title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: The bank and its subsidiaries have over 89,000 employees and over 26 million clients worldwide. In Canada, the bank operates through its TD Canada Trust division and serves more than 11 million customers at over 1,091 branches. In the United States, the company operates through their subsidiary TD Bank, N.A., which was created through the merger of TD Banknorth and Commerce Bank. TD Bank serves more than 6.5 million customers in the United States with a network of over 1,200 branches in sixteen states and the District of Columbia.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: The predecessors of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, the Bank of Toronto, and The Dominion Bank were established in the mid-19th century, the former in 1855 and the latter in 1869. In 1954, an agreement was reached between the Bank of Toronto and The Dominion Bank to merge the two financial institutions. The merger was later accepted by the Canadian Minister of Finance on November 1, 1954, and was made official on February 1, 1955. The new institution adopted the name Toronto-Dominion Bank.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In 1967, TD Bank opened its new head office, the Toronto-Dominion Centre in downtown Toronto. In the next year, the bank entered into a partnership with Chargex (later known as Visa Inc.). The TD Bank shield logo was unveiled to the public near the end of the decade, in 1969.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In 1976, TD Bank piloted its first automated teller machine (ATM), the TD 360, which was renamed The Green Machine, a name it continues to carry.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In 1987, Toronto Dominion Securities Inc. was established by the bank. TD Bank saw growth in the 1990s, with the acquisition of several financial assets including the commercial branches of Standard Chartered Bank of Canada. In 1992, the bank acquired the assets and branches of Central Guaranty Trust, as well as Waterhouse Investor Services in 1996.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In 1992, TD Bank and G4S Cash Solutions, a subsidiary of British security services company G4S plc, began a pilot project in Toronto that developed into a nationwide partnership in 1997. G4S Cash Solutions secured the contract to transport cash and provide first-line maintenance for the bank's ATMs – both cash dispensing and deposit pick up units." By 2010, the partnership had expanded where G4S Cash Solutions operated 2,577 ATMs, 1,093 branch night deposits, 95 weekly balanced cash dispensers as well as eight cash dispensers for branch tellers and 100 across the pavement services and hosted a discussion on the introduction of polymer banknotes in 2011 with leading Canadian financial institutions.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: TD Bank formed a partnership with Bank of Montreal (BMO) and Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) in 1996 to create Symcor, a private entity that offers transaction services such as item processing, statement processing and cash-management services to major banks and retail and telecommunications companies in Canada. In 2011, Symcor produces close to 675 million statements and more than two billion pages of customer statements, and processes three billion cheques annually.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In 1998, TD Bank and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce agreed to a merger. However, the Government of Canada, at the recommendation of then Minister of Finance Paul Martin, blocked the merger, as well as another proposed merger between the Bank of Montreal and the Royal Bank of Canada – believing it was not in the best interest of Canadians.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In 2000, Toronto-Dominion Securities bought Newcrest Capital for (75 per cent in stock and 25 per cent in cash). In the same year, TD Bank also acquired Canada Trust, re-branding most of its commercial banking operations in Canada as TD Canada Trust.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: Ultimately Martin would approve the merger of TD and Canada Trust with some conditions. The new bank sold Canada Trust's MasterCard business to meet the demands of the Competition Bureau due to the fact that TD issued Visa cards at the time and Canada Trust issued MasterCard and competition rules at the time prevented a single institution from the duality of selling both brands simultaneously. The Competition Bureau also forced the sale of 13 branches, representing over 120,000 customers, in three Ontario markets where the territories of TD and Canada Trust overlapped. The vast majority of the affected branches were in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, including four in Kitchener, two in Waterloo, four in Cambridge and one in Elmira. All but one branch were sold to the Bank of Montreal for $50million. The remaining branch in Paris, Ontario, was sold to Laurentian Bank of Canada. In all six TD branches and seven Canada Trust branches specifically changed hands to meet the Competition Bureau's requirements.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In response, TD announced it would close 275 branches, representing 4,900 employees, to adhere to the ruling and to reduce overall costs. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business said the Competition Bureau's decision to ultimately approve the deal would reduce consumer choice while eliminating the chance to create a second-tier of Canadian banking by killing off the Trust industry in Canada.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In 2002, TD Bank acquired Stafford Trading and Letco Trading. In the following year, TD Bank acquired Laurentian Bank's retail branches west of Quebec.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In 2004, TD Bank entered the American retail banking market, announcing an agreement to acquire the majority stake of Banknorth, a New England–based bank, for a total of . Banknorth was later rebranded as TD Banknorth after the sale was finalized in March 2005.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In January 2006, the company sold its United States brokerage business branded as TD Waterhouse, which it had purchased in 1984, to Ameritrade. The business was renamed TD Ameritrade.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In April 2007, TD Bank acquired all remaining shares of TD Banknorth, transforming TD Banknorth into a fully owned subsidiary of TD Bank, and resulting in it being no longer traded on the New York Stock Exchange. In the same year, TD Bank acquired Commerce Bancorp, a bank based in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Commerce Bancorp was later merged with TD Banknorth to form TD Bank, N.A. in 2008.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In 2010, the bank acquired the Florida-based Riverside National Bank of Fort Pierce; and the South Financial Group Inc. In the following year, TD Bank acquired Chrysler Financial, which was later rebranded as TD Auto Finance. On December 1, 2011, TD Bank acquired MBNA's Canadian credit card business. In October 2014, Affiliated Computer Services, a subsidiary of Xerox, acquired Symcor's U.S. operations from TD Bank.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: After Moody's Investor Service downgraded the credit worthiness of Royal Bank of Canada to Aa1 on December 13, 2010, TD Bank remained the only one of Canada's Big Five banks with a top Aaa credit rating at that point in the Great Recession (at the time, CIBC was Aa2, Scotiabank was Aa1 and Bank of Montreal was Aa2). It is also ranked number 1 by profit in the Top 1000 2012 listing.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: From 2014 to 2015, TD went through a minor restructuring which included job cuts and other cost-cutting measures, under the leadership of Bharat Masrani, which kept the stock price on a stable upward trend.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In April 2020 it became apparent that TD Bank was a significant secured creditor involved in the voluntary administration of the Virgin Australia airline, which has debts of . The Virgin administrators declared TD Bank held an all present and after-acquired property charge over substantially the whole of the property of certain entities of the airline.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: Bloomberg reported that TD Bank, along with Canada's other large banks, added ESG measures to their chief executive officers' compensation plans.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: On February 28, 2022, TD made a offer for First Horizon Corp., with 1,159 branches, expected to be completed in February 2023. This would be the second-largest bank deal since the Great Recession in the United States. As of December 31, 2021, TD had in U.S. assets, making it the ninth largest bank in the United States. If completed the deal would give TD 1,560 branches in 22 U.S. states.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In July 2022, TD Bank announced it was evaluating a takeover of US brokerage firm Cowen. The following month, TD agreed to buy Cowen for in an all-cash deal, paying Cowen shareholders per share. TD announced that Cowen chair and CEO Jeffrey Solomon would join the senior leadership of TD's securities division following the acquisition, and that the combined business will be known as TD Cowen, headed by Solomon. To fund the purchase, TD sold over 28 million non-voting common shares of Charles Schwab Corporation, reducing its stake in the company from 13.4% to 12%.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: Toronto-Dominion Bank, and its subsidiaries, are title sponsors for a number of sporting venues in Canada and the United States. TD Bank holds the naming rights to several multi-sport indoor arenas including TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. TD Banknorth acquired the naming rights for the Boston-based venue in 2005, with the venue being known as TD Banknorth Garden until 2007. After TD Banknorth was merged to form TD Bank, N.A., the venue dropped Banknorth from the name and was branded as TD Garden.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: Other indoor stadiums sponsored by TD Bank include TD Station in Saint John, New Brunswick; and TD Place Arena in Ottawa, Ontario. TD Place Arena forms a part of TD Place at Lansdowne Park. The bank also holds the naming rights to the outdoor stadium at TD Place, known as TD Place Stadium. Other outdoor stadiums sponsored by TD Bank include TD Stadium in London, Ontario, and TD Ballpark in Dunedin, Florida.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In 2010, a suspicious customer trading at TD Bank in the UK was fined £750,000 (US$1.16 million) by the Financial Services Authority for intentionally mismarking his trading positions.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: News outlets reported the bank's policy regarding ordinary Iranian-Canadian citizens, July 10, 2012. Some one hundred personal bank accounts had been closed to this date, citing the recent ambiguous Special Economic Measure Regulation of the Canadian government. A family in Vancouver was forced to refinance a $250,000 house mortgage in 60 days to avoid foreclosure.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: A TD Bank document became the focus of a 2012 contempt hearing in Miami federal court. In a civil lawsuit against TD Bank, a jury found the bank liable for aiding alleged Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein's fraud.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In 2015, the Canadian news website the "Halifax Examiner" reported that a political action committee (PAC) established by TD Bank had donated over $50,000 to the campaigns of anti-LGBT rights politicians in the United States. The article suggested that this was problematic given TD Bank's status as a sponsor of 41 LGBT Pride events across North America; TD Bank made no comment. In response to this article, on October 6, 2015, a motion was brought at the annual general meeting of Halifax Pride to sever ties with TD Bank if it did not provide a satisfactory response to the concerns; the motion was ultimately defeated.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: On March 10, 2017, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC) news programme "Go Public" reported that TD Bank employees had admitted that, under pressure to achieve sales targets, they had increased customers' lines of credit, overdraft amounts, and Visa credit limits without advising them which is against the law. One TD financial adviser says she "invested clients' savings into funds which were not suitable, because of the SR [sales revenue] pressure". Another admitted downplaying the risk of products saying: "I was forced to lie to customers, just to meet the sales revenue targets." In an internal letter to employees, Andy Pilkington, executive vice-president of branch banking, wrote: "We don't believe the [CBC] story is an accurate portrayal of our culture," but the report provided an opportunity "to pause, reflect and ask ourselves ... how we can do better for our people and our customers." The bank's stock lost 5.55 per cent of its value on March 10, posting its worst day since 2009.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In 2017, Greenpeace announced a campaign against TD's financing of tar-sands on the basis of environmental as well as human rights issues. Their campaign stated that tar sand pipelines are not consistent with a transition to a lower-carbon world and that many Indigenous and First Nations communities along the pipeline routes have not given permission for the projects.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: Following his ended relationship to private-banking with JPMorgan, which was headed by his friend Jes Staley, and his relationships later for over 20 years through Thomas Bowers at The Citi Private Bank and subsequently the Thomas Bowers headed private wealth management division of Deutsche Bank from 2013 until early 2019, Jeffrey Epstein established a close relationship during 2019, allegedly through Darren Indyke, with wealth management and private banking at TD Bank which was Epstein's bank while he was under investigations in the United States, Brazil, and France at the time of his death in August 2019.


title: Toronto-Dominion Bank

text: In February 2022, TD Bank froze two personal bank accounts holding $1.1 million in funds, deposited to support the vaccine mandate protests in Ottawa.


title: Roxane Gay

text: Roxane Gay (born October 15, 1974) is an American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator. Gay is the author of "The New York Times" best-selling essay collection "Bad Feminist" (2014), as well as the short story collection "Ayiti" (2011), the novel "An Untamed State" (2014), the short story collection "Difficult Women" (2017), and the memoir "Hunger" (2017).


title: Roxane Gay

text: Gay was an assistant professor at Eastern Illinois University for four years before joining Purdue University as an associate professor of English. In 2018, she left Purdue to become a visiting professor at Yale University.


title: Roxane Gay

text: Gay is a contributing opinion writer at "The New York Times", founder of Tiny Hardcore Press, essays editor for "The Rumpus", co-editor of PANK, a nonprofit literary arts collective, and the editor for "Gay Mag", which was founded in partnership with Medium.


title: Roxane Gay

text: Gay was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to Michael and Nicole Gay, both of Haitian descent. Her mother was a homemaker and her father is owner of GDG Béton et Construction, a Haitian concrete company. Gay is a cousin of Claudine Gay.


title: Roxane Gay

text: Gay was raised Catholic and spent her summers visiting family in Haiti. She attended high school at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. Gay began writing essays as a teenager, with much of her early work being influenced by her experience with childhood sexual violence. Her parents were relatively wealthy, supporting her through college and paying her rent until she was 30.


title: Roxane Gay

text: Gay began her undergraduate studies at Yale University, but dropped out in her junior year to pursue a relationship in Arizona. She completed her undergraduate degree at Vermont College of Norwich University, and also earned a master's degree with an emphasis in creative writing from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.


title: Roxane Gay

text: Gay received a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Technical Communication from Michigan Technological University in 2010. She was inducted into the Omicron Delta Kappa Circle. Her dissertation is titled "Subverting the Subject Position: Toward a New Discourse About Students as Writers and Engineering Students as Technical Communicators." Dr. Ann Brady served as her dissertation advisor.


title: Roxane Gay

text: After completing her Ph.D., Gay began her academic teaching career in 2010 at Eastern Illinois University, where she was assistant professor of English. While at EIU, she was a contributing editor for "Bluestem" magazine, and she also founded Tiny Hardcore Press. Gay worked at Eastern Illinois University until the end of the 2013–14 academic year. She was an associate professor of creative writing in the Master of Fine Arts program at Purdue University from August 2014 until 2018. Gay announced her departure from Purdue in October 2018, voicing concerns about the fairness of her compensation and noting Purdue had failed to address the issue. For the spring of 2019 Gay was serving as a visiting professor at Yale University.


title: Roxane Gay

text: Gay published a short-story collection, "Ayiti" (2011), then two books in 2014: the novel "An Untamed State" and the essay collection "Bad Feminist" (2014). A "Time" review noted: "Gay's writing is simple and direct, but never cold or sterile. She directly confronts complex issues of identity and privilege, but it's always accessible and insightful."


title: Roxane Gay

text: In 2014, Gay published her debut novel, "An Untamed State," which centers around Mireille Duval Jameson, a Haitian-American woman who is kidnapped for ransom. The novel explores the interconnected themes of race, privilege, sexual violence, family, and the immigrant experience. "An Untamed State" is often referred to as a fairy tale because of its structure and style, especially in reference to the opening sentence, "Once upon a time, in a far-off land, I was kidnapped by a gang of fearless yet terrified young men with so much impossible hope beating inside their bodies it burned their very skin and strengthened their will right through their bones," and the author's exploration of the American dream and courtship of Mireille's parents.


title: Roxane Gay

text: "The Guardian" review by Attica Locke calling it "a breathtaking debut novel," and "The Washington Post" crediting it as "a smart, searing novel."


title: Roxane Gay

text: Gay's collection of essays, "Bad Feminist", was released in 2014 to widespread acclaim; it addresses both cultural and political issues, and became a "New York Times" best-seller. A "Time" magazine reviewer dubbed "Bad Feminist" "a manual on how to be human," and called Gay the "gift that keeps on giving." In a 2014 interview with the magazine, Gay explained her role as a feminist, and how it has influenced her writing: "In each of these essays, I'm very much trying to show how feminism influences my life for better or worse. It just shows what it's like to move through the world as a woman. It's not even about feminism per se, it's about humanity and empathy."


title: Roxane Gay

text: In "The Guardian", critic Kira Cochrane offered a similar assessment, "While online discourse is often characterised by extreme, polarised opinions, her writing is distinct for being subtle and discursive, with an ability to see around corners, to recognise other points of view while carefully advancing her own. In print, on Twitter and in person, Gay has the voice of the friend you call first for advice, calm and sane as well as funny, someone who has seen a lot and takes no prisoners."


title: Roxane Gay

text: A group of feminist scholars and activists analyzed Gay's "Bad Feminist" for "Short Takes: Provocations on Public Feminism", an initiative of the feminist journal "Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society".


title: Roxane Gay

text: In July 2016, Gay and poet Yona Harvey were announced as writers for Marvel Comics' "World of Wakanda", a spin-off from the company's Black Panther title, making them the first black women to be lead writers for Marvel. Six issues of the comic were published.


title: Roxane Gay

text: "Black Panther: World of Wakanda" was hailed for its prominent portrayal of LGBTQ characters. The comic followed the journey of two lovers Aneka and Ayo, who are former members of the Dora Milaje, the Black Panther's female security force. The series follows the pair through multiple events, including the siege of their city by Thanos and the flooding of Wakanda by Namor.


title: Roxane Gay

text: The series' cancellation was confirmed in June 2017 by Gay, just two days after the premiere of the trailer for the "Black Panther" movie. The last issue released in March 2017. Marvel stated no official reason for the cancellation; however, feminist tech site "The Mary Sue" pointed to a connection with Marvel's knock against "diversity titles" and Marvel VP David Gabriel's statement that "people didn't want any more diversity. They didn't want female characters out there. That's what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don't know that that's really true, but that's what we saw in sales."


title: Roxane Gay

text: In 2017, Gay published "Difficult Women", a collection of short stories that highlight women who have lives that differ from society's spectrum of a normal life. Each story follows a different character and her journey through either a traumatic experience or what makes her different from societal norms. The stories explore difficult and complex topics such as the intertwined relationship of sex and violence.


title: Roxane Gay

text: "Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body" was released in June 2017. Throughout, Gay discusses her experience with weight, body image, and building a positive relationship with food, particularly following her experience as a childhood victim of sexual violence. In fact, the novel is divided into two sections, "The Before" and "The After" with the day of her rape being the dividing event. At 12 years old, Gay was lured into a cabin by her then-boyfriend and gang raped by him and his friends. She describes the event as the catalyst for her rapid weight gain and lifelong issues with both her body and sexuality. Gay described the book as a testimony of "what it's like to live in a world that tried to discipline unruly bodies." The memoir received wide acclaim, praised by critics as "remarkable... ferociously honest," "arresting and candid," and "intimate and vulnerable."


title: Roxane Gay

text: Following her national book tour in support of "Hunger," Gay said she found press around the book "to be very challenging, because people just don't know how to talk about fat." In June 2017, Australian website "Mamamia" published an interview with Gay, revealing numerous details about how they prepared for her visit, which they described as a "logistical nightmare" because of the apparent consequence of her weight. On Twitter, Gay later described these preparations, including questions like “Will she fit into the office lift?” as both "cruel and humiliating". In an interview with "The New York Times," Gay stated the controversial event was "helpful, in that I think people get to see, in real time, what fat-phobia looks like and just how careless people can be in considering that fat people deserve dignity. So I suppose it's a useful example of why I wrote the book."


title: Roxane Gay

text: At a February 2019 speaking event at USC, in the Q&A, supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party criticized co-speaker Amanda Nguyen's work in the U.S. government during the War on Terror; in response, Gay defended Nguyen on Twitter.


title: Roxane Gay

text: Gay was the editor of the anthology titled "Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture". The collection, published in 2018 by HarperCollins, features essays from Gay and 29 other authors, including Stacey May Fowles, Lyz Lenz, Samhita Mukhopadhyay, Ally Sheedy, Brandon Taylor, and Gabrielle Union.


title: Roxane Gay

text: Medium approached Gay in 2017 about the possibility of starting a "pop-up" magazine for the online publishing platform. The magazine would specialize in cultural criticism and provide pay for writers including Gay's work in an editorial capacity. The weekly online publication was produced with Medium's Deputy Editor Laura June and Managing Editor Kaitlyn Adams. The first issue, published in late April 2019, featured essays by Athena Dixon and Grace Lavery. In May 2019, Gay and Medium formally launched the new publication, "Gay Magazine". The short-lived journal was also referred to on Medium as "GAY The Magazine--The Best Stories About Culture" and "Gay Mag". The first of the planned quarterly themed editions appeared in June 2019; public submissions were solicited in addition to the commissioned articles. The final issue of Medium's "Gay Magazine" was themed 'Power' and was posted on April 3, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic's global lockdowns.


title: Roxane Gay

text: In October 2019, when asked about "Gay Magazine", Gay responded, "I'm doing what I always aim to do as an editor, which is to create a literary space for a range of voices who have something smart and interesting to say — and more importantly, to be able to pay them well. One of the biggest challenges of the digital media landscape is that the money is concentrated at the top and it rarely trickles down to the editors and writers, so to be able to have the support of Medium to create a publication — for however long it lasts – where we can pay people equitably and fairly is a really great thing. There is so much good writing going on out there, and I love being able to have a small hand in bringing that into the world."


title: Roxane Gay

text: In April 2018, Gay partnered with the online publishing platform Medium to create a month-long pop-up magazine called "Unruly Bodies". The magazine explored the relationship people share with their bodies, through an anthology of essays by 25 writers (including Gay herself). Gay asked the 24 writers, "What does it mean to live in an unruly body?"; her book dealing with such issues, "Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body", had been published in 2017. In a 2018 interview, Gay said, "I was surprised because I expected that I might get a lot of repetition, of [subject], not of style, but people wrote about all kinds of things. They wrote about gender, size, gun violence, wrestling, sex, ability. The range of issues from that one prompt, with the way that writers responded, was wonderful, and affirmed that I made very good choices in the writers that I approached." In April 2018, over a year before the actual launch of the online magazine, "Gay Magazine" posted 25 articles in response to Gay's query under the heading "Unruly Bodies"; the writers were: Kaveh Akbar, Gabrielle Bellot, S. Bear Bergman, Keah Brown, Meghan Carpentier, Mike Copperman, Jennine Capó Crucet, Kelly Davio, Mensah Demary, Danielle Evans, Roxane Gay, Casey Hannan, Samantha Irby, Randa Jarrar, Kima Jones, Kiese Laymon, Carmen Maria Machado, Terese Mailhot, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Brian Oliu, Tracy Lynne Oliver, Larissa Pham, Matthew Salesses, Chelsea G. Summers and Your Fat Friend.


title: Roxane Gay

text: In December 2019, comic book publisher TKO Studios launched "The Banks" by Gay. "The Banks" is a heist thriller about the most successful thieves in Chicago: the women of the Banks family. TKO Studios announced in 2020 a partnering with Macro (whose films have garnered nine Oscar nominations and one Oscar win for Viola Davis in "Fences") to produce a film adaptation of the graphic novel. The screenplay is to be written by Gay, who is also serving as executive producer.


title: Roxane Gay

text: In January 2021, Gay debuted her newsletter "The Audacity", featuring essays by herself and emerging writers on a bi-weekly basis. It is also home to The Audacious Book Club, which features one book per month highlighting new works from underrepresented American writers. It started with "Black Futures" by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham, followed by Torrey Peters' debut novel "Detransition, Baby" in February. Also featured in 2021 are books by Brandon Hobson, Ashley C. Ford, and Anthony Veasna So.


title: Roxane Gay

text: Gay was the editor of "The Butter," an online feminist writing site and sister site to "The Toast," from November 2014 to August 2015. "The Butter" featured writing on subjects including disability, literature, family, and music. "The Butter" ceased publishing in August 2015, with Gay stating she was "simply stretched too thin."


title: Roxane Gay

text: Gay was featured in a five-minute segment of "This American Life" on June 17, 2016, talking about her body, and how she is perceived as a fat person.


title: Roxane Gay

text: Gay announced in January 2017 that she was pulling her book "How to Be Heard", originally set to be published in 2018 by TED Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, due to her objections to alt-right journalist Milo Yiannopoulos receiving a book deal from another Simon & Schuster imprint.


title: Roxane Gay

text: She also edited the book "Girl Crush: Women's Erotic Fantasies". In addition to her regular contributions to "Salon" and the now-defunct "HTMLGiant", her writing has appeared in "Best American Mystery Stories 2014", "Best American Short Stories 2012", "Best Sex Writing 2012", "A Public Space", "McSweeney's", "Tin House", "Oxford American", "American Short Fiction", "West Branch", "Virginia Quarterly Review", "NOON", "Bookforum", "Time", "The Los Angeles Times", "The Nation" and "The New York Times Book Review". She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology "Daughters of Africa", edited by Margaret Busby.


title: Roxane Gay

text: Gay was featured in the 2016 book "In the Company of Women: Inspiration and Advice from over 100 Makers, Artists, and Entrepreneurs."


title: Roxane Gay

text: In 2019, Gay partnered with Tressie McMillan Cottom to create a black feminist podcast titled "Hear To Slay", which was set to feature influential black women as guests, including Stacey Abrams, Gabrielle Union, and Ava DuVernay.


title: Roxane Gay

text: In 2020, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first LGBTQ Pride parade, "Queerty" named Gay among the fifty heroes "leading the nation toward equality, acceptance, and dignity for all people". She was also included in the 2022 Fast Company Queer 50 list.


title: Roxane Gay

text: Much of Gay's written work deals with the analysis and deconstruction of feminist and racial issues through the lens of her personal experiences with race, gender identity, and sexuality.


title: Roxane Gay

text: On January 29, 2020, "Gay Magazine" published an essay alleging that Kate Elizabeth Russell's then-forthcoming novel "My Dark Vanessa" shared "eerie story similarities" to Wendy C. Ortiz's memoir, calling "My Dark Vanessa" "fictionalized, sensationalized." Ortiz's memoir and "My Dark Vanessa" share themes of intergenerational sexual abuse by a teacher, yet the Associated Press has reported that "[r]eviewers who looked at both books saw no evidence of plagiarism," though the "Gay Magazine" article ran with an illustration of one artist copying the work of another.In response to these allegations, Oprah Winfrey dropped "My Dark Vanessa" from her influential book club.


title: Roxane Gay

text: The "Gay Magazine" allegations prompted Russell to state that "My Dark Vanessa" was not appropriated from other work but inspired by her own experience as a sexual abuse survivor, a disclosure she'd never before revealed. Russell stated, "I do not believe that we should compel victims to share the details of their personal trauma with the public."


title: Roxane Gay

text: Gay is bisexual. In October 2019, she became engaged to artist and writer Debbie Millman. In August 2020, Gay revealed that they had eloped.


title: Roxane Gay

text: In January 2018, Gay revealed that she had undergone sleeve gastrectomy, a bariatric surgery that removes 85% of the stomach. She is tall.


title: Mariah Carey albums discography

text: American singer Mariah Carey has released fifteen studio albums, two soundtrack albums, eight compilation albums, four extended plays, and one remix album. Carey is one of the best-selling music artists of all-time, having sold over 220 million records globally. She was presented with the Millennium Award at the 2000 World Music Awards for becoming the best-selling female artist of the millennium. According to the RIAA, she is the highest-certified female artist and eleventh overall recording artist with shipments of 71 million albums in the US. She is also ranked as the best-selling female artist of the US Nielsen SoundScan era (1991–present) with album sales of 55.5 million.


title: Mariah Carey albums discography

text: Carey released her self-titled debut album in June 1990; it was certified nine-time platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), denoting shipments of nine million copies in the United States. Her second album, "Emotions", was released a year later and sold eight million copies worldwide. In 1993, Carey released her most successful studio album to date, "Music Box", which was certified Diamond in the United States and topped the charts in many countries around the world. "Music Box" is one of the best-selling albums of all time, with over 28 million copies sold. Carey's her first holiday album and fourth overall studio effort, "Merry Christmas", followed in 1994. After Carey's success in Asia with "Merry Christmas", "Billboard" estimated Carey as the all-time best-selling international artist in Japan. The singer's fifth studio album "Daydream" was released in 1995 and became her second Diamond certified album by the RIAA, with worldwide sales of 20 million copies.


title: Mariah Carey albums discography

text: Carey's sixth studio album "Butterfly", and the compilation album, "#1's", were both certified five-time platinum in the US; the latter remains the best-selling album in Japan by a non-Asian artist, selling 3.25 million copies. While the singer's seventh studio effort "Rainbow" (1999) received triple platinum certification from RIAA, it was her first album since "Merry Christmas" to not reach number one in the US. Carey parted from Columbia/Sony Music in 2001 and signed a contract with EMI's Virgin Records worth a reported US$100 million, the largest record contract ever signed. She released her next album, "Glitter", which was the soundtrack to the film of same name. The album suffered from poor publicity and became a commercial failure.


title: Mariah Carey albums discography

text: Carey signed a new deal in 2002 with Island Records and released her ninth studio album "Charmbracelet", which also fell short of Carey's earlier success. The singer then took a three-year break to record new material and introduced a hip-hop inspired album, "The Emancipation of Mimi", which became the best-selling album of 2005 in the US. It was certified six-time platinum by the RIAA, sold 10 million copies worldwide. In 2008, Carey released her tenth studio album, "E=MC²", which sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide. Her subsequent release, "Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel" (2009), managed sales of two million units while her second holiday album "Merry Christmas II You" (2010) shipped over 500,000 copies in the United States. The singer's fourteenth effort, "Me. I Am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse", became the lowest selling release of her career.


title: Mariah Carey albums discography

text: After the poor reception from her fourteenth album, Carey eventually went on to secure a multi-album record deal with Epic in January 2015, a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment. She subsequently came out with her sixth compilation album, "#1 to Infinity", and a residency deal to perform at The Colosseum at the Caesars Palace hotel in Las Vegas. Her fifteenth studio album, "Caution", was released in November 2018 under Epic, and was given much higher praise than her most recent works at the time. In 2019, Carey released a deluxe version of her first Christmas album featuring an extra disc of remixes, live performances and multiple tracks from her second Christmas album. In mid-2020, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Carey's debut album, Carey released a compilation album, entitled "The Rarities", which featured unreleased songs, B-sides, demos and live performances. A few months later, Carey announced a Christmas special with an accompanying soundtrack, "Mariah Carey's Magical Christmas Special". The album featured rerecordings of Carey's Christmas discography along with a variety of musical guests, including Ariana Grande, Snoop Dogg among others.


title: Sonali Deraniyagala

text: Born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, she studied economics at Cambridge University and has a doctorate from the University of Oxford. She is on the faculty of the Department of Economics at SOAS, University of London and is a research scholar at Columbia University in New York City. She lives in New York City, and London.


title: Sonali Deraniyagala

text: She married economist Stephen Lissenburgh, and while on vacation at Sri Lanka's Yala National Park in December 2004, she lost her two sons, husband, parents, best friend, and her best friend's mother in the Indian Ocean tsunami. The tsunami carried her two miles inland and she was able to survive by clinging to a tree branch.


title: Sonali Deraniyagala

text: Deraniyagala later relocated to New York where she became a visiting research scholar at Columbia University. Her 2013 memoir, "Wave", recounts her experiences in the tsunami and the progression of her grief in the ensuing years. It was shortlisted for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award (Autobiography) and won the PEN Ackerley Prize 2013. This book is currently used as a prose passage in the education system (O/Level) for English Literature in Sri Lanka.


title: Sonali Deraniyagala

text: She started dating the actress Fiona Shaw in 2018 after years of dating men only, the couple got married after Sonali proposed to her a few months later. They had their first child in October 2021.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: Brothers is a 2015 Indian Hindi-language sports action film, based on Mixed Martial arts (MMA) directed by Karan Malhotra and produced by Dharma Productions, Lionsgate Films and Endemol India. An official remake of the 2011 American film "Warrior", it stars Akshay Kumar and Sidharth Malhotra with Jacqueline Fernandez, Jackie Shroff and Shefali Shah in supporting roles.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: The first look poster of the film was released on 9 March 2015 and film was released on 14 August 2015 on Independence Day weekend.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: The film opens in medias res where street fighting issues are raised in Mumbai. Sports chairman Peter Braganza expresses his desire of making street fighting a legal sport and decides to open a league called Right 2 Fight (R2F). Meanwhile, imprisoned Garson "Gary" Fernandes, a recovering alcoholic and former MMA expert under rehabilitation, is released from his jail term, and his younger son Monty comes to pick him up. Monty gets tensed when his father asks about his elder son David and takes him away to their home. At home, Gary acts protective of all the belongings of his wife, Maria, who died many years ago. David, now a physics teacher, has a daughter with a kidney ailment. Unable to arrange money from the bank and other sources, he starts to earn money through street fights, as he was once a promising MMA fighter when he was younger. This stresses out his wife, Jenny, as she is worried about David. Meanwhile, Gary, who misses his wife Maria, starts hallucinating about her and violently attacks a mirror from self-hating about how he destroyed his family. Monty rushes to stop and comfort his father, realizing how much regret he has. Gary then tries to meet David, but the latter ends up throwing Monty and Gary out of his house in a rage after Gary sees his granddaughter and learns David named her after his mother, Maria.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: Over a flashback, Monty is revealed to be Gary's illegitimate child. Maria nevertheless loved Monty, as she did David. The two brothers had a close, loving relationship until David was 18 and Monty was 15. On the night of Monty's 15th birthday, Gary came home drunk and apologized to Maria for destroying the family, but mentioned his lover Sarah's name, instead of Maria's. An enraged Maria confronted Gary about this, and in a drunken state, Gary hit Maria, who was injured from hitting her head on the furniture and died. A furious David pushed Gary aside; when Monty came close to Maria, who reached out to him before passing, David angrily pushed him away, holding his father and half-brother equally responsible for his mother's death. This is what created the rift between Gary, Monty, and David.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: David later loses his job in school when principal Shobhit Desai learns about David's involvement in street fights. Monty, who wants to be a fighter, is then introduced to Suleiman Pasha, a fighting agent who is old friends with Gary, as they trained together. Suleiman fixes a match with Mustafa in which Monty is defeated. This enrages Gary, but Monty asks for a rematch with Mustafa, where Monty brutally defeats Mustafa after listening to his father’s advice and is declared a selected fighter for R2F by Peter. The fight is recorded and uploaded to YouTube, and soon Monty becomes an internet sensation. Monty undergoes training to become the R2F champion. Meanwhile, David, too, decides to be a full-time fighter, and Jenny encourages him to do so. Suleiman is initially unconvinced by David but arranges a match while Monty celebrates his victory at a bar. David is soon victorious in the fight and is accepted for R2F after convincing Suleiman of his true potential. R2F begins its grand debut and soon becomes a sensation as fighters from all over the world show their interest in the league. Monty has a solid time winning till he goes up against Luca, a fighter who is notorious for knocking out his opponents but ends up defeating him in a total knockout, shocking the audience as he becomes the first finalist. Meanwhile David the underdog comes up with a good game plan to outlast his opponents to reach the semis. There, he fights Hammer; an aggressive fighter who kicks the cage, injuring Gary. This causes David to violently assault Hammer in retaliation, and he too advances to the finale. After beating their last opponents the brothers are now the finalists and their identities as siblings are revealed to the public causing massive media coverage for the R2F.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: Gary, feeling guilty about his sons fighting each other instead of loving one another because of his mistake, leaves the arena. Jenny, David’s students, and everyone back at Suleiman’s fight club watch the match, which becomes brutal from the heated rivalry between the brothers. Monty proves dominant in striking and throws in cheap shots to taunt David, Gary heads back to the arena when he sees the fight. During the fight, David breaks Monty's shoulder, which causes David concern as Monty refuses to give up. Gary rushes towards the cage and apologizes for his mistakes, and tells David not to direct his anger towards his brother. Monty continues to fight despite David’s plea to stop. David gets Monty in a rear-naked chokehold and tells Monty not to fight anymore. Monty, in turn, tells David to continue to choke him because David is selfish and never considered how Monty felt that night, telling him Maria was also his mother and how lonely he was without her and David in his life. David moved to tears, now realizing how much pain he caused to his brother finally apologizes, and Monty allows David to win the championship. David takes Monty in his arms, and both brothers walk backstage, now having finally reconciled.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: The film was announced in late August 2014 by producer Karan Johar on his Twitter. Special stunt co-ordinators Eric Brown and Justin Yu from Los Angeles choreographed the film's stunt and MMA sequences.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: For the role of an MMA fighter, Kumar had taken up a weight-specific diet and shot scenes depicting his actual workout. He also underwent a six-month training of several martial art forms including judo, kyūdō, aikido, and karate.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: Actor Sidharth Malhotra trained in Jujitsu and aikido. It was speculated that he gained 10 kilograms for the role.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: "Vroovy" a joint venture of Hungama and Gameshastra had released the 3D video game titled ""Brothers: Clash of Fighters"" available for Android phones.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: The soundtrack of the album is composed by Ajay–Atul, while the lyrics are written by Amitabh Bhattacharya. Critic Joginder Tuteja from Bollywood Hungama gave 3 stars of 5, quoting, "The music of "Brothers" doesn't really go all the way when it comes to good expectations that came from it being a big chartbuster album in the making. However, from a situational numbers perspective, it does well to keep you engaged for the most part of it. Expect the 'Brothers Anthem' to haunt you all the more once you are through experiencing it with the film." Kasmin Fernandes from Times of India rated 3 out of 5 with mixed reviews. The song "Mera Naam Mary Hai" is a cover version of "Ye Maina", which was composed by the same composer from the Marathi film "".


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: Trade Analyst Komal Nahta said, "On the whole, Brothers, a mixed martial arts film, may carry mixed reports, but it will ultimately prove to be a paying proposition for all concerned. It will do good business in multiplexes and single-screen cinemas, and an 'A', 'B', 'C' and 'D' class centers."


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: Film critic Subhash K Jha gave 4 stars out of 5 and said "Brothers may not appeal to those who look for laughter in times of despair. There is barely room for a whiff of a smile in this dark sanguinary and seductive tale of destruction and redemption told in a free-wheeling style that accommodates derivations and innovations without apology or awkwardness." The Times of India(TOI) gave 3 stars out of 5. Bollywood Hungama gave 3 stars out of 5. Koimoi(koimoi.com) gave 2.5 stars out of 5.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: Film critic Raja Sen for Rediff wrote, "Weighing 158 unbearable minutes, "Brothers" is nearly 600-times as long as the Rousey win – and not one-millionth as thrilling." Sen reviewed the characters of the film and concluded, "But that's all this film has, a ball-busting Kumar and one particular fight that ends with delightful abruptness. Everything else is exhausting." He gave the film 1.5 stars out of 5. Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV opines, "For all the hoopla, "Brothers", in going for the jugular, punches well below its weight. It makes so much noise that any sensible point about brotherly bonding and filial fidelity that it might be trying to make is completely drowned out by the decibels. Take your earplugs along." He gave the film 2.5 stars out of 5. Anuj Kumar of The Hindu newspaper reviewed, "The problem is, be it emotion or action, Karan is in no hurry to say cut. At times it works for the emotion to seep in, but many times, over-elaboration dilutes the punch. The music is a letdown. Kareena Kapoor deserved a better song and choreography for the special appearance." Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express summarized, "Akshay Kumar, Sidharth Malhotra's film gets dragged down by its over-wrought mawkishness." At first post, critic Deepanjana Pal stated, "Akshay Kumar is hot but with Jackie Shroff and Sidharth Malhotra this film is a hot mess. A few more films like "Brothers" and Bollywood will have achieved what no amount of litigation can manage — the freedom to copy freely. Because if Gavin O'Connor, who directed and co-wrote "Warrior," ever sees how his story has been brutalized, he might just go on a campaign claiming that intellectual property rights be damned, Hollywood is better off not being associated; with Bollywood remakes." Martin D'souza from Glamsham stated "The fight director makes BROTHERS look good" and gave 2 stars out of 5. Subhash K. Jha from skjbollywoodnews stated "Definitely one of Akshay Kumar's glorious achievements." and gave 4 stars out of 5.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: Brothers made Rs.52.08 crore in its opening weekend in India. The film brought in internationally. Adding the film's gross India business of 70.30 crores, after week one Brothers' worldwide business stands at 106 crores at the box office.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: In the season where films have started doing well at the box office, Brothers have managed to find an audience for itself over the weekend. If the start was good, if not phenomenal, there was some good escalation waiting to take place for the rest of the weekend. Saturday was always going to be the key for the film, and the Karan Malhotra film managed to cross the 21 crore mark. Sunday did not see as many footfalls as Saturday but still did better than Friday, as a result of which 52.08 crores came in once the weekend was through.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: Brothers made quite a low business on its 3rd day, i.e., 1st Sunday at the box office. The movie collected 15.45 crores on Sunday, which is almost equal to its Friday business (15.20 crores). Nevertheless, thanks to its super jump on Day 2, the film's overall opening weekend collections have come to a good amount of 52.08 crores. The film now stands as the 2nd Highest Weekend Grosser of the year. Bajrangi Bhaijaan, with 102.60 crores, holds the record of Top weekend grosser of 2015. The film went on to collect just 64.80 crores net in its first week in India which is a poor result because it has a big holiday.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: Brothers crashed 88% in its second weekend as it grossed just 5.25 crore net approx in its second weekend.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: The ten days business of film is just 69.83 crores. Brothers grossed 80 lakhs net on its second Monday and has grossed just 6 crore net approx in its first four days of the second week.


title: Brothers (2015 film)

text: Brothers performed poorly overseas but managed to garner around $2.4 million in the first weekend, the Gulf, Pakistan, USA, and UK were the top markets


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: Patrick Soon-Shiong (born July 29, 1952) is a Chinese-South African transplant surgeon, billionaire businessman, bioscientist, and media proprietor. He is the inventor of the drug Abraxane, which became known for its efficacy against lung, breast, and pancreatic cancer. Soon-Shiong is the founder of NantWorks, a network of healthcare, biotech, and artificial intelligence startups; an adjunct professor of surgery and executive director of the Wireless Health Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles; and a visiting professor at Imperial College London and Dartmouth College. Soon-Shiong has published more than 100 scientific papers and has more than 230 issued patents worldwide on advancements spanning numerous fields in technology and medicine.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: Soon-Shiong is the chairman of three nonprofit organizations: the Chan Soon-Shiong Family Foundation, which aims to fund research and erase disparities in access to health care and education; the Chan Soon-Shiong Institute for Advanced Health, which is focused on changing the way health information is shared; and the Healthcare Transformation Institute, a partnership with the University of Arizona and Arizona State University. He has been a minority owner of the Los Angeles Lakers since 2010, and since June 2018, he has been the owner and executive chairman of the "Los Angeles Times" and "The San Diego Union-Tribune". , Soon-Shiong is estimated by "Forbes" to have a net worth of 11.5 billion. He has committed to the Giving Pledge and has pledged to give away at least half of his wealth to philanthropy.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: Soon-Shiong was born in Port Elizabeth, Union of South Africa, to Chinese immigrant parents who fled from China during the Japanese occupation in World War II. His parents were Hakka originally from Meixian District in Guangdong province. His ancestral surname is Wong (黃).


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: Soon-Shiong graduated 4th out of his class of 189 from the University of Witwatersrand, receiving a bachelor's degree in medicine (MBBCh) at age 23. He completed his medical internship at Johannesburg's General Hospital. He then studied at the University of British Columbia, where he earned a master's degree in 1979, with research awards from the American College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, and the American Association of Academic Surgery.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: He moved to the United States and began surgical training at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and became a board-certified surgeon in 1984. Soon-Shiong is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (Canada) and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: Soon-Shiong joined UCLA Medical School in 1983 and served on that faculty until 1991, as a transplant surgeon. Between 1984 and 1987, he served as an associate investigator at the Center for Ulcer Research and Education. Soon-Shiong performed the first whole-pancreas transplant done at UCLA, and he developed and first performed the experimental Type 1 diabetes-treatment known as encapsulated-human-islet transplant, and the "first pig-to-man islet-cell transplant in diabetic patients." After a period in industry, he returned to UCLA in 2009, serving as a professor of microbiology, immunology, molecular genetics and bioengineering until this date. Soon-Shiong served as a visiting professor at Imperial College, London, in 2011.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: Soon-Shiong purchased Fujisawa, which sold injectable generic drugs, in 1998. He used its revenues to develop Abraxane, which took an existing chemotherapy drug, Taxol, and wrapped it in protein that made it easier to deliver to tumors. He was able to quickly move it through the regulatory process and made his fortune with this medicine.<ref name="Forb 2020/08/27"></ref> In 1991, Soon-Shiong left UCLA to start a diabetes and cancer biotechnology firm called VivoRx Inc. This led to the founding in 1997 of APP Pharmaceuticals, of which he held 80% of outstanding stock and sold to Fresenius SE for $4.6 billion in July 2008. Soon-Shiong later founded Abraxis BioScience (maker of the drug, Abraxane), a company he sold to Celgene in 2010 in a cash-and-stock deal valued at over $3 billion.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: Soon-Shiong founded NantHealth in 2007 to provide fiber-optic, cloud-based data infrastructure to share healthcare information. Soon-Shiong went on to found NantWorks in September 2011, whose mission was "to converge ultra-low power semiconductor technology, supercomputing, high performance, secure advanced networks and augmented intelligence to transform how we work, play, and live." In October 2012, Soon-Shiong announced that NantHealth's supercomputer-based system and network were able to analyze the genetic data from a tumor sample in 47 seconds and transfer the data in 18 seconds. The goal of developing this infrastructure and digital technologies was to share genomic information among sequencing centers, medical research hubs and hospitals, and to advance cancer research and big science endeavors such as The Cancer Genome Atlas. In January 2013, he founded another biotech company, NantOmics, to develop cancer drugs based on protein kinase inhibitors. NantOmics and its sister company, NantHealth, were subsidiaries of NantWorks. Soon-Shiong stated that NantWorks' vision for the future of cancer treatment was a convergence of multiple technologies that included diagnostics, supercomputing, network modeling of sharing data on tumor genes and personalized cocktails of cancer drugs in multi-target attacks, to achieve a sustained disease-free state.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: In 2010, with Arizona State University and the University of Arizona, Soon-Shiong founded the Healthcare Transformation Institute (HTI), which he dubs a "do-tank". HTI's mission is to promote a shift in health care in the United States by better integrating the three now separate domains of medical science, health delivery, and healthcare finance. In July 2015, Soon-Shiong initiated an IPO for NantKwest (formerly ConkWest) that represented the highest value biotech IPO in history, at a market value of $2.6 billion. In April 2016, the "Los Angeles Times" reported that Soon-Shiong received a pay package in 2015 from NantKwest worth almost $148 million, making him one of the highest paid CEOs. Soon-Shiong is also a member of the Berggruen Institute's 21st Century Council.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: In early 2016, Soon-Shiong launched the National Immunotherapy Coalition to encourage rival pharmaceutical companies to work together to test combinations of cancer-fighting drugs. He has also met numerous times with former vice president and current US president Joe Biden to discuss more ambitious approaches to fighting cancer, including conducting genomic sequencing of 100,000 patients to create a massive database of potential genetic factors.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: In 2017, as announced by press secretary Sean Spicer, then President-elect Donald Trump met with Soon-Shiong at his Bedminster, New Jersey estate to discuss national medical priorities. In May 2017, Soon-Shiong was appointed by House Speaker Paul Ryan to the Health Information Technology Advisory Committee, a committee established by the 21st Century Cures Act.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: In 2017, Soon-Shiong and his wife were invited by the Smithsonian to be part of the permanent exhibit "Many Voices, One Nation" in the West Wing of the Smithsonian museum in Washington DC.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: In early 2021, Soon-Shiong merged a publicly traded company NantKwest (NASDAQ: NK) with a privately held entity ImmunityBio (formerly NantCell). The new public entity after the merger is known as ImmunityBio, Inc. trading in NASDAQ under ticker symbol: IBRX.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: By summer 2021, ImmunityBio had developed a T cell-inducing universal COVID-19 vaccine booster shot had reached Phase III trials in his native South Africa, with a stated goal of completely blocking transmission and stemming an endemic tide of COVID-19 variants. In December 2021, Dr. Soon-Shiong shared pre-clinical results of giving two different vaccine platforms (heterologous) and showed beneficial T cell levels using an adenovirus and mRNA technology.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: [40] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/opinion/sway-kara-swisher-patrick-soon-shiong.html?showTranscript=1


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: In September 2021, Soon-Shiong and President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa announced via a virtual press conference a new venture called NantSA with NantWorks to expand the capability of vaccine development for Africa. NantWorks has signed a collaboration agreement with the South African government’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) and the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: In January 2022, Soon-Shiong opened a new manufacturing facility and campus in Cape Town, South Africa with President Ramaphosa. Soon-Shiong and his entities are reported to be investing over 4 billion RAND (~$250 million dollars) into the continent.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: In Feb 2022, Soon-Shiong announced results from ImmunityBio regarding a clinical trial in Non-Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer (NMIBC) with a 24.1 median duration and 71% complete remission.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: In September 2014, NantWorks LLC, a company headed by Soon-Shiong, invested $2.5 million in AccuRadio.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: In February 2018, the "Los Angeles Times" reported that Soon-Shiong's investment firm NantCapital reached a deal to purchase the paper and "The San Diego Union-Tribune" from Tronc Inc. for "nearly $500 million in cash" as well as the assumption of $90 million in pension obligations. Soon-Shiong, with this acquisition, became one of the first Asian-Americans to be a media proprietor through ownership in a major daily newspaper in the United States. The sale closed on June 18, 2018.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: In September 2018, his company NantEnergy announced the development of a zinc air battery with a projected cost of $100 per kilowatt-hour (less than one-third the cost of lithium-ion batteries).


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: In 2019, Soon-Shiong became an investor in a graphene based technology company in Europe called Directa Plus. He is currently a 28% owner of the company.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: In 2021, Soon-Shiong announced a new investment of $29 million in a biorenewables company called NantRenewables in SeaPoint, Savannah, Georgia.


title: Patrick Soon-Shiong

text: Soon-Shiong is married to former actress Michele B. Chan. They have two children, including Nika Soon-Shiong, and live in Los Angeles, California. He is an avid basketball and football fan.


title: Hypersonic weapon

text: Hypersonic weapons are weapons travelling at hypersonic speed – at between 5 and 25 times the speed of sound, about .


title: Hypersonic weapon

text: Below such speeds, weapons would be characterized as subsonic or supersonic, while above such speeds, the molecules of the atmosphere disassociate into a plasma which makes control and communication difficult. Directed-energy weapons such as lasers may operate at higher speeds but are considered a different class of weaponry.


title: Hypersonic weapon

text: Currently China, India, Iran, Russia and US have developed fully functional hypersonic weapons in the form of glide vehicles, ballistic missiles, rail guns and air breathing cruise missiles having their own respective independent programs and have demonstrated


title: Glenn Quinn

text: Glenn Martin Christopher Francis Quinn (28 May 1970 – 3 December 2002) was an Irish actor, best known for his portrayal of Mark Healy on the 1990s family sitcom "Roseanne" and his role as the half-demon Allen Francis Doyle on "Angel", a spin-off series of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer".


title: Glenn Quinn

text: Glenn Martin Christopher Francis Quinn was born in Dublin on 28 May 1970, the son of Bernadette Quinn (née Brady) and Murty Quinn. His father was a musician and singer with the Miami Showband, who had seven 1 hits in the 1960s and 1970s. He was raised in the Cabinteely suburb of Dublin, and attended Clonkeen College. In 1988, at the age of 18 he moved to the United States along with his mother and two sisters, Sonya and Louisa, who settled in Los Angeles. He also had a third sibling whom he never met, his brother, Ciaran, who had been put up for adoption as a baby. Quinn did not know of his existence prior to his death.


title: Glenn Quinn

text: In 1990, Quinn did television commercials for Pepsi and Ray-Ban, appeared in the music video for the Richard Marx song "Satisfied", and had his first speaking line in the pilot of "Beverly Hills, 90210" after having endured eight separate auditions for the roles of Brandon Walsh and Steve Sanders (played by Jason Priestley and Ian Ziering, respectively). Casting director Johanna Ray gave him a small role with two speaking lines in the pilot, however Quinn was barely visible in the final broadcast version.


title: Glenn Quinn

text: In 1991, Quinn had his first major film role in the musical film "Shout", starring John Travolta and Heather Graham, sharing an on-screen kiss with Gwyneth Paltrow in her debut film.


title: Glenn Quinn

text: In 1990, Quinn was cast as the recurring character Mark Healy, Becky Conner's boyfriend and later husband, in "Roseanne" in its third season and remained a series regular through its ninth and final season in 1997. In 1992, while still on "Roseanne", Quinn also took a main role on the US and UK TV series "Covington Cross" and in the same year, co-starred with Holly Marie Combs in the slasher film, "Dr. Giggles". In 1997, he played dual roles in the horror anthology "Campfire Tales".


title: Glenn Quinn

text: In 1999, after seven years of using an American accent on "Roseanne", Quinn was pleased when producers cast him in the role of Allen Francis Doyle on the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" spin-off series, "Angel". Although the character was not written as Irish, he was allowed to use his native Irish accent at the suggestion of series creator, Joss Whedon. In an interview with "The Irish Times", he said of his accent, "I've been hiding it for so long that it's amazing to have some freedom. It was like putting on an old pair of shoes. It's bringing my soul back to life." Whedon stated that the character was supposed to die early in the first season, but the character became a fan favorite. Whedon informed Quinn and promised him a "hero's exit".


title: Glenn Quinn

text: Quinn struggled with substance abuse throughout his life, starting when he was a teenager in Ireland in 1987. Unable to maintain sobriety, he was eventually bought out as the owner of Goldfingers nightclub in Los Angeles in 1997. He returned to Ireland in 1997 to be with his family, who supported him in achieving short periods of sobriety and spent time in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. He would later return to Los Angeles to resume his acting career.


title: Glenn Quinn

text: On 3 December 2002, at the age of 32, Quinn was found dead at a friend's home in North Hollywood, California, where he had been staying for a few months. An autopsy found that he had died from an accidental drug overdose earlier that day.


title: Glenn Quinn

text: During production of the tenth season of "Roseanne", which aired in 2018, it was decided that Quinn's role of Mark Healy would not be recast, and his role was written off the show as having died years ago. It introduced, however, a new Mark Healy, the son of Darlene Conner and David Healy. The series paid tribute to Quinn at the end of one of its episodes, "Eggs Over, Not Easy."


title: Glenn Quinn

text: In 2019, during "Entertainment Weekly" 20th-anniversary reunion of the cast of "Angel", actor David Boreanaz stated that "Glenn played a great character, but also became a really close friend of mine. God rest his soul."


title: 1950s

text: The 1950s (pronounced nineteen-fifties; commonly abbreviated as the "Fifties" or the "50s") (among other variants) was a decade that began on January 1, 1950, and ended on December 31, 1959.


title: 1950s

text: Throughout the decade, the world continued its recovery from World War II, aided by the post-World War II economic expansion. The period also saw great population growth with increased birth rates and the emergence of the baby boomer generation. Despite this recovery, the Cold War developed from its modest beginnings in the late 1940s to a heated competition between the Soviet Union and the United States by the early 1960s. The ideological clash between communism and capitalism dominated the decade, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, with conflicts including the Korean War in the early 1950s, the Cuban Revolution, the beginning of the Vietnam War in French Indochina, and the beginning of the Space Race with the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957. Along with increased testing of nuclear weapons (such as RDS-37 and Upshot–Knothole), the tense geopolitical situation created a politically conservative climate. In the United States, a wave of anti-communist sentiment known as the Second Red Scare resulted in Congressional hearings by both houses in Congress. The beginning of decolonization in Africa and Asia also took place in this decade and accelerated in the following decade. During the 1950s, the world population increased from 2.5 to 3.0 billion, with approximately 1 billion births and 500 million deaths.


title: 1950s

text: Inflation was moderate during the decade of the 1950s. The first few months had a deflationary hangover from the 1940s but the first full year ended with what looked like the beginnings of massive inflation with annual inflation rates ranging from 8% to 9% a year. By 1952 inflation subsided. 1954 and 1955 flirted with deflation again but the remainder of the decade had moderate inflation ranging from 1% to 3.7%. The average annual inflation for the entire decade was only 2.04%.


title: 1950s

text: The recently invented bipolar transistor, though initially quite feeble, had clear potential and was rapidly improved and developed at the beginning of the 1950s by companies such as GE, RCA, and Philco. The first commercial transistor production started at the Western Electric plant in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in October, 1951 with the point contact germanium transistor. It wasn't until around 1954 that transistor products began to achieve real commercial success with small portable radios.


title: 1950s

text: A breakthrough in semiconductor technology came with the invention of the MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor), also known as the MOS transistor, by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs, in November 1959. It revolutionized the electronics industry, and became the fundamental building block of the Digital Revolution. The MOSFET went on to become the most widely manufactured device in history.


title: 1950s

text: Television, which first reached the marketplace in the 1940s, attained maturity during the 1950s and by the end of the decade, most American households owned a TV set. A rush to produce larger screens than the tiny ones found on 1940s models occurred during 1950–52. In 1954, RCA intro Bell Telephone Labs produced the first Solar battery. In 1954, a yard of contact paper could be purchased for only 59 cents. Polypropylene was invented in 1954. In 1955, Jonas Salk invented a polio vaccine which was given to more than seven million American students. In 1956, a solar powered wrist watch was invented.


title: 1950s

text: A surprise came in 1957: a satellite named Sputnik 1 was launched by the Soviets. The space race began 4 months later as the United States launched a smaller satellite.


title: 1950s

text: Popular music in the early 1950s was essentially a continuation of the crooner sound of the previous decade, with less emphasis on the jazz-influenced big band style and more emphasis on a conservative, operatic, symphonic style of music. Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Frankie Laine, Patti Page, Judy Garland, Johnnie Ray, Kay Starr, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Dean Martin, Georgia Gibbs, Eddie Fisher, Teresa Brewer, Dinah Shore, Kitty Kallen, Joni James, Peggy Lee, Julie London, Toni Arden, June Valli, Doris Day, Arthur Godfrey, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Guy Mitchell, Nat King Cole, and vocal groups like the Mills Brothers, The Ink Spots, The Four Lads, The Four Aces, The Chordettes, The Fontane Sisters, The Hilltoppers and the Ames Brothers. Jo Stafford's "You Belong To Me" was the #1 song of 1952 on the Billboard Top 100 chart.


title: 1950s

text: The middle of the decade saw a change in the popular music landscape as classic pop was swept off the charts by rock-and-roll. Crooners such as Eddie Fisher, Perry Como, and Patti Page, who had dominated the first half of the decade, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed by the decade's end.


title: 1950s

text: doo-wop entered the pop charts in the 1950s. Its popularity soon spawns the parody "Who Put the Bomp".


title: 1950s

text: Rock-n-roll emerged in the mid-1950s with Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, Jackie Wilson, Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard, James Brown, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, Bobby Darin, Ritchie Valens, Duane Eddy, Eddie Cochran, Brenda Lee, Bobby Vee, Connie Francis, Johnny Mathis, Neil Sedaka, Pat Boone and Ricky Nelson being notable exponents. In the mid-1950s, Elvis Presley became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television appearances and chart-topping records. Chuck Berry, with "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), refined and developed the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, focusing on teen life and introducing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music. Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Everly Brothers, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty, Johnny Horton, and Marty Robbins were Rockabilly musicians. Doo-wop was another popular genre at the time. Popular Doo Wop and Rock-n-Roll bands of the mid to late 1950s include The Platters, The Flamingos, The Dells, The Silhouettes, Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers, Little Anthony and The Imperials, Danny & the Juniors, The Coasters, The Drifters, The Del-Vikings and Dion and the Belmonts.


title: 1950s

text: The new music differed from previous styles in that it was primarily targeted at the teenager market, which became a distinct entity for the first time in the 1950s as growing prosperity meant that young people did not have to grow up as quickly or be expected to support a family. Rock-and-roll proved to be a difficult phenomenon for older Americans to accept and there were widespread accusations of it being a communist-orchestrated scheme to corrupt the youth, although rock and roll was extremely market based and capitalistic.


title: 1950s

text: Jazz stars in the 1950s who came into prominence in their genres called bebop, hard bop, cool jazz and the blues, at this time included Lester Young, Ben Webster, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Art Tatum, Bill Evans, Ahmad Jamal, Oscar Peterson, Gil Evans, Jerry Mulligan, Cannonball Adderley, Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Art Blakey, Max Roach, the Miles Davis Quintet, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Nina Simone, and Billie Holiday.


title: 1950s

text: The American folk music revival became a phenomenon in the United States in the 1950s to mid-1960s with the initial success of The Weavers who popularized the genre. Their sound, and their broad repertoire of traditional folk material and topical songs inspired other groups such as the Kingston Trio, the Chad Mitchell Trio, The New Christy Minstrels, and the "collegiate folk" groups such as The Brothers Four, The Four Freshmen, The Four Preps, and The Highwaymen. All featured tight vocal harmonies and a repertoire at least initially rooted in folk music and topical songs.


title: 1950s

text: On 3 February 1959, a chartered plane transporting the three American rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson goes down in foggy conditions near Clear Lake, Iowa, killing all four occupants on board, including pilot Roger Peterson. The tragedy is later termed "The Day the Music Died", popularized in Don McLean's 1972 song "American Pie". This event, combined with the conscription of Elvis Presley into the US Army, is often taken to mark the point where the era of 1950s rock-and-roll ended.


title: 1950s

text: The 1950s are known as The Golden Age of Television by some people. Sales of TV sets rose tremendously in the 1950s and by 1950 4.4 million families in America had a television set. Americans devoted most of their free time to watching television broadcasts. People spent so much time watching TV, that movie attendance dropped and so did the number of radio listeners. Television revolutionized the way Americans see themselves and the world around them. TV affects all aspects of American culture. "Television affects what we wear, the music we listen to, what we eat, and the news we receive."


title: 1950s

text: European cinema experienced a renaissance in the 1950s following the deprivations of World War II. Italian director Federico Fellini won the first foreign language film Academy Award with "La Strada" and garnered another Academy Award with "Nights of Cabiria". In 1955, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman earned a Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival with "Smiles of a Summer Night" and followed the film with masterpieces "The Seventh Seal" and "Wild Strawberries". Jean Cocteau's "Orphée", a film central to his Orphic Trilogy, starred Jean Marais and was released in 1950. French director Claude Chabrol's "Le Beau Serge" is now widely considered the first film of the French New Wave. Notable European film stars of the period include Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Max von Sydow, and Jean-Paul Belmondo.


title: 1950s

text: Japanese cinema reached its zenith with films from director Akira Kurosawa including "Rashomon", "Ikiru", "Seven Samurai", "Throne of Blood", and "The Hidden Fortress". Other distinguished Japanese directors of the period were Yasujirō Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi. Russian fantasy director Aleksandr Ptushko's mythological epics "Sadko", "Ilya Muromets", and "Sampo" were internationally acclaimed as was "Ballad of a Soldier", a 1959 Soviet film directed by Grigory Chukhray.


title: 1950s

text: In Hollywood, the epic "Ben-Hur" grabbed a record 11 Academy Awards in 1959 and its success gave a new lease of life to motion picture studio MGM.


title: 1950s

text: Animated films in the 1950s presented by Walt Disney included "Alice in Wonderland", "Cinderella", "Peter Pan" and "Lady and the Tramp", followed by "Sleeping Beauty".


title: 1950s

text: In the early 1950s Abstract expressionism and artists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning were enormously influential. However, by the late 1950s Color Field painting and Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko's paintings became more in focus to the next generation.


title: 1950s

text: Pop art used the iconography of television, photography, comics, cinema and advertising. With its roots in dadaism, it started to take form towards the end of the 1950s when some European artists started to make the symbols and products of the world of advertising and propaganda the main subject of their artistic work. This return of figurative art, in opposition to the abstract expressionism that dominated the aesthetic scene since the end of World War II was dominated by Great Britain until the early 1960s when Andy Warhol, the most known artist of this movement began to show Pop Art in galleries in the United States.


title: 1950s

text: The 1950s saw the birth of the teenager and with it rock n roll and youth fashion dominating the fashion industry. In the UK the Teddy boy became both style icons and anti-authoritarian figures. While in America Greasers had a similar social position. Previously teenagers dressed similarly to their parents but now a rebellious and different youth style was being developed. This was particularly noticeable in the overtly sexual nature of their dress. Men wore tight trousers, leather jackets and emphasis was on slicked, greasy hair.


title: 1950s

text: New ideas meant new designers who had a concept of what was fashion. Fashion started gaining a voice and style when Christian Dior created “The New Look” collection. The 1950s was not only about spending on luxurious brands but also the idea of being comfortable was created. It was a time where resources were available and it was a new type of fashion. Designers were creating collections with different materials such as: taffeta, nylon, rayon, wool and leather that allowed different colors and patterns. People started wearing artificial fibers because it was easier to take care of and it was price effective. It was a time where shopping was part of a lifestyle.


title: 1950s

text: Different designers emerged or made a comeback on the 1950s because as mention before it was a time for fashion and ideas. The most important designers from the time were:


title: 1950s

text: Christian Dior: everything started in 1947 after World War II was over. Christian Dior found that there were a lot of resources in the market. He created the famous and inspirational collection named “The New Look.” This consisted on the idea of creating voluminous dresses that would not only represent wealth but also show power on women. This collection was the first collection to use 80 yards of fabric. He introduced the idea of the hourglass shape for women; wide shoulders, tight waistline and then voluminous full skirts. Dior was a revolutionary and he was the major influence for the next collections. He is known for always developing new ideas and designs, which led to a rapid expansion and becoming worldwide known. He had pressure to create innovative designs for each collection and Dior did manage to provide that to the consumers. He not only made the hourglass shape very famous but he also developed the H-line as well as the A and Y-Lines. Dior was a very important designer, he changed the way fashion was looked on the world but most importantly he reestablished Paris as a fashion capital.


title: 1950s

text: Cristobal Balenciaga: Cristobal Balenciaga a Spanish designer who opened his first couture house in 1915. In 1936, he went to Paris in order to avoid the Spanish Civil War, there he had inspiration for his fashion collections. His designs were an inspiration for emerging designers of the time. His legacy is as important as the one from Dior, revolutionaries. He was known for creating sack dresses, heavy volumes and balloon skirts. For him everything started when he worked for Marquesa de Casa Torre who became his patron and main source of inspiration. Marquesa de Casa Torre helped Balenciaga enter the world of couture. His first suit was very dramatic. The suit consisted on cutout and cut-ins the waist over a slim skirt, something not seen before. Balenciaga was a revolutionary designer who was not afraid to cut and let loose because he had everything under control. In the 1950s and 1960s his designs were well known for attention to color and texture. He was creating different silhouettes for women, in 1955 he created the tunic, 1957 the sack dress and 1958 the Empire styles. He was known for moving from tailored designs to shapeless allowing him to show portion and balance on the bodies. Showing that his designs evolved with time and maintained his ideologies.


title: 1950s

text: Coco Chanel: Her style was well known over the world and her idea of having functional luxurious clothing influenced other designers from the era. Chanel believed that luxurious should come from being comfortable that is why her designers were so unique and different from the time period, she also achieved her looks by adding accessories such as pearl necklaces. Chanel believed that even though Dior designs were revolutionary for the time period they did not managed to represent the women of the time. She believed women had to wear something to represent their survival to another war and their active roles in society. Coming back from a closed house of fashion was not easy for Chanel and competing against younger designers. The Chanel suit was known as a status symbol for wealthy and powerful women. Chanel influenced over the years and her brand is still one of the most influential brands for fashion.


title: 1950s

text: The 1958 World Cup is notable for marking the debut on the world stage of a then largely unknown 17-year-old Pelé.


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: Fallen is the debut studio album by American rock band Evanescence, released on March 4, 2003 by Wind-up Records. Co-founders singer and pianist Amy Lee and guitarist Ben Moody began writing and recording songs as Evanescence in 1995, and after releasing several EPs and a demo CD, Evanescence signed to Wind-up in January 2001. Several of the songs from their earlier independent releases feature on "Fallen". The album was recorded between August and December 2002 in several studios in California. It is Evanescence's only album to feature Moody, who left the band in October 2003.


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: The album yielded four singles: "Bring Me to Life", "Going Under", "My Immortal", and "Everybody's Fool". "Bring Me to Life" and "My Immortal" charted in the top 10 of over 10 countries, including the US, UK and Australia. "Fallen" is the band's most commercially successful album to date, selling 10 million copies in the US and over 17 million copies worldwide, making it the sixth best-selling album of the 21st century. It debuted at number seven on the "Billboard" 200 with 141,000 copies sold in its first week, peaking at number three in June 2003. The album topped the charts in more than 10 countries. It was certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in December 2022.


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: "Fallen" received generally positive reviews from music critics. Evanescence received five nominations at the 46th Grammy Awards: Album of the Year, Best Rock Album, Best Rock Song, Best Hard Rock Performance, and Best New Artist, winning the latter two. At the following year's ceremony, "My Immortal" was nominated for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. Evanescence embarked on their first headlining concert tour, the "Fallen" Tour, in 2003. A live album and concert DVD with behind the scenes footage was released in 2004, titled "Anywhere but Home".


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: After Evanescence was formed by Lee and Moody in 1995, they recorded three independent EPs, a demo CD, "Origin" (2000), and signed with Wind-up Records in 2001. In an MTV interview, Moody said that he and Lee rarely wrote together, it was "maybe two or three times in eight years did we actually sit down and write together in the same room." Lee said that the creation of "Fallen" largely consisted of her and Moody writing music separately and then adding to each other's work, due to tension and significant creative differences between them. Lee's creative disagreements with Moody included his strict approach to songwriting and focus on commerciality; he would "always be corralling" her ideas, and wanting to push them in a more commercial, pop direction. She indicated that with Moody there was a "pressure of wanting to rule the world". "It was always a push and pull between us, for me", she said. ""Fallen" really is a lot of compromise. It definitely leaned toward what he wanted a lot of the time." Creative restrictions included instrumentation decisions such as her wanting to play organ on the record and Moody not wanting that. Moody conceded that they had different approaches, adding that Lee is "more creative" and "more educated musically", and he is "more commercial minded" and likes making "songs people can adhere to." In 2004, Lee expressed that the making of "Fallen" was stressful because "we had to remember [that] at least one big single had to be totally radio-friendly. And I'm really ready not to think that way."


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: "Fallen" was recorded in California at Track Record Studios, NRG Recording Studios, Ocean Studios, and Conway Recording Studios, beginning at Ocean Studios in Burbank, where "Bring Me to Life" was recorded prior to full album production. Recorded and mixed from late August to early December 2002, the album was "built on overdubs" to supplement "the depth of production" that the music involves; "this type of record should be done to where it sounds larger than life", producer Dave Fortman said.


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: Songs were recorded as demos before the recording sessions, and "My Immortal", "Imaginary", and "Whisper" were originally from Lee and Moody's earlier independent demo recordings. They had originally recorded "My Immortal" at the radio station where Lee's father worked after it was empty late at night; this recording, with demo vocals and a MIDI keyboard, is the version used on "Fallen" per the label's demand, to Lee's displeasure. She stated: Lee later said she also dislikes it because she "sounds like a little kid" and the album version of the song does not use David Campbell's orchestration. When "My Immortal" became a single, Lee and Moody chose their preferred version of the song for radio and its music video.


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: Jay Baumgardner lent Moody his guitar gear, including Gibson Les Paul and Gibson SG guitars, Marshall and Mesa Boogie amp heads with an old Mesa Boogie cabinet. Moody said, "It was an old cabinet that was tried-and-true on rock records. It was a no-brainer to use it. I know it was used on Papa Roach and, I think, Staind." The guitars on the album were recorded at Mad Dog Studios in Burbank. Fortman recorded the guitars through two different amps: Marshall on one side and Mesa/Boogie on the other. "The differences tonally and with the different frequencies in the two different amps really do create a larger stereo feel", he said. He used two Shure 57 mics and ran them through Neve 1081 preamps directly to Pro Tools.


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: Lee's vocals, recorded on a Neumann U47 tube mic, pianos and the background vocals by the Millennium Choir were recorded at NRG Recording Studios. The orchestral parts were arranged by David Campbell and David Hodges except for "My Immortal", which was arranged by composer Graeme Revell. A 22-piece string section was recorded in Seattle, and later mixed at the Newman Scoring Stage and Bolero Studios in Los Angeles. To record the 12-member Millennium Choir's voices, Fortman ran a stereo pair of U67s and their voices were then doubled or tripled for a larger sound. In the bridge of "Imaginary", Fortman said "there are probably 70-plus people performing at that moment", including "the choir that's been doubled, a string orchestra with 22 players doubled, then you add all of the bandmembers, and it's huge."


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: Drum tracks were recorded at Ocean Studios, with Josh Freese playing on selected songs to a click track, stereo guitars and vocals. Fortman recorded Fresse's drums with C12As for overheads, Audio-Technica ATM25s on the toms, a D112 on the inside of the kick drum, a U47 on the outside, and an NS-10 speaker as an outside mic. He also used 414 microphones on the ride and hi-hat cymbals. He recorded the drums on two-inch tape on a Studer recorder, and bounced the tracks in Pro Tools.


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: "Fallen" was mixed over a two-week period at Conway Recording Studios in North Hollywood, and mastered by Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound in New York City.


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: Lee said that she generally writes songs alone first on the piano or on acoustic guitar, and for "Fallen" she would write a song and work with Moody to "take it to the finish line." Lee and Moody had composed some of the songs on "Fallen" when they were 15 and 16. Lee also wrote the choir parts on the album, and is credited with the choral arrangements.


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: Most of Lee's writing on "Fallen" was driven by her mindset during an abusive relationship she was in. "Going Under", the first song on the album and its second single, Lee wrote about "coming out of a bad relationship". She described the feeling as, "when you're at the end of your rope, when you're at the point where you realize something has to change, that you can't go on living in the situation that you're in." Lee later said that after completing the songs that came out of an abusive relationship, she was listening to her words on "Going Under" and felt that in the chorus she would have liked to have written instead the notion of "I'm leaving and I'm not going to put up with this anymore", thinking to herself "you know what you need to do and you're not doing it." "Billboard" said that the "stop/start cadence" of the guitar, "rippling piano and Lee's defiant wail pack a startling wallop".


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: Written by Lee when she was 19, "Bring Me to Life" is stylistically on the album a nu metal-rap rock song, which Lee disliked as the label forced them to add the male rapping vocal. She wrote the song after a then-acquaintance asked her if she was happy, and while in an abusive relationship at the time, she lied in response. The acquaintance seeing through her facade, as she felt she "was completely outwardly acting normal", inspired her to write the track.


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: The song is about "open-mindedness" and "waking up to all the things you've been missing for so long", Lee said, realizing that "for months I'd been numb, just going through the motions of life." She later confirmed that the acquaintance was Josh Hartzler, a therapist who became a close friend and she married in 2007. "From the sparkling piano to the epic choruses, to Lee's siren call", "Billboard" considered "Bring Me to Life" "Fallen"s "definitive track."


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: Lee wrote "Everybody's Fool", the album's fourth single, in 1999 about the lie of pop stardom life and unrealistic, over-sexualized images that warped the youth's expectations. In a VH1 interview, Lee explained how the song came about: "My little sister was really getting into these, I don't want to offend anyone, but like really fake, cheesy, slutty female cracker-box idols, and it really pissed me off. She started dressing like them and she was like 8 years old. So I gave her the talk and I wrote a song." She said it is not about a specific person, but about a collective of the industry that promotes detrimental images and ideals of perfection while "nobody looks like that. It's all fake and it's really hurting a lot of girls' and women's self images." Songfacts stated that the song's concept "seems like it's always relevant". When asked about it in 2016, Lee said she wrote it as "an angsty teenager" about her "frustration with fakeness" that sprung at the time from all the "bubblegum pop acts" that were "put together like products" influencing young people, including her younger siblings. She added: Lee further said that she also acknowledged that "you never know what's going on inside anybody, no matter what they seem like", and that it is a song she has "disconnected" from over the years.


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: "My Immortal" is a piano power ballad, with fictional words written by Moody and the composition worked on by Moody and Lee when they were 16 and 15, respectively. The version on the album was the preferred version of the label, a demo using all keyboard and Lee's demo vocals from when she originally recorded it as a teen, alongside added strings; while the single version used for radio and the music video features a full band performance after the bridge and a new string arrangement.


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: "Haunted"'s production emphasizes "feeling overwhelmed by someone’s obsession with you", according to "Billboard", with Lee "fighting both being possessed and her desire to give in to it." "Tourniquet" is a reworked version of "My Tourniquet", co-written by drummer Rocky Gray for his death metal band Soul Embraced. Gray told Lee the song was "coming from a Christian standpoint, but it's about suicide. It's from the perspective of someone who has just committed suicide and it's about the controversy in Christianity that if you commit suicide, will you go to heaven or hell?"


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: "Imaginary" is a song from Evanescence's 1998 self-titled EP, which Lee wanted as "Fallen" fourth single. She had written it about feeling the need to retreat to her safe haven as a young teen. "Billboard" described the combination of Lee's lyrics, the piano, "crashing drums" and the Millennial Choir as painting "a picture of the heavens shooting overhead". The midtempo "Taking Over Mes lyrics are about Lee being consumed by another person's obsession with her.


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: Lee wrote "Hello" about her little sister who died of an illness when Lee was six years old. The song has a "chilled atmosphere", "Billboard" stated, and "relates, from a child’s perspective, the dawning agony of realizing someone is gone forever." The lyrics of "My Last Breath" imply a struggle for emotional and physical survival. Driven by guitar and Lee's "commanding voice", "Whisper" features the "booming" Millennium Choir singing in Latin, ending the album "on a foreboding note", "Billboard" wrote.


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: Evanescence was initially promoted by their label in Christian stores, and the band then publicly made it clear that they were not a Christian band and did not want to be associated with Christian rock. In April 2003, Wind-up Records chairman Alan Meltzer sent a letter to Christian radio and retail outlets explaining that despite the "spiritual underpinning that ignited interest and excitement in the Christian religious community", Evanescence were "a secular band, and as such view their music as entertainment." Meltzer also wrote that even the label "strongly feels that no longer belong in Christian markets." Soon after receiving the letter, many Christian radio stations pulled "Fallen" songs from their playlists. Terry Hemmings, CEO of the Christian music distributor Provident, was puzzled by the band's about-face: "They clearly understood the album would be sold in these channels." In 2003, Lee said she had always opposed the promotion in the Christian market and the "Christian band" identification, while Moody supported it, stating in 2006: "I fought that from the beginning; I never wanted to be associated with it. It was a Ben thing. It's over. It's a new day." Lee stated that Evanescence "has never been a Christian band" and lyrically never had a religious affiliation.


title: Fallen (Evanescence album)

text: "Bring Me to Life" first appeared in a scene of the film "Daredevil" and was included on the , released in February 2003. "Fallen" was released on March 4, 2003. On April 7, 2003, "Bring Me to Life" was released as the album's first single. Wind-up Records president Ed Vetri revealed that when the label introduced the song to radio, radio programmers rejected it, saying, "A chick and a piano? Are you kidding? On rock radio?" However, after the song was released on the "Daredevil" soundtrack, a grassroots fanbase grew and listeners began requesting air play for it, compelling radio stations to reconsider the band. On the worldwide success of the song, Lee said: