The Conservatives have denied any and all responsibility, forever pointing the finger at Covid or Ukraine or someone or somewhere else is a threadbare Tory tactic that only the criminally gullible could fall for -and now the electorate has had enough

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TAXES and prices going up as the value of wages, pensions and benefits are falling significantly has created a cost of living crisis powered by the Government.

Boris Johnson and his Tory lieutenants are exacerbating the pain for hard-pressed people, plunging them deeper into hardship.

This weeks triple-whammy alone is evidence that the Conservatives are divorced from reality, ruling without any genuine appreciation of just how much folk are suffering.

Denying any responsibility, forever pointing the finger at Covid or Ukraine or someone or somewhere else is a threadbare Tory tactic that only the criminally gullible could fall for.

The PM and Chancellor not only refuse to help but are making lives worse.

Picking the pockets of households by increasing taxes, particularly National Insurance for many, and Council Tax, while holding down pensions and benefits as inflation rockets, deserves never be forgotten or forgiven.

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NOBODY knows better than the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge that their Caribbean tour didnt go as well as intended.

Along with the mishaps there was Williams statement conceding he may never follow in the Queens footsteps as head of the Commonwealth. This is a monarchy attempting to come to grips with a changing world.

Perhaps discussing the issues and seeking diverse views from far and wide may avoid repeating past mistakes.

William and Kate are widely admired and respected in Britain. Displaying self-awareness is vital for an institution recognising that it must also evolve to remain relevant and loved.

THE future is even brighter for Lotto pair Marion Wood and Michael Williams, after what they thought was a 1,000 win turned out to be a cool 1million.

Thats 500,000 each... which will no doubt help them fare far better amid the cost of living crisis. Perhaps we should all have a flutter.

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'Tories are divorced from reality, without any appreciation of how folk are suffering' - The Mirror

The last we left Atlanta, it was nearly four years ago, and also a thousand years ago, and also just moments ago.

Season 2 ended on FX in 2018. This was a long hiatus, even for a series that has always moved with its own fluid sense of time. Since then, there has been (for starters) a pandemic, an attack on the Capitol and the racial reckoning after George Floyds murder, which echoed a theme of this richly drawn show: what life is like for Black Americans like the shows characters, for whom fortune can turn in a moment.

If Atlanta has always been hard to pigeonhole its comedy, except when its drama, except when its horror that may be because it is about complicated people whose circumstances are always just a nudge away from any of these. And the two-episode Season 3 premiere, airing Thursday, is Atlanta in top form, going to new places while maintaining that unsettling sense of never knowing how the ground might shift.

When we catch up with Alfred, a.k.a. the rapper Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry); his manager-cousin, Earn (Donald Glover); and their friends Darius (LaKeith Stanfield) and Van (Zazie Beetz), life seems to have turned for the better, at least materially. Alfred is touring Europe, but its not the tour he was beginning at the end of Season 2, when he was still an aspiring artist at a make-or-break moment in his career.

As he gets ready to play a show in Amsterdam, he has returned to Europe as a headliner. He can ask for a 20,000-euro advance on his fee, get it without complaint and toss handfuls of cash to the fans thronging him in the street. There are drivers and fancy hotels and one-night stands in those hotels.

The characters are in a different place now, in more ways than one. The time jump manages to simultaneously pick up where the series left off and move the story forward in time.

But before we get to that, theres a detour. The spectacular and haunting first episode picks up on a boat, seemingly somewhere in Georgia, far from the main characters. The lake, we are told, covers the ruin of a self-sufficient Black town, flooded when a dam was built. (There is a shameful real-life history of such communities being eradicated for dams, lakes, even Central Park.) Under the murky surface, the tale goes, vengeful ghosts await.

Then the story shifts, to Loquareeous (Christopher Farrar), a troubled Black child who is made to live with two white women after a school staffer witnesses a scene of corporal punishment and calls child services. (This premise also borrows elements of a disturbing true story, the murder-suicide of two women and their six adopted children.)

His hippie-ish new moms shorten his name to Larry and lecture him about the unhealthiness of the foods that youre used to. They encourage their kids, without any self-awareness, to sing field songs as they labor in the organic garden. The house is shabby, the food scarce, and Loquareeous remembers a warning from his birth mother: These white people, they going to kill you.

This being Atlanta, the story takes several surreal and unexpected turns. Then it drops us in a hotel room in Europe. Atlanta has always been a digressive series that gets where its going by the back roads. But what does the one story have to do with the other? Directly, not much. Thematically, everything.

For Alfred, Amsterdam appears to be the opposite of a horror story. When we find him in the second episode, hes been arrested, recalling his and Earns arrest at the beginning of Atlanta. But here, the police are solicitous. He is offered a gourmet meal in his comfortable cell and quickly released. In Europe, as Paper Boi, he is welcomed, accommodated, respected.

But wait. It is December in the Netherlands Christmas season, and the season of Zwarte Piet, the helper to Sinterklaas (Santa Claus), traditionally depicted in blackface. Here, there and everywhere are sooty-painted macroaggressions a child on a bike, a porter at a hotel which the Dutch dismiss as harmless fun.

Alfreds exhaustion Henry can play irritated weariness with a thousand different inflections says it all. Suddenly, were back on the lake, where no matter how safe you think you are today, those ghosts of history can arise to drag you under. Were in a different kind of horror story, where the unexamined cluelessness of supposedly tolerant people can hit as hard as overt hostility.

My colleague Wesley Morris wrote last week about the awards-show incident in which the Black tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams were the collateral damage of an off-handed slight by the white director Jane Campion. They were invitees turned, suddenly, into interlopers, he writes, presenting one minute, plunged through a trap door the next. It could have been a prescient description of Alfreds experience in this Atlanta episode. You can have fame, accomplishment, the V.I.P. ticket. But it turns out that even quaint cobblestone streets have trap doors.

According to FX, most of Season 3 will take place in Europe, which raises questions. What is Atlanta without Atlanta? And what, to the characters, is their home city? Is it a place that they can leave, or a history that they always bring as a carry-on?

The premiere episodes, familiarly disorienting and strikingly shot by the longtime Atlanta director Hiro Murai, suggest an answer. Atlanta is where these characters are, as they seek contentment, purpose and balance. The two episodes sent to critics for review are a mere peek, but they give no sign of the shows having lost a step in the past four years. Maybe the pause simply gave the future time to catch up.

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Review: 'Atlanta' Is Back and as Surprising as Ever - The New York Times

A new LinkedIn tool helps make time off part of your professional story.

The Great Resignation doesnt appear to be slowing down anytime soon, and this professional trend isnt just changing how people think about leaving their jobs its also shifting how they look for a new one.

A record-breaking 48 million workers quit in 2021. And while some of them were transitioning into an earlier-than-expected retirement, for many its less about ending their career story and more about diving headfirst into something different, as KCM recently learned firsthand from three women who made big pivots during the pandemic.

While conventional wisdom has long told us its best to wait to put in your notice until you have another opportunity lined up, the cultural shifts of the pandemic have pushed more and more people to take the plunge immediately and figure out their next role later. A January survey conducted by LinkedIn found that 62 percent of workers around the world have taken a career break, and that number is even higher (64 percent) among women.

Its not just dissatisfaction with pay or roadblocks to a promotion thats causing these breaks. Personal issues like mental health, medical leave, burnout, and caring for someone else were all highly cited as motivations for temporarily leaving the workforce.

The good news is that as this kind of personally enriching time off becomes increasingly common, its no longer the obstacle to future employment that it might have been previously.

Were seeing a change in that people think there was a stigma related to taking a career break, but that actually isnt true, says LinkedIn career expert Blair Heitmann. The pandemic has really normalized it.

The evidence can be found in that same LinkedIn survey, in which 50 percent of hiring managers reported they agree career breaks are becoming more common, and 46 percent of them said they believe applicants who have taken these breaks are an untapped talent pool.

Heitmann says thats because employers are recognizing that the kinds of interpersonal skills people can develop during time away from work are actually extremely relevant to high-functioning performance at the office.

Just because youre not working, it doesnt mean youre not learning and growing, Heitmann says. A lot of those skills that you spent time working through during that break are really important for employees today. Things like communication, the ability to multitask, patience, self-awareness its the soft skills that we know make you really good at your job.

But its not just about acquiring (or sharpening) those soft skills during your time off; candidates must also highlight that personal growth and use it to sell themselves. Fifty-two percent of hiring managers told LinkedIn that applicants should proactively bring up their career break during an interview, and 46 percent said they feel job seekers usually undersell what theyve gained from the time away.

Heitmann tells us more and more employers want candidates to feature their career breaks as essential parts of their personal and professional stories. Its so important, she says. Hiring managers say theyre actually more likely to contact you if you include that context.

Considering all this, LinkedIn got feedback from its members that they needed more ways to easily and clearly reflect these breaks (and what they gained from them) in their profiles to help integrate that into their employment history. Thats why the site has introduced a new tool that allows users to specifically list a career break on their profile, with the option to select from a host of explanations for the time off, including career transition, full-time parenting, bereavement, a gap year, pursuing a personal goal, focusing on ones health, and many more.

Using the tool is especially effective, Heitmann explains, considering that 44 percent of hirers told LinkedIn they want to know the reason behind a career break and 51 percent said theyre more likely to reach out to someone whos actively provided that explanation.

One of LinkedIns options for filling in that employment gap is volunteer work, which Heitmann says is a salient example of how other activities contribute to professional development.

With volunteering, you can improve your ability to communicate with your team, to be patient, and to negotiate with a bunch of different people, she says. Those are the types of things that you can dial up and talk about when you discuss that time.

Heitmann just took a break from work herself to go on maternity leave, which has given her a helpful first-hand understanding of how time away to focus on parenting can actually make someone better at their job.

Patience, self-awareness, communication, and multitasking are all things that youre putting the pedal to the metal on when you have a newborn, she says. In the last two months since Ive been back, Ive really felt that juggling my calendar, the babys calendar, the food schedule, and laundry was good training. That time management is really important.

So if youve done a personal assessment about when to quit your job and decided the time is now, you can rest easy knowing that jumping immediately into a new role isnt your only option for moving your life forward while still keeping your career on track.

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LinkedIn is Normalizing Career Breaks: Why It's OK to Have Resume Gaps - Katie Couric Media

Employers are desperate to hire these days, and they're more willing to overlook a short stint or even a gap in your work history.

That's good news for young workers who feel their new jobs have been overhyped during the Great Resignation. A recent survey from The Muse found 80% of millennial and Gen Z jobseekers say it's acceptable to leave a new job before six months if it doesn't live up to your expectations.

If you're preparing to jump back into job-search mode after just a short time away, here are a few ways to talk about it throughout the hiring process.

There are ways to be honest and diplomatic about a short tenure if the job or company turned out to be different from what you expected, says The Muse founder and CEO Kathryn Minshew.

If possible, discuss how the scope of the job changed between the time you interviewed, when you accepted it and when you began working. Did the responsibilities change? Did your hiring manager or colleagues quit? Were there other organizational changes that impacted how you feel about the company or leadership?

Minshew suggests saying something along the lines of: "Obviously, it's not ideal to have such a short stint at a company. When I was interviewing for that position, some of the things that I was looking for were XYZ. There was a lot that was communicated to me about the role and the type of work environment that I was really excited for. But when I joined the team, there were some really key differences in what I experienced compared with what was advertised. It wasn't the right move professionally, so I left."

If you made an impact even with just a few months on the job, that's something to highlight, says career coach Chelsea Jay.

Did you hit the ground running to meet important deadlines for your team? Or overhaul a workflow the company will continue using moving forward? Talk about how quickly you were able to adapt into a new work setting (even though it's one you ultimately didn't enjoy) and how you were able to help the business in a short amount of time.

Self-awareness goes a long way, and you can even play it to your strengths. Lean on the fact that you stood up for yourself and what you want in a job or company, and that you were quick to see the other organization wasn't delivering on it.

"You can tell them you're big on self-awareness, that you recognized the job was a bad fit and you wanted to get out in time for someone else who would truly enjoy it," Jay says.

Then, focus on how the experience reaffirmed what you want in a job or company values like flexibility, innovation, or the ability to help people, for example and that you know how to look for it in interviews. Instill some confidence by adding these values are "[things] I'm really focused on in my next role, and I really want to find a company where I can stay for a long time," Minshew adds.

Job interviews aren't a good place to drag a former employer, even if you feel they misled you in the hiring process. Keep it honest and professional.

If you want, you could frame a bad experience as something you hope to avoid in the future. For example, if you didn't like the competitive nature of a previous company, Minshew suggests saying something like: "I thrive best in a really collaborative environment, where I'm given a lot of information about the various areas of the company, colleagues want to help each other out and there's a minimum of politics or gossip."

You also don't have to go into every single detail about a bad work experience if it doesn't serve the interview, Jay adds. "Your goal in interviews is to take everything you learned and accomplished to reason why you would be perfect for the new company and what you can do for their bottom line," Jay says.

Keep the conversation simple and future-focused, she says: The past work environment was no longer for me, and this is what I'm looking for going forward.

If you worked on a side business or project while at your last job, focus on what you learned while on your own.

If your side hustle directly relates to the job you're applying for, that's extra experience and skills you can talk about. Even if the skillsets don't totally line up, bring out the soft skills that make you a good employee and leader, like time management or the ability to delegate.

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Quit your job after less than a year? Here's how to discuss it in interviews - CNBC

By Dr. Seth Meyers

When you hear the word attractive, the first thing that probably comes to mind is physical attractiveness. While how a person looks is important to some, it is not the most important characteristic for many others.

Having counseled countless couples and single men and women over the years, I have created a list of personality traits that make a person appealing and attractive to others.

RELATED:10 Little Habits That Make You Irresistibly Attractive

While you certainly will have at least one or two, the goal is to have many characteristics that make you appealing as a potential partner. If you dont have some of these characteristics now, you can set a goal to change that.

The more attractive personality traits you have, the more likely you will be to find a dating partner who is attractive overall not because of the way they look.

One of the things we all love to talk most about is ourselves! Who doesnt love to spend time with a good listener? Good listeners are human gems, making you feel important and cared about.

If you are a good listener, this trait alone will make you extremely appealing to others. You should take pride in that and trust that you have at least one trait that makes you an appealing date.

When you start dating someone, you quickly see that this individual has a whole set of family, friends, and coworkers. You also realize that this individual has their own set of behaviors, interests, and hobbies that they have spent a lifetime cultivating.

If you are someone who is flexible and open to trying new things, remember that this is a huge plus. After all, there are many men and women who dont want to date to begin with because they say dating feels like an obligation or takes too much work.

If youre someone who is open to new experiences, you actually enjoy the ride just as much as you enjoy arriving at the destination. Flexibility and openness mark an extremely attractive personality trait, which you should pride yourself in if this describes you.

RELATED:8 Things Men Find Super Hot In A Woman (And The Real Reasons Why)

Simply put, there are all kinds of funny. Still, some people are simply funnier than others. Some men and women have a sense of humor that is so quirky, quick, or clever that you cant help but laugh out loud at some of the things they say.

If you have the kind of humor that makes people truly laugh, you ought to know that you bring with you one of the most attractive characteristics any man or woman could have.

To begin, Im not talking about touch that is necessarily sexual. Im talking about the way you touch a person when youre walking down the street, having dinner with them, or sitting on the couch while watching a movie.

A good friend of mine loves when her husband gently rubs his fingernails up and down her forearm slowly. That type of affection and the willingness to make another person feel good and to connect physically with them in a non-sexual way is a crowd-pleaser for many. Sure, some people dont like to be touched a lot, but most people do.

If youre a very physically affectionate person, you should wear this badge proudly and know that many men or women will want to keep dating you because that characteristic makes them feel good and tended to emotionally and physically.

I always say, like singer Vanessa Williams, I had to save the best for last. Hands down, Ive found that this is the characteristic that men and women value the most in their partner after many years together.

In the beginning, someone may hook you by their appearance, their professional success, or their charm, but those arent the factors that keep a couple glued together years later. Long-term couples come face to face with resentments and challenges, but it helps if the person youre with can take responsibility for their issues or things theyve done that have hurt you.

While immature or insecure men and women get defensive, flip the problem onto their partner, or blame the other person, men and women who self-reflect and have self-awareness will actually hear what you say, sincerely apologize when theyve hurt you, and learn their lesson.

If you are self-aware and can admit your weakness to your date and apologize meaningfully when youre wrong, you ought to know that this characteristic makes you light years more attractive as a potential partner than, say, half the dating pool.

If you have some of these characteristics, that speaks well for your prospects to attract a good partner.

But if you dont have one or more of these characteristics, work on the ones you want to gain.

We are all works in progress, and it is always good to set goals to improve your personality and behavior so that you become the best possible version of yourself.

RELATED:What Makes You Instantly More Attractive To Men

Dr. Seth Meyers is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, Psychology Today blogger, and TV guest expert. He practices in Los Angeles and treats a wide range of issues and disorders and specializes in relationships, parenting, and addiction.

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5 Most Attractive Personality Traits (That Have Nothing To Do With Looks) - YourTango

Over a decade after Odd Future permanently altered the rap landscape, the groups debut album/mixtape has mostly aged poorly even as it captures an impossible crossroads between creativity and youthful abandon.

The one assuagement for the torture of adolescence is often what makes the art associated with it so beautiful; it doesnt last forever. In the music world, its one significant reason why we romanticize youth. So many of musics most enduring moments come from people sustained by gifts endowed from young adulthood: namely, a nascent sense of agency and the fickle, irrepressible life force that drives it. The emphasis, however, rests on romanticize. Even those of us lucky enough to experience the highlights of adolescence still live tumultuous temporary existences, likely without the self-awareness necessary to appreciate just how fast those moments may pass.

Like every punk group before them, Odd Future werent built to last. You cant carry the energy they demonstrated at their peak, raging en masse at self-curated festivals and buoyed by seas of moshing teenagers, even into your late 20s. Similarly, the ideas on which they raged were just as destined for ephemerality. Gleeful offensiveness only works if youre internally shielded from the consequences of your words, and thats harder to do as your sense of empathy matures. The easy camaraderie of group friendship also gets more difficult as that same maturity draws you towards committed relationships and family building, coinciding with the fading novelty of random sex.

Nowadays, ask the average adult American, and they likely wont recall Odd Future, even though the national hand-wringing over the blatant misogyny and homophobia embedded in their music did bring them to momentary infamy in the early 2010s. But they likely will have heard of some of the artists that once comprised the group. Tyler, the Creator grew up, came out, and blossomed into a flower boy. Frank Ocean grew up, came out, and changed R&B forever. Earl Sweatshirt, meanwhile, grew up; the rough, rancorous version of horrorcore he spat at 16 hes now refined across a slew of fantastic albums bridging the gaps between the mainstream and the underground. The common thread between these people is that they eventually transcended the groups juvenescent limitations. They and everyone else, regardless of the level of success they managed to achieve since seem overall hesitant to revisit the material.

Part of that may be because of how badly some of the songs on The OF Tape Vol. 2 have aged (more on that later). But another part of it may be that, like any teenage friend group, distance has taken a toll. Odd Futures most alluring aspect, which has secured their legacy, was how they made their internal dynamic part of the product in ways that only modern technology could allow. In an era where the most generous public figures among us pass out pieces of themselves in perpetuity, its easy to forget that when Odd Future were constantly uploading pictures and videos to Tumblr of themselves just fooling around, no one else was doing it. Their approach to PR lined up serendipitously with the growing ubiquity of social media among teenagers and young adults. That would also line up with the burgeoning phenomenon of Internet-based parasocial relationships.

The impact of the groups efforts cant be understated. Its been acknowledged before: Soulja Boy may have pioneered the independent-rapper-as-entrepreneur, and Lil B may have altered our perception of prolificacy, but Odd Futures breach of the artistic looking glass inspired an entire generation of young upstarts looking to bypass the traditional confines of the industry, a force that only ever proved parasitic for most Black artists. Their unceasing efforts to self-promote the dense culture they fostered around them, the festivals they curated, their dedication to interweaving fashion and multimedia into their image, and how they somehow circumvented the brand of self-consciousness typical to their mean age. On these merits, the groups fingerprints show up all over todays hip-hop environment.

Theres no better evidence of Odd Future at their height than the music video for Oldie, which remains one of hip-hops finest visual feats. On it, you get a glimpse rare for some, but certainly not for them of the process behind their power. Theres a discernible blueprint for the video, one that would see them interlaced with jump cuts and contrived revelry that would likely make it interchangeable with one from any other rap act. But Tyler actively dismantles the plan, ordering one of the cameras to stay on the group for ten minutes as each feature pops in and out to say their piece. Whatever coordination is present between them feels conjured out of thin air. Part of the live audio is left layered over the song, capturing the groups live response to the rigor of the shoot. What might be cut out of a traditional final product, like the moments where the group breaks to joke around or doesnt even pretend to lip-sync, are also left in whole. Together its a stunning document of inner-band chemistry, full of candid laughs and sharpened by a collective focus, that would not be possible without the ability to share it independently on the Internet.

Oldie remains the strongest song on the tape and not just because of its video. Ten minutes is an eternity for any song shooting for the charts, but not a second is wasted because each of its verses forms its own personal best. Tylers bookends boast his most concise wordplay, while Domo Genesis, who overall owns the record alongside Hodgy Beats, spits corkscrewed lines over what would typically be well-trodden tropes. After years of radio silence, Earl Sweatshirts return to the mic represents the tapes greatest moment, as he spends a triumphant two minutes reminding us of his surrealist lyrical mastery. But its the way each verse is set up that gives the song its hidden power. Notice how Frank Oceans breezy laconic feature chills the mood until a hilariously terrible line by class clown Jasper sets Earl up for his spike, or how Left Brains relatively simple drawl on weed and women is closed in by Domo and Hodgys fleet-footed bars.

If nostalgia is at play now after an entire decade (as it is, poignantly, on Oceans White), we could take Oldie, its video, and the comparative success of Odd Futures biggest players and leave most everything else behind. But were covering an album here, and regrettably, theres a great deal on The OF Tape Vol. 2 that feels better left in the past. You could potentially count the tapes truly enduring tracks on one hand. Its no coincidence that Ocean is on most of them. Theres Oldie, White, and the tender Analog 2, which bears a formula Tyler would later perfect on his late 2010s works. Rellas beat is grimy in a comforting way, and Forest Green is Mike Gs singular moment even as it brings to mind Wiz Khalifas verdant schtick.

Everything else feels either tired in proximity to the last few years of Soundcloud rap a field that, to be fair, Odd Future helped sow or weighed down by the groups usual derogatory slings. Hodgy Beats and Domo Genesis, more than any other members, take over the tape in featuring on a full two-thirds of its songs. While they each provide some of their best material across their careers, the material mainly feels stale. On Bitches, they volley bars with zeal, but the energy is the tracks only significant component. The same goes with 50, where Hodgy and Left Brain, credited as MellowHype, rage unsteadily. It doesnt help that theyre backed by a bevy of undercooked beats, which once carried a sense of underdog charm but wilt in a retrospective light.

Elsewhere, those who would later release far more laudable works are still audibly developing their craft here. For the way his presence lifts the tape every time it surfaces, Ocean is still honing his songwriting ability: note how his short refrain on Snow White doesnt layer properly over the tracks chords and ends on a sour note. Likewise, the Internets sole contribution is lightyears away from what they would eventually conjure on 2015s GRAMMY-nominated Ego Death. Until its more even-keeled conclusion, Ya Know coasts on a tepid drum beat and a series of off-kilter chords that dont mesh well with Matt Martians vocals. Its also repellent content-wise: a tale of drunken lothario behavior displaying neither the levity nor satire required to dampen its creepiness.

Ya Know punctuates a particular aspect of the tape the groups members seem eager to leave behind: the rampant misogyny laced into what feels like every moment. Theres the usual handful of cheap racist and homophobic shots taken because that was always Odd Futures MO, but the misogyny feels explicitly amped up to a maximum. If were going on pure numbers, the word bitch is uttered roughly 120 times over the hour, and while not all of those utterances are pointed, it doesnt help when a handful of songs here bear titles are. Real Bitch is particularly egregious, as Hodgy, Domo, and young upstart Taco run down a laundry list of preferred qualities in a mate as if dictating a nice guys stream of consciousness. Its all played for laughs albeit the kind that might regularly surface on r/im14andthisisfunny. However, a decade after the shock factor has died away, the gangs one-note focus on cheap hits reads boring at best, unconscionable at worst, and cringe-worthy most everywhere else.

Time, it turns out, has not been kind to Tylers parts. Here as on Bastard and Goblin, he plays the raucous ringleader, leaning fully into offending as many people as he can think of while making a meal out of the splashy headlines of the day. Listening back now, his spot the reference verses pull us back into the hot topics of the early 2010s, and even for the era, some of their inclusions feel shoehorned in. Remember Casey Anthony? That Sean Kingston jet ski accident? Did you know Hodgy Beats ghostwrote for Bow Wow, and how much does it matter now?

Convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky shows up on two different songs, each reference dropped like a supposed bomb but instead representative of Tylers rare lack of imagination. Similar to Eminems celebrity obsessions on The Marshall Mathers LP, these references were fated to be infirm, notable now only for the spindly wordplay forming their scaffolding. With the additional knowledge of how Tyler has outgrown his more gremlin-like impulses, he sounds far too eager to shock here. The result is far more eye-rolling than pearl-clutching.

The OF Tape Vol. 2 need only be remembered for its highest highs, which also cant be replicated without building a time machine. Your mileage may vary, but those who can push past the outrage will find some guilty laughs scattered throughout. White portrays a young Frank Ocean on the cusp of R&B superstardom. And Oldie endures because it captures an impossible moment, where youthful abandon meets unlimited creativity. For a short moment, Odd Future were on the frontier of rap. What we forget is how much of that success was wrapped in the presentation, allowing the music to mostly fade out of the foreground. Perhaps, in a sense, thats yet another tick for the groups enduring influence.

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Odd Future's 'The OF Tape Vol.2' Is Cringeworth & Captivating - PopMatters

Tarot card readings have been around for centuries and have been used for years for their use in providing clarity to many people. When going through tough, uncertain times, a tarot reading can help people get through impactful moments in their life.

Tarot readings are done with designated decks of cards filled with meaning and symbolism. These cards cannot tell the future but can offer insight into ones life (present, past, and future). A tarot reading can be done in a few different ways. However, we are going to go over one of the simplest and most comfortable ways to receive a psychic reading online.

Online readings have risen in popularity due to the comfortability of being able to receive readings from your home. This is an excellent option for those who are socially shy, especially when opening up to a stranger.

We have looked through all the online sites that claim to do exceptional tarot reading services, so you would not have to. We have compiled a shortlist of the top three reading sites of 2022. We are optimistic that one of the sites listed below will be able to help you move through your spiritual journey to self-awareness.

After looking through all of the following factors and criteria, we are sure one of the sites listed below will be able to help you through your journey. So, let us jump into our top three sites for tarot card readings.

Purple Garden is one of the best online tarot reading websites with accurate online readings. Our team has done extensive research to make the list of the top psychic reading sites for love, relationship, and career.

Our exceptional list of psychic advisors who have been rated as the most accurate in their advice and guidance by our customers. These advisors, who are capable of enlightening, inspiring, and empowering you, have all been verified and voted for by people just like you. Our high-accuracy advisors cover a wide range of services, including love readings, mediumship, tarot cards, career advice, and more.

Purple Garden offers its consumers an all-time best lineup of a master psychic consultants, all of whom have been tried, evaluated, and graded by tens of thousands of customers over many years. Ask them any and all of your pressing questions, and youll gain new perspectives and a better understanding.

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Since Purple Garden offers a wide variety of tarot advisors and psychic readers, the pricing of the psychic services will vary according to the demands of the psychic reader. However, the majority of online tarot readers offer a few free initial minutes to get a hang of the quality of the service.

Customer Service

These advisors, who are ready to enlighten, inspire, and empower you, have all been vetted and selected by people like you. The high-accuracy advisors cover a wide range of services, including love readings, mediumship, tarot cards, career advice, and more.

Purple Garden offers its consumers an all-time best array of grasp psychic advisors, all of whom have been tried, reviewed, and rated by tens of thousands of customers over many years. Ask them any and all of your pressing questions, and youll gain new perspectives and a better understanding.

Pros

Cons

? Visit the Official Website ofPurple Garden

#2. Keen Most Trusted Online Tarot Reader

Keen is a great option to consider for tarot readings, as it offers authentic readings accompanied by affordable rates. Their top-rated readers have numerous reviews to back up their services. Keen also offers more than just tarot readings.

Psychic readings and advice from psychic mediums are also available through their memberships. Keen has the capabilities to help you connect with yourself spiritually and emotionally.

With all the options Keen has available for readers, you are bound to find just what you need. Before starting with Keen or any other tarot card reading website, you will have to create an account. Once your account is created, your answers to your questions are just a click away.

The pricing with this site varies on what service you are looking for. There are tons of different psychics on this site offering a variety of different services. Their prices range depending on which reader you choose.

Some readers have prices listed as $2 a minute, while other readers have prices listed as $10 a minute. Look thoroughly into your readers reviews and bio before making the decision to receive a reading.

Keens customer service team is available Monday through Friday from 6 am to 6 pm and Saturdays and Sundays from 8 am to 4:30 pm. In general, their customer service team is available for the most part to help you with any issues you may experience in your readings.

They also have an option where you can email them if you have any concerns. If you are not satisfied with your reading, their customer service team may be able to help you out with that. You must contact them first regarding your situation, and you may be eligible to receive credits back for future readings.

? Visit the Official Website of Keen

Kasamba is considered one of the best tarot card reading sites in the industry. Even if people may not know much about tarot reading, Kasamba is a name that is familiar to many, as it has been around for over 20 years.

It is one of the only sites in the market that has been known to have trusted tarot readers that are experienced in their work.

Each reader has tons of reviews to give you a perspective on what to expect with your guide. The thousands of reviews under each psychic/tarot reader really help everyone understand what they are getting into.

With tarot readings from Kasamba, the prices can vary depending on the readers experience and ratings. Some tarot readers on this site can be as cheap as $1.99, while others charge up to $20 per minute.

The price varies on how long your reading is. In order to receive a thorough reading, paying a bit more is recommended. It is hard to receive all your answers in the span of three minutes, so do keep that in mind when choosing your reader.

Kasamba has a team filled with loyal customer service representatives ready to help you with any issues you may experience when navigating through their site. In addition, their customer service team is available to help you through email and via a live chat option through their site.

? Visit the Official Website of Kasamba

Some readers might be on the lookout for the top online tarot site with services in Spanish, or different languages than just English. AskNow is perhaps the best website in the world for Tarot readings that take place in Slovak, French, Spanish, and English.

This is a highly descriptive site and tells you whether or not a psychic is available. It offers ratings for the psychic, and lets you know the years of experience they have. They also include the psychics astrology sign as well.

You can find plenty of great services on this site- namely, they do dream analysis, readings for spirit guides, goals/careers readings, past lives, pet readings, and dream analysis among others. This site also helps with energy defense, and you can also purchase psychic protection.

AskNows introductory offer gets you 30 minutes for $30, plus 5 free Elite/Master Minutes.

You may also choose $20 for 20 minutes as well.

Their top-rated advisors go anywhere from 3.99 to 9.99 USD a minute, meanwhile, their Elite Advisors go for 10 to 12.99 USD a minute; lastly, their Master Advisors cost 13 USD per minute and more.

Many customers enjoyed their helpful and highly insightful reading from AskNows experienced readers. The site has limited readers to speak of, but they do hire the best- so rest assured that youre getting a quality tarot reading when it is your turn. This is why the majority of customers were happy with the services rendered at AskNow.

? Visit the Official Website of AskNow

#5. Oranum Most Spiritual Readers of Tarot

Oranum initially caught our eye thanks to the uniqueness of the site. We noted that there were lots of listings on there for readers of many different skill sets, cultural backgrounds, and origins. It offers a wide selection of experienced tarot readers with many positive reviews.

However, its also easy to find readers whose specialty is holistic healing and Eastern reading styles.

This website feels different from the others, in that it offers unique services you dont see in other places. It is one of the finest online tarot sites if youd like to explore various methods of healing and readings.

Oranum focuses on ones overall wellness and has a wide range of psychic readers from across the globe. You will find it easy to locate a psychic that speaks your tongue and offers you a reading in a language youre comfortable speaking.

Purchasing coins is how youll participate in Oranums services. You then use coins to pay the psychics.

You get 10,000 coins just by signing up and providing a valid credit card. You may then purchase coin packages ranging from $5.99 to $479.99.

The coin system can be confusing to new users because youre not sure what the average psychic costs. Most charge about 2,000 coins a minute.

So, consider purchasing a larger package so you can have a comfortable and thorough reading.

Based on customer reviews, not all readings are perfect, but most of the readers are accurate and superb at their craft. You just have to research a bit and find one who specializes in the area you seek advice for.

Customers enjoy the wide range of services offered by the site and they like that they can speak with readers before they book. Users also love that they do live video chat readings.

? Visit the Official Website of Oranum

Mysticsense is another high-quality reading site that deserves to be on our top three list for tarot card readings. This site offers a wide range of readers specializing in different types of work. The majority of the reviews that you will find on Mysticsense have positive feedback, which is a good sign when choosing a trusted brand for your readings.

Each reader listed on Mysticsense has detailed information regarding their specifications. This can help you retrieve a little bit more insight on which reader to choose. The website, in general, is easy to work through and is informative for newcomers. Mysticsense aims to make all of its consumers feel comfortable and welcome when receiving their psychic readings.

There is no set pricing when looking for a psychic or a tarot card reader through Mysticsense. Each reader has their own individual price listed based on their experience. Some readings vary from $1 a minute to over $5 a minute.

Some of the readers listed on this site offer readings through video chat and phone calls. These methods may be a little pricier than using chat messages; however, always choose a method that is best suited for your comfortability and lifestyle.

Their customer service team offers a variety of different articles and FAQs on their website to help anyone who may want to find answers themselves. If you are not able to find the answers to your questions, you are welcome to contact them via email through the help center listed on their website.

? Visit the Official Website of Mysticsense

To compile this list of the best tarot reading sites of 2022, we did extensive research on each brand claiming to offer top-notch reading services. You would be surprised just how many fakes and phonies are out there. A lot of these sites claim to work wonders and unlock your inner self; however, we knew a lot of the brands on the internet were not legit.

We did the hard work for you by carving down our list based on what we believe makes a tarot card reading site the best. Each site is unique and offers its own benefits, so it is important to keep that in mind when looking through your options.

We wanted to ensure the best sites we provided for you were legit, trusted websites to receive tarot readings. We want you to receive an authentic reading from real professionals.

We looked through the numerous tarot reading sites in the market and pulled out the top three that are sure to guide you through any hardships you are facing. So, let us go over the things we considered when making this list.

What We Looked For

We wanted to provide you with trusted sites in order for you to receive good-quality tarot readings. We wanted to ensure newcomers to this method feel comfortable and confident in receiving this service.

When creating this list, we looked at the following:

The world of tarot card reading can be an influential, magical place. But, there are a few things to remember before picking out how you would like to go about your first tarot card reading.

Life can get hectic and make you feel like you have no control over where everything is heading. But, tarot card readings can provide a sense of relief from the uncertainty of not knowing. Turning over a few cards can make such a difference in someones day.

Tarot card readings can provide relief for those who need clarity on what the future may hold. These readings can also help people better understand themselves on a spiritual level.

After looking over our top three choices for online tarot card readings, let us dig deeper into the readings themselves. But first, let us get over any misconceptions you may have about the use of tarot cards.

Tarot card readings are not magical gateways into the future. Tarot cards cannot predict your future, but they may be able to offer you insight into your life when it comes to the present and future. Tarot card readings help unlock knowledge that most people have hidden away without realizing it.

A tarot card reader is there to help guide you on your journey through self-awareness. However, an experienced tarot card reader should not claim the ability to see into the future.

A professional tarot card reader should be able to effectively operate on their intuition while connecting to a deep understanding of the person they are reading.

By doing so, they will be able to help you make any troubling decisions that you probably already know the answers to.

Now that we know the purpose of a tarot card reading, let us go over the components that make up a deck. A regular tarot deck will usually consist of 78 cards in total. Each card in the deck has its own unique picture and story behind it.

Out of the 78 cards, 22 are known as major arcana cards, which are what give you insights in a spiritual way. The rest of the cards in the deck are called minor arcana cards, which are used to represent the struggles each person experiences within their life. Finding the right deck for some tarot readers may take more than one try.

Tarot card readers must find the deck that resonates with them the best and the one that is clear to explain. This is important for the reader in order to give a closely accurate reading. Now that you know the basics of what a tarot deck consists of, let us go over how to prepare yourself for one.

Before jumping into a reading, it is important to evaluate and understand your reasoning for a reading in the first place. You want to make sure you are clear in what questions you have and prepare yourself for answers you were not expecting.

Once you are fully aware of the questions you have, make sure to ask your reader questions with the possibility of open-ended answers, as this will lead you to a better understanding.

Stay away from questions that only have possibilities for yes or no answers, as these can be vague and can lead to even more confusion. To receive a thorough reading, it is best to go into any reading with an open heart and mind.

Although this may be a vulnerable state to be in, this method will give you the most clarity and self-awareness on a spiritual level. By putting your trust into your reader and the deck, the answers you receive will resonate with you and your path through life. Do not rely on the reader to ask you questions, and remember that your questions being prepared beforehand will give you the best possible answers.

The tarot reader will be able to direct you better once you are open with your questions and concerns. Do not be scared to question yourself once you receive a reading. It is completely normal to ask yourself questions after receiving a reading.

When going through your first tarot card reading, or any tarot reading, it is important to remember that this process should not be rushed. You want to make sure the answers you receive to your questions make sense and connect with your current path down life. So, do not be discouraged if your first tarot card reading does not go as expected.

First-time tarot card readings can feel a little invasive, especially if you are not 100% emotionally and mentally prepared to receive answers. If you ever come across a tarot card reading that makes you feel uneasy or uncomfortable, do not be scared to stop. It is important that you are fully comfortable with the process; otherwise, the information you receive will be vague and useless.

If you are not ready for a reading, collect your thoughts and revisit your reasons for wanting a reading in the first place. It is important to remember that tarot card readings should not be rushed. If you are looking to get a thorough reading, looking for a cheap, rushed option is not the best choice.

A more in-depth reading will help reach the subconscious parts of your mind that you may not be able to access without professional help. Even if an accurate tarot card reading may seem a little pricier, the answers you receive may be more thorough and accurate. A professional tarot card reader should be able to connect with you on a spiritual level, assuring you throughout the process.

Moreover, always watch out for inexperienced readers, as they often give vague answers that can be given to just about anyone. These kinds of readers are what cause the misconceptions that surround tarot readings. After taking all of these criteria into consideration, we are sure you will be able to better prepare for any future tarot card readings.

There are two different ways to receive a tarot card reading online and offline. In-person, or offline, readings can get a little finicky, and finding a tarot card reader in your area is where it gets complicated. There are not many reliable sources for in-person tarot card readers that may be available in your area.

And let us not forget to mention the hassle you will have to go through with traveling and booking appointments. Traveling to an in-person reader may be out of your way. However, online methods for tarot card readings are an excellent option for people who are not socially comfortable. We know it can be a little tough to be vulnerable in front of someone.

So, talking to a tarot reader through online chats, emails, or phone calls are great options for people looking to receive answers in a more comfortable setting. Online tarot reading sites are a great way to fit a reading into any schedule.

Furthermore, finding time to see an in-person tarot reader may not always work with your routine. Also, online tarot reading sites sometimes offer benefits like discounts, refunds, and more information on your tarot reader. You may not be able to get all of this information from in-person readers.

There are three main decks used in tarot readings the Rider, the Thoth, and the Tarot de Marseille. The Rider and the Thoth were both created back in the 19th century by a supposed secret magic society. The Tarot de Marseilles is the French version and contains most of the original details from the original tarot decks.

Tarot readings can be used to gather information and insight in fortune-telling, your love life, personal growth, and spiritual growth. As long as you are open-minded with an experienced tarot reader at hand, the possibilities are endless.

The simple answer to that is yes, anyone can read a tarot card deck. But although you can read the deck, you must keep an open mind to fully understand the meanings behind each card. You must open yourself spiritually in order to receive your answers.

When reading tarot cards for yourself, it is best to start with one question first, which you should narrow into with a relaxed and focused mindset. If you are not quite sure how to go about doing a reading on yourself, it may be a good option to speak with a professional first to better understand the gist of it.

Tarot card readings cannot tell you about the future word by word. But, what it can do for you is offer you insight on what to expect down the path you are headed and what you may need to change. Tarot readings also help you unlock subconscious answers that you have probably always had but did not have the ability to release without help.

Tarot card readings require an open mind and heart. However, going in with a closed mind is pointless when it comes to tarot readings. Tarot cards may seem overwhelming to learn; however, once you grasp the symbolism behind each card, the process seems easier.

Do not let it overwhelm you, and remember to have fun with it. When performing your first read on someone, it is an excellent option to use someone you are familiar with.

The world of tarot cards is mysterious yet intriguing. Tarot card readings have the capabilities to help thousands of people ease their worries and stresses. So many people go on throughout their days facing struggles that can be mentally and emotionally draining.

Constantly feeling this way can lead to a dead end. But, tarot card readings may be able to help people change the current path they are taking while offering advice on how to maneuver through challenges that may arise. Tarot cards cannot predict the future, but they sure can give people a sense of better understanding.

Tarot cards are not basic cards that can be shuffled and toyed with. These cards have the potential to help you become self-aware of your subconscious mind to help you in making better decisions for your future.

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Best Online Tarot Readings: Top Psychic Sites for Most Accurate Tarot Card Reading - The Southern Maryland Chronicle

Do you remember the story of "The Emperors New Clothes?" It's the Hans Christian Andersen tale about a vain king who only wore the most expensive clothing.

One day, two conmen came to town and told the king that they made the finest fabric in the world. In addition to being beautiful, the fabric was invisible to people who were unusually stupid or unfit for office.The king immediately ordered a new outfit and paid the men a lot of money. They set up their loom and demanded that they be provided with the finest silks and purest threads. Then they pretended to be weaving the fancy material.

The king went down to see how they were doing and, of course, couldnt see anything but also couldnt admit that he didnt see it because that would mean he was stupid and unfit for office. He sent his ministers down to look at it. They couldnt see it either but came back and told the king how beautiful it was and how great he would look when he wore it.

You know how the story ends. The conmen dressed the king in the nonexistent clothes and he marched proudly down the street. The crowds cheered his fine raiment until one little boy shouted out But he hasnt got anything on! At that, the rest of the parade goers said, But he hasnt got anything on! The king suspected they were right but thought, The procession must go on so he continued marching proudly naked down the street while his noblemen held high the train that wasnt there.

This story has always resonated with readers because it makes fun of the vanity and lack of self-awareness of public figures.

So here it comes…

Has anybody else noticed that our president, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. acts like a 79 year old man? Not that theres anything wrong with 79 year-old men. Im fast becoming one myself. But old men tend to lose a step or twoas they age. They dont walk as fast, they dont talk as fast and they dont think as fast. Joe Biden is displaying all those signs of old age. Agree with his politics or not, any objective observer cannot help but wonder about the competence of the leader of the free world.

Before we discuss what he says, just watch the way he walks. He meanders around, seemingly confused and not quite sure where he is or what he is doing. If you havent seen the videos of it, you are watching a cable channel that doesnt want you to see it.

Even before he was elected, Joe could speak pretty well when reading a script from his basement, but when he tried to improvise, his staff must have cringed. Remember when he called a person at an election rally a dog faced pony soldier?

After dodging the press for the first year of his presidency, Joe was very proud of holding an hour-long press conference. Thats the one where he said it might be OK if Russia made just a minor incursion into Ukraine. His staff had to scurry to clean up after that. During his State of the Union address, he confused Iranians with Ukrainians. People dont pay much attention to an old guy muttering on a park bench but the world notices when Joe goes off script.

One protector he has is the mainstream press. They are so happy that any Democrat beat Trump, they simply ignore the increasing number and frequency of gaffes made by the Befuddled Old Geezer of the U.S. (BOGUS). In case you wonder if the press is giving him a pass, remember when Gerald Ford, an All-America football player, slipped on wet steps while getting off a plane? The press and comedians branded him a klutz for the rest of his life. When Joe tripped not once, not twice but three times climbing up airplane steps, no one mentioned it.

Dan Quayles unfortunate misspelling of potato[e] forever branded him a dunce. When Joe mumbled We hold these truths… you know, the thing the press ignored it. Last Thursday, Joe started his White House remarks by saying, I may be Irish, but Im not stupid. There might be comedic material there if it had been reported.

About now, the MSNBC trolls are running to their keyboards typing IN ALL CAPS Trump was worse! Maybe so, but Trump isnt president and Joe is clearly out of his depth. Plus, the press pointed out every Trump mistake, even if it was imaginary. Biden is quick to blame every problem on Trump because he knows the press wont call him in it. Im an old guy, too, but, unlike Joe, I didnt ask America to give me control over nuclear weapons.

So the parade goes on. BOGUS is strutting out in front claiming hes done more than any other president. His sycophants in the media are holding the train to his invisible garment. Maybe its time for those of us who are objectively observing this farcical parade to say, He hasnt got anything on.

Harry Bulkeley is a retired Knox County judge and a local historian.

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Harry Bulkeley: Biden is the emperor with new clothes - Galesburg Register-Mail

AFTER GOD CREATED the heavens and the earth, he stood back to contemplate creation, like a painter standing back from the canvas. This is the moment we are living in the moment of God standing back. Who knows how long it has been going on for? So begins Sheila Hetis new novel, Pure Colour. Heti has made a habit of starting books with grand, philosophical questions. Her critically acclaimed 2012 novel, How Should a Person Be?, begins by asking the titular question. The Chairs Are Where the People Go (2011), co-written with Misha Glouberman, bears the subtitle How to Live, Work, and Play in the City and features chapters that explore existential questions underpinning daily life. Hetis recent semi-autobiographical novel Motherhood (2018) opens with a description of the I Ching, a method of flipping coins to divine answers a technique she uses to query her creative purpose. That Heti invokes the Book of Genesis on the first page of Pure Colour, then, feels fitting, if ambitious. With each book, her scope seems to widen, and Pure Colour ushers the reader further from roman clefor autobiography and closer to a kind of speculative philosophy or myth.

In narrative terms, Pure Colour tracks the emotional and psychic life of a protagonist named Mira. When the novel opens, Mira is young woman living in Toronto or, rather, familiar street names lead me to assume the story is set in Hetis own hometown. Mira left home, Heti writes in an early passage. Then she got a job at a lamp store. The lamp store sold Tiffany lamps, and other lamps made of coloured glass. Each lamp was extremely expensive. Miras tedious work seems simultaneously to dull and heighten her senses, an aesthetic perspective that is later honed when she is accepted into the American Academy of American Critics. Over the course of the novel, Mira also falls in love with a mysterious woman named Annie and mourns the death of a beloved father. Though her feelings toward Annie and her father form the storys emotional core, Miras focus oscillates between considering the details of her own life and broader questions about art and existence, giving the book a meditative and at times almost spiritual quality.

In many respects, summarizing Pure Colour by describing its plot, which is quite scant in conventional terms, misses the point. The narration shifts between describing Miras experiences and postulating more broadly about Gods intentions in creating the first draft of the world. In the opening pages, readers learn that there are three types of people: birds, fish, and bears. People born from these three different eggs will never completely understand each other, the narrator explains, subsequently confirming that Mira is a bird, Annie a fish, and Miras father a warm bear. Within this tri-species taxonomy,directionalperspective correlates strongly to how individuals literally and figuratively regard the world. Birds observe from a distance and are interested in beauty, order, harmony and meaning; fish are bound in a collective and concerned with fairness and justice here on earth; and bears care most about their immediate surroundings and are turned towards those they can smell and touch. The tensions between these different worldviews are central to the story and Pure Colours meta-subject is how different relationships to art and criticism allow humans to interpret, cope, exalt, and otherwise find meaning in life.

Pure Colours two sections the account of Miras life and the passages considering divine or universal purpose are voiced by similar, if not identical, omniscient narrators. In effect, there is a fable-like quality to the storytelling. Surreal events, such as when Miras spirit enters a leaf with her father after his death, are relayed matter-of-factly. This measured tone is also reflected in the syntax: Heti uses a mixture of short phrases and long sentences broken into multiple clauses to organize stream-of-consciousness ideas into causal observations, as in: The day after her father died, Mira saw that she could abandon her whole life, walk away from it, and it wouldnt matter. The direct prose, as well as the narrators tendency to circle back and reconsider ideas, evokes the process of mulling things over during a long walk or an extended period alone the parallels with isolated thinking during the pandemic are not lost on the reader.

Whether pondering metaphysical or minor topics, Mira often observes patterns and gaps in her own thought processes. In some ways, Miras gestures toward self-reflexivity and self-critique make it easy to read her as a product of the mindfulness era. Shes by no means perfectly self-aware or prophetic; rather, Mira comes across as genuinely curious. At times, drawing connections between seemingly abstract or historical topics and her present-day emotions or realities causes her to become overwhelmed. For instance, reflecting upon the Bronze Age as part of a stream-of-consciousness thought spiral, the narrator suddenly thinks: Because you know what, if we suddenly went back two thousand years, thered be nothing we could do to speed things along. I dont know how to make a steam engine. This rare first-person invocation, and the abrupt introduction of a new subject (on the previous page, Mira was describing her father, not historical progression or steam power), reveals a mind racing to find coherence in the wake of personal disaster. Whats unique about Miras self-reflexivity, at least within Hetis oeuvre, is that she searches for answers without a desire for action. Perhaps typical for a bird person, Hetis narrator seeks understanding, or at least interpretation, for its own sake.

Heti is known for experimenting with form as a means of representing self-awareness. How Should a Person Be?, her breakthrough novel, depicts intimate scenes from Hetis own life and incorporates transcripts from conversations with her friend and collaborator, the painter Margaux Williamson. Similarly based on events from Hetis life, Motherhood chronicles the authors conflicting desire and disinclination toward parenting and employs the I Ching to answer questions like: Will reading help my soul?; Is art at home in the world?; and [C]an a woman who makes books be let off the hook by the universe for not making the living thing we call babies? How Should a Person Be? and Motherhood are both voiced in the first person and feature narrators who learn about themselves through interacting with, and judging, others. Its notable, then, that Heti shifts to using a close third person for most of Pure Colour and that the characterization of the critic Miras voice feels less developed than those of the writer protagonists in Hetis earlier works. In an apt review in 4Columns, Jennifer Kabat observes that the writing is warm, deft, and strange, but the characters are thin and the plot is too. Im inclined to agree and initially struggled to articulate my response to the book. With time, though, Ive found a growing appreciation for Miras resistance to what a recent New Yorker article called main character energy and for Hetis own anti-novelist stance.

The more the story if we can even call it that develops, the more Pure Colour becomes a tale about grieving during the Anthropocene. The writings alternately rough and delicate slowness reads like a modern benediction. Now the earth is heating up in advance of its destruction by God, who has decided that the first draft of existence contained too many flaws, Heti writes. We learn that God, [r]eady to go at creation a second time, hoping to get it more right this time, [] appears, splits, and manifests as three art critics in the sky: a large bird who critiques from above, a large fish who critiques from the middle, and a large bear who critiques while cradling creation in its arms. For bird-descendent Mira, criticism is a means of apprehending not only culture but also human beings. Looking closely, however, risks opening the door to both beauty and despair. The narrator explains: Its true that the world was failing at its one task of remaining a world. Pieces were breaking off. Seasons were becoming postmodern. In this world, [t]he ice cubes were melting. The species were dying. Though Mira may have drawn on the rhetoric of art criticism to fathom abstract, global loss, her fathers death upsets her very sense of self and renders her unmoored, a bird flying through a storm.

By Hetis own explanation, she didnt set out to write about grief, but her fathers death in 2018 influenced the course of Pure Colour. In 2020, Heti published an essay in The Yale Review titled A Common Seagull: On Making Art and Mourning in which she shares a memory that may well have inspired Mira going into the leaf. Walking in the forest with my dog a few weeks after my father died, I noticed the green of the fir trees; the colors were so muted and beautiful, Heti recalls, continuing:

I felt in that moment as if I had never really looked at colors before, I stood wondering beneath the shadowless sky whether, when my father died, the spirit that had enlivened him passed into me, for I had held him as he died; as perhaps when his father, a painter, died, his spirit went into my father, so that now I had the spirit of my father and the spirit of my grandfather both inside me. And I wondered whether this influence the spirit of my painter grandfather inside me was why I was suddenly noticing colors.

This quotation reads like a map for Pure Colour, in which the father promises the child Mira that one day he will buy her pure colour not something that was coloured, but colour itself! Bird Miras childhood belief in her father, a bear who desires closeness and proximity, eventually gives way to a sense of guilt. As Mira got older, it became harder to love [her father] in the proper dimensions, or even to know what those were, the narrator explains, as any interest she developed in another person felt like it was taking something from him, since he had no one to love but Mira. Nevertheless, when her father dies, it is Mira who wishes to follow and [draw] him halfway back.

Hetis writing is sometimes described as strange, a description most often invoked in the context of praise. Pure Colour extends this fundamental strangeness in new directions, with varied results. At times, the tapestries Heti weaves to relay hyper-imaginative conceits feel overstretched: while reading, I kept picturing a loose mohair knit the kind of delicate, expensive garment often advertised to me on Instagram. The books metaphorical threads are glimmering and attractive, but the wide spaces left between some of its ideas create opportunities for snags. For example, the notion of a second draft of the world, and of God as a critic examining defects in the first draft (the world that Pure Colours characters and readers occupy), is exciting. The notion that arts vitality may no longer be appropriately measured by means of its endurance in this fast-dying world is also poignant. Some of the nuances of Hetis ideas, however, are lost or diminished due to a hazy internal structure. Is God a critic? Are all human beings? Is Annie, the orphan whom Mira claims to adore yet knows so little about, vaguely sketched because of the limits of Miras perspective or because character building is unimportant in Hetis novel-cum-mythology? Because Pure Colour is light on plot, losing the proverbial thread doesnt so much threaten our understanding of the text as our very engagement with it.

Heti is a question asker, and Pure Colour is rich in queries that link the personal with the universal. In the past, the conceptual richness of Hetis questions led critics to speculate about the influence of Judaic mysticism or forms of aesthetic philosophy on her writing. In a 2019 interview in Guernica, the author remarked: I dont think my characters actually make decisions based on what they get from mystical or supernatural sources; looking in that direction indicates a kind of desperation for meaning, but the final answers never come from those places. In Pure Colour, Mira isnt consumed with taking up or disputing specific intellectual or spiritual traditions. Instead she accepts the mutable nature of meaning and strives to hone a personal framework for interpretation. To this end, Pure Colours roving subject matter and looping motifs embody the surrealistic mix of clarity and discombobulation that accompany grieving. As a writer, Heti has a special talent for making the mundane feel magical this is key to the beguiling strangeness of her texts. The most moving parts of Pure Colour arrive when Mira seeks emotional and aesthetic truths in spaces between the profound and the everyday, inviting readers birds, fish, and bears alike to witness the depth of the protagonists (and the authors) mental perambulations.

Esm Hogeveen is an arts and culture writer based in Tkaronto/Toronto. She is a staff writer atAnother Gazeand a Film and ArtSeen contributor atThe Brooklyn Rail. Her work has also appeared inArtforum,Bookforum,The Baffler, BOMB, and Frieze, among other venues.

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Revising the First Draft of the World: On Sheila Heti's Pure Colour - lareviewofbooks

Most of Holly Harpers life seemed pretty traditional. She married at 24, had a baby girl and lived what she called the perfect picket-fence life. But even then, she never considered her approach to life to be conventional.

My personal life story is one of experimentation, travel, dabbling in everything, connecting people and dreaming, Harper shared. For as long as I can remember, Ive brainstormed ways to get my beloved community [and] chosen family to physically be in the same space whether living in the same town or vacationing together or retiring to the same cul de sac or assisted care community when we are Golden Girls.'

As a military spouse, she lived in seven states and Europe. During that time, she cultivated an eclectic group of friends and leaned into her unconventional side.

After 17 years together, Harper and her husband separated and sold their house. After living in an apartment for a year that never felt like home, she decided it was time to look for a place of her own.

Holly Harper

Harper had owned several homes throughout her marriage and was well aware of the expenses and demands of owning a home. Although she had contacted a realtor and started the search for her own home, she knew it would be a challenge to find one that worked with her budget as a self-employed single mom, especially in the Washington, D.C., area where she lived.

Then, in April 2020, she caught up with her friend Herrin Hopper during the lockdown. During their conversation, the women realized they were both newly single and shopping for homes.

In D.C., its common to have a duplex or condo, so we thought: What if we bought neighboring units? Harper explained.

They agreed to find a multifamily property with (at least) two units of similar size in a kid-friendly neighborhood close to public transportation. Another must was that neither family would sleep in a basement.

Holly Harper

They found a four-unit building and closed on it in late June 2020. Soon after moving in, they sought renters for the remaining units. Single mom of two Leandra Nichola replied and came in on a rent-to-own plan.

In December 2020, Jen Jacobs rented the top-floor studio unit. The single, childless friend of Hopper and Harper was looking for a change from the loneliness she experienced at the height of the pandemic.

The women named the home Siren House as a symbol of female empowerment.

Harper says that her co-housing partners are also unconventional.

We are free spirits, free thinkers, and open to building relationships with one another and others in general with transparency and compassion, she shared. Things are always going faster than we can keep up with, but it is much more like sisterhood than a Real World D.C. situation.

Holly Harper

Self-awareness, self-care and building firm boundaries are top priorities for the women.

We support one another in a number of ways, from one-on-one conversations, meetings, festive occasions and catching each other when we stumble, Harper said.

As with any family or community, issues arise. The group is mindful of handling practicalities, such as home repairs, as a team. They tackle emotional matters that come up head-on, making it a point to meet and talk things out.

The best part about it is we cant run away and hide from our own demons, our own triggers, our own bad behavior, said Harper. We hold each other with trust and empathy, but also hold each other accountable to being mature and healthy humans.

Holly Harper

And it doesnt stop with their cozy living quarters. They also help one another achieve their pursuits and goals. Together, the women opened the Takoma Park, Md. cafe Main Street Pearl in March 2021. Nichola, whose longstanding dream has been to open an eatery, manages the cafe.

The women said they all live as an extended family that genuinely cares for one another. The kids live like cousins, reaping the rewards of being surrounded and influenced by multiple unique, devoted adults.

Harper hopes that Siren House will encourage others to consider unconventional living arrangements no matter what the housing market looks like, citing the continuing decline of the traditional family, longer lifespans and environmental concerns as catalysts for change. In addition, she believes that smart co-housing communities can enable smaller living, less commuting and the advantages of creating your own family support network.

For all of us, the greatest benefit is having your biggest cheerleaders pushing you forward through imposter syndrome, hesitations, self-confidence dips, aging, dating, mom-shame, child-rearing, career growth to truly live a joyous life, Harper shared. We know its possible and we want to help one another so when we need help, we have someone to help us in turn.

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These Single Moms Bought A Group House Together And Created A Community - Simplemost