text:
A Bold and Controversial Idea for Making Breast Milk
The obsession with breastfeeding has inspired a start-up to make human milk outside the human body.
By Sarah Zhang
stilllifephotographer / Claudia Totir / Getty / Katie Martin / The Atlantic
The inconvenient truth about breastfeeding is that breasts are, invariably, attached to a person. A person who could get too sick to breastfeed. A person who might have to go back to work within two weeks of giving birth, because U.S. law does not mandate paid leave. A person who might have no place to pump at work, despite a law that does actually mandate such a room. For understandable and frustrating reasons, many mothers who want to breastfeed—who have internalized years of hearing "Breast is best"—simply cannot.
Enter: a bioreactor of lactating human breast cells.
A small start-up called Biomilq recently announced it has managed to grow human mammary cells that make at least two of the most common components of breast milk: a protein called casein and a sugar called lactose. This is the first step, the company hopes, to making human milk outside the human body.
Breast milk is of course far, far more complex than just casein and lactose. It is made up of at least hundreds of different components: a multitude of proteins, fats, and sugars, but also antibodies, hormones, and beneficial bacteria. Biomilq's founders, Leila Strickland and Michelle Egger, say that they seek to eventually make milk that is "nutritionally" but not necessarily "immunologically" close to breast milk. Experts I spoke with said that mammary cells in a bioreactor simply could not replicate the full complexity and benefits of breast milk. One researcher laughed at the idea.
Biomilq does seem to be onto something though, at least culturally. Since the postwar days of doctors pushing formula as the superior "scientific" option, the conventional and medical wisdom has swung in the opposite direction—to the point where women often feel guilty for being unable to breastfeed. "There's just a feeling of failure: I can't do this for my child. This is really important," said Maryanne Perrin, a breast-milk researcher at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who has studied women trying to buy breast milk online for their children. "I heard a lot of anxiety in the voices and comments," she added. In other words, there is definitely a demand for human breast milk.
The idea for Biomilq, in fact, came out of Strickland's own struggles to breastfeed as a new mom. Her son had trouble latching after he was born, and she wasn't making enough milk. "During those months of life, my whole world revolved around whether or not my body would produce enough of this food," she says. She wished for an option that was not formula. Strickland has a background in cell biology, so she naturally wondered: What about breast cells?
In 2013, she began growing mammary cells in a tiny lab space in North Carolina, and in 2019, she met Egger, a student at Duke's business school and a former food scientist at General Mills, who had worked on products such as Go-Gurt. They officially launched Biomilq late last year to make lab-grown human milk—or as they prefer to call it, "cultured breastmilk." Another start-up based in Singapore, TurtleTree Labs, recently announced it is trying to re-create cow and human milk with cells as well.
Human milk is currently available for sale, but it is not easy to buy. Officially, parents can go to a milk bank to buy donated breast milk that has been screened and pasteurized—but this requires a doctor's prescription and can go for a hefty $4 or $5 an ounce to cover processing costs. (Milk banks also prioritize donor milk for sick or preterm infants in the hospital, for whom cow-based formula is particularly prone to causing a serious gut disease called necrotizing enterocolitis.) Unofficially, parents can go on Facebook or Craigslist or another online marketplace where women share or sell extra breast milk. These markets are cheaper and more convenient, but they're also unregulated. Donors largely follow the honor system for disclosing medications and other health information. Meanwhile, formula is cheap, safe, and widely available in grocery stores. Biomilq promises to combine the "nutrition of breastmilk" with the "practicality of formula."
It's hard to say, at this nascent stage, exactly how still-hypothetical breast milk made by cells in a bioreactor would compare with formula. The cultured human-milk proteins could be more suitable in a baby's gut than dairy proteins, and sugars specific to human milk could help feed a baby's new gut microbes.
Read: The ominous rise of toddler milk
But milk from cells in a bioreactor would still be missing some key components of true breast milk—for the simple reason that the components of breast milk don't come from the breast alone. Natalie Shenker, a breast-milk researcher at Imperial College London, enumerated some examples: Antibodies, which transfer immunity against pathogens from mother to baby, come from the mother's own immune cells in her blood. Hormones, which may shape the baby's brain and behavior, from her endocrine system. Fats, which make up a substantial portion of the calories in milk, from her diet and own stored fatty tissue. (Biomilq suggests that these fats could be supplemented in cultured cells.) Beneficial bacteria that help populate the baby's gut come from the mother's own microbiome. The whole body is responsible for the production of what we call breast milk.
The exact cocktail of protein, sugar, fats, antibodies, hormones, and bacteria in breast milk can change from day to day and even hour to hour. It can change in response to the baby's needs. One hypothesis suggests that a sick baby can communicate via "retrograde milk flow"—more memorably termed "baby spit backwash"—to change the composition of breast milk to help the baby fight off disease. Breast milk is complex and dynamic. Perrin said she applauds any efforts to improve infant nutrition, but "to re-create breast milk in a test tube, I think we're just so far away from that."
Growing enough mammary cells to make any milk at scale is also a huge technical challenge. These cells require expensive nutrients and are incredibly prone to contamination from bacteria. The recent interest in lab-grown meat has prompted a number of companies to work on these problems, but breast milk is likely to face higher scrutiny, deservedly so, because it is for babies. Shenker, who is familiar with the challenges of growing mammary cells from her own research, wondered whether re-creating milk was the best use of resources. Why go through the expensive, unproven process of growing cells to make milk in a bioreactor, she asked, when we already know how to get actual milk—nutritionally complete—from a donor? The problem is not a lack of breast milk on Earth, but a lack of access and distribution.
Read: The vindication of cheese, butter, and full-fat milk
When I contacted breast-milk researchers to ask about lab-grown breast milk, they ended up changing the topic to barriers faced by women who want to breastfeed. "A lot of moms aren't getting the support they need," said Meghan Azad, a breast-milk researcher at the University of Manitoba. Breastfeeding takes skill, which was lost for a generation when formula was dominant. It takes workplaces that give women the time and flexibility to breastfeed or pump. And it takes a culture that doesn't shame women for breastfeeding in public. And although society makes it hard for women to breastfeed, it also tells them that "Breast is best." The result is a nearly impossible set of expectations.
The appeal of Biomilq is that it's supposed to close the gap—that frustrating space between what mothers are expected to do and what most can realistically do. "We're done making trade-offs between our baby's health, our wellbeing, and the environment," the company's website proclaims. But it also puts the company in the position of both touting the benefits of breastfeeding … and telling women it's okay not to breastfeed. Egger says Biomilq is not about replacing breastfeeding, but supplementing it. "If women can breastfeed even part of the time, they should be wholeheartedly supported in doing that," she says. "We just see this as an opportunity for them to actually continue to enable that process and not having to feel guilt or shame or frustration." She draws a particular contrast with formula companies, which have used aggressive tactics to get into hospitals and influence breastfeeding recommendations. Over the course of the 20th century, these standardized cans of formula often came to replace the highly personalized breast milk of mothers.
The irony is that if human milk from cells, as a concept, really does take off one day, the more successful it is, the more likely it is to become formula 2.0: another practical, standardized, and commercial product. In fact, formula companies are already adding sugars called "human milk oligosaccharides" to their products, to sell formula that they can say is closer to breast milk.


text:
Q: Doxygen UML not showing type of attributes, methods and their arguments and returns I'm trying to add to my UML diagram information about type of attributes, methods and their arguments and returns, but I can't find appropriate flag to set. What should I set to achieve this?
I have:

I want to achieve:

My Doxyfile:
    # Difference with default Doxyfile 1.8.17
OUTPUT_DIRECTORY       = /home/adrian/Dokumenty/eclipse/0_FULL_GAME/headers
BUILTIN_STL_SUPPORT    = YES
EXTRACT_ALL            = YES
EXTRACT_PRIVATE        = YES
EXTRACT_PRIV_VIRTUAL   = YES
EXTRACT_PACKAGE        = YES
EXTRACT_STATIC         = YES
EXTRACT_LOCAL_METHODS  = YES
CASE_SENSE_NAMES       = NO
INPUT                  = /home/adrian/Dokumenty/eclipse/0_FULL_GAME/headers
GENERATE_TREEVIEW      = YES
ALLEXTERNALS           = YES
DOT_FONTSIZE           = 14
UML_LOOK               = YES
UML_LIMIT_NUM_FIELDS   = 0
TEMPLATE_RELATIONS     = YES
CALL_GRAPH             = YES
CALLER_GRAPH           = YES
INTERACTIVE_SVG        = YES

A: Doxygen has little support for UML diagramas and doesn't allow much customization.
I think you should use another tool if you want to generate UML diagrams from C++ code, like Visual Paradigm or Enterprise Architect (I'm not sure if they are free).
You might find this question useful.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Home › Rankings › PSA World Tour
The Professional Squash Association (PSA) is the global governing body responsible for the administration of both men's and women's professional squash around the world.
Events on the PSA World Tour are broken down into four categories ranging from the elite World Series, featuring only the very best players from around the world, to 5-15 level, where budding stars of the future take their first steps on the road to squash stardom. Click below to see how Canadians are ranking against the top men and women in the world.
Men's PSA Rankings
Women's PSA Rankings
Canadian Singles
Canadian Doubles
WSF Junior Rankings

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
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text:
\section{Introduction}
\label{sec:intro}

Coreference resolution has always been considered one of the unsolved NLP tasks due to its challenging aspect of document-level understanding \cite{wiseman-etal-2015-learning,wiseman-etal-2016-learning,clark-manning-2015-entity,clark-manning-2016-improving,lee-etal-2017-end}.
Nonetheless, it has made a tremendous progress in recent years by adapting contextualized embedding encoders such as ELMo \cite{lee-etal-2018-higher,fei-etal-2019-end} and BERT \cite{kantor-globerson-2019-coreference,joshi-etal-2019-bert,spanbert-joshi}.
The latest state-of-the-art model shows the improvement of 12.4\% over the model introduced 2.5 years ago, where the major portion of the improvement is derived by representation learning (Figure~\ref{fig:coref-history}).

Most of these previous models have also adapted higher-order inference (HOI) for the global optimization of coreference links, although HOI clearly has not been the focus of those works, for the fact that gains from HOI have been reported marginal.
This has inspired us to analyze the impact of HOI on modern coreference resolution models in order to envision the future direction of this research.

\noindent To make thorough ablation studies among different approaches, we implement an end-to-end coreference system in PyTorch (Sec~\ref{subsec:baseline}),
and two HOI approaches proposed by previous work, attended antecedent and entity equalization (Sec~\ref{subsec:previous}), along with two of our original approaches, span clustering and cluster merging (Sec~\ref{subsec:new}).
These approaches are experimented with two Transformer encoders, BERT and SpanBERT, to assess how effective HOI is even when coupled with those high-performing encoders (Sec~\ref{sec:exp}).
To the best of our knowledge,\LN this is the first work to make a comprehensive analysis on multiple HOI approaches side-by-side for the task of coreference resolution.\footnote{Source codes and models are available at \url{https://github.com/lxucs/coref-hoi}.}

\begin{figure}[htbp!]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.9\columnwidth]{img/coref-history.pdf}
\caption{Performance breakdown of the recent state-of-the-art models on the CoNLL 2012 shared task. W-16: \citet{wiseman-etal-2016-learning}, C-16: \citet{clark-manning-2016-improving}, L-17: \citet{lee-etal-2017-end}, L-18: \citet{lee-etal-2018-higher}, F-19: \citet{fei-etal-2019-end}, K-19: \citet{kantor-globerson-2019-coreference}, J-19: \citet{joshi-etal-2019-bert}, J-20: \citet{spanbert-joshi}.}
\label{fig:coref-history}
\end{figure}

\section*{Acknowledgments}

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the AWS Machine Learning Research Awards (MLRA).
Any contents in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of AWS.
\section{Appendices}
\label{sec:appendix}

\subsection{Experimental Settings}
\label{append:experiments}

We implement the experimented models using PyTorch. BERT\textsubscript{Large} and SpanBERT\textsubscript{Large} are used as encoders. For each experiment, the best performed model on the development set is selected and evaluated on the test set.

\paragraph{Hyperparameters and Implementation}
Similar to \citet{joshi-etal-2019-bert,spanbert-joshi}, documents are split into independent segments with maximum 384 word pieces for BERT\textsubscript{Large} and 512 for SpanBERT\textsubscript{Large}. In our final setting, BERT-parameters and task-parameters have separate learning rates ($1 \times 10^{-5}$ and $3 \times 10^{-4}$ respectively), separate linear decay schedule, and separate weight decay rates ($10^{-2}$ and $0$ respectively). Models are trained 24 epochs with dropout rate 0.3.

The implementation of \texttt{EE} is based on the Tensorflow implementation from \citet{kantor-globerson-2019-coreference} which requires $\mathcal{O}(k^2)$ memory with $k$ being the number of extracted spans, while other HOI approaches only requires $\mathcal{O}(k)$ memory \footnote{The maximum number of antecedents for all models is set to 50 which is constant.}. To keep the GPU memory usage within 32GB, we limit the maximum number of span candidates for \texttt{EE} to be 300, which may have a negative impact on the performance.

Experiments are conducted on Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs with 32GB memory. The average training time is around 7 hours for \texttt{BERT} and \texttt{SpanBERT} without HOI, and ranges from 9 - 15 hours with HOI methods.

\subsection{Results}
\label{append:results}

Table~\ref{table:results_avg} reports the macro-average F1 scores out of 5 repeated developments of each approach. \texttt{CM} still has the best performance with 79.9 averaged F1 score. Span refinement-based HOI approaches, \texttt{AA}, \texttt{EE}, and \texttt{SC}, still have lower F1 scores than the local-only \texttt{SpanBERT}.

We do not find different configurations for \texttt{CM} make any huge impact to the performance. The final configuration for \texttt{CM} is sequential order and max reduction (Algorithm~\ref{algo:cm}).

\subsection{Analysis}
\label{append:analysis}

\begin{table}[htbp!]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{c|c}
\toprule
\AAA & -0.02 ($\pm$ 0.06) \\
\EE & 0.03 ($\pm$ 0.07) \\
\SC & 0.11 ($\pm$ 0.10) \\
\CM & 0.04 ($\pm$ 0.04) \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\caption{Performance drop on CoNLL'12 English test set after turning off the corresponding HOI in trained models.}
\label{table:impact}
\end{table}

Table~\ref{table:impact} shows the averaged performance drop and its standard deviations w.r.t Avg-F1 after turning off the corresponding HOI in trained models, to see the direct performance impact of HOI over local decisions.

\paragraph{Pronoun Resolution}

In our analysis, the following personal pronouns are regarded as ambiguous pronouns: ``you'', ``your'', ``yours''.

\section{Approach}
\label{sec:approach}

\subsection{End-to-End Coreference System}
\label{subsec:baseline}

We reimplement the end-to-end \textit{c2f-coref} model introduced by \citet{lee-etal-2018-higher} that has been adapted by every coreference resolution model since then. It detects mention candidates through span enumeration and aggressive pruning.
For each candidate span $x$, the model learns the distribution over its antecedents $y \in \mathcal{Y}(x)$:
\begin{equation}
    P(y) = \frac{e^{s(x, y)}}{\sum_{y' \in \mathcal{Y}(x)}e^{s(x, y')}} \label{eq:py}
\end{equation}
where $s(x,y)$ is the local score involving two parts: how likely the spans $x$ and $y$ are valid mentions, and how likely they refer to the same entity:
\begin{align}
\label{eq:antecedent_score}
    s(x, y)  &= s_m(x) + s_m(y) + s_c(x,y)\\
    s_m(x)   &= w_m \texttt{FFNN}_m (g_x) \nonumber\\
    s_c(x,y) &= w_c \texttt{FFNN}_c (g_x, g_y, \phi(x,y)) \nonumber
\end{align}
$g_x, g_y$ are the span embeddings of $x$ and $y$, $\phi(x,y)$ is the meta-information (e.g., speakers, distance), and $w_m, w_c$ are the mention and coreference scores, respectively (\texttt{FFNN}: feedforward neural network).

We use different Transformers-based encoders, and follow the ``\textit{independent}'' setup for long documents as suggested by \citet{joshi-etal-2019-bert}.

\subsection{Span Refinement}
\label{subsec:previous}

Two HOI methods presented by recent coreference work are based on span refinement that aggregates non-local features to enrich the span representation with more ``global'' information.
The updated span representation $g_x'$ can be derived as in Eq.~\ref{eq:refine}, where $g_x'$ is the interpolation between the current and refined representation $g_x$ and $a_x$, and $W_f$ is the gate parameter.
$g_x'$ is used to perform another round of antecedent-ranking in replacement of $g_x$.
\begin{align}
\label{eq:refine}
    g_x' &= f_x \circ g_x + (1 - f_x) \circ a_x \\
    f_x &= \sigma (W_f [g_x, a_x])\nonumber
\end{align}
The following two methods share the same updating process for $g_x'$, but with different ways to obtain the refined span representation $a_x$.

\paragraph{Attended Antecedent (\texttt{AA})}

takes the antecedent information to enrich $g_x'$ \citep{lee-etal-2018-higher,fei-etal-2019-end,joshi-etal-2019-bert,spanbert-joshi}.
The refined span $a_x$ is the attended antecedent representation over the current antecedent distribution $P(y)$, where $g_{y \in \mathcal{Y}(x)}$ is the antecedent representation:
\begin{equation}
    a_x = \sum_{y \in \mathcal{Y}(x)} P(y) \cdot g_y
\end{equation}

\paragraph{Entity Equalization (\texttt{EE})}

takes the clustering relaxation as in Eq.~\ref{eq:ee} to model the entity distribution \citep{kantor-globerson-2019-coreference}, where $Q(x \in E_{y'})$ is the probability of the span $x$ referring to an entity $E_{y'}$ in which the span $y'$ is the first mention. $P(y)$ is the current antecedent distribution.
\begin{align}
\label{eq:ee}
    & Q(x \in E_{y'}) = \nonumber\\
    & \begin{cases}
        \sum_{k=y'}^{x-1} P(y = k) \cdot Q(k \in E_{y'}) & y' < x \\
        P(y = \epsilon) & y' = x \\
        0 & y' > x
    \end{cases}
\end{align}
The refined span $a_x$ is the attended entity representation, where $e_y^{(x)}$ is the entity representation to which the span $y$ belongs till the span $x$:
\begin{align}
    e_x^{(t)} &= \sum_{y=1}^t Q(y \in E_x) \cdot g_y \\
    a_x &= \sum_{y=1}^x Q(x \in E_y) \cdot e_y^{(x)}
\end{align}

\subsection{HOI with Clustering}
\label{subsec:new}

This section introduces two new HOI methods for a more extensive study in HOI.

\paragraph{Span Clustering (\texttt{SC})}

is also based on span refinement, and it
constructs the actual clusters and obtains the ``true'' predicted entities using $P(y)$ instead of modeling the ``soft'' entity clusters through the relaxation as in \texttt{EE} (Section~\ref{subsec:previous}).
This way, although we lose the differentiable property, the obtaining of true entities with the same empirical inference time as \texttt{EE} has made \texttt{SC} desirable.

\noindent The entity representation $e_i$ for an entity cluster $C_i$ is given by the attended spans in this cluster:
\begin{align*}
    \alpha_t &= w_{\alpha} \text{FFNN}_{\alpha} (g_t) \\
    \alpha_{i,t} &= \frac{\exp(\alpha_t)}{\sum_{k \in C_i}\exp(\alpha_k)} \\
    e_i &= \sum_{t \in C_i} \alpha_{i,t} \cdot g_t
\end{align*}
The entity clusters $C_i$ are constructed in the same way as in the final cluster prediction.
The refined span $a_x$ is then equal to the representation of entity $e_i$ to which it belongs ($g_x \in C_i$).

\paragraph{Cluster Merging (\texttt{CM})}

performs sequential antecedent ranking combining both antecedent and entity information to gradually build up the entity clusters, which is distinguished from span refinement methods that simply re-rank antecedents.
Algorithm~\ref{algo:cm} describes the ranking process for \texttt{CM}.
$g_i$ is the $i$'th span, $\mathcal{Y}(i)$ is the indices of $g_i$'s antecedents, and $C_i$ is the cluster that $g_i$ belongs to.
The ranking score  $s_x(y)$ consists of both antecedent score $f_a$ (see Eq.~\ref{eq:antecedent_score}) and cluster score $f_c$.
To avoid overlapping between $f_a$ and $f_c$, we set $f_c$ as $0$ if the cluster is the initial cluster (L6).
Thus, $f_c$ becomes the consultation such that when $f_c > 0$, the span $g_x$ is likely to match the cluster $C_y$, and vice versa.
$f_c$ is computed by \texttt{FFNN} similar to $f_a$, and $\phi(C_y)$ is the meta-feature such as the cluster size.

\begin{algorithm}
  \caption{Antecedent Ranking for \CM}\label{algo:cm}
  \begin{algorithmic}[1]
    \small
    \Procedure{ranking}{$g_1, \cdots, g_N$}
    \State $C_{i = 1, \cdots, N} \gets g_i$
    \State $R \gets $ ranking\_order($g_1, \cdots, g_N$)
    \For{$x = R_1 \cdots R_N$}
        \For{$ y \in \mathcal{Y}(x)$} \Comment{Parallelized}
            \State $f_c (g_x, C_y) \gets 0$ if $C_y = g_y$
            \State $s_x(y) \gets f_a (g_x, g_y) + f_c (g_x, C_y, \phi(C_y))$
        \EndFor
        \State $y' \gets \text{argmax}_{y \in \mathcal{Y}(x)} s_x(y)$
        \If{$y' \neq \epsilon$}
            \State merge $C_x$ and $C_{y'}$
        \EndIf
    \EndFor
    \State \textbf{return} $s_1, \cdots, s_N$
    \EndProcedure
  \end{algorithmic}
\end{algorithm}

\noindent Two simple configurations can be tuned for \texttt{CM}. We can have the sequential left-to-right ranking order or the easy-first order (L3) whose sequence is ordered by each span's max antecedent score, building the most confident clusters first \citep{ng-cardie-2002-improving,clark-manning-2016-improving}. There can be element-wise mean or max-reduction among the spans in the two merging clusters (L10).

Distinguished from \citet{wiseman-etal-2016-learning}, clusters in \texttt{CM} are searched and merged in training without the use of oracle clusters, closing the gap between training and test time.

\section{Conclusion}
\label{sec:conclusion}

We implement the end-to-end coreference resolution model and investigate four higher-order inference methods, including two of our own methods.
Our best model shows the new result of 80.2 on the CoNLL 2012 dataset.
We thoroughly analyze the empirical effectiveness of HOI and demonstrate why it fails to boost performance on the CoNLL 2012 dataset compared to the improvement from encoders. We show that current HOI does not meet up with the original motivation, suggesting that a new perspective of HOI is needed for this task in the era of deep learning-based NLP.
\section{Experiments}
\label{sec:exp}

For our experiments, the CoNLL 2012 English shared task dataset is used \citep{pradhan-etal-2012-conll}.
Given the end-to-end coreference system in Section~\ref{subsec:baseline}, six models are developed as follows:\footnote{Appdendix~\ref{append:experiments} provides details of our experimental settings.}

\begin{itemize}
\small\setlength\itemsep{0em}
\item \texttt{BERT}: BERT \cite{devlin-etal-2019-bert} as the encoder
\item \texttt{SpanBERT}: SpanBERT \cite{spanbert-joshi} as the encoder
\item \texttt{+AA}: \texttt{SpanBERT} with attended antecedent (\textsec{subsec:previous})
\item \texttt{+EE}: \texttt{SpanBERT} with entity equalization (\textsec{subsec:previous})
\item \texttt{+SC}: \texttt{SpanBERT} with span clustering (\textsec{subsec:new})
\item \texttt{+CM}: \texttt{SpanBERT} with cluster merging (\textsec{subsec:new})
\end{itemize}

\noindent Note that \noindent \texttt{BERT} and \texttt{SpanBERT} completely rely on only local decisions without any HOI.
Particularly, \texttt{+AA} is equivalent to \citet{spanbert-joshi}.

\subsection{Results}
\label{subsec:results}

Table~\ref{table:results} shows the best results in comparison to previous state-of-the-art systems. We also report the mean scores and standard deviations from 5 repeated developments, which we could not find from the previous works.

The impact of SpanBERT over BERT is clear, showing 2.4\% improvement on average.
However, none of the HOI models shows a clear advantage over \texttt{SpanBERT} which adapts no HOI.
In fact, all HOI models except for \CM\ show negative impact.
The best result is achieved by \CM\ with the Avg-F1 of 80.2, surpassing the previous best result of 79.6 based on \textit{c2f-coref} reported by \citet{spanbert-joshi}.

\subsection{Impact Analysis of HOI}
\label{subsec:impact}

Three HOI methods based on span refinement, \texttt{AA}, \texttt{EE}, and \texttt{SC}, show negative impact upon local decisions.
We suspect that error propagation from antecedent-ranking may downgrade the quality of refinement.
On the other hand, \texttt{CM} shows marginal improvement, suggesting that maintaining entity clusters can be superior to span refinement, at the cost of more inference time from the sequential ranking process.
To analyze the direct impact of HOI, we take the trained models of each HOI method and evaluate them on the test set while turning off HOI, making it compatible to \texttt{SpanBERT}.

The averaged performance drop w.r.t Avg-F1 after turning off HOI is less than 0.2 for all methods\LN (Appendix~\ref{append:analysis}), implying that none of the HOI method has a significantly direct impact to the final performance of the model using SpanBERT.

\begin{table}[htbp!]
\small
\centering
\begin{tabular}{c|cccc}
\multicolumn{1}{c|}{} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{W2C} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{C2W} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{C2C} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{W2W} \\
\midrule
$\;$ + \texttt{AA} & 240.8 (1.3) & 241.2 (1.3) & 16262.2 & 2168.4 \\
$\;$ + \texttt{EE} & 244.1 (1.3) & 245.3 (1.3) & 16183.3 & 2136.3 \\
$\;$ + \texttt{SC} & 248.2 (1.3) & 262.0 (1.4) & 16184.4 & 2146.0 \\
$\;$ + \texttt{CM} & 226.4 (\textbf{1.2}) & 235.0 (\textbf{1.2}) & 16446.0 & 2180.0 \\
\end{tabular}
\caption{Averaged statistics on the test set prediction of four HOI approaches. W2C represents the number of mentions that are linked to a \textbf{W}rong antecedent before HOI and are linked to a \textbf{C}orrect antecedent after HOI; vice versa for C2W. C2C/W2W is the number of mentions that are both linked to \textbf{C}orrect/\textbf{W}rong antecedents before and after HOI. Parentheses indicate the percentage of corresponding numbers per row.}
\label{table:link_change}
\vspace{-3ex}
\end{table}

In further investigation, we examine the change of coreferent links w.r.t their correctness. Specifically, Table~\ref{table:link_change} shows the four types of link changes before and after HOI. It demonstrates that the benefits from HOI is diminished because the effects are two-sided: there are roughly same amounts of links (about 1\%) becoming correct or wrong after HOI, therefore neither HOI method leads to much improvement overall.

It is worth mentioning that the impact of HOI is not limited to only global decisions.
HOI implicitly\LN serves as a way of regularization that impacts local decisions as well, since HOI and local ranking are mutually dependent during training.
Such indirect influence of HOI makes it difficult to assess its true impact, which we will explore more in the future.

\subsection{Analysis of Pronoun Resolution}
\label{subsec:pronoun}

\begin{table}[htbp!]
\small
\centering
\begin{tabular}{c|cc|cc|c}
\multicolumn{1}{c|}{} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{SP} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{PS} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{FL} & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{WL} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{BC} \\
\midrule
\tt BERT     & 2.3 & 6.5 & 213.8 & 186.3 & 48.8 (3.5) \\
\tt SpanBERT & 2.8 & 6.6 & 218.3 & 168.0 & \textbf{43.8} (2.7) \\
$\;$ + \texttt{AA} & \bf 1.8 & 8.8 & 214.2 & \bf 159.4 & 44.8 (2.4) \\
$\;$ + \texttt{EE} & \bf 1.8 & \bf 5.5 & 210.0 & 165.3 & 44.0 (2.5) \\
$\;$ + \texttt{SC} & 3.8 & 7.2 & 223.6 & 170.0 & 45.4 (3.0) \\
$\;$ + \texttt{CM} & 3.0 & 6.6 & \bf 208.0 & 162.2 &\textbf{43.8} (2.6) \\
\end{tabular}
\caption{Averaged statistics on the test set prediction of different approaches. SP is the number of coreferent links from \textbf{S}ingular to \textbf{P}lural personal pronouns; vice versa for PS. FL (False Link) and WL (Wrong Link) is the number of conreferent link errors that involve two personal pronouns. BC is the number of clusters that contain both singular and plural pronouns, and the parentheses indicate the numbers of BC that contain ambiguous pronouns such as ``you''.}
\label{table:analysis}
\vspace{-3ex}
\end{table}

\paragraph{Direct Inference}

For the error analysis, we examine the direct inference between two personal pronouns.\footnote{Ambiguous pronouns such as ``you'' are excluded in direct inference analysis, and included in indirect inference analysis.}
SP/PS in Table~\ref{table:analysis} shows the numbers of links that one pronoun incorrectly selects another pronoun with different plurality as its antecedent.
We find that adapting HOI shows slightly higher impact than switching to a more advanced encoder.
\texttt{AA} can reinforce the pronoun representation to bias towards singularity and lead to lower SP error and higher PS error, while the difference between \texttt{BERT} and \texttt{SpanBERT} is trivial on SP/PS.

\noindent We also look at the general types of coreferent errors involving two pronouns.
False Link (FL) falsely links a non-anaphoric pronoun to another pronoun as antecedent; Wrong Link (WL) links an anaphoric pronoun to another wrong pronoun as antecedent. Table~\ref{table:analysis} shows that \texttt{EE} and \texttt{CM} reduce FL errors by 4+\%, suggesting that the aggregation of non-local features indeed leads to more conservative linking decisions.
However, adapting an advanced encoder shows higher impact on WL errors, as \texttt{SpanBERT} reduces almost 10\% compared to \texttt{BERT}, implying that representation learning is still more important for semantic matching.

\paragraph{Indirect Inference}

The plurality of ambiguous pronouns such as \textit{you} depends on the context. Two indirect links of (\textit{he}, \textit{you}) and (\textit{you}, \textit{they}) can be common to induce incorrect clusters that contain both singular and plural pronouns \citep{wiseman-etal-2016-learning,lee-etal-2018-higher}. Table~\ref{table:analysis} shows the numbers of these erroneous clusters in prediction. Surprisingly, very few of these clusters contain ambiguous pronouns in either approach.
This observation moderates the long-standing movitation of HOI.

Additionally, the change of representation from BERT to SpanBERT has far more impact that reduces 10\% of these erroneous clusters, while the four HOI methods fail to show significant difference compared to \texttt{SpanBERT}.

\section{Related Work}
\label{sec:related}

Most neural network-based coreference resolution models have adapted antecedent-ranking \cite{wiseman-etal-2015-learning,clark-manning-2015-entity,lee-etal-2017-end,lee-etal-2018-higher,joshi-etal-2019-bert,spanbert-joshi}, which relies on the local decisions between each mention and its antecedents.
To achieve deeper global optimization,\LN \citet{wiseman-etal-2016-learning,clark-manning-2016-improving,yu-etal-2020-cluster} built entity representations in the ranking process, whereas \citet{lee-etal-2018-higher,kantor-globerson-2019-coreference} refined the mention representation by aggregating its antecedents' information.

It is no secret that the integration of contextualized embeddings has played the most critical role in this task. While the following are based on the same end-to-end coreference model \cite{lee-etal-2017-end},
\citet{lee-etal-2018-higher,fei-etal-2019-end} reported 3.3\% improvement by adapting ELMo in the encoders \cite{peters-etal-2018-deep}.
\citet{kantor-globerson-2019-coreference,joshi-etal-2019-bert} gained additional 3.3\% by adapting BERT \cite{devlin-etal-2019-bert}.
\citet{spanbert-joshi} introduced SpanBERT that gave another 2.7\% improvement over \citet{joshi-etal-2019-bert}.

Most recently, \citet{wu-etal-2020-corefqa} proposes a new model that adapts question-answering framework on coreference resolution, and achieves state-of-the-art result of 83.1 on the CoNLL'12 shared task.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


Roofing replacement is more than just nailing down shingles. Today, effective roofing relies on advanced material technology and an integrated system approach aimed at protecting your biggest asset – you home.
Installing a new shingle roof is a huge commitment, so understanding the entire re-roofing process from start to finish can be highly beneficial to you as a homeowner. From questions about the cost involved to knowing the installation pitfalls to watch out for, there's a lot of information that you need to familiarize yourself with if you want a successful replacement with no costly surprises along the way.
The process itself starts with contractor research, comparing estimates, and deciding project details. Then, it's go time!
Here at All Roofing Solutions, we've nailed down a re-roofing process that's guaranteed to give you the best roof for your buck.
Whether we're replacing a shingle, slate or metal roof, surface preparation is always the same.
Also, wood sheeting needs to be inspected to make sure that it is attached to the roof rafters the right way. Unfortunately, many roofing contractors do not check for missing nails during the removal old roofing material. They install new shingles without re-nailing the old wood decking. After the new shingles are installed you might be impressed at the sight of the whole structure, but after several weeks you will see many bumps on your roof.
We re-nail whole wood decking so that the roof is fully secured.
Drip Edge Installation – After wood decking is prepared we install drip edge at all edges of the roof. Drip edge is a piece of metal bend at 90 degrees to prevent rain from getting underneath roofing material on all edges.
Ice and water shield installation – Next step is installing "ice and water shield" which is a special type of roofing underlayment. Ice and water shield sticks to the wood decking which prevents any water leaks. It must be installed at the bottom of the roof and at all roof penetrations (chimneys, pipe flanges, roof connections, etc.).
Roofing felt installation – After ice and water shield is applied, the rest of the roof needs to be cover with roofing felt. Roofing felt prevents shingles from sticking to the wood. We always use heavy duty #30 roofing felt.
Need New Shingle Roofing Installed?
All Roofing Solutions is a family owned and operated roofing contractor proudly serve Delaware and southeastern Pennsylvania. We have been replacing, repairing, and inspecting roofs in the residential and commercial sectors for nearly 20 years and pride ourselves with excellent workmanship and great customer service!
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Each roofing/siding projects includes a meticulously performed, post-roofing inspection. We want to make sure that your roof replacement is done correctly and that it meets with your complete satisfaction.
All projects are supervised by company owner to ensure high quality workmanship.
To schedule your free consultation, call 302-725-ROOF (7663) in Delaware or 610-551-ROOF (7663) in Pennsylvania. And don't forget to ask about our discounts!
Excellent job! All the steps listed above are an important part of a roofing replacement process.
These are really some excellent points. Each and every step mentioned above is equally important in roof installation and replacement.
Great step by step procedures I am sure most novice will find this helpful.
I would not have even thought about half of these steps! It never occurred to me to cover your house so the old roof that is taken off doesn't damage it! I am definitely going to hire professionals to re roof my house.


text:
Waiting for user's reply
Auto-create a button is possible now with Feedbacks, but not with Commands
Theo Derks - NL (distributor) 7 years ago in Applications / Studio (Server editor) • updated by Oksana (expert) 7 years ago • 1
In Studio version 18439 it's possible now to auto-create a button when a feedback is Drag & Dropped to the project.
but we want this option also for commands!
This is extremely convenient when testing small projects; to test one or more commands.
Now we need to draw items, and then to drag & drop commands to these items (Buttons). But it will be much faster if we can drag & drop commands to the canvas, and the buttons are auto-created.
The first time this will be used, the Studio editor has to ask which options (on press, on release, etc), and remember these options for the next times this function is used.
To reset / change this option, the function has to be used with right-click on the command and then Drag & Drop the command to the canvas. Studio has to display the screen with options, so the user can change the options.


I am Nalin Pithwa. My profession is DSP and Digital Communications; my passion is Mathematics. I had learnt Math long back, and would like to relearn it with gumption and gusto, zeal and zest. Here, I will blog about basic and advanced MSc Math — generally referring to Algebra, Analysis, Topology, Number Theory, PDE's and Probability Theory. As I am relearning, I will post solutions to some problems I hope to be able to solve from Herstein, baby Rudin, Munkres, Hocking and Young, Niven and Zuckermann, and the like.


Four units make up a collection on volcanoes, earthquakes, plate tectonics, and hazards associated with these forces. Learners discover how are they all related and what exactly they have to do with our planet. Use this collection from Math/Science Nucleus to engage kindergarteners in the exploration of the plate tectonics cycle.
This unit focuses primarily on plate tectonics and plate boundaries surrounding continents. It contains pre- and post-lab sections that walk young geologists through plate movements in order to visualize what's going on inside Earth.


text:
Cardi B Confirms She's Back With Offset 27 Days After Filing For Divorce
by : Julia Banim on : 15 Oct 2020 17:17
iamcardib/Instagram
A mere 27 days after filing for divorce, Cardi B appears to have confirmed that she's giving things another go with Offset.
The rumour mill has been whirring ever since the pair were seen looking close at Cardi's 28th birthday bash, with Offset treating his estranged wife to a brand new Rolls Royce Cullinan, and their daughter to an $8,000 car seat.
Although the WAP singer hasn't clarified whether or not divorce is completely off the table, it's clear things are heating up once again, at least according to a recent Instagram Live session.
You can catch it here:
It became evident that a romantic flame had been reignited after it emerged the pair had been hanging out in bed together without much in the way of pyjamas.
Earlier this week, Cardi ended up accidentally sharing a topless picture via Instagram Live. A mishap that seems very easy to do if you're not concentrating.
However, unlike many of us who enjoy scrolling away in bed during our evenings, Cardi has a following of more than 76.9 million people, many of whom saw the picture before she had chance to take it down.
Luckily, the Grammy Award winner was able to deal with the situation with her usual confident sense of humour, shrugging:
I'm not gonna beat myself up about it. I'm just gonna eat my breakfast and then I'm gonna go to the party.
Check out Cardi talking about the photo here:
Explaining how the photo got out in the open, Cardi revealed:
I'm leaning in the f*cking bed, right? And I'm telling Offset, 'Yo I feel like… I'm taking the f*cking picture' and then I f*cking press and I see that it's loading and I'm like 'Oh my God! Oh my God, Offset! Oh my God, the picture's loading', and he was like, 'Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa.'
Offset Gives Cardi B $20,500 Gold Bird Cage Handbag For Valentine's Day
All talk of the topless pic aside, fans were more interested in what exactly Offset was doing in her bed while she was topless.
Speaking candidly with fans, Cardi admitted:
I just be starting to miss [him]… It's hard not to talk to your best friend. And it's really hard to have no d*ck.
She added: 'I do like material things. What do you want me to do, the n***a gave me a Rolls-Royce and I snub him? And I really wanted some d*ck for my birthday.'
Thank you sir 😏😏😏I love it
A post shared by Cardi B (@iamcardib) on Oct 9, 2020 at 12:52pm PDT
Opening up further about the nature of their relationship, Cardi continued:
We're some really typical two young motherf*ckers, got married early, that's what we are. We're not no different than y'all f*ckin' dysfunctional ass relationships. We're the same way.
Cardi filed for divorce on September 14, with court documents stating the marriage was 'irretrievably broken' and 'there are no prospects for a reconciliation'.
Whether or not the spouses have fully reconciled remains to be seen, but it certainly looks as though Cardi has had an eventful birthday week.
Julia Banim
Jules studied English Literature with Creative Writing at Lancaster University before earning her masters in International Relations at Leiden University in The Netherlands (Hoi!). She then trained as a journalist through News Associates in Manchester. Jules has previously worked as a mental health blogger, copywriter and freelancer for various publications.
Topics: Celebrity, Cardi B, divorce, Instagram, Music, Offset, relationship, Sound
Cardi B/Instagram
@iamcardib


When using page builders, you might sometimes want to update the page in the default language but preserve the existing translations.
WPML preserves the texts that you have already translated. When translating the new texts that you have added to the default page, you can see that the old texts translations are already preserved in the Translation Editor page. You can simply add the translations to the new texts that you have added and click on the Save button to update the translation.
Note that the translation will be lost if you update the text and the position of an element directly inside the page.
Add a new page, and then add a Text Block to your new page. Publish the new page.
Make sure that you are using the Translation Editor. You can check this by navigating to WPML -> Settings page.
Click on the plus icon found on the language meta box to translate your page.
Add your translated text, and mark it as Translation is complete. Once you have completed translating all the textual elements, click on the Save & Close button.
Edit your Text Block. Add some texts to it, and then Save. Update the page.
The plus icon found in the language meta box is now a round arrow, indicating that new texts needs to be translated. Click on the round arrow icon to translate the text that you have added to the Text Block.
The texts that have been translated are preserved. You can simply add the translation for the new text and mark it as Translation is complete. Click on the Save & Close button.
Existing translations are preserved in a similar fashion for all the other integrated page builders.


Poems in this volume cover current themes on politics, power, and control in most major hot spots on the globe. Using deft poetic devices, serious in some poems and spoof in others, Marshall is able to draw the readers interest into these events. His acute poetic observation of control and its detrimental effect on local, national, and international communities is succinctly covered. These events are currently in the news and on television. In using powerful symbolism, metaphors, and delicate poetic language, Marshall delivers a volume that is both definitive and beautiful. Continents on Fire exposes so many of these social failings that hold international attention and grab headlines. Dictators and dogmas are treated alike. Similar to previous books, Marshall uses deep contrasts in poetic devices and subject matter to create multidimensional poetry. Join a growing community of readers who have now taken up performance poetry as an art from his previous books. There are poems in this book that will sizzle and sparkle on stage as performance poems and songs of a generation of involved readers swirling in the matrix of magic created by this poet-writer.


Smoke and Smoke get right to the point. Like a Hemmingway novel, the music is terse and violent—presented in short, unsentimental, bursts. Short thrift is given for anything unessesary. Smoke and Smoke has a debut record due out on Frenchkiss in November. Here are the facts. No funny business.
Smoke and Smoke is Spencer Moody, Mike Kunka and Dan Haugh. Mike and Dan were in godheadSilo (sub pop.) Dan once cut all the tendons in his left arm and lost the use of it for a year or two, so godheadSilo chilled. Mike was also in Enemymine (k records, up records.) Spencer was the singer in Murder City Devils (sub pop). Mike and Spencer were in Dead Low Tide (tigerstyle records). Mike got whooping cough and was sick for 1 1/2 years and scarred his vocal chords. This somehow ended dead low tide.
Smoke and Smoke live and practice in Port Angeles, Washington. Smoke and Smoke is the name of the local head shop in Port Angeles Washington. And mostly people from Port Angeles, Washington will get the joke. Smoke and Smoke are trying their hardest to not sound like any other band or any certain type of music. They are also trying their hardest to have fun.
Smoke and Smoke record themselves in the practice spot or with their good friend Matt Remine on his ranch just outside of Port Angeles, Washington. The Creative process unfolds something like this: Mike rides his bike to the spot and he and Dan rock it. Spencer hears it and drops lyrical science all over that piece.


text:
JELISA JAY ROBINSON
Jelisa the Writer-Blog
Light Write Writing Group
Joyful Rehearsals of Delivery with the Queens Theatre
During the months of July and August, I got the chance to work with a fantastic group of artists to bring my play Delivery to life. As apart of the New American Voices Summer 2020 Virtual Reading Series at the Queens Theatre, my play was directed by Ruben C. Gonzalez and put on as a reading. I was approached by Rob Urbinati, the Director of New play Development. We both had a piece in the Black and Latino Playwright Celebration. Speaking of BLPC, Eugene Lee's (the Director of the Celebration) piece Lyin' Ass was in the Reading Series too! The whole process was like a reunion. I got to work with many people from the BLPC session including Ali, Joe Luis, Ruben, and Preston.
It was also a wonderful experience to work with new actors too. Shout out to Ruben for casting. The group that he brought together was thoughtful, talented and top-notch. Each of them brought their flair to roles, their questions, feedback and their best selves. I got the chance to do some rewrites as well. I know I still have more to do, but I am happy with the progression of the work. What you will be seeing online, has been recorded and edited by the great Tech director and Queens Theatre General Manager Jay Rodgers! He fielded our tech issues and put together the show with ease and awesome energy.
Between Sean's impromtu talent shows, Rachel's rendition of "Kiss by a Rose", Yeniffer's pep talks, Ruben's jokes, Nickclette's ode to "baby hairs" and Ja'Michael's positive energy, I found this to be one of the most joyful rehearsal spaces I'd been in a while. YOU MUST FIND JOY WHILE WORKING. This was also a grand opportunity to work with two colleagues from UT Austin (Nickclette and Ja'Michael). It was awesome to work with Ruben and Joe again. During Black and Latino Playwrights Celebration, they were in the trenches with me figuring out the play!
I wanted to take the time to share a little bit about the incredible cast and creative team!
You can read about them below. Check out their bios and hire them!
I hope you can come see this fantastic cast kill it Tuesday August 25th 7pm Central time. You can RSVP here.
Ruben C. Gonzalez is a critically acclaimed solo performer, actor, writer and director who hails from southeast Los Angeles. He is a 28 year veteran actor/director of the prestigious, El Teatro Campesino. He recieved his training at The London Academy for the Performing Arts, Circle in the Square Theatre School (NYC), El Teatro Campesino and holds an MFA in Dramatic Arts from the University of California, Davis. In spring 2019, his solo piece, LA ESQUINITA, USA was published in the anthology, ENCUENTRO: Latinx Performance for the New American Theatre (Northwestern University Press). Ruben has directed; LA VIRGEN DEL TEPEYAC at The Mission of San Juan Bautista, CONJUNTO BLUES by Nicolas Valdez, PILGRIMAGE by Joe Quintero, Monica Sanchez's THE CHONICLES of ODISIA, ALISO in WORKERLAND, MI ABUELO FUE UN BRACERO and IYA by Luis Juarez and THE THROWDOWN by Theatre Troupe Headrush. In August, he will graduate with a Master's in Psychology where he will dedicate part of his life to bringing mental health assistance to people from marginalized communities of color.
Actor-Javier
SEAN CARVAJAL Harlem born, Washington Heights bred. Actor/Activist. Selected Credits include: Broadway: King Lear. Off-Broadway: RICHARD II (Public Theater/WNYC); Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven, Tell Hector I Miss Him (Atlantic Theater); Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train (Signature Theater; Lucille Lortel Lead Actor, Obie, Drama Desk, Clarence Derwent Awards)' Seven Spots on the Sun (Sol Project/Rattlestick); Queen Latina and Her Power Posse (Cherry Lane); Ghetto Babylon (59E59), Lissabon (La MaMa); Holy Land (HERE Arts Center). Regional: Water by The Spoonful (Mark Taper Forum), Seven Spots on the Sun (Cincinnati Playhouse), Between Riverside and Crazy (Studio Theater). TV: "Crashing" (HBO). Member of The Actors Center.
Actress-Mani
Rachel Webb is a singer, actress, dancer and model from Dallas, Texas. She recently received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre from Texas State University. It was through the Black and Latino Playwrights Celebration at Texas State that she found a passion for developing new works. She was introduced to Jelisa Robinson's writing through BLPC as well. In school she portrayed the roles of "Mayme" in Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage, "Ariel" in Shakespeare's The Tempest, and "Sarah Brown" in Guys and Dolls. Now that she has graduated, Rachel is focusing on writing her own music. Find more of Rachel's material on her website: rachelswebb.com
Actor-Murdr
Preston Perez is a rising junior at TXST in the BFA Musical Theatre program. He had the opportunity to read for Murdr at the TXST Black and Latino Playwrights Conference this past August and is thrilled to be on this script again. Regional Credits: A CHORUS LINE (Paul), IN THE HEIGHTS, CHICAGO, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS at Music Theatre Wichita, and WEST SIDE STORY (Luis) at Weston Playhouse.
Actress-Ms. Tolivar
Johnique Mitchell was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. She received her BFA in Acting from Texas State University, class of '15 and her MFA in Acting from Penn State University, class of '17. The variety of roles she's played includes the Jack Daniel's toting Marie from Robert O'Hara's "Barbeque", the ambitious hopeless romantic Olivia from Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" and the powerhouse care-taker Athena from Mary Zimmerman's "Argonautika."She originated the role of Randy in Hansol Jung's "Double Think" in the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa and Janeece in the second world premiere of Ruben Santiago Hudson's "Your Blues Aint Sweet Like Mine." In 2018 she joined The Chautauqua Theater's acting company in their production of Brandon Jacob Jenkins' "An Octoroon". In 2019 she joined the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's acting company in their production of "Hairspray", "As You Like It" and the west coast premiere of Christina Anderson's "How to Catch Creation".
Actress-Mama
Yeniffer Behrens-Mendoza is an Award-winning actress that has amassed a prolific career as an established actress for over two decades. Yeniffer has expanded her talent as a producer, director, content creator, mentor & philanthropist. Her passion to support dual-language education led her to produce a benefit to bring awareness and advocate for children to grow up bilingual. The "Multicultural Harmony Gala" ran for two years and she raised thousands of dollars for her community, she also served as a board member to the Beauty in Beauty out a foundation in Chicago for a few years, supporting women from all walks of life. Her mission is to create content and live events that make a difference in the world & unite us all. During these unprecedented times, Yeniffer created a daily Spiritual fun live show on youtube FB/IG: 11:11 Conversations with Yen & Mau Known as 'The best Spiritual Party Ever"! As well as Shortcut2hollywood.biz: An online coaching & mentorship school for aspiring actors to become working actors. She established True Form Films production company in 2006 and joined forces with her husband Mauricio Mendoza in 2010. Since then, they have produced numerous award-winning films such as After School, Desconocidos, Fighting Chance, The Shifting, Intolerance, It Can Only Be Used Once, Taco Shop, Sinverguenzas & Mi Amor, to name a few. Her latest acting credits are Ben Affleck's movie "The Way Back", Netflix-Grace & Frankie, Hulu FX-Dave & ABC-How to Get away with Murder. She is currently in the post-production of the anthology feature Covid19 Sins & Virtues.
Actress-Student 1
Nickclette Izuegbu is an actress, writer, producer, with wit and a hint of goober that you can curl up to. She began her career working and training at various theaters across the United States, including the Steppenwolf Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Zach Scott Theater, Vortex Repertory Theater Company, Houston Shakespeare Festival, and First Stage Theater. She has written, produced and starred in several digital series, including "the Bards" and the hit scripted comedy "Nneka the Uber Driver."
Ali Gutierrez is a Theatre Performance and Production major with a Political Communication minor at Texas State University, she graduated high school from Shoemaker High School in Killeen, Texas. Her hobbies include activism, writing, and crying watching turtle videos on YouTube.
Student 3-Actor
Ja'Michael De'Shawn is a new york-based actor, singer, and multidimensional storyteller from lil ole HEARNE, texas. He enjoys telling stories that create space for black folks and their friends to live blissful and unapologetic lives. Writing: The Electric Lady, The Self-Portrait of the Soul as a Young Man, Exile Blues Theatre: Self Portraits, The Breakup, The Afterparty, Kill Floor, Twenty Eight Film: Dear Bruh (YouTube), If There Is Light (Hulu), You Die (Amazon)
Actor-Stage Directions
Joe Luis Cedillo is a left-handed Chicano writer-director who works on stage and behind the camera. He is a graduate of Cal State Northridge and the University of Iowa's Playwright's Workshop. Iowa Director credits: 7 DAYS: A FANTASIA ON THE LIFE OF MILES DAVIS; THIS IS YOUR LIFE, THE SUPERIOR STORY and his play DRY. His plays ON PAINTED SKIN and COLUMPIO were both Runner Ups for the Kennedy Center ACTF National Latino Playwriting Award. Playwright-Director credits include: 69 PORTRAITS OF CHE, TEXTBOOKS & FENCES and 7, 8IGHT, 9. Site-specific work includes ASCENSION (Watt's Village Theatre Company Meet Me @Metro), THE PARTY (Chalk Rep at The La Brea Tar Pits), and CRUISING CON LA VIRGEN (Moving Arts Car Plays as part of Radar LA) to name a few. He was a member of the MET Theater Company, Urban Ensemble Theatre Collective, Co-Founder of Company of Strangers, founding member of The Unit Collective@The Playwright's Center in Minneapolis. He interned for Director Diane Rodriguez at the Center Theater Group and assisted Playwright Robert Schenkkan on his production of LEWIS AND CLARK REACH THE EUPHRATES that premiered at the Mark Taper Forum. In Houston, he served as Production Dramaturg/Literary Manager for the Alley Theatre for the 60th anniversary season. Dramaturg credits include: JOURNEY'S END, THE CLEAN HOUSE, SUBJECT TO FITS and MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING to name a few. At Texas State's Black and Latino Playwright's Conference he's worked with such playwrights as Elaine Romero, Gus Edwards, Mando Alvarado and Amparo Garcia-Crow. As a Director-Dramaturg for Watts Village Theatre Company he devised the play UNLOCKED with students at Animo Watts Locke High, developed Donald Jolly's RIOT/REBELLION about the '65 Watts Riots, acted & directed in the EVERY 28 HOURS plays, and most recently directed OCHRE & ONYX in the East LA area libraries. Joe served Producing Artistic Director Kinan Valdez as Associate Artistic Director for El Teatro Campesino. Credits include: puppeteer for LA CONQUISTA, screenwriter for MAURYA'S KICK, and acted on the back of a flatbed for the annual Dia De Los Muertos pageant like back in the day. He served Founding Artistic Director Luis Valdez as a Producer, Assistant Director and Sound Designer for his new play VALLEY OF THE HEART and subsequent remounts at the Teatro and CSU Monterey Bay's World Theater. Mr. Cedillo directed El Teatro Campesino's annual Christmas folk opera productions LA PASTORELA and LA VIRGEN DEL TEPEYAC performed site-specifically in Mission San Juan Bautista's church. His digital film credits include: HERMANA and WRNG IN STUDIO CITY. Commissions include: Highways 4x4 Emerging Latino Artists, The LA History Project with the Edge of the World Theatre Festival, NYC's The MET Museum with Houston's MFAH, and Minneapolis's zZamya Theatre Project. Recognitions include: Bay Area Playwright's Festival Finalist, FAIR Fellow at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Theatre Master, Core Member Apprentice for the Playwright's Center, Alliance Theatre Kendeda Finalist and a Latino Theater Commons Fellow. He is Artistic Director for Company of Strangers having recently directed the new work BULLETS AND SEEDS at Highways for the most recent 4x4 Festival, acted in Henry Ong's DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER, and served as Workshop leader for CASA 0101's Beyond Macho Writer's Circle. Mr. Cedillo is developing an original LA crime drama pilot SWEET PALMS and a new musical about the 1934 General Strike on San Francisco's Waterfront. FB under his full name, Twitter: @JoeLuisCedillo, Instagram: joeluiscedillo.
Tech Director for the Reading and General Manager of Queens Theatre
RSVP here for the Reading of Delivery on Tuesday August 25th 7 pm CST.
I would like to thank everyone for this opportunity. It was a pleasure working with you all.
If you kept reading through all of this, thank you. I do this to share my playwriting journey in hope that it will help someone begin or continue their journey in this craft. Keep pushing. Keep fighting. Keep going!
I'm a playwright, and teaching artist. It is here where you'll see my questions and musings on life and writing, theater and the world. My posts highlight my writing process, the inclusion of Black voices in the American Theatre and updates on my own work. I hope you enjoy!
© Jelisa Jay Robinson 2020


I've recently upgraded from an Exige Sprint to a 350 Sport, so far so good really enjoying the extra grunt and superior build quality. Just ordered a 2bular Valved Road back box to add some more pops and bangs.
Good result for you. Don't suppose you know if it sold to Elite/Eclat owners or not? Or just someone who wanted some trim.
All the trim sold tonight.
Ok cool. Am happy with it so far. Will see if it remains stuck when I remove the tape tomorrow.
Now I'm back home and the car run for a totaly of 470km this weekend No other problems than the ones mentioned earlier.
That's exactly what mine looked liked yesterday. This is the best image I could find of the original fitment I checked the adhesive I used yesterday this morning and it is all good and looks just the same as the photo above but with shiny white paint and good chrome. Picture of new tomorrow.
What a difference... A cleaning and a chrome rings make..


It seems as if the genre would collapse under the sheer weight of all the truly "extraordinary" stories of survival that have emerged from that devastating war. We are all acquainted with young soldiers, old generals, plucky children, cosseted women becoming brave, ingenious young girls outsmarting the enemy, old men heroically rising to the occasion and young boys becoming men too soon, with the requisite defiance of unimaginable odds.
Add former British officer and military historian Robert Lyman's new book, "Among the Headhunters," to the list. Yes, extraordinary it is for the sheer improbability of the location, the cast of characters and the way one strain in the winding history of imperialism intersected at a crucial moment — and with astonishing precision — with the fate of 20 men. All but one survived a plane crash in the dangerous Burmese jungle, most certainly populated by brutal Japanese soldiers eager for American captives to put to work as slave labor. But instead of that grim fate, the men were saved by members of the Naga tribe of Burma. This was not necessarily a stroke of good luck; the tribe was partial to human sacrifice and collected decapitated heads like their American counterparts did baseball cards.
Others have introduced us to the singularly dangerous Burmese jungle, most notably Robert Flanagan in his 2013 Man Booker Prize-winning novel, "The Narrow Road to the Deep North," which depicted the slave-labor conditions suffered by Allied prisoners of war forced to build a railway between Thailand and Burma. But while fiction demands imaginative plot construction, Lyman is dealing with, yes, extraordinary facts and was fortunate enough to have a few very literate American and British diarists in his cast of characters.
The CBS correspondent Eric Sevareid — who decades later became a Mount Rushmore-like presence on the nightly news — was one of them. One of Edward R. Murrow's war team in Europe, he returned to the United States and was then sent by the White House "to take a firsthand look at the issue of China," which was in a state of chaos with the hapless and corrupt regime of Chiang Kai-shek bleeding America of its supplies and men, allegedly to combat the communists. But first Sevareid had to get there, and that involved being one of the 21 passengers who were on Air Transport Command Flight 12420 on Aug. 2, 1943. The flight had to traverse an incredibly dangerous passage over the Himalayas dubbed the "Hump" and the "vomit trail" by American crews because of its strong and unreliable winds, low clouds, and treacherous mountains that claimed many lives. Their journey was further complicated by the fact that the license for Flight 12420 had been temporarily revoked.
The plane crashed in the Burmese jungle, and not only did all but one crew member survive, but after having bailed out at various points during the descent, all the men managed to find one another. How? With the help of members of the Naga tribe. Keen on slavery, human sacrifice and headhunting, the tribe had been discovered by members of the British Raj in the 19th century, and from then well into the 20th century it had been alternately studied, fought and marginally gentled by the British imperialists.
This is where Lyman's book departs from the familiar trajectory of most heroic World War II narratives. The heart of the book focuses on encounters between the Naga people — who lived in a region perfect for tea plantations — and the British explorers, diplomats and even some American missionaries who appeared in their midst. Lyman vividly describes the conflicts, dangers and deepening relationship between the two cultures "along the fringes of [the British] empire," so that by the time we return to our surviving passengers, the reader is nearly as well-acquainted with the Naga as with the stranded airmen.
Because the area had been so well-surveyed by the British, the survivors received airdrops for nearly two weeks before they were rescued, impressing their Naga hosts with "their determination of purpose, and their self-confident representation of a new and extraordinary world outside the borders of Pangsha's self-contained green kingdom." An unusual relationship between crash victims and savages deepened during that time, and there were moments when Sevareid realized, "I love it here, wouldn't be elsewhere." Readers of this remarkable book will discover exactly what he means.


Medical Marijuana Menu Highlight: HR #23!
For a limited time, we're running a 1/4 special on this top shelf Reseda original! Grab a 1/4 of this hybrid medical cannabis strain for only $90 per 1/4 oz. For those of you who don't know how much a 1/4 amounts to, the answer is 7 grams. Enjoy! One Love!
This entry was posted in Marijuana Menu Highlights and tagged 1/4 special, cannabis, deals, hr #23, humboldt relief, hybrids, medical cannabis, medical marijuana, medical marijuana menu, reseda, specials, top shelf on September 17, 2011 by Katherine.
This medical marijuana strain represents the best of both worlds. The uplifting Sativa side puts a smile on your face while the Indica presence relaxes the body. One Love!
This entry was posted in Marijuana Menu Highlights, Menus and tagged hr #23, humboldt relief, hybrids, medical marijuana, medical marijuana menu, reseda, top shelf on August 30, 2011 by Katherine.
This medical marijuana strain is a fairly balanced hybrid. The Sativa side induces euphoric laughter while the Indica soothes aches and pains. One Love!
This entry was posted in Marijuana Menu Highlights and tagged #23, hr #23, humboldt relief, hybrids, medical marijuana, medical marijuana menu, medical marijuana menu highlight, medical marijuana picture menu, og, top shelf on August 9, 2011 by Katherine.
Greetings Humboldt Relief patients! Here's the latest medical marijuana menu for our super summer sale! Remember, the sale ends after the July 4th weekend!We're capping at $45 until then.
Get these strains while the getting's good. One Love!
This entry was posted in Menus and tagged and 1, brutus og, hr #23, humboldt relief, larry og, medical marijuana, medical marijuana menu, riddler og, silver pearl, summer sale, top shelf, wicked og on June 29, 2011 by Katherine.
Greetings Humboldt Relief patients! Here's the freshest medical marijuana menu loaded up for our super summer special!
Be sure to try the new strains on Monday! One Love!
This entry was posted in Menus and tagged and 1, hr #23, humboldt relief, humboldt relief menu, king kush, maximus og, medical marijuana, medical marijuana menu, menu, Pure Kush x SFV, riddler og on June 19, 2011 by Katherine.
This mellow medical marijuana strain achieves a nice balance between Indica induced relaxation and Sativa influenced euphoria. During our super summer sale, this strain is only $45 per 1/8th. One Love!
This entry was posted in Marijuana Menu Highlights and tagged hr #23, humboldt relief, hybrids, summer sale, super summer sale, top shelf on June 15, 2011 by Katherine.
Greetings Humboldt Relief patients! Here's the new menu, complete with donation prices to reflect our super summer sale! This isn't a typo. We're offering your top shelf favorites for only $45 per 1/8th until July 4th! Of course, the lower level medications are getting the same kick down.
We hope you guys take advantage of this deal for our loyal patients. While you're in the shop, don't forget to donate to help Roxy get her cancer treatment! You don't have to wait till your next visit either. Just click here! One Love!
This entry was posted in Menus and tagged and 1, Dr. Greenthumb's Red Ribbon, hr #23, humboldt relief, mandarin dream, medical marijuana, save roxy, SFV OG, summer sale on June 15, 2011 by Katherine.
This hybrid leans more towards the Indica side of the spectrum, but there's enough Sativa in it to produce a nice head change. It's an extremely smooth smoke, so be careful about your dosage. It didn't affect me right away, and after a few minutes I thought I might need to smoke another bowl. And then it hit me. I spent the rest of the night floating. And 1 is the best medication I've smoked in a while. While you're at HR donating for some And 1, please give a few dollars to Roxy! One Love!
This entry was posted in Marijuana Menu Highlights and tagged and 1, hr #23, humboldt relief, hybrids, top shelf on June 11, 2011 by Katherine.
Greetings Humboldt Relief patients! Our top shelf just got crazier with an amazing OG. We call it And 1 because it's HR #23 and then some! Wait till you guys see this one! If anyone noticed the staff seemed a little spaced out today, now you know why. Pics coming tomorrow, so stay tuned…….One Love!
This entry was posted in Menus and tagged and 1, hr #23, humboldt relief, ogs, top shelf on June 11, 2011 by Katherine.


eMarketsTrade Review 2018 | Is eMarketsTrade a Scam or Legit Forex Broker?
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It is clear that traders should stay away from unregulated entities such as eMarketsTrade, especially when they use fake registration information to get clients' trust. We strongly advise you to only deal with financial firms that are authorised by reliable regulators like FCA in the UK or CySEC in Cyprus. You can always check the registers of the authorized brokers on their website to ensure that the company you want to invest with is properly regulated. Check the list of the CySEC-regulated brokers.


Peter Bagrov is a film historian, curator, and archivist specializing in early Russian and Soviet cinema. He currently serves as vice president of the International Federation of Film Archives and until recently was the senior curator at Gosfilmofond of Russia. Note: Bagrov will be present at the February 10 screening only.
Alexander Nevsky also screens on April 11 (with a lecture by Anne Nesbet) as part of the series In Focus: Eisenstein and His Contemporaries.
On February 10, enjoy a Film to Table dinner at Babette, the cafe at BAMPFA. Join an intimate group of fellow filmgoers for a four-course, prix-fixe meal in a convivial, dinner-party atmosphere. Purchase dinner tickets in advance at babettecafe.com (film tickets must be purchased separately).
Eisenstein's first completed sound film, Alexander Nevsky features not just a score by Sergei Prokofiev, but a brilliant formal collaboration, a form of cinematic opera based on Eisenstein's theories of contrapuntal dynamics. Made on the eve of World War II, the film, though set in 1241, had the authority of a contemporary documentary: its portrayal of a nationalist hero in a peaceful village courageously confronting foreign invaders points to the imminent danger of a German invasion of Russia. The famed "Battle on the Ice" is memorable indeed, but the film's calmer, lyrical moments emphasize how life is interrupted by violence, however patriotic the call.


Customize your outfits thanks to the wide selection of patches and badges we offer. Several models are available: PVC, cloth badges, with or without Velcro, choose your product according to your needs and affinities.
Ecusson PVC avec scratch S.T.A.R.S.
Display your country's colors (Canada, Russia, Belgium, UK, France, etc.) on your airsoft outfit, or opt for fanciful badges, as our selection of Star Wars badges or the Batman insignia.
Heritage-Airsoft also provides low visibility versions of National Insignias, allowing you to wear your colors without serving as target.
Head on over the customized "Heritage-Airsoft" insignia, this pays tribute in our way to the forces of the GIGN and RAID, as we have an 82nd airborne insignia, derivate to the colors of Heritage-Airsoft.
The badges we offer can be worn freely on your outfits, they are not regulatory, thus respecting the French law.


This week's conversation is with one of my closest and dearest friends, Dr. Christopher Charles Stewart. Christopher is an assistant professor of computer science at The Ohio State University. He also leads the ReRout Lab, a program that uses computer systems to broaden participation in computer science and build real systems that people use. He's also a recipient of the prestigious NSF Career Award! Way to go, Chris!
We talked about his research over at OSU with cloud computing systems, "greening as a service", and how to increase diversity in the field of computer science.


If we were lucky and Charlie was feeling mischievous, he'd let us follow him into his bedroom at night, wide-eyed and jostling for position at his knees. With a bit of theatrics, he would reach up to the fleshy crevasse behind his right eyelid and pop out the ceramic eyeball he had worn since losing the real eye in an accident with a bedspring sometime in 1912. The round yolk of non-vision, with its carefully painted on pupil and iris, bobbed in the glass of water on the bedside table where Charlie had placed it. Lifeless, yet terrifying in its imitation of sight, it leered at us, inanimate, yet mocking, sending the girls squealing out of the room while the boys feigned bravery and stared it down. Charlie loved playing the provocateur.
I have a photo of Charlie and Maude, his new bride, taken in 1918, on their wedding day. She wore a dark grey linen blouse and a pleated skirt. Her long black hair was bound at the nape of her neck in a bun. Her look was solemn, as if she had a premonition of the difficulty ahead, as if she knew at eighteen that her life would include the Great Depression, a second World War, giving birth to nine children at home and being a grandmother to twenty-five, of which I will be number twelve.
Maude's family name was Moss and it always seemed that the name had shaped her, that her personality had developed according to the laws of genus and phylum. Like moss, which grows in damp places hidden away in shaded woodlands, Maude was quiet and non-assuming, fragile and soft. My memories of her are like that too, hazily tucked in between the larger fragments of childhood recollections. Memories of Charlie, however, flash neon sign bright.
When my cousins and I were little, Charlie would throw a quilt over his back and let us climb on. He would pretend to be a bucking bronco, or an African elephant carrying us someplace far off and exotic. When he tired, he'd shake us off and morph into a monster, or a tiger, and, knees shuffling across the wood plank floors, he would chase us from room to room, bellowing or roaring beast-like over our laughter. In the evenings he would sit in the, big yellow armchair facing the fireplace in the "company" room of their small farmhouse, two or three of us perched on his knees. He'd read Uncle Remus to us, changing his voice as the narrative volleyed from Brer Rabbit, to Brer Fox and back again.
One of Charlie's jobs was to keep Maude alive, and this was always so, even before she got so sick later on. When my mother was a girl, the family lived on a farm that sat along the banks of the Cumberland River. If Charlie came home and asked where Maude was, and none of the children could locate her, he would search the house, he would look in the garden, then the hen house or the water pump in the backyard. If he could not find her near the house, he would hurry down the long slope of pasture that led to the acres of rich bottom land running alongside the riverbank.
Sprinting, he would rush to the river, hoping not to see her standing along the edge about to step in, hoping not to see an apron floating, swirling out of reach in the swift current, hoping her deep unfathomable sadness had not overtaken her. Maude's depression must have been a constant companion, a jealous lover lying in wait, hoping to steal her away. Charlie battled that lover and won, keeping her with him for fifty years, losing her finally to heart disease when she was sixty-eight.
Maude died in the grim chill of January, three weeks before my twelfth birthday. I was clammy and uncomfortable in the dress-up clothes my mother insisted I wear for the visitation the night before Maude's funeral. To escape the hordes of grown-ups, I stole off to the little anteroom that had been set up for the family in preparation for the next day's service. The folding chairs were lined up to face a set of double doors that opened to the front of the auditorium, giving the family a side view of the casket and the podium behind which the preacher would stand to deliver the eulogy. Ensconced in this small room, the family could watch the funeral without being viewed in return by the merely acquainted, the gawkers, the non-related. We could be bereft, unaffected, or inconsolable in private.
I was alone in the anteroom, bored, and sleepy. In front of me, just through the doors, was Maude in her shiny oak casket, her quiet dead face strangely foreign and familiar at the same time. I was surprised when Charlie walked down from the back of the auditorium and into my line of vision. He seemed quite old to me, his shoulders a bit slumped under his suit coat, with a hint of shuffle in his lanky gait. He stood over the open coffin, gazing at Maude lying ashen and fancied up in her black linen sheath, her grey-black hair captured by a plain wool hat with a silver hat pin holding it in place, as if she might spring up at any moment and the hat tumble from her head. As if something in his grief might animate her in a way that her life could not.
The light above the casket spotlighted them both as Charlie stood beside her, hands gripping the casket, as if he were contemplating climbing in himself, lying down beside her for good. I wondered briefly if he would shake the casket, and rouse her back to life. I realized that Charlie was crying, his head hung over his chest, quiet sobs shaking his body, and I was transfixed. I knew I was witnessing a private moment, and should look away, but I could not. I had never seen Charlie cry. I had never seen him hold Maude's hand, or give her a kiss. I had never heard them call each other a special name, or gaze lovingly into each other's eyes, yet on that day he sought her pale absent countenance with a longing so deep and ragged I realized that Charlie had a life to which I had not been witness, not until this moment in the soft, lonely quiet of death. He must have loved her terribly. He must have loved her like the river, calm on the surface, yet deep and swift underneath.


Fausti has been manufacturing hunting and competition shotguns with great care and passion since 1948 combining century old traditions with progress and modern technology. Fausti over under and side by side shotguns are designed to meet the specific needs of very demanding hunters and shooters. They can also become true collector pieces with technical and aesthetic features which represent a milestone in time. The company was founded by Stefano Fausti and is run by his three daughters Elena, Giovanna and Barbara.
FAUSTI USA was established in 2009 to better service the existing American clientele and also reach new hunters, shooters and collectors in this great country and educate them about the most recent additions to the fine line of Fausti shotguns.
FIELDSPORT is proud to be an exclusive, stocking, Midwestern dealer for the fine line of FAUSTI shotguns. We have been selling them since their introduction into the U.S. market. We are quite pleased with the quality, attention to detail, service and value that supports every Fausti shotgun we offer. In addition, we offer a complementary, in-store gun fit analysis with every Fausti purchase. If warranted, we also offer a live fire, impact test, gun fitting at a reduced fee.
Regardless of your gun budget, we know you will be pleased with adding a new game or target Fausti shotgun to your collection this year.
Sorry! We do not have any guns in this listing at this time.


text:
Dalliances and Happenings
What a tick-tock, wheely-whizzing, turnabout summer we're having; it's equal parts all over the place and nowhere at all. But things are a-happening and its high time I scuttled back through it all and gathered some of my recent updates and highlights together under one roof.
Spiderseed has been out for nearly six months now, can you believe it, and I recently got back some lovely footage from the launch, which I'll be sprucing up and sticking on YouTube soon hopefully. I've been a-chatting about the book and my other endeavours on various lovely interviews, including with student newspaper Mancunion, on North Manchester FM's Hannah's Bookshelf (where I also selected my 'Apocalypse Books'), and a particularly lovely chat with poet-pal Andy N for his Spoken Label series. I'm starting to detect cross-over in these formal conversations I have with people; discussions on the nature of 'flash fiction', the inevitable question of influences, my predilection for animal themes (just wait until the next collection…), and the conjunction between writing and performing.
This latter was a particular focus in the long-form interview with theatre activist and playwright Mark Reid for his Rudiment essays, a discussion which continued on into some very interesting textual ruminations on the nature of structure and content in my work, which kicked my old brain matter back into gear. Mark is a very astute critic I think. I also had a most excellent talk with old friend Dan Carpenter for his delightful Paperchain Podcast. Recorded back in March when Spiderseed was still freshly hatched, we had a lovely pre-Brexit chat about all sorts of cheeriness, the delights of early Spring twittering in our voices. I also debuted a new story, 'Mothering', written especially for the podcast based on the theme of "That's What She Said" set by previous guest Ella Chappell (hence the paperchain. My prompt for the next guest is: "Moveable Feast"). I've discovered I really do enjoy being interviewed and, once lead, I can witter on about writing and performing until all our tongues fall out from lack of sustenance. If you're reading this and want to interview me, just throw me an email! I've got a great answer to 'so where do you get your ideas from?', I promise.
Speaking of podcasts, top fool-friend Fat Roland has gone and started himself a most amusing one about meeting people called, appropriately enough, Hey Fat Roland. It ties in with his Edinburgh Fringe show and is, already, a hot pod for your ear bods. And still going from strength to strength, make sure you keep a-listening to Rob Cutforth's End of All Things, if only for Rob's stupendous post-Brexit rants. The latest ep. features the North West's grand dame superstar Jenn Ashworth talking on Canal St about her latest book Fell. Hot pod, ear bods.
While I'm throwing around things I love by people I love, I have to draw your fleeting attentions to the gargantuan efforts of brother Rick and his monthly electronica EPs. He started in February and has released a five or four track EP every month since then. Each one is bloody brilliant, I PROMISE YOU. Take this track 'Cold Feet' from The Soothsayer's Fear as a primer then plug your skulls into all the rest:
Bro Rick is also one third of excellent post-punk/finger folk band Rocketship Forest who are rumoured, mostly by me, to be the next Radiohead. They've got a massive gig coming up on the 20th August at Gullivers in Manchester where, if you are lucky, you hear the thumping live versions of the tracks from their hotly anticipated new EP Fingerthief . Curious title eh? Heard it somewhere before have you? Hmm, maybe.
In story news, my tiny tale 'Wakes Week', about a pair of siblings enjoying some time off during the Industrial Revolution, was featured inside the pages of the National Flash Fiction Day anthology A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed, alongside some other brilliant flash fic writers including Jonathan Pinnock, Sal Page, Sarah Hilary, Nik Perring, Calum Kerr, and the aforementioned Fat Roland with his beautifully bizarro tale about a sad panda.
Speaking of animals, I had a bit of whinge about the opening of the new Cat Cafe here in Manchesterland for The Skinny, spitting forth my furies on the topic. I got a bit of sweary bantz back from the sorts of folk who don't like to face hard truths, and a bunch of comments accusing me of being fact-less on tiny points which somehow means the whole argument crumbles. Fact is: one cat cafe leads to another and the more we have, the worst it gets for the cats. Anyway, don't set me off. Just stay away from animal cafes, please.
Animals are still very much the flavour of the months for my new works, which I've been slowly punting out of myself over the summer, whensoever I've managed to find the time. I can now add Cockroach, Snake and Guinea Pig to my menagerie and I'm feeling incredibly close to closing the doors of the ark. Just one last look around to make sure everyone is as comfy as can be, and then it might finally be time to set sail for Collection Island again. Exciting, right?
In the more immediate meantime, Speak Easy is back after a brief hiatus with a new look, a new placebook on the Facebook, and an Autumn/Winter season booked in (see dates below) and ready to go. Same drill as ever: 5 minute slots for all, first-timers particularly encouraged, and no headliner egos. So whip out your diaries and stick in our new dates for our living room live literature, and sign up to read why not? Nothing stopping you is there? In other performance news, I'll be on stage at the Stretford Public Hall on the 18th September for the Stretford Public Assembly, and I'll be blabbing little fictions at an RSPCA cabaret event on Oct 1st in Chorlton. Plenty to be getting on with then.
There's also something else on the horizon. Something colossal. Too big and bright and frightening to look at right now. I'll get back to you on that one. I'll get back to you very soon.
live literature
Spiderseed