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What is Clubhouse? [+Should Marketers Care?]
Post published:17th February 2021
Post category:Marketing / Social Media Marketing
In 2020, you might have heard your favorite influencers talking about a mysterious new social media app called Clubhouse.
But, unless you had a huge online following of your own, you might just be getting access to the app now.
Until a few months ago, Clubhouse was a platform where big-name celebrities, company leaders, Silicon Valley investors, and some of the web's top global influencers could have uncensored audio group chats about their lives, hobbies, work, or industries.
Now, as the invite-only Clubhouse continues to gain media coverage and a growing pool of non-celebrity users, you might be wondering, "What the heck is it? And, how do I get in on the action?"
Below, we'll explain where Clubhouse came from, what it actually is, and the pros and cons of using it in your marketing strategy.
Clubhouse was launched in March 2020 by Paul Davison, who previously worked at companies including Pinterest and Google, and Rohan Seth, a former Google engineer. According to a post from Davison and Seth, Clubhouse was created after a handful of social media app experiments.
"After a lot of iteration in the audio space, we launched Clubhouse in March of last year," the co-founders wrote. "Our goal was to build a social experience that felt more human—where instead of posting, you could gather with other people and talk. Our north star was to create something where you could close the app at the end of the session feeling better than you did when you opened it, because you had deepened friendships, met new people, and learned."
Initially, Clubhouse was marketed to top-tier influencers, celebrities, Silicon Valley investors, and industry thought leaders, but recently opened to more general audiences. A few of the app's first high-profile users include Drake, Daymond John, Elon Musk, and Oprah Winfrey. Early on, these notable users were heard chatting in Rooms related to their interests, hobbies, causes, or industries.
Despite Clubhouse's exclusivity, it was valued at $100 million and received a $12 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz within a year of its launch.
Most recently, Clubhouse has begun to give access to a larger pool of users by allowing each new member to invite two friends of their own. This has caused the user base to jump from 600,000 active users in December 2020 to more than 2 million today.
"This past week, two million people around the world—musicians, scientists, creators, athletes, comedians, parents, entrepreneurs, stock traders, non-profit leaders, authors, artists, real estate agents, sports fans, and more—came to Clubhouse to talk, learn, laugh, be entertained, meet and connect. It's the most exciting thing we've ever been a part of," wrote the Clubhouse team in a Jan. 24 blog post.
Why Most of Us are Just Learning About Clubhouse
Just hearing about Clubhouse now? You aren't alone.
As mentioned, Clubhouse was initially targeted to high-profile industry "elites," such as celebrities, CEOs, and top online influencers. For a while, these types of users were the only ones who could send and receive Clubhouse invites. On top of the app's invite-only nature, it's only available to iPhone users.
While Clubhouse's early exclusivity made it interesting and alluring to the every-day social media user, it caused the app's awareness and user-base to grow at a slow but steady pace.
Now that the app's become more accessible to social media users, it's been getting more awareness online and across news media. At this time, marketers are also starting to wonder if and how they could use Clubhouse — or something like it — in their strategy.
In fact, many professionals, business leaders, and non-profit members can already be heard speaking in Rooms that discuss a topic related to their brand, industry, or mission.
For example, a recent Room I dropped in on featured a group of lawyers aiming to offer education around patent protection. While this content was intriguing to listeners, it also could have brought each lawyer's firm more awareness:
Aside from marketers, major social media companies are also trying to take advantage of Clubhouse's audio social media trends.
Shortly after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke in a Clubhouse Room, the New York Times reported that his social media company was allegedly building a similar audio platform. Meanwhile, Twitter just began rolling out Twitter Spaces — a drop-in audio feature with its app — to a small group of beta testers.
At the moment, Clubhouse seems like a promising way to network and build a community online, and its audio social format is already being adopted by competitors. However, in a time where we see a handful of new online platforms each year, is Clubhouse really a game-changer in the social media space? Or is it just another over-hyped app you shouldn't waste your marketing efforts on?
Below, I'll give a brief description of how the platform works and then weigh the pros and cons of using Clubhouse for marketing.
How Clubhouse Works
While we'll be publishing a detailed how-to guide for the Clubhouse platform, which we'll link to in this post later, here's a quick description of how some of the major features work.
Clubhouse's Main Tabs
When entering Clubhouse, users will find a homepage that highlights ongoing Rooms related to their interests or followers. They'll also find search, message inbox, calendar, and notification icons in the upper navigation.
When tapping the search or "Explore" tab, users can scroll through a feed of suggested Rooms, Clubs, or people to follow. They can also use the search bar to find specific individuals or Clubs. However, it does not seem like users can search for specific Rooms yet.
If users can't attend a Room when they're surfing the Clubhouse app but would like to drop into one later, they can tap the calendar icon.to see or create their scheduled Rooms.
Clubhouse Rooms
Entering a Room is essentially like attending a webinar or Zoom meeting with no video and a partially muted audience.
Attendees, who can join or leave a Room at any time, enter (or drop-in) as automatically muted listeners. If they'd like to speak or ask questions, they can tap the "Raise Hand" icon in the lower right corner of the Room page. Room moderators will then be notified of the hand raise request and can ignore it or unmute the attendee.
Below is a look at what Clubhouse Rooms look like:
Visually, attendees of the Room can see only the profile photos and names of current participants, with moderators and speakers appearing at the top of the screen.
Users and moderators can also add people they follow to a Room by tapping the "+" button in the lower navigation. This gives their friends a notification that they've been invited to a Room and enables them to open the app and join it directly.
Starting a Room
At the bottom of the homepage, users can also tap "Start a Room" to launch either a "Closed" chat open to specific people only, a "Social" chat open to all of a user's following, or an "Open" chat that anyone on Clubhouse can drop into.
Users can also tap the nine-dot icon on the lower homepage navigation to have a private audio chat with specific followers who are online.
Room moderators, who either launched the Room or were assigned to a moderator role after the Room launched, see a similar page that attendees see. However, they also get notifications of new Room attendees and a list of attendees who have raised their hand requesting to speak.
One interesting thing to note is that a Room only ends when a moderator ends it or when the final moderator leaves it. Additionally, moderators who want to leave a Room without ending it can assign someone else to become a moderator. This means that a Room with multiple moderators can go on for hours or even days.
Because of how long Rooms last, and the fact that attendees can join or exit whenever they want, you might regularly hear more seasoned Room moderators re-introduce themselves, what they're discussing, and who else is speaking throughout a Room event.
Clubs and Networking
Aside from creating Rooms, users can also follow individual profiles of friends, influencers, or thought leaders in their industry.
They can also join or create Clubs, which are groups of users with interest in specific topics, hobbies, or industries. Take a look at some of the Clubs that appeared when I searched, "growth marketing."
Once users join a Club, they can be notified if a Club's manager launches a Room related to its core topic. For example, if I were to join one of the Growth Marketing Clubs shown above, I'd be instantly notified if they hosted a Room on a growth marketing tactic.
The Pros and Cons of Clubhouse.
Pros of Using Clubhouse
1. Clubhouse could help brands build trust and community.
In 2020, consumers began to favor companies with authentic, trustworthy messaging over big-name companies with decades of brand loyalty. This shift will likely continue through 2021.
Why? In a time of financial uncertainty and constant news events, consumers want to know that brands care about their customers and share values with them. While creating a live, uncensored, unscripted Room related to your brand's industry might sound nerve-wracking, it could help some brands seem more authentic and trustworthy.
"Clubhouse offers a lot of opportunities for connection with celebrities, a vast variety of people in different industries, and even close friends," says Krystal Wu, HubSpot's social media community manager. "It opens the door for live conversations allowing people to be vulnerable within a community space. This type of connection is unique to deliver audio content with small to large groups of people. Its unscripted content that anyone can be a part of."
Brands that use Clubhouse could earn credibility by discussing topics they're experts on. But, they could also earn trust because they've made themselves available to listen and talk candidly with their audiences.
2. The app's content is always evolving.
While the app initially hosted conversations related to entertainment, business, and technology due to its initial target audience, the audio content on the platform has broadened and evolved
In fact, CNBC recently reported that some of Clubhouse's most engaging Rooms have been launched by innovative Black creatives who've done heavy experimentation on the platform.
For example, instead of hosting a chat or discussion, one group of Black performers hosted an audio-only production of Disney's "The Lion King."
While there isn't a recording of the Clubhouse performance, led by Noelle Chesnut Whitmore, Kam DeLa and Bomani X, here's a screenshot from the event, which shows each Room moderator as the character they played:
"What started as a random conversation on Clubhouse has scaled to something much greater. We have so many talented people contributing their time and energy to this performance," Whitmore said in a press release. "Our goal is just to spread some joy to people through these events. I never imagined this would get such a huge response."
In another example, a cocktail brand called Loop hosted a Room that encouraged participants to have a cocktail and join a casual conversation with no specific topic. While this strategy is less structured, it enables people who want to learn more about the brand or just want to chat with other cocktail drinkers to connect.
Because Clubhouse is fairly new, there aren't major content-related expectations just yet. This means that anyone from any group, industry, non-profit, or brand can experiment with it and learn what's truly engaging to the app's growing audience.
3. The app is primed for thought leadership.
Clubhouse's user base was built around influencers and thought leaders. This means that users are likely coming to the app to hear the latest tips, exclusive information, or discussions straight from industry experts.
For example, the scheduled Room shown below features Coinbase Co-Founder and CEO Brian Armstrong.
In a Clubhouse Room like the one shown above, users could learn more about a brand like Coinbase and ask its leader questions about the company or its industry. Through Rooms like this, Coinbase and other brands could boost both company awareness and credibility with audiences who listen.
4. Audiences want online communities and audio content.
In the last year, people who were stuck at home turned to webinars, virtual events, and other online experiences to learn more about their interests, hear from others in their industry, or just feel a sense of connection to people outside of their households.
But, while virtual events were beneficial for many, most of us eventually dealt with screen fatigue.
Because too much screentime can be mentally draining, consumers also checked out podcasts or camera-free webinars. Now, these audiences could be primed for Clubhouse's audio-only nature.
"Clubhouse's most appealing quality is that it's a break from the nonstop screen time we all exist in," says Kelly Hendrickson, HubSpot social media marketing manager. "Clubhouse is also a wonderful place to have conversations among niche communities and topics."
And, while consumers are craving personal connections and live content more than ever, many brands are trying to build stronger online communities and launch effective digital event strategies.
Ultimately, Clubhouse's audio-only layout could help brands meet and build an engaged community of fans on an interactive, authentic, and live platform.
Cons of Clubhouse
1. The app still has limited audiences.
Ultimately, one of Clubhouse's biggest brand marketing flaws is also what makes it so intriguing: exclusivity.
"I am generally against anything that is invite-only as it creates a culture of 'others'," Hendrickson says. "Any time you need to be 'in the know' to have a seat at the table, how can you also be inclusive?"
While Clubhouse might pose unique group chat opportunities for community marketers when more people join, the audiences might still be too limited for some marketers at the moment. On top of this, the app is still unavailable to Android users.
"Clubhouse actually hinders its capabilities because there are many talented potential users out there that are missing out all because they are on Android," Wu says.
If you're looking to only create content for the largest audiences possible, you might want to hold off on building a Clubhouse strategy right now. However, if you're only looking to experiment and see if you can reach the audiences it already has, it might be an interesting platform for your team to try.
2. Clubhouse could have strong audio-app competition.
Facebook and Twitter could be just the first platforms to create a similar audio drop-in experience. And, while this hints that Clubhouse creators have stumbled upon a platform many social media users want, the big-name competition could also pose concerns about the platform's future.
For example, if Facebook or another major competitor can create something similar that's less exclusive and allows iPhone and Android users, people might leave Clubhouse for a platform with a larger audience or more credibility in the social media world. If this happens, marketers who invest heavily in a Clubhouse strategy might need to do a sudden pivot.
While this shouldn't scare you away from testing the platform if you think it's right for your brand, the competition is still important to keep in mind. If you are considering Clubhouse, continue to follow its competitors and determine how you could pivot your strategy to those platforms if your audiences start to flock there instead.
3. Clubhouse can feel like an "unedited podcast."
"Another challenge I think brands and individuals will have with Clubhouse is how it feels like an unedited podcast," says Hendrickson. "That means you're hearing all the great meat, but you also have to listen to the trimmings. It will be interesting to see if long term, people are okay with that in their content."
If you're planning to experiment on Clubhouse, consider practicing a few conversation starters, how you'll enter the call, and determine what you'll do if you run into dead air, boring conversation, or off-topic discussion that draws attention away from your Room's goal.
Although Rooms are live and unscripted, having a gameplan will help you moderate an effective, higher-quality conversation than users might find in other Rooms.
4. Brands could be too vulnerable.
Certain generations, like Gen Z, crave authenticity from people and brands they follow on social media. With an app like Clubhouse, brands could create Rooms or Clubs related to their industry that include thought leaders, prospects, and even clients that want to talk with them in a live, unfiltered way.
However, while Clubhouse's high level of unscripted authenticity has intrigued both marketers and prospective users, it also could put brands in vulnerable positions. Wu describes this as "a balance between good and evil."
Within a year of its launch, Clubhouse's live nature has already led to brand-related controversies.
For example, in February, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, dropped into a Room with Robinhood Markets CEO Vlad Tenev and raised his hand. When he was invited to speak by the Room's moderators, Musk began intensely questioning Tenev and asked him to explain why his stock-trading company stopped its users from buying and selling GameStop and other manipulated stocks. You can hear the line of questioning in the video below:
While Robinhood's CEO remained calm and collected throughout the chat, some brands might not have well-trained speakers who would react as calmly or professionally to this surprising scenario.
Additionally, although Clubhouse doesn't allow users to record, many either downloaded screen-recording apps or filmed their phones with another video recording device. Because of this, Musk and Tenev's conversation was covered by the media within hours.
Even though conversations cannot be replayed or recorded in the Clubhouse app itself, marketers on the app must remember that they're live and anything they say could easily be streamed or quoted in seconds. Because of this, Room hosts should prepare themselves so that they can answer both easy and challenging questions from audience members. Moderators should also determine what they'll do or how they'll react if an unmuted audience member says something controversial or unexpected.
Is Clubhouse right for you?
In its current state, Clubhouse could offer some major awareness and community-building benefits to brands. But, because of how new it is, it also poses some challenges and cons to companies that want to reach the largest audiences possible. Ultimately, while some companies might thrive on it, others might realize that it isn't the best platform for their goals just yet.
As with any new social media platform, you'll want to spend some time on Clubhouse and see what the app has to offer before putting time and effort into using it.
At this point, it could be wise to see if one of your friends or colleagues can send you a Clubhouse invite so you can familiarize yourself with the app. If you can't log on, be sure to continue following the news around it.
As you surf through the app or read Clubhouse news coverage, ask yourself questions like these:
Are topics related to your product or industry widely discussed on the platform?
Are there any thought leaders or company experts you could host a panel or two with to boost your awareness or credibility on Clubhouse?
Are our competitors using Clubhouse? And, if so, can we create stronger Room experiences than they can?
Do you already use marketing strategies that could be adapted to an audio-only platform, such as live video Q&As, webinars, or virtual events?
With questions like those above, you can determine if you'll be able to create scalable and engaging content for this social media platform.
Can't get access to Clubhouse just yet? Don't worry. We'll continue to cover it on the HubSpot Blog so you'll be ready when you do.
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ESSAYS Mousse 57
Theory of the Minor
by Chris Sharp
Allison Katz, 2 Cocks, 2016. Courtesy: the artist and Giò Marconi, Milan. Photo: Filippo Armellin
This piece could just as well be called "Against Allegory." Or even "Against Representation." Or maybe even better yet "Against Language." Never mind "Against Interpretation" (which is obviously a precedent). I would even almost be inclined to call it "Against Everything," if that were not already taken and most deftly accounted for, not to mention true. But it is not.
This text is for as much as it is against. Essentially positive, it nevertheless defines itself negatively against certain tendencies, assumptions, and givens in contemporary art. It should be stated that this text, and the thoughts and position that actively inform it, have been largely sponsored by living and working in the context of Mexico City, and more generally Latin America, for the past four years. Consistently exposed there to a series of doxas regarding the production and dissemination of contemporary art, which are characterized by an implicit protocol to confuse art with journalism, pedagogy, and compulsory assertions of collectivity, all of which are thoroughly embedded in language, I have found myself forced to articulate an increasingly antagonistic position, which militates, perhaps anachronistically, for art itself. Or to be more precise a specific kind of art, which I will antagonistically call minor.
Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Pecs, 2016. Courtesy: the artist and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York
By minor, I of course do not mean in the classical sense of the term, as in lesser or secondary to the major (e.g., Guido Reni to Caravaggio), but rather as a mode of making that is characterized by resistance not as a political position, but as a natural consequence of the practice itself (it goes without saying that this consequence is always already political, insofar as it introduces conflict as opposed to consensus). In order to start to sketch out the minor, it is necessary to first take a stab at defining the major, which is more of a verb than a noun. The major, like allegory, instrumentalizes. The major reduces and recuperates, streamlines, flattens out, absorbs, and eliminates difference. Art is never an end in itself, but a means, a vehicle. Seeking the lowest common denominator, which is often found in either spectacle, topicality, or use value, it continually asks what art can do, as opposed to what it is or can be, which it almost always takes for granted.
This is why most major contemporary art formally avails itself of the academicism of conceptualism, all but dismissing form or formal concerns as secondary or tertiary to the impetus of the work—which is to communicate or transmit a specific ideology unequivocally. The major is to art what pornography is to the (erotic) imagination (which it, unlike the minor, paralyzes). In other words, like the news, it takes much more than it gives (while the minor gives more than any one individual or era, for that matter, can take). The exhibition format par excellence of the major is the biennial. Servilely obeying the socially and politically expedient injunction to embody and communicate its moment as comprehensively as possible (for how else could it, as an exhibition format, be justified?), to be "contemporary," the biennial generally structures itself around a few key concepts or "urgent political issues" which the art is meant to embody or illustrate, as if it were so much three-dimensional visual aid (of the news or concepts related thereto).
ektor garcia, kriziz installation view at kurimanzutto, Mexico City, 2016. Courtesy: the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City. Photo: Abigail Enzaldo
This is not to say that all art in biennials is major, or that all biennials are always themselves major. Salient exceptions exist—Massimiliano Gioni's 2013 Venice Biennale represented a dubious attempt to deal with the minor on major terms, while Jay Sanders and Elisabeth Sussman's 2012 Whitney Biennial was refreshingly minor—but unfortunately they are few and far between. One of the final and most crucial characteristics of the major is that it always seeks to speak for (the disenfranchised and oppressed, art being apparently the most effective way and place to do such a thing) as if it were a duty, a civic responsibility to essentially ventriloquize. It aims for the multitude. Abiding by the twenty-first-century logic of the zombie, it always thinks mathematically, in terms of numbers and statistics (like the museum, in fact, or better yet a biennial,) which is how it measures "success."
The major's greatest antagonist is idiosyncrasy, which is a fundamental component, nay the very bedrock, of minor art. In case anyone has forgotten the meaning of this word, its etymology might help. Circa 1600, from French idiosyncrasie, from a Latinized form of the Greek idiosynkrasia, "a peculiar temperament," from idios, "one's own" + synkrasis, "temperament, mixture of personal characteristics," from syn, "together" + krasis, "mixture," from PIE root *kere– "to mix, confuse; cook." Therefore, a mixture of that which is absolutely one's own, peculiar to an individual, unique, perhaps even nontransferable. I think the krasis, to mix, is also interesting insofar as it suggests the appropriation, mutation, and integration of preexisting elements into something that is unmistakably one's own. Irreducible and irrecuperable, it is intrinsically resistant to being co-opted or put into the service of allegory, nor can it be made to speak for, be deployed, or even assigned a function (the major positively loves to assign functions, socially, politically, and art historically).
Nina Canell, Treetops, Hillsides and Ditches, 2011, The Promise of Moving Things installation view at le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine, 2014. Courtesy: the artist; Daniel Marzona, Berlin; Mother's Tankstation, Dublin; Galerie Barbara Wien, Berlin. Photo: André Morin / le Crédac
If anything, it interrupts and disrupts the process of assimilation to which the major continually and inexorably seeks to exercise on the world around it, like science. Incidentally, if my language here is evocative of Georges Bataille, it is because my thinking is directly informed by him, notably via Denis Hollier's Against Architecture, and in particular Bataille's notion, if it can be called that, of the heteorological, which is much more of a precedent of the minor for me than Gilles Deleuze's definition of it. Indeed, in sharp contrast to Deleuze, I would say that the three characteristics of minor art are: not the deterritorialization of language, but the development of one's own personal, highly idiosyncratic language; not so much the connection of the individual to a political immediacy, but the acknowledgement that form, which is art's primary duty, is always already political; and definitely not the collective assemblage of enunciation, but the impossibility of art to speak for anyone else if it does not first and foremost speak for itself. This is one of the reasons why the minor generally does not harmonize with ideologies of collectivity, or science for that matter ("knowledge production"). For in the spirit of scientific method, the collective generally cannot brook manifestations of idiosyncrasy due to the simple fact that they cannot account for anything but themselves, and therefore must be suppressed in favor of the logical accountability of collective decision making (one of the fundamental features of the heteorological is, it just so happens, unaccountability).
Olga Balema, Cannibals installation view at Croy Nielsen, Berlin, 2015. Courtesy: Croy Nielsen, Vienna. Photo: Joachim Schulz
The minor is of course queer, but not due to its non-existent capacity to represent (the minor does not represent; it actually precludes representation, which is the domain of the major), but due to its non-classifiability, not to mention its inherent eschewal of the logic of the project, or better yet projects, which have identifiable beginnings and endings, or limits, as it were. I am thinking in particular of the markedly queer sculptural practice of the Mexican American artist ektor garcia, whose sprawling hybrid sculptures-cum-installations are continuous parts of an organic, ever-evolving, and unbounded whole. Devoid of partition, whatever he makes is a manifestation not of projects, but the project. Perhaps more importantly than this is how he and others like him elaborate their own personal formal language, and the extent to which it is indivisible from the materials and techniques they use. Drawing upon the iconography and material composition of everything from Mesoamerican religious imagery to southern Mexican ceramic-making techniques to gay leather subculture as well as, say, the likes of Paul Thek and Bruce Conner (both of whom could be considered minor artists), garcia absorbs it into the krasis (see above) of his crucible from which he fashions what is unmistakably his own way of making and non-linguistically signifying.
Michael E. Smith, Untitled, 2014. Courtesy: the artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
The Colombian artist José Antonio Suárez Londoño and the Mexican artist Rodrigo Hernandez have markedly similar ways of proceeding. Personal to a magnificently gnomic fault, Suárez Londoño's minutely labored, small-scale drawings and etchings are the result of a highly developed idiosyncratic formal language (in which written language itself never has more than an idiosyncratic, non-narrative, and non-conceptual function), which is inspired by indigenous, pre-Colombian iconography as much as it is by European modernism. Hernandez, whose ongoing highly plastic practice interrogates the divisions between drawing, sculpture, and painting, likewise draws on a heterogeneous variety of sources to construct his own formal idiom. It is perhaps not a coincidence that all of these artists, and those that follow, incidentally, are makers who work primarily with their hands—for what method of producing more directly registers and transmits the idiosyncratic?
José Antonio Suárez Londoño, Planas: del 1de enero al 31 de diciembre del año 2005, 2005. Courtesy: Casas Riegner, Bogotá. Photo: Miguel Suárez Londoño
Unlike the major, which ratifies, reaffirms, and relies upon specific, already thoroughly codified linear, if dialectical, art historical traditions (for instance Wade Guyton is the quintessential major painter, and it is perhaps no mere coincidence that his latest body of work was actually the news), the minor creates or unearths new or unexpected, if tangential, trajectories. To this end, examples of contemporary minor painting range in age and geography from the Canadian, London-based Allison Katz, to the Belgian éminence grise Walter Swennen, to the Texan Daniel Rios Rodriguez, whose practices variously engage and depend upon minor practitioners from Francis Picabia to René Daniëls to Forrest Bess (all of whom have recently been subject to revivals—meaning we could very well be in the age of the minor). Abandoning a linear approach toward the horizon of painting, they could be said to move along it in lateral shifts and jumps, while developing radically idiosyncratic pictorial methods and idioms.
Rodrigo Hernández, Head (Pedro), Pedro installation detail at o.T. Raum für aktuelle Kunst, Lucerne, 2012. Courtesy: the artist
Meanwhile the issue of allegory is a tricky one, because many minor artists and even writers would seem to traffic in allegory, but upon close inspection, it becomes clear that they do not (if you disagree, ask yourself why we still read Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka, while we barely read Jean-Paul Sartre or, say, Alberto Moravia, the latter of whom were egregious allegorists; a similar dichotomy could be established between the likes of Philip Guston and Bernard Buffet). The work of the Detroit native Michael E. Smith could be and has been read as an allegory of Detroit, and, by extension America, but that is obviously a simplistic interpretation of a practice whose formal, spatial, and affective complexity has few parallels in contemporary art. When it comes down to it, what he does is just too strange and, yes, idiosyncratic to logically signify (which is the business of the major—logically, nay serviceably signifying). It always already exceeds whatever function might be assigned to it, and is as such excessively dysfunctional. The sculpture of Olga Balema, by virtue of its relationship to the body, undergoes a similar procedure, a kind of feint, if you will, but always errs on the side of excess, and as such ungrudgingly refuses to submit to manageable systems of signification, such as allegory.
Jean-Luc Moulène, Ca Propre (Anse) [That Clean (Handle)], (Paris, 2016), 2016. Courtesy: the artist and Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York
By the same token, a similarly quasi if pseudo allegorical attitude can found in the work of the likes of the Swedish artist Nina Canell or the German photographer Jochen Lempert. However, in their cases this elusive dalliance with allegory touches on the domain of science, whose sincere and profound engagement is always ultimately exceeded by the minor quiddity of the work. Whereas Canell deploys and harnesses imperceptible currents, conductors, and energies to singularly sculptural (non-illustrational), effect, Lempert's black-and-white photographs of flora and fauna always go beyond the formal zoological and taxonomical origins of his photography, not to mention his training as a biologist. Any attempt to oblige their respective practices to signify in any systematic, scientific way is always already foiled not only by a healthy quotient of affect, but more importantly by a complete and total commitment to the plastic and formal (non-linguistic) qualities of their work.
In an age of increasingly hypertrophic expansion (galleries and museums as well as the grand gestures that must fill them), the minor can also refer to a diminishment of scale and valorization of intimacy as a mode of engagement (the American sculptor Vincent Fecteau, for example, is a master of the minor). But this of course is not always the case. Notable exceptions to the question of scale include the German sculptor Manfred Pernice and the French artist Jean-Luc Moulène. Whatever scale they are working at, the material and formal properties of their inimitable practices always exceed and collapse any linguistic framework within which their work might be placed–never mind the radical heterogeneity at the heart of what they both do.
Jochen Lempert, Untitled (Flora), 2016. © Jochen Lempert by SIAE, Rome, 2017. Courtesy: BQ, Berlin and ProjecteSD, Barcelona. Photo: Roman März, Berlin
When all is said and done, however, any attempt to describe and codify the minor is potentially, and even ideally, an exercise in theoretical vanity. It almost doesn't need to be said that the minor, in keeping with its essential irreducibility, can be neither a formula nor a strategy. But if anything unites, binds together, and courses through the work of every artist I have just mentioned, it is the creation of their own thoroughly plastic languages, which naturally, non-serviceably refuse to submit to (written or spoken) language. To this end, at least where the viewer is concerned, the minor assumes an almost narrative property, not in the sense of recounting a story (or an allegory), but rather in the sense of positing and generating (new) possibility. For what gives, vitalizes, and renews in the spirit of discovery more than the sense of pure possibility (of being, experiencing, apprehending, and understanding)? Indeed, the irruption of each truly minor artist necessarily entails the introduction of a corresponding quotient of possibility into the world.
Chris Sharp is a writer and independent curator based in Mexico City. Together with the artist Martin Soto Climent, he runs the independent space Lulu. A contributing editor of Art Review and Art-Agenda, his writing has appeared in many magazines, on-line publications and catalogues. He is currently preparing exhibitions at kurimanzutto, Mexico City; Pivô, São Paulo, and Le Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, among others.
Originally published on Mousse 57 (February–March 2017)
Oceanic Time-Lag: On Mati Diop's "Atlantics"
Clinical Cosmology: Tishan Hsu
Every Force Evolves a Form
Resplendent Men: Louis Fratino
Momentary Snaps: Gili Tal
Semiological Lexicon of Modernism: Tal R

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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11:YEARS
Money and Mental Health: What more can we do?
Sarah Kocianski
The link between poor mental health and money worries is well-known, as is the fact that all too often it can become a vicious circle.
Poor mental health can lead to poor financial health and vice versa, trapping people in a never-ending spiral where one problem continually exacerbates another. To drive that home, across England more than 1.5 million people are experiencing both problem debt and mental health problems, according to Money and Mental Health.
In the UK both subjects have received an increasing volume of column inches recently, something that has been driven by any number of factors but not least ongoing political austerity policies and the uncertainty caused by the protracted Brexit process.
Why are the two so intrinsically linked?
86% of people who experience mental health problems said that their financial situation had made their mental health problems worse, according to a survey by Money and Mental Health.
Worry about debt is one of the most common triggers for the exacerbation of mental health problems, a situation which can be made worse by the aggressive or impersonal behaviour of debt collectors — whether they are informal loan sharks or large financial institutions. Additionally the current trend of showing customers as much data as possible about their finances, while helpful for many, can cause or exacerbate anxiety-related conditions.
At the same time, those with mental health problems are more likely to struggle with managing their finances, particularly if their illness means they need to take time off work, find it harder to make financial decisions or are in a pattern of spending to make themselves feel better.
Further, poor mental health that impacts a person's ability to carry out day to day activities can result in costs of £1,100 - £1,550 a year, due to inaccessible services, poor regulatory protections and inadequate support according to Citizens' Advice.
Financial institutions do not, generally, have a history of managing situations where a customer is struggling with finances due to mental health problems well. Much of the time this is not intentional, but due to a failure to understand the situation.
Banks and lenders, as a rule, are not able to spot patterns in a customers' finances which may indicate an underlying mental health problem, nor do they make it easy for customers to inform them of their illness, assuming they are willing or able to do so. Even if a particular staff member is empathetic their ability to act is typically hamstrung by processes and red tape as illustrated by this example from Mind.
What are financial services companies doing to help?
UK banks are starting to wake up to the situation, and some are making steps towards easing the issue for affected customers. I've highlighted a few examples below but it should be noted that this list is not exhaustive, and that nearly all banks have vulnerable customer support teams or trained staff.
Barclays has an easy to find Mental Health support page on its website and allows customers to block their card being used in certain types of retailers to help manage spending. In terms of specific services for those with mental illness, it offers longer branch appointment times, private rooms and the attendance of a companion at meetings. But customers still have to proactively reach out to the bank, and for many very unwell people that will be impossible if they suffer from avoidance or disordered thinking.
Monzo uses plain language in all customer communications, gives customers control over which notifications to receive, allows them to set budgets, opt out of lending at the point an account is opened and turn off lending promotions.
It also allows customers who are struggling with debts and their mental health to "take a break" from communications about their debt while they focus on their recovery. While some of these features and services are innovative, they do still rely on the customer being able to make decisions about their finances.
Nationwide's Open Banking For Good Challenge features two fintechs which are specifically targeting the money and mental health issue.
Toucan, which is still in development, offers a service which is the opposite of many personal financial management tools. Instead of displaying lots of information about a customer's financial situation, it simplifies the picture, showing only a financial "status update". It also enables users to set up alerts to be sent to someone they trust when their balance gets low or when spending is higher than normal. That means another person knows about their situation, without the user having to approach them. It has the backing of the Money and Mental Health Charity so it will be one to keep an eye on at launch.
Tully, which is accepting applications for early access, consolidates a user's financial accounts and then provides them with a realistic budget. If the user is struggling with debt, Tully offers to speak to lenders on their behalf and try and arrange "breathing space" while creating a personalised repayment plan. A product designed specifically for those worrying about money, Tully is meeting a clear need in the market. However, the fact that it is app only means some more vulnerable people will likely struggle to use it.
What is left to do?
The short answer is: a lot.
Initiatives and products like those mentioned above are still rare, and most rely on technology to help people — which still leaves a huge swathe of consumers that they won't be able to reach.
For example, 51% of people with mental health problems receive paper bills from 1 or more utility supplier and 18% use cash or cheques to pay bills in order to help them manage their money, according to Citizens Advice. For this group, apps and online services will be of limited use.
There needs to be more widespread change in the financial services industry. The practice of offering "breathing space" should be standard, and awareness of and access to vulnerable customer support teams should be raised.
Additionally, with the increasing use and reliability of machine learning techniques, I would hope financial firms are investing in solutions that help them proactively detect when a customer may be struggling with their mental health and looking for appropriate ways to act in response.
I look forward to seeing more activity in this space as financial services firms prove that they really do have their customers' best interests at heart.
If you have been affected by anything this blog mentions, you can find a wide range of support at Mind, Citizens' Advice and Rethink.
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Exploring a simple, pure aesthetic, the new 'iko iko' chair from Jardan brings sustainability to the fore of genuine Australian design.
The playful 'iko iko' combines a little cheekiness with a classic and refined aesthetic – it is a chair made for daydreaming.
'iko iko' uses a sustainable kiln-dried American Oak base and a steel sub-frame – delivering lightness, strength and tailored ergonomics – with high-resilience CFC-free polyurethane foams for comfort and longevity.'¨'¨The 'iko iko' chair is made to order and fully upholstered in fabric or leather with a pinched-edge stitching detail, and the legs are available in a range of stain finishes.
Like all of Jardan's products, the 'iko iko' is designed with the full lifecycle in mind – offering to take back products at end-of-life to disassemble and recycle component parts.
Jardan have been specified in a number of 5 star Green Building Council of Australia projects.
With showrooms in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Singapore, Jardan are proud to be setting the benchmark in eco-aware Australian furniture production and proving that great Aussie design can indeed go hand-in-hand with a sustainable future.


2010 World Cup Part 1.
Vuvuzelas: The world's soundtrack this past month.
Enjoy the image above (A little picture from the opening match between South Africa and Mexico where I joined up to 50,000 other South Africans in a local fan park in Soshanguve to celebrate the draw with Mexico! I have never before thought I would be in a semi riot, but when Tshabalala scored that goal in the 57th minute, oh.my.goodness. Let's just say that in the rush of vuvuzela blowing (I LOVE THEM!) and dancing, a little boy got shoved into my lap in the chaos for the rest of the match. Priceless!).
I just finally moved into my new place (a back bachelors flat of a house in our new neighborhood of Clydesdale right next to the University of Pretoria in the city, and the rugby/soccer stadium (Loftus) you've seen on the World Cup). I navigated South African government bureaucracy and purchased a car.
Maxie and I are progressing along great, it's been 11 months together earlier this week which is incredibly awesome and weird! I think we are moving towards long term relationship (not discussing marriage yet, but committed to grow and progress together). We are appreciating each other more and more, learning to value the immense cultural differences that come when you throw an American and a South African together in relationship, and choosing each other over many other things.
I have just returned from a fanstastic 2 week outreach trip with a bunch of talented South African musicians and dancers during the first 2 weeks of the World Cup in the Port Elizabeth/Jeffrey's Bay area (scored 4 amazing sessions of waves at Supertubes including the longest rides of my life too!). I was able to teach some, 'mc' our outreaches with a girl from Mabopane (a local township Maxie works in), pastor the team, and generally learn to lead with Maxie who led the whole trip!
We (all of CRM that is) head to malaysia (I know, the life of a missionary is rough!) for the last 2 weeks of July for our every 4 years annual worldwide conference (literally all of CRM stops what they are doing in over 25 countries with over 400 missionary families and gathers for a week of worship, teaching, exhortation, strategy, and play). I can't wait to understand the larger story i am a part of!
I recently led the teaching team (they call themselves the public pool!) of 3rd Place, my local faith community in Pretoria, through a day long retreat of input and reflection connected to Donald Miller's incredible work, "A Million Miles In A Thousand Years." I have been chewing on this book ever since it was released last autumn and have to say that I think it is the most profound, powerful, disturbing, and beautiful work I have ever read. I've worked through it at least 3 times now, and am about to start on it for a fourth time soon. It has basically been the only thing I have been reading the past 9 months. More accurately as Rob Bell comments in a quote on the book jacket, "I feel like this work was reading me." I have been profoundly challenged to consider the types of stories I am telling with my life, and to create (as God has breathed this creative impulse deep within me) meaningful stories with my life.
I really enjoyed watching the World Cup and reading the SA blogs – the use of "we" by South Africans is my favorite part.


The first thing you should consider for this is that you must pack your bag light. Try to know the things that you really require and then try to sense out what kinds of dresses do you require in whole trip. When you start packing, you must be well aware of the weather in, which you are going to spend your vacation. In regard with weather, start packing your bag. You can know the climate and weather either with the help of travel agents or through internet. When you pack your clothes, you can easily choose some clothes that you can mix and match and wear them in change with each other. When you go out on vacation, you must take some clothes, which are hand washable and avoid any clothes that may require dry cleaning.
Apart from this, you should not forget to pack all your important documents like passport, insurance, ticket print outs and such things in outer portion of bag. These are something that needs to be handy, as you can need them at any time in your vacation. Travel preparation is nice if you pack each of your family member's bags individually, be it your children's too. A good travel preparation is one when you pack off everything that you may require in your vacation. You must also have your own travel health care to further maintain goodness of your vacation through these travel preparation.


(With version 1.7.1) camera settings like the position of the view and the zoom level seem to only be saved if there was some change to the images, otherwise they're not saved.
1) I open a .Ref file (it has some images), I pan around and zoom and then hit Ctrl+S to save.
2) I close PureRef and then reopen it.
3) I press Ctrl+Shift+L to reload the last used scene. The pan and zoom levels are still like they were before step 1.
If the only change I want to make in the scene is about the pan or zoom level, I need to slightly transform some image just so that the save can actually "commit" the new pan and zoom.
If this was fixed in 1.8.0 I apologise.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-05-06 22:51 by PureRef.
This is indeed an issue and it is not fixed in 1.8.0. We will look into getting it fixed for the next version of PureRef.
This issue should be fixed in the latest version of PureRef, 1.9.0.
"Fix - Allow saving even if no change has happened, to be able to save the current camera position."
This is great. Thank you for your hard work.


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Q: Managing resource closure in a servlet container I'm using Tomcat as a servlet container, and have many WARs deployed.  Many of the WARs share common base classes, which are replicated in each context due to the different classloaders, etc.
How can I ensure resource cleanup on context destruction, without hooking each and every web.xml file to add context listeners?
Ideally, I'd like something along the lines of
class MyResourceHolder implements SomeListenerInterface {
    private SomeResource resource;
    {
        SomeContextThingie.registerDestructionListener(this);
    }
    public void onDestroy() { resource.close(); }
}

I could put something in each web.xml, but since there are potentially many WARs and only ones that actually initialize the resource need to clean it up, it seems more natural to register for cleanup when the resource is initialized rather than duplicating a lot of XML configuration and then maybe cleaning up.
(In this particular case, I'm initiating an orderly shutdown of a SQL connection pool.  But I see this being useful in many other situations as well...)
I'm sure there's some blisteringly obvious solution out there, but my Google-fu is failing me right now.  Thanks!

A: There's no other feasible option than ServletContextListener.
If you're already on Servlet 3.0, then you could just annotate it with @WebListener, ship it with the webapp and it will be automagically loaded. But with Servlet 2.5 and older you really need to hassle with the web.xml.

A: You could put the resources in a shared-classloader and make them available as JNDI resources - you'd have to be very careful to keep your apps in sync by doing that though - though it's an option.
Might depend on what kind of resources you're cleaning, and what kind of churn you expect to see in your API.
Note: Classloader issues can be very difficult to debug - "Class XClass is not an instance of XClass" can drive you nuts.
Edit1: Another options: you could use finalizers on your pool or other object - this should allow you to execute code (say when a webapp is unloaded and the pool is recycled) - this is how many JDK classes clean up native resources. If you do this though, be very careful as deadlocking on the finalizer queue will block all kinds of important cleanup, and likely crash your JVM, since nothing which uses finalizers will get gc'd.

A: Move your SQL Connection pool out of the web application and into the web container, and access it through JNDI.

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We can supply all the necessary components to keep your car wash operating smoothly and efficiently.
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High pressure hoses, foam brush hoses.
Need an unusual size hose? We make custom "cut to size" high pressure hoses for many applications.


Chill and cosy environment with nice music and long bar. Bar food such as Sausage platter, prawn paste chicken, fish and chips available. Wide range of drink selection from Highballs to beer, wine, spirits and cocktails.


If you are looking for a home near one of New Hampshire's largest cities, yet still want a suburban neighborhood, a Jensen community is waiting for you. Convenient locations give you access to all you need, including shopping, entertainment, recreation and medical facilities.
Each community has its own unique charm. We cover the state from the southern border to the seacoast, lakes region and mountains. New Hampshire has such diversity – there is something for everyone. Recreational opportunities abound, whether you are looking to enjoy a sport or participate by watching.
Some New Hampshire highlights include the seacoast, lakes, skiing, quaint cities and towns, White Mountain National Forest, historical sites, breweries/wineries and more! Check out our individual communities for more details on local attractions.


He's the thing…I graduated college in 2004 and have no idea how semesters or quarters work at a private institution like St. Louis University…i'm a state school kid. So, i'm giving my SLU grades now…with 8 games left in the regular season…and despite my repeated unanswered emails to the chancellor…these grades will count for a collective zero credit hours.
I never understood what a "bell curve" was… Tepen and Beckmeyer tried to explain it back at Mizzou a few times, but to no avail… so these are straight up old school A through F grades.
The Billikens are one of the best defensive teams in the nation…seriously. If their offense was just adequate they would be a top 20 team. With Javon Bess in discussions for A-10 defensive play of the year talks, and Hasahn French on pace to break every Billiken career rebound and blocks record, this team is stout 1-5 on D…but dat offense tho….
If there was a grade worse I would use it. The only reason this team isn't 22-1 is because they cannot shoot.
Seriously… SLU has only been truly beaten once… they flat out beat themselves 7 times this season. 7 TIMES. It does not matter how many times you stop a team on defense if you miss on your very next possession.
Defense and rebounding are the only things that stop SLU from shooting their way to A-10 oblivion. This squad flat out gets after it on the glass. French, Bess, and Goodwin lead the way and constantly battle it out for the rebound chain. Despite their offensive woes, there is ZERO quit in this team. ZERO, From buzzer to buzzer they are working their asses off and you can see it in these rebounding stats.
J-Good is non-stop. He is a physical and vocal force on all 94 feet. Bess is the Alpha Dog now, but Goodwin is laying in wait. The only thing between Goodwin and the NBA is a consistent shot. If he becomes a consistent shooter from deep, and the line, he will be a contributor on an NBA playoff team in 3-4 years.
Hasahn is a helluva rebounder and defender. He has a great attitude, work ethic, and is a great teammate. His only downfall is his work at the charity stripe. For his career he is shooting 35.3%. Once he graduates I have no doubt he will at least get to the G-League. His issue is not without precedent. Andre Drummond is a similar player and was a sub 40% free throw shooter for 5 years in the NBA. If French can just get himself in the 60% range like Drummond he will get some run in the league. As for this season, he would be an A+ and be putting up Anthony Bonner type numbers if he could just get his free throws together.
Javon will play in the NBA. He is the next DeMarre Carroll. He can defend the 1, 2, or 3 at the next level right now. He is the leader of these Bills and the all-around best player in the A-10. He plays all 40 minutes and all 94 feet at maximum effort and efficiency. He has bettered his jumper. The only thing he still needs to add to his game is NBA level handles. The rest is complete, it just needs slow and steady improvement.
I like Coach Ford a lot. He is open, respectful, and a seemingly all around good man. The issue, this is the same exact team as last year except the fact that Javon Bess is a much improved offensive player, and Fred Thatch is a better all-around player than Aaron Hines. That is it. Tramaine Isabell Jr. is basically the same player as Davell Roby, KC Hankton appears to be Jalen Johnson 2.0 with far less minutes played. The offense outside of the improvement of Bess and the occasional 3-point hits from Dion Wiley has not improved in any way shape or form. They still run a weave to burn 8 seconds off the shot clock every play that results in the ball being pretty much exactly where it started, and they still struggle to reach 65 points on a nightly basis. The old saying goes, nothing changes if nothing changes. And from my vantage, nothing has changed in the offensive approach of this program.
This team has a shot to go to the dance, and it has an equal chance of going out in the first round of the NIT. It all has to do with shooting. Free throws and threes. The pain and frustration of knowing how close you are to being what you've dreamed of, but you just can't reach that next rung has to be eating at every young man on that roster. But, despite that, I know that this team will not quit, they will not stop. They will grind and grind until every last drop of sweat falls upon polished hardwood. And that is my kind of team.
Let's all sit and try to enjoy a true blue collar squad. They are worth your time, and you won't regret it.


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IC 1367 ist eine Spiralgalaxie vom Hubble-Typ S im Sternbild Füllen nördlich der Ekliptik. Sie ist schätzungsweise 187 Millionen Lichtjahre von der Milchstraße entfernt.

Das Objekt wurde am 30. September 1891 von Stéphane Javelle entdeckt.

Weblinks
 SIMBAD Astronomical Database

Einzelnachweise

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Bats and biodiversity need a voice!
Bats without Borders is committed to engage with key stakeholders (e.g. community conservancies, general public, land managers, wildlife organisations, national park staff, conservation NGOs, local government organisation) to promote a positive image of bats and over time to advocate for effective practical conservation measures for their protection based on sound scientific advice.
Initially one of our priority areas will be to engage with land managers to promote bats and to map significant bat roosts. If you know of a cave, sink hole or abandoned mine with bats please let us know.


Wrought Iron windows guard are one of the most beautiful feature of any home or business. We know that your property and it's appearance are a unique expression of the owner. We want your vision to be our creation. From simple to intricate, our balcony railings add beauty and accent to your home.
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Wrought Iron windows guard can be matched with entry ways, interior and exterior gates and other landscape design elements like stone, masonry, wrought iron fences and iron patio furniture.
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Screening all women at primary care visits for intimate partner violence does not appear to be beneficial, according to one study.
Such screening did not appear to cause any harm, but neither did it prompt affected women to access services or otherwise deter intimate partner violence (IPV), said Dr. Harriet L. MacMillan of McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont., and her associates.
Some medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, recommend such screening of all women, "despite the lack of evidence that it is effective." Others—including the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care—say that there isn't sufficient evidence either for or against such screening.
Dr. MacMillan and her colleagues conducted a study to assess whether IPV screening reduced subsequent violence or improved womens' quality of life. They randomly assigned 6,743 women to be screened or not screened at primary care visits, then followed them for 18 months to determine whether intimate violence decreased (JAMA 2009;302:493–501).
The study subjects were aged 18–64 years and were recruited when they attended 12 primary care sites, 11 emergency departments, and 3 ob.gyn. clinics in Ontario in 2005–2006. They completed the Woman Abuse Screening Tool, an eight-item self-report instrument that measures physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in the preceding year, before consulting the clinician.
Any discussion of positive findings on the screen and referral for further treatment was left to the discretion of the treating clinician. Overall, 44% of the women who were screened for IPV reported discussing violence with the clinician, compared with 8% of those who were not screened.
The women also were assessed for depressive symptoms, posttraumatic stress disorder, alcohol abuse/dependency, and global mental and physical well-being. All were given an information card listing available resources for women exposed to violence.
A subset of 347 screened women and 360 unscreened were included in the data analysis for this study. The proportion of these subjects who were lost to follow-up was high: 43% of those who were screened for IPV and 41% of those who were not screened.
No significant differences were foundbetween the two groups in IPV recurrence, and only a weak, nonsignificant benefit in depression and quality of life scores with screening, Dr. MacMillan and her colleagues said.
"If there were an effective intervention to which women could have been referred once identified as exposed to IPV, it is possible that the results of this trial would have been more positive," Dr. MacMillan and her associates noted.
Some experts have raised concerns about possible harmful effects of routine IPV screening, "including reprisal violence, psychological distress, family disruption, and risk of a child being removed from a mother's care following child protective services involvement," the investigators added. Their study showed no evidence of a harmful effect on either abused or nonabused women.
Neither the investigators nor the editorial writers reported financial disclosures. The study was funded by the former Ontario Women's Health Council.


text:
'The Goat' makes audiences take hard look at what we consider taboo
Emily Quigley
In ancient Greece, theater was more than just a classy evening out. For audience members, theater was a ritual, bordering on religious, experience. Greek tragedy, then, was a performance type meant to bring viewers to the extreme edges of human experience, where they could see an assortment of horrors, feel their impact, and walk away with a sense of catharsis without having to undergo those extremes themselves.
Rebecca Robinson and Robert Pierson in "The Goat." Contributed by Alan Trammell
Edward Albee's "The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?" is a play deliberately cast in the mold of Greek tragedy. Its high-status protagonist, Martin, is a world-famous architect brought low by both his own flaws and the hypocrisies of the society around him, and the normal, subdued tones of the opening slowly descend into a frenzied nightmarescape by the play's end. What's more, "The Goat" is a provocative theatrical hand grenade thrown by one of America's fiercest playwrights, who deliberately asks his liberal audience to reconsider their own notions of what they consider taboo and why.
Capital T Theatre's outstanding new production, playing through Sept. 15 at Hyde Park Theatre, taps into the depth, terror and ultimate humanity that are at the heart of Albee's text. Over the course of three harrowing scenes, we see Martin and his family (his wife Stevie and son Billy) descend into a hell of Martin's making, a plunge mirrored pitch-perfectly by the subtle (and not-so-subtle) changes in Patrick Anthony's lighting, Cheryl Painter's costumes and director Mark Pickell's own fastidiously naturalistic set.
As the play opens, the full range of Robert Pierson's portrayal of Martin isn't quite evident. He is distracted, forgetful and tonally subdued, all of which is due, we learn through a confession to his best friend Ross (played with boyish jocularity by Tim Blackwood) that he is having an affair. That infidelity, we learn, is not with another woman, but rather with a goat named Sylvia.
Albee treats what may at first glance seem to be comedic or surrealist with deadly seriousness, as we see Stevie and Billy's reactions to Martin's revelation. From there, Pierson's performance opens up, as Martin refuses to see anything wrong with what he has done, as his affair with Sylvia has given him happiness he has rarely known. Underneath this hapless obliviousness, though, is the dark edge to Martin's character, which Pierson slowly brings out, as a man who seeks the ultimate sympathy and understanding from his family has absolutely no sympathy for Stevie or Billy's feelings or concerns.
Rebecca Robinson, as Stevie, is given an equally demanding role by the text, forced to exist on the precipice of rage and hysteria, a frenetic tone that she maintains with daunting forcefulness. Her rage provides one of the play's fearful driving engines, as does Billy's simmering, hormonal, teenage sexuality that threatens to burst other societal taboos.
"The Goat" is the kind of play that engenders both deep emotion — from unease to disgust to, yes, even sympathy — and deep conversation about the nature of what we, as a society, are willing and unwilling to accept. By the end of Capital T's marvelous production, Martin's admission feels among the least disturbing secrets we have learned, and yet each further revelation engages us intellectually even as it reaches to the core of our deeply embedded social assumptions.
Though its dark, frank material may not be for everybody, "The Goat" is a must-see for those looking for a moving, moody, meditative family tragedy of Greek proportions that may forever change the way we view our world and ourselves.
'THE GOAT'
When: 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday through Sept. 15
Where: Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd St.
Cost: $20-$30
Information:capitalt.org


Let's face it; creative minds tend to wander. One fascinating thing we've learned from our own experience, as well as that of many successful creators, is that the constraint of habits serves to create flow. Many success stories are based on daily habits and routines that compound over time and lead to greater creative freedom and success.
One popular habit we've heard from many entrepreneurs and creators, like Tim Ferriss, is that they never start their day with email or social media. Email and social media put you into reaction mode. We've certainly noticed the difference in our own productivity when we start our day with creative writing vs responding to external demands.


text:
Q: how to send value of a variable declared in one jsp file to an other jsp file and how to receive it in the other jsp file I have a login.html page where i get the username and password details. I use the <form> tag to POST those values onto login.jsp file for further processing. Now in login.jsp I have used the line
String username=request.getParameter("username");  to get the value.
There is an other request.jsp file where i need the same username variable value. Can anyone sugest me the code line to be used in login.jsp to send the value of username to request.jsp and also the code line in request.jsp to recieve it?

A: Perhaps you can try this
Login.jsp
session.setAttribute("username2",username); // the username value is come from request parameter

Request.jsp
String USERNAME = (String)session.getAttribute("username2");

OR
you can bring param from login.jsp to request.jsp by passing parameter
eg. at login.jsp form tag   action="request.jsp?username2=<%=username%>"

eg. at request.jsp String USERNAME= request.getParameter("username2");

A: You can send attributes using request object.
request.setAttribute(attributeName, attributeValue)

And receive using request.getAttribute(attributeName)


text:
Jo Anne Payton
Share Jo's life story with friends and family
1944 - 2020 Jo Anne Payton, age 75, of Anaheim, California, passed away June 20, 2020 from Alzheimer's disease. The daughter of Joe and Jean Parsons, Jo was born December 19, 1944 in Fullerton, CA and grew up in the city of Orange. She graduated from Orange High School in 1962, California State University, San Jose in 1966 and earned her teaching credential from University of California, Irvine in 1974. While at San Jose she met Larry Payton, her husband of 53 years. Jo and Larry moved to Irvine, CA in 1970 where they raised their two children. She spent her entire 31+ year teaching career at El Camino Real Elementary School in Irvine where she taught first and third grade, and was once honored as an Irvine Unified School District "Teacher of the Year". Jo didn't set out to change the world, but she did through those she taught. She is remembered as a teacher, mentor teacher and parent who set high standards, gave new meaning to the words "organization and planning", modeled what she taught, ensured that kids believed in themselves and made sure they knew she believed in them as well. Her unwavering belief in children helped them learn to challenge themselves, and accomplish their goals no matter how big or small. Jo's many lessons helped build the foundation for success of countless students who passed through her classroom over the years. Jo was also a dedicated wife and mother, who loved to read, sit in the sun and spend time with those she treasured most. She learned to enjoy softball and football, and was a passionate parent at her own kids' sporting events during their youth. She loved the beach and often vacationed in San Diego and Hawaii with her husband. The title grandmother was a source of great pride and joy. Jo is survived by husband Larry, daughter Leslie, son Michael, 6 grandchildren (Kate, Tyler, Elizabeth, Lauren, Josh and Travis) and her brother Ralph. Jo was a wife, mother, grandmother, friend, mentor and teacher but most of all, she was an inspiration and a gift to those who were lucky enough to have had her in their lives. She will forever be loved and remembered by her family and friends. www.FairhavenMemorial.com
Published in Orange County Register on Jun. 28, 2020.
Fairhaven Memorial Park Mortuary
1702 Fairhaven Avenue
Guest Book sponsored by Fairhaven Memorial Park Mortuary
Mrs. Payton was my first grade teacher, she was my favorite. So sorry for your loss. Sincerely, Kathy Dahlke
Kathryn Sarmiento
TRIBUTE TO A MASTER
Jo Payton has just let go of the insidious grip of Alzheimers. disease. She now joins her mom and dad; and is free from pain. Jo was my Master Teacher at El Camino Real Elementary School in Irvine Unified School District in the late 70s. She was extremely influential in my growth as a teacher; in fact, she modeled for me one of the most critical strategies of effective teaching: classroom management. Jo took teaching very seriously and worked tirelessly to provide the best for her kids. As it turned out, she also applied those skills to mentoring me in the profession. I will never forget how she seemed to know whenever I was almost comfortable with performing a new task, and would add another, starting with reading a story to kids. Who knew that one cannot just sit down and read a book to kids and have their rapt attention? She skillfully and compassionately taught me how to be a teacher. I can say, without reservation, that Jo Payton, was one of the most influential professional models in my teaching career.
We became lifelong friends and I watched her raise two brilliant children with her supportive husband, Larry. I will never forget her; I loved her and miss my friend and master teacher Jo Payton. RIP dear Jo!
Debby Collins
In loving memory of a wonderful person. We will love you and miss you always. Had it not been for her my son Shaun would never been diagnosed as Dyslexic.
Dianne Wooley
When my son Shaun had her in 3rd grade, She was the one who discovered he was dyslexic if she hadnt of caught Shaun would have struggled the rest of his time in school.. I loved going each week to help her out in the classroom
Mrs. Payton was my third grade teacher at ECR many years ago and one of my favorite teachers of all time. My condolences to her family and friends.


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TO READ WITH COFFEE
Collaborations & Links
Fun Topics!
Serious Topics
Emily Peacock
The #BlackLivesMatter is a tag and movement that was created in 2013 to bring awareness to police brutality against black people after the murder of Trayvon Martin, and is still very relevant today.
Following #BlackLivesMatter, came #AllLivesMatter. A tag that white people created to justify their own hardships in life, even though our experiences will never match those of people of color.
I mean how could they? Especially when black people only make up 13% of the population, yet are 24% of the people being killed by the police each year. Black people are 3 times more likely to be killed by police than white people, and 1.3 times more likely to be unarmed in comparison to white people. Eight of the 100 largest city police departments kill black men at higher rates than the U.S. murder rate. Let all that sink in for a minute, I know it's a lot.
Even though these numbers help to put the big picture into perspective, we cannot forget that each number and statistic represents a human being; a person who had a family, friends, hobbies, likes, dislikes, feelings, thoughts. They are all people who deserved to be treated as so, and instead were shot down by the very people who were meant to protect them. We need to remember their stories.
George Floyd was 46 years old, the father to two young daughters, and just trying to get some food when he was murdered on May 5th, 2020 in Powderhorn, Minnesota. The cashier suspected Floyds $20 was counterfeit, and so police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyds neck and head for 8 minutes and 46 seconds; 2 minutes and 53 seconds of which Floyd was unresponsive for. Before becoming unconscious, Floyd was pleading for his life and saying "I can't breathe," "Please," "Don't kill me." Three other police officers stood by and let Chauvin kill George Floyd. Their names are Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas K. Lane, and they need to be prosecuted.
We can no longer allow the police to mistreat our neighbors, our friends, our equals. The police departments have been letting their cops get away with beatings and murders for far too long, barely giving them a slap on the wrist in turn for taking a life. There have been too many deaths, too many 'thoughts and prayers,' it is time for radical change. We need all cops with past records of brutality to be removed from the force, and many to be prosecuted.
Having these conversations and facing the truth about the way our country is run is hard, it's uncomfortable, and it forces a lot of people to look at themselves in a new way. Oftentimes people avoid hard conversations in order to avoid the consequences of past actions, but comfort can not be a priority anymore - not when it is costing lives.
Growing up in a mainly white state and town, conversations of race were rare, but going to school in New York, I made friends that I can talk to about the hard, sad, and tragic things in life, even the things that I cannot relate to. These are the kinds of conversations that need to be had in order for real change to happen. Unfortunately, it took another murder and a series of riots to get the majority of the nation really talking.
Though the riots have gained the people's attention, violence is not necessarily the solvent for the wrongdoings of the police. More people are being injured by tear gas, rubber bullets, and other forms of force by the police every day. If you are protesting, remember to cover your tattoos, leave anything illegal home, bring water, and wear goggles. Use your voice to take action.
You can also make a difference by signing petitions and donating to various causes. Find links to these at the bottom.
We are living in a time of unrest. I am sad for the state of this country, and scared for my friends who are watching violence unfold in their cities, outside of their homes. What we can do now is stand together for justice, keep the conversation going, and remember the people whose lives were taken from them. #BlackLivesMatter.
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
Petitions:
National Action Against Police Brutality and Murder
Justice for George Floyd #2
Places to Donate:
Bail Fund for Protestors
Minnesota Freedom Fund
Weed and Paranoia
Mushrooms & Weed Win in The 2020 Elections
Marijuana and Opioid Addiction
©2018 by To Read With Coffee. Proudly created with Wix.com


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My Month in Reading, September 2019
November 10, 2019 by Jeff
In September, I read three more InCryptid books by Seanan McGuire, and finished out the series so far. Other than that, I read a few graphic novels and listened to a short sci-fi novella.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Cannon by Wallace Wood
This book is definitely a relic of its time. Wood liked to write sexy action comics for servicemen, so these stories originated in comics sent to soldiers. Wood had a great art style, all bullet-headed agents and voluptuous, leggy women. He had a talent for drawing both action scenes and cheesecake pinups, and he was also especially good and looks of existential horror, which pop up once or twice in this volume.
One of the tropes of this series is that all the women are beautiful and none of them keep on their clothes. A handful of the female characters (heroes and villains both) are seemingly always nude or only occasionally dressed in see-through clothing. When given the opportunity to disrobe, they do, and if they need to escape a villain's clutches in the altogether, they make the best of it.
This would all be a bunch of absurd, sexploitational fun if not for the threats of rape and casual misogyny that crop up throughout. I liked the art and adventure enough that the occasional sour note didn't ruin the book for me, but my rating definitely comes with a big asterisk.
Magic for Nothing by Seanan McGuire
I think one of the biggest strengths of the InCryptid series is its ability to support switching viewpoint characters from volume to volume. These books exist in a shared world, but every Price sibling has a different perspective on life and a unique tone that comes along with it.
The whole series is funny, but the humor in each book comes at you from different angles. This book is the first of three focusing on Antimony Price, the youngest Price sibling, tasked with an important undercover mission after the world-changing events of the last book. She also ends up joining the circus.
One nice thing about Antimony's story is that she gets a bit of new romance, which was missing from the last few books because Alex and Verity have more established relationships. It's a fun time to mix romance and danger with death-defying feats in a carnival tent. I've already purchased the rest of the series so far, so it won't be long before I've finished reading the remaining books.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Imaginary Fiends by Tim Seeley, Stephen Molnar and Quinton Winter
In the world of this book, imaginary friends are real but are also trans-dimensional vampires that feed on fear, among other emotions. The main character, Melba Li, is a young woman committed to an insane asylum as a teenager after stabbing her best friend a dozen times because Polly Peachpit, her imaginary friend, told her to do it. The FBI recruits the now adult Melba to help solve a case that may involve another imaginary friend.
The art in this book is pretty great, and the story goes to some bizarre, oftentimes dark, places. I like the idea of someone who can only solve crimes with the help of a manipulative invisible monster. It's an absurd trope, but it's fun to see it play out in this scenario.
Unfortunately, I think this book was a casualty of DC shuttering Vertigo, and it seems unlikely the story will continue. At least the book doesn't end on a cliffhanger, and this story arc can easily stand alone even if there is plenty of potential for more in this world.
Giselle and Beatrice by Benoît Feroumont
This is an odd book. The art is exaggerated and cartoonish, but the subject matter is fairly explicit. It's about a woman named Beatrice, mistreated by her sexist cad of a boss, George, until she gets revenge with magic that turns him into a woman named Giselle. Oh, and Beatrice has a penis because she was partially transformed by the man who gave her the gender-swapping magic.
After George becomes Giselle, Beatrice forces herself on her and then makes Giselle clean her apartment as her live-in maid. Complicating things for Giselle is the fact that she has a thick accent and speaks in broken English, so she has a hard time explaining her predicament to anyone. As time passes, their relationship changes in unexpected ways.
I liked the art, and the story kind of reminds me of Almodovar's The Skin I Live In, but this is also a book about two reprehensible people. George was a scumbag, but Beatrice isn't particularly likable once she gets her revenge, and Giselle soon becomes sympathetic.
Tricks For Free by Seanan McGuire
Antimony is on the run from the covenant as well as hiding from her family, so she goes to ground and goes undercover as an employee at LowryLand, a Disney-like theme park with equally soul-destroying working conditions.
It wouldn't be an InCryptid novel if she wasn't surrounded by cryptids and the supernatural. Her dead aunt Mary hangs around to make sure she's safe, and her roommates are a sylph and a gorgon. She doesn't have her mice or her boyfriend Sam, but plenty of weird stuff keeps happening around her no matter what she does and how much she tries to hide.
When Antimony runs afoul of magic users in the park, she jumps at the chance when one of them offers to teach her how to control her magic. Everything seems great until strange, unexplained accidents start happening around the park and Antimony decides to investigate even though it might blow her cover.
This was yet another highly enjoyable entry in the InCryptid series. I did get a little frustrated late in the book when it felt like the characters were constantly rushing into danger without much of a plan, but it wasn't enough to kill my momentum. The ending sets up further complications that will surely pay off with dividends in the third Antimony book, That Ain't Witchcraft.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
That Ain't Witchcraft by Seanan McGuire
And now, after six InCryptid books in a row, I come to the end of the series so far. Book nine comes out in February of next year, and you can be sure that I'll buy it day one. I enjoyed immersing myself in this world for the last two months.
I especially liked how Antimony's books served as a trilogy within the larger series, building a story arc that resolved with a confrontation against the most significant and dangerous supernatural villain in the series so far, while also tying up one thread of the Price family's fight against the Covenant, now personified in Leonard Cunningham.
My favorite part of this book comes during a climactic moment that I won't spoil here, but let's just say that it was the only moment in the series so far that made me get a little misty-eyed.
The Last Conversation by Paul Tremblay
I've seen a lot of rave reviews of Tremblay's work, but this is the first of his stories that I've read, and although it was decent enough, it probably wasn't the best introduction.
In it, an amnesiac wakes up in a strange facility and an unseen woman puts him through his paces. She prompts him to remember his past via mental and physical exercises. The tone is detached and a little unsettling, and I'm sure it won't surprise you to learn that there is more going on than the main character first realizes.
This novella is part of a collection of thematically related short stories made available on Audible and Kindle for Prime and Kindle Unlimited users. It's a fancy short story collection that you can download and read in any order. Even if this story wasn't my bag, I plan on checking out the rest of the series.
Categories Month in Review Tags 2019, female characters, graphic novels, Seanan McGuire, September, supernatural Post navigation
My Month in Reading, August 2019
My Month in Reading, October 2019


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US officers to boycott Beijing Olympics over rights 'atrocities'
The United States is not going to ship authorities officers to the 2022 Winter Olympics as a result of China's human rights "atrocities," the White House mentioned on Monday, after Beijing threatened unspecified "countermeasures" towards any diplomatic boycott.
President Joe Biden mentioned final month that he was contemplating such a boycott amid criticism of China's human rights document, together with what Washington says is genocide towards minority Muslims in its western area of Xinjiang. The transfer — regardless of a current effort to stabilise ties with a video assembly final month between Biden and China's chief Xi Jinping — is for certain to additional pressure the 2 superpowers' relations, which have been at their lowest level in many years.
"The Biden administration will not send any diplomatic or official representation to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games given the PRC's ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses," White House press secretary Jen Psaki advised a day by day press briefing. "US diplomatic or official representation would treat these games as business as usual in the face of the PRC's egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang, and we simply can't do that," Psaki mentioned, referring to the People's Republic of China.
The diplomatic boycott, which has been inspired by some members of Congress and rights advocacy teams for months, wouldn't have an effect on the attendance of American athletes, she mentioned.
"The athletes on Team USA have our full support. We will be behind them 100% as we cheer them on from home." Secretary of State Antony Blinken has mentioned the United States has consulted allies on a "shared approach" to the Beijing Games. It was unclear if they might comply with the US lead.
"Canada remains deeply disturbed by the troubling reports of human rights violations in China," Canada's overseas ministry mentioned in a press release. "We were notified of the US decision and we will continue to discuss this matter with our partners and allies."
The diplomatic boycott additionally places company Olympic sponsors in "an awkward spot", however fell in need of the US authorities implying they need to reduce ties, mentioned Neal Pilson, a former president of CBS Sports who has overseen Olympics broadcast rights offers.
"The most important issue (for the sponsors) is whether the US team would attend," Pilson mentioned.
Asked whether or not the Biden administration needs American corporations to boycott the Games, State Department spokesman Ned Price advised reporters the federal government wouldn't dictate personal sector practices, however that companies ought to be "fully cognisant" of what's transpiring in Xinjiang.
A spokesperson from Comcast-owned NBCUniversal, which is broadcasting the Beijing Games within the United States, mentioned it might nonetheless be broadcasting occasions from China.
China's embassy in Washington known as the US transfer "political manipulation", as no invites had been prolonged to US politicians within the first place. "In fact, no one would care about whether these people come or not, and it has no impact whatsoever on the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics to be successfully held," embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu mentioned.
Earlier, China's overseas ministry mentioned Beijing would take "resolute countermeasures" ought to Washington go forward with such a boycott, nevertheless it didn't elaborate.
The United States is subsequent as a result of host an Olympics in 2028 in Los Angeles, elevating questions of how China would possibly reply.
Beijing says it opposes the politicisation of sports activities, nevertheless it has punished American sports activities leagues prior to now, together with the National Basketball Association, for crossing political purple traces.
'Excited and ready'
The International Olympic Committee (IOC), which has confronted criticism for turning a blind eye to China's proper document, mentioned the Games ought to be "beyond politics".
"The presence of government officials and diplomats is a purely political decision for each government, which the IOC in its political neutrality fully respects," an IOC spokesperson mentioned.
Sarah Hirshland, chief government of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, mentioned Team USA was "excited and ready to make the nation proud." "We greatly appreciate the unwavering support of the President and his administration and we know they will be cheering us on from home this winter," she mentioned in a press release following the boycott announcement.
Many US athletes argued it might have been unfair to ban them from the Games, and a few US lawmakers who supported not sending officers had mentioned it was in US pursuits for its nationwide anthem to be enjoying in Beijing as Americans obtained medals.
While a handful of outstanding Republicans criticised Biden for not pursuing a full boycott, Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who led the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, mentioned Biden had made the best alternative.
Human rights teams welcomed the transfer, however mentioned Washington might do extra to carry China accountable. For China, which denies all rights abuses, Biden's transfer is much less a menace to the Games and extra of an optics downside that Beijing fueled by threatening retaliation, specialists mentioned.
"It would have been a non-story if let alone," mentioned Lisa Delpy Neirotti, an affiliate professor of sport administration on the George Washington University School of Business. "We typically do not send a large government delegation anyway, especially in Covid times."
China plans to restrict spectator attendance on the February Games, citing strict Covid-19 protocols, and Chinese state media have mentioned Beijing doesn't intend to ask Western politicians who threaten boycotts. Russian President Vladimir Putin is the one chief of a serious nation who has accepted China's invitation. Other international locations, together with Australia and Britain, are reportedly contemplating their very own boycotts.
Stefano Sannino, chief of the European Union's diplomatic service, mentioned on Friday that boycotts have been a matter for particular person member states, not widespread EU overseas coverage.
Scott Kennedy, a China professional on the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, mentioned Beijing had choices to retaliate — corresponding to limiting bilateral dialogue, stalling visas, or hamstringing athletic delegations and journalists on the Games — all of which can result in additional diplomatic backlash for China's ruling Communist Party.
"The ultimate origin of these tensions is China's shift in a more autocratic direction. That's the CCP's choice, but it doesn't mean the rest of the world simply has to remain silent," he mentioned.
Tags: Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics beijing olympics China indian express indian express news Joe Biden paralympic games todays news United States world news
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