"La primera función de la cárcel no es la reinserción, es padecer la pena" / "Una minoría nacionalista no tiene por qué influir en el resto de España" / "El país Vasco es una sociedad enferma. Se han tragado el adoctrinamiento de la raza superior del cretino de Sabino Arana"
In a recent interview with Yahoo! Movies, writer Mark Millar was asked for his thoughts about the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) films—specifically, interviewer Hanna Flint asked, “Apart from Wonder Woman, what is Warner Bros. doing wrong?”
Millar’s answer focused on the origins of the characters, and what their stories center on. (Note: I updated the punctuation of Millar’s answers slightly for readability.)
“I think it’s really simple: the characters aren’t cinematic, and I say this as a massive DC fan who much prefers their characters to Marvel’s. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are some of my favourites, but I think these characters, with the exception of Batman, they aren’t based around their secret identity; they are based around their super power. Whereas the Marvel characters tend to be based around the personality of Matt Murdock or Peter Parker or the individual X-Men, it’s all about the character.”
“DC, outside of Batman, is not about the character,” he continued. “With Batman, you can understand him and you can worry about him but someone like Green Lantern, he has this ring that allows him to create 3D physical manifestations and green plasma with the thoughts in his head but he’s allergic to the colour yellow! How do you make a movie with that? In 1952 that made perfect sense, but now the audience have no idea what that’s all about.”
“People will slam me for this but I think the evidence is there,” he said. “We’ve seen great directors, great writers and great actors, tonnes of money thrown at them, but these films aren’t working. I think they are all too far away from when they were created. Something feels a little old about them: kids look at these characters and they don’t feel that cool. Even Superman, I love Superman, but he belongs to an America that doesn’t exist anymore. He represents 20th Century America and I think he peaked then.”
Now, I think there are some valid points here. One of the geniuses of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby was to give heroes like Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four more struggles that came from their own character flaws and human needs, rather than simply from an adversary. That was a genuine innovation that helped to set them apart from DC. However, I do think shows like the animated Justice League have shown just how much character the different DC heroes can have when they play off each other, and I absolutely believe an ensemble piece like that could make for a great film. Plus, many of the DC characters have evolved and developed really distinct personalities, and DC Comics has written plenty of character-driven arcs over the year – and plenty of successful DC films have also been made in the past. (The Dark Knight, Superman, etc.)
That said, while I definitely think the question of the DCEU is more complicated that Millar suggested, I do agree with him that DC faces some fundamentally different challenges in bringing some of its characters to the screen. Superman and Wonder Woman have larger iconic and symbolic meaning outside of themselves, in ways that Iron Man or Thor do not, and that does create different questions and concerns when adapting them for the big screen.
What do you think of Millar’s analysis, though? Do you think it was way too general, or was there some small kernel of truth there?
(via io9; image: Warner Bros.)
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Hace un par de años pudimos disfrutar de uno de los documentales de crímenes más apasionantes de los últimos años. Siguiendo el espíritu de true crimes como 'Serial' o 'The Jinx', Netflix demostró que también ella sabía jugar con este género con 'Making a murderer', donde durante diez episodios explorábamos el caso de Steven Avery, condenado en 2007 por el asesinato de Teresa Halbacht.
La serie fue un éxito y se anunció una segunda temporada. Pues parece que no contentos con eso, Netflix ha encargado 'Convicting a murderer', una suerte de spin-off que seguirá la otra versión de los hechos: la fiscalía y las fuerzas policiales y cómo llegaron al convencimiento de que Avery y su sobrino Brendan Dassey eran culpables de dicho asesinato.
Dirigida por Shawn Rech, los ocho episodios de los que constará 'Convicting a murderer' se antojan una visión muy necesaria sobre el caso de Steven Avery. La primera temporada de 'Making a murderer' pecaba de ser demasiado parcial hacia el acusado, el típico "indeseable redneck" del que todo el mundo desconfía.
Parcialidad debida a la poca participación de la policía en el documental y fue de hecho su mayor crítica. Para el director, la justificación es clara:
Cuando se produjo 'Making a murderer', bastante de la versión de la historie de las fuerzas de la ley no pudo o no quiso participar en la serie, lo que resultó en un análisis partidista. Esta docuserie examinár el caso y las alegaciones de negligencia policial desde una perspectiva más amplia. Además compartirá con los espectadores los efectos traumáticos de ser encontrado culpable y vilipendiado en el tribunal de la opinión pública.
Me parece una magnífica idea, precisamente porque sí que al terminar la serie te quedabas con la sensación de que Steven Avery había salido demasiado bien retratado con esa narrativa de "pobre oveja negra al que nadie quiere".
Roman Polanski se basará en hechos reales para su próximo thriller, 'True Crime'
Los mejores videojuegos que puedes encontrar para tu smartphone Android por 0,99€ (o menos)
Netflix prepara una serie documental sobre el brutal crimen de las niñas de Alcàsser
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Netflix encarga 'Convicting a murderer', continuación que explorará el otro punto de vista de 'Making a murderer'
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PERFIL | O ex-rexedor do Grove foi condenado a catro anos por narcotráfico na Audiencia Nacional pero o Supremo absolveuno por un defecto de forma. A demanda polo libro reclama medio millón de euros por dous parágrafos sobre o político, condenado noutro proceso por branqueo
REPORTAXE | O Colectivo A Rula, que traballa na protección do patrimonio, vén de publicar a localización de 167 taboleiros gravados nas lousas de adros e prazas da cidade nos séculos XVII e XVIII, empregados pola poboación -supostamente- para diversos xogos, coma o tradicional pai-fillo-nai. Falamos con Luis Leclere. Galería de imaxes e mapa no interior
O Apóstolo como artefacto da reaçom. Dilúvia sobre molhado.
Nom é complicado verificar como a religiom católica continua a ser um eficaz ariete da reaçom local contra todo o que levante a cabeça. E si, sabemos que nom é nada particular que a cúria tenha muito claro o seu bando; é umha simbiose milenar. O caso é que na velha Compostela ésta sanguenta colaboraçom cobrou umha específica intensidade que durante toda a história aplacou qualquer aspiraçom de progreso.
Neste eterno retorno ha sobresaltos que podem servir para sorprender-nos momentaneamente ou para percatar-nos de que o cerco à liberdade de expressom e às mais modestas liberdades democráticas é cada vez mais estreito e devem de umha sucessom de acontecimentos enlazados. Nom som manifestaçons pontuais da luita eleitoral municipal onde a parte azul dos esquemáticos resultados tenta agredir à parte vermelha empregando o rebanho crente. Nom é isso, ojalá fosse isso, mas o que esta sofrendo o amigo Carlos forma parte e é resultado de um caminho regresivo que ha tempo vai devagarinho reducindo o redil por onde o contrapoder transita. A Gentalha leva 15 anos bregando nesta cidade e esse percurso permite-nos observar de longe o constante recorte da auto-denominada democracia.
Já no 2006 o governo municipal aplicou umha verdadeira campanha silenciadora da nossa festa do 17: arrancarom faixas e cartazes, prohibirom praças, cortarom a luz e multarom activistas por colar cartazes amparados nessas eufemísticas leis de “madiambiente” urbano. Tais ferramentas represivas ainda vigentes de luva branca e apariência ecológica servem, por ejemplo, para multar ao irmao centro social corunhes Gomes Gaioso com 400€ neste mesmo ano.
Em 2011 a Gentalha do Pichel foi sancionada pola cámara municipal com umha multa de 1500€ por colocar um cartaz na cacharela de sam Joám que dizia “Na Galiza só em galego” em base a umha normativa aínda vigente que obriga a comunicar o contido das mensagens que coloques nas cacharelas.
Em 2012, companheiras da comissom de língua forom sancionadas pola Guardia Civil com 3.000€ (sí, tresmil euros) por mudar um N por um M num sinal indicador.
E assim fomos chegando a um entruido de 2018 onde nem o carnaval pode fazer escárnio do poder. Isto nom sai da nada, figerom falta muitos desalojos de lugares ocupados, muita violência contra as companheiras do Escárnio, muitos julgamentos contra quem tencionava reactivar a Sala Yago, muitas normativas represivas, muitas multas administrativas em situaçom de indefensom, muitas identificaçons a companheiras que portavam um rolo de fita e uns cartazes de papel. As faculdades cada vez mais inócuas, as praças cada vez mais repletas de terraças, as ruas cada vez mais inóspitas e o pior de todo: umha parte de nós, umha parte do sentir colectivo dos movimentos populares foi interiorizando que isto é assim e que vai ir a pior. Vamos, pedra a pedra, aprendendo e até justificando ésta atroz travesia até as redes sociais; verdadeiros vertedoiros da nossa rebeldia. E nem isso, por que é ahi, nesse mundo virtual que eles mesmo criarom, onde a liberdade de expressom é mais controlável.
É por todo isto que na Gentalha nom podemos calar; porque sabemos o que se sinte, porque Carlos foi um amigo do nosso colectivo desde o princípio, desde aquela Burla Negra (em que Carlos Santiago participou) que ocupou nos princípios do nosso centro social um local no primeiro andar. Nom podemos calar porque o próprio personagem do apóstolo veu blasfemar no nosso décimo aniversário e rimos com ele.
Na Gentalha todas somos Carlos porque todas fomos Carlos Santiago durante muito tempo.
Había sido expulsado de Cefalú, Sicilia, por orden del mismo Mussolini, que estaba decidido a acabar con las sociedades secretas y, con más razón, si sus actividades se desarrollaban en medio de rituales que incluían «sangre, orgías y depravación». Esto al menos fue lo que dijo a las autoridades italianas una seguidora de Aleister Crowley, el mago ocultista más célebre del siglo XX (apodado por él mismo como «La Bestia» y «Mega Therion») y a quien el periodista sensacionalista y ultraconservador británico John Bull definió como «El rey de la depravación», «Una bestia humana» o «Un hombre al que nos gustaría colgar». Allí, a los pies de la roca de Cefalú, había edificado la abadía de Thelema, un reflejo de un pasado mítico narrado por Rabelais cuyo lema era «Haz lo que quieras» como única ley. No se fue solo. El 1 de mayo de 1923, Crowley, en compañía de Leah Hirsig, su por entonces compañera y Mujer Escarlata, fueron acompañados por un agente de policía hasta el puerto, dejando atrás las tierras italianas.
Retrato de Aleister Crowley
Crowley en el norte de África
Su destino fue Túnez. Tras casi dos décadas de recibir el decisivo mensaje transmitido por Aiwass, un ser sobrenatural que era su especie de ángel de la guarda y que se le apareció en 1904 en El Cairo, dictándole el fundamental Libro de la Ley, el texto revelado que fundaría la religión de Thelema, no tenía fortuna económica ni literaria. Tampoco el mundo se había rendido a sus pies. Ahora, tras el sueño de Cefalú, estaba sin blanca en un hotel barato tunecino. Leah estaba hambrienta y flaca, casi siempre enferma y débil. Bebían y se drogaban. Crowley comenzaba a darse cuenta de lo terrible de su adicción e intentó dejar la heroína con ayuda del éter, pero fue en vano, salvo unos días de tregua en los que se mostró exultante y optimista.
Pero el dinero llegó gracias a uno de sus seguidores, que cada cierto tiempo aparecían en el momento adecuado para mantenerlo y retornar a una vida no exenta de lujos. Sin embargo, antes de abandonar la ciudad escribió a León Trotski. Detestaba el fascismo, pero también el bolchevismo. Su difuso anarquismo era resbaladizo e inestable. Rechazar la autoridad no era suficiente para abrazar un protoanarquismo que, llegado el momento, posiblemente se evaporaría con un soplo y que siempre era propicio para una especie de «fascismo místico» que inauguraría una nueva era, la del Eón de Horus revelado en El Libro de la Ley. El tiempo pasaba y el cristianismo parecía no estar en retroceso. Los soviets habían triunfado, pero el mundo se debatía en intrigas y sospechas de espionaje. Mega Therion tomaría los mandos, dirigiría el mundo con mano de hierro. En la carta que envió a Trotski le pedía encarecidamente ponerlo al cargo de una empresa de esa magnitud. Según Gerald Yorke, uno de sus biógrafos, quiso que este se sumase a Thelema. Hay varias menciones a Trotski por parte de Crowley en su obra Magick without tears. Valora la potencia del acto revolucionario, el gesto que es capaz de cambiar el mundo con un movimiento de mano, pero desconfía. Le parecen timoratos. Crowley y Trotski tenían un amigo en común, el irlandés Frank Harris, quien precisamente ayudó económicamente tanto a La Bestia como a Trotski durante su breve estancia en Nueva York en 1917. Harris era un periodista que dirigía el Pearson’s Magazine, por entonces uno de los periódicos más populares de Nueva York. Además, era un empresario aventurero y bien posicionado que había sido amigo de Oscar Wilde o George Bernard Shaw. Uno de sus negocios fueron unas célebres postales pornográficas llamadas Dirty Banshees, tras pasar por varios trabajos de distinto tipo, desde cowboy hasta obrero de la construcción. Publicó un libro que relata sus encuentros sexuales y varios relatos de ficción.
Frank Harris
La fijación de Crowley por Trotski se remontaba como mínimo a 1919, cuando realizó una exposición de sus pinturas en el Greenwich Village de Nueva York y que recogió The Jackson Citizen Patriot. Una de las obras expuestas se titulaba Young bolshevik with wart looking at Trotsky. En el ambiente bohemio del famoso barrio, se presentaba a sí mismo como un «impresionista del subconsciente».
Crowley en la portada de la revista francesa Détective (1929)
Aleister Crowley, The Sun (1920)
Retratos de Crowley en la noticia de The Jackson Citizen Patriot
Derrocar el imperante cristianismo era un trabajo arduo y, posiblemente, el antiguo líder soviético tenía otras cosas en qué pensar. Intentaba mantener a flote una revolución que sufría toda clase de convulsiones e intrigas. No sabemos si llegó a recibir la misiva. No contestó. Crowley, por su parte, marchó a París, pero meses más tarde le confesó a Leah, que seguía muy débil y en la miseria, que los «Jefes Secretos» le habían ordenado un retiro mágico en el norte de África, adonde marchó para edificar la Nueva Jerusalén.
Cuando Antonio Maestre escribió este artículo titulado "Orgullo de clase" lo leí tres veces seguidas y se lo pasé por WhatsApp a todo el mundo. Me flipó su simplicidad, la manera en la que consiguió resumir en tan pocas palabras lo que para mí y seguramente para muchos chavales de la "periferia de la periferia" fue una revelación vital: darnos cuenta de que pertenecíamos a una clase, la obrera.
En algún punto de nuestra vida los hijos de la clase obrera empezamos a entenderla y a partir de ahí a dejar de odiarla. Dejamos de exigir unas deportivas nuevas y empezamos a comprender que el dinero con el que nuestros padres pagan las excursiones del instituto vale más que el dinero con el que las pagan los padres de nuestros compañeros por el simple hecho de que ha costado más horas conseguirlo. Dejamos de lamentarnos por lo que no tenemos y empezamos a valorar lo que, con mucho esfuerzo, pueden darnos.
LEE:
El caso es que mi mejor amigo me respondió: "Es bonito pero, ¿qué quiere decir?" No supe contestarle qué quería decir, qué significaba, pero aquello fue como volver a tener esa revelación de clase.
Mi colega no sabía lo que quería decir esa reflexión porque no tuvo que ponerse a trabajar mientras estudiaba para pagarse el abono del transporte ni renunció a irse de Erasmus por mantener el curro con el que se pagaba el abono de transportes.
Y el caso, también, es que fui a ver Lady Bird con ese mismo amigo al que le había tenido que explicar lo que era la clase y que yo no pertenecía a la misma que él.
Al salir del cine hablamos de todo lo que hablan todas las críticas a Lady Bird. De la sutilidad con la que Gerwik ha plasmado la adolescencia y de cómo ha invertido los roles de género de los personajes. De cómo ha reflejado la masculinidad y la feminidad desde un punto de vista distinto y de que vaya primera peli más guapa se ha marcado.
Lady Bird somos todas las adolescentes que llevábamos las J'Hayber cuando todavía no molaban, deseando en silencio calzar unas Nike
También comentamos la escena en la que el calambre de los dedos de sus pies es suficiente para contarnos que Lady Bird se está masturbando y de cómo todos los adolescentes de provincias somos un poco ella porque odiamos nuestros pueblos de provincias pero empezamos a quererlos en cuanto nos alejamos de ellos.
Pero no hablamos de que Lady Bird se avergüenza de su casa y no quiere decirle dónde vive a su amiga. Ni de que su padre está en paro y hace la misma entrevista de trabajo que su hermano. El puesto lo consigue el hermano, claro, porque es más joven y seguramente más barato.
Tampoco hablamos de que curra en un bar mientras estudia porque sus padres no tienen la pasta suficiente como para pagarle la universidad ni de que tiene que comprarse el vestido para su graduación en una tienda de segunda mano y a pesar de eso (o precisamente por eso) se ve guapísima.
Y no hablamos de ello porque yo reparé en esos detalles pero él no. Porque yo fui consciente de que Lady Bird había tenido esa revelación que tenemos todos los chavales de la periferia de la periferia en algún momento, pero él no. Y no es su culpa, como no era culpa de mis padres no poder pagarme un año en el extranjero como hicieron los padres de algunos de mis colegas.
Identificarse con Christine, con Lady Bird es fácil: todos hemos sido adolescentes. Todos hemos odiado a nuestras madres y su extensión, el lugar en el que pone que hemos nacido en el DNI. Todos hemos hablado con nuestros amigos sobre si era mejor hacerse pajas en la ducha o fuera de ella y todos hemos sentido la impotencia de la pérdida del primer amor.
Pero quizá solo unos pocos, solo los que llevábamos las J'Hayber cuando todavía no molaban — deseando en silencio calzar unas Nike— sabremos ver que, aunque no es el tema central de la cinta y aunque ninguna crítica lo diga, Lady Bird es una de los nuestros. Y un día se dejó de avergonzar de su origen, de su clase, para comenzar a amarla.
Spain from Vladivostok to Orlando.
Reddit user: mgoulart
Related posts:
– The U.S. and Canada at the same latitudes as Europe
– European and North American cities overlaid at equivalent latitude
– Overlay of European Cities onto North America
– South American cities transposed with Australian and New Zealand cities
– Find cities with a similar climate
The post Map of Spain with other world cities at same latitude appeared first on Vivid Maps.
There’s no disagreement about what it’s like to wake up after a night that involved tequila shots at last call and maybe a few double dry-hopped IPAs too many. The pounding headache, dry mouth, and cartwheeling stomach are universal signs that you overdid it—and that you’re spending the morning squinting at your phone with one eye open and texting “never drinking again” to your group chat.
Booze hangovers are so well documented in clinical studies that there are actual best practices for how researchers should study them. But when it comes to the consequences of overdoing it on weed, there’s far less agreement. While some people swear that they are worse for the wear the morning after they get high, many other people balk at the notion that a so-called “weed hangover” exists. It doesn’t help that some of the most widely cited studies on marijuana’s morning-after effects were conducted nearly three decades ago.
In one—very small—study from 1990, for instance, 16 people were recruited to either smoke a joint, or if they were less fortunate, puff on a placebo containing no THC at all. Then they went to bed. (Sounds like our kind of study.) The following morning, the researchers gave the subjects a bunch of tests to see if their mental or physical abilities were in any way dulled.
For the most part, the subjects who’d smoked weed the night before seemed to be just fine: “No evidence of residual subjective intoxication was found, and most of the behavioral tasks and mood scales were unaffected the morning after,” the authors concluded, adding that “marijuana smoking was not associated with a ‘hangover’ syndrome similar to those reported after use of alcohol or long-acting sedative-hypnotics.”
What those researchers could not have anticipated, however, is the nuclear-grade ganja that your average recreational drug user in 2018 now packs. In the 1990 study, for instance, the strength of the joint participants smoked was around 2.3 percent THC—on par with the average at the time. By 2003, however, that average strength had more than doubled to 6.4 percent. Today, some strains being sold in Colorado are well above 20—and in some cases, even 30—percent THC.
More from VICE:
We know what the implications here would be if we were talking about alcohol, rather than weed: A five-percent (ABV) beer won’t give the average person much of a buzz. Drink the entire six-pack at once, however, and that same person will likely wake up with a crushing headache—and possibly a vague memory of singing “Danny Boy” in the back of a Lyft.
Unlike with alcohol, however, increasing the potency of THC doesn’t necessarily appear to hinder your body’s ability to recover from it. “In our medicinal cannabis studies, it has not been a common complaint to experience side effects from the previous day or evening of dosing,” says Barth Wilsey, an associate physician who works with the University of California’s Center for Medicinal Cannabis research.
But while there’s not much evidence for the existence of a weed hangover, withdrawal symptoms—which are sometimes conflated with hangovers, but aren’t quite the same thing—can still affect longtime users who quit cold turkey. “Over time, they accumulate THC and its metabolites in their body,” Wilsey says. “Stopping the cannabis acutely might lead to symptoms of withdrawal.” Wilsey believes that’s what some people might actually be describing when they complain of a weed “hangover.”
Common cannabis withdrawal symptoms share some things in common with what you might experience after a rough night out—anxiety, restlessness, irritability, and sleep deprivation, for starters. The symptoms usually begin the day after someone stops using after a prolonged period of time. The symptoms peak between two and six days, and can persist for up to two weeks, Wilsey says. To prevent withdrawal, slowly tapering off your cannabis use is the way to go. Gabapentin, a prescription medication, can help ease symptoms if tapering isn't an option.
But if you’re not a daily user, and you’ve smoked an average dose—roughly a one gram joint—the majority of cannabis’s effects should be long gone within eight hours of use, regardless of its potency, says Mitch Earleywine, a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Albany and author of Understanding Marijuana. Earleywine also points out that most anecdotal reports of “weed hangovers” often fail to account for the simultaneous use of alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, and antihistamines, or the fact that a big night often means more running around and less sleep.
Even if weed is to blame for your sluggishness, Earleywine suggests a couple of easy time-tested remedies. “Plenty of fluids and an extra dash of caffeine,” he says, “will likely undo what little effect there is.”
Read This Next: Why Do Edibles Give You a Different High Than Smoking?
Following complaints from Disney, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner, a court in Spain recently ordered local ISPs to block HDFull.tv and Repelis.tv, a pair of popular pirate sites.
Citing changes in local law which helped facilitate the action, the MPA welcomed the blockades as necessary to prevent further damage to the creative industries. Now, just a week later, it seems that Spain really has the bit between its teeth.
An announcement from the Guardia Civil (Civil Guard), the oldest law enforcement agency in the country, reveals that almost two dozen websites have just been blocked for infringing intellectual property rights.
“The Civil Guard, within the framework of the ‘Operation CASCADA’, has initiated a campaign to block websites that allow people to download content protected by copyright and disseminate them through links in P2P networks, that is, networks of computers that work without fixed servers,” the Civil Guard said in a statement.
“In this first phase, a total of 23 web domains have been blocked from which direct download links of all kinds of protected audiovisual material such as movies, series, music and video games were accessed, many of them of recent creation and without being released yet in our country.
“High-quality versions of films available on the cinema billboards of our country were offered, although they had not yet been sold in physical or digital format and dubbed with audio in several languages.”
A full list of websites and domains hasn’t yet been provided by the authorities but familiar names including divxtotal.com and gamestorrents.com are confirmed to be included in the first wave.
The Civil Guard, which is organized as a military force under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Defense, said that the administrators of the sites operate their platforms from abroad, generating advertising revenue from Spanish visitors who are said to make up 80% of the sites’ traffic.
In common with similar sites, the authorities accuse their owners of taking evasive action to avoid being shut down, including hiding the true location of their servers while moving them from country to country and masking domain registration data.
“Cases have been detected in which previously judicially blocked domains were reactivated in a matter of hours, with practically identical domain names or even changing only the extension thereof. In this way, and even if several successive blocks were made, they were able to ‘resurrect’ the web pages again in a very short space of time,” the Civil Guard reports.
“For all these reasons, components of the Department of Telematic Crimes of the Central Operative Unit of the Civil Guard, responsible for the investigation, were forced to implement a series of measures tending to cause a total blockade of them that would be effective and definitive, being currently inaccessible web pages or lacking download links.”
According to the authorities, the sites are now being continuously monitored, with replacement domains being blocked in less than three hours. That doesn’t appear to have been the case yesterday, however.
It’s claimed that the blocked sites were created by “a person of Spanish origin” who subsequently sold them to a company in Argentina. On Thursday, Argentina-based site Dixv.com.ar fired back against the blockade with a new site called Yadivx.com, which is reportedly serving all of the former’s content to users in Spain.
The sites’ owners continue to administer the rogue sites from Argentina, Spanish authorities believe. Only time will tell who will emerge victorious but at least for now, the sites are remaining defiant.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons
In a recent episode of Grey’s Anatomy, the surgeon Miranda Bailey realizes she’s having a heart attack. Rather than go to the doctors at her own hospital, she heads out for another emergency room—where she’s initially dismissed as merely anxious.
Grey’s writer Elisabeth Finch drew on her own experience with misdiagnosis for Bailey’s storyline. Both incidents point to a persistent, often overlooked problem in medicine: Women’s symptoms are often diminished and dismissed by doctors.
Maya Dusenbery wrote about the episode for Pacific Standard, noting the importance of a show like Grey’s tackling such a key topic. “As a devoted fan of the show for all 14 seasons,” she wrote, “I have been awaiting for this particular episode for years: the one that tackles the insidious gender bias within the medical system.”
In her new book, Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick, out next month, Dusenbery digs deeper into the issue, exploring the way gender bias in medicine often leaves women struggling for proper care.
More than 200 women wrote to Dusenbery with their stories—about not being believed, diagnosed, or properly treated by their doctors. It was powerful, she says, to see the patterns emerge. It can be easy for individuals to minimize their own experiences, or assume that they were the problem. “But seeing the stories in aggregate,” she says, “you can say this is not about you, this is reflective of problems in the larger system.”
What got you interested in this topic in the first place?
I’ve been a feminist writer for several years, and I have a background in reproductive health. But I hadn’t really gone down this route until a few years ago when I got rheumatoid arthritis. I started learning about autoimmune diseases, and I realized that they disproportionately affect women. They’re super common, and there really isn't a lot of awareness in the public and in the medical system about them. I also started hearing a lot of stories from other women I knew, both with autoimmune diseases and other things, talking about having a really hard time being diagnosed, feeling like they were being dismissed, and having their symptoms belittled.
In your research, what did you find were the biggest factors driving this problem in medicine?
In the book I talk about the two big problems being a knowledge gap and a trust gap. A knowledge gap refers to the idea that a lot of clinical research is conducted mostly on men. Also, conditions that disproportionately affect women—and exclusively affect women—have often been relegated to the bottom of the research agenda. We too often just don't know a lot about really common women's health conditions. Doctors, even the very best doctors, just aren't getting the knowledge they need to care as well for their female patients as they can male patients.
The second issue, the trust gap, refers to the problem women have with their symptoms being believed by healthcare providers. When women report pain, fatigue, dizziness, or any of the subjective symptoms that can't be confirmed by a test, you have to trust the person's self-report of what they’re feeling in their body. There’s been this long history in medicine of believing that women are especially prone to hysteria, that symptoms are psychogenic. There’s a very direct lineage, where hysteria, in the 19th-century idea of it, has been passed down generation by generation. Symptoms aren't taken seriously, and they’re dismissed as depression or anxiety.
What are the major reasons women aren’t taken seriously by doctors?
It’s definitely sexism in general, to the extent that it’s related to these stereotypes about men and women that arise in many realms. The fact that men are expected to be stoic, and women more emotional, means that men are taken more seriously in the medical system—in part because it’s assumed that they’re reluctant to admit that they’re in pain or suffering. The opposite holds for women.
To some extent, the problem is that the stereotype has been embedded in medical knowledge itself. It’s just a medical fact that women have more "medically unexplained" symptoms, which is the term for symptoms that aren't explained by physical disease. Medicine has, by default, assumed that they must be all in your head. The problem is that because there’s the longstanding idea that women are prone to hysterical symptoms, then the scientific research that’s needed to understand them never gets done. You're stuck in this self-fulfilling prophecy, where women's symptoms are assumed to be all in their head, so they continue to be medically unexplained.
The other really big thing I learned through the research was that women face long diagnostic delays for a lot of conditions. Doctors just don't get a lot of feedback on their errors. There’s no systematic way that doctors are informed that this woman they dismissed as stressed went to another doctor, and another, and another and finally got the correct diagnosis four years later. The first doctor doesn't get the memo.
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Speaking of that trust gap, do you think that’s a reason that so many women turn to alternative medicine?
This is a topic I’m interested in, because I do think that women are more inclined than men turn to alternative health. I think part of the reason is that women are more likely than men to have conditions that are poorly understood by mainstream medicine. It’s not surprising people turn to alternatives, because the mainstream isn't offering an explanation.
I've often been frustrated with the discourse around alternative health, that talks about it as fads. It implies that women are just going gluten-free because it's the most fashionable thing, without acknowledging that women know their bodies, and wouldn't be doing crazy stuff if there wasn't a reason. And clearly, there are things in the alternative health sphere that are ineffective snake oil, but mainstream medicine deserves blame for leaving a bunch of patients, a lot of them women, to turn to whatever they can to find help. I think it’s definitely reflective of the ways mainstream medicine is failing women that so often they turn to alternative medicine.
What is the role that female doctors and female nurses play?
A lot of the women I interviewed who had stories of being dismissed or misdiagnosed had experience with female physicians and didn't see a huge difference. I think that speaks to the fact that this problem is not about being overtly sexist—this is about an unconscious bias that everyone, including women, can have. It’s also about bias in what doctors are taught. I think female physicians are taught the same medical knowledge as male physicians.
That said, the fact that medicine has been historically, and continues to be, very male-dominated, is part of the problem. If women had been in positions of power in medicine decades ago, we would have done more research on conditions that affect women, we wouldn’t have these sexist legacies. And it's clear that women in medicine have brought about change. There’s evidence that women as researchers are more likely to do research on gender disparities. Certainly it’s important for a lot of reasons to get more gender equality within the profession. But it’s also important to see gender bias as a systemic problem that women are not immune to.
In January, Serena Williams told Vogue about her experience giving birth, and not being believed in the hospital when she told nurses that she had a blood clot. Gender obviously plays a role there, but race is a factor as well. How does race play into the way we approach the issue of gender bias in medicine?
It’s clearly a huge factor, and especially seems to be a huge factor when it comes to maternal mortality, as the Serena Williams story put on the radar in such a big way. The intersection of race and gender is pretty clear—a lot of the research shows that black women are treated poorly in comparison both to white women and to black men.
Part of the reason is the stereotype that patients of color are more likely to be drug seekers. In the book, I have one story of a black women with lupus, and her struggle to get diagnosed over many years. She was ending up in the ER with really severe pain, and often couldn't even get past the ER gatekeepers, because she was assumed to be drug-seeking just automatically. I think that’s a really big issue.
One of the differences, perhaps, between how white women and black women are perceived in that context is that the white woman is more likely to be seen as depressed, anxious, or a hypochondriac, while the black woman would be facing that sort of drug-seeking stereotype.
Knowing what we know, how can women advocate for themselves?
It’s a challenging question for me because I really didn't like having to put the onus on individual women. I asked all the experts I interviewed that question. Very consistently, I got the answer that women should really get second opinions, not accept it if they’re dismissed, and really trust their instincts.
That’s really good advice for an individual, but it’s important to be clear that the reason that advice is needed is that so often women are finding that their instincts are being questioned, and that it should be on doctors to listen more so that isn’t required.
A lot of problems are bigger than the individual—it’s about changing medical education, changing how clinical research is done. For those things, the long-term things, that requires the will of people within the biomedical community. I do think there’s definitely a lot of potential for patient advocacy to spur change.
Beyond just being well-informed and advocating for yourself, I think there's a lot of power in telling your own stories, in part because there’s not quite yet a recognition that this is such a widespread problem. There’s the potential for a ‘me too’ moment, when it comes to medicine, to expose the extent of the problem here.
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While dozens of millions of people use uTorrent as their default BitTorrent client, the software has seen few feature updates in recent years.
That doesn’t mean that the development team has been sitting still. Instead of drastically expanding the current software, they have started a new ambitious project: uTorrent Web.
This new piece of software, which launched rather quietly, allows users to download and stream torrents directly in their default web browsers, such as Chrome or Firefox.
The way it works is pretty straightforward. After installing the client, which is Windows-only at the moment, torrent and magnet links are automatically opened by uTorrent Web in a browser window.
People can use their regular torrent sites to find torrents or use the app’s search box, which redirects them to Google.
Let’s start…
TorrentFreak took the application for a spin and it works quite well. Videos may take a short while to load, depending on the download speed, but then they play just fine. As in most modern video players, subtitles are also supported, if they’re included.
The streaming functionality supports both audio and video, with the option to choose a specific file, if a torrent contains more than one.
Applications and other files can also be downloaded, but these are obviously not streamed.
uTorrent Web in action
The current Beta release comes with several basic preferences settings and users can change things such as the download location and upload speed. It’s likely that more options will follow as development matures, however.
While the quiet release comes as a surprise, BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen previously told us that the browser version was coming. In the long run, this version could even replace the “original” client, he seemed to suggest.
“We’re very, very sensitive. We know people have been using uTorrent for a very long time and love it. So we’re very, very sensitive to that and gonna be sure to make sure that people feel that it’s an upgrade that’s happening. Not that we’ve just destroyed the experience,” Bram said.
“We’re going to roll it out and get feedback and make sure that people are happy with it before we roll it out to everybody.”
For now, however, it appears that BitTorrent is offering both products side-by-side.
It’s been a turbulent week for BitTorrent Inc., thus far. The company had to deal with a serious vulnerability in its flagship software uTorrent. This same issue also affected uTorrent Web, but the most recent version is fully patched, we were told, as is the stable release.
We reached out to BitTorrent Inc. to find out more about this release, but we haven’t heard back for several days. Perhaps we’ll get an opportunity to find out more in the near future.
Until then, people are free to take uTorrent Web for a spin here.
Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons
The therawtarian.com is a blog for people who don’t eat animal products or vegetables cooked above about 118° F. It’s a lifestyle blog, because being a raw vegan isn’t just about what you eat—it’s about the way you live your life. There are recipes, of course; raw chocolate pudding made of avocados, raw cauliflower popcorn with butter flavor made of flaky nutritional yeast, a BLT starring bacon made with seaweed harvested from the Scottish Isle of Iona, but in addition, there are articles about beauty and exercise, a podcast, and a store where fellow Rawtarians can buy apps and “cook” books.
Images of the blog’s founder abound. She’s a glowy-skinned Atlantic Canadian who enjoys sharing her raw food "journey," sitting in sunny rooms with pastel walls, and clutching bright glasses of juice. In a previous life, she ate chips and pizza and suffered mood swings.
The blog appeals to a fantasy version of myself that I’m ashamed of. She owns a water-bottle filled with ionized quartz crystals, and thinks nothing of wearing yoga pants with sheer mesh panels. She lovingly prepares Rawtarian meals for herself because she deserves deep self-care, and she’s very, very thin. People tease her about her piousness. She flips a glossy lock and says, “I’ve just never really liked the taste of oil.”
I don’t want to be her friend, I want to be her. But it would take a lot of tedious work and a complete erasure of my ethics. Besides, work is antithetical to this ideal. These women are effortless; sprung from nature through the co-incidental assemblage of Bikram yoga, nut butter balls, and gallons and gallons of water.
The Rawtarian has a community forum, a pretty common feature on wellness blogs. There are more than 5,000 members loving up on raw food in almost 13,000 threads. They discuss the ethical problems with bee pollen, how to fix a broken Vitamix, and, of course, weight loss.
Weight loss is the secret overlord of wellness communities everywhere. The “Why Raw Vegan” (Or “Why Paleo,” or “Why Keto” or “Why 30 Bananas a Day”) segment of any wellness blog will list many reasons to be like them; you’ll have more energy, your skin will be clearer, and your depression will finally subside. But the community forums tell a more focused story: Eat like this, and you’ll lose weight.
“Vegan diet, Mostly Raw For About 6 Weeks- Howdy All! … and ON the journey! Looking to get back to my ideal weight, which is 20 lbs lower. Good luck and happiness to all on here. Looks like a right friendly place! ☺”
“How much weight did you lose during the first month? ☺ Just curious, and did you eat fatty foods (nuts, etc)?”
“I feel great and have a ton more energy. But no weight loss. Anyone else experience this?”
And every so often, a question like this:
“How Long Can I Live on Just Juices? I'd like to ask how many days can a person go only on green juices? Can I leave indefinitely on juices? ☺ Thank You”
One Rawtarian forum member wonders why the asker would want to subsist on a diet of only leaf water. Another worries she has an eating disorder. But there are just as many who give answers like these:
“if you also have hemp or flax oil, you can go around 92-100 days and still feel vibrant. if you’re not 100% and willing to partake in enemas or colon hydrotherapy, it's probably not recommended.”
“I am plant based for years but because of surgery complications I stopped eating almost entirely. If I eat, even if it's just fruit- I get fissures and abscesses in places you don't want to hear about. So the general gist I get from reading your opinions is you can’t live on juices alone for more than about a year. Did anyone try?”
It sounds like someone’s about to try.
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Telling a person with an eating disorder that they have an eating disorder is not a deterrent. They know what’s up. There’s a set of deeply irregular behaviors, all of which involve overriding evolved physical cues, like hunger, required maintain anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia, or binge eating disorder.
I was 14 when I was diagnosed with anorexia. The therapy back then, in the Girl, Interrupted 90s, consisted of adults telling me not to worry, I wasn’t fat. They assumed, still a widely held assumption today, that eating disorders are the result of extreme measures taken to eradicate fatness, the least desirable of all the body states. If I’d been fat, but still living on six Diet Cokes and half a hotdog bun a day, I wonder if there’d have been such a fuss. Looking like an anorexic caused more alarm than being one. Until I got bony and started fainting in inconvenient places, I was just a girl with discipline.
The message was clear: it’s important to be thin, but being openly anorexic is stressful for the people around you. So, I taught myself bulimia. It was easy to learn, and easy to hide.
I went online and surfed early versions of pro-ana/pro-mia forums. Ana is short for anorexia and mia is short for bulimia; code names that sound like straight-haired models with visible collar bones. People who are pro-ana/mia aren’t trying to recover. They embrace their eating disorder as a lifestyle, instead of the deadly psychiatric disease that it is.
The forums I used to visit aren’t around anymore, but their progeny are strong. Myproana.com is one of the biggest: the forum stats boast over 300,000 members. The images in the “thinspiration” gallery feature the same palm-tree adjacent blondes and gap-thighed peace-sign tossers that decorate mainstream wellness blogs and Instagram.
Clicking through the forums, members still talk each other through extreme restriction diets. The big change is that the same diets are embraced by raw vegans and the fitness-obsessed paleo crowd. Raw Before Four, 30 Bananas a Day, and the Ketogenic diet all have their own discussion threads. Members praise 30 BAaD for its ability to satiate gnawing hunger, while others complain it made them gain weight. Back when I was a member of sites like this, all we had were calories. I never could have imagined a world where the pro-ana crowd and the girls on the soccer team were both going hard on 7 pounds of bananas a day.
Food obsession has gone mainstream, and eating disorders have tagged along. If you don’t have the time to scour blogs and forums to find innovative ways to restrict, chances are you’re following someone on Instagram doing a #detox (10,538,182 posts), or a #whole30 (3,318,441 posts) or grinning into a smoothie bowl while pledging allegiance to a #plantbased (12,960,289 posts) lifestyle. And even though Instagram gatekeeps pro-ana hashtags like #thighgap, thigh gaps themselves are alive and well in gym mirror selfies under the ubiquitous insta-reign of #eatclean (48,402,466 posts) where they’re rewarded with screens of positive affirmations. Under a photo of a woman on day 11 of a 30 day juice cleanse posing in a sports bra: “Your a babe !!! ♀️.” Under a meme of Julie Andrews, arms wide open in the Swiss hills singing “look at all the ways I’m a fucking failure” because she’d cheated on her Whole 30: “Oh girl! It’s ok. That just means you get to go along with my whole 60 that continues next week.” Under a video of a woman explaining that all she’s had for 48 hours is water and she’s about to go home and exercise to expedite weight loss: “Proud of you Champ!!!!!”
There’s a misconception that controlling food is the eating disorder. It’s a symptom of the disease, but it’s not the whole thing. The eating disorder happens when a person’s identity becomes the sum of what they eat and/or how their body looks as a result. But the domination that food and bodies have over our digital identities is building a bridge to disorder. Scrolling through the Rawtarian’s Insta followers, reams of profiles with names like “Kacees_Vegan_Life” and “Raw_vegan_beauty5053” show just how much we’ve normalized the you are what you eat ethos. Not every vegan or paleo devotee is sick—but they’ve given people with the disease, overt and covert, a lot more to work with.
Pursuing good health, mental and physical, means wading through a sea of panic about food and our bodies. The idea of “healthy eating” is shorthand for food that doesn’t make us fat, as though this were the only measure of good health. For every #bodypositive, there’s 10 #eatcleans. No longer the domain of pro-ana, hard-to-find chatrooms, and cryptic forums, our collective disorder, building identities out of what we eat and how we look, is inescapable.
In my own quest for recovery, for normal, healthy eating, the hardest part has been learning that there’s no normal to recover to.
If you or someone you know is dealing with an eating disorder, contact the helpline of the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237, or visit their site. You can also live chat with a volunteer via Facebook Messenger, and text 'NED!' to 741741 for crisis support 24/7.
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In an 1873 paper, English physician Sir William Gull described three cases of women who appeared extremely emaciated but had no other abnormal symptoms. But despite their physical frailty, they all exhibited restlessness and excessive physical activity. Gull named the condition “anorexia nervosa” and blamed the patients' “morbid mental state.” He recommended a treatment “fitted for persons of unsound mind,” i.e. force-feeding them at regular intervals.
While our knowledge and treatment of eating disorders has come a long way, researchers still can’t say the exact causes of the conditions. Environmental factors certainly contribute, such as a the societal pressure to be thin in modern Western culture, which has been identified as a specific risk factor for eating disorders. Also, interventions that reduce thin-ideal internalization have been associated with reductions in eating disorder symptoms.
But a growing number of studies are finding that genetic factors may be a major factor at play. In other words, eating disorders can run in the family similar to diabetes and heart disease.
Initially, researchers discovered through studies of patients and their relatives that eating disorders tend to aggregate in certain families more than others. Several twin studies also estimated a significant heritability for anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder.
Today, with the advances in genome sequencing technology and cost, the focus has shifted to hunting for individual genes possibly linked to greater eating disorder risk. Last year, scientists pinpointed the first genome-wide significant marker for anorexia nervosa in an area that harbors genes associated with type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune disorders.
The growing body of research supports the idea that eating disorders are partly biological illnesses that might require new treatment options, rather purely caused by societal influences.
“The genetic component is estimated to account for 50 to 70 percent of the risk of developing an eating disorder, which is fairly substantial, making it one of the most heritable psychiatric disorders,” said Michael Lutter, a psychiatrist at the Eating Recovery Center in Dallas. “If you have a first-degree female relative with an eating disorder, you are about ten times more likely to have an eating disorder in your life.”
Even though heritability has been observed in lots of families, it’s a hard disorder to trace, or to know for sure if other members have had it.
“We often see 'sporadic' cases. However, given the stigma associated with eating disorders, we really cannot be confident that other family members have not had an eating disorder,” said Cynthia Bulik, Founding Director of the UNC Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders. “Especially among older generations, we hear things like ‘Aunt Louise ate like a bird,”’ or ‘My mother had body image issues all of her life’—but they may never have received a formal diagnosis of an eating disorder.”
A common tool in determining heritability is a twin study, which looks at certain traits in twins raised in the same family environment. A researcher compares the similarity of a trait between sets of identical twins, who share all their DNA, to the similarity between sets of fraternal twins, who only share about half their DNA. Any additional likeness found in the identical twins is chalked up to genes instead of upbringing.
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These studies estimate the genetic component of anorexia nervosa to be around 48 to 74 percent, while that of bulimia ranges from 55 to 62 percent. Less research has been done on the heritability of binge-eating disorder, but current estimates hover at 39 to 45 percent.
More recently, researchers have been sequencing the genomes of those with eating disorders to find the exact genetic variants that contribute. These genome-wide association studies search for small variations, that occur more frequently in people with a certain disease.
In 2014, a study by the Eating Disorders Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC-ED) identified the first genetic marker for anorexia nervosa. By comparing the DNA of 3,495 anorexia nervosa cases and 10,982 controls, the researchers found a variation associated with the disease on chromosome 12 in an area previously associated with type 1 diabetes and autoimmune disorders.
They also looked for genetic correlations, which asks whether two disorders or traits are caused by the same genes. Both neuroticism and schizophrenia had a high genetic correlation—as in, shared many of the same types of gene variants—with anorexia. This connection isn’t surprising and supports the idea that eating disorders are a kind of psychiatric disease with an overlapping genetic risk.
But the study also found genetic ties to metabolic features—in particular, negative correlations between anorexia and extremely high body mass index (BMI), obesity, and normal BMI. A negative genetic correlation indicates that the same genetic variants that increase one trait’s risk decrease the other’s, and vice versa. The PGC-ED is currently working on genome-wide association studies of bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder.
“This finding brings us into new territory and suggests that we might need to start thinking about anorexia nervosa as both a psychiatric and a metabolic illness,” said PGC-ED researcher Bulik.
But as with depression and schizophrenia, eating disorders are complex genetic illnesses—we’ll never find a single “bulimia gene” that we can inherit from our parents. Instead, there are probably tens of thousands of variants that combine to create one's overall genetic risk of disease.
“On one end of the spectrum, there are rare variants that give a very high risk of developing an eating disorder, like maybe 60 to 70 percent,” said Lutter. “On the other end of the spectrum are fairly common variants that each give a very small increase in the risk of developing an eating disorder, like 0.1 percent.”
Lutter focuses on those rare mutations that account for a relatively small proportion of eating disorder cases but confer high risk. Studying these genes, similar to BRCA1 and BRCA2 in breast cancer, can help give insight into the biology of these illnesses. For instance, Lutter and his colleagues discovered in 2013 that people with mutations in two genes—ESRRA and HDAC4—have a 90 percent and 85 percent chance of developing an eating disorder, respectively.
His lab also found a set of 245 genes more likely to be mutated in patients with binge-eating behaviors. These mutations affect neuropeptides—molecules used by neurons for communication—that control appetite and food intake, making people more likely to binge. Another set of 186 genes involved in inflammation tend to appear more often in patients with anorexia nervosa restricting-type behaviors.
Based on these findings, Lutter hopes to cluster patients into these two groups and target more effective treatments. In the study, he tested the therapeutic effects of targeting the neuropeptide pathway with a drug in a binge-eating mouse model. The animals significantly reduced their food intake during binge episodes after taking a low dose of the drug, which falls into the same class of medications already FDA approved for diabetes and weight management.
Aside from developing new targeted medications, studying the genomes of those with eating disorders can help researchers answer some lingering questions about the disease. For instance, why some individuals are more vulnerable to environmental risk factors like dieting, while others can diet without a problem.
“We know that some adolescents, for example, can go on a diet with no long term adverse effects at all. They go off the diet and there are no changes to their eating habits, metabolism, or psychology,” said Bulik. “For others, however, that first diet can be a very high risk event that accelerates a descent into anorexia nervosa. Genetic research may hold the answer to the individual differences that make people differentially vulnerable to such environmental insults, and thereby help with illness prevention.”
As genome sequencing technology continues to improve, more information will continue to be uncovered about the true origins of eating disorders—and hopefully, better treatment options will follow. Instead of being dismissed as a “morbid mental state” or a teenage girl problem, rigorous genetic research has helped eating disorders become increasingly recognized as a biological illness that affect people of all backgrounds.
If you or someone you know is dealing with an eating disorder, contact the helpline of the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237, or visit their site. You can also live chat with a volunteer via Facebook Messenger, and text 'NED!' to 741741 for crisis support 24/7.
Read this next: Pro-Eating Disorder Communities Thrive on Instagram
La tendencia al alza de llegada de inmigrantes a España se frenó en 2011 debido a la crisis económica, pero la población volvió a crecer en 2017 después seis años de descenso, en parte, porque volvemos a ser "atractivos" —aunque estamos a años luz de la perfección— para personas extranjeras.
LEE:
Hoy en día España la pueblan alrededor de 46,5 millones de personas, y 4,4 millones son extranjeros. Pero, ¿qué es lo que menos les gusta de España? Es muy typical spanish creernos que lo hacemos todo bien, así que hemos salido a la calle para preguntar a extranjeros qué cosas mejorarían para progresar como sociedad y, sobre todo, como personas.
"No abren el super en domingo", Grecia, 28, México
"Cuota mensual exageradamente alta para autónomos", Ramona, 26, Francia
"Que todavía hay una familia real", Adriano, 36, Portugal
"Turistas británicos bebiendo cerveza y gritando", Jamie, 27, Inglaterra
"Las colas para hacer cualquier trámite", Madalena, 24, Portugal
"Que no puedes encontrar baños públicos", Lawrence, 26, Suecia
"En los bares se chilla mucho", Sigkard, 29, Suecia
"Que a veces me miran raro", Rashid, 35, Marruecos
"Cuesta mucho encontrar un trabajo decente", Tahir, 29, Algeria
"No paro de engordar comiendo tapas", Manuela, 22, Ecuador
"Los trenes nunca llegan en hora", Ester, 21, Ecuador
"Los jóvenes visten muy muy mal", Thierry, 21, Francia
LEE:
"Los taxis te dan muchas vueltas", Sanne, 28, Holanda
"Falta de eficacia con la burocracia", Laura, 34, Canadá
"El sistema de una monarquía parlamentaria", Tomás, 36, Argentina
"La poca conciencia con el reciclaje", Avery, 20, EE. UU.
"Hace frío donde no debería hacerlo", Nicco, 28, Italia
"Mierda de perros en las calles", Mike, 23, Canadá
"Es muy triste no poder votar", Oscar, 18, Polonia
"La gente española baila muy mal", Lara, 27 años, Holanda
"Demasiado relajados, lentos cuando no deberían", Luis, 30, México
"Estar de pie en los bares", Jessica, 30, Colombia
"Cuando llueve es todo un caos", Ari, 38, Italia
"Me llaman 'morena' en la calle", Emely, 22, República Dominicana
"Mariano Rajoy es un completo idiota", Eoghan, 27, Escocia
"Gente que escupe en la calle", César, 27, Colombia
"No es España, es la gente", Lloyd, 24, Escocia
"Que tiren muchas cosas al suelo", Aiko, 26, Japón
Durante muchos años, quizá demasiados, la expresión 'edad de oro del pop españo' sirvió para designar a los años ochenta. Seguramente hay muchos motivos, entre ellos que la mayoría de periodistas musicales influyentes tenían entre veinticinco y treinta y cinco años cuando pasó todo aquello. También existen factores objetivos, como el fin de la censura franquista, el aumento de programas musicales en televisión y la consolidación de las empresas discográficas en nuestro país. En el año 2014, varios sociólogos y musicólogos de la UNED y de la Complutense elaboraron una metalista de los mejores álbumes del pop-rock español, haciendo media de las selecciones de las cabeceras más emblemáticas (Rolling Stone, Efe Eme, Rockdelux…). Triunfó 'La canción de Juan Perro' (1987), de los prestigiosos Radio Futura, por encima incluso de clásicos como Serrat, Sabina y Camarón de la Isla. En el resto del listado, ganaron de largo los álbumes de los ochenta, en especial de La Movida. Junto con los Auserón, se colaban en el top diez Gabinete Caligari, Loquillo, Alaska & Dinarama y Nacha Pop. ¿Estamos ante una evidencia o somos víctimas del sesgo de edad de los expertos?
Diez años de oroEl resultado de aquel estudio lo disputa Adrián Vogel, ensayista pop que puede presumir de una exitosa carrera como ejecutivo discográfico, que incluye la creación de su propio sello o un puesto en CBS Nueva York, donde trabajó con Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen y Michael Jackson, entre otros. Tirando de datos, señala que la edad dorada del pop español fue el periodo 1965-1975. No se refiere solo a sus gustos, sino al éxito internacional de nuestros artistas. “Hablamos de impacto fuera de los mercados naturales de habla hispana. Me refiero a conseguir entrar en listas de Gran Bretaña, Estados Unidos, Holanda, Alemania, Francia, Italia…”.
Aquella cosecha de artistas de lujo incluía a Los Bravos ('Black Is Black', 'Bring a Little Lovin'), Luis Eduardo Aute ('Aleluya Nº1'), Massiel ('La, La, La…'), Pop Tops ('Oh Lord, Why Lord', 'Mammy Blue'), Miguel Ríos ('Himno a la Alegría'), Aguaviva ('Poetas andaluces'), Peret ('Borriquito'), Barrabás ('Wild Safari'), Mocedades ('Eres tú') y Jeanette ('Por qué te vas'). Además Herbie Mann triunfó en Estados Unidos en 1976 con una versión de 'Hi Jack' de Barrabás. Parecen muchos, pero hubo todavía más motivos para felicitarse: “No incluyo a Waldo de los Ríos y su adaptación de la 40 de Mozart, a pesar de llegar al top cinco en singles y álbumes en Gran Bretaña, ya que considero que no es pop-rock. No solo triunfó en las islas, sino en más países europeos. Por muy arreglo "moderno" que tuviese, Mozart no deja de ser el clásico de los clásicos. Sí incluyo el “Himno de la alegría" de Miguel Ríos porque a esta le pusieron letra”, precisa.
Sobredosis de talentoLos datos que aporta Vogel se han convertido en materia de una clase sobre industria musical en el Máster en Industria Musical y Estudios Sonoros de la Universidad Carlos III. “¿Qué explico a los alumnos? Que esta época, a la que habría que añadir unos años por delante -al menos desde el 62 o el 63- es tan productiva artísticamente como en el plano comercial. A los artistas de éxito internacional hay que añadir gigantes como Serrat, Dúo Dinámico, Brincos, Juan & Junior, Lone Star, Los Sirex, Pekenikes, Rocío Dúrcal y Los Módulos. También algunos que no me gustan, pero cuyo impacto es indudable como Julio Iglesias, Raphael y Camilo Sesto, sin olvidarnos de Karina, Bruno Lomas, Nuestro Pequeño Mundo, Cecilia… Se mire como se mire, el éxito de estos artistas de la segunda mitad del segundo franquismo es tan indudable como inigualable”, recuerda.
Explosión punkIgnacio Juliá, director histórico de la biblia rockera Ruta 66, tira por el registro personal. “Mi edad de oro del pop español arrancó el 4 de diciembre de 1977 durante el Festival punk del Poble Nou, donde algunos ansiosos jóvenes de la época nos pusimos estupendamente europeos viendo a Ramoncín, La Banda Trapera Del Río y otros grupos presuntamente punk-rock. Luego vendría la hoy tan discutida Movida y sus tentáculos periféricos en Barcelona o Vigo, una asimilación de lo que sucedía en el ámbito anglosajón, con epicentro en Londres, que vista desde el presente tiene el plus de que su asimilación de patrones foráneos primaba lo autóctono: Alaska y los Pegamoides, Loquillo y los Trogloditas, Nacha Pop, Siniestro Total, Radio Futura, Derribos Arias, El Último de la Fila, Gabinete Caligari… Muestran un carácter localista —cantaban en castellano— que se diluiría en los años noventa y su corta-y-pega del rock alternativo anglosajón”, recuerda. Algún día habrá que hacer un artículo sobre la peor década del pop español, donde la oleada de grupos indie que decidieron cantar en inglés tiene todas las papeletas para ganar ese triste honor.
Del flamenco a RaimonLa novelista y periodista Grace Morales, conocida por su trabajo en la revista Mondo Brutto, apuesta por los años previos a la explosión del pop madrileño. “Me quedo con el periodo 1976-1981, enlace entre la tradición rock y pop de los setenta, polimorfa, reivindicativa, llena de contradicciones , con el nacimiento de la Nueva Ola, desprejuiciada, muy joven y eminentemente femenina. Del rock urbano, flamenco fusión, pop melódico, folk hasta el punk 76-77, tecno, ska, heavy y rockabilly. Luego todo fue una movida”, bromea. Tiene razón en que los periodos sin un sonido claramente hegemónico pueden ser los más fértiles.
La periodista musical Patricia Godes no duda un instante en escoger. “La mejor música popular de nuestra época es la nova cançó ,que se hizo en Cataluña entre 1966 y 1977. En los años siguientes se propagaron ideologías musicales reaccionarias basadas en la existencia de seres superiores, bendecidos por Dios, que no necesitan saber hacer música para obtener la pleitesía de los epsilones, la protección del sistema, la fama, la fortuna además de un rinconcito envuelto en oropeles en el orinal más sucio de la historia”, apunta. Las canciones de Raimon, Francesc Pi de la Serra, Lluís Llach, María del Mar Bonet y Ovidi Montllor -entre otros- han envejecido como el buen vino, ganando cuerpo año tras año. También las de un tal Joan Manuel Serrat, que quizá les suene.
Mezclar pop con Lope de VegaCerramos con la visión de un músico. Igor Paskual es guitarra de Loquillo, autor de una sólida carrera en solitario y una de las mejores plumas de la prensa musical española. Su elección no anda lejos de la de Vogel. “Para mí, la excelencia está el arco que va desde 1964 hasta 1968. No sólo están las melodías de Los Brincos, que eran puros orfebres, sino también los doce temas de Juan y Junior dejaron para la posteridad. Eso ya es difícilmente superable. Además tenemos a Los Pekenikes, que me siguen pareciendo -junto con Los Brincos- la mejor banda española. Están Los Ángeles y Lone Star, que graban 'Mi Calle' y no le encuentro equivalente en el mundo internacional. Cuidado también con los temazos del Duo Dinámico”, afirma.
Un Lope de Vega eléctricoEn aquella época, no solo se cocía pop. “También destacaba el soul de Los Canarios, que siguen siendo intocables, o los éxitos internacionales de Miguel Ríos, Los Bravos o Pop Tops”. No solo estamos ante himnos brillantes, sino también muy locales, enraizados en nuestras tradiciones culturales. “Los Brincos dominaban la cadencia frigia y Los Cheyenes en el 65 registraron “Válgame la Macarena”, por no hablar de Los Sónor en el 62 con “El relicario”. Cuando hablo de ‘lo español’ no me refiero a ‘lo latino’. Tampoco a lo meridional en exclusiva. Recordemos la gaita con la guitarra fuzz de Los Archiduques -con Tino Casal a la voz- en “Lamento de gaitas”. O “Nit de llampecs” de Los Relámpagos. ¿Qué decir de Los Íberos adaptando un texto de Lope de Vega en 'Las tres de la noche'. El pop español, enseguida, fue español. Si te fijas, los intentos de las bandas actuales de indagar en la tradición llegan después de un periodo largo de anglofilia. Pienso en Los Planetas, Lucas 15 o esa maravilla que es 'O Isa', un tema de Triángulo de Amor Bizarro basado en una cantiga de escarnio”, señala.
Paskual remata con unas palabras de agradecimiento: “Aunque muchos de ellos fueran de familias acomodadas, su mérito es increíble. El contexto -incluso el familiar- no simpatizaba con ellos y tuvo que ser una odisea para las bandas llegar a grabar o desarrollarse profesionalmente. Y estaba el servicio militar rompiendo carreras a mansalva. Y es en 1967 cuando Bruno Lomas graba ¡el primer disco en directo en España! No somos conscientes del mérito que tuvieron estos artistas”. Bueno es recordarlo.
REBECA COLLADO | Ferrol | Jueves 22 febrero 2018 | 18:24
El portavoz de En Marea en el Parlamento de Galicia, Luis Villares, ha participado este jueves en el acto ‘Conservas no Parador’, que organiza el club de Prensa de Ferrol, para hablar sobre la sitación de la ciudad naval, sus sectores industriales y los conflictos de la vida política municipal, entre otros.
Villares ha comenzado su intervención hablando de Navantia y de la necesidad de apostar por el I+D, la transferencia de conocimiento y la apertura a nuevas oportunidades como las energías renovables. El portavoz de En Marea ha reprochado a la Xunta y al Estado su comportamiento con la ciudad en las horas más bajas de Ferrol, «aquí hai moitas administracións que escurren o bulto por cuestións partidistas».
En este sentido, Villares ha afirmado que «Galicia ten que volcarse con Ferrol porque no pasado foi Ferrol quen se volcou con Galicia» y ha añadido que ahora es el momento de apostar por la urbe naval porque «despois revertirá en todos».
También ha criticado el político de En Marea las deficiencias de la línea ferroviaria entre Ferrol y A Coruña, así como la conexión con A Mariña. «É inadmisible que Fomento non teña articulado un tren de cercanías en toda a área metropolitana», ha censurado Villares y se ha preguntado «por que temos que renunciar a grande área urbana de Ferrol e A Mariña?».
En el turno de las preguntas el portavoz de En Marea no se ha mojado y ha pasado de puntillas por cuestiones como la situación de María Fernández Lemos y Rosa Méndez como concejalas del gobierno no adscritas; la falta de presupuestos; la posibilidad de que una formación similar a FeC irrumpa en las próximas elecciones y la división de la izquierda.
Sí se ha mojado Villares al reconocer que «hai que entenderse co PSOE» y que «ás veces hai que facer de tripas corazón», al ser preguntado si le recomendaría a Jorge Suárez pactar de nuevo con el PSOE si fuera necesario para revalidar la Alcaldía. El portavoz de En Marea ha señalado que la alternativa al PP pasado por entenderse con los socialistas.
También ha afirmado que ve a Jorge Suárez como candidato a las próximas elecciones municipales, aunque ha apuntado que «o ten que ratificar a asemblea». Confía el portavoz de En Marea en que «a cidadanía saberá ler os esforzos e dificultades» que está teniendo el gobierno de Ferrol y que «saberán premiar a quen estivo intentando facer políticas para a xente».
En agosto de 1892, la famosa princesa Pauline Metternich participó en un duelo que cambió la historia del duelismo entre mujeres. Muy popular en aquellas fechas, los duelistas eran casi siempre hombres. El acto adquiría unas connotaciones sociales y políticas importantes, justamente en la época del sufragismo y la aparición del feminismo contemporáneo. Su rival fue la rusa Anastasia Kielmansegg, con quien ya había tenido enfrentamientos verbales. La causa del duelo fue el desacuerdo en el arreglo floral para un evento. Antes de comenzar el duelo, la mujer especialista en medicina, una baronesa, que las asistía, decidió que se batirían en topless. La razón era sencilla: se pensaba que un corte con una de las espadas sobre la ropa podía dar lugar a una grave infección. Y así lo hicieron. Se quitaron sus corsés y blusas y lucharon de esta manera, que pronto se hizo popular entre las mujeres duelistas. El duelo siguió las reglas francesas. Terminaba quien primero fuese herida. No sé sabe con seguridad quién ganó, pero lo cierto es que aquella imagen se reprodujo una y otra vez en extrañas postales y fotografías «picantes» que se comercializaron y fueron muy famosas en los sucesivos años. También años más tarde llegó al cine, con An Affair of Honor (1901), una cinta muda que fue de las primeras producciones en los albores del cine.
En España, concretamente en Madrid, en el parque del Retiro, tuvo lugar uno de los duelos entre mujeres más célebres, cuyas protagonistas fueron Paz Villavicencio y Lolita, apodada la «de las Canas», debido a una disputa surgida en el bohemio Café Fornos, donde eran muy célebres. El duelo se realizó en un lugar cargado de simbolismo: a los pies de la estatua del Ángel Caído.
La emancipación había llegado también al duelo, territorio genuinamente masculino a pesar de que la tradición de mujeres duelistas era muy amplia. Desde entonces, los duelos entre mujeres se convirtieron en parte del discurso de liberación de las mujeres, que por aquellos años aprendían artes marciales (fundamentalmente jiu-jitsu) o se armaban con alfileres o bastones afilados que utilizaban contra acosadores y violadores.
Una escena de An Affair of Honor (1901). Las mujeres, debido a la censura, no combaten en topless
Incautación de un alijo en Vigo, 2006. Fotografía: Miguel Vidal / Cordon.
Hace poco más de dos años, el 5 de enero de 2016, los principales medios de comunicación se hacían eco de la incautación de tres toneladas de cocaína en el municipio pontevedrés de Barro. Se trataba del mayor alijo interceptado en suelo español desde 1999 y los titulares de prensa no escatimaron en grandilocuencia para enriquecer la información: «Así fue la mayor operación terrestre del siglo contra el tráfico de cocaína», se podía leer en La Voz de Galicia. La sorpresa saltaba al detenernos en la letra pequeña y descubrir que no había un solo gallego involucrado en la operación. La mercancía, de la que se ofrecían todo tipo de detalles incluida su procedencia y hasta el sello que portaba, habría sido introducida en nuestras costas por un clan holandés y sus destinatarios resultaron ser unos mafiosos ingleses residentes en la Costa del Sol que, mediante un convoy de furgonetas, pretendían distribuirla por diferentes países de Europa: ni una sombra de duda sobre cómo unos holandeses habían sido capaces de alijar y esconder tres mil kilos de cocaína en Galicia sin el consentimiento o la colaboración de los clanes locales, nada.
Se mira pero no se toca
Así es como se ha tratado la información sobre el narcotráfico gallego en los últimos años: esquivando lo obvio. La reciente detención de Sito Miñanco parece haber devuelto cierta atención mediática sobre un fenómeno que parecía desterrado de las rías gallegas tras el encarcelamiento de los grandes capos pero que, en medio de un extraño silencio, no ha dejado de crecer y fortalecer sus alianzas a ambos lados del Atlántico. A día de hoy entra más cocaína por la costa gallega que en 1990, el año en que Baltasar Garzón y la Operación Nécora pusieron en boca de todos los nombres del propio Miñanco, Laureano Oubiña o Manuel Charlín. El narcotráfico y su brillantina, como los eucaliptos, las bateas de mejillón o el granito, siguen componiendo una parte fundamental del paisaje gallego pero algo ha cambiado en la percepción de un fenómeno que se mira pero no se toca, como si no hablar de ello fuese el método más aséptico de combatirlo.
Muerto el perro, muerta la rabia
Aquella rebelión popular de los noventa contra los clanes históricos tuvo mucho que ver con el despertar de una sociedad ante una evidencia terrible: los beneficios que el narcotráfico aportaba a tantas familias, incluso a localidades enteras, comenzaron a parecer meras limosnas ante la podredumbre y la inseguridad que asolaban las calles. Fue la acción devastadora de la heroína lo que puso en jaque a los más ilustres robinhoodes de la cocaína que ayudaban a levantar casas, pagaban tratamientos médicos a sus vecinos, colaboraban con las parroquias y se sentaban a la mesa con lo más granado de la sociedad gallega. La furia de Carmen Avendaño y las otras madres de Érguete (levántate) provocó un tsunami social con el que no contaban los narcos y el resto es historia. Pero la epidemia pasó y con la normalidad regresó el ambiente de calma que tanto beneficia a quien negocia en silencio. Tocaba recapacitar, abandonar ciertos hábitos y retomar la actividad en el punto exacto donde la habían abandonado, si es que alguna vez lo hicieron.
Cuando los árboles sí dejan ver del bosque
Ser narcotraficante ya no es un sueño de infancia, al menos no uno confesable. El tráfico de drogas ha perdido todo el glamur y prestigio que acumuló durante la transición del contrabando de tabaco al alijo de cocaína. La ostentación ha dejado de ser requisito imprescindible del triunfador hasta convertirse en un sinónimo de mediocridad y la discreción se ha implementado como cortafuego indispensable, el primer muro tras el que esconder el negocio de las miradas indeseadas. El verdadero poderío del narco gallego se oculta hoy entre chaquetas de lana, calzado barato, partidas de cartas en el bar y cartillas de pensionista. Los vehículos de gran cilindrada, el oro grosero y la ropa de marca, especialmente la deportiva, luce ahora en manos de cachorros imberbes que pretenden imitar a los grandes nombres pero sin más perspectiva que la de recoger una pocas migajas y terminar, más pronto que tarde, con sus huesos en la cárcel. Ellos son los árboles que todavía permiten ver el bosque frondoso e inaccesible en que se ha convertido del narcotráfico en Galicia.
Árboles, ¿qué árboles?
En casi todos los pueblos de la costa gallega se pueden encontrar muestras palpables del flujo incesante de dinero que provoca el tráfico de cocaína. Lo ven casi a diario los hosteleros, testigos directos del lujo más íntimo y la alergia ancestral del narcotráfico a las facturas. Cada fin de semana se celebra en Galicia un bautizo con aspecto de boda real o una boda común con apariencia de ceremonia de apertura de unos juegos olímpicos, bacanales de derroche que se pagan en mano y al contado, sin necesidad de contratos o cualquier otro papel que deje huella del gasto. También pueden dar fe los empleados de algunas sucursales bancarias, la primera ventanilla a la que todavía acuden petimetres y advenedizos con intención de blanquear ciertas cantidades, bienintencionados pero sin el conocimiento o la asesoría legal de la que disponen los grandes peces del negocio. Concesionarios, joyerías, lonjas, mueblerías, tiendas de ropa, salas de juego o clubes de alterne son algunos de los hábitats naturales en los que el dinero de la droga también se gasta sin miramientos, a la vista de todos, un manantial que no se ha detenido nunca por más que las noticias hablen de holandeses, británicos, mexicanos, colombianos o andaluces como nuevos amos del cortijo.
«No se debe olvidar lo que todavía no ha terminado»
¿Por qué razón iban a dejar de trabajar los grandes cárteles de la droga con sus más eficaces aliados? ¿Por qué confiar en unos desconocidos para alijar y esconder varias toneladas de cocaína en la costa gallega, ese entramado inabarcable de piedras, bateas, pequeñas calas y grandes acantilados en los que un nativo experimentado se mueve como pez en el agua? ¿Por qué excluir del negocio a quienes fueron capaces de revalorizar el producto estrella de las selvas americanas hasta convertir vulgar y dudosa cocaína en codiciada fariña? Se podrá dudar de la capacidad o el poder real de algunos históricos del narcotráfico, pero sería de ilusos pretender que toneladas de droga sigan desembarcando en las rías de Galicia cada año sin contar con las expertas manos de los clanes gallegos en la partida. Lo advertía Nacho Carretero en la última línea de su libro recientemente secuestrado, Fariña: «No se debe olvidar lo que todavía no ha terminado». Ni ha terminado ni terminará, es una de las pocas certezas que todavía se nos pueden arrancar a los gallegos.
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