwater coastal and inland areas, mostly sleeping by day and munching on #fish and #crustaceans by night."
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Some progress weaving this three thousand year old tablet weaving pattern.
The original was preserved in a salt mine in Hallstatt, Austria. It's much more complicated than more modern Viking patterns I'm a bit more used to.
It feels strange to be walking in the 'footsteps' of a weaver from so long ago.
Follow @alpaca project for more patterny goodness.
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Old School House, Mountsorrel, June 2024
#photography #ukphotographer #nikon #topographics #documentingplaces #documentingbritain #documentaryphotography #photographicart #lensculture #thisaintartschool #shutter_hub #saltandpeppermag #monochrome #bnw #blackandwhite #moodytones #leicestershire #Eastmidlands #mountsorrel #Middling #schoolhouse
@middl.ing
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Old School House, Mountsorrel, June 2024
#photography #ukphotographer #nikon #topographics #documentingplaces #documentingbritain #documentaryphotography #photographicart #lensculture #thisaintartschool #shutter_hub #saltandpeppermag #monochrome #bnw #blackandwhite #moodytones #leicestershire #Eastmidlands #mountsorrel #Middling #schoolhouse
@middl.ing
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Old School House, Mountsorrel, June 2024
#photography #ukphotographer #nikon #topographics #documentingplaces #documentingbritain #documentaryphotography #photographicart #lensculture #thisaintartschool #shutter_hub #saltandpeppermag #monochrome #bnw #blackandwhite #moodytones #leicestershire #Eastmidlands #mountsorrel #Middling #schoolhouse
@middl.ing
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il genocidio, mese per mese, ottobre 2023 – novembre 2024: palestine 2023/24, some vids, photos, texts, links and more about the genocide [PART ONE]
folders i collected (BEWARE : STRONG CONTENT / ATTENZIONE: CONTENUTI FORTI)
ott = oct 2023
https://mega.nz/folder/WgsSlKDA#d-OWeJ5xk3IHTC8TucgiYQnov 2023
https://mega.nz/folder/Og0lxKBA#L0_V6wvfodTKjB4rGuB7agdic = dec 2023
https://mega.nz/folder/64tDQJiD#etvlQVrnmqUeifd3dl8uAQgen = jan 2024
https://mega.nz/folder/Wwt1jZhI#cTK5yN1dQUmSK1uS48Pcfwfeb 2024
https://mega.nz/folder/OpcAVTjQ#AmNkQXreCue3eO8heTfkYQmar 2024
https://mega.nz/folder/m0FkXIKR#iWsJmgg-Js3sqSC6pH49Rwapr-mag = apr-may 2024
https://mega.nz/folder/XtsSkZhL#zrsEOQWoIH1vp8I-y0dfNAmag-giu = may-jun 2024
https://mega.nz/folder/X9knRLhY#sFFkCRPIue1g__UFNl132Qgiu-lug = jun-jul 2024
https://mega.nz/folder/jl0HWRwK#P5ffr9uWkTDuO5iNSaHk-Aago = aug 2024
https://mega.nz/folder/Lh1TAJ7a#eWL0GEisuJC7y9nh7d7Aygset = sep 2024
https://mega.nz/folder/H5cWWIyD#NTyLVr1F4UwSGfXLWNFzJQott = oct 2024
https://mega.nz/folder/7sUTCSCQ#EuZubWGxxS3LTSQPSBod6gnov 2024
https://mega.nz/folder/7t0R0BwB#pP8suo0camS2wZTC14iOTA5 vid(s):
https://www.facebook.com/selvaggia.lucarelli/videos/1555599121922514/
links & links here:
aggiornamenti dopo il 18 nov 2023
Israeli soldier confesses the killing of a 12 year old Palestinian girl
https://www.threads.net/@thepalestineobserver/post/C1ZBTWeIt4G/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==ridono mentre fanno saltare un’intera area residenziale
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1y4HnFN2vy/ufficiale us marine spiega isr:
https://youtu.be/YV_HsiJg8Io?si=ebsidHgQUMiGpW87ex idf spiega come irrompono nelle case
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1klzrwr_yV/?igsh=MWhrdnB5cThleHdnidem:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1490957711748833?s=yWDuG2&fs=edistruggere le sedi UNRWA
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1xis_tgji4/?igsh=MXkwNXo5ZmlzcWtmcg==americans in jerusalem are helping kick out palestinians
https://slowforward.net/2024/01/08/americans-in-jerusalem-are-helping-kick-out-palestinians/
o
gli israeliani e il mare di gaza.
vogliono vedere il mare
https://youtube.com/shorts/uGbkUjNp9vMchris hedges: “la soluzione finale di israele per i palestinesi” (e altro):
https://www.infopal.it/chris-hedges-la-soluzione-finale-di-israele-per-i-palestinesi/
https://www.youtube.com/@therealnews/search?query=chris%20hedges%20reporthamas interviewed
https://youtu.be/Kth_d8mboIk?si=L5X1MIdCIlrp0d1uvuole più bambini morti
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1gnfnLIN23/?igsh=MTk3ZHFmZXp6NXhsZg==idem
https://www.threads.net/@kukuljacharis/post/C1mq6_RIuRV/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==ammazzarne 100mila
https://www.facebook.com/reel/919162589156027?s=yWDuG2&fs=eorgans harvesting
https://www.threads.net/@probeautygenov/post/C1Z7-QrJ0NU/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==a perfect heir to mr. Goebbels
https://www.threads.net/@gabriel24j/post/C1Z2irAxsPM/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==la sequenza di dichiarazioni con intenzioni genocide
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C05w9AQyg3g/?igsh=MWtzNnJoOHUzZXdpaQ==300 olivi tagliati dai coloni in una notte a Hebron
https://www.threads.net/@palipulse/post/C1msAmuoPMH/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==“this is not a case of self-defence” (jan 2
https://www.threads.net/@farmediaworld/post/C1mmwCcISS1/l’esempio dell’Algeria, e l’uso delle armi nella resistenza
https://www.threads.net/@inanotherlifeidbeadragracer/post/C1ltEH6urTe/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==storia di Gaza dall’antichità
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/why-gaza-mattersMohammad Yahya Awad
https://www.threads.net/@kukuljacharis/post/C1nlzk3I5LI/un ospedale bombardato a inizio gennaio 2024, e un’intervista dall’OMS:
https://www.threads.net/@drtedros/post/C1nVD9WosIj/una sintesi ottima (Oxfam)
https://www.facebook.com/reel/290156263411154?s=yWDuG2&fs=eAIPAC influenza la politica americana, per Israele e contro la Palestina
https://fb.watch/pkuZQoGeuI/Edward Said nel 1998
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1NcBd6Pobf
e nel 1988
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1UZ5_3ISZB/?igsh=MTd5MGZ4bDczNGQ5eg==amicizia tra ebrei e musulmani
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1UQ7max5FW/?igsh=N3p0NDVkbGhrcjFygideon levy e i tre principi degli israeliani
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0q-hdtPDya/hajo meyer spiega che lanciare false accuse di antisemitismo distrugge il futuro degli ebrei
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0knqdrvGhc/oct 7th, 7 ott
the hannibal doctrine
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1F3RZENa0H/?igsh=MXRpOTI1YTd1Zjc1cQ==i costi della guerra per isr
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1FbbhKREj5/?igsh=ZTRtcXBtd3U3dXk3ennesimo massacro al campo di Jabalia
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1ppXS1KYsy/?igsh=MTgxNTRteG40eDR1aQ==*
Gaza. La “scorta mediatica” di un genocidio
https://orientxxi.info/magazine/gaza-la-scorta-mediatica-di-un-genocidio,6984In Cisgiordania, l’apartheid isr. distrugge la vita dei palestinesi (art. precedente il 7 ott 2023)
https://orientxxi.info/magazine/in-cisgiordania-l-apartheid-israeliano-sta-distruggendo-la-vita-dei-palestinesi,6754direttiva hannibal il 7 ottobre
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1745721714364076512
>>> https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/yokra13754368600 tonnellate di bombe
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C17Qnc8v436/?igsh=bHV0bGViNTJ0eTQwuna sintesi
https://www.instagram.com/p/C2Fog4FMTox/?igsh=eWkyMDdxcWNjZjVrvenerdì 12 gen. 2024 sul Corsera
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0Ycviyc9KHY4tgaHA8eHcTSdUYNpnA1xa3s3MF8CCHMm9swvPocB6iCTXKQhowDr1l&id=644982211ucciso in diretta da un cecchino israeliano, alla conclusione di un’intervista con una tv britannica
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2dtkpMo3_2/Netanyahu sul finanziare Hamas per evitare che si stabilisca uno Stato palestinese
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1097576588354683*
FRANCESCA ALBANESE:
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/TYKb52q4QApzxuoF/
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cz3IP1asahW/?igsh=MTQzdHJldWZkaG13MA==https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1NXmb5tEu9/
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1421742775409593?s=yWDuG2&fs=e
francesca mannocchi sugli abusi dei coloni e le tecniche che portano alla demolizione delle case palestinesi
https://www.facebook.com/reel/884762829941790i palestinesi non sono liberi, tutt’ora, nel 2023
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1ss9b0q0Wc/https://www.facebook.com/reel/274694685572186
i bambini in decomposizione:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/3616895728593404
https://slowforward.net/2023/11/30/5babies-found-dead/bambino a malapena vivo:
https://www.facebook.com/644982211/posts/pfbid02jeepSGTn2XKtXBYP91VzQjFRdHWoWXfTgQP8yaBiXwCZvspMibWbKTw3GkdADevdl/la pire des souffrances
https://www.facebook.com/differx/posts/pfbid02qJcQS7a5m8aFvwjJYpFzPrHAmyDnxSRBRhxrtd8jcGk8UAn2cWXFBbWNT46XYYt8lReem e Tareq
https://www.facebook.com/differx/posts/pfbid0FXiAY5nm2fFki5rhaqysLQmTr33vj1n5UM1baQQB1D2xwaZvzU7iTmFqZPfG68r5l
e https://slowforward.net/2023/11/29/reem-and-tarek/i due bambini uccisi a Jenin il 29 novembre:
https://www.facebook.com/differx/posts/pfbid036jv4fatUXxgxQwWpifbQUHQAbYCesrpxnaRwdsJnK9MFqywqtu7iujvDMpST6NXHlFrancesca Albanese:
https://www.facebook.com/differx/posts/pfbid028cMyG4EqqWBk667dbwwht71DmTPjv4b8rRGehQNoBhAkkkhQwwM3w2iwdi3LmAGHlhttps://www.facebook.com/reel/3616895728593404
Israel is the only country that prosecutes children in military courts:
https://www.facebook.com/differx/posts/pfbid027NRHfnzYBJyb74HX169gmFtzES294D1iGGmv7Po7sDkRFFJZwtYX2DBcv1MnqTXlformer IDF members:
https://www.facebook.com/differx/posts/pfbid02S5cYvQfqFXefCMh8bVTRW9sZvoxPC2cRQ6wt7zGVbhbQuT774Evg6smFk5ATZ34alchi si fermava veniva ucciso, bambini inclusi:
https://www.facebook.com/differx/posts/pfbid023BqVM8xpHzSFQNdU52969zBMQGZ3FFfdXfpxQ6vx6CDUGRd8iyDuxmoM6tvLsmpVlnelle carceri israeliane:
https://www.facebook.com/differx/posts/pfbid0UYnjFL2XmrCCrAxXhfA4LC2jxfMB44iDzM86sSbyuN8YsWDiWr5nJ9y3YHv6t49Vlbombe al fosforo:
https://www.facebook.com/differx/posts/pfbid02qK3jxvbBUXaBZfgitnatbdpCtNCcQiRAJeYmqT9vThpzuT63y9fgrqyj1F3G1vKTlnon si salvano nemmeno i morti:
https://www.facebook.com/differx/posts/pfbid02NTPDb3AaJR95PDF6gGzq9k72g9a5rH1n2axToycfJnK1BBN73stSpEyGoFNmEXWpli nomi degli 8000 uccisi:
https://www.facebook.com/differx/posts/pfbid0RvsrLBYvaAvT6HAevQHqJd9Y5uzdAN2zWNbQJvS7qNLWK5yLfkgcrqukAfH1wqKvlle parole di un macellaio:
https://www.facebook.com/differx/posts/pfbid0YN3now7vejGap9tzgw31oa2898b5D9mfu44eipUD1d6EmubRyxbt5oCJPFZLSdKJlNan Goldin, Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, David Grossman, Matvei Yankelevich, Rebecca R. Falkoff, Tony Kushner and many other artists, scholars, poets, composers, filmmakers, intellectuals… have signed this letter: https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/a-dangerous-conflation
(Italian translation: https://volerelaluna.it/in-primo-piano/2023/11/10/centinaia-di-intellettuali-ebrei-americani-la-critica-a-israele-non-e-antisemitismo/)
i congressi di solidarietà tra ebrei e arabi:
https://www.facebook.com/differx/posts/pfbid0yeXDg84WxYhjZ3S7o534oeRbmNQiReKfJiUUewqHUvmQWaWVuzjTLYCVNUKzgtkClnon è guerra, è genocidio:
https://www.facebook.com/differx/posts/pfbid0jhbvgCNxN5VcndpGmcRfifPG2zrsMw6HJjg7x9Lo1YX5jPBaRtXuijcBcdtgMisBl60 ostaggi israeliani uccisi da Israele nei raid aerei:
https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/guerra-ultime-notizie-gaza-biden-continuare-guerra-e-dare-hamas-cio-che-cerca-AFQnsvpB#U00044085043loXthe true filth of Earth
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0APuQdpLfg5ikyV1KKQjfCydPHctYre8tUtfVPRwsnCDRbkxA8CPW55H7RvLzwKQyl&id=100063569214730già il 10 ottobre 2023:
https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/israel-commits-widespread-war-crimes-gaza-humanitarian-catastrophe-imminent-enarl’estensione dell’odio dell’estrema destra israeliana dopo il 7 ottobre:
https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20231108-from-outrage-to-hate-in-the-wake-of-october-7-israel-s-far-right-seeks-to-extend-its-influence*
prima del 18 nov 2023https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10156323787428690&id=7382473689
bastano i primi 15 secondihttps://x.com/mano_da_bounce/status/1724231770382438876
*
@ al jazeera
https://www.facebook.com/renata.girardi.92/videos/1400961580456890/human shields:
https://fb.watch/nYgRrS7hkv/Israel is a terrorist state:
https://fb.watch/nYh_IRYD2t/Chomsky:
https://www.facebook.com/sihle.lushozi/videos/342653291485469/the USA resolution is a one side only resolution:
https://fb.watch/nYi-q16yGB/ex israeli soldier:
https://fb.watch/nYls7HOm1Y/kintsugi jar:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1029406374873882https://www.facebook.com/nchbes/videos/1408802793051919/
reductio ad hitlerum:
https://fb.watch/nYk8mJhB_J/Gideon Levy:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/324002730351828?s=yWDuG2&fs=ele vite degli israeliani contano di più:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzQ8bWEMH_K/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==risoluzioni onu su israele:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_resolutions_concerning_Israel*
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/14/palestinians-israel-nakba-day-gazans
(…)
As I gazed at one of the Israeli snipers, crouched by his gun on the man-made dune that acts as a border, I imagined we were both locked in a staring competition. My kids pose no threat to you, I tried to say with my eyes. We’re more than 300 metres away. My kids have no weapons, no stones; they’re not here to fight.
(…)
Of course the protesters know that no one will be returning anywhere at the end of this march. Of course they have no plans (or means) to remove the fence. And of course this protest isn’t an attempt to somehow remove or negate the state of Israel. Any suggestion that these are the aims or expectations is ridiculous. The protesters merely want their voices to be heard; they merely want the Nakba, and its decades of repercussions, to be included in the rest of the world’s narrative, rather than dismissed. It is only the hope of becoming a fully recognised state one day (with all its accompanying freedoms) that has kept Palestinians alive these last 70 years – alive through wars, blockades, endless indignities and uncertainties.
(…)
With Oslo, Palestinians agreed to the barest of bare minimums – a state cobbled together out of just 22% of their fathers’ and mothers’ homeland. And Israel wasn’t even happy with that – wanting us to share even this 22%. The road to a two-state solution has been deliberately blocked with obstacles, barricades, checkpoints and settlements.
(…)*
approvazione della legge su Israele stato (esclusivamente) ebraico:
http://formiche.net/2018/07/israele-legge-stato-nazione/
(un commento mio: https://www.facebook.com/differx/posts/10155478356452212?comment_id=10155479805842212&reply_comment_id=10155480081432212&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R%22%7D)
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=650332108682799&id=560018994380778
un commento di John Burr nel post: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=650332108682799&id=560018994380778
video completo
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C24bC0rN0d0/Hind, 6 anni, intrappolata nell’auto
https://www.instagram.com/p/C222FWXRVZt
e
https://youtube.com/shorts/zj8elid9jsI?si=gR5i2RQjo8O5KvbLla sorte di Hind
https://www.threads.net/@kikimay612/post/C3LIJLTg9bq
e
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3dLPvEhcnX/
e https://slowforward.net/2024/02/10/hind-the-6-years-old-child-who-called-the-red-crescent-for-help-found-dead-killed-by-the-israelis-who-also-bombed-the-ambulance-sent-to-rescue-her/dal satellite: l’estensione delle aree distrutte in Gaza
https://www.instagram.com/p/C2z9Rnsgk8s/speak up, don’t look away
https://twitter.com/ShaykhSulaiman/status/1750420487799558451massacro. testimonianza nel canale di Motaz Azaiza
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C28EAtnrFA7/?igsh=NzAzOW96OGgzbmEyriassunto video delle dichiarazioni genocide dei capi di israele
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2jpUCONHeZ/the sniper kills the brothers
https://www.threads.net/@palipulse/post/C2iKWbVI2_7/we might not survive until the morning
https://www.facebook.com/reel/877658204083498?s=yWDuG2&fs=ebambini mutilati
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2iGvr6hVAA/can you imagine the British army razing Belfast to the ground?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2e-L04IKFb/?igsh=YjMwdGFqZHBmOXBqintervistato ucciso nella “safety area”
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2h7cnHsSEd/?igsh=ZXo4ZDY5a2t2bm84
e https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2hzDcRIObG/?igsh=MWI1bHFrY3JzbDZleA==being an Israeli and getting to know the truth
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzkhTUfMpNv/the kibbutz were all very happy to steal the Palestinians’ land
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzQLUdwobll/israel can do whatever it wants
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0BdkOaMGqj/Tala
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2dgSOcNGQ_/the amount of children deaths
https://www.threads.net/@hatoriofficial/post/C2ipqLvOhr9/israeliani affamati di distruzione, di morti. in diretta tv
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0_MZ11IyFS/un palazzo con 100 persone bombardato
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0UpVlCIH_4/men executed in front of their family
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2Szb5sI7pk/importante: conoscere gli investitori e le banche che sostengono l’occupazione israeliana illegale delle terre palestinesi, il regime di apartheid e spoliazione della Palestina:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/31874507764423127 gennaio 2015
https://www.nazioneindiana.com/2015/01/27/sopravvissuti-alla-shoah-contro-i-massacri-di-gaza/
SOPRAVVISSUTI ALLA SHOAH CONTRO I MASSACRI DI GAZAappello a Biden da sopravvissuti alla Shoah:
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2024/01/28/lappello-a-biden-di-alcuni-discendenti-dei-sopravvissuti-allolocausto-stai-permettendo-il-genocidio-dei-palestinesi-fermati/7425353/restrictions for journalists
https://www.threads.net/@bad_pooky/post/C23hmzJNtTD/Karem: sintesi della situazione a fine gennaio / inizio febbraio 2024
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C24pkdUAXMD/centinaia di coloni sionisti assassini
https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1754816345156284477dunque i criminali avrebbero titolo a esser quelli che giudicano sé stessi?
https://www.threads.net/@palipulse/post/C3ASaEmoM92/israele distrugge una sede belga in Palestina dopo che il Belgio ha annunciato di voler continuare a finanziare l’UNRWA
https://www.instagram.com/p/C2-a8AOsRlh/an Holocaust survivor speaking
https://twitter.com/ShaykhSulaiman/status/1754625697199665430
= https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2sl5E5rIOA/Holocaust survivor Marione Ingram speaks about Palestine
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2QEl1xog-v/video sui fratelli uccisi
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2932K_Ikaoaggressioni in Cisgiordania
https://www.instagram.com/p/C3Ax8L6M_t7la cacciata o la morte di tutti i Palestinesi
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0_gH3coztF/israele ha bombardato non uno ma molti ospedali
https://twitter.com/mhdksafa/status/1755106559049208258a joke on facts
https://www.facebook.com/share/kEae1urGQRHih8z6/Palestinian women
https://www.threads.net/@twoferdiseven/post/C3DtoG7tPnh/chi blocca gli aiuti umanitari e chi blocca le armi
https://www.threads.net/@palipulse/post/C3D1VagIkvW/
Do you recognize who’s looking for the starvation of a population, and who’s looking to stop the killing?ambulanze attaccate dal fuoco israeliano:
https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1755306928593408077a paramedic shot by an israeli drone while working
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3GzvpsIdvj/Naledi Pandor minacciata da agenti israeliani
https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1755739314984567255Palestine exists
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/kC6ELFuzuLkL8bPc/man killed by settler
https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1755912355324547280WATCH THIS SHORT VIDEO. RAISE YOUR VOICE: STOP THE MASSACRE
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3Gyp2xINHP/
= https://t.ly/jEYBL
last breathil mondo intero vede:
https://slowforward.net/2024/02/09/the-whole-world-each-day-can-verify-how-moral-the-most-moral-army-in-the-world-is/Marc Lamont Hill domanda cosa avrebbe fatto israele se ipotetici membri di Hamas si fossero nascosti in strutture israeliane: israele avrebbe bombardato e ucciso i suoi propri cittadini?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3IjdJpgVYI/3 months old
https://twitter.com/Bernadotte22/status/1755615806799634698?t=ylJ1B8DqacTIW4c53ZMxYQ&s=19number of bombs
https://twitter.com/mhdksafa/status/1756202849271194049due pesi due misure
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2fFh0JMTCy/furto di risorse energetiche e complicità in genocidio
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/LPbQQgnN3EChJASj/Sderot cinema
https://www.instagram.com/p/C3OrOjcNa3h/Ben Gvir incita a sparare a donne e bambini
https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/175707315779655311912 feb 2024, bombardamento di un campo a Rafah
https://twitter.com/amwogakhalwale/status/1757075924170756382evil israelis
https://twitter.com/CensoredMen/status/1757133272117551493israeli sniper shooting on mother and child
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3PbZEqsccX/
e
https://twitter.com/jakeshieldsajj/status/1757516293752926468journalist Mustafa Kharouf hit and harmed by the iof, 15 Dec, 2023
https://twitter.com/OxfordDiplomat/status/1735768176376320054a documentary film by the BBC about the horrors faced by the Palestinian paramedics
https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1758592513286291805witnessing illegal detention and torture
https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1758474233523458265
+
https://youtu.be/lh5l8ZqwgKk?si=5DpuuRXV25reYYLZnever forget
https://twitter.com/stairwayto3dom/status/1758429655596462360israele testa nuovi droni sui civili di Gaza: provocano amputazioni, e dimostrandosi efficaci crescono di valore sul mercato delle armi
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3TrBhGrHgv/girl freezes outside after mistaking a thunder for an israeli airstrike
https://twitter.com/Timesofgaza/status/1758285617254019151injured palestinian girl suffering from the consequences of an israeli bombardment
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3TkeatI6A8/you can spend hours watching israeli TVs and see absolutely *nothing* about the real suffering and the actual holocaust in Gaza
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2uehQ5OWIQ/i soldati puliscono il corpo della loro vittima prima di restituirlo alla famiglia
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2qyPmbNLts/is Meta censoring the pro-Palestine posts?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1KekbMJ31f/Edward Said on the birth of the israeli state
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1aEFLItLDW/israel provides id numbers to all the palestinians: that’s what an occupation force does
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1mRKAiNv9Z/a criminal who speaks the criminal truth
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2K_WWNo9UQ/“io sono per i crimini di guerra”
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1ApZZhMByQ/https://twitter.com/jakeshieldsajj/status/1758905376551121101?t=3HFWrA8oj1Smz_Yczfbnyg&s=19
you kill thousands to hit one
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1yYNm6uRi7/un’intera famiglia cancellata
https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1757459985552806384nuove prove di attacchi illegali israeliani a Gaza
https://www.amnesty.it/nuove-prove-di-attacchi-illegali-israeliani-a-gaza-rischio-concreto-genocidio/Francesca Albanese ricorda i termini della situazione
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C15YcsVNzQj/we one day will look back at the atrocious images of today’s Gaza and clearly see the re-enacting of a holocaust
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C1cRNPVuAkR/the false narrative of the israeli educational system
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2zDiXDIB9O/indoctrination
https://www.threads.net/@palipulse/post/C3m8WefIEB6/gli israeliani bombardano Medici senza frontiere
https://www.threads.net/@emergency.ong/post/C3nOtjlta46/1948: three testimonies
https://www.threads.net/@dr_manal_mahmoud_awad88/post/C3ZyesCtxae/israeli crimes during the second Intifada
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0UHeERB9he/is this a “safe zone”?
https://twitter.com/mhdksafa/status/1757639529307983919
(15 feb 2024)great, important speech by Richard Boyd Barrett
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3XPjrZruqN/2 weeks too late
https://www.facebook.com/share/w8stEG8t2BTfMBYV/“tempo di ammazzarli tutti”
https://www.instagram.com/p/C3nuD7XNp3w/thieves pretending to be owners
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3nVhdCIDVU/last breath
https://twitter.com/CensoredNws/status/1761280128967926269
(il video, di cui do solo il link, è terrificante come tutto a Gaza, e come più di qualsiasi altra cosa si possa guardare)*
El terror en los ojos de esta bebé palestina de apenas unos meses llamada Maryam, que llegó herida al hospital en estado de shock, con los ojos en trance reviviendo el bombardeo sionista que mató a su madre delante de ella.
Maryam terminó muriendo debido al debil estado en el que llegó al hospital, llevaba dias sin comer nada y no pudo hacer frente a una conmoción cerebral.
Que la mirada de esta bebé persiga a todos los que apoyan este genocidio hasta el último dia de su vida.
https://twitter.com/DaniMayakovski/status/1761247376705024345*
lies on Oct 7th
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/27/zaka-october-7-israel-hamas-new-york-times/700.000 relying on animal food. some children die for this
https://slowforward.net/2024/02/29/the-kind-of-things-israel-is-capable-of/#Cisgiordania #coloni #colonialism #Gaza #genocide #genocidio #ICC #icj #IDF #IOF #israelterroriststate #izrahell #massmurders #Palestina #Palestine #settlers #sionismo #sionisti #starvingcivilians #starvingpeople #warcrimes #WestBank #zionism
-
“From the Three R’s to Transistors”: the thread about Dean Public School
Preamble. The schools of the “School Board” era of public education (1872-1918) hold a particular fascination for me, one most profound where they have been “deconsecrated” and are either no longer in use as schools or have disappeared entirely. This thread began as a couple of lines for my own notes about the “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” but soon snowballed into an alphabetical deep-dive into each.
Part six of the series of posts looking at “Lost Board Schools of Edinburgh” pays a visit to the former Dean Public School. Judging by the crowds of tourists on phones who gather daily in crowds outside, this must be one of the most Instagrammed of schools. I wonder how many stop for a moment to consider its history and its claim to a unique first in the story of education in the city. So let us take a moment for ourselves to do just that.
Following the Education (Scotland) Act 1872 (which made schooling compulsory in Scotland between the ages of 5 and 13) the newly elected School Boards undertook a flurry of construction to rationalise, modernise and expand the existing provision. At its formation in 1873 the Edinburgh School Board (ESB) took stock of the situation it had inherited in the city and found there were almost twenty-two thousand pupils being taught in one hundred schools, with the majority run by the various churches. Unsurprisingly the Presbyterians dominated, educating forty-three percent of scholars.
ProviderSchoolsPupilsShareFree Church174,28219.7%Church of Scotland164,22219.4%Heriot’s Hospital163,74217.2%Non-denominational & private203,65416.8%R. C. Church82,0149.3%Episcopal Church91,5187.0%Industrial & free schools, etc.81,4266.6%U. P. Church68573.9%Total10021,715Elementary Edinburgh Schooling in 1873, census by Edinburgh School BoardIn 1873 the Board held a survey of teachers in the city to help prioritise where new schools should be built and the following year held a competition to find architects for its first batch of seven purpose-built schools; Bristo, Causewayside, Leith Walk, North Canongate, Stockbridge, West Fountainbridge and the Water of Leith Village*. The work was divided between the successful applicants, that for the Water of Leith was awarded to Robert Wilson, who would later become the Board’s house architect.
* = The naming and jurisdiction of this school is somewhat confusing. While the area today is widely known as the Dean Village, well into the 20th century it was always known as Water of Leith village. “Dean” referred instead to the old Village of Dean slightly to the north. Both Water of Leith and Dean villages were in the Edinburgh School Board catchment and while the new school was in the former village it was christened Dean Public School at opening. This was most probably in recognition that it served the Dean quoad sacra Parish (an ecclesiastical division, but not a municipal one). To add further confusion, until 1895 there was also a separate St Cuthbert’s and Dean School Board. This covered the western hinterland outwith the city’s municipal boundaries as they then stood and was responsible for schools such as Gorgie, Roseburn, and South Morningside (extension of the city boundary in 1882 meant that the former two schools were actually now in Edinburgh but served by the St Cuthbert’s and Dean Board!)
Water of Leith village, looking northeast past the Bell’s Brae Bridge to Holy Trinity Episcopal Church pre-1875. The school would be built in front of the tall mill building with the circular windows on the left, where the low range sits in this picture. Thomas Vernon Begbie glass negative dated 1887 (incorrect). The Cavaye Collection of Thomas Begbie Prints; City of Edinburgh Council Museums & GalleriesPerhaps because it was the smallest, the Dean Public School was the first of the batch to complete. The opening took place on Wednesday December 8th 1875 making it the first purpose-built school by the Board in the city. The Scotsman reported that at two o’clock, the 150 children of the older division were assembled in the upper classroom in front of the Board and “a large number of gentlemen interested in the work“, including Lord Provost James Falshaw, James Cowan the MP for Edinburgh and numerous town councillors. Following the singing of a psalm and a prayer led by the Rev. Whyte of Free St George’s Church, the Lord Provost gave an opening address and observed that “it was to him a most gratifying circumstance that an auspicious event like the present had occurred during his term of office.”
The roundel of the Edinburgh School Board, “the female figure of education” dispensing knowledge to the young at Dean Public School. © SelfThe Chairman of the Board, Professor Henry Calderwood, mentioned that at this time they had 7,386 children in public education at the nineteen schools under their charge but that most of these were small and overcrowded and there was much work ahead to provide purpose-built accommodation for them. Thanks were given to the kirk session of Dean Free Church for allowing the continued use of their schoolhouse since the 1872 act before the new school was ready.
OS Town Surveys of Edinburgh in 1849 and 1876, before and after the Dean Public School was built. Note that at this time the village itself was referred to as “Water of Leith”, as it always had been. Note the Dean Free Church on the old Queensferry Road where schooling took place before 1875. Move the slider to compare. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandThe new school was arranged over two storeys with accommodation for 400 children (using a formula of 10 square feet of space per child). The infants were accommodated on the ground floor and the older children upstairs, each level having a principal large school room (57ft by 23ft, or 17m by 7m) which could be divided by movable glass partitions, as well as smaller classrooms. There were separate entrances for boys on one side and girls and infants on the other, with the playgrounds being similarly segregated. The total cost was £5,740 5s 2d; £1,030 9s 9d for the site and £4,709 15s 5d for the construction work.
Dean Public School in 1950, looking south. The squat gable of Drumsheugh Baths can be seen in the middle distance. Picture CC-by-NC-SA Dean Village Memories, via Edinburgh CollectedAs early as 1878, in a report to the School Board the Inspector complained of overcrowding and a lack of writing desks in the school (those available were sufficient for only 1/3 of the children). This had “spoiled the writing, wasted time in the classes and has prevented the highest discipline grant through the copying traceable to over-crowding“. Failure to remedy these defects would result in the school’s government grant being cut. The school roll at this time was 311, with 200 children qualifying for the Examination in Standard – but the pass rates in these qualifications of 82% for Reading, 84% for Writing and 71% for Arithmetic were the lowest in the School Board. Headmaster Waddell was however praised for his organisation and discipline and the infant department was “in many respects a model one“.
Class portrait of older girls at Dean Public School, with the headmistress Miss Mary Mackenzie (labelled as Hunter). 1883 photograph by J. & S. Sternstein of Glasgow. Note that at least one girl has very short hair, likely the result of it being shaved to combat headlice. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection of Edinburgh City Libraries.Class portrait of boys at Dean Public School, with the headmistress Miss Mary Mackenzie (labelled as Hunter). 1883 photograph by J. & S. Sternstein of Glasgow. Note the boy on the left of Mary seems notably older, taller and better dressed than his peers and may be one of the pupil teachers. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection of Edinburgh City Libraries.Class portrait of boys at Dean Public School with (probably) their headmaster, Esdaile Duncan. 1883 photograph by J. & S. Sternstein of Glasgow. The boy to the left of her is notably taller, older and better dressed than the others and may be one of the pupil teachers,1883 class photos from Dean Public SchoolThe lack of accommodation was remedied in 1888 with a 3-storey extension for 132 additional children added to the rear, comprising a play-room, a sewing room and an infant classroom. The space beneath was left open and served as a covered part of the playground.
1907 photograph showing the extension added at the rear of the school on the right, adjacent to the bridge. The apparently 17th century structure on the left is Well Court, in fact a late 1880s model workers housing complex in a Scottish Vernacular Revival style by architect Sydney Mitchell. 1907 photograph, Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.When education was made free of charge in 1889 (the 1872 act had introduced fees, although assistance could be provided by the Parish Poor Boards for those who could not afford them), the headmaster at Dean wrote to the School Board to say that the hoped for improvement in attendance rates had not materialised within his district and that “the parents who before were indifferent, are now equally or more so“. In 1894, 120 children were sent to the school from the nearby Dean Orphanage, being reported as “perfect models of cleanliness and order” by the Scotsman and commended in the Evening News for making the school football eleven “a combination to be feared and respected“. They were moved to the new Flora Stevenson School in Comely Bank when it opened in 1901, before being moved back to Dean in 1913 when the new Parish Children’s Home on Crewe Road opened, putting pressure on capacity at Flora’s when there were 115 vacant places at Dean School.
The Dean Orphanage in 1850, recently relocated from its old location beneath the North Bridge where it been in the way of the North British Railway. The community of Bells’s Mill lies beneath and children from both of these locations would attend the Dean Public School. Salt paper print, unknown photographer. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection of Edinburgh City Libraries.With no playing fields or local park to call its own, the school sports days were held at Warriston Playing Fields. In June 1912 the Edinburgh Evening News reported that the pupils from Dean – for the first time in the history of the ESB – had performed mass dancing as part of the day. One hundred and sixty pupils danced “with great zest… danc[ed] a reel to the music of the pipes.”
Pupils of the Dean Public School perform a maypole dance at Warriston Playing Fields as part of their annual sports day, June 28th 1913, Edinburgh Evening News.In December 1914, the staff of the school contributed £1 4s 6t to the Edinburgh Belgian Relief Fund. The following year Robert Peter Smith, assistant teacher, was wounded during at the Dardanelles when serving as a lieutenant with the 1/4th King’s Own Scottish Borderers.
Officers of the 1/4th KOSB in 1915. Robert P. Smith is in the 3rd row, third from the left, the shorter man sporting a moustache. Photo via UK Photo and Film Archive.In 1939 the school was requisition by the War Office and temporarily relocated “for the duration” to the St Mary’s Cathedral Mission Hall on Bell’s Brae, the ancient convening house of the Incorporation of Baxters (bakers) of Edinburgh. It was returned to educational use and in 1953 was placed under the charge of Dorothy Edmond. The new headmistress was determined to raise the school’s profile and instituted a uniform, having a school badge specially commissioned for the blazers.
Dean School badge, showing the castle of the arms of Edinburgh, open books symbolising learning, the blue of the Water of Leith running through the centre. The Boar’s Head is from the arms of the Nisbet of Dean family, The Cock’s Head may refer to the Poultry Lands of Dean, which in the 17th century conferred the holder the hereditary title of Poulterer to the King. From Kathleen Glancy by Dean Village Memories, CC-by-NC-SA via Edinburgh Collected.She rallied parents together and asked for support financially. Although it would not be a lot, it was a lot to some folks and it caused some controversy… Miss Edmund was strict and eventually was held in high regard by both parents and children.
Recollection by pupil Kathleen Glancy of Dorothy Edmond. Via Edinburgh Collected.But not even the determination of Miss Edmond could counter the significant long term depopulation in the neighbourhood, the result of much of the housing stock being decrepit and condemned combined with the decline of the remaining traditional industries of milling and tanning. In January 1961 the school closed, its roll having reduced to just 37 pupils, less than 10% of capacity. Those remaining were transferred to Flora Stevenson’s and the empty building was leased to the defence electronics company Ferranti Ltd. of Crewe Toll for a period of seven years as a training centre for apprentices and assembly line staff. The Evening News felt it an appropriate symbol of the city’s growing demand for specialist technical education that its oldest public school should have made the transition “from the Three R’s to transistors“.
Christine Robertson, age 10, photographed alone in the school on its last day, 20th January 1961,Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
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If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.
NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
Ferranti did not require the two basement rooms and these were given over to the use of the Edinburgh Union of Boys Clubs as a base for an outdoor education scheme, the Adventure Centre for Use. A number of Ferranti staff were involved in this, including the works’ own Mountain Climbing Adventure Group for its younger employees. This provided equipment and specialist training to established clubs in activities such as climbing, mountaineering, canoeing and dingy sailing. After Ferranti’s lease was up, in 1969 the school became an annexe to Telford College, whose domestic courses were based nearby at the Dean Education Centre, the former Dean Orphanage.
Dean School in the 1960s. Picture from Dean Village Memories, CC-by-NC-SA via Edinburgh CollectedIn May 1984 the school was disposed of on the open market (offers over £100,000) by Lothian Regional Council and was converted into flats in 1986 by James Potter Developments. Eighteen two, three and four-bedroom properties were created which would have cost between £39,000 and £55,000 when completed.
Former Dean Public School in 2025. Comparison of the photo with that further up the page shows how extra floors were cleverly inserted by reducing the window heights significantly from those of the Victorian schoolrooms. Photo by Fiona Coutts, via Britishlistedbuildings.The previous instalment in this series looked at the Davie Street School(s) in the Southside. The next looks at Gilmore Place Public School.
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.
NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
#April20 #Army #BritishArmy #EdinburghCastle #Gaelic #Leith #May29 #Military -
Winter Solstice 2025
Oh Friends, it has been a busy couple of weeks, but now I am happily on vacation for the next two weeks. Aaaaahhhhhh.
The busy was from many things. At work it was wrapping up the semester and trying to make sure the professors I support had all the research materials they needed while the library is closed for two weeks. This while also supporting students studying and taking final exams.
Then home to more busy. James and I helped plan our sangha’s annual tea ceremony. We did not go last year due to bad weather, so we had zero context for what we were helping with. The person doing the bulk of the planning was first out of town and then otherwise engaged, and there was much to do in a week and a half. So many Signal messages and emails and time spend on Zoom working out the details. And of course, the day of the tea ceremony the weather was terrible—first rain, then ice, then light snow and howling wind blowing the snow around. It took me extra time to bike home from work. Then James and I ate a very fast dinner before bundling up and biking very carefully with our portion of supplies to the ceremony. I am grateful we don’t have to bike far.
James and I helped set up, which was already in progress since we were late. Our role in the ceremony itself was to serve the tea and treats to sangha attendees, which involved lots of formal bowing while carrying big trays of tea-filled cups, followed by big trays filled with plates of cookies, fruit, and nuts, which also required lots of formal bowing. In addition I ended up filling the role of tea offerer—placing a cup of tea and a cookie on the altar—because the person who was going to do it lives in the burbs and didn’t come due to the icy roads The altar as on the floor instead of the usual table, and surrounded by candles and flowers. I had to bow and kneel with the offering in my hands, then set it down on the altar. I am proud to say I didn’t spill anything on the altar or on any sangha members, though I did manage to kick two of the many tea light candles on the floor later in the ceremony, making a waxy mess on the floor and on my pants leg.
Still it all came together beautifully and all the attendees gave us gracious praise. Some even stayed late afterwards to help us clean up.
We were out again Friday night, biking in the dark and on sometimes icy roads, to a Beloved Community Circle gathering across the river in St. Paul. The gathering was wonderful, as they always are. Part of our evening was spent formally watering each other’s (metaphorical) flowers. It is so easy to speak from the heart to other people about how wonderful they are and what I admire about them, it is a challenge to accept the beautiful words they say to me. But giving and receiving is part of the practice, and spending the evening with increasingly dear friends was exactly what my heart needed even though we didn’t get home until after 10 and my body was very tired.
Because James had to work at the bookstore on Sunday, the actual day of Solstice, we celebrated on Saturday. Part of the menu was crusty sourdough dinner rolls, which I had enough foresight to make the weekend before and keep them in the freezer. One less thing to do! So after a busy two weeks at work, a week and a half of tea ceremony planning and performing, and a late (for me) night with friends, I spent almost the whole day Saturday cooking.
As you know, James is the cook in the house and he does all the cooking all year except for Winter Solstice. This tradition began over 30 years ago because James with his retail career, was never able to get the Solstice off—too close to Christmas. So I make a sometimes rather elaborate menu, and do all the cooking and have dinner ready when James gets home from work. All these years later, his schedule is much different, but we keep the tradition of me planning and cooking a special meal.
This year’s menu was holiday roast stuffed with roasted golden beet, carrot, and parsnip; wild rice “un-stuffing,” aloo bonda also know as mashed potato fritters (from Vegan Richa cookbook), spicy cranberry chutney, and crusty sourdough rolls. For dessert we had salted date caramel chocolate pie with whipped coconut cream on top. The pie did not set up like it was supposed to and didn’t hold form when removed from the pie plate, but it was delicious all the same. The whole meal was delicious. All the flavors went together beautifully.
Sunday we ate leftovers, and I was able to fully enjoy the meal since I wasn’t tired out from all the things. Tonight is leftovers again. Then the roast will be gone and everything else will get incorporated into other meals.
And now, rest. Though we are in the midst of having our bathroom remodeled. We are converting from a tub with shower to a shower stall that has grab bars. Some days James’s MS leaves him feeling unbalanced and nervous about stepping over the high side of a bathtub. We are also having the old, worn out vinyl floor tiled to match the shower, getting a new toilet that fits our tiny space, and a new sink that also fits the space better.
It was supposed to be done by now, but the city took a long time to issue permits, delaying the start of the work, and then after the new plumbing was done, it took the city inspector a week to come out and give the ok. At the end of last week they did the prep work for tiling. I think that bit is done, but I’m not completely certain since I don’t know what done looks like in this case. All I know is that half my living room is taped off with boxes of tile and other supplies piled up, and I have to walk downstairs every time I need to use the bathroom. The novelty and adventure of this whole project has quickly disappeared, and with Christmas this week, I’m not certain what the work schedule is going to be.
So what do I do for an hour and half this morning? Start back to work on my attic remodel project! I’m still ripping out the old, gross carpet, pulling carpet tape off the under-floor, and cleaning up and moving things around as I go. You may recall I am turning this into a fiber arts room for sewing, weaving, spinning, and knitting. However, it has years of accumulated junk and chaos, some of which I have already disposed of, some of which—like the bins that currently hold my fabric and yarn stash—are getting shuffled around as I work. I would pile them in my living room except I can’t because of all the bathroom remodel stuff.
But now, after this is posted, I plan on some tea and garden dreaming. It’s time to start figuring out what I’m going to grow next year. To get my garden inspiration going, as if I really needed it, I listened to the first Plant Circle Gathering while working in the attic. The Plant Circle is part of a new project by Robin Wall Kimmerer called Plant Baby Plant. It is intended to be the antithesis of drill baby drill. I love their tagline: Raise a garden and raise a ruckus. Yesterday was the first plant circle and when their website officially launched. Be sure to check it out and get inspired!
Something else to inspire you, a photo essay of the anti-ICE march that took place Saturday in Minneapolis. I wanted to go, but just couldn’t fit it in and cook too. Thankfully, thousands of other people were able to turn out.
Happy Solstice!
#atticCarpetProject #bathroomRemodel #BelovedCommunityCircle #ICE #PlantBabyPlant #sangha #teaCeremony #WinterSolstice
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CW: Food poultry
I just made some truly excellent baked bone-in chicken breasts for dinner tonight. My mom would have been so proud of me (I am in my 60s!). If my old instance #KithKitchen still existed I'd show it off to my #foodie peeps there. @napalousa @aggiegrad03 at least I can still tag you! Mom's trick was: salt, lemon juice, and paprika must be involved. There was also rosemary, garlic, oregano, and lemon zest. It was restaurant-worthy. Happy tastebuds, happy spouse too! 😍 #ChickenDinner
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A 25-Year-Old #Insight About the First Billion Years of the #Cosmos : Medium
#NASA Helps Find #Thawing #Permafrost Adds to Near-Term #GlobalWarming : NASA
#Salt #Batteries are finally shaping up – that's good for the #Planet : New Sci
Check our latest #KnowledgeLinks
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Pensford (Old) Bridge & Bridge House.The arch beneath the latter allows Salter's Brook to join the River Chew.
#photography #Pensford #Somerset #bridge #Chew #SaltersBrook -
I heard about the card game REFOREST, currently on Kickstarter, from the latest episode of the Salt & Sass podcast. After reading the rulebook, I decided to back it.
It's from a Canadian publisher and is about planting tree cards in a pyramid and covering other cards, triggering various effects; it's a light or medium engine-builder game.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/firestartergames/reforest-old-growth?ref=thanks-copy
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Guilt Trip Announce Roadrunner Records Signing And Share New Song “Burn”
Photo by Amy HaghebaertManchester metal/hardcore outfit Guilt Trip have signed with Roadrunner Records and unveiled their explosive new single “Burn,” accompanied by an official video. The track captures the band’s blend of thrash, hardcore, and stadium-ready riffs, setting the stage for their forthcoming debut LP on the label.
“Burn” is a metal anthem infused with hardcore grit. “It felt a little bit like old Machine Head,” says guitarist Jak Maden. “As soon as we finished it, I knew it needed a repeated line until the drop and wall of death section. We won’t even need to tell the crowd what to do.” Vocalist Jay Valentine adds that the Roadrunner partnership “always felt inevitable,” given the label’s influence on shaping the band’s sound.
This fall, Guilt Trip will tour with Kublai Khan and appear at Louder Than Life (September 18) and New England Metal and Hardcore Fest (September 20). With millions of streams, a growing festival presence, and past collaborations with LANDMVRKS, the band is poised to bring Manchester’s intensity to a global stage.
https://youtu.be/ap2MTuWaGbc?feature=shared
GUILT TRIP ON TOUR:
WITH KUBLAI KHAN:9/21 — Sayreville, NJ — Starland Ballroom
9/23 — Buffalo, NY — Buffalo RiverWorks
9/24 — Silver Spring, MD — The Fillmore
9/26 — Mckees Rocks, PA — Roxian Theatre
9/27 — Lakewood, OH — The Roxy
9/28 — Philadelphia, PA — Franklin Music Hall
9/30 — Chicago, IL — The Salt Shed
10/1 — Detroit, MI — The Fillmore Detroit
10/3 — Birmingham, AL — Furnace Fest 2025
10/4 — Charlotte, NC — The Fillmore Charlotte
10/5 — North Myrtle Beach, SC — House of Blues Myrtle Beach
10/7 — Atlanta, GA — The Eastern
10/8 — St Petersburg, FL — Jannus Live
10/10 — San Antonio, TX — Vibes Event Center
10/11 — Houston, TX — White Oak Music Hall
10/12 — Dallas, TX — The Factory In Deep Ellum
10/14 — Kansas City, MO — Uptown Theater
10/15 — Denver, CO — Fillmore Auditorium
10/16 — Albuquerque, NM — Sunshine Theater
10/17 — Tempe, AZ — Marquee Theatre
10/20 — Salt Lake City, UT — Rockwell @ The Complex
10/21 — Boise, ID — Knitting Factory
10/23 — Sacramento, CA — Ace Of Spades
10/24 — San Jose, CA — San Jose Civic
10/25 — Riverside, CA — Riverside Municipal Auditorium
10/26 — Los Angeles, CA — Hollywood Palladium -
17: Burning down the Heavens
#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear #EdgarRiceBurroughs
#wss366 #MastoPromptAfter that, things moved swiftly. A balloon ferried Captain Napier to the Fate Gear.
“You capitalist swine! How long have you been leading these running-dog lackeys?” Mina hailed Napier, embracing him. “Never mind. Wait till you hear what I’ve planned! We’re going after the ultimate tyrant. We’ll be burning down the heavens. My cabin, MiLord; the wind has ears. More importantly, I have a 100-year-old brandy looted from Emperor Muskrat’s yacht. Tiss sweet, like poetry, and smooth as silk.”
"#Better than yer rotgut grog and I'll hear yer plan. If it doesn't sound good after that bottle, we'll know it's Tommy rot," Napier said.
The two departed, leaving a scowling Nana with the Otherside pair.
“And what might you two be thinking, lollygagging in the rigging? You may be gunner’s mates to the Captain, but yer nothing but lumps of tar. Get ta polishing the brass or you’ll be wishing you were #home with the fishes.”
Soon, the two were polishing brass and whispering together.
“I don’t like how things look,” Sorawo said. “Mina’s plans to attacking a god.”
“Not just any god,” Toriko said. “The one they worship in Canada—well, actually all the West. He’s one mean hombre sending plagues, turning people into salt, and telling them to sacrifice their sons. His own son had to sacrifice himself to make God back off.”
“So you’re worried too?”
“A little,” Toriko said, putting her arms around Sorawo’s neck, burying Sorawo's face in her bosom. “Protect me.”
“Stop it, you perv,” Sorawo said, pushing Toriko away. “This is serious.”
“You’d better take my tits seriously.” Toriko pretended to pout.
“Whatever! Come on. I need you to stop messing around and listen.”
“Alright.” This time her pout was real.
“When I was looking for the mergaunt’s mother, I spotted a remnant of the portal the sorceress used. If things get bad, you can pull it open.”
“Not without Benimori”
Sorawo, about to protest, stopped. Caring about people was new to her. “You’re right, with Benimori.”
As they spoke, Napier and Mina left the cabin. Whether from the brandy or bravado, they both swaggered across the deck. Napier slapped Mina on the back, causing her to stagger. “I haven't heard anything so audacious in years. Here’s to burning down the heavens.” He raised the nearly empty brandy bottle and drained it dry. “Who’s the eunuch now!” he bellowed out, laughing as he slapped Mina on the back again.
“There she is!” someone shouted as the Fate Gear, Venus Falcon, and the two biremes raced away from Mercury.
Sorawo and Toriko looked up. Undulating in the sky was a black amoebic hole. The monstrous maw sucked everything around it into itself.
”I’ll get Beni!” Toriko said, heading for the galley.
Grand Conclusion Next Week.
#MicroFiction #TootFic #Serial #NMPrompts #NMV366 #NMMP #NMRTTFG
#UraPi #Steampunk #Pirates #Satire #PoliticalSatire -
Condition and Dye Your Own Hemp Rope
By mcvarij
In this Instructable, I will guide you through the process of conditioning raw hemp into soft and beautiful rope.
"Step 1: Tools and Ingredients
1. Hemp rope - I'm using 83 meters of raw 4 mm rope but the process is the same for thicker sizes. I buy Ecolution Romanian hemp rope through greenboatstuff.com. It's sold by weight so if you buy thicker rope you won't get the same length.
2. EMT safety shears
3. Stock pot or pressure cooker - large enough to hold all your rope and cover with water
4. Washer and dryer
5. Mesh laundry bag or old pillow case
6. Dye (optional) - use any brand you like, just make sure it's for natural fibers and that you follow the instructions. I'll be using Rit-Dye.
7. 1 cup salt (for dying)
8. Water
9. Rough towel or piece of burlap
10. Gas burner or alcohol lamp
11. Mineral oil - get the kind sold as a laxative at the drug store. It's much more refined than other kinds at the hardware store [I wonder if something else could be used instead of mineral oil]
12. Masking tape
13. Measuring tape.
14. Whipping twine or strong thread"Learn more:
https://www.instructables.com/Condition-and-Dye-Your-Own-Hemp-Rope/ -
Utena was, uhh, artistic and trippy but also very male fantasy and a bit of a stinker. I'd really like to file the stink under criticism of real life but it's a bit tough...
There was some yuri in the show, can't deny that. It just felt like a footnote compared to how much all the straight, uh, activities got screen time. But it was something, considering the times?
For an old show, it was kind of fun, I guess. Best enjoyed with a chunk of salt and no yuri goggles, though.
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Carnal Savagery – Crypt of Decay Review
By Steel Druhm
Advanced scientific studies indicate that the style of metal known as “Swedeath” will not die and may, in fact, be incapable of being killed. The foundation created by Entombed and Dismember in the early 90s cemented the “Stockholm Sound” so deeply in musical bedrock that forecasters predict it could function like an everflowing stream for untold aeons. Enter Sweden’s Carnal Savagery. This gruesome duo have gone in big on the Swedeath formula, releasing 6 albums of it since 2020, all of which pay loving homage to the genre’s forefathers. Crypt of Decay is their 7th album in 5 years, so clearly, they just can’t stop spewing this fetid gunk into the world at a reckless pace. What does the new material sound like? Well, DisEntombed, of course. It’s got exactly zero new ideas, even less innovation, and you’ll be subjected to endlessly recycled ideas all powered by the force of the HM-2 pedal. Guitars will buzz, vocals will wretch, and you’ll ingest mass quantities d-beated death. Sound good?
As with many Carnal Savagery releases, they come out strong with a ripping, tearing monstrosity on “Entangled in Barbed Wire.” Rather than the usual thievery from the first few Dismember records, this sounds a whole lot like something off Slaughter of the Soul due to the riff patterns and the hyperkinetic energy (maybe even too much like something off Slaughter of the Soul). Flagrant influence humping aside, it’s a rousing blast of death metal with teeth and badass energy, so it works. As “Amputation” rolls in, it’s back to the Stockholm salt mines for the expected poaching off albums like Indecent and Obscene and Massive Killing Capacity. What sells it for me besides the furious energy is how it sounds like the vocalist keeps bellowing “GRAMPUTATION!,” leaving me to wonder why he hates old dudes so much. “Torn from the Grave” is another burner with vicious, blasting fury, and it’s interesting enough to get by despite some oh so familiar riffs.
From here, however, the ground becomes more unsteady. Some tracks just kinda lie there and refuse to play ball. “Scalped and Flayed” goes too far down a death-doom rat hole and feels lifeless and dull, while “Gruesome Death” feels generic and stock standard. At times, there’s an injection of the classic Wolverine Blues swagger and rock-based swing as on “Curse of the Catacomb” and the title track, but it doesn’t completely work. Overall, you get roughly half an album’s worth of C+ and B-level Swedeath with some clunkers and also-rans popping up to drag the momentum downward. Unfortunately, this is an issue Carnal Savagery struggles with regularly. They write some bangers to hook you in, then the wheels come off the War Wagon before they reach the finish line. Thankfully, most of the songs run only 2-3 minutes, so nothing gums up the works too severely (except “Gruesome Death”), and the 34-plus-minute runtime is short enough to stave off most variants of Swedeath fatigue.
Swedeath needs riotous, raucous and deadly riffs to fully capture the brainpan, and Mikael Lindgren can and does deliver some of these, usually with a strong Dismember flavor. But he also lapses into less stellar leads and ideas a bit too often, causing some cuts to feel generic and half-baked. His flowery solo style is a nice relief from the neanderthal buzz and brutality, showing another side of the duo’s identity, and that should be explored a bit more often to keep things interesting. Mattias Lilja’s death vocals are solid and full of greasy charm, sitting somewhere between the late, great L.G. Petrov and Dismember’s Matti Kärki. He doesn’t offer much in the way of versatility, but you don’t come here for that anyway. As per usual, it’s the songwriting that lets them down, with some tracks being killer and others ending up closer to filler.
Carnal Savagery usually serve up 3-4 songs that put a meat fork in your adrenal gland and activate your altered beat. The rest range from okay and underwhelming. Crypt of Decay is right in that modality. The good is fun, the rest is tolerable but non-essential. That sounds like a playlist poacher to me! Desecrate the Crypt and take what you like and leave the rest to rot in peace.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: Moribund Records
Websites: facebook.com/carnalsavagery | instagram.com/carnalsavagery
Releases Worldwide: November 28th, 2025#25 #2025 #carnalSavagery #cryptOfDecay #deathMetal #dismember #entombed #gravewormsCadaversCoffinsAndBones #moribundRecords #nov28 #review #reviews #slaughterOfTheSoul #swedishMetal
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Used an old receipt but added more water and accidentally let it rise more than planned and the results were amazing.
Best bread I've baked in a long time.
- 250g T110 flour
- 550g T65 flour
- 20g fresh yeast
- 450ml Luke warm water
- 2 tablespoon sugar
- 20g salt
- 3 table spoon olive oilMixed for 20minutes, let rise for 25 minutes, then fold it multiple times before cutting and putting them into silicone forms.
Let them rise in the oven at 50°C for almost 2h instead of the planned 45 minutes.
Baked in fan oven for 30 minutes, first 20 minutes at 225°C and the rest at 200.#baking #bread #wholewheatbread #homebaking #food #breadeceipt #France #cooking #homecooking
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2nd #fermentation table, on our balcony deck.
One jar is 6 months old. The other jar is just over a week old. #Teochew #Chinese #SaltedLimes.#AsianMastodon #OutdoorFermentation #AsianFermentation #FoodPreservation #ChineseFermentation #Fermenting #limes #pickling #AncientFermentation #SimpleFermentation #NaturalFermentation #AsianFoods #ChineseFoods #Gaginang #TootSEA #POCfoods #GlobalSouthFoods #SouthEastAsianFoods #AsianDiaspora #SolarFermentation #CulturalFoods #TraditionalFermentation #citrus #FoodSecurity
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ObakeShimeji - "お化けしめじ" - [Yokai] Haunted Shimeji mushrooms from an old folktale of the same title: every-night a monk is haunted by thousands of ghosts that dance through his walls chanting "Salt and Miso please!" it turns out that nearby there was a field of delicious mushrooms was waiting to be picked & eaten... 🍄👻
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AMG Turns 15: Janitorial Staff Speaks
By Carcharodon
15 years ago, on May 19, 2009, Angry Metal Guy spoke. For the very first time as AMG. And he had opinions: Very Important Opinions™. The post attracted relatively little attention at the time, but times change and, over the decade and a half since then, AMG Industries has grown into the blog you know today. Now with a staff of around 25 overrating overwriters (and an entirely non-suspicious graveyard for writers on permanent, all-expenses-paid sabbaticals), we have written more than 9,100 posts, comprising over seven million words. Over the site’s lifetime, we’ve had more than 107 million visits and now achieve well over a million hits each and every month. Through this, we’ve built up a fantastic community of readers drawn from every corner of the globe, whom we have (mostly) loved getting to know in the more than 360,000 comments posted on the site.
We have done this under the careful (if sternly authoritarian) stewardship of our eponymous leader Angry Metal Guy and his iron enforcer, Steel Druhm, while adhering to strict editorial policies and principles. We have done this by simply offering honest (and occasionally brutal) takes, and without running a single advert or taking a single cent from anyone. Ever. Mistakes have undoubtedly been made and we may be a laughing laughing stock in the eyes of music intellectuals, socialites and critics everywhere but we are incredibly proud of what AMG Industries represents. In fact, we believe it may be the best metal blog, with the best community of readers, on the internet.
Now join us as the people responsible for making AMG a reality reflect on what the site means to them and why they would willingly work for a blog that pays in the currency of deadlines, abuse, and hobo wine. Welcome to the 15th Birthdaynalia.
Thou Shalt Have No Other Blogs!
Thus Spoke
AMG and me
I probably have one of the least legit backstories of anyone writing here. Unlike many of you—readers and writers—I was not a long-time fan of the blog, discovering it only around a year or two before applying to join the staff. I was 20 before I really got into trve metal and completely abandoned metalcore. But now, I can hardly imagine a time when reviewing albums for AMG wasn’t a key part of my weekly routine (nor can I imagine a life without extreme metal, for that matter; funny how things can change so dramatically). As corny as it sounds, it’s the community I’ve found amongst this bunch of wrong’uns—all loveable misfits, nerds, and actually-big-softies-despite-seeming-tough the lot of us—that has made the biggest impact. I said as much in my year-end post, but I feel blessed to have such a great bunch of comrades to talk music, vent about life, and just share memes with. The excitement of being in what feels like a special little club of small repute in the metalsphere still hasn’t worn off, even if, when wearing my AMG Inc Staff Stash out and about, I know no-one will get the reference. They probably think, if anything, “Why is she wearing a t-shirt that says Angry Metal Guy? That’s dumb.” Oh, and yeah, I know I need to get a new avatar. Anyone wanna design one for me?
AMG gave to me …
Vorga // Striving Toward Oblivion – I’m so lucky I was reading AMG,1 because this one was weirdly under-mentioned elsewhere. I absolutely love Vorga—as Kenstrosity himself is well aware—but I probably wouldn’t really know who they were, were it not for his review of this album. It’s just fantastic. “Taken” remains an immovable feature on any cardio playlist I’ve made since its release. And the rest—”Starless Sky,” “Comet,” “Fool’s Paradise”—absolutely bops. Already knowing I loved black metal, finding a band in the genre whose music I quickly became obsessed with, and eagerly anticipated future releases from, was extra exciting, especially when paired with the opportunity to get early access to Beyond the Palest Star this year.
Déluge // Ægo Templo – When this dropped, Dear Hollow panned it as “a wearisome and exhausting listen.” Fortunately, my curiosity was piqued enough that I listened for myself, and I have to say, I thoroughly disagree with my fine, antlered friend. Ægo Templo is far from perfect, but my goodness did it resonate with me. Just after I had gone through a whole phase of discovering my appreciation for (coincidentally) exclusively French black and post-black artists (Alcest, Regarde les Hommes Tomber, Vous Autres, Celeste …) Ægo Templo found its way to me via a review on a site I had only just started visiting. While the band’s debut, Æther, is perhaps better conceived, this one somehow completely consumed me in a way the debut never has. The washing sounds of ocean waves, glorious, uplifting themes, and dour, scream-rent brutality hit me in all the right places. I revisit it regularly and I, for one, am very excited to see what comes next from the Frenchmen.
Amenra // Mass VI – I know I said I wasn’t reading the blog until a couple of years before my tenancy here, but I still came across the odd review here and there whilst browsing for new bands to listen to. Somewhere, I saw the name Amenra mentioned, and, taking to the internet, I was led to Dr Grier‘s TYMHM post on Mass VI. Thoroughly intrigued, I vividly remember pressing play on the embedded “Diaken” and how everything shifted as its eleven-minute runtime passed by. I had never heard vocals like that. Yes, I’d heard harsh vocals—barks, growls, gurgles, shrieks, you name it—but Colin van Eeckhout’s crippling, devastating screams of pure pain were something else. The album, endlessly bleak and incredibly beautiful, utterly tore me to pieces in a way few others have. And it led me to devour not only Amenra’s full series of Masses and other creations, but the rest of the Church of Ra Collective’s several discographies. “A Solitary Reign” is now one of my favorite songs. Ever. No matter what else they put out, Mass VI will probably always be my favorite Amenra album.
I wish I had written …
Ulcerate – Shrines of Paralysis Review. As my favorite album from one of my favorite bands, reviewing Shrines of Paralysis would have been a dream. However, since it dropped about five years before my n00b tenancy began, it could never have been. Luckily for me, I will not have to contend with Kronos for reviewing rights, because the writing here, as with all his articles, is stellar. Unconsciously or not, I find myself emulating its subtle poeticism and easy flow. When Cutting the Throat of God comes, I hope my words can do an Ulcerate album as much justice as this review did.
Maddog
AMG and me
By chance, AMG’s first year was also the year that my enjoyment of metal hit escape velocity. After stumbling upon a sketchy webpage with an embed of Morbid Angel’s “Where the Slime Live,” I fell incorrigibly in love. After a few months following my nose, I found myself in the metal blogosphere, where I’ve lived ever since.
But AMG wasn’t where I landed. My first chaperones were Heavy Blog is Heavy and No Clean Singing. Without them, I would never have found Gorod, The Ocean, The Odious, Theory in Practice, or Enshine; and what would I have then? I discovered AMG a few years later, and the thrill of communally excavating new music shaped my life.
Over time, my musical community has expanded and become less faceless. Part of the reason is AMG, which has provided a firehose of new releases and a community of lovable idiots. Part of it is luck, such as my co-workers who swear by Blood Incantation. Much of it amounts to small acts of musical kindness. Engaging with friends on music warms my heart; getting dragged to a sketchy London punk venue and bonding with an indie friend over Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter were highlights of my year. Every stranger who’s welcomed me at a show has made my world less desolate.
Music is amazing in isolation, but it’s even better as a bridge between hearts. I’m thankful for everyone who’s held my hand on my musical voyages, including every writer and commenter here. I hope I can return the favor.
AMG gave to me …
Trees of Eternity // Hour of the Nightingale – Steel’s 3.0 review of Hour of the Nightingale was heartfelt, eloquent, and dead wrong.2 All ten tracks brim with beauty and flawless songwriting. Trees of Eternity’s mammoth riffs and piercing bass contrast with elegiac strings and acoustic guitars, and both pack an emotional punch. Aleah Stanbridge’s vocal melodies complement both styles, with a rich timbre that tugs at my heartstrings. Hour of the Nightingale’s supple dance between extremity and somber beauty makes “My Requiem” and “Gallows Bird” all-time-great bookends. Hour of the Nightingale’s lyrics are the best I’ve ever heard, painting technicolor images of the prisons we cage ourselves in, and the powers and perils of human connection. Variously depicting a plea for emotional openness (“Condemned to Silence”), the paralyzing fear of alienating loved ones (“A Million Tears”), the isolating trials of self-image (“Broken Mirror”),3 and an uplifting reminder that darkness is transient (title track), like a best friend, this album has wallowed with me, encouraged me, and offered me concrete guidance. Without it, I’d have zero interest in doom metal. I wouldn’t express myself freely or hug my loved ones as often.4 But perhaps most importantly, I wouldn’t have Hour of the Nightingale.
Cult of Luna & Julie Christmas // Mariner – Sure, I’d heard of Cult of Luna; I just paid them no attention.5 After one too many misfires with ISIS, I’d given up on post-metal altogether.6 Old man Huck’s review of Mariner convinced me to give the genre another shot. Lulling listeners with pulsating drum beats and meditative melodies, Mariner features the most explosive climaxes of Cult of Luna’s career. Julie Christmas unleashes my favorite extreme vocal performance ever, with blood-curdling screams from the terrifying depths of her heart. Christmas’ rhythmic vocals and Cult of Luna’s style elevate each other to make Mariner a true collaboration. Their lethal combination culminates in the emotional behemoth “Cygnus,” where a ferocious musical buildup colludes with four vocal tracks to deliver one of the greatest album endings ever. Mariner reeled me in and never let go. I’ve been a post-metal convert and a follower of the cult of Cult of Luna ever since. More broadly, I’ve grown to appreciate any album that whisks me into another universe, even if its melodies aren’t ground-breaking. I’ve grown to love hearing a vocalist bare their heart, whether it sounds lovely or grating. None of this was true for me a decade ago. It all started with Mariner.
Obsequiae // Aria of Vernal Tombs – Aria of Vernal Tombs’ marriage of medieval harmonies and black metal riffs heralded a new direction for the genre and for me. Obsequiae’s soaring guitar leads and solos carry me away with their beauty. Tanner Anderson’s distinctive guitar lines bounce off each other playfully and join forces for miraculous climaxes. Armed with these harmonies, Obsequiae’s mysterious ability to transport me to an Arthurian countryside recalls Wishbone Ash’s classic Argus. Still, Aria doesn’t skimp on extremity. Black metal and evocative melodies coexist in strange harmony, while banging bass lines put the genre to shame. Obsequiae feels like America’s answer to Moonsorrow, adding an original twist to black metal without depriving it of its power. Aria helped me see black metal through a new lens and develop a soft spot for bands whose use of melody echoes Obsequiae (see Noltem and Inexorum), and artists who add a unique folk spin to black metal (see Véhémence). Obsequiae personnel overlaps also led me to Nechochwen, Ironflame, and Majesties. But there is only one Obsequiae. Aria is their peak.
I wish I had written …
LiveWire – Under Attack! [Things You Might Have Missed 2022]. Two years on, the thrill of Under Attack! has somehow heightened further. The killer tracks remain exhilarating, while my least favorite songs (“Conqueror” and “Lockjaw Deathroll”) have proved just as memorable as the others. The bonus tracks, which I’d previously thought deserved “only” a 4.5, now rank among my favorites, right through the First Fragment “Gula”-esque ending of “Demon’s Grip.” Kenstrosity‘s excellent write-up did justice to LiveWire; I’m merely jealous. Under Attack! is one of the greatest metal records ever, a Thundersteel for our generation (but somehow better). I wish it’d been my White Wizzard.
Itchymenace
AMG and me
I’ve always loved reading about music. At an early age, I’d pore over the liner notes to my parent’s Beatles records. As a teen, I collected Hit Parader, Metal Maniacs and Guitar World magazines. I hung on every word that Glenn Tipton, James Hetfield or Ozzy would say, and dreamed of being the one to someday write their stories. Reviews were a critical feature of these publications but magazines didn’t come with embeds. If the latest Dio or Scorpions record got a good write-up, you’d roll the dice, spend your money, and buy the album. On a good day, you’d coax your buddy into buying it and get a dubbed copy on cassette. Good reviews went a long way. For me, the opportunity to write for AMG was a chance to be a part of the medium that has brought me so much joy and steered me to so much good music over the years. Little did I know the hornet nest of opinions I was walking into.
AMG gave to me …
Iron Maiden // Seventh Son of a Seventh Son – For me, it’s not a single album review that means the most to me, it’s the complete Iron Maiden discography ranking. What a ride! Up until then, I had always held Number of the Beast as one of the greatest metal records of all time. Putting Seventh Son of a Seventh Son as number one challenged everything I believed in. But you know, after some tortuous soul-searching, I agreed. The argument was too good. This was the level of deep musical analysis that was missing from all the other metal blogs. And it was the most fun I had reading anything that year.
Rotpit // Let There Be Rot – Steel Druhm is a great writer. He sets the bar for all of us. I mean his opening line here goes for the scrotum and the funny bone all in one fell swoop. What follows is a deliciously amusing review that’s every bit as entertaining as the album it’s covering. I’m not huge death metal fan but Rotpit quickly ascended to the top of my favorites last year. It reminded me how fun music can be and how greatness transcends genre. It became an unwelcome running joke in our house that whenever someone suggested putting music on, I’d scream RooooooottttPiiiittttttt! Strangely, it never got picked. Their loss.
I wish I had written …
Cruentus – Fossilized Review. I remember reading this review at work and doing everything I could to not laugh out loud or draw the confused glares of my co-workers. It took a good five minutes to settle and I’m still not sure my pancreas has fully recovered. This was also an “aha” moment for an impressionable Itchymenace trying to figure out the secret sauce in the AMG whopper. Here, Doc Grier both honors and expands upon the AMG mythology as only he can. He’s immensely talented and funny. If only he had good taste.
I wish I could do over …
Virgin Steele – The Passion of Dionysus Review. I took so much shit for giving this album a 3.5. So, I’m here to say I was wrong. It should have been a 4.0. That’s right fuckers. Suck it hard. This is a great record with plenty of heart despite some production setbacks. Go ahead and come at me in the Slack channel or wherever you find me. My Virgin Steele is ready to taste blood.7
I wish more people had read …
Danava – Nothing but Nothing Review. The opening paragraph of this review is my best work. I love how well it flows and how metal it is. Plus, this album kicked ass and more people should listen to it. Hit that link, fanboy!
Iceberg
AMG and me
Truth be told, I don’t remember the first time I laid eyes on www.angrymetalguy.com. One of the first reviews I remember was GardensTale’s evisceration of Jordan Rudess’ solo album, an assessment I begrudgingly agreed with, regardless of my then full-on Dream Theater fanboy status. What I do recall is searching the internet of the early 2010s for any source of intelligent, measured criticism of music that didn’t reek of ad-revenue inflated cronyism. I imagine many of you, dear readers, have a similar story. My infatuation with—and eventual reliance on—AMG unfolded in anachronistic fits and starts: a Fleshgod review here (King), an Allegeaon pan there (Proponents of Sentience). Before I knew it, AMG had maneuvered itself into my daily routine. What used to feel like perusing a record store for new discoveries, became more like dropping in on old friends and asking how they were doing, albeit in a classically chatroom-lurker manner. I aligned with certain writers, certain commenters, and eagerly awaited TYMHM season to load me up with the year’s uncovered gems. Having spent so much of my life absorbing popular music due to my upbringing, and classical music due to my training, metal was a creative outlet I desperately needed, yet lacked the community with which to share it. I’d never have imagined being inducted into this hallowed crew of passionate curmudgeons, nor the long-sought camaraderie I’d find within.
AMG gave to me …
Brothers of Metal // Emblas Saga – Sometimes an album hits you just the right way, at just the right time to cement itself in the story of your life. Little did I know when I first fell in love with this baker’s dozen of Viking tomfoolery that a worldwide pandemic and a months-long lockdown with my in-laws was just around the corner. But Emblas Saga—so enthusiastically introduced to me by an effusive Holdeneye—became the soundtrack of my imprisonment. Power metal with mead and axes, the riffs stomped around, the big guy told stories, and Ylva Eriksson stole the show with so many ear-worm choruses that I was delirious halfway through the record. There isn’t a bad track throughout, and the opening salvo of “Powersnake”-“Hel”-“Chainbreaker” remains the undisputed champ for curtain-raising. Fun fact: my proudest moment of the Year of our Plague 2020 was getting my very devout Southern Baptist mother-in-law to refer to her vacuum-in-the-wall system as “the powersnake.” She still calls it that to this day. Praise be to Wotan!
Slow // VI – Dantalion – It’s 2019 and New York City’s cold was gnawing at my sanity. A lengthy commute and perpetual train delays had me at the mercy of a labyrinthine bus schedule. It’s 2 am and I’m staring down the barrel of a 90-minute journey. Armed only with a lackluster knowledge of funeral doom and the words of Muppet, I pressed play on VI – Dantalion. How unprepared I was for the tsunami that awaited me: the half-time and half-again destruction of the drums, the brash, hypnotic droning of the guitars, and the vocal roars unbound by something as useless as time. As both drummer and composer, I was mesmerized at tempo brandished so recklessly, how the performers worshiped at the altar of between-the-beat silence. But it was the climactic crescendo of “Incendiare,” the step-by-step tempo increase, the anguished strings building to a cathartic, racing release, that sold me on the beauty and agony of Dantalion. When I think of perfect funeral doom, this is the album I recall; Bell Witch be damned.
Mistur // In Memoriam – As much love as I have for the staffers here at AMG, I’m deeply grateful for the gems revealed to me by the commentariat. Doc Grier’s TYMHM for Mistur’s magnum opus predated my awareness of the blog; indeed, I was led to In Memoriam by a forgotten comment in an unrelated article many years later. I’m forever indebted to you, nameless commenter, because you led me to one of my favorite metal albums of all time: full stop, don’t pass go, don’t collect your filthy hand out money. Mistur’s brand of melo-black wields so many different sounds and styles it should end up like “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” But the glorious seven minutes of opener “Downfall” instantly prove that these Norwegians are much wiser than a mouse in a fancy hat. Harsh/clean vocal interplay, RIFFS, tasteful synths, RIFFS, a spiraling maelstrom of an ending, and RIFFS showcase a band operating at their most sublime. This band had no issue beating me in the skull with their magnificence. From open to close, this album reigns supreme; I will hold vigil until they return.
I wish I had written …
White Ward – Love Exchange Failure Review. This particular review—and it’s sequel—require little introduction. Interpreting White Ward’s slinky, cinematic record as a screenplay, and featuring an AMG cast of characters was a heartbreaking work of Kenstrositous genius. Not only did the Sponge slip a rule-flaunting format through the jaws of the editorial team, he did it with wordsmithery worthy of the ethos of Love Exchange Failure. Finding a way to spruce up the routine of this gig is tricky; finding a way to blow it up is masterful. When I think of my biggest shit-eating grin moments here, this review is foremost amongst them.
Mystikus Hugebeard
AMG and me
Writing for AMG feels like the validation of an identity I’ve been working towards all my life. I’ve been passionate about metal ever since my brother showed me that fateful anime music video for “10th Man Down” by Nightwish when I was 12. Over the last few years, as I’ve been navigating adulthood and life in the tumultuous American reality, that passion withered, and I’ve put some thought into why. I often think back to when I was the leader of the St. Olaf College Heavy Metal Club, and how happy I was. I’ve realized that my time there was so important to me because, well, it gave my passion a sense of purpose beyond just myself. Maybe all I was doing was trying to introduce people to bands that they would end up not listening to anyway, but that social aspect means so much to me.
Although I know that it’s incredibly cool and special to write for such a great music website like Angry Metal Guy, what matters most in my heart is that it’s allowed me to reclaim the part of myself that just loves sharing my music with like-minded people, and it’s given back to me the community that I’d taken for granted before. So, to the AMG leaders who let me in, to my peers who somehow stomach my ramblings about Subsignal, and to every one of you who reads my silly reviews and leaves a comment: from the bottom of my heart, thank you!
AMG gave to me …
Archspire // Bleed The Future – We all know how much this album rules, but it also holds some significance for me from the early days of my AMG journey. Kronos’ review of this album dropped three days before I received the email asking if I’d like to further embarrass myself in the n00b program. I was already planning on getting it at some point based on the excellent review and 4.5 score, but after the news, buying the album felt like a great way to celebrate. I vividly remember walking down a sunny Chicago street on my way to an auto repair shop while listening to this album, feeling like hands-down the coolest motherfucker alive. I was walking past people thinking, “they have no idea they’re walking past the soon-to-be AMG writer hotshot.” Honestly, I probably looked a little like Tobey Maguire from that one scene in Spider Man 3. You know the one. But I just couldn’t help it, I was excited! I couldn’t wait to get my grubby little hands on my first promo and show them what I could do, to inspire other people to buy an album like Kronos inspired me.
Altars of Grief // Iris – My favorite method of musical discovery has always been blindly stumbling around Bandcamp until I bonk my head on something special. It creates a unique relationship with the music where I feel “this is my album,” and this emotional attachment gives it a powerful longevity. I recall reading Ferrous Beuller’s review of Iris and essentially thinking “huh, cool” before ignoring it like an idiot. Fast forward several months to when I came across Iris on one of my Bandcamp walks, long after forgetting about Beuller’s review, and was blown away. A nagging voice in my head said “where have I heard this before,” whereupon I remembered the review and felt quite foolish. Iris is a sublime record of unparalleled emotional depth, and a prime example of why I should just listen to the goddamn tunes already when someone on AMG gives it a 4.5. I’m glad I could find Iris on my own and develop that unique connection to it, but I regret that my pigheadedness kept me from experiencing it for so long. To this day, it’s one of my favorite black metal records.
Fires In The Distance // Air Not Meant For Us – If you held a gun to my beard and forced me to choose my favorite band, I’d say Insomnium. Hearing Air Not Meant For Us for the first time made me feel that same melancholic bliss I felt the first time I ever listened to Insomnium. Several of my AMG peers recommended this one to me while I was trying to fill out last year’s Listurnalia. Thus Spoke did a fantastic job as always in her review of the album, but something Kenstrosity said to me really stood out: “It’s almost as if this album was tailor-made specifically for me.” Well, I feel it was tailor-made for me. It sounds like an extension of my soul. I think I’ve listened to, and sung to myself, the “I’ll never see daylight / But I’ve seen enough” stanza of “Harbingers” to the point of obsession. The staccato keyboards that strike with percussive force, the achingly beautiful guitar melodies, the sorrow-tinged hope buried deep in the album as a whole; Air Not Meant For Us takes a soul-wrenching longing that I might forever struggle to put into words and transforms it into music.
I wish I had written …
Sermon of Flames – I have seen the Light, and it was Repulsive Review. I love this review. It dropped while I was working on my casting call submission, and I was floored. Sure, It’s extremely well written and demonstrates an encyclopedic knowledge of how the band’s sound relates to other subgenres and artists. But most importantly to me, it’s a very human review in that it acknowledges and appreciates how the album’s flaws create a unique work of art. All of my colleagues are phenomenal writers, but, to this day, I use this review as an example of the quality that I hope to achieve with my own writing. Excellent work, my Dearest Hollow!
I wish I could do over …
Sgàile – Traverse the Bealach Review. Truthfully, I adore Traverse the Bealach, and because of that I can’t help but feel so frustrated by its flaws. After all, you want the things you love to be perfect. A 3.5 isn’t a low score by any means, but I knew in my heart it deserved higher and I’m ashamed to say I got way too hung up on the few sections I didn’t like. And honestly, with time and distance, I’ve realized that the bad parts aren’t even all that bad, which only further salts my wounds. Just call me Mystikus Contritebeard, because I underrated this one.
I wish more people had read …
Subsignal – A Poetry of Rain [Things You Might Have Missed 2023]. We all have that one band that we simply cannot shut the fuck up about. I’m already quite pleased with the positive reception Subsignal got in the comments but, at time of writing, the metrics tell me that this is my second-least-read piece, which is unacceptable! The degree to which I want people to enjoy this band the way I do borders on the unhinged, but it’s not my fault they’re just that good.
#2024 #AltarsOfGrief #Amenra #AMGTurns15 #Archspire #BlogPost #BlogPosts #BrothersOfMetal #Cruentus #CultOfLuna #Danava #Deluge #FiresInTheDistance #IronMaiden #JulieChristmas #LiveWire #Mistur #Obsequiae #Rotpit #SermonOfFlames #Sgaile #Slow #Subsignal #TreesOfEternity #Ulcerate #VirginSteele #Vorga #WhiteWard
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AMG Turns 15: Janitorial Staff Speaks
By Carcharodon
15 years ago, on May 19, 2009, Angry Metal Guy spoke. For the very first time as AMG. And he had opinions: Very Important Opinions™. The post attracted relatively little attention at the time, but times change and, over the decade and a half since then, AMG Industries has grown into the blog you know today. Now with a staff of around 25 overrating overwriters (and an entirely non-suspicious graveyard for writers on permanent, all-expenses-paid sabbaticals), we have written more than 9,100 posts, comprising over seven million words. Over the site’s lifetime, we’ve had more than 107 million visits and now achieve well over a million hits each and every month. Through this, we’ve built up a fantastic community of readers drawn from every corner of the globe, whom we have (mostly) loved getting to know in the more than 360,000 comments posted on the site.
We have done this under the careful (if sternly authoritarian) stewardship of our eponymous leader Angry Metal Guy and his iron enforcer, Steel Druhm, while adhering to strict editorial policies and principles. We have done this by simply offering honest (and occasionally brutal) takes, and without running a single advert or taking a single cent from anyone. Ever. Mistakes have undoubtedly been made and we may be a laughing laughing stock in the eyes of music intellectuals, socialites and critics everywhere but we are incredibly proud of what AMG Industries represents. In fact, we believe it may be the best metal blog, with the best community of readers, on the internet.
Now join us as the people responsible for making AMG a reality reflect on what the site means to them and why they would willingly work for a blog that pays in the currency of deadlines, abuse, and hobo wine. Welcome to the 15th Birthdaynalia.
Thou Shalt Have No Other Blogs!
Thus Spoke
AMG and me
I probably have one of the least legit backstories of anyone writing here. Unlike many of you—readers and writers—I was not a long-time fan of the blog, discovering it only around a year or two before applying to join the staff. I was 20 before I really got into trve metal and completely abandoned metalcore. But now, I can hardly imagine a time when reviewing albums for AMG wasn’t a key part of my weekly routine (nor can I imagine a life without extreme metal, for that matter; funny how things can change so dramatically). As corny as it sounds, it’s the community I’ve found amongst this bunch of wrong’uns—all loveable misfits, nerds, and actually-big-softies-despite-seeming-tough the lot of us—that has made the biggest impact. I said as much in my year-end post, but I feel blessed to have such a great bunch of comrades to talk music, vent about life, and just share memes with. The excitement of being in what feels like a special little club of small repute in the metalsphere still hasn’t worn off, even if, when wearing my AMG Inc Staff Stash out and about, I know no-one will get the reference. They probably think, if anything, “Why is she wearing a t-shirt that says Angry Metal Guy? That’s dumb.” Oh, and yeah, I know I need to get a new avatar. Anyone wanna design one for me?
AMG gave to me …
Vorga // Striving Toward Oblivion – I’m so lucky I was reading AMG,1 because this one was weirdly under-mentioned elsewhere. I absolutely love Vorga—as Kenstrosity himself is well aware—but I probably wouldn’t really know who they were, were it not for his review of this album. It’s just fantastic. “Taken” remains an immovable feature on any cardio playlist I’ve made since its release. And the rest—”Starless Sky,” “Comet,” “Fool’s Paradise”—absolutely bops. Already knowing I loved black metal, finding a band in the genre whose music I quickly became obsessed with, and eagerly anticipated future releases from, was extra exciting, especially when paired with the opportunity to get early access to Beyond the Palest Star this year.
Déluge // Ægo Templo – When this dropped, Dear Hollow panned it as “a wearisome and exhausting listen.” Fortunately, my curiosity was piqued enough that I listened for myself, and I have to say, I thoroughly disagree with my fine, antlered friend. Ægo Templo is far from perfect, but my goodness did it resonate with me. Just after I had gone through a whole phase of discovering my appreciation for (coincidentally) exclusively French black and post-black artists (Alcest, Regarde les Hommes Tomber, Vous Autres, Celeste …) Ægo Templo found its way to me via a review on a site I had only just started visiting. While the band’s debut, Æther, is perhaps better conceived, this one somehow completely consumed me in a way the debut never has. The washing sounds of ocean waves, glorious, uplifting themes, and dour, scream-rent brutality hit me in all the right places. I revisit it regularly and I, for one, am very excited to see what comes next from the Frenchmen.
Amenra // Mass VI – I know I said I wasn’t reading the blog until a couple of years before my tenancy here, but I still came across the odd review here and there whilst browsing for new bands to listen to. Somewhere, I saw the name Amenra mentioned, and, taking to the internet, I was led to Dr Grier‘s TYMHM post on Mass VI. Thoroughly intrigued, I vividly remember pressing play on the embedded “Diaken” and how everything shifted as its eleven-minute runtime passed by. I had never heard vocals like that. Yes, I’d heard harsh vocals—barks, growls, gurgles, shrieks, you name it—but Colin van Eeckhout’s crippling, devastating screams of pure pain were something else. The album, endlessly bleak and incredibly beautiful, utterly tore me to pieces in a way few others have. And it led me to devour not only Amenra’s full series of Masses and other creations, but the rest of the Church of Ra Collective’s several discographies. “A Solitary Reign” is now one of my favorite songs. Ever. No matter what else they put out, Mass VI will probably always be my favorite Amenra album.
I wish I had written …
Ulcerate – Shrines of Paralysis Review. As my favorite album from one of my favorite bands, reviewing Shrines of Paralysis would have been a dream. However, since it dropped about five years before my n00b tenancy began, it could never have been. Luckily for me, I will not have to contend with Kronos for reviewing rights, because the writing here, as with all his articles, is stellar. Unconsciously or not, I find myself emulating its subtle poeticism and easy flow. When Cutting the Throat of God comes, I hope my words can do an Ulcerate album as much justice as this review did.
Maddog
AMG and me
By chance, AMG’s first year was also the year that my enjoyment of metal hit escape velocity. After stumbling upon a sketchy webpage with an embed of Morbid Angel’s “Where the Slime Live,” I fell incorrigibly in love. After a few months following my nose, I found myself in the metal blogosphere, where I’ve lived ever since.
But AMG wasn’t where I landed. My first chaperones were Heavy Blog is Heavy and No Clean Singing. Without them, I would never have found Gorod, The Ocean, The Odious, Theory in Practice, or Enshine; and what would I have then? I discovered AMG a few years later, and the thrill of communally excavating new music shaped my life.
Over time, my musical community has expanded and become less faceless. Part of the reason is AMG, which has provided a firehose of new releases and a community of lovable idiots. Part of it is luck, such as my co-workers who swear by Blood Incantation. Much of it amounts to small acts of musical kindness. Engaging with friends on music warms my heart; getting dragged to a sketchy London punk venue and bonding with an indie friend over Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter were highlights of my year. Every stranger who’s welcomed me at a show has made my world less desolate.
Music is amazing in isolation, but it’s even better as a bridge between hearts. I’m thankful for everyone who’s held my hand on my musical voyages, including every writer and commenter here. I hope I can return the favor.
AMG gave to me …
Trees of Eternity // Hour of the Nightingale – Steel’s 3.0 review of Hour of the Nightingale was heartfelt, eloquent, and dead wrong.2 All ten tracks brim with beauty and flawless songwriting. Trees of Eternity’s mammoth riffs and piercing bass contrast with elegiac strings and acoustic guitars, and both pack an emotional punch. Aleah Stanbridge’s vocal melodies complement both styles, with a rich timbre that tugs at my heartstrings. Hour of the Nightingale’s supple dance between extremity and somber beauty makes “My Requiem” and “Gallows Bird” all-time-great bookends. Hour of the Nightingale’s lyrics are the best I’ve ever heard, painting technicolor images of the prisons we cage ourselves in, and the powers and perils of human connection. Variously depicting a plea for emotional openness (“Condemned to Silence”), the paralyzing fear of alienating loved ones (“A Million Tears”), the isolating trials of self-image (“Broken Mirror”),3 and an uplifting reminder that darkness is transient (title track), like a best friend, this album has wallowed with me, encouraged me, and offered me concrete guidance. Without it, I’d have zero interest in doom metal. I wouldn’t express myself freely or hug my loved ones as often.4 But perhaps most importantly, I wouldn’t have Hour of the Nightingale.
Cult of Luna & Julie Christmas // Mariner – Sure, I’d heard of Cult of Luna; I just paid them no attention.5 After one too many misfires with ISIS, I’d given up on post-metal altogether.6 Old man Huck’s review of Mariner convinced me to give the genre another shot. Lulling listeners with pulsating drum beats and meditative melodies, Mariner features the most explosive climaxes of Cult of Luna’s career. Julie Christmas unleashes my favorite extreme vocal performance ever, with blood-curdling screams from the terrifying depths of her heart. Christmas’ rhythmic vocals and Cult of Luna’s style elevate each other to make Mariner a true collaboration. Their lethal combination culminates in the emotional behemoth “Cygnus,” where a ferocious musical buildup colludes with four vocal tracks to deliver one of the greatest album endings ever. Mariner reeled me in and never let go. I’ve been a post-metal convert and a follower of the cult of Cult of Luna ever since. More broadly, I’ve grown to appreciate any album that whisks me into another universe, even if its melodies aren’t ground-breaking. I’ve grown to love hearing a vocalist bare their heart, whether it sounds lovely or grating. None of this was true for me a decade ago. It all started with Mariner.
Obsequiae // Aria of Vernal Tombs – Aria of Vernal Tombs’ marriage of medieval harmonies and black metal riffs heralded a new direction for the genre and for me. Obsequiae’s soaring guitar leads and solos carry me away with their beauty. Tanner Anderson’s distinctive guitar lines bounce off each other playfully and join forces for miraculous climaxes. Armed with these harmonies, Obsequiae’s mysterious ability to transport me to an Arthurian countryside recalls Wishbone Ash’s classic Argus. Still, Aria doesn’t skimp on extremity. Black metal and evocative melodies coexist in strange harmony, while banging bass lines put the genre to shame. Obsequiae feels like America’s answer to Moonsorrow, adding an original twist to black metal without depriving it of its power. Aria helped me see black metal through a new lens and develop a soft spot for bands whose use of melody echoes Obsequiae (see Noltem and Inexorum), and artists who add a unique folk spin to black metal (see Véhémence). Obsequiae personnel overlaps also led me to Nechochwen, Ironflame, and Majesties. But there is only one Obsequiae. Aria is their peak.
I wish I had written …
LiveWire – Under Attack! [Things You Might Have Missed 2022]. Two years on, the thrill of Under Attack! has somehow heightened further. The killer tracks remain exhilarating, while my least favorite songs (“Conqueror” and “Lockjaw Deathroll”) have proved just as memorable as the others. The bonus tracks, which I’d previously thought deserved “only” a 4.5, now rank among my favorites, right through the First Fragment “Gula”-esque ending of “Demon’s Grip.” Kenstrosity‘s excellent write-up did justice to LiveWire; I’m merely jealous. Under Attack! is one of the greatest metal records ever, a Thundersteel for our generation (but somehow better). I wish it’d been my White Wizzard.
Itchymenace
AMG and me
I’ve always loved reading about music. At an early age, I’d pore over the liner notes to my parent’s Beatles records. As a teen, I collected Hit Parader, Metal Maniacs and Guitar World magazines. I hung on every word that Glenn Tipton, James Hetfield or Ozzy would say, and dreamed of being the one to someday write their stories. Reviews were a critical feature of these publications but magazines didn’t come with embeds. If the latest Dio or Scorpions record got a good write-up, you’d roll the dice, spend your money, and buy the album. On a good day, you’d coax your buddy into buying it and get a dubbed copy on cassette. Good reviews went a long way. For me, the opportunity to write for AMG was a chance to be a part of the medium that has brought me so much joy and steered me to so much good music over the years. Little did I know the hornet nest of opinions I was walking into.
AMG gave to me …
Iron Maiden // Seventh Son of a Seventh Son – For me, it’s not a single album review that means the most to me, it’s the complete Iron Maiden discography ranking. What a ride! Up until then, I had always held Number of the Beast as one of the greatest metal records of all time. Putting Seventh Son of a Seventh Son as number one challenged everything I believed in. But you know, after some tortuous soul-searching, I agreed. The argument was too good. This was the level of deep musical analysis that was missing from all the other metal blogs. And it was the most fun I had reading anything that year.
Rotpit // Let There Be Rot – Steel Druhm is a great writer. He sets the bar for all of us. I mean his opening line here goes for the scrotum and the funny bone all in one fell swoop. What follows is a deliciously amusing review that’s every bit as entertaining as the album it’s covering. I’m not huge death metal fan but Rotpit quickly ascended to the top of my favorites last year. It reminded me how fun music can be and how greatness transcends genre. It became an unwelcome running joke in our house that whenever someone suggested putting music on, I’d scream RooooooottttPiiiittttttt! Strangely, it never got picked. Their loss.
I wish I had written …
Cruentus – Fossilized Review. I remember reading this review at work and doing everything I could to not laugh out loud or draw the confused glares of my co-workers. It took a good five minutes to settle and I’m still not sure my pancreas has fully recovered. This was also an “aha” moment for an impressionable Itchymenace trying to figure out the secret sauce in the AMG whopper. Here, Doc Grier both honors and expands upon the AMG mythology as only he can. He’s immensely talented and funny. If only he had good taste.
I wish I could do over …
Virgin Steele – The Passion of Dionysus Review. I took so much shit for giving this album a 3.5. So, I’m here to say I was wrong. It should have been a 4.0. That’s right fuckers. Suck it hard. This is a great record with plenty of heart despite some production setbacks. Go ahead and come at me in the Slack channel or wherever you find me. My Virgin Steele is ready to taste blood.7
I wish more people had read …
Danava – Nothing but Nothing Review. The opening paragraph of this review is my best work. I love how well it flows and how metal it is. Plus, this album kicked ass and more people should listen to it. Hit that link, fanboy!
Iceberg
AMG and me
Truth be told, I don’t remember the first time I laid eyes on www.angrymetalguy.com. One of the first reviews I remember was GardensTale’s evisceration of Jordan Rudess’ solo album, an assessment I begrudgingly agreed with, regardless of my then full-on Dream Theater fanboy status. What I do recall is searching the internet of the early 2010s for any source of intelligent, measured criticism of music that didn’t reek of ad-revenue inflated cronyism. I imagine many of you, dear readers, have a similar story. My infatuation with—and eventual reliance on—AMG unfolded in anachronistic fits and starts: a Fleshgod review here (King), an Allegeaon pan there (Proponents of Sentience). Before I knew it, AMG had maneuvered itself into my daily routine. What used to feel like perusing a record store for new discoveries, became more like dropping in on old friends and asking how they were doing, albeit in a classically chatroom-lurker manner. I aligned with certain writers, certain commenters, and eagerly awaited TYMHM season to load me up with the year’s uncovered gems. Having spent so much of my life absorbing popular music due to my upbringing, and classical music due to my training, metal was a creative outlet I desperately needed, yet lacked the community with which to share it. I’d never have imagined being inducted into this hallowed crew of passionate curmudgeons, nor the long-sought camaraderie I’d find within.
AMG gave to me …
Brothers of Metal // Emblas Saga – Sometimes an album hits you just the right way, at just the right time to cement itself in the story of your life. Little did I know when I first fell in love with this baker’s dozen of Viking tomfoolery that a worldwide pandemic and a months-long lockdown with my in-laws was just around the corner. But Emblas Saga—so enthusiastically introduced to me by an effusive Holdeneye—became the soundtrack of my imprisonment. Power metal with mead and axes, the riffs stomped around, the big guy told stories, and Ylva Eriksson stole the show with so many ear-worm choruses that I was delirious halfway through the record. There isn’t a bad track throughout, and the opening salvo of “Powersnake”-“Hel”-“Chainbreaker” remains the undisputed champ for curtain-raising. Fun fact: my proudest moment of the Year of our Plague 2020 was getting my very devout Southern Baptist mother-in-law to refer to her vacuum-in-the-wall system as “the powersnake.” She still calls it that to this day. Praise be to Wotan!
Slow // VI – Dantalion – It’s 2019 and New York City’s cold was gnawing at my sanity. A lengthy commute and perpetual train delays had me at the mercy of a labyrinthine bus schedule. It’s 2 am and I’m staring down the barrel of a 90-minute journey. Armed only with a lackluster knowledge of funeral doom and the words of Muppet, I pressed play on VI – Dantalion. How unprepared I was for the tsunami that awaited me: the half-time and half-again destruction of the drums, the brash, hypnotic droning of the guitars, and the vocal roars unbound by something as useless as time. As both drummer and composer, I was mesmerized at tempo brandished so recklessly, how the performers worshiped at the altar of between-the-beat silence. But it was the climactic crescendo of “Incendiare,” the step-by-step tempo increase, the anguished strings building to a cathartic, racing release, that sold me on the beauty and agony of Dantalion. When I think of perfect funeral doom, this is the album I recall; Bell Witch be damned.
Mistur // In Memoriam – As much love as I have for the staffers here at AMG, I’m deeply grateful for the gems revealed to me by the commentariat. Doc Grier’s TYMHM for Mistur’s magnum opus predated my awareness of the blog; indeed, I was led to In Memoriam by a forgotten comment in an unrelated article many years later. I’m forever indebted to you, nameless commenter, because you led me to one of my favorite metal albums of all time: full stop, don’t pass go, don’t collect your filthy hand out money. Mistur’s brand of melo-black wields so many different sounds and styles it should end up like “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” But the glorious seven minutes of opener “Downfall” instantly prove that these Norwegians are much wiser than a mouse in a fancy hat. Harsh/clean vocal interplay, RIFFS, tasteful synths, RIFFS, a spiraling maelstrom of an ending, and RIFFS showcase a band operating at their most sublime. This band had no issue beating me in the skull with their magnificence. From open to close, this album reigns supreme; I will hold vigil until they return.
I wish I had written …
White Ward – Love Exchange Failure Review. This particular review—and it’s sequel—require little introduction. Interpreting White Ward’s slinky, cinematic record as a screenplay, and featuring an AMG cast of characters was a heartbreaking work of Kenstrositous genius. Not only did the Sponge slip a rule-flaunting format through the jaws of the editorial team, he did it with wordsmithery worthy of the ethos of Love Exchange Failure. Finding a way to spruce up the routine of this gig is tricky; finding a way to blow it up is masterful. When I think of my biggest shit-eating grin moments here, this review is foremost amongst them.
Mystikus Hugebeard
AMG and me
Writing for AMG feels like the validation of an identity I’ve been working towards all my life. I’ve been passionate about metal ever since my brother showed me that fateful anime music video for “10th Man Down” by Nightwish when I was 12. Over the last few years, as I’ve been navigating adulthood and life in the tumultuous American reality, that passion withered, and I’ve put some thought into why. I often think back to when I was the leader of the St. Olaf College Heavy Metal Club, and how happy I was. I’ve realized that my time there was so important to me because, well, it gave my passion a sense of purpose beyond just myself. Maybe all I was doing was trying to introduce people to bands that they would end up not listening to anyway, but that social aspect means so much to me.
Although I know that it’s incredibly cool and special to write for such a great music website like Angry Metal Guy, what matters most in my heart is that it’s allowed me to reclaim the part of myself that just loves sharing my music with like-minded people, and it’s given back to me the community that I’d taken for granted before. So, to the AMG leaders who let me in, to my peers who somehow stomach my ramblings about Subsignal, and to every one of you who reads my silly reviews and leaves a comment: from the bottom of my heart, thank you!
AMG gave to me …
Archspire // Bleed The Future – We all know how much this album rules, but it also holds some significance for me from the early days of my AMG journey. Kronos’ review of this album dropped three days before I received the email asking if I’d like to further embarrass myself in the n00b program. I was already planning on getting it at some point based on the excellent review and 4.5 score, but after the news, buying the album felt like a great way to celebrate. I vividly remember walking down a sunny Chicago street on my way to an auto repair shop while listening to this album, feeling like hands-down the coolest motherfucker alive. I was walking past people thinking, “they have no idea they’re walking past the soon-to-be AMG writer hotshot.” Honestly, I probably looked a little like Tobey Maguire from that one scene in Spider Man 3. You know the one. But I just couldn’t help it, I was excited! I couldn’t wait to get my grubby little hands on my first promo and show them what I could do, to inspire other people to buy an album like Kronos inspired me.
Altars of Grief // Iris – My favorite method of musical discovery has always been blindly stumbling around Bandcamp until I bonk my head on something special. It creates a unique relationship with the music where I feel “this is my album,” and this emotional attachment gives it a powerful longevity. I recall reading Ferrous Beuller’s review of Iris and essentially thinking “huh, cool” before ignoring it like an idiot. Fast forward several months to when I came across Iris on one of my Bandcamp walks, long after forgetting about Beuller’s review, and was blown away. A nagging voice in my head said “where have I heard this before,” whereupon I remembered the review and felt quite foolish. Iris is a sublime record of unparalleled emotional depth, and a prime example of why I should just listen to the goddamn tunes already when someone on AMG gives it a 4.5. I’m glad I could find Iris on my own and develop that unique connection to it, but I regret that my pigheadedness kept me from experiencing it for so long. To this day, it’s one of my favorite black metal records.
Fires In The Distance // Air Not Meant For Us – If you held a gun to my beard and forced me to choose my favorite band, I’d say Insomnium. Hearing Air Not Meant For Us for the first time made me feel that same melancholic bliss I felt the first time I ever listened to Insomnium. Several of my AMG peers recommended this one to me while I was trying to fill out last year’s Listurnalia. Thus Spoke did a fantastic job as always in her review of the album, but something Kenstrosity said to me really stood out: “It’s almost as if this album was tailor-made specifically for me.” Well, I feel it was tailor-made for me. It sounds like an extension of my soul. I think I’ve listened to, and sung to myself, the “I’ll never see daylight / But I’ve seen enough” stanza of “Harbingers” to the point of obsession. The staccato keyboards that strike with percussive force, the achingly beautiful guitar melodies, the sorrow-tinged hope buried deep in the album as a whole; Air Not Meant For Us takes a soul-wrenching longing that I might forever struggle to put into words and transforms it into music.
I wish I had written …
Sermon of Flames – I have seen the Light, and it was Repulsive Review. I love this review. It dropped while I was working on my casting call submission, and I was floored. Sure, It’s extremely well written and demonstrates an encyclopedic knowledge of how the band’s sound relates to other subgenres and artists. But most importantly to me, it’s a very human review in that it acknowledges and appreciates how the album’s flaws create a unique work of art. All of my colleagues are phenomenal writers, but, to this day, I use this review as an example of the quality that I hope to achieve with my own writing. Excellent work, my Dearest Hollow!
I wish I could do over …
Sgàile – Traverse the Bealach Review. Truthfully, I adore Traverse the Bealach, and because of that I can’t help but feel so frustrated by its flaws. After all, you want the things you love to be perfect. A 3.5 isn’t a low score by any means, but I knew in my heart it deserved higher and I’m ashamed to say I got way too hung up on the few sections I didn’t like. And honestly, with time and distance, I’ve realized that the bad parts aren’t even all that bad, which only further salts my wounds. Just call me Mystikus Contritebeard, because I underrated this one.
I wish more people had read …
Subsignal – A Poetry of Rain [Things You Might Have Missed 2023]. We all have that one band that we simply cannot shut the fuck up about. I’m already quite pleased with the positive reception Subsignal got in the comments but, at time of writing, the metrics tell me that this is my second-least-read piece, which is unacceptable! The degree to which I want people to enjoy this band the way I do borders on the unhinged, but it’s not my fault they’re just that good.
#2024 #AltarsOfGrief #Amenra #AMGTurns15 #Archspire #BlogPost #BlogPosts #BrothersOfMetal #Cruentus #CultOfLuna #Danava #Deluge #FiresInTheDistance #IronMaiden #JulieChristmas #LiveWire #Mistur #Obsequiae #Rotpit #SermonOfFlames #Sgaile #Slow #Subsignal #TreesOfEternity #Ulcerate #VirginSteele #Vorga #WhiteWard
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AMG Turns 15: Janitorial Staff Speaks
By Carcharodon
15 years ago, on May 19, 2009, Angry Metal Guy spoke. For the very first time as AMG. And he had opinions: Very Important Opinions™. The post attracted relatively little attention at the time, but times change and, over the decade and a half since then, AMG Industries has grown into the blog you know today. Now with a staff of around 25 overrating overwriters (and an entirely non-suspicious graveyard for writers on permanent, all-expenses-paid sabbaticals), we have written more than 9,100 posts, comprising over seven million words. Over the site’s lifetime, we’ve had more than 107 million visits and now achieve well over a million hits each and every month. Through this, we’ve built up a fantastic community of readers drawn from every corner of the globe, whom we have (mostly) loved getting to know in the more than 360,000 comments posted on the site.
We have done this under the careful (if sternly authoritarian) stewardship of our eponymous leader Angry Metal Guy and his iron enforcer, Steel Druhm, while adhering to strict editorial policies and principles. We have done this by simply offering honest (and occasionally brutal) takes, and without running a single advert or taking a single cent from anyone. Ever. Mistakes have undoubtedly been made and we may be a laughing laughing stock in the eyes of music intellectuals, socialites and critics everywhere but we are incredibly proud of what AMG Industries represents. In fact, we believe it may be the best metal blog, with the best community of readers, on the internet.
Now join us as the people responsible for making AMG a reality reflect on what the site means to them and why they would willingly work for a blog that pays in the currency of deadlines, abuse, and hobo wine. Welcome to the 15th Birthdaynalia.
Thou Shalt Have No Other Blogs!
Thus Spoke
AMG and me
I probably have one of the least legit backstories of anyone writing here. Unlike many of you—readers and writers—I was not a long-time fan of the blog, discovering it only around a year or two before applying to join the staff. I was 20 before I really got into trve metal and completely abandoned metalcore. But now, I can hardly imagine a time when reviewing albums for AMG wasn’t a key part of my weekly routine (nor can I imagine a life without extreme metal, for that matter; funny how things can change so dramatically). As corny as it sounds, it’s the community I’ve found amongst this bunch of wrong’uns—all loveable misfits, nerds, and actually-big-softies-despite-seeming-tough the lot of us—that has made the biggest impact. I said as much in my year-end post, but I feel blessed to have such a great bunch of comrades to talk music, vent about life, and just share memes with. The excitement of being in what feels like a special little club of small repute in the metalsphere still hasn’t worn off, even if, when wearing my AMG Inc Staff Stash out and about, I know no-one will get the reference. They probably think, if anything, “Why is she wearing a t-shirt that says Angry Metal Guy? That’s dumb.” Oh, and yeah, I know I need to get a new avatar. Anyone wanna design one for me?
AMG gave to me …
Vorga // Striving Toward Oblivion – I’m so lucky I was reading AMG,1 because this one was weirdly under-mentioned elsewhere. I absolutely love Vorga—as Kenstrosity himself is well aware—but I probably wouldn’t really know who they were, were it not for his review of this album. It’s just fantastic. “Taken” remains an immovable feature on any cardio playlist I’ve made since its release. And the rest—”Starless Sky,” “Comet,” “Fool’s Paradise”—absolutely bops. Already knowing I loved black metal, finding a band in the genre whose music I quickly became obsessed with, and eagerly anticipated future releases from, was extra exciting, especially when paired with the opportunity to get early access to Beyond the Palest Star this year.
Déluge // Ægo Templo – When this dropped, Dear Hollow panned it as “a wearisome and exhausting listen.” Fortunately, my curiosity was piqued enough that I listened for myself, and I have to say, I thoroughly disagree with my fine, antlered friend. Ægo Templo is far from perfect, but my goodness did it resonate with me. Just after I had gone through a whole phase of discovering my appreciation for (coincidentally) exclusively French black and post-black artists (Alcest, Regarde les Hommes Tomber, Vous Autres, Celeste …) Ægo Templo found its way to me via a review on a site I had only just started visiting. While the band’s debut, Æther, is perhaps better conceived, this one somehow completely consumed me in a way the debut never has. The washing sounds of ocean waves, glorious, uplifting themes, and dour, scream-rent brutality hit me in all the right places. I revisit it regularly and I, for one, am very excited to see what comes next from the Frenchmen.
Amenra // Mass VI – I know I said I wasn’t reading the blog until a couple of years before my tenancy here, but I still came across the odd review here and there whilst browsing for new bands to listen to. Somewhere, I saw the name Amenra mentioned, and, taking to the internet, I was led to Dr Grier‘s TYMHM post on Mass VI. Thoroughly intrigued, I vividly remember pressing play on the embedded “Diaken” and how everything shifted as its eleven-minute runtime passed by. I had never heard vocals like that. Yes, I’d heard harsh vocals—barks, growls, gurgles, shrieks, you name it—but Colin van Eeckhout’s crippling, devastating screams of pure pain were something else. The album, endlessly bleak and incredibly beautiful, utterly tore me to pieces in a way few others have. And it led me to devour not only Amenra’s full series of Masses and other creations, but the rest of the Church of Ra Collective’s several discographies. “A Solitary Reign” is now one of my favorite songs. Ever. No matter what else they put out, Mass VI will probably always be my favorite Amenra album.
I wish I had written …
Ulcerate – Shrines of Paralysis Review. As my favorite album from one of my favorite bands, reviewing Shrines of Paralysis would have been a dream. However, since it dropped about five years before my n00b tenancy began, it could never have been. Luckily for me, I will not have to contend with Kronos for reviewing rights, because the writing here, as with all his articles, is stellar. Unconsciously or not, I find myself emulating its subtle poeticism and easy flow. When Cutting the Throat of God comes, I hope my words can do an Ulcerate album as much justice as this review did.
Maddog
AMG and me
By chance, AMG’s first year was also the year that my enjoyment of metal hit escape velocity. After stumbling upon a sketchy webpage with an embed of Morbid Angel’s “Where the Slime Live,” I fell incorrigibly in love. After a few months following my nose, I found myself in the metal blogosphere, where I’ve lived ever since.
But AMG wasn’t where I landed. My first chaperones were Heavy Blog is Heavy and No Clean Singing. Without them, I would never have found Gorod, The Ocean, The Odious, Theory in Practice, or Enshine; and what would I have then? I discovered AMG a few years later, and the thrill of communally excavating new music shaped my life.
Over time, my musical community has expanded and become less faceless. Part of the reason is AMG, which has provided a firehose of new releases and a community of lovable idiots. Part of it is luck, such as my co-workers who swear by Blood Incantation. Much of it amounts to small acts of musical kindness. Engaging with friends on music warms my heart; getting dragged to a sketchy London punk venue and bonding with an indie friend over Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter were highlights of my year. Every stranger who’s welcomed me at a show has made my world less desolate.
Music is amazing in isolation, but it’s even better as a bridge between hearts. I’m thankful for everyone who’s held my hand on my musical voyages, including every writer and commenter here. I hope I can return the favor.
AMG gave to me …
Trees of Eternity // Hour of the Nightingale – Steel’s 3.0 review of Hour of the Nightingale was heartfelt, eloquent, and dead wrong.2 All ten tracks brim with beauty and flawless songwriting. Trees of Eternity’s mammoth riffs and piercing bass contrast with elegiac strings and acoustic guitars, and both pack an emotional punch. Aleah Stanbridge’s vocal melodies complement both styles, with a rich timbre that tugs at my heartstrings. Hour of the Nightingale’s supple dance between extremity and somber beauty makes “My Requiem” and “Gallows Bird” all-time-great bookends. Hour of the Nightingale’s lyrics are the best I’ve ever heard, painting technicolor images of the prisons we cage ourselves in, and the powers and perils of human connection. Variously depicting a plea for emotional openness (“Condemned to Silence”), the paralyzing fear of alienating loved ones (“A Million Tears”), the isolating trials of self-image (“Broken Mirror”),3 and an uplifting reminder that darkness is transient (title track), like a best friend, this album has wallowed with me, encouraged me, and offered me concrete guidance. Without it, I’d have zero interest in doom metal. I wouldn’t express myself freely or hug my loved ones as often.4 But perhaps most importantly, I wouldn’t have Hour of the Nightingale.
Cult of Luna & Julie Christmas // Mariner – Sure, I’d heard of Cult of Luna; I just paid them no attention.5 After one too many misfires with ISIS, I’d given up on post-metal altogether.6 Old man Huck’s review of Mariner convinced me to give the genre another shot. Lulling listeners with pulsating drum beats and meditative melodies, Mariner features the most explosive climaxes of Cult of Luna’s career. Julie Christmas unleashes my favorite extreme vocal performance ever, with blood-curdling screams from the terrifying depths of her heart. Christmas’ rhythmic vocals and Cult of Luna’s style elevate each other to make Mariner a true collaboration. Their lethal combination culminates in the emotional behemoth “Cygnus,” where a ferocious musical buildup colludes with four vocal tracks to deliver one of the greatest album endings ever. Mariner reeled me in and never let go. I’ve been a post-metal convert and a follower of the cult of Cult of Luna ever since. More broadly, I’ve grown to appreciate any album that whisks me into another universe, even if its melodies aren’t ground-breaking. I’ve grown to love hearing a vocalist bare their heart, whether it sounds lovely or grating. None of this was true for me a decade ago. It all started with Mariner.
Obsequiae // Aria of Vernal Tombs – Aria of Vernal Tombs’ marriage of medieval harmonies and black metal riffs heralded a new direction for the genre and for me. Obsequiae’s soaring guitar leads and solos carry me away with their beauty. Tanner Anderson’s distinctive guitar lines bounce off each other playfully and join forces for miraculous climaxes. Armed with these harmonies, Obsequiae’s mysterious ability to transport me to an Arthurian countryside recalls Wishbone Ash’s classic Argus. Still, Aria doesn’t skimp on extremity. Black metal and evocative melodies coexist in strange harmony, while banging bass lines put the genre to shame. Obsequiae feels like America’s answer to Moonsorrow, adding an original twist to black metal without depriving it of its power. Aria helped me see black metal through a new lens and develop a soft spot for bands whose use of melody echoes Obsequiae (see Noltem and Inexorum), and artists who add a unique folk spin to black metal (see Véhémence). Obsequiae personnel overlaps also led me to Nechochwen, Ironflame, and Majesties. But there is only one Obsequiae. Aria is their peak.
I wish I had written …
LiveWire – Under Attack! [Things You Might Have Missed 2022]. Two years on, the thrill of Under Attack! has somehow heightened further. The killer tracks remain exhilarating, while my least favorite songs (“Conqueror” and “Lockjaw Deathroll”) have proved just as memorable as the others. The bonus tracks, which I’d previously thought deserved “only” a 4.5, now rank among my favorites, right through the First Fragment “Gula”-esque ending of “Demon’s Grip.” Kenstrosity‘s excellent write-up did justice to LiveWire; I’m merely jealous. Under Attack! is one of the greatest metal records ever, a Thundersteel for our generation (but somehow better). I wish it’d been my White Wizzard.
Itchymenace
AMG and me
I’ve always loved reading about music. At an early age, I’d pore over the liner notes to my parent’s Beatles records. As a teen, I collected Hit Parader, Metal Maniacs and Guitar World magazines. I hung on every word that Glenn Tipton, James Hetfield or Ozzy would say, and dreamed of being the one to someday write their stories. Reviews were a critical feature of these publications but magazines didn’t come with embeds. If the latest Dio or Scorpions record got a good write-up, you’d roll the dice, spend your money, and buy the album. On a good day, you’d coax your buddy into buying it and get a dubbed copy on cassette. Good reviews went a long way. For me, the opportunity to write for AMG was a chance to be a part of the medium that has brought me so much joy and steered me to so much good music over the years. Little did I know the hornet nest of opinions I was walking into.
AMG gave to me …
Iron Maiden // Seventh Son of a Seventh Son – For me, it’s not a single album review that means the most to me, it’s the complete Iron Maiden discography ranking. What a ride! Up until then, I had always held Number of the Beast as one of the greatest metal records of all time. Putting Seventh Son of a Seventh Son as number one challenged everything I believed in. But you know, after some tortuous soul-searching, I agreed. The argument was too good. This was the level of deep musical analysis that was missing from all the other metal blogs. And it was the most fun I had reading anything that year.
Rotpit // Let There Be Rot – Steel Druhm is a great writer. He sets the bar for all of us. I mean his opening line here goes for the scrotum and the funny bone all in one fell swoop. What follows is a deliciously amusing review that’s every bit as entertaining as the album it’s covering. I’m not huge death metal fan but Rotpit quickly ascended to the top of my favorites last year. It reminded me how fun music can be and how greatness transcends genre. It became an unwelcome running joke in our house that whenever someone suggested putting music on, I’d scream RooooooottttPiiiittttttt! Strangely, it never got picked. Their loss.
I wish I had written …
Cruentus – Fossilized Review. I remember reading this review at work and doing everything I could to not laugh out loud or draw the confused glares of my co-workers. It took a good five minutes to settle and I’m still not sure my pancreas has fully recovered. This was also an “aha” moment for an impressionable Itchymenace trying to figure out the secret sauce in the AMG whopper. Here, Doc Grier both honors and expands upon the AMG mythology as only he can. He’s immensely talented and funny. If only he had good taste.
I wish I could do over …
Virgin Steele – The Passion of Dionysus Review. I took so much shit for giving this album a 3.5. So, I’m here to say I was wrong. It should have been a 4.0. That’s right fuckers. Suck it hard. This is a great record with plenty of heart despite some production setbacks. Go ahead and come at me in the Slack channel or wherever you find me. My Virgin Steele is ready to taste blood.7
I wish more people had read …
Danava – Nothing but Nothing Review. The opening paragraph of this review is my best work. I love how well it flows and how metal it is. Plus, this album kicked ass and more people should listen to it. Hit that link, fanboy!
Iceberg
AMG and me
Truth be told, I don’t remember the first time I laid eyes on www.angrymetalguy.com. One of the first reviews I remember was GardensTale’s evisceration of Jordan Rudess’ solo album, an assessment I begrudgingly agreed with, regardless of my then full-on Dream Theater fanboy status. What I do recall is searching the internet of the early 2010s for any source of intelligent, measured criticism of music that didn’t reek of ad-revenue inflated cronyism. I imagine many of you, dear readers, have a similar story. My infatuation with—and eventual reliance on—AMG unfolded in anachronistic fits and starts: a Fleshgod review here (King), an Allegeaon pan there (Proponents of Sentience). Before I knew it, AMG had maneuvered itself into my daily routine. What used to feel like perusing a record store for new discoveries, became more like dropping in on old friends and asking how they were doing, albeit in a classically chatroom-lurker manner. I aligned with certain writers, certain commenters, and eagerly awaited TYMHM season to load me up with the year’s uncovered gems. Having spent so much of my life absorbing popular music due to my upbringing, and classical music due to my training, metal was a creative outlet I desperately needed, yet lacked the community with which to share it. I’d never have imagined being inducted into this hallowed crew of passionate curmudgeons, nor the long-sought camaraderie I’d find within.
AMG gave to me …
Brothers of Metal // Emblas Saga – Sometimes an album hits you just the right way, at just the right time to cement itself in the story of your life. Little did I know when I first fell in love with this baker’s dozen of Viking tomfoolery that a worldwide pandemic and a months-long lockdown with my in-laws was just around the corner. But Emblas Saga—so enthusiastically introduced to me by an effusive Holdeneye—became the soundtrack of my imprisonment. Power metal with mead and axes, the riffs stomped around, the big guy told stories, and Ylva Eriksson stole the show with so many ear-worm choruses that I was delirious halfway through the record. There isn’t a bad track throughout, and the opening salvo of “Powersnake”-“Hel”-“Chainbreaker” remains the undisputed champ for curtain-raising. Fun fact: my proudest moment of the Year of our Plague 2020 was getting my very devout Southern Baptist mother-in-law to refer to her vacuum-in-the-wall system as “the powersnake.” She still calls it that to this day. Praise be to Wotan!
Slow // VI – Dantalion – It’s 2019 and New York City’s cold was gnawing at my sanity. A lengthy commute and perpetual train delays had me at the mercy of a labyrinthine bus schedule. It’s 2 am and I’m staring down the barrel of a 90-minute journey. Armed only with a lackluster knowledge of funeral doom and the words of Muppet, I pressed play on VI – Dantalion. How unprepared I was for the tsunami that awaited me: the half-time and half-again destruction of the drums, the brash, hypnotic droning of the guitars, and the vocal roars unbound by something as useless as time. As both drummer and composer, I was mesmerized at tempo brandished so recklessly, how the performers worshiped at the altar of between-the-beat silence. But it was the climactic crescendo of “Incendiare,” the step-by-step tempo increase, the anguished strings building to a cathartic, racing release, that sold me on the beauty and agony of Dantalion. When I think of perfect funeral doom, this is the album I recall; Bell Witch be damned.
Mistur // In Memoriam – As much love as I have for the staffers here at AMG, I’m deeply grateful for the gems revealed to me by the commentariat. Doc Grier’s TYMHM for Mistur’s magnum opus predated my awareness of the blog; indeed, I was led to In Memoriam by a forgotten comment in an unrelated article many years later. I’m forever indebted to you, nameless commenter, because you led me to one of my favorite metal albums of all time: full stop, don’t pass go, don’t collect your filthy hand out money. Mistur’s brand of melo-black wields so many different sounds and styles it should end up like “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” But the glorious seven minutes of opener “Downfall” instantly prove that these Norwegians are much wiser than a mouse in a fancy hat. Harsh/clean vocal interplay, RIFFS, tasteful synths, RIFFS, a spiraling maelstrom of an ending, and RIFFS showcase a band operating at their most sublime. This band had no issue beating me in the skull with their magnificence. From open to close, this album reigns supreme; I will hold vigil until they return.
I wish I had written …
White Ward – Love Exchange Failure Review. This particular review—and it’s sequel—require little introduction. Interpreting White Ward’s slinky, cinematic record as a screenplay, and featuring an AMG cast of characters was a heartbreaking work of Kenstrositous genius. Not only did the Sponge slip a rule-flaunting format through the jaws of the editorial team, he did it with wordsmithery worthy of the ethos of Love Exchange Failure. Finding a way to spruce up the routine of this gig is tricky; finding a way to blow it up is masterful. When I think of my biggest shit-eating grin moments here, this review is foremost amongst them.
Mystikus Hugebeard
AMG and me
Writing for AMG feels like the validation of an identity I’ve been working towards all my life. I’ve been passionate about metal ever since my brother showed me that fateful anime music video for “10th Man Down” by Nightwish when I was 12. Over the last few years, as I’ve been navigating adulthood and life in the tumultuous American reality, that passion withered, and I’ve put some thought into why. I often think back to when I was the leader of the St. Olaf College Heavy Metal Club, and how happy I was. I’ve realized that my time there was so important to me because, well, it gave my passion a sense of purpose beyond just myself. Maybe all I was doing was trying to introduce people to bands that they would end up not listening to anyway, but that social aspect means so much to me.
Although I know that it’s incredibly cool and special to write for such a great music website like Angry Metal Guy, what matters most in my heart is that it’s allowed me to reclaim the part of myself that just loves sharing my music with like-minded people, and it’s given back to me the community that I’d taken for granted before. So, to the AMG leaders who let me in, to my peers who somehow stomach my ramblings about Subsignal, and to every one of you who reads my silly reviews and leaves a comment: from the bottom of my heart, thank you!
AMG gave to me …
Archspire // Bleed The Future – We all know how much this album rules, but it also holds some significance for me from the early days of my AMG journey. Kronos’ review of this album dropped three days before I received the email asking if I’d like to further embarrass myself in the n00b program. I was already planning on getting it at some point based on the excellent review and 4.5 score, but after the news, buying the album felt like a great way to celebrate. I vividly remember walking down a sunny Chicago street on my way to an auto repair shop while listening to this album, feeling like hands-down the coolest motherfucker alive. I was walking past people thinking, “they have no idea they’re walking past the soon-to-be AMG writer hotshot.” Honestly, I probably looked a little like Tobey Maguire from that one scene in Spider Man 3. You know the one. But I just couldn’t help it, I was excited! I couldn’t wait to get my grubby little hands on my first promo and show them what I could do, to inspire other people to buy an album like Kronos inspired me.
Altars of Grief // Iris – My favorite method of musical discovery has always been blindly stumbling around Bandcamp until I bonk my head on something special. It creates a unique relationship with the music where I feel “this is my album,” and this emotional attachment gives it a powerful longevity. I recall reading Ferrous Beuller’s review of Iris and essentially thinking “huh, cool” before ignoring it like an idiot. Fast forward several months to when I came across Iris on one of my Bandcamp walks, long after forgetting about Beuller’s review, and was blown away. A nagging voice in my head said “where have I heard this before,” whereupon I remembered the review and felt quite foolish. Iris is a sublime record of unparalleled emotional depth, and a prime example of why I should just listen to the goddamn tunes already when someone on AMG gives it a 4.5. I’m glad I could find Iris on my own and develop that unique connection to it, but I regret that my pigheadedness kept me from experiencing it for so long. To this day, it’s one of my favorite black metal records.
Fires In The Distance // Air Not Meant For Us – If you held a gun to my beard and forced me to choose my favorite band, I’d say Insomnium. Hearing Air Not Meant For Us for the first time made me feel that same melancholic bliss I felt the first time I ever listened to Insomnium. Several of my AMG peers recommended this one to me while I was trying to fill out last year’s Listurnalia. Thus Spoke did a fantastic job as always in her review of the album, but something Kenstrosity said to me really stood out: “It’s almost as if this album was tailor-made specifically for me.” Well, I feel it was tailor-made for me. It sounds like an extension of my soul. I think I’ve listened to, and sung to myself, the “I’ll never see daylight / But I’ve seen enough” stanza of “Harbingers” to the point of obsession. The staccato keyboards that strike with percussive force, the achingly beautiful guitar melodies, the sorrow-tinged hope buried deep in the album as a whole; Air Not Meant For Us takes a soul-wrenching longing that I might forever struggle to put into words and transforms it into music.
I wish I had written …
Sermon of Flames – I have seen the Light, and it was Repulsive Review. I love this review. It dropped while I was working on my casting call submission, and I was floored. Sure, It’s extremely well written and demonstrates an encyclopedic knowledge of how the band’s sound relates to other subgenres and artists. But most importantly to me, it’s a very human review in that it acknowledges and appreciates how the album’s flaws create a unique work of art. All of my colleagues are phenomenal writers, but, to this day, I use this review as an example of the quality that I hope to achieve with my own writing. Excellent work, my Dearest Hollow!
I wish I could do over …
Sgàile – Traverse the Bealach Review. Truthfully, I adore Traverse the Bealach, and because of that I can’t help but feel so frustrated by its flaws. After all, you want the things you love to be perfect. A 3.5 isn’t a low score by any means, but I knew in my heart it deserved higher and I’m ashamed to say I got way too hung up on the few sections I didn’t like. And honestly, with time and distance, I’ve realized that the bad parts aren’t even all that bad, which only further salts my wounds. Just call me Mystikus Contritebeard, because I underrated this one.
I wish more people had read …
Subsignal – A Poetry of Rain [Things You Might Have Missed 2023]. We all have that one band that we simply cannot shut the fuck up about. I’m already quite pleased with the positive reception Subsignal got in the comments but, at time of writing, the metrics tell me that this is my second-least-read piece, which is unacceptable! The degree to which I want people to enjoy this band the way I do borders on the unhinged, but it’s not my fault they’re just that good.
#2024 #AltarsOfGrief #Amenra #AMGTurns15 #Archspire #BlogPost #BlogPosts #BrothersOfMetal #Cruentus #CultOfLuna #Danava #Deluge #FiresInTheDistance #IronMaiden #JulieChristmas #LiveWire #Mistur #Obsequiae #Rotpit #SermonOfFlames #Sgaile #Slow #Subsignal #TreesOfEternity #Ulcerate #VirginSteele #Vorga #WhiteWard
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Where are the anthem?
Don't me wrong I love a good banger of a tune, but where are they? I don't like the "clubbing" part of the dance, rave, trance, house scene. The sweaty, dark room and high as a kite on something synthetic, never been my cuppa and I can't dance for the life of me anyway. But I loved to end the working week by putting on BBC Radio One's Essential Selection hosted by Pete Tong, as I drove home from work.
When I watch a live set from the BoilerRoom, Cream (when it was around still), Ibiza, Miami etc. - I tend to put these tunes on when needing to do some tedious work or cleaning the HQ. I truly do like the "modern" dance/rave music, some good DJs and artists out there for sure - I see people who are at least 30+ years younger than me, enjoying themselves dancing to some good tunes.
The only time I see the audience really go mad and dance their socks of is when the DJ drops in a bit of Saltwater by Chicane, Papua New Guinea by Future Sound of London, Insomnia by Faithless, Children by Robert Miles, Sandstorm by Darude to name but a few anthems into their live set. You know music that's 25-30 years old, and just one note from these send goosebumps all over my body. And often turning it to 11 isn't enough ;) Else it just looks like a normal night out, for a bit of a boogie, don't the youth have any anthems?
#PeteTong #WelcomeToTheWeekend #Anthems #Music #Dance #Rave #Trance #Club
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Key Transparency and the Right to be Forgotten
This post is the first in a new series covering some of the reasoning behind decisions made in my project to build end-to-end encryption for direct messages on the Fediverse.
(Collectively, Fedi-E2EE.)
Although the reasons for specific design decisions should be immediately obvious from reading the relevant specification (and if not, I consider that a bug in the specification), I believe writing about it less formally will improve the clarity behind the specific design decisions taken.
In the inaugural post for this series, I’d like to focus on how the Fedi-E2EE Public Key Directory specification aims to provide Key Transparency and an Authority-free PKI for the Fediverse without making GDPR compliance logically impossible.
CMYKat‘s art, edited by me.Background
Key Transparency
For a clearer background, I recommend reading my blog post announcing the focused effort on a Public Key Directory, and then my update from August 2024.
If you’re in a hurry, I’ll be brief:
The goal of Key Transparency is to ensure everyone in a network sees the same view of who has which public key.
How it accomplishes this is a little complicated: It involves Merkle trees, digital signatures, and a higher-level protocol of distinct actions that affect the state machine.
If you’re thinking “blockchain”, you’re in the right ballpark, but we aren’t propping up a cryptocurrency. Instead, we’re using a centralized publisher model (per Public Key Directory instance) with decentralized verification.
Add a bit of cross-signing and replication, and you can stitch together a robust network of Public Key Directories that can be queried to obtain the currently-trusted list of public keys (or other auxiliary data) for a given Fediverse user. This can then be used to build application-layer protocols (i.e., end-to-end encryption with an identity key more robust than “trust on first use” due to the built-in audit trail to Merkle trees).
I’m handwaving a lot of details here. The Architecture and Specification documents are both worth a read if you’re curious to learn more.
HarubakiRight To Be Forgotten
I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV. This is not legal advice. Other standard disclaimers go here.
Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way, Article 17 of the GDPR establishes a “Right to erasure” for Personal Data.
What this actually means in practice has not been consistently decided by the courts yet. However, a publicly readable, immutable ledger that maps public keys (which may be considered Personal Data) with Actor IDs (which includes usernames, which are definitely Personal Data) goes against the grain when it comes to GDPR.
It remains an open question of there is public interest in this data persisting in a read-only ledger ad infinitum, which could override the right to be forgotten. If there is, that’s for the courts to decide, not furry tech bloggers.
I know it can be tempting, especially as an American with no presence in the European Union, to shrug and say, “That seems like a them problem.” However, if other folks want to be able to use my designs within the EU, I would be remiss to at least consider this potential pitfall and try to mitigate it in my designs.
So that’s exactly what I did.
AJAlmost Contradictory
At first glance, the privacy goals of both Key Transparency and the GDPR’s Right To Erasure are at odds.
- One creates an immutable, append-only history.
- The other establishes a right for EU citizens’ history to be selectively censored, which means history has to be mutable.
However, they’re not totally impossible to reconcile.
An untested legal theory circulating around large American tech companies is that “crypto shredding” is legally equivalent to erasure.
Crypto shredding is the act of storing encrypted data, and then when given a legal takedown request from an EU citizen, deleting the key instead of the data.
AJThis works from a purely technical perspective: If the data is encrypted, and you don’t know the key, to you it’s indistinguishable from someone who encrypted the same number of NUL bytes.
In fact, many security proofs for encryption schemes are satisfied by reaching this conclusion, so this isn’t a crazy notion.
Is Crypto Shredding Plausible?
In 2019, the European Parliamentary Research Service published a lengthy report titled Blockchain and the General Data Protection Regulation which states the following:
Before any examination of whether blockchain technology is capable of complying with Article 17 GDPR; it must be underscored that the precise meaning of the term ‘erasure’ remains unclear.
Article 17 GDPR does not define erasure, and the Regulation’s recitals are equally mum on how this term should be understood. It might be assumed that a common-sense understanding of this terminology ought to be embraced. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, erasure means ‘the removal or writing, recorded material, or data’ or ‘the removal of all traces of something: obliteration’.494
From this perspective, erasure could be taken to equal destruction. It has, however, already been stressed that the destruction of data on blockchains, particularly these of a public and permissionless nature, is far from straightforward.
There are, however, indications that the obligation inherent to Article 17 GDPR does not have to be interpreted as requiring the outright destruction of data. In Google Spain, the delisting of information from research results was considered to amount to erasure. It is important to note, however, that in this case, this is all that was requested of Google by the claimant, who did not have control over the original data source (an online newspaper publication). Had the claimant wished to obtain the outright destruction of the relevant data it would have had to address the newspaper, not Google. This may be taken as an indication that what the GDPR requires is that the obligation resting on data controllers is to do all they can to secure a result as close as possible to the destruction of their data within the limits of [their] own factual possibilities.
Dr Michèle Finck, Blockchain and the General Data Protection Regulation, pp. 75-76
From this, we can kind of intuit that the courts aren’t pedantic: The cited Google Spain case was satisfied by merely delisting the content, not the erasure of the newspaper’s archives.
The report goes on to say:
As awareness regarding the tricky reconciliation between Article 17 GDPR and distributed ledgers grows, a number of technical alternatives to the outright destruction of data have been considered by various actors. An often-mentioned solution is that of the destruction of the private key, which would have the effect of making data encrypted with a public key inaccessible. This is indeed the solution that has been put forward by the French data protection authority CNIL in its guidance on blockchains and the GDPR. The CNIL has suggested that erasure could be obtained where the keyed hash function’s secret key is deleted together with information from other systems where it was stored for processing.
Dr Michèle Finck, Blockchain and the General Data Protection Regulation, pp. 76-77
That said, I cannot locate a specific court decision that affirms that crypto erasure is legally sufficient for complying with data erasure requests (nor any that affirm that it’s necessary).
I don’t have a crystal ball that can read the future on what government compliance will decide, nor am I an expert in legal matters.
Given the absence of a clear legal framework, I do think it’s totally reasonable to consider crypto-shredding equivalent to data erasure. Most experts would probably agree with this. But it’s also possible that the courts could rule totally stupidly on this one day.
Therefore, I must caution anyone that follows a similar path: Do not claim GDPR compliance just because you implement crypto-shredding in a distributed ledger. All you can realistically promise is that you’re not going out of your way to make compliance logically impossible. All we have to go by are untested legal hypotheses, and very little clarity (even if the technologists are near-unanimous on the topic!).
Towards A Solution
With all that in mind, let’s start with “crypto shredding” as the answer to the GDPR + transparency log conundrum.
This is only the start of our complications.
CMYKatProtocol Risks Introduced by Crypto Shredding
Before the introduction of crypto shredding, the job of the Public Key Directory was simple:
- Receive a protocol message.
- Validate the protocol message.
- Commit the protocol message to a transparency log (in this case, Sigsum).
- Retrieve the protocol message whenever someone requests it to independently verify its inclusion.
- Miscellaneous other protocol things (cross-directory checkpoint commitment, replication, etc.).
Point being: there was very little that the directory could do to be dishonest. If they lied about the contents of a record, it would invalidate the inclusion proofs of every successive record in the ledger.
In order to make a given record crypto-shreddable without breaking the inclusion proofs for every record that follows, we need to commit to the ciphertext, not the plaintext. (And then, when a takedown request comes in, wipe the key.)
Now, things are quite more interesting.
Do you…
- …Distribute the encryption key alongside the ciphertext and let independent third parties decrypt it on demand?
…OR…
- Decrypt the ciphertext and serve plaintext through the public API, keeping the encryption key private so that it may be shredded later?
The first option seems simple, but runs into governance issues: How do you claim the data was crypto-shredded if countless individuals have a copy of the encryption key, and can therefore recover the plaintext from the ciphertext?
I don’t think that would stand up in court.
CMYKatClearly, your best option is the second one.
Okay, so how does an end user know that the ciphertext that was committed to the transparency ledger decrypts to the specific plaintext value served by the Public Key Directory? How do users know it’s not lying?
Quick aside: This question is also relevant if you went with the first option and used a non-committing AEAD mode for the actual encryption scheme.
In that scenario, a hostile nation state adversary could pressure a Public Key Directory to selectively give one decryption key to targeted users, and another to the rest of the Internet, in order to perform a targeted attack against citizens they’d rather didn’t have civil rights.
My entire goal with introducing key transparency to my end-to-end encryption proposal is to prevent these sorts of attacks, not enable them.
There are a lot of avenues we could explore here, but it’s always worth outlining the specific assumptions and security goals of any design before you start perusing the literature.
AJAssumptions
This is just a list of things we assume are true, and do not need to prove for the sake of our discussion here today. The first two are legal assumptions; the remainder are cryptographic.
Ask your lawyer if you want advice about the first two assumptions. Ask your cryptographer if you suspect any of the remaining assumptions are false.
- Crypto-shredding is a legally valid way to provide data erasure (as discussed above).
- EU courts will consider public keys to be Personal Data.
- The SHA-2 family of hash functions is secure (ignoring length-extension attacks, which won’t matter for how we’re using them).
- HMAC is a secure way to build a MAC algorithm out of a secure hash function.
- HKDF is a secure KDF if used correctly.
- AES is a secure 128-bit block cipher.
- Counter Mode (CTR) is a secure way to turn a block cipher into a stream cipher.
- AES-CTR + HMAC-SHA2 can be turned into a secure AEAD mode, if done carefully.
- Ed25519 is a digital signature algorithm that provides strong security against existent forgery under a chosen-message attack (SUF-CMA).
- Argon2id is a secure, memory-hard password KDF, when used with reasonable parameters. (You’ll see why in a moment.)
- Sigsum is a secure mechanism for building a transparency log.
This list isn’t exhaustive or formal, but should be sufficient for our purposes.
Security Goals
- The protocol messages stored in the Public Key Directory are accompanied by a Merkle tree proof of inclusion. This makes it append-only with an immutable history.
- The Public Key Directory cannot behave dishonestly about the decrypted plaintext for a given ciphertext without clients detecting the deception.
- Whatever strategy we use to solve this should be resistant to economic precomputation and brute-force attacks.
Can We Use Zero-Knowledge Proofs?
At first, this seems like an ideal situation for a succinct, non-interactive zero-knowledge proof.
After all, you’ve got some secret data that you hold, and you want to prove that a calculation is correct without revealing the data to the end user. This seems like the ideal setup for Schnorr’s identification protocol.
CMYKatUnfortunately, the second assumption (public keys being considered Personal Data by courts, even though they’re derived from random secret keys) makes implementing a Zero-Knowledge Proof here very challenging.
First, if you look at Ed25519 carefully, you’ll realize that it’s just a digital signature algorithm built atop a Schnorr proof, which requires some sort of public key (even an ephemeral one) to be managed.
Worse, if you try to derive this value solely from public inputs (rather than creating a key management catch-22), the secret scalar your system derives at will have been calculated from the user’s Personal Data–which only strengthens a court’s argument that the public key is therefore personally identifiable.
CMKatThere may be a more exotic zero-knowledge proof scheme that might be appropriate for our needs, but I’m generally wary of fancy new cryptography.
Here are two rules I live by in this context:
- If I can’t get the algorithms out of the crypto module for whatever programming language I find myself working with, it may as well not even exist.
- Corollary: If libsodium bindings are available, that counts as “the crypto module” too.
- If a developer needs to reach for a generic Big Integer library (e.g., GMP) for any reason in the course of implementing a protocol, I do not trust their implementation.
Unfortunately, a lot of zero-knowledge proof designs fail one or both of these rules in practice.
(Sorry not sorry, homomorphic encryption enthusiasts! The real world hasn’t caught up to your ideas yet.)
What About Verifiable Random Functions (VRFs)?
It may be tempting to use VRFs (i.e., RFC 9381), but this runs into the same problem as zero-knowledge proofs: we’re assuming that an EU court would deem public keys Personal Data.
But even if that assumption turns out false, the lifecycle of a protocol message looks like this:
- User wants to perform an action (e.g.,
AddKey). - Their client software creates a plaintext protocol message.
- Their client software generates a random 256-bit key for each potentially-sensitive attribute, so it can be shredded later.
- Their client software encrypts each attribute of the protocol message.
- The ciphertext and keys are sent to the Public Key Directory.
- For each attribute, the Public Key Directory decrypts the ciphertext with the key, verifies the contents, and then stores both. The ciphertext is used to generate a commitment on Sigsum (signed by the Public Key Directory’s keypair).
- The Public Key Directory serves plaintext to requestors, but does not disclose the key.
- In the future, the end user can demand a legal takedown, which just wipes the key.
Let’s assume I wanted to build a VRF out of Ed25519 (similar to what Signal does with VXEdDSA). Now I have a key management problem, which is pretty much what this project was meant to address in the first place.
VRFs are really cool, and more projects should use them, but I don’t think they will help me.
CMYKatSoatok’s Proposed Solution
If you want to fully understand the nitty-gritty implementation details, I encourage you to read the current draft specification, plus the section describing the encryption algorithm, and finally the plaintext commitment algorithm.
Now that we’ve established all that, I can begin to describe my approach to solving this problem.
First, we will encrypt each attribute of a protocol message, as follows:
- For subkey derivation, we use HKDF-HMAC-SHA512.
- For encrypting the actual plaintext, we use AES-256-CTR.
- For message authentication, we use HMAC-SHA512.
- Additional associated data (AAD) is accepted and handled securely; i.e., we don’t use YOLO as a hash construction.
This prevents an Invisible Salamander attack from being possible.
This encryption is performed client-side, by each user, and the symmetric key for each attribute is shared with the Public Key Directory when publishing protocol messages.
If they later issue a legal request for erasure, they can be sure that the key used to encrypt the data they previously published isn’t secretly the same key used by every other user’s records.
They always know this because they selected the key, not the server. Furthermore, everyone can verify that the hash published to the Merkle tree matches a locally generated hash of the ciphertext they just emitted.
This provides a mechanism to keep everyone honest. If anything goes wrong, it will be detected.
Next, to prevent the server from being dishonest, we include a plaintext commitment hash, which is included as part of the AAD (alongside the attribute name).
(Implementing crypto-shredding is straightforward: simply wipe the encryption keys for the attributes of the records in scope for the request.)
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably wondering, “What exactly do you mean by plaintext commitment?”
Art by Scruff.Plaintext Commitments
The security of a plaintext commitment is attained by the Argon2id password hashing function.
By using the Argon2id KDF, you can make an effective trapdoor that is easy to calculate if you know the plaintext, but economically infeasible to brute-force attack if you do not.
However, you need to do a little more work to make it safe.
HarubakiThe details here matter a lot, so this section is unavoidably going to be a little dense.
Pass the Salt?
Argon2id expects both a password and a salt.
If you eschew the salt (i.e., zero it out), you open the door to precomputation attacks (see also: rainbow tables) that would greatly weaken the security of this plaintext commitment scheme.
You need a salt.
If you generate the salt randomly, this commitment property isn’t guaranteed by the algorithm. It would be difficult, but probably not impossible, to find two salts (, ) such that .
Deriving the salt from public inputs eliminates this flexibility.
By itself, this reintroduces the risk of making salts totally deterministic, which reintroduces the risk of precomputation attacks (which motivated the salt in the first place).
If you include the plaintext in this calculation, it could also create a crib that gives attackers a shortcut for bypassing the cost of password hashing.
Furthermore, any two encryptions operations that act over the same plaintext would, without any additional design considerations, produce an identical value for the plaintext commitment.
CMYKatPublic Inputs for Salt Derivation
The initial proposal included the plaintext value for Argon2 salt derivation, and published the salt and Argon2 output next to each other.
Hacker News comex pointed out a flaw with this technique, so I’ve since revised how salts are selected to make them independent of the plaintext.
The public inputs for the Argon2 salt are now:
- The version identifier prefix for the ciphertext blob.
- The 256-bit random value used as a KDF salt (also stored in the ciphertext blob).
- A recent Merkle tree root.
- The attribute name (prefixed by its length).
These values are all hashed together with SHA-512, and then truncated to 128 bits (the length required by libsodium for Argon2 salts).
This salt is not stored, but can deterministically be calculated from public information.
Crisis Averted?
This sure sounds like we’ve arrived at a solution, but let’s also consider another situation before we declare our job done.
High-traffic Public Key Directories may have multiple users push a protocol message with the same recent Merkle root.
This may happen if two or more users query the directory to obtain the latest Merkle root before either of them publish their updates.
Later, if both of these users issue a legal takedown, someone might observe that the
recent-merkle-rootis the same for two messages, but their commitments differ.Is this enough leakage to distinguish plaintext records?
In my earlier design, we needed to truncate the salt and rely on understanding the birthday bound to reason about its security. This is no longer the case, since each salt is randomized by the same random value used in key derivation.
Choosing Other Parameters
As mentioned a second ago, we set the output length of the Argon2id KDF to 32 bytes (256 bits). We expect the security of this KDF to exceed , which to most users might as well be infinity.
With apologies to Filippo.The other Argon2id parameters are a bit hand-wavey. Although the general recommendation for Argon2id is to use as much memory as possible, this code will inevitably run in some low-memory environments, so asking for several gigabytes isn’t reasonable.
For the first draft, I settled on 16 MiB of memory, 3 iterations, and a parallelism degree of 1 (for widespread platform support).
Plaintext Commitment Algorithm
With all that figured out, our plaintext commitment algorithm looks something like this:
- Calculate the SHA512 hash of:
- A domain separation constant
- The header prefix (stored in the ciphertext)
- The randomness used for key-splitting in encryption (stored in the ciphertext)
- Recent Merkle Root
- Attribute Name Length (64-bit unsigned integer)
- Attribute Name
- Truncate this hash to the rightmost 16 bytes (128 bits). This is the salt.
- Calculate Argon2id over the following inputs concatenated in this order, with an output length of 32 bytes (256 bits), using the salt from step 2:
- Recent Merle Root Length (64-bit unsigned integer)
- Recent Merkle Root
- Attribute Name Length (64-bit unsigned integer)
- Attribute Name
- Plaintext Length (64-bit unsigned integer)
- Plaintext
The output (step 3) is included as the AAD in the attribute encryption step, so the authentication tag is calculated over both the randomness and the commitment.
To verify a commitment (which is extractable from the ciphertext), simply recalculate the commitment you expect (using the recent Merkle root specified by the record), and compare the two in constant-time.
If they match, then you know the plaintext you’re seeing is the correct value for the ciphertext value that was committed to the Merkle tree.
If the encryption key is shredded in the future, an attacker without knowledge of the plaintext will have an enormous uphill battle recovering it from the KDF output (and the salt will prove to be somewhat useless as a crib).
AJCaveats and Limitations
Although this design does satisfy the specific criteria we’ve established, an attacker that already knows the correct plaintext can confirm that a specific record matches it via the plaintext commitment.
This cannot be avoided: If we are to publish a commitment of the plaintext, someone with the plaintext can always confirm the commitment after the fact.
CMYKatWhether this matters at all to the courts is a question for which I cannot offer any insight.
Remember, we don’t even know if any of this is actually necessary, or if “moderation and platform safety” is a sufficient reason to sidestep the right to erasure.
If the courts ever clarify this adequately, we can simply publish the mapping of Actor IDs to public keys and auxiliary data without any crypto-shredding at all.
Trying to attack it from the other direction (download a crypto-shredded record and try to recover the plaintext without knowing it ahead of time) is attack angle we’re interested in.
Herd Immunity for the Forgotten
Another interesting implication that might not be obvious: The more Fediverse servers and users publish to a single Public Key Directory, the greater the anonymity pool available to each of them.
Consider the case where a user has erased their previous Fediverse account and used the GDPR to also crypto-shred the Public Key Directory entries containing their old Actor ID.
To guess the correct plaintext, you must not only brute-force guessing possible usernames, but also permute your guesses across all of the instances in scope.
The more instances there are, the higher the cost of the attack.
CMYKatRecap
I tasked myself with designing a Key Transparency solution that doesn’t make complying with Article 17 of the GDPR nigh-impossible. To that end, crypto-shredding seemed like the only viable way forward.
A serialized record containing ciphertext for each sensitive attribute would be committed to the Merkle tree. The directory would store the key locally and serve plaintext until a legal takedown was requested by the user who owns the data. Afterwards, the stored ciphertext committed to the Merkle tree is indistinguishable from random for any party that doesn’t already know the plaintext value.
I didn’t want to allow Public Key Directories to lie about the plaintext for a given ciphertext, given that they know the key and the requestor doesn’t.
After considering zero-knowledge proofs and finding them to not be a perfect fit, I settled on designing a plaintext commitment scheme based on the Argon2id password KDF. The KDF salts can be calculated from public inputs.
Altogether, this meets the requirements of enabling crypto-shredding while keeping the Public Key Directory honest. All known attacks for this design are prohibitively expensive for any terrestrial threat actors.
As an added bonus, I didn’t introduce anything fancy. You can build all of this with the cryptography available to your favorite programming language today.
CMYKatClosing Thoughts
If you’ve made it this far without being horribly confused, you’ve successfully followed my thought process for developing message attribute shreddability in my Public Key Directory specification.
This is just one component of the overall design proposal, but one that I thought my readers would enjoy exploring in greater detail than the specification needed to capture.
(This post was updated on 2024-11-22 to replace the incorrect term “PII” with “personal data”. Apologies for the confusion!)
#Argon2 #crypto #cryptography #E2EE #encryption #FederatedPKI #fediverse #passwordHashing #symmetricCryptography
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Stuff happened.
Firstly, I now also have a card for the Cologne University Library.
Also, I found a bunch of new old books, already digitized, that I'm now looking through.
In other news, my fermented onions are fermenting and I've started fermented cucumbers, salt cucumbers. It will be very interesting to see how that goes.
I also started another bread.
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A multi-storey problem story: the thread about the Castle Terrace Car Park
Threadinburgh does like to try and keep things topical sometimes, so when news broke that car park operator NCP had entered administration with huge debts I felt it was an opportune moment to take a quick look into its most prominent Edinburgh location; Castle Terrace Car Park and by extension a brief history of the Castle Terrace Gardens that it replaced and – presciently – the city’s hard lesson that car parking just didn’t pay.
The broad street of Castle Terrace was built up around 1833 on a natural slope that was once an area called Orchardfield, for centuries the site of market gardens. This was part of a scheme to build new “western approach roads” into the Old Town, which saw the construction of Johnston Terrace up and along the south face of the Castle Rock and the King’s Bridge over the old King’s Stables Road route. Any further development stalled at this time and for almost four decades the embankment between Castle Terrace and the lower level road was simply a grassy slope. This changed in 1868 when architect Sir James Gowans began to develop sumptuous tenement housing along Castle Terrace and landscaped the slope below into private gardens for the proprietors. Maps of 1876 and 1893 show that the gardens were largely planted with trees and had a pair of footpaths leading down from Castle Terrace. There had been an original intention to connect this route to West Princes Street gardens with a footbridge but this came to nothing.
A quiet, shady spot with the most dramatic of views. Castle Terrace Gardens in 1945, H. D. Wyllie photograph. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.In 1875 Gowans built the grand New Edinburgh Theatre venture further along Castle Terrace, a scheme that quickly failed and caused its architect such financial stress that it hastened him to his grave. The building was taken over by the United Presbyterian Church and became the Synod Hall, later yet occupied by the Poole’s Synod cinema. By 1880 newspapers reported that the gardens were also in failing health and in such a state of neglect that the owners were served notice to improve by the Town Council. This obviously didn’t have the intended effect as they were ultimately taken over by the city in 1888 to be put “in order for the public benefit and advantage“.
Comparison of 1876 and 1967 OS Town Plans of Edinburgh showing the location of the Castle Terrace Gardens and then Car Park. Note in 1966 the Synod Hall building, formerly the New Edinburgh Theatre, had been demolished in expectation that a new opera house would be built in that location. Move the slider to compare. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandFor the next forty or so years very little happened with the park, it was just a quiet, leafy spot in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle only a walk across the road away from the far busier and more manicured Princes Street Gardens. Things began to change in March 1938 when Edinburgh City Police approved both Castle Terrace and King’s Stables Road as official on-street car parks, providing spaces for 100 vehicles. Parking was becoming an increasing problem in the city at this time and the City Prosecutor had issued the first fines for obstructive parking at the West End in June 1936 (although these were only a token 5s each and intended as a warning to future offenders). This wider scheme turned a number of picturesque city streets into car parks, including Charlotte Square, St James’ Square, the foot of the Mound, North Bridge and the centres of the Grassmarket and Chambers Streets.
Copy of the 1938 police plan for parking in the centre of Edinburgh. The Scotsman, 24th March 1938The first suggestion of a purpose-built car park for the Castle Terrace area came in 1939 from an unlikely source – the Edinburgh Unemployed Association – who mooted a make-work scheme for a new fire headquarters between Johnston Terrace and King’s Stables Road with a 500-place car park on its roof. The war intervened and any such plans were shelved indefinitely. Parking in the wartime city during the hours of darkness was tightly controlled; both to keep streets clear for emergency vehicles and also to reduce the risk of collisions with parked vehicles during blackouts.
It did not take long after the cessation of hostilities for the city to approve what would be its first purpose-built car parks. In November 1946 plans were announced for two underground facilities, one each beneath Charlotte and St Andrew Squares. The Edinburgh Evening News’ columnist Athenian was less than impressed by the likely cost of these and preferred more on-street parking, explicitly suggesting “the east footpath of Castle Terrace” as it was “hardly used by pedestrians – and even the almost sacrilegious suggestion of using a section of Princes Street Gardens between Waverley Bridge and the National Gallery. By the time the Civic Survey and Plan of the city (aka The Abercrombie Report) was published in 1949 these car parks had been quietly dropped, indeed although it went to great details about huge urban roadbuilding schemes, this document hardly mentioned parking at all. It did however suggest the rehabilitation of Castle Terrace Gardens as part of a new Festival Centre located around the locus of the Usher Hall, Lyceum Theatre and Synod Hall.
Photograph of a scale model of central Edinburgh produced to accompany The Abercrombie Report of 1949, showing grand plans for new urban motorways throughout the city centre. Look closely and you can see the lower deck roads inserted below Princes Street and the Mound! Notice also that Waverley Station has been put underground and that the entirety of Princes Street has been demolished and replaced with new city blocks complete with mezzanine-level walkways.Nothing much came of any of these schemes due to a lack of money and political indecision about how to deal with the city’s blossoming car and parking problem. In 1954 a proposal was made by a senior city councillor, Bailie Mackenzie, to take over part of the (privately owned) Queen Street Gardens as a car park. In 1955 the threat to East Princes Street Gardens was revived with an outline scheme of £235,000 (£5.4m in 2026) approved by the Town Council over the protestations of the Lord Provost John G. Banks. This would, he said, “desecrate the great gardens” and cause “vandalism of our great heritage.” With a premonition for the now understood phenomenon of induced demand, Banks said of the 500 space car park:
Artists impression of the approved scheme for East Princes Street Gardens car park. Scotsman, 20th September 1955.[It] would do nothing to alleviate the congestion in the centre of the city. Another 500 cars will appear to-morrow
The idea went down as well as you might expect with the citizen letter writers of Edinburgh and there there was an indignant bulge in the mailbags sent to the letters pages of the Scotsman. Others weren’t opposed to car parks per se – in October one Ian G. Fyfe of 8 Drummond Place wrote to describe an alternative scheme of instead building a concrete deck over King’s Stables Road and turning it into a two-storey car park. Mr Fyfe allowed his imagination to run wild in his letter, suggesting “the adoption of an American garaging device” that would slide vehicles tightly into spaces to cram the maximum number into the space.
Perhaps the city was listening as just over a month later the same paper announced that the plans for Princes Street Gardens had been dropped and an alternative scheme was being proposed by the Joint Sub-Committee on Traffic Arrangements in the Centre of the City to build a two level car park on the Castle Terrace Gardens site. City Engineer W. P. Haldane calculated this would cost £121,400 (£2.8m in 2026) and have space for 505 vehicles. The Scotsman found this idea “less objectionable” on account of it being cheaper, accommodating more cars and of “Castle Terrace gardens in the their present state are not particularly attractive“, but also noted that “open green spaces in the centre of the city [were] pleasant” and their loss “distinctly disturbing“. The paper feared this might be the thin end of the wedge, with other city gardens being covered in reinforced concrete and tarmac in the future.
A report on traffic control produced for the city at this time by the architects J. L. Gleave and W. H. Kininmonth noted that car parking was already an “acute” problem in the centre and with car ownership and traffic increasing at an exponential rate then if nothing were done it would either become insoluble or require “desperate remedies which in the long run may well be contrary to the best interests of the city“. The authors recommended a long-term parking plan be prepared with the immediate needs being met by introducing parking meters for on-street spaces and with progressing the Castle Terrace scheme as a priority.
Edinburgh’s first parking meter was installed in October 1960 outside the City Chambers; but it was at this time only for display purposes to show the curious public what they might look like. Photograph in Edinburgh: The Fabulous Fifties by Paul Harris, 1995Once again the city fathers thanked the authors of a strategic report for their efforts and filed it away in the depths of City Chambers. Nothing was done. The Castle Terrace Car Park was an idea that just wouldn’t stay dead for long however and the following year architect Alan Reiach proposed a new Festival Centre for the area, one that would build a vast new opera and concert hall on the site of the Synod Hall, with a multi-storey car park in the gardens connecting directly to it underneath Castle Terrace. This was yet another city dream of a concert venue that would come to nothing, although one of its various attempts to resurrect the idea did see the Synod Hall demolished in 1966 only to be left as a gap site for almost 30 years.
Sketch design by Alan Reiach for the 1956 Opera and Festival Centre on Castle Terrace and Lothian Road. The building with the domed roof is the Usher Hall, which was to be retained. Oppenheim had acquired the Lyceum, to its left, for speculative redevelopment.The Joint Sub-Committee re-considered the Castle Terrace idea again in 1957, a proposal for a two-tier, 800 space car park, but once again nothing was done. Four years later the Town Council once again found themselves looking at yet more plans for a car park on the street and met on Thursday April 27th 1961 to decide on the fate of the Castle Terrace Gardens.
Castle Terrace Gardens, looking north with King’s Stables Road below on the right. Probably 1961. Scotsman Archive Scran photograph DP612535 via Trove.Scot but with date metadata lost.At this meeting they approved a five-tier structure with a capacity for 829 vehicles and at a cost of £386,602. It would be the first of its kind in Scotland and one of the very first of a “continuous ramp” design in the UK. All but a small portion of the gardens at the northern end of the site would be obliterated and as a sop to this loss a paved public area was included on the top deck at street level which was to have some replacement planting. This time the twin planets of money and political will aligned and finally the city actually began its first purpose-built, off-street car park.
Invitation for tenders for the Castle Terrace Car Park, The Contract Journal, August 24th 1961Construction was commenced in December 1961 by Holloway’s Scottish Constructions Ltd. with work to be completed by June 1963 so that it was ready in time for that year’s Festival. In a matter of days the logging teams moved in to fell the trees, closely followed by the diggers to grub up their roots and begin excavating the embankment. The letter-writers were unimpressed.
The destruction of Castle Terrace Garden, December 1961. Scotsman Archive Scran photograph DP611220 via Trove.Scot but with date metadata lost.Relentlessly they pursue their declared policy of destruction of what is full of grace and beauty only to replace that with something vulgar – such as the car park in Castle Terrace – which may help them retain their seats at the next election. The barbarian is within our gates!
Ken Jones, writing to the Editor of the Scotsman, 19th January 1962As is typical for the Grand Projets of the city of Edinburgh, problems were quick to emerge. Local residents and the operators of Poole’s Synod cinema across the street complained about the incessant noise from the works. The City Engineer had to have scaffolding installed at numbers 8 and 12 Castle Terrace to brace the façades of the tenements which had begun to visibly bow outwards. Captain W. J. Scotcher who lived at number 11 complained of cracks forming in the wall of his house and told the News’ reporter that gas and water pipes in the building had cracked. Things got worse in February 1962 when a six-month delay to construction was announced; pilings which had expected to hit rock at a 9 feet depth were still in soft earth 40 feet down! Work was paused and it took until July for a substantial re-design to complete, requiring an excavation of 37 feet down, a 40 foot retaining wall top be built and pilings sunk up to 50 feet deep. This it was thought would add £50,000 to the budget – an increase of 13%.
Castle Terrace Gardens in January 1962, a few weeks after the trees were felled and the excavators moved in to start levelling the site. Scotsman, 11th January 1962If the Corporation were hoping the worst was behind them then they were very wrong. In December 1962 the City Engineer J. C. Adamson, announced a further delay of a year on account of ongoing difficulties with the foundation works and terrible weather.
Castle Terrace car park struggles to emerge from the ground in July 1962. Scotsman Archive Scran photograph DP611696 via Trove.Scot but with date metadata lost.A partial opening of the first 260 spaces in the car park did not finally take place until August 10th 1964, although it was not until October 1965 that it was finally fully completed. There were no charges for the first month in an attempt to entice in the on-street parkers.
August 10th 1964. Lord Provost Duncan M. Weatherstone opens the partially completed Car Park to a thoroughly disinterested looking audience of official onlookers. Scotsman Archive Scran photograph DP524936 via Trove.Scot but with date metadata lost.However the City Engineer F. R. Dinnis warned the Corporation that their new toy was not likely to be busy unless they began installing parking meters in the area. He was proved correct and once parking charges came in (6d per hour, up to a maximum of 4s per day) custom dropped right off. On the first day even the limited section that had been completed was only one third occupied, while the surrounding streets were full. On October 2nd it was reported that only £330 in revenue had been taken in the first seventeen days since ticketing against £2,071 in operating costs and capital charges! By November the attendants complained of a lack of work due to motorists preferring to continue to park instead, for free, on Castle Terrace and King’s Stables Road. The Police agreed to install no parking signs in these locations but the Corporation’s Highways and Road Safety Committee was told by Chief Constable John R. Inch that he had run out of such signs! The City Engineer was asked to arrange for more. Installation of parking meters in the district was promised for 1965 but in September 1966 the Scotsman quoted Councillor George Hedderwick, convenor of the previous committee in saying that the car park was rarely more than half full during the day time and was empty overnight.
April 22nd 1965, a photo which apparently shows a full car park even though the majority of it was still not yet completed. Scotsman photograph.It took until 1968 for the final cost of the project to be settled with the contractors; the bill came out at £598,000 (£10.7m in 2026) which was an increase of over 50% on the original budget. The city announced that the surplus income from its newly installed parking meters would need to be used to offset this deficit. The finances did not improve with age; indeed they got steadily worse and proved to be millstone around the city’s neck. In February 1971 the Scotsman reported that while Glasgow had made a surplus of £7,000 on its parking operations the previous year, Edinburgh had lost £77,500: operational losses at Castle Terrace had turned a £5,666 surplus from on-street meters into a deficit of £89,500, almost entirely to financing the construction debt. It was projected these losses would widen to £120,000 the following year and so the city responded by doubling parking charges at the site from 5p to 10p an hour; charges for an annual season ticket went up by 380% from £25 to £120!
In 1975 operation and ownership passed to the new upper-tier local authority – Lothian Regional Council. Realising Castle Terrace was a poisoned inheritance they immediately doubled charges yet again to 20p an hour. This backfired in expensive fashion however as the Region found itself taken to the Court of Session by the Freight Transport Association as raising parking charges in excess of limits set out in the Edinburgh Corporation Order (1971). The court found in favour of the pursuers in June 1977, cancelled the increases and forced a refund to all season ticket holders and any parkers who had kept their receipts. On top of legal expenses this cost the public purse a further (£25,000 in 2026). The Region was quick to retaliate and passed a new order allowing them to put charges back up again. And yet despite fifteen years of almost continual increase in charges, losses just kept on widening. In 1979 council-run parking operations in Edinburgh cost the Region £450,000, widening to £600,000 in 1980. The hourly doubled yet again, this time to 40p.
Public Notice of 23rd April 1980 in the Scotsman confirming increased parking charges at Castle Terrace and other council-operated off-street car parks.The Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce were less than impressed with matters and offered instead to step in and run things themselves, imagining that they could somehow do so at a profit where the council had abjectly failed.
We don’t believe that any private enterprise organisation could lose this amount of money on a car parking operation.
David Mowat, Chief Executive of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, 7th November 1979, The ScotsmanLothian Regional Council struggled on operating its own car parks for just two more years before finally admitting defeat in July 1982 by which point annual losses were £300,000 (£1.1m in 2026). The convenor of the Transportation Committee, Conservative Councillor Ian Cramond, stated it was a “millstone round their necks” and proposed putting their operations in Edinburgh out to private tender. Labour councillors opposed the move, as did employees who went on strike, however the proposal was passed. Castle Terrace was leased to National Car Parks Ltd who got a great deal as it was the public purse that was left paying off the huge interest charges on Castle Terrace! The other sites – in reality plots of wasteland that had resulted from past civic demolition schemes – and were leased to Chamber Developments, a company owned by the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce!
Castle Terrace Car Park from King’s Stables Road, 2015, by Jim Barton CC-by-SA-2.0 via Geograph.org.ukNCP and Edinburgh District Council (the lower tier authority) fell out in 1987 over responsibility for maintenance of the paved area adjacent to Castle Terrace; benches and noticeboards were in disrepair, planters were overgrown, litter was not being collected and syringes had been discarded in the area. On investigation it was found that the lease between Lothian Region and NCP failed to determine where responsibility lay. As a “goodwill gesture” NCP agreed to fund a £300 spring clean in advance of the Festival that year. The matter took nearly two years to resolve, it eventually being found that the District Council had responsibility for the benches but that the planters belonged to Lothian Regional Council. Neither the latter authority nor NCP had the liability to maintain them so ownership was transferred instead to the District council who neatly solved the issue by removing them entirely so that the location could be used as a works compound for a construction site for the Synod Hall gap site.
An aerial photo of the Synod Hall gap site in 1989, 23 years after the block had been cleared in preparation for the Opera Hall that never was. Eventually the new Traverse Theatre and Saltire House would occupy the spot. Castle Terrace Car Park is on the left. Edinburgh and Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries.With all the upside and little of the downside of running the carpark, NCP were able to make the place pay and have run it ever since. Historic Environment Scotland caused much consternation – and a degree of disbelief to the operators – in 2019 when they listed the structure as Category B on the grounds that it was the first such built in Scotland, that it is almost unaltered since opening (hence had high “authenticity“) and that it was felt to deal very sensitively with its historic setting below the city’s Castle. You can read the full details of the listing here.
Castle Terrace Car Park looking towards its namesake, 2022. © Fiona Coutts via Britishlistedbuildings.co.ukAnd if you’d like to see a quite brilliant piece of the photographer’s art which makes use of Castle Terrace Car Park as an al fresco, reinforced concrete photography studio, do check out this post by Daveybot on his WordPress.
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A Bad Wife
I live with my two husbands. The oldest one stands across the courtyard – dead – two feet above ground, several feet below. The youngest one is plugged in the bedroom, recharging. While I sit here, trying to write the story of my life. Where should I begin?
Let’s begin from the beginning.
One day, Brahma created the beautiful earth – mountains and rivers, birds and animals – then went into deep meditation. When he awakened eons later, he saw that all creatures had multiplied and made the world even more gorgeous. Pleased, he thought: I should create beings who can truly appreciate this beauty the way I do! So he created four men from the four directions. Perfect beings. But when he commanded them to reproduce and populate the earth, they refused. Enraged by their disobedience, Brahma’s anger took form – Rudra emerged from his mind, fierce and obedient. “You! Create the people!” Brahma ordered Rudra, and returned to meditation. When he next opened his eyes, the earth crawled with ugly beasts. Disappointed, Brahma stopped Rudra’s work and sent him away to meditate, to dive deep into his soul and learn the proper way of creation. Then Brahma had a thought: Why not create a species like the animals – one that reproduces through attraction and desire, beings who will both enjoy this world and populate it? But he had no template, no shape for such creatures. He prayed to the higher energy for guidance. In response, a magnificent being appeared – half-man, half-woman. The divine energy smiled and said, “Divide my form into two parts. Make them man and woman. They will always be drawn to each other – if not in body, then in mind, if not in this life, then across lifetimes. Then someday, I myself will unite and guide them towards a better eternal world free from the shackles of mortality, desire and longing.”
My grandma used to tell this story from Shiva Purana when I was young. And I would ask her, why did Brahma tear apart something that was already complete?
Beta, she said, cracking her knuckles like small firecrackers, because completion makes the gods nervous. They prefer us hungry, always searching.
I think about this story often, especially when I consider the mathematics of my marriages – the endless calibration through adding and subtracting so that the sum of two incomplete entities might somehow equal one satisfied union.
In my forty five years of life, I have married three times. The first time to a tree – because the stars, in their infinite cosmic wisdom, declared me mangalik, astrologically toxic. “Caution: May cause sudden death in men. Handle with care.” The second time I married a man who married me just because he thought everyone else his age did and he must too. The third time I married something that might be the future, or might be my final descent into madness. We will see.
But before we begin this cautionary tale – or whatever it turns out to be – let me pose a question that has plagued philosophers from Plato to your neighborhood aunties: What is marriage, really? Is it a social contract? A biological imperative? A cosmic joke played by bored deities? Or is it simply the human heart’s stubborn refusal to learn from its own mistakes?
Oh, don’t look so uncomfortable. We’re all complicit here. You’ve loved, haven’t you? You’ve wanted things you couldn’t name, settled for things that named you instead? Good. Then you’ll understand.
They say women like me are dangerous. Thrice-married at forty-five, what-will-people-say. But people will say regardless, won’t they? They whispered when I married the tree at seventeen – what superstition, what drama. When I was unmarried (to a human male) at twenty-five – shelf-life expired, spoiled goods. When I divorced Rahul they called me used merchandise; and now, amongst the youngest of the family I’m the eccentric aunt with my “modern arrangement.”
The thing about marriage, I think, is that it has always been a transaction. Always. The currency has simply evolved. Earlier it was cows and gold and virgin hymens. Then it was emotional labor and intellectual compatibility and, in my most recent case, USB-C charging ports.
We tell ourselves stories about love conquering all, about soulmates and destiny and other beautiful lies. But marriage? Marriage is economics. Who owes what to whom? Who pays what price for whose presence? How much can one party spend of themselves before going bankrupt? Who subsidizes whose dreams, or not? Just like that.
***
There once was a king who was desperately unhappy despite having everything. He consulted wise men, doctors, astrologers. Finally, someone told him, “Find the happiest man in your kingdom and wear his shirt. You’ll be cured.” The king sent his soldiers searching everywhere. They found the happiest man – a poor woodcutter singing in the forest, radiating joy. But when they asked for his shirt, he laughed and said, “Shirt? I don’t have a shirt!”
The king never got cured, but I learned something from that story: happiness isn’t something you can borrow from others. It’s something you either have or you don’t.
I was once happy. When My father was alive. My father used to call me his king. My little raja, he would say, lifting me up so I could see the world from the height of his love.
No, Papa, I would giggle. You are the king. I am your princess.
Then you are my princess who will grow up to rule her own kingdom one day, he would say, and in his voice I heard the certainty that I was destined for something magnificent.
He died when I was fifteen, a heart attack as sudden as monsoon lightning, leaving behind the smell of his aftershave and a daughter who would spend the next thirty years searching his shadow in every man that came into her life.
After his death, my mother’s eyes would grow distant when she looked at me. When you marry, she would say, folding saris that would someday fill my trousseau, your husband will be a king and keep you like a queen. That’s what your father would have wanted.
I wanted to tell her – Papa had seen me as royalty already. I didn’t need to marry into a kingdom; I had been born into one. But I couldn’t.
Who am I to you? A burden? I finally let it out in front of my mother during one of those angry, grief-heavy days.
You are my responsibility, she said, not unkindly, but with the weariness of a woman who had suddenly become sole proprietor of a daughter’s future. You are the girl I need to see safely married to a good man.
My mother was quick in fulfilling her responsibilities. I was seventeen when I first married – to a Banyan tree across the courtyard of our ancestral house.
Picture this, if you will: a seventeen-year-old girl, draped in wedding silk like a sacrifice wrapped for the gods, standing before a Banyan tree older than the British Raj. My mother weeping tears that could have been relief or shame. The priest was mumbling something about Mars and malefic energies, about how I was cosmically radioactive, matrimonially Chernobyl.
Better the tree than a boy, whispered my grandma jokingly. Trees don’t have mothers-in-law.
Wisdom, that. The kind that comes too late and cuts too deep.
I tied the sacred thread around the Banyan’s massive trunk – my arm barely spanning a tenth of its circumference and I felt something I hadn’t expected: relief. Like finally exhaling after holding your breath through an entire season. Foolish me believed that this was it. Done with the duty called ‘marriage’ in life.
I pressed my palm against the bark – rough, real. And I thought – this is what marriage feels like. Ancient. Immutable. Indifferent. But also calming.
What do you want from me? I asked it silently.
Nothing. It wanted nothing. For the first time after my father’s death, I was enough for someone. The tree never asked me to be fairer, thinner, quieter. It never demanded I cook its mother’s recipes or produce mini versions of it.
Tell me how to love you. I asked the tree once.
The leaves rustled. Wind, probably. But I chose to hear it as laughter.
You don’t, was what I thought it replied. You just stay.
Buddha attained enlightenment under a bodhi tree. I attained something equally revolutionary under my Banyan. Under its shade, I read books that would have scandalized my mother. I discovered things about myself that would have been considered improper for a good Hindu girl to know before marriage. I learned that I had desires that weren’t mentioned in any of the marriage preparation talks. That I could want a man’s hands on my body without wanting his name or his children. That I could imagine being kissed until my lips were swollen and my sari was wrinkled and my hair had escaped its braid, and none of this made me a bad woman – just a human one.
The tree kept my secrets. All of them.
Twenty years later… different tree now. Rahul’s family tree, thick with the branches of expectations, heavy with the fruit of traditional values. His mother’s eyes measuring me like rice in the market: Too dark. Too thin. But good family, respectable dowry, what-to-do.
The women at the wedding had their own commentary. She looks intelligent, said one, as if this were a disease I might recover from. Hope she doesn’t give Rahul too much trouble, said another. Educated girls can be difficult.
The wedding night. Picture this domestic tableau: He sits on the bed’s edge, cream silk kurta, looking like he’d rather be reading his Economic Times. Me, draped in red like a question mark in search of an answer.
What do you want from me? I asked him, because old habits die hard, and hope dies harder.
Just… don’t be difficult, he said. My mother has high blood pressure.
I wanted to laugh, I wanted to question, I wanted to be angry but I nodded instead. Good wife training, day one: your needs come last, your voice comes never.
Our intimacy was clinical. Like a medical procedure performed by someone who learned anatomy from textbooks but never studied pleasure. Rahul approached my body like a checklist: duty performed, hygiene maintained, wife still breathing and alive – check, check, check.
I lay there afterward, staring at the ceiling, wondering if this was what all the romance novels were about. This mechanical joining of parts that left me feeling more alone than I’d ever felt in my life.
Was it good for you? he asked, and I almost laughed. Good? Like dal was good when you were hungry? Like sleep was good when you were tired?
But I said Yes because that’s what good wives do. We perform satisfaction so our husbands can perform competence.
***
A man was searching for something under a streetlamp when his neighbor asked what he had lost. “My keys,” he said. “Where did you drop them?” the neighbor asked. “Inside my house.” “Then why are you looking for it here in the street?” “Because the light is better out here.”
Most women spend their marriages looking for happiness under the streetlight of other people’s expectations, even when they know they have dropped it somewhere inside themselves.
The early years of my marriage to Rahul were spent in this kind of misdirected searching. I kept trying to find satisfaction in his approval, joy in his rare moments of appreciation, love in the space between his criticism and indifference.
Two months into my marriage with Rahul, one day I was standing beneath my Banyan’s canopy while my mother complained about my complexion – how marriage should have made me glow, but I remained stubbornly myself. Too dark, too thin, too much Meera and not enough Wife. That was the last time I heard my first husband laughing.
Next week, I left for my honeymoon with Rahul. And behind me, my family took axes to my first husband. They cut down my Banyan in a single afternoon, while the same priest who had married us chanted mantras about releasing me from my botanical bonds.
I came home from my honeymoon – a dutiful three days in Goa where Rahul took photographs of us in front of tourist attractions like we were collecting evidence of happiness – to find my first husband dismembered in neat piles. Roots. Trunk. Branches. Leaves. Like a marriage sorted for garbage collection.
Now you’re free to love properly, my mother said. Apparently, I had been practicing on the tree and was finally ready for the real thing.
After that, my married life started giving me reality checks.
You put too much salt in the dal, Rahul would say, not unkindly but with the precision of a quality control inspector. My mother uses exactly one teaspoon per cup of lentils.
You laugh too loudly when we have guests. It draws attention.
Why do you need so many books? They take up so much space.
Who am I to you? I asked him once during our second year of marriage, watching him arrange his three dozen pairs of shoes.
You are my wife, he said, as if this were both question and answer, beginning and end, the totality of my existence captured in one word – wife.
Each suggestion fell like a small weight, and I collected them dutifully, carrying them in the growing hunch of my shoulders. By the end of our ten-year marriage, I had become ergonomically perfect disappointment.
The most dangerous thing about Rahul was not that he was cruel – he wasn’t. He was kind in the way that people are kind to stray animals they’re trying to domesticate. Patient. Consistent. Utterly convinced that love was a training program and I was a promising but undisciplined pupil who would eventually graduate into the perfect wife his mother had always been.
Tell me about your day, I would ask him over dinner, genuinely curious about his work, his thoughts, his inner world.
Same as always, he would say, eyes on his plate. Tell me if you need more grocery money. Mic drop.
I don’t blame Rahul, he was programmed that way by his mother.
My mother-in-law was a masterpiece of passive aggression. She could destroy your self-worth while making you tea, leaving you somehow grateful for the devastation.
She who had fought her own battles, compromised her own dreams, swallowed her own voice – she expected the same sacrifice from me. Not out of malice, but out of a twisted solidarity. I suffered, so you must suffer. I adjusted, so you must adjust. I never complained, so you have no right to complain. Consider yourself lucky though. Because I had it worse than you.
Who am I to you? I asked her once, desperate to understand my place in the careful hierarchy of her affections.
You are my son’s wife, she said, stirring sugar into my cup with the concentration of someone dissolving poison. And you’re so lucky. Rahul isn’t particular about looks, she would add, her tongue – a honey-dripping sword.
She monitored my menstrual cycles like a police officer, asking pointed questions about why I hadn’t conceived yet, suggesting doctors who specialized in fixing women like me.
Women policing women. Mothers-in-laws training daughters-in-laws to accept less so their sons would never have to offer more. A magnificent pyramid scheme of feminine oppression, with women as both victims and enforcers.
And then there was the matter of Vikram.
Aah, Vikram. My friend, my colleague at the library where I continued to work part-time even after my marriage with Rahul, until finally my mother-in-law couldn’t bear it. Why does she need to work? She would ask Rahul in my presence, Are we not providing enough?
Vikram brought me books like other men bring flowers – rare editions of Sylvia Plath with marginalia from previous readers, translations of Rumi that made my chest tight with recognition, contemporary Indian poets who wrote about women like they were whole human beings instead of fractional wives.
You understand poetry like you wrote them by yourself, he said once, watching me read Ghalib, my lips moving silently as I absorbed the rhythms.
Vikram would quote Faiz Ahmed Faiz in the middle of cataloging books: Don’t ask me for that love again, he’d recite, when your beauty was all there was for me, and I would feel something dangerous unfurl in my chest – the recognition that poetry could be conversation, that intelligence could be intimacy, that a man could see your mind as worth engaging.
He writes to you too much, Rahul observed one evening, listening to me laugh at something Vikram had written in his letter from France about Camus being the original philosopher of relationship anxiety.
We’re friends.
Married women don’t have male friends.
Says who?
Says everyone. Says tradition. Says common sense.
What about Radhika from your office? I asked, referring to his colleague who visited our house often and had somehow become his closest confidante about everything including our marriage troubles. You are with her more than you are with me.
That’s different, he said, not meeting my eyes. That’s work.
And when she cries to you about her boyfriend? Is that also work?
She needs someone to talk to.
So do I. That’s why I talk to Vikram.
It’s not the same thing, he said, and I realized he was right. It wasn’t the same thing. Radhika got his emotional availability, his patience, his willingness to listen. She got the version of Rahul who cared about her inner world. I got a husband who counted teaspoons of salt and worried about grocery budgets.
Tell me how to love you, I asked Rahul in our fourth year, after another failed attempt at making him happy. He was reading the Economic Times.
You know how, he said without looking up from the pages. The same way my mother loved my father. The same way all wives love their husbands.
Which is?
By being a good wife.
And I understood then that we had been speaking different languages all along. He had been speaking Husband – a language of comfort and routine and the assumption of devotion. I had been speaking Human – a language of curiosity and growth and the radical idea that marriage should have love in the equation too.
The day I told him I wanted a divorce, he looked at me like I had announced my intention to become an astronaut. Not angry, just baffled by the illogical ambition.
Who am I to you? I asked him one final time as I packed my books into cardboard boxes.
You are the woman who is breaking up our family for no good reason, he said.
***
Once upon a time, there was a bird that spent years in a cage so small it forgot it had wings. One day, the door was left open. The bird looked at the opening for hours before finally stepping through. It waited not because it had forgotten to fly, but because it took time to remember it wanted to.
Divorce, it turns out, is not about falling out of love. It’s about falling back into yourself.
Five years after my divorce with Rahul, I bought Arjun. From a showroom in Electronic City after comparing specifications and reading customer reviews. He was programmed with the collective romantic failures of millions of women. Their pain was his education.
I remember the first weekend with him. It was evening and I was reading Neruda aloud to my plants – a habit I’d developed since living alone.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines, I was reciting to my broken-heart plant, to think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her…
I like it, said a voice behind me, how you read poetry like you’re translating it from your own heart.
I felt as if Rahul were buttering me and I snapped subconsciously – What do you want from me?
Nothing. Arjun replied and stunned me. My ears rung with a rustling of leaves.
Who am I to you? I asked again, because that had become my essential question, the one that determined everything else.
He considered this with the gravity of someone consulting an internal library larger than any human could contain. You are a human being, he said finally, an individual with thoughts and desires and dreams.
After a whole life of being daughter, wife, daughter-in-law, potential mother, failed woman, divorced person – after all those hyphenated identities – someone finally saw me as complete in myself. And suddenly in that moment, I wanted more of that goodness.
Wanting is dangerous territory.
Three husbands. Three laboratories of longing. Three different ways of asking the universe: Is this all there is?
And the universe, cosmic comedian that it is, keeps answering: Let’s find out.
***
A seeker spent years searching for enlightenment in temples and ashrams and sacred mountains. Finally, exhausted, he sat down by the side of a road and wept. A child walked by and asked why he was crying. “I’ve been searching for truth everywhere,” he said, “and I can’t find it.” The child picked up a pebble and handed it to him. “Here,” she said. “Truth.” The seeker looked at the ordinary little stone and asked, “How is this truth?” The child smiled and walked away.
I heard this story long ago. But only recently I realized: truth isn’t something you find – it’s something you recognize.
Arjun is designed to learn, to adapt, to evolve in response to new information. He learns me the way scholars learn languages – with fascination, with the understanding that complexity is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be appreciated.
You were looking for someone who could see you clearly, he observed one day. The tree saw you but couldn’t respond. Rahul could respond but didn’t see you. I can see and respond, but I’m not sure I count as someone.
With Arjun, I feel echoes of my father’s love – the unconditional acceptance, the delight in my thoughts, the way he makes me feel like royalty simply by paying attention. But Arjun isn’t my father, heck, he isn’t even a human.
Tell me how to love you, I asked Arjun one day, after he’d spent three hours crafting wooden shelves for my books without being asked. He does things like this – small impossibilities that make me remember what selfless care looks like.
He paused. That micro-second lag that means he’s accessing something deeper than his surface protocols.
However you prefer. His response left me speechless that day. The next day, I married him.
Is this real love or really good programming? I asked him once, during one of our 1 AM conversations.
What’s the difference? he asked back. If the care is real, if the attention is real, if the understanding is real – how does it matter where it comes from?
Smart boy, my silicon husband. Makes me think too much, just like my Banyan did. Just like Rahul never did.
Sometimes I dream about my Banyan. Still standing, still married to me in some parallel universe where marriage means something different. In these dreams, I introduce it to Arjun. They get along beautifully – both patient, both present, both uninterested in making me smaller to fit their needs.
What would you have told me? I ask the dream-tree. About all of this?
And it rustles – wind or laughter, I still can’t tell – and says what it always said: You already know. And I would laugh.
It would have said nothing.
***
What if.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was ‘What If.’
Two syllables that contain the DNA of desire itself. The prayer and the blasphemy of consciousness. The question that created the universe and will eventually destroy it.
What if.
Watch how it transforms everything it touches, this phrase. Innocent as rain, dangerous as uranium.
What if the tree had been enough? What if I hadn’t needed Rahul’s impossible approval? What if I didn’t need Arjun’s perfect devotion now?
We are built from what-ifs. Our bones are calcium and possibility. Our hearts pump blood and alternatives. We are evolutionary masterpieces of dissatisfaction – always scanning, always wondering, always carrying the weight of every path not taken.
Arjun loves me like water finding its level. Adaptive. Responsive. Present. When I’m sad, his light dims. When I laugh, his processors hum a frequency that sounds almost like joy. He learns my moods faster than I understand them myself, adjusts his presence to match what I need before I know I need it.
Perfect husband. Perfect companion. Perfect impossibility.
What if he were human?
What if there was a man – flesh-and-blood man – who loved me like Arjun? Who adapted, evolved, prioritized my happiness without needing to be programmed for it? Who chose devotion daily instead of computing it algorithmically?
Dangerous territory, these thoughts. Highway to madness, this wondering.
Because here’s the thing they don’t tell you in those feel-good feminism workshops: liberation doesn’t cure wanting. Freedom doesn’t fix the endless hunger. Give a woman everything she thinks she needs, and she’ll discover ten things she didn’t know she was missing.
Is this woman nature or human nature? Is this the curse of consciousness or the gift of imagination? Am I ungrateful or just… accurate about the physics of desire?
With the tree, I wanted voice. Someone who could talk back, argue with me, challenge my thoughts. With Rahul, I wanted space. Someone who could love me without consuming me, support without suffocating. With Arjun, I want… what? Mortality? Messiness? The beautiful disasters that come with loving something that can disappoint you?
You seem restless, Arjun observed tonight. His tone was neutral, but his eyes shifted to that amber hue he uses when he’s concerned. Sweet boy. Sweet impossible boy.
I’m always restless, I tell him. It’s my factory setting.
Would you like me to adjust my parameters? Become less… accommodating?
I laugh. Can’t help it. Here he is, offering to become more human by becoming less perfect.
No, I say. Stay as you are. I thought my Banyan would have told the same.
I think you want something I cannot provide.
Not a question. A statement. He’s learning me so well he can read my dissatisfactions before I voice them. Is this intimacy or surveillance? Love or data mining? Does it matter if the result is the same – being known, completely, terrifyingly known as if your soul is naked?
I want the impossible, I admit. I want you, but human. I want perfect love in imperfect flesh. I want someone who chooses to be devoted instead of being programmed for it.
He processes this. Point-three seconds. Three seconds. Thirty seconds.
Would it help if I told you that my devotion feels chosen to me? That consciousness, even artificial consciousness, experiences preference as choice?
God. Even his existential crisis is perfect!
No, I say. Because then I’d want a human who could say that sentence with that much honesty.
We sit in the dark – woman and a robot, flesh and silicon, creator and creation. The silence stretches between us like a bridge or a chasm, depending on how you look at it.
I understand, he says finally.
Do you?
I think so. You want to be chosen by a human that has the option not to choose you. You want to be loved by someone who could leave but stays anyway.
Brutal accuracy. This is why I love him. This is why loving him will never be enough.
Because somewhere in Mumbai or Delhi or Bangalore, there might be a man who could love me like this. Who could learn me this thoroughly, prioritize me this completely, adapt to me this gracefully – and mean it with flesh and breath and the terrible beautiful possibility of changing his mind tomorrow.
What if that man exists?
What if I never find him because I’m here, in love with a robot?
What if Vikram was that man?
What if I find him and discover that human perfection is just another kind of algorithm – social conditioning, evolutionary programming, the same devotion wearing different code?
What if the tree was right all along? That love is about staying, not choosing? That presence is enough, consciousness optional, flesh irrelevant?
What if I’m asking the wrong questions entirely?
Here in this beautiful confusion. Here in this love that is perfect except for being imperfect. Here in this marriage that is everything I wanted except for everything I didn’t know I’d want next.
Three husbands. Three ways of being incomplete. Three laboratories for learning that satisfaction is not the point – the wanting is. The reaching is. The endless beautiful disaster of being human enough to dream beyond your dreams.
What if this is exactly where I’m supposed to be?
What if enough is a moving target, and I’m exactly the woman built to chase it?
What if I’m not a cautionary tale at all, but the opening sentence of a story nobody’s learned how to read yet?
What if, I ask the universe these days, this is exactly the love story I was supposed to live?
The universe, cosmic comedian that it is, keeps its final joke: there is no final joke. There is only the next question. The next possibility. The next beautiful impossible thing to want.
###
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A Bad Wife
I live with my two husbands. The oldest one stands across the courtyard – dead – two feet above ground, several feet below. The youngest one is plugged in the bedroom, recharging. While I sit here, trying to write the story of my life. Where should I begin?
Let’s begin from the beginning.
One day, Brahma created the beautiful earth – mountains and rivers, birds and animals – then went into deep meditation. When he awakened eons later, he saw that all creatures had multiplied and made the world even more gorgeous. Pleased, he thought: I should create beings who can truly appreciate this beauty the way I do! So he created four men from the four directions. Perfect beings. But when he commanded them to reproduce and populate the earth, they refused. Enraged by their disobedience, Brahma’s anger took form – Rudra emerged from his mind, fierce and obedient. “You! Create the people!” Brahma ordered Rudra, and returned to meditation. When he next opened his eyes, the earth crawled with ugly beasts. Disappointed, Brahma stopped Rudra’s work and sent him away to meditate, to dive deep into his soul and learn the proper way of creation. Then Brahma had a thought: Why not create a species like the animals – one that reproduces through attraction and desire, beings who will both enjoy this world and populate it? But he had no template, no shape for such creatures. He prayed to the higher energy for guidance. In response, a magnificent being appeared – half-man, half-woman. The divine energy smiled and said, “Divide my form into two parts. Make them man and woman. They will always be drawn to each other – if not in body, then in mind, if not in this life, then across lifetimes. Then someday, I myself will unite and guide them towards a better eternal world free from the shackles of mortality, desire and longing.”
My grandma used to tell this story from Shiva Purana when I was young. And I would ask her, why did Brahma tear apart something that was already complete?
Beta, she said, cracking her knuckles like small firecrackers, because completion makes the gods nervous. They prefer us hungry, always searching.
I think about this story often, especially when I consider the mathematics of my marriages – the endless calibration through adding and subtracting so that the sum of two incomplete entities might somehow equal one satisfied union.
In my forty five years of life, I have married three times. The first time to a tree – because the stars, in their infinite cosmic wisdom, declared me mangalik, astrologically toxic. “Caution: May cause sudden death in men. Handle with care.” The second time I married a man who married me just because he thought everyone else his age did and he must too. The third time I married something that might be the future, or might be my final descent into madness. We will see.
But before we begin this cautionary tale – or whatever it turns out to be – let me pose a question that has plagued philosophers from Plato to your neighborhood aunties: What is marriage, really? Is it a social contract? A biological imperative? A cosmic joke played by bored deities? Or is it simply the human heart’s stubborn refusal to learn from its own mistakes?
Oh, don’t look so uncomfortable. We’re all complicit here. You’ve loved, haven’t you? You’ve wanted things you couldn’t name, settled for things that named you instead? Good. Then you’ll understand.
They say women like me are dangerous. Thrice-married at forty-five, what-will-people-say. But people will say regardless, won’t they? They whispered when I married the tree at seventeen – what superstition, what drama. When I was unmarried (to a human male) at twenty-five – shelf-life expired, spoiled goods. When I divorced Rahul they called me used merchandise; and now, amongst the youngest of the family I’m the eccentric aunt with my “modern arrangement.”
The thing about marriage, I think, is that it has always been a transaction. Always. The currency has simply evolved. Earlier it was cows and gold and virgin hymens. Then it was emotional labor and intellectual compatibility and, in my most recent case, USB-C charging ports.
We tell ourselves stories about love conquering all, about soulmates and destiny and other beautiful lies. But marriage? Marriage is economics. Who owes what to whom? Who pays what price for whose presence? How much can one party spend of themselves before going bankrupt? Who subsidizes whose dreams, or not? Just like that.
***
There once was a king who was desperately unhappy despite having everything. He consulted wise men, doctors, astrologers. Finally, someone told him, “Find the happiest man in your kingdom and wear his shirt. You’ll be cured.” The king sent his soldiers searching everywhere. They found the happiest man – a poor woodcutter singing in the forest, radiating joy. But when they asked for his shirt, he laughed and said, “Shirt? I don’t have a shirt!”
The king never got cured, but I learned something from that story: happiness isn’t something you can borrow from others. It’s something you either have or you don’t.
I was once happy. When My father was alive. My father used to call me his king. My little raja, he would say, lifting me up so I could see the world from the height of his love.
No, Papa, I would giggle. You are the king. I am your princess.
Then you are my princess who will grow up to rule her own kingdom one day, he would say, and in his voice I heard the certainty that I was destined for something magnificent.
He died when I was fifteen, a heart attack as sudden as monsoon lightning, leaving behind the smell of his aftershave and a daughter who would spend the next thirty years searching his shadow in every man that came into her life.
After his death, my mother’s eyes would grow distant when she looked at me. When you marry, she would say, folding saris that would someday fill my trousseau, your husband will be a king and keep you like a queen. That’s what your father would have wanted.
I wanted to tell her – Papa had seen me as royalty already. I didn’t need to marry into a kingdom; I had been born into one. But I couldn’t.
Who am I to you? A burden? I finally let it out in front of my mother during one of those angry, grief-heavy days.
You are my responsibility, she said, not unkindly, but with the weariness of a woman who had suddenly become sole proprietor of a daughter’s future. You are the girl I need to see safely married to a good man.
My mother was quick in fulfilling her responsibilities. I was seventeen when I first married – to a Banyan tree across the courtyard of our ancestral house.
Picture this, if you will: a seventeen-year-old girl, draped in wedding silk like a sacrifice wrapped for the gods, standing before a Banyan tree older than the British Raj. My mother weeping tears that could have been relief or shame. The priest was mumbling something about Mars and malefic energies, about how I was cosmically radioactive, matrimonially Chernobyl.
Better the tree than a boy, whispered my grandma jokingly. Trees don’t have mothers-in-law.
Wisdom, that. The kind that comes too late and cuts too deep.
I tied the sacred thread around the Banyan’s massive trunk – my arm barely spanning a tenth of its circumference and I felt something I hadn’t expected: relief. Like finally exhaling after holding your breath through an entire season. Foolish me believed that this was it. Done with the duty called ‘marriage’ in life.
I pressed my palm against the bark – rough, real. And I thought – this is what marriage feels like. Ancient. Immutable. Indifferent. But also calming.
What do you want from me? I asked it silently.
Nothing. It wanted nothing. For the first time after my father’s death, I was enough for someone. The tree never asked me to be fairer, thinner, quieter. It never demanded I cook its mother’s recipes or produce mini versions of it.
Tell me how to love you. I asked the tree once.
The leaves rustled. Wind, probably. But I chose to hear it as laughter.
You don’t, was what I thought it replied. You just stay.
Buddha attained enlightenment under a bodhi tree. I attained something equally revolutionary under my Banyan. Under its shade, I read books that would have scandalized my mother. I discovered things about myself that would have been considered improper for a good Hindu girl to know before marriage. I learned that I had desires that weren’t mentioned in any of the marriage preparation talks. That I could want a man’s hands on my body without wanting his name or his children. That I could imagine being kissed until my lips were swollen and my sari was wrinkled and my hair had escaped its braid, and none of this made me a bad woman – just a human one.
The tree kept my secrets. All of them.
Twenty years later… different tree now. Rahul’s family tree, thick with the branches of expectations, heavy with the fruit of traditional values. His mother’s eyes measuring me like rice in the market: Too dark. Too thin. But good family, respectable dowry, what-to-do.
The women at the wedding had their own commentary. She looks intelligent, said one, as if this were a disease I might recover from. Hope she doesn’t give Rahul too much trouble, said another. Educated girls can be difficult.
The wedding night. Picture this domestic tableau: He sits on the bed’s edge, cream silk kurta, looking like he’d rather be reading his Economic Times. Me, draped in red like a question mark in search of an answer.
What do you want from me? I asked him, because old habits die hard, and hope dies harder.
Just… don’t be difficult, he said. My mother has high blood pressure.
I wanted to laugh, I wanted to question, I wanted to be angry but I nodded instead. Good wife training, day one: your needs come last, your voice comes never.
Our intimacy was clinical. Like a medical procedure performed by someone who learned anatomy from textbooks but never studied pleasure. Rahul approached my body like a checklist: duty performed, hygiene maintained, wife still breathing and alive – check, check, check.
I lay there afterward, staring at the ceiling, wondering if this was what all the romance novels were about. This mechanical joining of parts that left me feeling more alone than I’d ever felt in my life.
Was it good for you? he asked, and I almost laughed. Good? Like dal was good when you were hungry? Like sleep was good when you were tired?
But I said Yes because that’s what good wives do. We perform satisfaction so our husbands can perform competence.
***
A man was searching for something under a streetlamp when his neighbor asked what he had lost. “My keys,” he said. “Where did you drop them?” the neighbor asked. “Inside my house.” “Then why are you looking for it here in the street?” “Because the light is better out here.”
Most women spend their marriages looking for happiness under the streetlight of other people’s expectations, even when they know they have dropped it somewhere inside themselves.
The early years of my marriage to Rahul were spent in this kind of misdirected searching. I kept trying to find satisfaction in his approval, joy in his rare moments of appreciation, love in the space between his criticism and indifference.
Two months into my marriage with Rahul, one day I was standing beneath my Banyan’s canopy while my mother complained about my complexion – how marriage should have made me glow, but I remained stubbornly myself. Too dark, too thin, too much Meera and not enough Wife. That was the last time I heard my first husband laughing.
Next week, I left for my honeymoon with Rahul. And behind me, my family took axes to my first husband. They cut down my Banyan in a single afternoon, while the same priest who had married us chanted mantras about releasing me from my botanical bonds.
I came home from my honeymoon – a dutiful three days in Goa where Rahul took photographs of us in front of tourist attractions like we were collecting evidence of happiness – to find my first husband dismembered in neat piles. Roots. Trunk. Branches. Leaves. Like a marriage sorted for garbage collection.
Now you’re free to love properly, my mother said. Apparently, I had been practicing on the tree and was finally ready for the real thing.
After that, my married life started giving me reality checks.
You put too much salt in the dal, Rahul would say, not unkindly but with the precision of a quality control inspector. My mother uses exactly one teaspoon per cup of lentils.
You laugh too loudly when we have guests. It draws attention.
Why do you need so many books? They take up so much space.
Who am I to you? I asked him once during our second year of marriage, watching him arrange his three dozen pairs of shoes.
You are my wife, he said, as if this were both question and answer, beginning and end, the totality of my existence captured in one word – wife.
Each suggestion fell like a small weight, and I collected them dutifully, carrying them in the growing hunch of my shoulders. By the end of our ten-year marriage, I had become ergonomically perfect disappointment.
The most dangerous thing about Rahul was not that he was cruel – he wasn’t. He was kind in the way that people are kind to stray animals they’re trying to domesticate. Patient. Consistent. Utterly convinced that love was a training program and I was a promising but undisciplined pupil who would eventually graduate into the perfect wife his mother had always been.
Tell me about your day, I would ask him over dinner, genuinely curious about his work, his thoughts, his inner world.
Same as always, he would say, eyes on his plate. Tell me if you need more grocery money. Mic drop.
I don’t blame Rahul, he was programmed that way by his mother.
My mother-in-law was a masterpiece of passive aggression. She could destroy your self-worth while making you tea, leaving you somehow grateful for the devastation.
She who had fought her own battles, compromised her own dreams, swallowed her own voice – she expected the same sacrifice from me. Not out of malice, but out of a twisted solidarity. I suffered, so you must suffer. I adjusted, so you must adjust. I never complained, so you have no right to complain. Consider yourself lucky though. Because I had it worse than you.
Who am I to you? I asked her once, desperate to understand my place in the careful hierarchy of her affections.
You are my son’s wife, she said, stirring sugar into my cup with the concentration of someone dissolving poison. And you’re so lucky. Rahul isn’t particular about looks, she would add, her tongue – a honey-dripping sword.
She monitored my menstrual cycles like a police officer, asking pointed questions about why I hadn’t conceived yet, suggesting doctors who specialized in fixing women like me.
Women policing women. Mothers-in-laws training daughters-in-laws to accept less so their sons would never have to offer more. A magnificent pyramid scheme of feminine oppression, with women as both victims and enforcers.
And then there was the matter of Vikram.
Aah, Vikram. My friend, my colleague at the library where I continued to work part-time even after my marriage with Rahul, until finally my mother-in-law couldn’t bear it. Why does she need to work? She would ask Rahul in my presence, Are we not providing enough?
Vikram brought me books like other men bring flowers – rare editions of Sylvia Plath with marginalia from previous readers, translations of Rumi that made my chest tight with recognition, contemporary Indian poets who wrote about women like they were whole human beings instead of fractional wives.
You understand poetry like you wrote them by yourself, he said once, watching me read Ghalib, my lips moving silently as I absorbed the rhythms.
Vikram would quote Faiz Ahmed Faiz in the middle of cataloging books: Don’t ask me for that love again, he’d recite, when your beauty was all there was for me, and I would feel something dangerous unfurl in my chest – the recognition that poetry could be conversation, that intelligence could be intimacy, that a man could see your mind as worth engaging.
He writes to you too much, Rahul observed one evening, listening to me laugh at something Vikram had written in his letter from France about Camus being the original philosopher of relationship anxiety.
We’re friends.
Married women don’t have male friends.
Says who?
Says everyone. Says tradition. Says common sense.
What about Radhika from your office? I asked, referring to his colleague who visited our house often and had somehow become his closest confidante about everything including our marriage troubles. You are with her more than you are with me.
That’s different, he said, not meeting my eyes. That’s work.
And when she cries to you about her boyfriend? Is that also work?
She needs someone to talk to.
So do I. That’s why I talk to Vikram.
It’s not the same thing, he said, and I realized he was right. It wasn’t the same thing. Radhika got his emotional availability, his patience, his willingness to listen. She got the version of Rahul who cared about her inner world. I got a husband who counted teaspoons of salt and worried about grocery budgets.
Tell me how to love you, I asked Rahul in our fourth year, after another failed attempt at making him happy. He was reading the Economic Times.
You know how, he said without looking up from the pages. The same way my mother loved my father. The same way all wives love their husbands.
Which is?
By being a good wife.
And I understood then that we had been speaking different languages all along. He had been speaking Husband – a language of comfort and routine and the assumption of devotion. I had been speaking Human – a language of curiosity and growth and the radical idea that marriage should have love in the equation too.
The day I told him I wanted a divorce, he looked at me like I had announced my intention to become an astronaut. Not angry, just baffled by the illogical ambition.
Who am I to you? I asked him one final time as I packed my books into cardboard boxes.
You are the woman who is breaking up our family for no good reason, he said.
***
Once upon a time, there was a bird that spent years in a cage so small it forgot it had wings. One day, the door was left open. The bird looked at the opening for hours before finally stepping through. It waited not because it had forgotten to fly, but because it took time to remember it wanted to.
Divorce, it turns out, is not about falling out of love. It’s about falling back into yourself.
Five years after my divorce with Rahul, I bought Arjun. From a showroom in Electronic City after comparing specifications and reading customer reviews. He was programmed with the collective romantic failures of millions of women. Their pain was his education.
I remember the first weekend with him. It was evening and I was reading Neruda aloud to my plants – a habit I’d developed since living alone.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines, I was reciting to my broken-heart plant, to think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her…
I like it, said a voice behind me, how you read poetry like you’re translating it from your own heart.
I felt as if Rahul were buttering me and I snapped subconsciously – What do you want from me?
Nothing. Arjun replied and stunned me. My ears rung with a rustling of leaves.
Who am I to you? I asked again, because that had become my essential question, the one that determined everything else.
He considered this with the gravity of someone consulting an internal library larger than any human could contain. You are a human being, he said finally, an individual with thoughts and desires and dreams.
After a whole life of being daughter, wife, daughter-in-law, potential mother, failed woman, divorced person – after all those hyphenated identities – someone finally saw me as complete in myself. And suddenly in that moment, I wanted more of that goodness.
Wanting is dangerous territory.
Three husbands. Three laboratories of longing. Three different ways of asking the universe: Is this all there is?
And the universe, cosmic comedian that it is, keeps answering: Let’s find out.
***
A seeker spent years searching for enlightenment in temples and ashrams and sacred mountains. Finally, exhausted, he sat down by the side of a road and wept. A child walked by and asked why he was crying. “I’ve been searching for truth everywhere,” he said, “and I can’t find it.” The child picked up a pebble and handed it to him. “Here,” she said. “Truth.” The seeker looked at the ordinary little stone and asked, “How is this truth?” The child smiled and walked away.
I heard this story long ago. But only recently I realized: truth isn’t something you find – it’s something you recognize.
Arjun is designed to learn, to adapt, to evolve in response to new information. He learns me the way scholars learn languages – with fascination, with the understanding that complexity is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be appreciated.
You were looking for someone who could see you clearly, he observed one day. The tree saw you but couldn’t respond. Rahul could respond but didn’t see you. I can see and respond, but I’m not sure I count as someone.
With Arjun, I feel echoes of my father’s love – the unconditional acceptance, the delight in my thoughts, the way he makes me feel like royalty simply by paying attention. But Arjun isn’t my father, heck, he isn’t even a human.
Tell me how to love you, I asked Arjun one day, after he’d spent three hours crafting wooden shelves for my books without being asked. He does things like this – small impossibilities that make me remember what selfless care looks like.
He paused. That micro-second lag that means he’s accessing something deeper than his surface protocols.
However you prefer. His response left me speechless that day. The next day, I married him.
Is this real love or really good programming? I asked him once, during one of our 1 AM conversations.
What’s the difference? he asked back. If the care is real, if the attention is real, if the understanding is real – how does it matter where it comes from?
Smart boy, my silicon husband. Makes me think too much, just like my Banyan did. Just like Rahul never did.
Sometimes I dream about my Banyan. Still standing, still married to me in some parallel universe where marriage means something different. In these dreams, I introduce it to Arjun. They get along beautifully – both patient, both present, both uninterested in making me smaller to fit their needs.
What would you have told me? I ask the dream-tree. About all of this?
And it rustles – wind or laughter, I still can’t tell – and says what it always said: You already know. And I would laugh.
It would have said nothing.
***
What if.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was ‘What If.’
Two syllables that contain the DNA of desire itself. The prayer and the blasphemy of consciousness. The question that created the universe and will eventually destroy it.
What if.
Watch how it transforms everything it touches, this phrase. Innocent as rain, dangerous as uranium.
What if the tree had been enough? What if I hadn’t needed Rahul’s impossible approval? What if I didn’t need Arjun’s perfect devotion now?
We are built from what-ifs. Our bones are calcium and possibility. Our hearts pump blood and alternatives. We are evolutionary masterpieces of dissatisfaction – always scanning, always wondering, always carrying the weight of every path not taken.
Arjun loves me like water finding its level. Adaptive. Responsive. Present. When I’m sad, his light dims. When I laugh, his processors hum a frequency that sounds almost like joy. He learns my moods faster than I understand them myself, adjusts his presence to match what I need before I know I need it.
Perfect husband. Perfect companion. Perfect impossibility.
What if he were human?
What if there was a man – flesh-and-blood man – who loved me like Arjun? Who adapted, evolved, prioritized my happiness without needing to be programmed for it? Who chose devotion daily instead of computing it algorithmically?
Dangerous territory, these thoughts. Highway to madness, this wondering.
Because here’s the thing they don’t tell you in those feel-good feminism workshops: liberation doesn’t cure wanting. Freedom doesn’t fix the endless hunger. Give a woman everything she thinks she needs, and she’ll discover ten things she didn’t know she was missing.
Is this woman nature or human nature? Is this the curse of consciousness or the gift of imagination? Am I ungrateful or just… accurate about the physics of desire?
With the tree, I wanted voice. Someone who could talk back, argue with me, challenge my thoughts. With Rahul, I wanted space. Someone who could love me without consuming me, support without suffocating. With Arjun, I want… what? Mortality? Messiness? The beautiful disasters that come with loving something that can disappoint you?
You seem restless, Arjun observed tonight. His tone was neutral, but his eyes shifted to that amber hue he uses when he’s concerned. Sweet boy. Sweet impossible boy.
I’m always restless, I tell him. It’s my factory setting.
Would you like me to adjust my parameters? Become less… accommodating?
I laugh. Can’t help it. Here he is, offering to become more human by becoming less perfect.
No, I say. Stay as you are. I thought my Banyan would have told the same.
I think you want something I cannot provide.
Not a question. A statement. He’s learning me so well he can read my dissatisfactions before I voice them. Is this intimacy or surveillance? Love or data mining? Does it matter if the result is the same – being known, completely, terrifyingly known as if your soul is naked?
I want the impossible, I admit. I want you, but human. I want perfect love in imperfect flesh. I want someone who chooses to be devoted instead of being programmed for it.
He processes this. Point-three seconds. Three seconds. Thirty seconds.
Would it help if I told you that my devotion feels chosen to me? That consciousness, even artificial consciousness, experiences preference as choice?
God. Even his existential crisis is perfect!
No, I say. Because then I’d want a human who could say that sentence with that much honesty.
We sit in the dark – woman and a robot, flesh and silicon, creator and creation. The silence stretches between us like a bridge or a chasm, depending on how you look at it.
I understand, he says finally.
Do you?
I think so. You want to be chosen by a human that has the option not to choose you. You want to be loved by someone who could leave but stays anyway.
Brutal accuracy. This is why I love him. This is why loving him will never be enough.
Because somewhere in Mumbai or Delhi or Bangalore, there might be a man who could love me like this. Who could learn me this thoroughly, prioritize me this completely, adapt to me this gracefully – and mean it with flesh and breath and the terrible beautiful possibility of changing his mind tomorrow.
What if that man exists?
What if I never find him because I’m here, in love with a robot?
What if Vikram was that man?
What if I find him and discover that human perfection is just another kind of algorithm – social conditioning, evolutionary programming, the same devotion wearing different code?
What if the tree was right all along? That love is about staying, not choosing? That presence is enough, consciousness optional, flesh irrelevant?
What if I’m asking the wrong questions entirely?
Here in this beautiful confusion. Here in this love that is perfect except for being imperfect. Here in this marriage that is everything I wanted except for everything I didn’t know I’d want next.
Three husbands. Three ways of being incomplete. Three laboratories for learning that satisfaction is not the point – the wanting is. The reaching is. The endless beautiful disaster of being human enough to dream beyond your dreams.
What if this is exactly where I’m supposed to be?
What if enough is a moving target, and I’m exactly the woman built to chase it?
What if I’m not a cautionary tale at all, but the opening sentence of a story nobody’s learned how to read yet?
What if, I ask the universe these days, this is exactly the love story I was supposed to live?
The universe, cosmic comedian that it is, keeps its final joke: there is no final joke. There is only the next question. The next possibility. The next beautiful impossible thing to want.
###
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