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Joss Whedon - About "Serenity" Movie - The CulturePulp Q&A Part 1
Sunday 25 September 2005, by Webmaster
As promised to readers of the Sunday, Sept. 25 Oregonian: Here's the nearly complete, 9,500-word transcript of my 67-minute interview with "Buffy," "Angel," "Firefly" and "Serenity" creator Joss Whedon.
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon always wanted to write and direct feature films — but even he admits that "Serenity" was a strange choice for his big-screen debut.
"A lot of people told me that — repeatedly," he says, "because ['Serenity''s] a story and not a premise movie — like 'Oh! He sees dead people!' or 'He's old and he looks like Tom Hanks now!'"
It's true: "Serenity," which opens Friday, Sept. 30, is hard to sum up in pithy sentences. But let's give it a shot:
In broad strokes, the film tells the story of space pirate Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) — a cynical, Han Solo-style mercenary whose thieving days are interrupted when the government sends an assassin (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to kill the psychic on his crew (Summer Glau) after she mentally eavesdrops on some alarming state secrets.
There are chases. There is banter. Things explode.
But try to describe "Serenity" in greater detail, and things get complicated in a hurry.
For starters, the movie's actually a sequel to a cancelled TV show called "Firefly" — which Fox unceremoniously dumped in 2002, after airing 11 of 14 produced episodes out of order.
Whedon — in a move that hasn't been seen since the Zuckers turned TV's "Police Squad!" into the "Naked Gun" franchise — refused to take that cancellation lying down.
"I loved the characters," he says. "I loved the people who played them. And I just thought, 'Their story's not told yet.'" So he convinced Universal to take a risk on a relatively low-budget ($40 million) film after a small but rabid group of fans calling themselves "Browncoats" snapped up somewhere north of 200,000 copies of a DVD set collecting the series.
It's easy to see why "Firefly" became a cult fixation: Its universe is richly textured in a way you don't see much in mainstream sci-fi. Set 500 years hence — in a new solar system mankind is colonizing, frontier-style — the film juggles a large, diverse crew that includes Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin and Ron Glass. And it mixes culture and language in some unexpected ways: Our heroes bicker in Old West cowboy-speak and curse in Chinese, and every set-piece and costume-scrap is a crazy mash-up of East/West motifs.
Whedon helps sell all this by shooting "Serenity" in a naturalistic, handheld style, with the considerable help of Clint Eastwood cinematographer Jack Green. (In the book "Serenity: The Official Visual Companion," Whedon describes the look of one fight scene as "Robert Altman's 'The Matrix'"; this is, incredibly, a fairly accurate assessment.)
We talked with Whedon for over an hour about "Serenity," "Firefly," rabid fans, the personal politics of his solar system, the "Serenity" mix tape, bizarro marketing strategies, the joys of studio non-interference and quality bootlegging, the dangers of becoming a cult icon, why touring a spaceship in a single take is a really good idea, and much, much, much more. A slightly edited transcript follows the jump.
Click the "Read More" link directly below to check out the whole interview!
I. AN EXPLANATION FOR THE NEWBIES
M.E. RUSSELL: So if you were going to pitch "Firefly"'s basic premise in terms that a novice would understand, how would you put it? The popular take seems to be that it's Han Solo's story — if Greedo still shot first.
JOSS WHEDON: Which I believe I, myself, said.
Q. Well, there you go.
A. Or if Han had come into the bar five minutes later and never met that old man. But you asked how I would pitch "Firefly," which is different from "Serenity." So which one am I pitching?
Q. I'm sorry — "Serenity" is the one we'd want to talk about.
A. I mean, of course, some people are thinking of both.... But if I was going to pitch "Serenity," I'd say it's a space adventure that involves the lowliest of people in the most mundane of circumstances getting caught up in something giant and epic — without lasers, aliens, or force-fields to protect them.
Q. It strikes me that any one "Firefly" character, taken alone, would be a premise character. But you have nine of them interacting.
A. Well, that's kind of the point. And that's part of what makes it difficult to sell and balance — and what makes it worth doing. What I started out with was these characters, because I had done the show "Firefly," and I loved these guys — I loved the characters, I loved the people who played them, I loved the way they played them. And I just thought, "These people, their story's not told yet. They're ready for it to be told on a much grander scale than perhaps anybody had anticipated." And that is a strange way to come at trying to build a film. It's not the way I usually do it. Usually it is about a premise, and I build a character from that. But I knew this universe was exciting and fresh and textured and very real to me, and I had these people — and I knew that they were in a world of trouble, in terms of where I was going with the series. I did know that I had something that was worthy of a movie. An easily told movie? Not necessarily. But a movie that would have more than just a premise. It would really get into their lives and tell the big, epic story — with the big chases and the big trouble and the fights and all the glory that we go to the movies for. But at the same time, it would be about the people in it — as opposed to the things you can accomplish with CGI.
Q. Speaking of which, I saw the film last night [Sept. 1] in a screening that wasn't an all-Browncoat screening. And it played very well. Which, as a big fan of the "Firefly" TV series, I was a bit concerned about. And I have to salute the climactic space battle in its final form: A lot of newbies — people who'd never seen the show — were saying that it was thrilling in a way that certain "Star Wars" dogfights haven't been in a long time.
A. That's very impressive, considering how beautifully done those dogfights are. So much money! The money! All that money! I think our dogfight works because you get a sense of their situation, which is: They're really little and they have no guns!
Q. Well the way it's storyboarded and assembled to have a documentary feel is also fascinating — there's a "shaky-cam" look to the effects that "Firefly" sort of pioneered.
A. Well, it looked like that for a reason. "Buffy" was made because there was a character I wanted to see that I wasn't seeing. And "Firefly" was made because I was missing something in televised science fiction, and also in the movies: a gritty realism that wasn't an "Alien" ripoff. The template I was working from was "NYPD Blue" — it was "you are there." It was, "We just happened to have a camera, and then this happened." Obviously, these were larger-than-life stories, and obviously [in "Serenity"] there was some arch and manipulative camera work, because much the way Mal realizes he's a hero, the movie realizes, "I'm a movie!" But we always tried to keep that presence: We're there, the cameraman might fall over, everyone might die, and none of us is safe.
II. BUILDING THE 'VERSE (and TALKING LIKE A MAN NAMED MARION)
Q. "Firefly" and "Serenity"'s political and cultural underpinnings are unusually well thought-out. You've obviously developed a whole system of planets, a Sino-American political system, a mix of languages. How long did the concept fester in your head before you started writing?
A. It festered for a while. It was probably two or three years after I came up with the idea that I made the TV show, a year-and-a-half doing that, and then a couple of years to write the movie. So it's had time to bake. And people are always like, "They're fighting an evil empire!" And I'm like, "Well, it's not really an evil empire." The trick was always to create something that was complex enough that you could bring some debate to it — that it wasn't black-and-white. It wasn't, "If we hit this porthole in the Death Star, everything will be fine!" It was messier than that, and the messiest thing is that the government is basically benign. It's the most advanced culturally....
Q. And [the government-sponsored assassin] The Operative has an honorable point of view — in his way.
A. Oh, he totally does. Mal is somebody that I knew, as I created him, I would not get along with. I don't think we have the same politics. But that's sort of the point. I mean, if the movie's about anything, it's about the right to be wrong. It's about the messiness of people. And if you try to eradicate that, you eradicate them.
Q. And on a sheer love-of-language level, it's about the clash of dialects. Several of the characters speak in an old-timey-Western-paperback patois. Why did you choose to make the connections between the Old West and the future so overt?
A. Because that's where it came from. It came from my love of frontier stories — in the movies and in actual, historical frontier stories. And also because if you are Han Solo — if you are living hand-to-mouth — you're dealing with a very classic frontier paradigm, which is that life is really hard out here. The law is, at best, obtuse and often useless — and occasionally dangerous. And the lack of law is troublesome, too. And you learn to make your own, and work on your own terms, in order to survive. Right now, we live in an age of extraordinary convenience — where you can have an entire group of friends and social gatherings and all your food and all your movies without ever leaving the house. And so I'm more and more fascinated by the physical — by people who "make their own fun," as it were. As David Mamet so perfectly put it, "Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it ain't fun — it's entertainment."
Q. Thank you. I still think "State and Main" is one of Mamet's best movies.
A. I really do.... I mean, you can look at the people in "Serenity" as people who are living in a Third-World country — because other people with the best of intentions are trying to, uh, "help" them, but they're kind of out of reach, or nobody knows how the system works well enough to do any good. The frontier, to me, was fascinating because it is so extreme. And at some point, almost everyone is confronted with that kind of extremity. And it's extraordinary how it changes us. It's what makes disaster movies fascinating to me — because they take people like us and say, "Whoa! Well! Who comes up to the mark? How do you change? Who's in charge? How does the system — how does, you know, society — dissolve when the walls are not existentially but literally broken down?" And obviously, you don't want a disaster to happen to anybody. But this movie is about people ... who are used to a certain level of peril and extremity in their lives that most people in this country aren't. Or weren't.
Q. Getting back to the question of language: I was wondering how the hell you found actors who make all that old-timey dialogue seem effortless. Because that's a hell of a coup.
A. It is. And with Nathan, he got so completely comfortable with it that we actually had to have him talk slower, because he could rattle it off so fast, people couldn't understand a word he was saying.
Q. And when he posts to the message boards on the fan-sites, he kind of writes that way, too.
A. He gets a little Mal on.... The dialogue is built out of a number of things: my own desire to make up silly slang, because I love the liquidness of language.... It's largely Western. It's also Elizabethan. There's some Indian stuff. There's some turn-of-the-century Pennsylvania Dutch. Irish.... There's absolutely anything that fits. But I think [the cast] will all band together and kill me because of the Chinese. And there's some John Wayne — which is different than just "Western." Nobody talked like John Wayne; John had his own thing that was so lyrical. The way he talked and the way he moved were both way too graceful for a man who was supposed to be that tough.
Q. [laughs] I know.
A. Then again, his name was Marion.
Q. Hey, John Ford cast him in a movie where he went to Ireland.
A. Yeah. He had an extraordinary individualism. And that's in there, too. See, with Nathan, I just got incredibly lucky, and for everyone else, it just works in different ways. When you start to work with actors, you start to write to their different strengths — you start to know what's going to trip them up and what's going to play to their different strengths.
III. THE GENIUS OF JAYNE, and the DIFFERENCE BETWEEN POLITICS AND PARTISANSHIP
Q. I'd like to go out of my way to praise Adam Baldwin's work in the film. I really expect him to get some more work out of this; he knocked every single line out of the park.
A. Adam is quite large to be a secret weapon. [laughs] He really is. It's great fun to take someone like Summer, who's never done a film — except for a small bit — and really get to show her to people. It's just as much fun with a guy who's been working for 20 years. Because he's so funny, and so vital. His love of that role, and what he brings to it.... Yeah, he does. He knocks every single line straight out of the park. Adam really is bigger than life.
Q. Now, I know his political views may not be your own. And one of the things that strikes me about the show is that, in terms of both gender and personal politics, "Firefly" and "Serenity" have one of the more diverse fan bases I've ever seen. The show's been written up in progressive and conservative journals....
A. Yeah. I would say about the movie that it is very political, but it's not partisan. And I think the curse, right now, of the politics of our nation is that a line has been drawn down the middle of our country — and that's not actually how the human mind works.
Q. Well, the problems are hugely complicated infrastructural problems, and we're trying to solve them with bloodsport. David Foster Wallace said that.
A. Yeah. It's not useful. The political statement that "Serenity" makes is very blatant — but it can be embraced by someone who's extremely conservative or someone who's extremely liberal. That's not the point. The point is: It's a personal statement. What "Serenity" and "Firefly" were both about is how politics affect people personally. And the personal politics are the only politics that really interest me. I'm not going to make this big, didactic polemic — I'm just going to say, "When there are shifts in a planet, those tiny little guys are the ones who are affected. So let's hang out with them — not the Federation heads or the Jedi Council."
Q. [laughs] Right.
A. And with the show, the idea was to have as many points of view as possible. The reason I made the Alliance a generally benign, enlightened society was so that I could engage these people in a debate about it. Now, in the film, obviously, there's more chasing and guns than debating —
Q. Plus explosions —
A. You know, people don't love a great debate flick.
Q. And when people try and make them, and critics praise them as great "message movies," no one goes to see them.
A. Yeah. Including myself. But if you let the points of view exist, then it does the work for you. In the show, that was always the idea: Nine different people see the same thing and have nine different reactions to it, based on who they are and where they've been. And that's what made for the drama. And, uh, most of the comedy.
Q. I'm a vague acquaintance of your colleague Brian Michael Bendis, who lives here in town — and one thing that strikes me about his work and yours is that you're guys who aren't ashamed about coding up all your messages in a genre structure.
A. Well, I have always been a fan of his. I love genre. I love fantasy. I love science fiction. I love horror. I love musicals. I love finding a different way to express what I want to say. And I think, ultimately, it works best for me — because otherwise, it would be boring and didactic and I wouldn't know what the hell I was doing. Genre helps me with structure, and structure helps me get through the day.
IV. THE PROBLEM WITH NICELY CARPETED SPACESHIPS and the MAD SKILLZ OF JACK GREEN
Q. The show and film are also fascinating in that they have no aliens, or dorks in jumpsuits with prosthetics on their nose-ridges. Nor does the spaceship in any way resemble a flying Sheraton Hotel.
A. [laughs] The thing I love about science fiction — future stuff, particularly — is the sense of being there. It's very important. And I'd seen a lot of shows with ships where they all tend to look like that —
Q. Nicely carpeted spaceships.
A. Exactly. That's why there's a toilet [on Serenity]. That's why there are ladders. That's why I'm obsessed with vertical space. I'm obsessed with the messiness of it. As much as "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" are old, weird uncles of this movie — and one of them may be the father, but we haven't gotten back the DNA test yet — "Alien," particularly the first one, also has significance. Because it gave a real sense of, "We live here. And this is where we eat, and this is where we sleep, and we climb up from here to here, and the vents run here." And that sense of the physical is another reason why I was doing the camerawork the way I did it — so you were not in that remove of, "AND NOW WE WILL ENACT THE DRAMA THAT EXISTS IN MY BIG JAR OF DRA-MA." It was, you know, "Everything here is beat-up and real and crappy, and you go up and you go down." Apart from the artificial gravity that one must inevitably have — because one doesn't want to make a floaty movie — the textured reality is there. I want to be on that ship, and I never felt like I was on those other ships. They were big, giant Sheratons.
Q. And you don't see a lot of science-fiction films lit by Clint Eastwood's cinematographer.
A. You know, how cool is Jack Green?
Q. How did you explain this to him?
A. I didn't really have to. He read the script; he got it; we talked; he got it. He knew there was a Western thing going on, but he also knew I wasn't looking to ape the Western — I was just looking for something that felt real and cobbled together with a lot of different palates. And the thing about Jack is: He can actually do any damned thing. You ask Jack for a certain thing, and he's got it in his repertoire. His druthers is to stay out of the way.
Q. He's probably the secret weapon that allows Eastwood to deliver all his movies on-time and under-budget.
A. Certainly. He's the reason we got to make a movie that looks — I think — a good deal more expensive than it was. He moves so fast, and he makes frames that I think are just as gorgeous as anything. But he doesn't announce, "JACK GREEN IN THE HOUSE!" — either on set or on film. He stays out of the way, and then he gives you stuff like that Shepherd Book/Mal scene — which, with three lights, is one of the prettiest things I've ever seen. He's not afraid of blacks, and neither am I, and that's a really important thing to me. He's not afraid of losing things, of keeping it a little sloppy. At the same time, he's very precise. And he moves faster than a lot of guys who are in TV. I can't say enough about Jack. And he's perfect for this because he's got a Western background, but he's done everything — and he's not turning this into a big-hat pastiche. Because when you say "space Western," a lot of people are gonna go, "RUN!!! JUST RUNNN!!!" To me, it is that to an extent, but it's more just a space adventure. I remember my father being very angry when people said that "Star Wars" was a Western. He'd say, "It's not a Western! It's a WWII flying-ace movie!"
Q. Mm-hm. It's "The Dambusters."
A. And of course it's a hundred different things — as is anything that feels new. But to me, it's perfectly logical, because you're out there in what is termed "the final frontier," and you're in the same situation that people were in when the final frontier was California: "We've got exactly this much cured meat, we've got exactly this many bullets, and we have no idea where we're heading." So it's not so much a question of genre, it's a question of the reality of the thing — and the fact that the Western was always an immigrant story, and you get to mish-mash all those cultures together. That's how we made this country, and that's how we're going to make every country from now on. So Jack is perfect for all of that, because he understands it all — he makes it all real. You still get your sci-fi jollies, but none of it feels like, you know, like there's a Theremin playing.
V. BETA-TESTING A MARKETING PLAN (and STICKING A PEN IN YOUR NECK)
Q. Now, Marc Schmuger and his Universal marketing team have really been using your film to beta-test a new way of marketing movies. Obviously, they can afford to do these sorts of experiments on your film. I'd love to hear your take on the specifics of that.
A. To me, the whole thing is fairly impressive. On the one hand, it's really nice, because I realized that they were saying, "The best thing we have to advertise your film is your film." And I thought, "Well, that's better than, 'We have to hide it until it opens and then run like bunnies.'" But at the beginning, when they first talked about showing it to the fans in a number of preview screenings that was, you know, pretty big —
Q. I think it was 65, wasn't it?
A. And that's not including the festivals. I think it'll end up having been shown about 75 times before it opens. I and a lot of people were a little scared: "What if we ring the dinner bell and the fans are all full?"
Q. Well, that and the movie heaps these Kobayashi Maru levels of abuse on the characters. I mean, fans are gonna go binary on that.
A. Some people might go, "Hey! Wait a minute! He took the sky! Where's my sky?" But, at the end of the day, what they [Universal] were trying to do.... They felt the fans — based on their experience of seeing them see the movie — weren't going to go, "Yawn! Well, we got our jollies and we're going to move on." They wanted to build the momentum with the idea that, "Oh, this is really something. And the noise that you guys are making could be heard elsewhere." And that was the thing. The fan base has been very loyal — and, I think, unprecedentedly involved. But it was really about the people who have no idea what "Serenity" is — or who could give a rat's ass — hearing these waves in the distance sort of heading towards them and going, "What is that?" And that was thinking two steps ahead of where I was thinking. And it seems to have worked. We've gotten some coverage in a lot of places that would not have given us the time of day. But it's still hard. I mean, the job that they were given — to sell a movie with a title that sounds vaguely Buddhist; that doesn't have an easily sellable premise; that doesn't have a single bankable star, unless you're a huge Alan Tudyk or Adam Baldwin fan like I am [laughs] — it was a hell of a thing for them to take on. And so they just said, "Well, we love it. They love it. Let's work with 'love.'"
Q. [laughs] What a novel idea for a marketing department.
A. Oh, yeah. I tell you, I've been pretty impressed. And they were always looking for things to do that were different. You know, the little Internet River bits.
Q. Yes! How did you enjoy gurgling with a pen in your neck?
A. You know? Uh, good times. And I'll be able to explain it all more when it's done. But that came not from Universal saying, "We have a marketing idea"; that came from Universal going, "What's weird? What's fresh? What's fun?" And me going, "I have a silly notion...." It was a chance to say, "We're gonna throw everything up there. We're just gonna keep coming at people from different angles." Because that's kind of what the movie does, and that's kind of what makes it interesting. So we're just gonna keep spreading out the mythos that this thing is built upon, so that even if somebody has no idea who anybody is, they know there's some body there — not something they missed, hopefully, but something that they can rely on — something that's been thought out, something with some weight.
VI. FLASHBACKS and 'ONE-ERS'
A. You said you've seen it with —
Q. I've seen it with the fans and the non-fans now.
A. You know, we spent a long time with this movie, in editing, getting it to a place where non-fans would be able to enjoy it. It was the hardest thing about it.
Q. I actually wanted to ask you about that. In the first 10 minutes of "Serenity," you manage to explain the entire premise of the show in three folding flashbacks and a long, single take that takes us on a tour of the entire ship and introduces all the characters. I just want to say: That must have been murderously hard to write.
A. Actually, not the hardest part. It was hard to structure. I sat down and said, "Now: I have to tell a story that I haven't told before, and explain it to people and not contradict stuff." Yeah, the task that I put before myself is one I hope never to put before myself again. [laughs] But once I figured out what I wanted to do, it made such incredibly perfect logical sense to do a narration that turns out to be a lecture that turns out to be a dream that turns out to be a holographic flashback, you know?


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8 posts tagged with archaeology and non_fiction_club.
Book: A Little History of Archaeology
What is archaeology? The word may bring to mind images of golden pharaohs and lost civilizations, or Neanderthal skulls and Ice Age cave art. Archaeology is all of these, but also far more: the only science to encompass the entire span of human history—more than three million years! This Little History tells the riveting stories of some of the great archaeologists and their amazing discoveries around the globe: ancient Egyptian tombs, Mayan ruins, the first colonial settlements at Jamestown, mysterious Stonehenge, the incredibly preserved Pompeii, and many, many more. In forty brief, exciting chapters, the book recounts archaeology's development from its eighteenth-century origins to its twenty-first-century technological advances, including remote sensing capabilities and satellite imagery techniques that have revolutionized the field. Shining light on the most intriguing events in the history of the field, this absolutely up-to-date book illuminates archaeology's controversies, discoveries, heroes and scoundrels, global sites, and newest methods for curious readers of every age.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on Jan 25, 2020 - 1 comment
Book: The Little Ice Age
The Little Ice Age tells the fascinating story of the turbulent, unpredictable, and often very cold years of modern European history. Using sources ranging from the dates of long-ago wine harvests and the business records of medieval monasteries to modern chemical analysis of ice cores, renowned archaeologist Brian Fagan reveals how a 500-year cold snap began in the fourteenth century. As Fagan shows, the increasingly cold and stormy weather dramatically altered fishing and farming practices, and it shaped familiar events, from Norse exploration to the settlement of North America, from the French Revolution to the Irish potato famine to the Industrial Revolution. Now updated with a new preface discussing the latest historical climate research, The Little Ice Age offers deeply important context for understanding today's age of global warming. As the Little Ice Age shows, climate change does not come in gentle, easy stages, and its influence on human life is profound.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on Jan 3, 2020 - 5 comments
Book: Cræft
Faced with an endless supply of mass-manufactured products, we find ourselves nostalgic for goods bearing the mark of authenticity―hand-made tools, local brews, and other objects produced by human hands. Archaeologist and medieval historian Alexander Langlands reaches as far back as the Neolithic period to recover our lost sense of craft, combining deep history with detailed scientific analyses and his own experiences making traditional crafts. Craft brims with vivid storytelling, rich descriptions of natural landscape, and delightful surprises that will convince us to introduce more craft into our lives.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on Nov 23, 2019 - 3 comments
Book: Built on Bones
Humans and their immediate ancestors were successful hunter-gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years, but in the last fifteen thousand years humans have gone from finding food to farming it, from seasonal camps to sprawling cities, from a few people to hordes. Drawing on her own fieldwork in the Mediterranean, Africa, Asia, and beyond, archeologist Brenna Hassett explores the long history of urbanization through revolutionary changes written into the bones of the people who lived it. For every major new lifestyle, another way of dying appeared. From the "cradle of civilization" in the ancient Near East to the dawn of agriculture on the American plains, skeletal remains and fossils show evidence of shorter lives, rotten teeth, and growth interrupted. The scarring on human skeletons reveals that getting too close to animals had some terrible consequences, but so did getting too close to too many other people. Each chapter of Built on Bones moves forward in time, discussing in depth humanity's great urban experiment. Hassett explains the diseases, plagues, epidemics, and physical dangers we have unwittingly unleashed upon ourselves throughout the urban past--and, as the world becomes increasingly urbanized, what the future holds for us. In a time when "Paleo" lifestyles are trendy and so many of us feel the pain of the city daily grind, this book asks the critical question: Was it worth it?
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on Oct 30, 2019 - 3 comments
Book: Paleofantasy
We evolved to eat berries rather than bagels, to live in mud huts rather than condos, to sprint barefoot rather than play football―or did we? Are our bodies and brains truly at odds with modern life? Although it may seem as though we have barely had time to shed our hunter-gatherer legacy, biologist Marlene Zuk reveals that the story is not so simple. Popular theories about how our ancestors lived―and why we should emulate them―are often based on speculation, not scientific evidence. [more inside]
Book: Women's Work
New discoveries about the textile arts reveal women's unexpectedly influential role in ancient societies. Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women. Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture. Elizabeth Wayland Barber has drawn from data gathered by the most sophisticated new archaeological methods—methods she herself helped to fashion.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on Sep 29, 2019 - 6 comments
Book: Fishing
In this history of fishing—not as sport but as sustenance—archaeologist and best-selling author Brian Fagan argues that fishing was an indispensable and often overlooked element in the growth of civilization. It sustainably provided enough food to allow cities, nations, and empires to grow, but it did so with a different emphasis. Where agriculture encouraged stability, fishing demanded movement. It frequently required a search for new and better fishing grounds; its technologies, centered on boats, facilitated movement and discovery; and fish themselves, when dried and salted, were the ideal food—lightweight, nutritious, and long-lasting—for traders, travelers, and conquering armies. This history of the long interaction of humans and seafood tours archaeological sites worldwide to show readers how fishing fed human settlement, rising social complexity, the development of cities, and ultimately the modern world.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on Sep 1, 2019 - 3 comments
Book: The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack
n his new book The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack, human paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall argues that a long tradition of "human exceptionalism" in paleoanthropology has distorted the picture of human evolution. Drawing partly on his own career—from young scientist in awe of his elders to crotchety elder statesman—Tattersall offers an idiosyncratic look at the competitive world of paleoanthropology, beginning with Charles Darwin 150 years ago, and continuing through the Leakey dynasty in Africa, and concluding with the latest astonishing findings in the Caucasus. [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on Jun 11, 2019 - 2 comments

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Demand for Discovery has always been strong in our home market; the New Discovery will build on this, offering customers the most complete all-round SUV package available anywhere today. The new vehicle takes absolutely everything that is great about Discovery from its design, its versatility, its go anywhere, do anything credentials and builds on them to make it better in every way. "Our retailers have been really excited to start talking about it; customer interest has exceeded all expectations already with a strong mix of new customers interested in the brand. With the addition of the Ingenium 2.0 litre engine, we're also looking forward to talking to more fleet and business users across the country.
New Discovery redefines the large SUV. Land Rover's design and engineering teams have revolutionised the Discovery DNA to create a highly desirable, extremely versatile and hugely capable premium SUV. We truly believe the result is a radical departure in design that will introduce the Discovery Family to a new, wider customer base.
Design creates an emotional connection between our customers and our vehicles. Our clear design strategy means our vehicles are instantly recognisable and communicate the values of Land Rover that our customers love. New Discovery's flawless volume and proportions, sophisticated surfaces and precise detailing beautifully combine with engineering integrity to create a premium SUV that will resonate with today's customers.
New Discovery combines a radical new exterior design with a highly versatile seven-seat interior. The result is a revolutionary family SUV that brings new levels of sophistication, desirability and capability to the Discovery family.
New Discovery looks very different but is still unmistakably a Discovery. Sophisticated surfaces and optimised proportions combine with beautiful detailing and enhanced precision to create a highly capable and versatile SUV with a more dynamic design than ever before.
At the front, New Discovery's sculpted surfaces, jewel-like headlamps and a faster windscreen angle break with Discovery tradition and the state-of-the-art daytime running lamps deliver a modern appearance with a distinctive new light signature.
In profile, the bodysides highlight the optimised volumes and proportions of New Discovery, while the wheelarch graphic echoes Discovery Sport with its distinctive castellations visually 'locking' the wheelarches to the vehicle body. The new form language features pronounced, yet smoothly contoured wheelarches, giving New Discovery a planted, more dynamic appearance.
New Discovery is available with optional adaptive LED headlamp technology. The jewel-like LED units provide a characterful lamp signature that closely follows the bold design previewed by the Discovery Vision Concept. On SE trim levels upwards, this includes distinctive daytime running lights with 'lightpipe' elements, which turn from white to amber when the directional-indicators are used.
An extensive choice of 17 different colourways is available for New Discovery: Namib Orange, Silicon Silver, Fuji White, Santorini Black, Corris Grey, Indus Silver, Loire Blue, Aintree Green, Firenze Red, Scotia Grey, Kaikoura Stone, Montalcino Red, Yulong White, Farallon Black, Waitomo Grey, Carpathian Grey and Aruba. The option of a Santorini Black or Corris Grey contrast roof provides added scope for personalisation*.
New Discovery's dramatic design represents a radical departure from previous models but retains established Discovery DNA. The trademark stepped roof and highly visible C-pillar are inspired by Discovery models of the past and distinguish the premium execution of New Discovery. The C-pillar design in particular gives the profile more drama and creates a design cue for the whole Discovery family.
Elegant side fender vents incorporate a horizontal, blade-like treatment that flows into the 'V'-grooved feature line, another strong cue of the Discovery family. While the tailgate design has changed, an asymmetric licence plate recess provides a visual link to Discoverys of the past while Land Rover's innovative new Powered Inner Tailgate delivers enhanced functionality.
New Discovery is a tour de force of modern design and quality materials, as well as a laser-like focus on the application of advanced technologies. Land Rover's design and engineering teams have produced a seven-seat interior that provides improved space and versatility by careful analysis and optimisation of every aspect of its design.
A wide choice of authentic material finishes are available throughout, from premium Windsor leather to Natural Shadow Oak veneer and the interior is available in a choice of five colourways***, from Ebony and Acorn to Nimbus, Vintage Tan and Glacier.
These high quality materials combine with the clever use of technology to deliver New Discovery's unique blend of design excellence and engineering integrity. This is best expressed by Land Rover's unique Intelligent Seat Fold function.
Even the humble 'curry hook' – introduced on the original Discovery – has been reinvented for New Discovery. The new push-operated design on the side of the transmission tunnel in the front passenger footwell sits flush with the surrounding surface. Pushing against its spring-loaded surround exposes the hook and, when released, tightly secures carrier bag handles to ensure the contents remain upright.
Further stowage solutions include double map pockets on the rear of the driver and front passenger seats while occupants travelling in the third row seats haven't been forgotten. Individual storage areas on top of the rear side panels are available with a USB charging point. Cupholders are located to the side of the seat cushions in row three.
New Discovery measures 4,970mm long, 2,220mm wide (mirrors out) and 1,846mm tall, making it 141mm longer but both narrower and lower than before. Its 2,923mm wheelbase has increased by 38mm, creating generous cabin space, while the compact design of the advanced integral-link rear suspension system minimises body intrusion.
Discovery's trademark stadium seating is accommodated by its distinctive stepped roof and ensures all passengers enjoy excellent forward visibility and comfort. The rearmost seats have been designed to accommodate 95th percentile adults (males 1.90m tall), so comfort is assured in every seat.
First Edition models are available in three striking exterior colour combinations and with two interior colourways, giving the very first customers a genuinely distinctive proposition. Bespoke details include aluminium interior trim on the facia and doors featuring an etched map motif in celebration of New Discovery's British design and engineering credentials.
New Discovery has been engineered to deliver customary best-in-class Land Rover all-terrain capability with enhanced on-road dynamics and heightened levels of refinement and comfort. A comprehensive suite of driver assistance features and towing and safety technologies provides outstanding customer convenience and peace of mind.
Once complete, Land Rover's engineers set about completing more than 35,000 individual tests across all components and systems using physical prototypes. This comprehensive programme involved taking New Discovery to the most unforgiving locations on earth, from the extreme heat and dust of the Middle East to the plummeting temperatures of the Arctic Circle. This punishing test and development schedule ensures New Discovery has the durability and capability to meet the requirements of the most demanding customers.
Nick Collins, New Discovery Vehicle Line Director, said: "Every new system has been developed for a reason, to enhance the ownership experience, delivering greater convenience and versatility for our customers."
Seats can be adjusted remotely using Land Rover's InControl Remote smartphone app technology, allowing customers to rearrange the seating layout before they reach the vehicle; for example from the checkout of a shop when purchasing large or bulky items.
If more space is needed for even larger, bulkier items, folding the row two seats provides up to 2,406-litres of carrying capacity. With all seven seats in place, the loadspace available is still a useful 258 litres – enough to carry a golf bag or as many as three cabin bags.
This is demonstrated by the new single-piece tailgate design, which replaces the previous horizontally split configuration introduced with the arrival of the third generation Discovery in 2004. The original 1989 Discovery featured a side-hinged rear door, so this aspect has constantly evolved to meet customers' changing demands.
New Discovery's single-piece tailgate is the ultimate 21st Century solution for modern families. When open it provides a wider aperture than before and improved shelter, affording greater protection against the elements for owners when using the load area at outdoor events or loading the shopping. To ensure customers are still able to enjoy all the benefits provided by the previous split tailgate, Land Rover's has developed the new Powered Inner Tailgate.
This neat innovation incorporates an additional fold-down section that deploys when the tailgate is opened. The deployed 285mm long tailgate serves as impromptu event seating and is able to support a maximum load of 300kg, making it the perfect place to enjoy a tailgate picnic or to change out of muddy boots – all under the shelter of the tailgate.
Designed as a durable wristband to be worn during outdoor activities, the Activity Key is activated by holding the wristband up to the 'D' in the rear Discovery badge. This locks the vehicle and disables the conventional keys, which can be left safely inside the vehicle.
The intuitive infotainment system delivers enhanced ease-of-use and faster processing and also features 'Dual View' technology and digital television capability, along with all other entertainment functions and provides access to the satellite navigation, heating and vehicle controls.
For enhanced connectivity InControl Touch Pro Services includes 3G WiFi connectivity for up to eight devices. InControl Apps also allows owners to use selected apps from their smartphone on New Discovery's 10-inch touchscreen, while Bluetooth is standard throughout the range.
In addition, the enhanced set-up provides updated satellite navigation functions, including door-to-door routing. The complete navigation solution will direct customers on the final part of their journey on foot via their smartphone. Another new function is Commute Mode. This intelligent feature 'learns' common routes, for example the daily commute, and advises the optimum route dependent on live traffic data without a destination being entered manually by the driver. A live ETA function can inform friends and colleagues of the driver's whereabouts and automatically send updates with accurate arrival times.
The vehicle returns to its automatic ride height or the height manually selected by the driver when pulling away. This thoughtful feature preserves New Discovery's trademark Command Driving Position, without compromising ease of use.
Land Rover's innovative aluminium full-sized SUV platform provides the perfect basis for New Discovery, delivering a lightweight but durable architecture that contributes to lower CO2 emissions and improved fuel economy, as well as enhancing its dynamic abilities.
This lightweight monocoque body construction is made up of 85% aluminium – 43% recycled – and is a significant 480kg lighter than before.
As well as improving strength and efficiency, the aluminium structure has been key to providing enhanced sustainability, with up to 50 percent of the sheet aluminium used in New Discovery's body manufactured from recycled aluminium.
New Discovery is powered by a selection of Jaguar Land Rover's efficient four- and six-cylinder diesel and petrol engines. Leading the way is the 2.0-litre Ingenium diesel powerplant, which delivers enhanced fuel economy and CO2 emissions without sacrificing the strong torque output customers expect from vehicles wearing the Discovery badge.
The introduction of Land Rover's award-winning Ingenium diesel engines ensures New Discovery offers highly competitive emissions.
With 240PS and 500Nm of torque the new Sd4 powerplant delivers strong performance, powering New Discovery from 0-100km/h in 8.3 seconds (0-60mph in 8.0 seconds) – with comparable performance compared to the outgoing Discovery 3.0-litre V6 diesel. Despite this hike, the new four-cylinder unit provides competitive CO2 emissions of 171g/km and is capable of 43.5mpg.
New Discovery is also available with a powerful 258PS 3.0-litre V6 diesel engine, badged Td6. The single-turbo engine features low-pressure exhaust recirculation, a two-stage oil pump and revised fuel-injector nozzle for improved responses, refinement and efficiency.
The 258PS engine delivers stronger performance than before and the benchmark 0-100km/h sprint takes only 8.1 seconds (0-60mph in 7.7 seconds) – a reduction of 1.3 seconds. With a significant 600Nm of torque on offer, the new Td6 diesel delivers relaxed cruising refinement and towering all-terrain capability.
Land Rover's advanced supercharged 3.0-litre V6 engine is an impressive performer. The 340PS Si6 engine develops 450Nm of torque and powers New Discovery from 0-100km/h in 7.1 seconds (0-60mph in 6.9 seconds).
All engines are fitted with a ZF eight-speed automatic gearbox, which has been engineered by Land Rover's powertrain experts to combine smooth shifts with sharp responses and optimised fuel efficiency.
Away from congested city streets and motorways, New Discovery's peerless all-terrain ability makes it one of the most capable vehicles ever to wear a Land Rover badge. Its class-leading combination of approach, departure and break-over angles, wading depth and ground clearance – augmented by a suite of innovative technologies – ensures it remains the class-leader when faced with the toughest all-terrain environments.
New Discovery is the ultimate family companion, delivering unrivalled long-haul comfort for seven people and a confidence-inspiring environment for the driver thanks to its raised Command Driving Position, simple controls and enhanced chassis technology.
A series of additional technologies support New Discovery's dynamics at the same time as enhancing safety. Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) has been enhanced to ensure New Discovery corners with greater confidence and security by monitoring all four wheels to detect and counteract understeer and oversteer. If detected, the intelligent system applies a braking force to the inside wheels to help tighten the cornering trajectory of the vehicle and reduces engine torque to help the driver maintain their desired path. This latest-generation system has enhanced understeer control, which applies braking to all four wheels to reduce vehicle speed and regain control more effectively.
New Discovery also features the latest version of Land Rover's Electric Power-Assisted Steering (EPAS) technology. The carefully calibrated variable ratio system provides a more natural and responsive steering feel, remaining easy to manoeuvre at low speeds and offering a more surefooted feel at higher cruising speeds.
The latest EPAS system also supports New Discovery's Terrain Response 2 function by varying the steering feedback depending on the friction level of the road surface. The adoption of EPAS has also allowed Land Rover's engineers to provide Park Assist technology, which takes the stress out of tricky parking manoeuvres for the first time on Discovery.
New Discovery's suspension is designed to optimise on-road dynamics, yet its outstanding geometry and wheel articulation of 500mm, aided by advanced air suspension, gives customers even greater confidence and capability when negotiating arduous and undulating surfaces.
The two-speed fully synchronised 'shift on the move' system allows the driver to swap between high and low ratios without having to stop the vehicle, at speeds of up to 60km/h (37mph).
Following its introduction on Range Rover Evoque, New Discovery is fitted with Land Rover's innovative All-Terrain Progress Control technology (ATPC).
New Discovery is fitted with Land Rover's next-generation Terrain Response 2 technology, which automatically monitors the driving conditions to ensure the vehicle is primed to cope with a range of surfaces; General driving; Grass, Gravel and Snow; Mud and Ruts; Sand; and Rock Crawl.
Land Rover's four-corner air suspension system not only improves ride quality when driving on-road but also provides greater capability when off-roading.
Complimenting New Discovery's optimised geometry and packaging is a suite of advanced all-terrain technologies. So whether drivers are faced with a snow-covered public road or towing a horsebox across a muddy field, New Discovery will maintain its composure.
New Discovery has been fitted with advanced semi-autonomous technology to make the task of towing a trailer or horsebox as safe and simple as possible. Paired with the vehicle's class-leading towing capacity of up to 3,500kg, this technology makes New Discovery the most capable tow vehicle in its class.
The industry-first Trailer Light Test feature is another example of technology enhancing convenience. It allows customers to test their trailer lights without outside assistance, pulsing them while standing outside the vehicle. The system can be activated with a button in the load area or by using the vehicle's main touchscreen.
New Discovery is the first of the family to be offered with an Electrically Deployable Towbar, which is activated using a button in the load area or, once again, from the driver's seat using the central touchscreen. Meanwhile, Rear Height Adjust allows the driver to lower and raise the height of the rear of the vehicle using the key fob or switches in the luggage compartment to make hitching a trailer simpler than ever and make it easier for dogs to jump into the back.
New Discovery features the company's Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) system, as debuted on Discovery Sport, but includes a new pedestrian detection system that detect adult or child pedestrians, as well as other vehicles in the road and apply the brakes to stop the vehicle quickly and safely.
Vehicles fitted with Adaptive Cruise Control also come with Advanced Emergency Brake Assist and Intelligent Emergency Braking (IEB). Using the vehicle's forward facing radar, AEB detects and monitors any vehicles that are moving in the same direction.
If the vehicle ahead suddenly brakes, the driver is alerted to a possible collision. When the system detects that the driver hasn't slowed it will gently and automatically apply the brakes. If a collision is imminent, the system will apply the same pressure as in an emergency braking situation.
Engine Drag torque Control (EDC) ensures the wheels don't lock up during engine braking in slippery conditions by sending increased torque to affected wheels.
Blind Spot Monitor uses rear-facing side-mounted radar sensors to check for vehicles within the vehicle's blind spots. The advanced set-up alerts the driver with a warning light in the corresponding wing mirror.
For New Discovery Blind Spot Monitor also includes Closing Vehicle Sensing, which provides added peace of mind on multi-lane roads. The system scans for fast approaching vehicles further behind and alerts the driver they risk a collision if they were to move into the path of an approaching vehicle in an adjacent lane.
§ Adaptive Cruise Control maintains a preset speed and automatically adjusts to maintain a pre-determined distance from vehicles in front. It is also able to come to a complete stop when in traffic.
Intelligent Speed Limiter uses the Traffic Sign Recognition and GPS systems to identify speed limits and reduce the vehicle's speed. The driver is not able to exceed this limit, unless they cancel the function, and the system will use engine braking to slow the vehicle appropriately.
New Discovery is manufactured at Jaguar Land Rover's Solihull production facility in the West Midlands, UK, alongside Range Rover and Range Rover Sport.
The facility houses Europe's largest aluminium body shop and final assembly hall – collectively the size of 22 football pitches – showcasing the Jaguar Land Rover's pioneering leadership in the construction of aluminium vehicles like New Discovery.
This Solihull facility has been a key part of Jaguar Land Rover's commitment to increased sustainability. The innovative close-looped system reuses surplus high-grade aluminium from the sheet stamping process within the supply chain. In this way, up to 50 per cent of all sheet aluminium used in New Discovery is manufactured from recycled material.
The introduction of Jaguar Land Rover's efficient Ingenium engines showcases the British design and engineering expertise at the heart of New Discovery. The advanced powerplants are produced at the modern Engine Manufacturing Centre in Wolverhampton, UK.
At full capacity 1,400 people are employed at the 100,000m2 site and the strong focus on sustainability is evidenced by the 21,000 solar panels covering its roof (the largest such installation in the UK). The renewable energy source can generate more than 30 per cent of the plant's total energy requirements.


It's become increasingly clear that what matters most in web acquisitions is what happens after the acquisition, not before.
The small news that personal profile service About.me struck a partnership with Moo.com to let users print business cards for free is actually a big deal from the perspective of how big companies do M&A, because About.me got acquired by AOL recently. It's actually quite rare for "acq-hires" like About.me to come out with cool, innovative features like that.
And it's a good sign for AOL.
The way your previous acquisitions work out are a huge signal to the startups you may need to acquire in the future.
The last point may be the most important and the most overlooked. Given how fast the internet ecosystem moves, being considered a good acquirer is a tremendous competitive advantage for a company, not just because of the acquisition it makes but because of the acquisitions it can make.
For talent acquisitions, ("acq-hires") give the new team responsibilities and a wide berth. The latter may actually be more important. As stated above, tech entrepreneurs are allergic to bureaucracy. If you buy their company and give them control of a business unit where they can achieve their mission, but they have to spend half their time in meetings justifying what they'll do, they'll leave. And you won't just lose out on the business and the person you spent X millions to come work for you, you'll lose out on future acquisitions.
For strategic acquisitions, let the new operation run independently if at all possible. "Synergies", on the web even more so than in real life, are always elusive. Relentless execution by motivated executives is what matters.
It's crucial, and a look at the biggest acquirers in tech will show why.
AOL has been a great acquirer of late. Things seem to be going well at About.me so far. TechCrunch, another AOL acquisition, seems to be doing well, despite founder Michael Arrington's heroic efforts to antagonize his parent. Most importantly, the Huffington Post, the new AOL's biggest acquisition to date, seems like it's doing very well: it's very clear that Arianna Huffington is in charge of AOL's media strategy and that the goal of the acquisition is not just to let HuffPo run independently but to "HuffPo-ize" AOL's media properties. If they can execute, the acquisition promises to be a big winner. More importantly, it means that founders will be less reluctant to sell to AOL in the future.
Facebook is a great talent acquirer. Facebook goes to great pains to make sure that the entrepreneurs it acq-hires have big responsibilities at Facebook -- and to show the world that they do. Perhaps the best example is FriendFeed co-founder and CEO Bret Taylor, who is now CTO of Facebook.
Google has had some great successes and failures in acquisitions, and is working to right that. Google has made some outstanding acquisitions: Android, YouTube, DoubleClick. But it has also let plenty of great projects die on the vine, and it's coming back to haunt them. Twitter and Foursquare, which can be big threats to Google and could help them tremendously with its social strategy, have both been co-founded and are run by Google alumni who have seen their previous startups be neglected at Google and now are resisting being absorbed by the tech giant. Larry Page's massive recent re-org of the company, making divisions more independent, is designed at least in part to make the company more palatable to potential acquisitions.
Apple is a bit of an exception. Apple is a pretty successful acquirer, only making very carefully considered moves. And this is despite tightly integrating the companies it acquires. But it seems that most entrepreneurs who stay to Apple stick around. We guess the basic reason is that if you're bought by Apple you know that everything you and your company do is going to subsumed into Apple's overarching product strategy, so you know what you're getting into when you sign up. There's less of an unpleasant surprise than with, say, Google buying Blogger and then doing nothing with it while Tumblr grows like gangbusters.
Amazon is the best acquirer in the tech industry by far. Amazon buys companies and lets them run independently. The great example is Zappos, which is almost completely independent. Another great example is IMDB, which is run by the same guy out of the same home office in rural England since the company was acquired by Amazon in 1998. It's one of the most unspoken of Amazon's competitive advantages.
Yahoo, meanwhile, shows what not to do. Flickr is described by insiders as marred by bureaucracy, which prevented it from pursuing the mobile photo sharing opportunity that plenty of startups like Instagram, Path and Color are going after. Delicious, a small but beloved service with an active userbase, is now a basket case. And Yahoo shows that it's not just those wasted opportunities it's paying for. Yahoo actively pursued Foursquare. That acquisition would have given it great cachet and a tremendous shot at pursuing mobile, where arch-rival Google is dominating and Yahoo is nowhere. But at the end of the day, Dennis Crowley didn't go for it despite being offered $100+ million just a year after starting up, because he knew his baby would get bogged down into bureaucracy and whither like Flickr.
Bottomline: M&A matters. Doing it right matters. But what matters most isn't the actual acquisition. It's what you do after it.


REPORTER: What do you say to Michelle Obama who says she will never forgive you for your birther comments in the past?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Oh, Michelle Obama said that? I haven't seen it. I guess she wrote a book. She got paid a lot of money to write a book. And they always insist that you come up with controversial.
Well, I'll give you a little controversy back: I'll never forgive him for what he did to our United States military by not funding it properly. It was depleted. Everything was old and tired. And I came in, and I had to fix it. And I'm in the process of spending tremendous amounts of money. So I'll never forgive him for what he did to our military. I'll never forgive him for what he did in many other ways, which I'll talk to you about in the future.


I recently retuned a Richter major harmonica to double harmonic scale. With that kind of tuning, I get a very exotic middle eastern sound somehow similar to Lee Oskar Minor Harmonic, but with more bright major-ish chords. With that kind of tuning, I can easily play Misirlou (theme from Pulp Fiction, which is originally middle eastern folk song). I can also play arab music and flamenco music.
Here's a chart of my modified A major harp. If you compare it to orignal layout, you can see that some draw reeds must be lowered of one semitone.
Last edited by UdovisDevoh on Sat Feb 23, 2019 7:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Looks very interesting and worth a try.
Quite easy to retune, just the B down to Bb and the F# down to F, at least 5 reeds altogether.
I like mideastern music and flamenco etc.
Yes, exactly 5 draw reeds. I might post a video showing what that kind of tuning can do.
You might want to consider retuning 2 draw two semitones down, from E to D, as the E is already represented at 3 blow, and it would make the chord on the draw notes more consistent, Bb7 ( Bb | D | F | G# ).
Thank you for your feedback! Yes, that would make sense. It would be something similar to the transformation applied to convert to paddy richter, but on 2 draw instead of 3 blow.
I just added a video in my original post.


text:
Home World Events Politics Anne-Marie Brady Hits Back at Chinese Ambassador's Claims
World EventsPolitics
Anne-Marie Brady Hits Back at Chinese Ambassador's Claims
Anne Marie Brady slammed the Chinese ambassador's accusations. (Image: YouTube/Screenshot)
Anne-Marie Brady is a professor of politics at Canterbury University in New Zealand and a well-respected expert on China. Her fearless criticism of Beijing's aggressive and domineering policies has made her a threat in the eyes of the Communist Party. In early 2018, several pro-China thugs broke into Brady's home. Chinese Ambassador to New Zealand Wu Xi dismissed her claim that she was being targeted by the communist regime. In an interview with News Hub, Brady bit back at the ambassador.
Targeted by China
The ambassador's dismissal was based on the fact that the New Zealand police had never found anything to link the break-in with the Chinese government. He also said that no one from the Chinese embassy was questioned by the NZ police. Wu went on to accuse Brady of self-promotion, signaling that she was lying in order to become famous. In response, Brady has stated that the police investigation is ongoing and has not been closed.
"The police report on the burglaries at my house and two office break-ins released in February 2019 was open-ended and did not clear China — or any suspect… With regard to the Ambassador's claim that the police and SIS engaged in a one-year burglary investigation because I was 'self-promoting', that is ludicrous… The police and SIS would not have devoted so many resources… unless they believed there were a genuine security concern and case to investigate," Brady said to News Hub.
According to Brady, officials from China's Ministry of State Security have visited even her close associates. Canterbury University had to hire a security consultant specifically to protect her office from future break-ins. For Brady, who has studied China's intimidation tactics for years, Beijing's plans to silence her feel kind of ironical.
Canterbury University had to hire a security consultant to protect Brady's office. (Image: pxhere / CC0 1.0)
Despite Beijing's best efforts, Brady hasn't allowed any Chinese intimidation to scare her off from exposing the Communist Party. "My main job is to look after myself and keep doing what I'm doing because it must surely matter if so much attention has been directed at me… I know the research I do is valued by our government, and my courage in speaking up is valued as well," she said to The Guardian.
Naval ship in New Zealand
A Chinese Naval vessel, the Qi Jiuang, recently spent five days in the New Zealand capital of Wellington. It carried 500 cadets onboard, making everyone wonder why the vessel was in New Zealand. According to Chinese media reports, one of the aims was to conduct a "Freedom of Navigation" exercise in Cook Strait. Brady is interested in knowing how much the New Zealand government knew about the activities of a Chinese Naval ship in their backyard.
"Surely they were notified because they were hosting the port visit, the New Zealand government was hosting it, they had to have been asked for permission for the boat to dock. And the boat must have met our anti-nuclear legislation requirements, so there would have been reporting there. But did they know also that the boat was especially coming to practice sailing in our internal waterway the Cook Strait," she said to RNZ.
A Chinese naval ship sailed through New Zealand's Cook Strait. (Image: U.S. Navy Via Flickr/ CC0 Public Domain)
Anna Powles, a senior lecturer in security studies at Massey University, believes that such visits by Chinese naval ships will increase in the future. She warns that governments need to keep an eye out on Chinese activities in the Antarctic waters and the Southern Ocean.
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text:
Q: thousands separator input type number in react (JSX) I would like to keep the <input type="number" />. All the solutions I have seen want the input type to be text.
I have a form where users type a number (a dollar amount) and want the input to be for example 120,000 rather than 12000 as they are typing.
<input
  type="number"
  min="80000"
  max="2000000"
  step="1"
  value={borrowAmount}
  placeholder="value"
  onChange={e => setBorrowAmount(e.target.value)}
/>;

A: Have you tried react-number-format? It can add thousands separators nicely.
<NumberFormat
  thousandSeparator={true}
  prefix={'$'}
  value={123456789}
  isAllowed={(values) => {
    const {floatValue} = values;
    return floatValue >= 5 &&  floatValue <= 10000;
  }}
/>

The onValueChange handler returns an object like this:
{
  "formattedValue": "$123,456,789",
  "value": "123456789",
  "floatValue": 123456789
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


The latest version of my Ear Trainer includes random melody generation! This new feature is a great way to strengthen your ability to play by ear. See the updated "exercises" section for more details.
I have several additions and improvements in mind for future versions, but with this recent version I'm finally pleased with its overall feature set.
I should also mention that it is only *lightly* tested at this point. While there are some oddities that I do know about, I think it should be fairly stable. If you happen to find something that simply doesn't work, please let me know.


text:
Women and 1916
Mondays at the Mess
Festival of History 2018
Blog and Podcasts
Richmond Barracks – One Year Open
It is hard to believe it's a full year since we opened our doors on May 2nd 2016. That day of course, the centenary of the first courts martial of the leaders of the Easter Rising held here in Richmond Barracks.:
On Tuesday morning May 2nd 1916, Piaras Beaslai, Eamon Duggan and Joseph Mc Guinness were taken from their room in Richmond Barracks. They waited on the grass plot directly in front of the officers quarters, the building where their courts martial would eventually take place. Patrick Pearse, Thomas Mc Donagh and Tom Clarke joined them and all six men were taken into the hallway of the officers quarters. In the small rooms, barely able to accommodate those present, their courts martial began.
"At their trials, the prisoners were not legally represented or permitted to give evidence on their own behalf. They did not have access to the rules under which the trials were being held. The trials were held in camera; no press, lawyers or public were admitted. Most trials appear to have lasted less than 20 minutes.
None of the officers conducting these trials had legal qualifications and there was no judge advocate to give legal rulings or a summing up. 90 death sentences were passed, 15 were carried out." (National Archives)
Richmond Barracks
Cherishing All Our Histories
A Dublin City Council - Community Partnership
to Restore and Commemorate the Heritage of Richmond Barracks
Richmond Barracks, off Bulfin Rd, Inchicore
richmondbarracks@dublincity.ie | +353 1-222 8400 | map
© 2016 Richmond Barracks
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text:
<?php
namespace Czim\PxlCms\Translatable;

/**
 * Extension / Decorator for dimsav/laravel-translatable
 */
trait Translatable
{
    use \Dimsav\Translatable\Translatable {
        getLocaleKey as DimsavGetLocaleKey;
        getRelationKey as DimsavGetRelationKey;
        getNewTranslation as DimsavGetNewTranslation;
        getTranslationByLocaleKey as DimsavGetTranslationByLocaleKey;
    }

    /**
     * @return string
     */
    public function getLocaleKey()
    {
        return $this->localeKey ?: config('pxlcms.translatable.locale_key', 'language_id');
    }

    /**
     * Override to use the cms's standard for a foreign key as 'entry_id'
     *
     * @return string
     */
    public function getRelationKey()
    {
        return config('pxlcms.translatable.translation_foreign_key') ?: $this->getForeignKey();
    }

    /**
     * Override to convert locale into language_id
     *
     * @param string $key
     */
    private function getTranslationByLocaleKey($key)
    {
        $key = $this->lookUpLanguageIdForLocale($key);

        return $this->DimsavGetTranslationByLocaleKey($key);
    }

    /**
     * Override to convert locale into language_id
     *
     * @param string $locale
     * @return \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model
     */
    public function getNewTranslation($locale)
    {
        $locale = $this->lookUpLanguageIdForLocale($locale);

        return $this->DimsavGetNewTranslation($locale);
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Watch what Weebly Users have to say about us. They were so happy with our products and support that they created videos sharing their success stories with you.
They have not been compensated or paid in any way for their testimonies. They're just happy customers!


Stainless Steel Brake Corporation offers the Prop-Block, an adjustable proportioning valve and distribution block all-in-one. It simplifies your brake plumbing! An adjustable proportioning valve regulates rear brake pressure, helping to maintain correct brake bias between front and rear brakes. The easy to turn handle with directional arrows makes it simple to either increase or decrease rear brake pressure.
Designed for dual bowl master cylinders, the distribution block connects to the master cylinder and distributes brake fluid to all four wheels. It includes 2 inlets from the master cylinder, 2 outlets to the front brakes and 1 outlet to the rear brakes. Included with the Prop-Block are 5 stainless steel 3/16 in. fittings, as well as a wiring pigtail for rear brake light switch. It features a black anodized finish and is designed to accept 3/16" brake lines.
Also available from Stainless Steel Brake Corporation are residual valves. These are a great addition to any disc brake system where the master cylinder is lower than the calipers! A 2 lb residual valve is available for disc brake applications, while a 10 lb valve is available to handle drum brake applications.


text:
Jimmy Kimmel Will Host the 2017 Academy Awards
Britt Hayes Published: December 5, 2016
Not long after setting Mike DeLuca and Jennifer Todd as showrunners, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has officially selected the host of the 2017 Oscars telecast. Drumroll please…oh, forget it, you saw the headline. It's Jimmy Kimmel, comedian, host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! and, most importantly, the guy who brought you celebrities reading mean tweets about themselves for your entertainment.
Per Variety, Kimmel has been officially selected as the host of the 89th annual Academy Awards, set to air on February 26, 2017 — on ABC, which also just so happens to be the home of Kimmel's late night talk show. It probably goes without saying that the upcoming Academy Awards show will feature a Very Special Installment of Mean Tweets, right? And though it was once difficult to imagine the great Meryl Streep reading cruel internet comments about herself on live television, this was the very awards show that gave us Meryl eating pizza, courtesy of Ellen DeGeneres, so anything is possible.
This is Kimmel's first time hosting the Oscars; the talk show host's previous awards show hosting gigs include the 2012 and 2016 Emmy Awards, the 2007 ESPYs and the American Music Awards — the latter of which he's presented five times.
A couple of weeks back, the Academy tapped three-time Oscar-nominated producer Mike DeLuca (The Social Network, Moneyball) and Emmy-nominated producer Jennifer Todd (whose credits also include the upcoming Live by Night) to produce the 89th annual awards show.
Source: Jimmy Kimmel Will Host the 2017 Academy Awards
Filed Under: jimmy kimmel, Oscars
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2016 Oscar Winners: See the Complete List!
Here Is Every Black Actor Who Has Won an Academy Award


text:
<?php
/**
 * @package Dao_Exception
 * @author Jay Zeng (jayzeng@jay-zeng.com)
 * @version 0.1
 */
namespace Dao\Exception;

/**
 * @package Dao_Exception
 */
interface DbExceptionInterface
{
    /**
     * Returns detailed information about the exception
     *
     * @return String
     */
     public function getDetails();
}


text:
Nigeria—Payment Models for Emergency Transport Schemes (METS)
Client: MacArthur Foundation
Solutions: Global Health
One of the significant factors in reducing maternal mortality and morbidity in northern Nigeria is being able to access to emergency obstetric care services in a timely way. The team from the Payment Models for Emergency Transport Schemes for Obstetric Emergencies in northern Nigeria (METS) progamme tested how different incentives packages affected the performance and motivation of drivers involved in Emergency Transport Schemes in four states.
Funded by a MacArthur Foundation grant, this two-year pilot was designed as an implementation research initiative, and aimed to generate evidence in support of an appropriately funded maternal health emergency transport policy.
The incentives tested ranged from fuel vouchers, free vehicle servicing vouchers, and cash vouchers linked to distances traveled. The incentives, both cash and in-kind, were associated with higher performance among drivers. The average cost of the incentives per safe delivery or maternal death averted was $9.33. If the women's families had paid for these trips, the average cost would have been much higher at between $30 and $49, depending on the state.
METS covered four states in northern Nigeria (Jigawa, Zamfara, Yobe and Katsina) and was implemented alongside HPI's Partnership for Reviving Routine Immunisation in Northern Nigeria and Maternal Newborn and Child Health (PRRINN-MNCH) programmes which ran in the same four states, providing additional value for money.
Swaziland—Strengthening Public Health Governance and Management Systems
We supported the Swaziland Ministry of Health in the implementation of the government's institutional and management reform initiatives.


Gun oil There are 2 products.
Heavy-duty PRECISION OIL temperature range -40 ° C to + 200 ° C Outstanding lubricant in areas with tight tolerances, z. As in the ejector pins in injection molding machines, assembly machines help with installation to prevent jamming in the startup phase. For the care of precision tools and gun oil ideal.


Discovering a space-time portal, Will travels to a haunted castle in Scotland. Once there, the Robinson boy is greeted by Hamish (Sean McClory)—a bag-piping ghost whose Uncle Angus, a horrifying creature, lives in a swamp. Although Major West manages to reopen the portal and rescue Will, an uninvited guest follows him through the dimensional gateway.
"The Astral Traveler" contains all the elements of a captivating ghost story: dungeons, torture chambers, and wailing noises that could chill even the toughest of horror movie enthusiasts. That being said, the eerie tropes featured in Carey Wilber's narrative are never strung together in a coherent, semi-plausible fashion.
Upon arriving on Earth, Will finds himself surrounded by props and devices of a ghoulish variety. Immediately thereafter, a monster covered in seaweed emerges from a body of water, startling the young lad with a ghastly cry—a terrifying sequence that will appeal to those who enjoy the subtle, creepy classics produced by Universal Studios during the 1930s.
While exploring a cave with Dr. Smith, Will encounters a revolving door that leads directly to Earth. Though likely a result of budgetary constraints, the use of an actual door to represent a temporal anomaly weakens the (already somewhat dubious) credibility of this episode.
Similar to "Catspaw" (the Star Trek Halloween special), "The Astral Traveler" employs gothic material in a science fiction setting—a rare combination that may intrigue fans of the sci-fi/horror crossover genre. It should be noted, however, that the futuristic themes of Lost in Space are blended poorly with the Earth-bound portion of Wilber's aforementioned narrative; specifically, viewers may question why the dimensional rift teleports Will to his home world—one planet out of countless billions—instead of another location in the galaxy.
By sparing Dr. Smith's life and suffering the consequences of doing so, Hamish—an otherwise goofy, one-dimensional character—sets a noble example for the audience to follow.
For those in search of a delightful treat to view during Halloween season, "The Astral Traveler" will not disappoint. Nevertheless, this offering deserves criticism for its muddled, if not thoroughly nonsensical, direction.
I still hope to make lots of comments in the future on all of these, from my very favorite all-time series..
My very favorite colored episode of the series is about as elite as you can get in color, I suppose. As for me, there is not a thing to dislike about this one, except for maybe Professor Robinson missing. Use of cast was never a factor with me though.
I love the dimensional concept and the uniqueness of this great (and final) Carey Wilber story. I love the spookiness and setting of it. Uncle Angus is classic. I love the extremely well done and moving final scene. Yes, this one had the best ending of any colored episode..always a big factor with me..
Jim, Professor Robinson was in the episode, but he didn't visit the castle — only Will and Dr. Smith went there.
One of the better season 2 episodes. My other favorites are Trip Through The Robot, Prisoners Of Space, and Wreck Of The Robot. The castle part when Will first teleports and the creepy sets and props. Scared the hell out of me when I first saw it as a kid. Angus and his scream echoing while walking through the corridors. Then the rattling of chains, and the ghost of the prisoner on the way to be executing.
I've been a fan of Lost In Space for 45 years. Thanks to the BluRay set I recently watched this episode with my grandkids and they loved it so much we watched it twice. It really warms my heart to sit back and watch the series again, and watching it with my grandkids makes it all the more enjoyable.


text:
CHRISTMAS FAIERY
Sam Faiers slammed for 'vulgar display of wealth' by disgusted fans after pictures show her 'over the top' Christmas
Mary Gallagher
Updated: 13 Dec 2019, 21:02
SAM Faiers has been slammed for her "vulgar display of wealth" and "over the top" Christmas decorations on Instagram.
The Mummy Diaries star transformed her dining room into a festive wonderland - but faced a huge backlash from angry fans.
Sam Faiers slammed for 'vulgar display of wealth' by disgusted fans after pictures show her 'over the top' Christmas
The unexpected reaction came after Sam asked her followers to donate money to orphans before she posted her lavish Christmas decorations.
Dozens of helium balloons, plastic candy canes, mini Santas and blow up stars covered her wall and ceiling, with a giant floral wreath laid across a table.
A large toy soldier stood by the wall, beside a sign that said 'Christmas by the Knightley's'.
One person summed up their thoughts beneath her post, writing: "One minute you're going to visit orphans, next minute you're shoving your wealth down everyone's throats. Distasteful."
Sam Faiers stars in The Mummy DiariesCredit: The Mega Agency
The reality star has shared photos of her home, including candy canes, santa balloons, gingerbread men and toy soldiers
Another person said in a lengthy rant: "I can't quite piece together how you would go from seeing children in dire situations who don't even have the basics and say that you are humbled, yet not a few weeks later you are splashing your wealth across social media.
"There are so many families that won't even have a tree this Christmas.
"I don't doubt you work extremely hard to earn what you do and spend your money however you want but why does it need to be plastered on social media? A little strange to go from one extreme to the other."
And one more typed: "This is amazing and total goals but I can't help but think there's some people who could feed a full family Xmas on the amount spent on this, at least 10 times over. Hope whatever can be gets donated to those less fortunate."
The table decorations included name plaques
Other followers were concerned what she had planned to do with the decorations after Christmas.
Another follower wrote: "Do you ever consider the environment?"
One more grumbled: "It's very beautiful but so much on your carbon footprint, this is a lot to go into landfill, particularly if it's bespoke"
And another said: "Those helium balloons never decompose they will exist for like 10,000+ years."
Sam shared videos from her extraordinary display
The over the top decorations included a kids play house at the end of the room
A wreath covered the table and trailed along the floor
However, other fans loved her efforts, with Lydia Bright's mum Debbie writing: "I absolutely love it."
Louisa Zissman added: "I've taught you to be the next best extra person I know"
And Love Island's Francesca Allen said: "I can't wait to come round"
Sam and her sister Billie Faiers found fame on TowieCredit: PA
Sam appeared in the very first episode of reality TV show The Only Way Is Essex.
She soon became a household name especially after her sister joined her on the show in the second series.
In March 2014, Sam announced she was leaving the show at the end of the eleventh series due to a lack of storylines, and to focus more on her personal life, after meeting future fiance Paul Knightley.
Sam is engaged to the father of her kids, Paul KnightleyCredit: Rex Features


text:
Smart Lock Maker August Home Acquired by ASSA ABLOY
by Christopher Baugh – Thu, October 19, 2017
Swedish lock giant ASSA ABLOY has signed an agreement to acquire San Francisco-based August Home, a provider of smart-home access products and services like smart locks and doorbell cameras with a primary focus on the DIY sector.
According to a new report from TechCrunch, ASSA ABLOY says the acquisition both strengths its position in smart door locks — Yale has a line of its own already — and gives the company an entrance into the video doorbell market and first steps into home delivery solutions.
"I am very pleased to welcome August into the ASSA ABLOY Group. August constitutes a strategic addition to the Group and reinforces our position in the residential smart door market," says Johan Molin, President and CEO of ASSA ABLOY.
Founded by Jason Johnson and Yves Behar, August Home has developed three generations of smart door locks and two generations of video doorbells, making the company among the industry leaders in technology, partnerships and retail sales.
ASSA ABLOY, which also manages brands like Unilock, Keylock, Arrow and Mul-T-Lock, expects August Home's sales to reach $60 million this year, according to a press release for the company.
"August Home strengthens our residential smart door strategy with complementary smart locks, expansion into video doorbells and comprehensive solutions for home delivery," says Thanasis Molokotos, Executive Vice President of ASSA ABLOY and Head of the Americas Division.
ASSA ABLOY's acquisition is subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions. The acquisition is expected to be completed during Q4 of 2017, and financial terms of the agreement are not being disclosed.
China Suspends LTE Access to Apple Watch Series 3 Amidst Security Concerns


text:
The message for farmers: Aussie Helpers have got your back
Written by Darcee Nixon
Above: Truckie and volunteer Craig Porter, volunteer Krystal Haycock and Aussie Helpers co-founder Brian Egan. Photo: Dubbo Photo News
Due to route restrictions on road trains which prevent them from going east of the Newell Highway, these vehicles are a rare sight in Dubbo. However, on Friday, May 18, Dubbo Photo News caught up with a very special road train from Charleville, Queensland, and its crew of Aussie Helpers volunteers who were en route to Molong via Yeoval with the sole aim of "helping to fight poverty in the bush".
Aussie Helpers Ltd is a not-for-profit registered charity that was founded by Brian and Nerida Egan 16 years ago. The charity is operated by volunteers working in Queensland, NSW, South Australia and Tasmania who freely give their own time and expertise to help Aussie farmers doing it tough.
"It's a non-stop business this," Aussie Helpers co-founder Brian Egan told Dubbo Photo News.
"This load is mainly ruminant pellets, dog food and horse food. We also have what we like to call 'black magic', which is a by-product of molasses that is very high in protein. It's a life-saver for cattle," Brian said.
"Everything on this load has been donated from our base at Charleville in Queensland. We are still in drought up there, but we have mulga there for the cattle," he added.
Aussie Helpers specify that their visits to farming families are not meant to solve any major problems. However just knowing that someone cares about them and their difficult situation in the bush offers a little hope of better days ahead. Most people that Aussie Helpers deal with would not ask for help or expect it.
Aussie Helpers know that no one wants to admit things are tough, and farmers are some of the proudest people in Australia. But sometimes they need help, especially before it's too late.
"They welcome us. I've been doing this for 16 years and I have never been turned away from anywhere," Brian told Dubbo Photo News.
"They have to understand the difference between pride and survival. Most of us that do this are from the bush or are ex-farmers, so we appreciate their situation.
"We pick an area out and then stop at every farm and see how we can be of assistance. Our main game is to keep breeding stock alive.
"We have helped over 10,000 farmers so far," Brian added.
The programs that Aussie Helpers offers include:
Farm Aid: Farm visits, mechanical repairs and the provision of stock feed.
Breakfast in a Bag: Up to a dozen farmers' wives are spoilt for three hours with free hairdos, a free medical check-up, chef-prepared lunch, and a medical person to speak with anyone needing help with domestic violence or mental health issues.
Volunteers for Isolated Students Education (AHVISE): Outback children all over Australia who attend School Of The Air have access to retired school teachers for a six-week period to help with their education.
Fish4Life: An aquaculture program which is a simple, low-cost method of growing your own vegetables in your backyard without soil, just water.
Virtual Psychologist: Professional counselling provided free of charge. This service aims to prevent marriage break-ups and suicides.
"The psychologists are just brilliant," Brian said.
"We can take about 30 calls and texts at once. About 60 per cent of people that use the service are males," Brian added.
This figure, along with the countless testimonials from grateful farmers and their families, is proof that Aussie Helpers are making a major contribution to the wellbeing of Australia's primary producers.
Mental illness is one of the leading health threats to people in rural and remote areas, so the fact that the team at Aussie Helpers are connecting with so many at-risk people, especially the stigmatised, harder-to-reach male demographic, is fantastic.
The charity has been praised by many notable Australians, including Australian radio broadcaster Alan Jones.
"So many people 'talk the talk' in relation to issues facing rural Australians – but Aussie Helpers actually gets things done," Mr Jones said in his testimonial for the organisation.
"A bag of fresh food, medical check-ups, hair-cuts, someone to talk to – these are things that many Australians take for granted. It is not always so simple in the bush.
"This program will allow many of us to 'give back' to those Australians who continue to give so much to us."
Entrepreneur Dick Smith has also commended Aussie Helpers:
"Supporting local industry and farming provides employment, ensures the profits stay in Australia and helps secure a better future for all Australians. We need to support our farmers by not only buying Australian products but through supporting the hard work of Brian and his team at Aussie Helpers," Mr Smith said.
Aussie Helpers is strongly supported by local communities, including individuals and businesses. However, after 16 years of life-changing work, the state governments of Victoria and Tasmania and the Federal Government still refuse to help with any funding. All goods that Aussie Helpers distribute are obtained through donations.
Additionally, there was zero mention in the 2018-2019 National Budget for drought preparation or drought management in Australia, even as a repeat of the Millennium drought looms.
It's a major frustration to many farmers that extravagances such as $75 billion for transport infrastructure are of greater importance than dealing with an immediate drought crisis. These decisions are often made by people whose idea of 'rural Australia' is the irrigated botanic garden in a Sydney suburb.
"We won't give up, we'll keep on plugging away," Brian told Dubbo Photo News.
So the message to farmers in Dubbo, surrounds and beyond: Aussie Helpers have your back, or in their own words: "We're looking after our own backyard." Because their backyard, our backyard, is the great Outback.
Aussie Helpers can be contacted on 1300 665 232.
Their 24/7 virtual psychologist text line is 0488 807 266. Offering a free text counselling service for farming families experiencing depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, failure or domestic violence.
www.aussiehelpers.org.au
Above: The main programs offered by Aussie Helpers. IMAGE: AUSSIE HELPERS
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