title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Recent studies have examined the neural correlates of emergence of the sense of agency under normal circumstances. This appears to involve consistent congruence between what is being produced through efferent outflow to the musculature of the body, and what is being sensed as the presumed product in the periphery of this efferent command signal. In alien hand syndrome, the neural mechanisms involved in establishing that this congruence has occurred may be impaired. This may involve an abnormality in the brain mechanism that differentiates between "re-afference" (the return of kinesthetic sensation from the self-generated "active" limb movement) and "ex-afference" (kinesthetic sensation generated from an externally produced 'passive' limb movement in which an active self does not participate). This brain mechanism is proposed to involve the production of a parallel "efference copy" signal that is sent directly to the somatic sensory regions and is transformed into a "corollary discharge", an expected afferent signal from the periphery that would result from the performance driven by the issued efferent signal. The correlation of the corollary discharge signal with the actual afferent signal returned from the periphery can then be used to determine if, in fact, the intended action occurred as expected. When the sensed result of the action is congruent with the predicted result, then the action can be labelled as self-generated and associated with an emergent sense of agency.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: If, however, the neural mechanisms involved in establishing this sensorimotor linkage associated with self-generated action are faulty, it would be expected that the sense of agency with action would not develop as discussed in the previous section.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: One theory posed to explain these phenomena proposes that the brain has separable neural "premotor" or "agency" systems for managing the process of transforming intentions into overt action. An anteromedial frontal premotor system is engaged in the process of directing exploratory actions based on "internal" drive by releasing or reducing inhibitory control over such actions.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: A 2011 paper reporting on neuronal unit recording in the medial frontal cortex in human subjects showed a clear pre-activation of neurons identified in this area up to several hundred milliseconds prior to the onset of an overt self-generated finger movement and the authors were able to develop a computational model whereby volition emerges once a change in internally generated firing rate of neuronal assemblies in this part of the brain crossed a threshold. Damage to this anteromedial premotor system produces disinhibition and release of such exploratory and object acquisition actions which then occur autonomously. A posterolateral temporo-parieto-occipital premotor system has a similar inhibitory control over actions that withdraw from environmental stimuli as well as the ability to excite actions that are contingent upon and driven by external stimulation, as distinct from internal drive. These two intrahemispheric systems, each of which activates an opposing cortical "tropism", interact through mutual inhibition that maintains a dynamic balance between approaching toward (in other words, with "intent-to-capture" in which contact with and grasping onto the attended object is sought) versus withdrawing from (that is, with "intent-to-escape" in which distancing from the attended object is sought) environmental stimuli in the behavior of the contralateral limbs. Together, these two intrahemispheric agency systems form an integrated trans-hemispheric agency system.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: When the anteromedial frontal "escape" system is damaged, involuntary but purposive movements of an exploratory reach-and-grasp naturewhat Denny-Brown referred to as a "positive" cortical tropismare released in the contralateral limb. This is referred to as a "positive" cortical tropism because eliciting sensory stimuli, such as would result from tactile contact on the volar aspect of the fingers and palm of the hand, are linked to the activation of movement that increases or enhances the eliciting stimulation through a positive feedback connection (see discussion above in section entitled "Parietal and Occipital Lobes").


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: When the posterolateral parieto-occipital "approach" system is damaged, involuntary purposive movements of a release-and-retract nature, such as levitation and instinctive avoidance – what Denny-Brown referred to as a "negative" cortical tropism – are released in the contralateral limb. This is referred to as a "negative" cortical tropism because eliciting sensory stimuli, such as would result from tactile contact on the volar aspect of the fingers and palm of the hand, are linked to the activation of movement that reduces or eliminates the eliciting stimulation through a negative feedback connection (see discussion above in section entitled "Parietal and Occipital Lobes").


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Each intrahemispheric agency system has the potential capability of acting autonomously in its control over the contralateral limb although unitary integrative control of the two hands is maintained through interhemispheric communication between these systems via the projections traversing the corpus callosum at the cortical level and other interhemispheric commissures linking the two hemispheres at the subcortical level.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: One major difference between the two hemispheres is the direct connection between the agency system of the dominant hemisphere and the encoding system based primarily in the dominant hemisphere that links action to its production and through to its interpretation with language and language-encoded thought. The overarching unitary conscious agent that emerges in the intact brain is based primarily in the dominant hemisphere and is closely connected to the organization of language capacity. It is proposed that while relational action in the form of embodied inter-subjective behavior precedes linguistic capacity during infant development, a process ensues through the course of development through which linguistic constructs are linked to action elements in order to produce a language-based encoding of action-oriented knowledge.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: When there is a major disconnection between the two hemispheres resulting from callosal injury, the language-linked dominant hemisphere agent which maintains its primary control over the dominant limb loses, to some degree, its direct and linked control over the separate "agent" based in the nondominant hemisphere, and the nondominant limb, which had been previously responsive and "obedient" to the dominant conscious agent. The possibility of purposeful action occurring outside of the realm of influence of the conscious dominant agent can occur and the basic assumption that both hands are controlled through and subject to the dominant agent is proven incorrect. The sense of agency that would normally arise from movement of the nondominant limb now no longer develops, or, at least, is no longer accessible to consciousness. A new explanatory narrative for understanding the situation in which the now inaccessible nondominant hemisphere based agent is capable of activating the nondominant limb is necessitated.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Under such circumstances, the two separated agents can control simultaneous actions in the two limbs that are directed at opposing purposes although the dominant hand remains linked to the dominant consciously accessible language-linked agent and is viewed as continuing to be under "conscious control" and obedient to conscious will and intent as accessible through thought, while the nondominant hand, directed by an essentially non-verbal agent whose intent can only be inferred by the dominant agent after the fact, is no longer "tied in" and subject to the dominant agent and is thus identified by the conscious language-based dominant agent as having a separate and inaccessible alien agency and associated existence. This theory would explain the emergence of alien behavior in the nondominant limb and intermanual conflict between the two limbs in the presence of damage to the corpus callosum.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: The distinct anteromedial, frontal, and posterolateral temporo-parieto-occipital variants of the alien hand syndrome would be explained by selective injury to either the frontal or the posterior components of the agency systems within a particular hemisphere, with the relevant and specific form of alien behavior developing in the limb contralateral to the damaged hemisphere.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Damage to the corpus callosum can give rise to "purposeful" actions in the person's non-dominant hand (an individual who is left-hemisphere-dominant will experience the left hand becoming alien, and the right hand will turn alien in the person with right-hemisphere dominance).


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: In "the callosal variant", the patient's hand counteracts voluntary actions performed by the other, "good" hand. Two phenomena that are often found in patients with callosal alien hand are "agonistic dyspraxia" and "diagonistic dyspraxia".


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Agonistic dyspraxia involves compulsive automatic execution of motor commands by one hand when the patient is asked to perform movements with the other hand. For example, when a patient with callosal damage was instructed to pull a chair forward, the affected hand would decisively and impulsively push the chair backwards.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Agonistic dyspraxia can thus be viewed as an involuntary competitive interaction between the two hands directed toward completion of a desired act in which the affected hand competes with the unaffected hand to complete a purposive act originally intended to be performed by the unaffected hand.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Diagonistic dyspraxia, on the other hand, involves a conflict between the desired act in which the unaffected hand has been engaged and the interfering action of the affected hand which works to oppose the purpose of the desired act intended to be performed by the unaffected hand. For instance, when Akelaitis's patients underwent surgery to the corpus callosum to reduce epileptic seizures, one patient's left alien hand would frequently interfere with the right hand. For instance, while trying to turn over to the next page with the right hand, his left hand would try to close the book.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: In another case of callosal alien hand, the patient did not have intermanual conflict between the hands but rather from a symptom characterized by involuntary mirror movements of the affected hand. When the patient was asked to perform movements with one hand, the other hand would involuntarily perform a mirror image movement which continued even when the involuntary movement was brought to the attention of the patient, and the patient was asked to restrain the mirrored movement. The patient had a ruptured aneurysm near the anterior cerebral artery, which resulted in the right hand being mirrored by the left hand. The patient described the left hand as frequently interfering and taking over anything the patient tried to do with the right hand. For instance, when trying to grasp a glass of water with the right hand with a right side approach, the left hand would involuntary reach out and grasp hold of the glass through a left side approach.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: More recently, Geschwind et al. described the case of a woman with severe coronary heart disease. One week after undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting, she noticed that her left hand started to "live a life of its own". It would unbutton her gown, try to choke her while asleep and would automatically fight with the right hand to answer the phone. She had to physically restrain the affected hand with the right hand to prevent injury, a behavior which has been termed "self-restriction". The left hand also showed signs of severe ideomotor apraxia. It was able to mimic actions but only with the help of mirror movements executed by the right hand (enabling synkinesis). Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Geschwind et al. found damage to the posterior half of the callosal body, sparing the anterior half and the splenium extending slightly into the white matter underlying the right cingulate cortex.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Park et al. also described two cases of infarction as the origin of alien hand symptoms. Both individuals had had infarction of the anterior cerebral artery (ACA). One individual, a 72-year-old male, had difficulty controlling his hands, as they often moved involuntarily, despite his trying to stabilize them. Furthermore, he often could not let go of objects after grasping them with his palms. The other individual, a 47-year-old female with an ACA in a different location of the artery, complained that her left hand would move on its own and she could not control its movements. Her left hand could also sense when her right hand was holding an object and would involuntarily, forcibly take the object out of her right hand.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Unilateral injury to the medial aspect of the brain's frontal lobe can trigger reaching, grasping and other purposeful movements in the contralateral hand. With anteromedial frontal lobe injuries, these movements are often exploratory reaching movements in which external objects are frequently grasped and utilized functionally, without the simultaneous perception on the part of the patient that they are "in control" of these movements. Once an object has been acquired and is maintained in the grasp of this "frontal variant" form of alien hand, the patient often has difficulty with voluntarily releasing the object from grasp and can sometimes be seen to be peeling the fingers of the hand back off the grasped object using the opposite controlled hand to enable the release of the grasped object (also referred to as tonic grasping or the "instinctive grasp reaction"). Some (for example, the neurologist Derek Denny-Brown) have referred to this behavior as "magnetic apraxia"


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Goldberg and Bloom described a woman with a large cerebral infarction of the medial surface of the left frontal lobe in the territory of the left anterior cerebral artery which left her with the frontal variant of the alien hand involving the right hand. There were no signs of callosal disconnection nor was there evidence of any callosal damage. The patient displayed frequent grasp reflexes; her right hand would reach out and grab objects without releasing them. In regards to tonic grasping, the more the patient tried to let go of the object, the more the grip of the object tightened. With focused effort the patient was able to let go of the object, but if distracted, the behaviour would re-commence. The patient could also forcibly release the grasped object by peeling her fingers away from contact with the object using the intact left hand. Additionally, the hand would scratch at the patient's leg to the extent that an orthotic device was required to prevent injury. Another patient reported not only tonic grasping towards objects nearby, but the alien hand would take hold of the patient's penis and engage in public masturbation.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: A distinct "posterior variant" form of alien hand syndrome is associated with damage to the posterolateral parietal lobe and/or occipital lobe of the brain. The movements in this situation tend to be more likely to withdraw the palmar surface of the hand away from sustained environmental contact rather than reaching out to grasp onto objects to produce palmar tactile stimulation, as is most often seen in the frontal form of the condition. In the frontal variant, tactile contact on the ventral surface of the palm and fingers facilitates finger flexion and grasp of the object through a positive feedback loop (i.e. the stimulus generates movement that reinforces, strengthens and sustains the triggering stimulation).


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: In contrast, in the posterior variant, tactile contact on the ventral surface of the palm and fingers is actively avoided through facilitation of extension of the fingers and withdrawal of the palm in a negative feedback loop (i.e. the stimulus, and even anticipation of stimulation of the palmar surface of the hand, generates movement of the palm and fingers that reduces and effectively counteracts and eliminates the triggering stimulation, or, in the case of anticipated palmar contact, decreases the likelihood of such contact). Alien movements in the posterior variant of the syndrome also tend to be less coordinated and show a coarse ataxic motion during active movement that is generally not observed in the frontal form of the condition. This is generally thought to be due to an optic form of ataxia since it is facilitated by the visual presence of an object with visual attention directed toward the object. The apparent instability could be due to an unstable interaction between the tactile avoidance tendency biasing toward withdrawal from the object, and the visually based acquisition bias tendency pushing toward an approach to the object.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: The alien limb in the posterior variant of the syndrome may be seen to "levitate" upward into the air withdrawing away from contact surfaces through the activation of anti-gravity musculature. Alien hand movement in the posterior variant may show a typical posture, sometimes referred to as a "parietal hand" or the "instinctive avoidance reaction" (a term introduced by neurologist Derek Denny-Brown as an inverse form of the "magnetic apraxia" seen in the frontal variant, as noted above), in which the digits move into a highly extended position with active extension of the interphalangeal joints of the digits and hyper-extension of the metacarpophalangeal joints, and the palmar surface of the hand is actively pulled back away from approaching objects or up and away from supporting surfaces. The "alien" movements, however, remain purposeful and goal-directed, a point which clearly differentiates these movements from other disorganized non-purposeful forms of involuntary limb movement (e.g. athetosis, chorea, or myoclonus).


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: In both the frontal and the posterior variants of the alien hand syndrome, the patient's reactions to the limb's apparent capability to perform goal-directed actions independent of conscious volition is similar. In both of these variants of alien hand syndrome, the alien hand emerges in the hand contralateral to the damaged hemisphere.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: There is no cure for the alien hand syndrome. However, the symptoms can be reduced and managed to some degree by keeping the alien hand occupied and involved in a task, for example by giving it an object to hold in its grasp. Specific learned tasks can restore voluntary control of the hand to a significant degree. One patient with the "frontal" form of alien hand who would reach out to grasp onto different objects (e.g., door handles) as he was walking was given a cane to hold in the alien hand while walking, even though he really did not need a cane for its usual purpose. With the cane firmly in the grasp of the alien hand, it would generally not release the grasp and drop the cane in order to reach out to grasp onto a different object. Other techniques proven to be effective include; wedging the hand between the legs or slapping it; warm water application and visual or tactile contact. Additionally, Wu et al. found that an irritating alarm activated by biofeedback reduced the time the alien hand held an object.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: In the presence of unilateral damage to a single cerebral hemisphere, there is generally a gradual reduction in the frequency of alien behaviors observed over time and a gradual restoration of voluntary control over the affected hand. Actually, when AHS originates from focal injury of acute onset, recovery usually occurs within a year. One theory is that neuroplasticity in the bihemispheric and subcortical brain systems involved in voluntary movement production can serve to re-establish the connection between the executive production process and the internal self-generation and registration process. Exactly how this may occur is not well understood, but a process of gradual recovery from alien hand syndrome when the damage is confined to a single cerebral hemisphere has been reported. In some instances, patients may resort to constraining the wayward, undesirable and sometimes embarrassing actions of the impaired hand by voluntarily grasping onto the forearm of the impaired hand using the intact hand. This observed behavior has been termed "self-restriction" or "self-grasping".


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: In another approach, the patient is trained to perform a specific task, such as moving the alien hand to contact a specific object or a highly salient environmental target, which is a movement that the patient can learn to generate voluntarily through focused training in order to effectively override the alien behavior. It is possible that some of this training produces a re-organization of premotor systems within the damaged hemisphere, or, alternatively, that ipsilateral control of the limb from the intact hemisphere may be expanded.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Another method involves simultaneously "muffling" the action of the alien hand and limiting the sensory feedback coming back to the hand from environmental contact by placing it in a restrictive "cloak" such as a specialized soft foam hand orthosis or, alternatively, an everyday oven mitt. Other patients have reported using an orthotic device to restrict perseverative grasping or restraining the alien hand by securing it to the bed pole. Of course, this can limit the degree to which the hand can participate in addressing functional goals for the patient and may be considered to be an unjustifiable restraint.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Theoretically, this approach could slow down the process through which voluntary control of the hand is restored if the neuroplasticity that underlies recovery involves the recurrent exercise of voluntary will to control the actions of the hand in a functional context and the associated experiential reinforcement through successful willful suppression of the alien behavior.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: The first known case described in the medical literature appeared in a detailed case report published in German in 1908 by the preeminent German neuro-psychiatrist, Kurt Goldstein. In this paper, Goldstein described a right-handed woman who had had a stroke affecting her left side from which she had partially recovered by the time she was seen. However, her left arm seemed as though it belonged to another person and performed actions that appeared to occur independent of her will.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: The patient complained of a feeling of "strangeness" in relationship to the goal-directed movements of the left hand and insisted that "someone else" was moving the left hand, and that she was not moving it herself. When the left hand grasped an object, she could not voluntarily release it. The senses of touch and proprioception of the left side were impaired. The left hand would make spontaneous movements, such as wiping the face or rubbing the eyes, but these were relatively infrequent. With significant effort, she was able to move her left arm in response to spoken command, but conscious movements were slower or less precise than similar involuntary motions.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Goldstein developed a "doctrine of motor apraxia" in which he discussed the generation of voluntary action and proposed a brain structure for temporal and spatial cognition, will and other higher cognitive processes. Goldstein maintained that a structure conceptually organizing both the body and external space was necessary for object perception as well as for voluntary action on external objects.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: In his classic papers reviewing the wide variety of disconnection syndromes associated with focal brain pathology, Norman Geschwind commented that Kurt Goldstein "was perhaps the first to stress the non-unity of the personality in patients with callosal section, and its possible psychiatric effects".


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: Cristela Alonzo (born ) is an American comedian, actress, writer and producer, who created and starred in the ABC sitcom "Cristela." This made her the first Latina woman to create, produce, write, and star in her own US primetime comedy.


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: Alonzo was raised in San Juan, Texas, the youngest of four children of mother Natalia Gonzalez, who worked double shifts at a Mexican restaurant for about 20 years, and father Adalberto Alonzo, both of whom were from Mexico. When Alonzo's mother was pregnant with Alonzo, Alonzo's mother left her abusive husband and raised the children alone. Alonzo has explained that she never met her father, who died in 2009.


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: She has three siblings, older sister Julisa Maria Alonzo and older brothers Eloy Eduardo Alonzo and Ruben G. Alonzo. Alonzo's mother came from the small village of El Zancarron in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Throughout her childhood, on her mother's weekly day off, Alonzo spent time with her paternal grandmother in Reynosa, Mexico, just across the border.


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: For the first eight years of Alonzo’s life, the family squatted in an abandoned diner, and were homeless and destitute, even with her mother working double shifts as a waitress. She often went hungry, and had problems with skin pigment due to a lack of nutrition. Alonzo said her mother often used humor to offset the abject poverty. Alonzo learned English from watching TV as her family spoke only Spanish at home; her mother never learned to speak English. Television was a way for the family to stay inside, avoiding the violence from drug trafficking in their neighborhood. Alonzo would translate American shows into Spanish and act them out for her mother. Alonzo and her mother were inseparable. Alonzo and her mother shared a bed until Alonzo turned 18.


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: Alonzo was raised in a very strict Catholic household. Because her older sister married young, she spent much of her childhood hanging out with her older brothers and became interested in comic books, trading playing cards, a lot of "", "Dungeons and Dragons", and metal music. She graduated from Pharr-San Juan-Alamo High School.


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: At age 18, Alonzo left home to attend Webster University to study theater in St. Louis. However, Alonzo dropped out because she could no longer afford school. She went back to Dallas and moved in with her sister, where she took care of her mother who was sick and her sister's children. Alonzo's mother died in 2002.


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: In 2003, a year after her mother died, Alonzo got a job as an office manager at the Addison Improv and started doing stand-up. Alonzo said that she started doing stand-up as a way to process her grief and talk about her mom and her family. She was part of a small Dallas scene. Alonzo eventually moved to Los Angeles to become a stand-up comedian.


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: In 2006, Alonzo got her first break in Los Angeles when she was hired to write on a Comedy Central show.


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: Alonzo spent two years traveling on a bus with the Honduran-born American comedian Carlos Mencia and several other comics. Alonzo ended up leaving the tour. Alonzo then spent a lot of time on the road doing college comedy shows, where she found a lot of success.


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: In 2010, Alonzo was a semi-finalist on the TV show "Last Comic Standing", which raised her visibility and led to a May 2011 segment in the comedy showcase "Legally Brown".


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: Alonzo did a 30-minute segment of Comedy Central's "The Half Hour" on June 7, 2013. She has appeared on "Conan", "Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson", "Gabriel Iglesias Presents Stand Up Revolution", "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" and "Live at Gotham".


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: In 2013, with TV producer Becky Clements, Alonzo created her own semi-autobiographical comedy pilot "Cristela" for ABC. She wrote the pilot with her writing partner, Kevin Hench. It was not greenlit as a part of the 2013–2014 television season. In an unusual move, they decided to plan to shoot a pilot presentation with the penalty money (a 30% fee they got when the network initially passed). On February 26, 2014, they shot a pilot presentation, filmed on the stage of "Last Man Standing" with much of that show's crew to save money; it got a strong testing response from the audience.


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: On May 10, 2014, ABC picked up the pilot to series for the 2014–15 television season. After an initial order of 13 episodes, nine additional episodes were ordered, bringing the total count of episodes for season 1 to 22. "Cristela" was a multi-camera show, shot in front of a live audience. The series concluded on May 7, 2015, and has since been cancelled.


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: In 2019, Alonzo published a memoir called "Music to My Years: A Mixtape-Memoir of Growing Up and Standing Up". The memoir release is accompanied by a stand-up tour called "My Affordable Care Act".


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: In 2020, in association with Vox Media Podcast Network, Alonzo hosted and voiced the 11-episode podcast "Chicano Squad," which details the story of a five-man Latino homicide investigation squad who worked to resolve police injustice in the Houston area during the 1970s. The podcast first aired in December 2020 and recorded its final episode on March 16, 2021.


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: In 2021, it was announced that Alonzo would host The CW's revival of the 1990s game show "Legends of the Hidden Temple".


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: Alonzo has a trademark, raucous laugh: "If I’m laughing, you know I’m either very happy or very sad", she said. "I cope with things with jokes." She is an observational comic who reflects on stories in her own life, and was inspired by Bill Cosby and Roseanne Barr and her favorite childhood shows ("The Cosby Show" and "Roseanne").


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: After the 2016 election, Alonzo has stated that with the mentorship and encouragement of Dolores Huerta and poet Sonia Sanchez, she became more politically active, with a focus on immigration and healthcare. She supported Julian Castro for his 2020 presidential campaign. Alonzo has been outspoken as to the lack of representation of Latino candidate Castro on "Saturday Night Live" in their coverage of Democratic candidates. Julian Castro's twin brother Congressman Joaquin Castro introduced Alonzo on-stage on in-video in her 2022 comedy special "Middle Classy", referring to her as "my badass friend".


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: Alonzo was criticized for celebrating the death of Rush Limbaugh on Twitter on February 17, 2021, when she tweeted out the post "Happy Rush Limbaugh is Dead Day. I didn’t even get the chance to put my tree up!" She was further criticized for doubling down by saying that she was "Not sorry...".


title: Cristela Alonzo

text: In January 2014, Alonzo was named as one of "10 L.A. Comedy Acts to Watch in 2014" by "L.A. Weekly". She was also named one of "13 Funny Women to Watch in 2014" by "Cosmopolitan". McAllen, Texas gave her the Key to the City in 2019.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: A tuned mass damper (TMD), also known as a harmonic absorber or seismic damper, is a device mounted in structures to reduce mechanical vibrations, consisting of a mass mounted on one or more damped springs. Its oscillation frequency is tuned to be similar to the resonant frequency of the object it is mounted to, and reduces the object's maximum amplitude while weighing much less than it.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: TMDs can prevent discomfort, damage, or outright structural failure. They are frequently used in power transmission, automobiles and buildings.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: Tuned mass dampers stabilize against violent motion caused by harmonic vibration. They use a comparatively lightweight component to reduce the vibration of a system so that its worst-case vibrations are less intense. Roughly speaking, practical systems are tuned to either move the main mode away from a troubling excitation frequency, or to add damping to a resonance that is difficult or expensive to damp directly. An example of the latter is a crankshaft torsional damper. Mass dampers are frequently implemented with a frictional or hydraulic component that turns mechanical kinetic energy into heat, like an automotive shock absorber.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: Given a motor with mass "m" attached via motor mounts to the ground, the motor vibrates as it operates and the soft motor mounts act as a parallel spring and damper, "k" and "c". The force on the motor mounts is "F". In order to reduce the maximum force on the motor mounts as the motor operates over a range of speeds, a smaller mass, "m", is connected to "m" by a spring and a damper, "k" and "c". "F" is the effective force on the motor due to its operation.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: The graph shows the effect of a tuned mass damper on a simple spring–mass–damper system, excited by vibrations with an amplitude of one unit of force applied to the main mass, "m". An important measure of performance is the ratio of the force on the motor mounts to the force vibrating the motor, . This assumes that the system is linear, so if the force on the motor were to double, so would the force on the motor mounts. The blue line represents the baseline system, with a maximum response of 9 units of force at around 9 units of frequency. The red line shows the effect of adding a tuned mass of 10% of the baseline mass. It has a maximum response of 5.5, at a frequency of 7. As a side effect, it also has a second normal mode and will vibrate somewhat more than the baseline system at frequencies below about 6 and above about 10.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: The heights of the two peaks can be adjusted by changing the stiffness of the spring in the tuned mass damper. Changing the damping also changes the height of the peaks, in a complex fashion. The split between the two peaks can be changed by altering the mass of the damper ("m").


title: Tuned mass damper

text: The Bode plot is more complex, showing the phase and magnitude of the motion of each mass, for the two cases, relative to "F".


title: Tuned mass damper

text: In the plots at right, the black line shows the baseline response ("m" = 0). Now considering "m" = , the blue line shows the motion of the damping mass and the red line shows the motion of the primary mass. The amplitude plot shows that at low frequencies, the damping mass resonates much more than the primary mass. The phase plot shows that at low frequencies, the two masses are in phase. As the frequency increases "m" moves out of phase with "m" until at around 9.5 Hz it is 180° out of phase with "m", maximizing the damping effect by maximizing the amplitude of "x" − "x", this maximizes the energy dissipated into "c" and simultaneously pulls on the primary mass in the same direction as the motor mounts.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: The tuned mass damper was introduced as part of the suspension system by Renault on its 2005 F1 car (the Renault R25), at the 2005 Brazilian Grand Prix. The system reportedly reduced lap times by 0.3 seconds: a phenomenal gain for a relatively simple device. The stewards of the meeting deemed it legal, but the FIA appealed against that decision.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: Two weeks later, the FIA International Court of Appeal deemed the mass damper illegal. It was deemed to be illegal because the mass was not rigidly attached to the chassis; the influence the damper had on the pitch attitude of the car in turn affected the gap under the car and the ground effects of the car. As such, the damper was considered to be a movable aerodynamic device and hence an illegal influence on the performance of the aerodynamics.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: Tuned mass dampers are widely used in production cars, typically on the crankshaft pulley to control torsional vibration and, more rarely, the bending modes of the crankshaft. They are also used on the driveline for gearwhine, and elsewhere for other noises or vibrations on the exhaust, body, suspension or anywhere else. Almost all modern cars will have one mass damper, and some may have ten or more.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: The usual design of damper on the crankshaft consists of a thin band of rubber between the hub of the pulley and the outer rim. This device, often called a harmonic damper, is located on the other end of the crankshaft opposite of where the flywheel and the transmission is. An alternative design is the centrifugal pendulum absorber which is used to reduce the internal combustion engine's torsional vibrations.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: All four wheels of the Citroën 2CV incorporated a tuned mass damper (referred to as a "Batteur" in the original French) of very similar design to that used in the Renault F1 car, from the start of production in 1949 on all four wheels, before being removed from the rear and eventually the front wheels in the mid 1970s.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: The tuned mass damper is widely being used as a method to add damping to bridges. One use-case for tuned mass dampers in bridges is to prevent large vibrations due to resonance with pedestrian loads. By adding a tuned mass damper, damping is added to the structure which causes the vibration of the structure to be reduced as the vibration steady state amplitude is inversely proportional to the damping of the structure.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: One proposal to reduce vibration on NASA's Ares solid fuel booster was to use 16 tuned mass dampers as part of a design strategy to reduce peak loads from 6"g" to 0.25"g", with the TMDs being responsible for the reduction from 1"g" to 0.25"g", the rest being done by conventional vibration isolators between the upper stages and the booster.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: Spin stabilized satellites have nutation development at specific frequencies. Eddy current nutation dampers have flown on spin stabilized satellites to reduce and stabilize nutation.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: High-tension lines often have small barbell-shaped Stockbridge dampers hanging from the wires to reduce the high-frequency, low-amplitude oscillation termed flutter.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: A standard tuned mass damper for wind turbines consists of an auxiliary mass which is attached to the main structure by means of springs and dashpot elements. The natural frequency of the tuned mass damper is basically defined by its spring constant and the damping ratio determined by the dashpot. The tuned parameter of the tuned mass damper enables the auxiliary mass to oscillate with a phase shift with respect to the motion of the structure. In a typical configuration, an auxiliary mass hung below the nacelle of a wind turbine supported by dampers or friction plates.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: When installed in buildings, dampers are typically huge concrete blocks or steel bodies mounted in skyscrapers or other structures, which move in opposition to the resonance frequency oscillations of the structure by means of springs, fluid, or pendulums.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: Unwanted vibration may be caused by environmental forces acting on a structure, such as wind or earthquake, or by a seemingly innocuous vibration source causing resonance that may be destructive, unpleasant or simply inconvenient.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: The seismic waves caused by an earthquake will make buildings sway and oscillate in various ways depending on the frequency and direction of ground motion, and the height and construction of the building. Seismic activity can cause excessive oscillations of the building which may lead to structural failure. To enhance the building's seismic performance, a proper building design is performed engaging various seismic vibration control technologies.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: As mentioned above, damping devices had been used in the aeronautics and automobile industries long before they were standard in mitigating seismic damage to buildings. In fact, the first specialized damping devices for earthquakes were not developed until late in 1950.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: Masses of people walking up and down stairs at once, or great numbers of people stomping in unison, can cause serious problems in large structures like stadiums if those structures lack damping measures.


title: Tuned mass damper

text: The force of wind against tall buildings can cause the top of skyscrapers to move more than a meter. This motion can be in the form of swaying or twisting, and can cause the upper floors of such buildings to move. Certain angles of wind and aerodynamic properties of a building can accentuate the movement and cause motion sickness in people. A TMD is usually tuned to its building's resonant frequency to work efficiently. However, during their lifetimes, high-rise and slender buildings may experience natural resonant frequency changes under wind speed, ambient temperature and relative humidity variations, among other factors, which requires a robust TMD design.


title: Moldovans

text: Moldovans, sometimes referred to as Moldavians ( , Moldovan Cyrillic: молдовень), are a Romance-speaking ethnic group and the largest ethnic group of the Republic of Moldova (75.1% of the population as of 2014) and a significant minority in Ukraine and Russia.


title: Moldovans

text: Bessarabia, Transnistria and the diaspora originating from these regions, self-identified as Moldovans (another 7% of the population of Moldova self-identified as Romanians).


title: Moldovans

text: The variant Moldavians is also used to refer to all inhabitants of the territory of historical Principality of Moldavia, currently divided among Romania (47.5%), Moldova (30.5%) and Ukraine (22%), regardless of ethnic identity. In Romania, natives of Western Moldavia identifying with the term generally declare Romanian ethnicity, while the Moldovans from Bessarabia (the Republic of Moldova included) are usually called "Bessarabians" ().


title: Moldovans

text: According to Miron Costin, a prominent chronicler from 17th-century Moldavia, the inhabitants of the Principality of Moldavia spoke Romanian and called themselves "Moldavians", but also "Romanians" which, he notes, comes from "romanus". Also, the Slavic neighbours called Moldovans "Vlachs" or "Volokhs", a term also used to refer to all native Romance speakers from Eastern Europe and the Balkan peninsula.


title: Moldovans

text: In 1812, the Russian Empire annexed the eastern half of Moldavia and renamed it Bessarabia. As the ethnonym "Romanian" was gaining more and more popularity throughout the remaining territory of Moldavia and Bukovina during the 19th century, its dissemination in Bessarabia, a more backward and rural province of the Russian Empire at the time, was welcomed mostly by the Romanian-oriented intellectuals, while the majority of the rural population continued to use the old self-identification "Moldovans".


title: Moldovans

text: Some authors observe that the Russian officials also initially preferred to refer to the native inhabitants of Bessarabia as "Romanians" (or "Volochi"), but after the 1859 unification of Moldavia and Wallachia they gradually began using the term "Moldavians" for them, to justify the idea of Russifiers and Pan-Slavists to create an identity different from that of the Romanians of Western Moldavia. Historian van Meurs however indicates that some Russian official documents and scholarly studies in the 19th century actually continued to use both "Romanians" and "Moldavians" when referring to the local population, noting that the Russian policy which restricted the use of the Romanian language in Bessarabia was rather part of the general tendency of Russification and of promotion of a tsarist nationality policy as such.


title: Moldovans

text: Van Meurs concludes that before the October Revolution the inhabitants of Bessarabia probably considered themselves "Moldavians" in a "natural, primarily local-territorial sense", and there had been no consistent government-sponsored effort to influence the local nation-building process by promoting a Moldavian identity. Likewise, Historian Charles King notes that the Moldovan peasant's view of his own national identity was not the product of Russian assimilationist policies but had instead remained virtually frozen since 1812.


title: Moldovans

text: Until the 1920s, historians generally considered Moldovans as a subgroup of the Romanian ethnos. After 1924, within the newly created Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet authorities supported the creation of a different standardized language (see Moldovan language) allegedly in order to prove that Moldovans form a separate ethnic group.


title: Moldovans

text: In the past, the terms "Moldovan" or "Moldavian" have been used to refer to the population of the historical Principality of Moldavia. However, for the inhabitants of Bessarabia living under the Russian rule, the term gained an ethnic connotation by the beginning of the 20th century: in May 1917, at a congress of Bessarabian teachers, a dispute arose over the identification of the native population; a group protested against being called "Romanians", affirming they were "Moldovan", while another group, led by poet Alexei Mateevici, supported the view that the Moldovans are also Romanians.


title: Moldovans

text: In 1918, Bessarabia joined the Kingdom of Romania, following a vote of Sfatul Țării. The circumstance of the vote was itself complex, since the Romanian troops were present in Bessarabia at the request of the Sfatul Țării as it was facing exterior threats and anarchy.


title: Moldovans

text: By the time of the union, the largely illiterate Romanian-speaking peasants of Bessarabia did not consider themselves part of a larger Romanian nation, and there was no mass nationalist movement as in other regions, such as in Transylvania.


title: Moldovans

text: The unified Romanian state promoted a common identity for all its Romanian-speaking inhabitants. Owing partly to its relative underdevelopment compared to other regions of Greater Romania, as well as to the low competence and corruption of the new Romanian administration in this province, the integration process of Bessarabia in the unified Romanian state was less successful than in other regions and was soon to be disrupted by the Soviet occupation.


title: Moldovans

text: In 1940, during World War II, Romania agreed to an ultimatum and ceded the region to the Soviet Union, which organized it into the Moldavian SSR. The Soviets began a campaign to promote the Moldovan identity overt that of the rest of Romanian speakers, taking advantage of the incomplete integration of the Bessarabia into the interwar Romania (see also Moldovenism). The official Soviet policy also stated that Romanian and Moldovan were two different languages and, to emphasize this distinction, Moldovan had to be written in a new Cyrillic alphabet (the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet) based on the Russian Cyrillic, rather than the older Romanian Cyrillic that ceased to be used in the 19th century in the Romanian Old Kingdom and in 1917 in Bessarabia.


title: Moldovans

text: A survey carried out in the Republic of Moldova in 1992 showed that 87% of the Romanian/Moldovan speakers chose to identify themselves as "Moldovans", rather than "Romanians".


title: Moldovans

text: According to a study conducted in the Republic of Moldova in May 1998, when the self-declared Moldovans were asked to characterize the relationship of the Romanian and Moldovan identities, 55% considered them somewhat different, 26% very different and less than 5% identical.


title: Moldovans

text: A poll conducted in the Republic of Moldova by IMAS-Inc Chișinău in October 2009 presented a more detailed picture. The respondents were asked to rate the relationship between the Romanian and Moldovan identities on a scale between 1 ("entirely the same") to 5 ("completely different"). The poll showed that 26% of the entire sample, which included all ethnic groups, claimed the two identities were the same or very similar, whereas 47% claimed they were different or entirely different.


title: Moldovans

text: The results varied significantly among different categories of subjects. For instance, while 33% of the young respondents (ages from 18 to 29 years) chose the same or very similar and 44% different or very different, among the senior respondents (aged over 60 years) the corresponding figures were 18.5% and 53%. The proportion of those who chose the same or very similar identity was higher than the average among the native speakers of Romanian/Moldovan (30%), among the urban dwellers (30%), among those with higher education (36%), and among the residents of the capital city (42%).


title: Moldovans

text: According to an 2020 OSCE-sponsored study, among the population of Moldova, 20% of ethnic Moldovans secondarily identified as Romanians, while 68% of ethnic Romanians secondarily identified as Moldovans. When asked about their mother tongue, among ethnic Moldovans 69% identified it as Moldovan, 34% as Romanian, and 7% as Russian (multiple answers were allowed). The study indicated ethnic Moldovans are highly endogamous, with 87% reporting a spouse of the same ethnic groups; in contrast, 50% of the Romanians indicated a Moldovan spouse. While 91% of the ethnic Moldovans reported having Moldavian parents of either sex, among ethnic Romanians 52% indicated having a Moldovan mother (as opposed to 45% having a Romanian one), while 49% indicated having a Moldovan father (as opposed to 50% having a Romanian one).


title: Moldovans

text: Also the major Moldovan political forces have diverging opinions regarding the identity of Moldovans. This contradiction is reflected in their stance towards the national history that should be taught in schools. Governing forces such as the Liberal Party, Liberal Democratic Party, and Our Moldova Alliance support the teaching of the history of Romanians. Others, such as the Democratic Party and the Party of Communists support the history of the Republic of Moldova.


title: Moldovans

text: The diverging opinions are also reflected in the official state documents issued in successive legislatures. The Declaration of Independence of 1991 calls the official language "Romanian", and the first anthem adopted by the independent Republic of Moldova was "Deşteaptă-te, române" ("Awaken thee, Romanian!"), the same as the anthem of Romania.


title: Moldovans

text: Mirroring different political configurations of the later Moldovan Parliament, the Constitution of Moldova (1994) calls the official language "Moldovan", while the "Concept of the National Policy of the Republic of Moldova" (2003) adopted by the Communist-dominated Parliament distinguishes explicitly Moldovans and Romanians as ethnic groups, and so does the census of 2004.


title: Moldovans

text: On December 5, 2013, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Moldova ruled that the Romanian language is the official language of this country, in agreement with the Declaration of Independence of 1991.


title: Moldovans

text: A significant number of intellectuals from the Bessarabia considered themselves part of the Romanian nation in the passing of time. Amongst these prominent figures, there are the following ones:


title: Moldovans

text: The resolution of the "Association of Historians from the Republic of Moldova" (AIRM) from October 28, 2009 in favor of teaching the history of Romanians in Moldovan schools reads "The people of the Moldovan SSR were subjected to the Communist ideology, with the aim of replacing the Romanian identity of the native population, with one newly created".


title: Moldovans

text: The welcome message of the Union of Writers from Moldova is a quote from Mircea Eliade: "We invite you to become initiated in the literary life of Bessarabia, border Romanian land subjected to a long, too long terror of history".


title: Moldovans

text: The national poet of Moldova and Romania, Mihai Eminescu was born and lived outside of the territory of the current Republic of Moldova and considered himself Romanian. He is often quoted as saying ""We are Romanians, period. (Suntem români şi punct)"".


title: Moldovans

text: The 2014 census reported an estimated 2,998,235 people (without Transnistria), out of which 2,804,801 were actually covered by the census. Among them, 2,068,068 or 73.7% declared themselves Moldovans and 192,800 or 6.9% Romanians. Some organisations like the Liberal party of Moldova have criticised the census results, claiming Romanians comprise 85% of the population and that census officials have pressured respondents to declare themselves Moldovans instead of Romanians and have purposefully failed to cover urban respondents who are more likely to declare themselves Romanians as opposed to Moldovans.


title: Moldovans

text: The previous 2004 census results reported that out of the 3,383,332 people living in Moldova (without Transnistria), 2,564,849 or 75.81% declared themselves Moldovans and only 73,276 or 2.17% Romanians. A group of international observers considered the census was generally conducted in a professional manner, although they reported several cases when enumerators encouraged respondents to declare themselves Moldovans rather than Romanians.


title: Moldovans

text: The 2001 census in Ukraine counted 258,600 Moldovans and 150,989 Romanians. The self-identified Moldovans live mostly in the southern and northern areas of historical Bessarabia (specifically in the Budjak region of Odessa Oblast and in Novoselytsia Raion of Chernivtsi Oblast), whereas the self-identified Romanians live mostly in Northern Bukovina and Hertsa region of Chernivtsi Oblast.


title: Moldovans

text: In Russia, 156,400 Moldovans have been counted in the 2010 Russian census. They are concentrated mostly in Moscow, but also in some rural areas in Kuban, southern Siberia, and the Russian Far East, where they migrated or were deported generations ago. Around 14,000 Moldovans live in Kazakhstan, mostly in the former capital Almaty, but also in some rural areas in the northern parts of the country.


title: Moldovans

text: The largest share (47.5%) of the territory of the historical Principality of Moldavia together with all its formal capitals (Târgul Moldovei, Suceava, and Iaşi) and the famous painted churches are located in Romania. The river Moldova (possibly, the origin of the name of the Principality, see "Etymology of Moldova") now flows entirely through Romania. After the Russian annexation of Bessarabia in 1812, and Austrian annexation of Bukovina in 1775, the rest of Moldavia united in 1859 with Wallachia and formed the modern Romania.


title: Moldovans

text: According to the Romanian census of 2002, there are 4.7 million Romanian speakers in the eight counties that were once part of the Principality of Moldavia. The number of people, if any, who possibly declared themselves as Moldavians in this census is impossible to know, since "Moldavian" is officially considered a regional identity in Romania and respondents were recorded as "Romanians". The Romanian-speaking inhabitants of these counties generally refer to themselves as "Moldavians", but declare Romanian ethnicity.


title: Moldovans

text: In 1998, Constantin Simirad, the former mayor of Iaşi founded the Party of the Moldavians "(Partidul Moldovenilor)" which later joined the Social Democratic Party. However, the party's declared objective was to represent the interests of the Moldavia region in Romania rather than any ethnic identification.


title: Moldovans

text: In February 2007, a small group of Romanian citizens who created the "Moldovan/Moldavian Community in Romania" (Comunitatea moldovenilor din România) attempted unsuccessfully to gain recognition of the minority status for Moldovans from Romania. The organization was initially registered legally, but the decision was soon reverted. Around the same time, during a visit to Moldova, three delegates met with President Vladimir Voronin, who promised them his support. Being denied legal recognition the Community eventually dissolved.


title: Moldovans

text: The major denomination in Moldova is Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The majority of Moldovan Orthodox Christians belong to the Moldovan Orthodox Church, a branch of the Russian Orthodox Church, while a minority belongs to the Metropolis of Bessarabia, a branch of the Romanian Orthodox Church. Both bodies are in full communion, the dispute between them being purely territorial and revolves around the legitimate succession of the interwar Metropolitan See of Bessarabia. As of 2007, the Moldovan Orthodox Church has 1255 parishes, while the Metropolis of Bessarabia has 219.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: The siege of Acre (also called the fall of Acre) took place in 1291 and resulted in the Crusaders losing control of Acre to the Mamluks. It is considered one of the most important battles of the period. Although the crusading movement continued for several more centuries, the capture of the city marked the end of further crusades to the Levant. When Acre fell, the Crusaders lost their last major stronghold of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. They still maintained a fortress at the northern city of Tartus (today in north-western Syria), engaged in some coastal raids, and attempted an incursion from the tiny island of Ruad, but when they lost that as well in 1302 in the siege of Ruad, the Crusaders no longer controlled any part of the Holy Land.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: In 1187, Saladin conquered much of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (also called the Latin Kingdom), including Acre and Jerusalem, after winning the Battle of Hattin and inflicting heavy losses on the Crusaders. The Third Crusade was launched in response; the Crusaders besieged and eventually recaptured Acre in 1191. Acre became the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The religious orders made their headquarters in and around the city, and from there made crucial military and diplomatic decisions. For example, when the Mongols arrived from the East in the mid-13th century, the Christians saw them as potential allies while also maintaining a cautious neutrality with the Muslim Mamluks. In 1260, the Barons of Acre granted the Mamluks safe passage through the Latin Kingdom en route to fighting the Mongols; the Mamluks subsequently won the pivotal Battle of Ain Jalut in Galilee against the Mongols. This was an example of atypically cordial relations between the Christians and the Mamluks.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: In 1250, the Mamluk Sultanate arose in Egypt; it was a more dangerous enemy than the Ayyubids. The Mamluks fielded heavy cavalry – a match for the Crusader knights – and was much more hostile. As early as 1261, after the Battle of Ain Jalut, Sultan Baibars led the Mamluks against the Crusaders. Baibars captured Caesarea, Haifa, and Arsuf in 1265, all the important Crusader holdings in Galilee the following year, and then Antioch in 1268.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: Europe launched a number of minor Crusading expeditions to reinforce the Crusader states, including the abortive Crusade of Louis IX of France to Tunis in 1270, and the minor Ninth Crusade of Prince Edward (later King Edward I) of England in 1271–1272. The expeditions failed to provide the required relief; they were too small, too short-lived, and the interests of the participants were too diverse.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: More seriously, no major reinforcing Crusade was forthcoming. Pope Gregory X was unable to rally support for another great Crusade. Papal advisors blamed the lack of enthusiasm to the laziness and vice of the European nobility and to clerical corruption. A more fundamental reason seems to have been the debasement of Crusading ideal; Gregory X's predecessors had used Crusades to raise armies against the Papacy's European enemies.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: The Crusader states continued to deteriorate from continuing attacks and political instability. In 1276, the unpopular "King of Jerusalem" Hugh III moved his court to Cyprus. Under Sultan Al-Mansur Qalawun, the Mamluks captured Lattakia in 1278, and conquered the County of Tripoli in 1289. Qalawun concluded a ten-year truce with the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1284.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: Following the fall of Tripoli, King Henry II, son of Hugh III, sent seneschal Jean de Grailly to warn European monarchs of the critical situation in the Levant. Pope Nicholas IV supported Jean by writing letters urging European potentates to act. However, the Sicilian question overshadowed calls for a new Crusade, and Edward I of England was too entangled by troubles at home.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: Decades of communications between the Europeans and the Mongols failed to secure a meaningful Franco-Mongol alliance.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: One Arabian account claims that an affair between a rich young wife of the city and a "Mussulman" was discovered by the husband who:


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: The Crusaders feared that Qalawun would use this as a pretext to resume the war, and petitioned the pontiff for reinforcements. According to Michaud, 25 Venetian galleys carrying 1600 men "levied in haste in Italy" were sent. Other sources claim 20 galleys of peasants and unemployed townfolks from Tuscany and Lombardy, led by Nicholas Tiepolo, the son of Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo, who was assisted by the returning Jean de Grailly and Roux of Sully. These were joined by five galleys from King James II of Aragon who wished to help despite his conflict with the Pope and Venice.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: The Italian reinforcements were ill-disciplined and without regular pay; they pillaged indiscriminately from both Muslims and Christians before setting out from Acre. According to Runciman they attacked and killed some Muslim merchants around Acre in August 1290, although in Michaud's account they instead pillaged and massacred towns and villages. Qalawun demanded the extradition of the Christian perpetrators. On the suggestion of Guillaume de Beaujeu, the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, the Council of Acre debated the issue; the Sultan's demand was rejected, with the Crusaders claiming that the murdered Muslims had been responsible for their own deaths.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: Sultan Qalawun dissolved the truce with Acre and the Mamluks began mobilizing by October 1290. Qalawun died in December and was succeeded by his son, Al-Ashraf Khalil (sometimes spelled "Chalil".) Guillaume de Beaujeu received a message from Khalil, which stated the latter's intention to attack Acre and to refuse peace overtures. Nonetheless, the Crusaders dispatched a peace delegation, led by Sir Philip Mainebeuf, to Cairo; the delegation was imprisoned. Khalil set out from Cairo in March 1291.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: The assembled Mamluk army greatly outnumbered the Crusaders. Khalil called upon Syria to reinforce his Egyptian army; he was answered by contingents from Damascus (led by Lajin), Hama (led by al-Muzaffar Taqai ad-Din), Tripoli (led by Bilban) and Al-Karak (led by Baibars al-Dewadar.) A significant portion of the troops were volunteers. The army included a substantial artillery train drawn from fortresses across the Mamluk empire. Hama sent the enormous catapult "The Victorious" (, '.) Another large catapult was "The Furious" (, '.) There were also lighter mangonels called "Black Bulls" (, "".).


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: Notable historians in the Mamluks ranks included Baibars al-Dewadar, and Abu al-Fida in the Haman contingent.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: The Crusaders appeals for aid met with little success. England sent a few knights, including Otto de Grandson of Savoy. The only noteworthy reinforcements came from Henry II of Cyprus, who fortified the walls and sent troops led by his brother Amalric. Burchard von Schwanden suddenly resigned as Grand Master of the Teutonic Order and left Acre for Europe; he was succeeded by Konrad von Feuchtwangen. The only major contingent to leave were the Genoese, who concluded a separate treaty with Khalil. Many women and children were evacuated from Acre to Cyprus in March.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: Acre was defended by an inner and outer wall, with a total of twelve towers built by European kings and rich pilgrims.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: Sultan Khalil and the Egyptian army arrived at Acre on 6 April 1291, with the Syrian contingents arriving two days later with siege engines. The Mamluk encampment spanned from one coast to the other about two kilometres from the city walls. The red "dihliz" – the Sultan's personal tent and headquarters – was on a small hill west of the Legate's Tower. There was little fighting during the first eight days as the besiegers established their camp. From days nine to eleven the Mamluks pushed forward barricades and wicker screens until they reached the fosse before the outer wall; Carabohas, rapid-fire siege engines, were brought up. The besiegers began mining and bombarding the walls. Acre's gates remained open – but heavily defended – as sally ports.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: The Crusaders launched multiple attacks on the Mamluk camp. An amphibious assault on the Hamans – stationed on the northernmost section of the line by the sea – was successful although the Crusaders suffered heavy casualties. In another raid, three hundred Templar, led by Jean de Grailly and Otto de Grandson, rode out under moonlight to attack Haman artillery with Greek fire; while the artillery was not destroyed, the Templar engaged over 1000 Mamluks and returned with trophies and captured supplies. Khalil punished some subordinates for the humiliation caused by the Templar. In general, Crusader attacks failed to disrupt Mamluk preparations for a direct assault on the walls.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: Henry II of Cyprus arrived on 4 May with reinforcements of 700 troops aboard 40 ships. The king's arrival temporarily buoyed morale, but an inspection of the city convinced Henry II to attempt a negotiated settlement; the Crusaders believed that tribute could buy a truce. On 17 May, William of Villiers, a knight, and William of Caffran, of Guillaume de Beaujeu's household, were sent to negotiate with the Sultan. The negotiations were unsuccessful. The Crusaders refused to surrender, and appealed to Khalil to lift the siege and accept peace for the sake of the civilian inhabitants. Khalil remained intent on conquering the city, perhaps encouraged by the popularity of the cause among his troops; his counteroffer to allow the defenders to surrender and leave with their lives and property was rejected. Toward the end of the meeting, a Crusader artillery stone landed near the "dihliz"; the Sultan was greatly angered and ordered a full assault the following day. The messengers returned to the city unharmed.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: The Mamluk assault was preceded by weeks of preparation. By 18 May, multiple towers and parts of the wall were collapsed by undermining, and sections of the fosse filled in. The collapse of the Tower of the King was particularly demoralizing among the defenders, and the evacuation of women and children accelerated.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: The Mamluk army assembled before dawn on 18 May and attacked the entire length of the wall to the sound of trumpets and drums carried on 300 camels. The Mamluks poured through the breaches; by 9a.m. the outcome seems to have been beyond doubt. The Mamluks captured the Accursed Tower on the inner wall and forced the Crusaders to retreat to the Gate of St. Anthony. Guillaume de Beaujeu was mortally wounded defending the Gate of St. Anthony. On the Montmusard walls, the Lazarists remained while the Templars and Hospitallers made a failed attempt to retake the Accursed Tower. The redeployment allowed the Hamans to break through the Montmusard walls and kill the Lazarists. The Mamluks gained more penetrations as the Crusaders abandoned the walls.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: The Mamluks pushed into the city, looting and massacring any they encountered Organized Crusader resistance collapsed, and the retreat to the harbour and the ships was chaotic; wealthy refugees offered exorbitant sums for safe passage. Henry II and Jean de Villiers, Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, were among those evacuated. The evacuation was made more difficult by the poor weather.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: By the night of 18 May, Acre was in Mamluk hands, except for the seaside Templar fortress at the western tip of city. The fortress contained four towers, and within were remnants of the Templar, Hospitallers, and Teutonic Knights, and thousands of civilians. The fortress held out for ten more days, during which Matthew of Clermont, a Hospitaller marshal, was killed. On 20 May, the tower held by the Templar, led by Peter de Severy, asked for amnesty. Sultan Khalil agreed to allow the Templars to leave without weapons to Cyprus. The agreement collapsed when the Mamluks supervising the evacuation inside the fortress were killed by the Templars. Templar Thibaud Gaudin and a few others left the fortress under the cover of darkness, taking the Templar treasury with them to Sidon. According to a contemporary Mamluk account, Khalil sent Emir Kitbugha al-Mansuri to offer amnesty to the Crusaders. The Teutonic Knights accepted and surrendered their tower after being allowed to leave with their women, but al-Mansuri was killed by other Crusaders. On 21 May, de Severy and a small delegation left the fortress to resume negotiations and were executed, possibly in reprisal for the death of al-Mansuri. Further offers of amnesty were rejected by the Crusaders. On 28 May, the final tower surrendered; Mamluk mines were prepared to destroy the tower making further resistance useless. The tower collapsed after prisoners and booty had been removed; according to Mamluk accounts, a few sightseers and looters were killed.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: News of Mamluk victory caused celebrations in Damascus and Cairo. In Damascus, Khalil entered the city with chained Crusader prisoners and captured Crusader standards – carried upside-down in defeat. The Sultan returned to Cairo with the gate of the Church of Saint Andrew from Acre, which was used to construct a mosque and released Philip Mainebeuf's delegation. Furthermore, celebrations were described as:


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: “The entire city had been decorated, and sheets of satin had been laid along his triumphal path through the city leading to the palace of the governor. The regal sultan was proceeded by 280 fettered prisoners. One bore a reversed Frankish banner; another carried a banner and spear from which the hair of slain comrades was suspended. Al-Ashraf was greeted by the whole population of Damascus and the surrounding countryside lining the route, ulama [legal scholars], mosque officials, Sufi sheiks, Christians and Jews, all holding candles even though the parade took place before noon.”


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: The fall of Acre signaled the end of the Jerusalem crusades. No effective crusade was raised to recapture the Holy Land afterwards, though talk of further crusades was common enough. By 1291, other ideals had captured the interest and enthusiasm of the monarchs and nobility of Europe and even strenuous papal efforts to raise expeditions to retake the Holy Land met with little response.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: The Latin Kingdom continued to exist, theoretically, on the island of Cyprus. There the Latin kings planned to recapture the mainland, but in vain. Money, men, and the will to do the task were all lacking. One last effort was made by King Peter I in 1365, when he successfully landed in Egypt and sacked Alexandria. Once the city was taken, however, the Crusaders returned to Cyprus. As a crusade, the episode was futile, and this and further coastal raids over the following decades led in 1410–11 to a destructive counter-raid by the Mamelukes; in 1426 Cyprus was forced into Mameluke vassalship with a hefty yearly tribute.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: The 14th century saw some other crusades organized, but these enterprises differed in many ways from the 11th- and 12th-century expeditions which are properly called Crusades. The crusades of the 14th century aimed not at the recapture of Jerusalem and the Christian shrines of the Holy Land, but rather at checking the advance of the Ottoman Turks into Europe. While many of the crusaders in these 14th-century undertakings looked upon the defeat of the Ottomans as a preliminary to the ultimate recapture of the Holy Land, none of the later crusades attempted any direct attack upon Palestine or Syria.


title: Siege of Acre (1291)

text: Two short works dedicated to the siege were produced by contemporaries on the basis of eyewitness accounts: the "Hystoria de desolacione" of Thaddeus of Naples and the anonymous "Excidium Acconis". These survive in four and six manuscripts, respectively. The "Gestes des Chiprois", written a generation later and surviving in a single manuscript, is the other main source from the crusaders' perspective.


title: All About That Bass

text: "All About That Bass" is the debut single of American singer-songwriter Meghan Trainor, released on June 30, 2014, through Epic Records. The song was included on Trainor's debut extended play (EP) "Title" (2014) and her debut studio album of the same name (2015). Written by Trainor and producer Kevin Kadish, "All About That Bass" is a bubblegum pop, doo-wop and hip hop track. Trainor, who as a teenager struggled with her negative body image, was inspired to write the song to promote self-acceptance.


title: All About That Bass

text: Some music critics praised "All About That Bass" production and memorable message, while others called it a novelty song and criticized the failure of its lyrics to empower every body type. The song was nominated for awards, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards. It was the best-selling song by a female artist during the 2010s in the United States, and was certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It also reached number one in 58 countries and received multi-platinum certifications in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Spain, and the United Kingdom, becoming the fourth best-selling song of 2014 with 11 million copies sold worldwide.


title: All About That Bass

text: Fatima Robinson directed the song's music video, which features 1950s-inspired aesthetics and a pink pastel backdrop. The video was released on June 10, 2014, and played an important role in the song's rise to prominence. "All About That Bass" inspired parodies and cover versions. Trainor performed the song on television shows such as "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon", Country Music Association Awards, and "The X Factor UK", and included it on the set lists of her concert tours That Bass Tour and MTrain Tour (2015), and The Untouchable Tour (2016).


title: All About That Bass

text: After independently releasing three albums herself between 2009 and 2010, Meghan Trainor decided to write songs for other singers because she considered herself "one of the chubby girls who would never be an artist". In 2012, she signed a publishing deal with Big Yellow Dog Music, a Nashville, Tennessee-based music publishing firm, and moved to Nashville the following November. American songwriter Kevin Kadish met Trainor in June 2013 at the request of Carla Wallace, a co-owner of Big Yellow Dog. Kadish liked Trainor's voice and booked a writing session with her the following month. He said it was "like a blind date" because they had a strong song-writing affinity and a mutual love of pop music from the 1950s and 1960s.


title: All About That Bass

text: Kadish read a list of potential song titles to Trainor, of which "All Bass, No Treble" was her favorite. Trainor was inspired by her teenage problems with self-acceptance and body image, and suggested these as a basis for the lyrics. She told "Rolling Stone" Kadish had experienced similar problems during his childhood and could relate to these themes. She suggested a booty theme with "it's about the bass, not the treble". Trainor was also inspired by Bruno Mars's "Just the Way You Are" (2010), and criticized the use of electronically edited images in beauty magazines. Kadish played a drum beat while Trainor sang the hook, "I'm all about that bass, 'bout the bass, no treble". Kadish and Trainor wanted to incorporate influences of 1950s doo-wop, a genre Trainor found catchy, into the song, which they wrote within 40 minutes. According to Kadish, he and Trainor equally contributed to the lyrics and melody, and Kadish finished the demo of "All About That Bass" two to three days later.


title: All About That Bass

text: Although both were satisfied with the song, they doubted its commercial prospects. They pitched it to several record labels, who said it would not be successful because of its retro-styled composition and wanted to rerecord it using synthesizers, which Kadish and Trainor refused. Trainor sang "All About That Bass" for Paul Pontius, who was the A&R manager for Epic Records chairman L.A. Reid. She performed the song the following week using a ukulele for Reid, who signed her with the record label 20 minutes later. Reid decided that the demo, with additional mastering, should be the song's final cut. Speaking in 2015, he said he considered it "lightning in a bottle" and realized at their first meeting Trainor "was going to explode".


title: All About That Bass

text: "All About That Bass" is three minutes and eight seconds long. The song was produced, engineered, programmed, sound designed, and mixed by Kadish—who also played drums, electric guitar, and bass guitar—at the Carriage House studio in Nolensville, Tennessee. David Baron played the piano, baritone saxophone, and Hammond organ. Trainor provided the track's clapping and percussion, and Dave Kutch mastered the recording at the Mastering Palace in New York City.


title: All About That Bass

text: "All About That Bass" is a bubblegum pop, doo-wop and hip hop song. Kelsey McKinney of "Vox" characterized it as retro-R&B pop, while "Slate"s Chris Molanphy described its style as "vintage white-girl, Italo-Latin soul". The track has a 1950s-inspired throwback soul beat, and influences from 1960s genres—soul-pop, groove, Motown bounce and girl group pop. "All About That Bass" includes syncopated handclaps and bass instrumentation. In the song's outro, Trainor alternates between wordless vocal ad-libs and a pitched-down echo of "bass, bass, bass" at the end of the chorus mark. She raps some of the lyrics. According to Molanphy, it has "a scatting tempo and shimmying melody", which has been compared with South Korean group Koyote's song "Happy Mode" (2006) and American band Phish's song "Contact" (1989).


title: All About That Bass

text: The lyrics of "All About That Bass" are a call to embrace inner beauty, and to promote positive body image and self-acceptance. The line "I'm bringing booty back" references Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack" (2006). In her song, Trainor criticizes the fashion industry for creating unreachable beauty standards. She affirms the listeners their bodies are flawless, and asks them to "move along" if they are only attracted to thin women. Kevin O'Keeffe of "The Atlantic" compared its lyrical message to those of Kesha's "We R Who We R" (2010), Pink's "Fuckin' Perfect" (2010), and Sara Bareilles' "Brave" (2013), among others. "The Guardian"s Caroline Sullivan called "All About That Bass" a 2014 version of Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" (2002).


title: All About That Bass

text: "All About That Bass" was released as the lead single from Trainor's debut extended play (EP) "Title" in 2014 and her studio album of the same name the following year. Epic Records released the song for digital download in several countries on June 30, 2014, as Trainor's debut single, and serviced it to radio stations in the United States on the following day. In the United Kingdom, it became available to stream on August 14, and for download on September 28. Sony Music sent the track to radio stations in Italy on September 5 and the United Kingdom's BBC Radio 1 added it to its playlist three days later. An EP titled "All About That Bass" was released in Austria, Germany and Switzerland on October 3; it also included the tracks "Title", "Dear Future Husband", and "Close Your Eyes". On the same day, "All About That Bass" was released as a CD single in Germany with only "Title" as its b-side.


title: All About That Bass

text: As "All About That Bass" began rising in popularity, Radio Disney's vice president of programming Phil Guerini asked Epic to send it a family-friendly version of the song with lyrics suitable for all audiences. The record label agreed to this because it wanted to maximize airplay and reach as many radio formats as possible. In the bowdlerized version, the line "But I can shake it, shake it, like I'm supposed to do" was replaced with "But Imma make it, make it, like I'm supposed to do"; and the line "Boys like a little more booty to hold at night" became "Boys like the girls for the beauty they hold inside"; it was also used on adult contemporary radio stations. Trainor and Kadish refused to make this version available for digital download because they believed it would "water down" the original.


title: All About That Bass

text: Some music critics viewed "All About That Bass" as a novelty song. MTV News named it the sixth-best track of 2014, while "Time" named it the sixth-worst of that year. Jon Caramanica of "The New York Times" called it a "shimmery" and "cheeky [...] hit" but criticized Trainor's unenthusiastic and drawn-out delivery, and accused her of imitating black music. Molanphy described the lyrics as "effortlessly memorable" and complimented the production, but worried the misuse of the word "treble" in its lyrics might ruin the word's meaning for a whole generation.


title: All About That Bass

text: The lyrics of "All About That Bass" caused controversy; some critics called the song anti-feminist and accused Trainor of shaming thin women. Kris Ex of "Complex" said Trainor imitated body standards often used to stereotype black women and appropriated colloquialisms that are associated with African-American Vernacular English. Alexa Camp of "Slant Magazine" called the song "faux empowerment" and criticized Trainor for encouraging women to rely on men's opinions for validation. McKinney said some of its lyrics promote a body-positive attitude and high self-worth while others contradict those values by denigrating other women.


title: All About That Bass

text: "The Independent" writer Yomi Adegoke argued the track's substitution of conventional beauty standards with new ones is a poor representation of body positivity, and was insulted by its statement men find only curvy women attractive. In response, Trainor said; "I didn't work this hard to hate on skinny people, I wrote the song to help my body confidence—and to help others". Writing for "The Guardian", Sullivan and Beejoli Shah defended "All About That Bass"; Shah suggested critics were reading too much into its lyrics and that "this isn't an academic polemic on modern womanhood: it's a pop song". Ashley White of "Florida Today" thought the song did not shame thin women, instead interpreting its lyrical message as "no one—skinny, fat or in between—should have to feel uncomfortable or imperfect in their skin".


title: All About That Bass

text: "Entertainment Weekly"s Melissa Maerz named "All About That Bass" one of the two best tracks on "Title", describing it as a "boomin' booty ode". Shah praised its lyrics and bassline but felt it did not signal a long career for Trainor. Writing for "Spin", Dan Weiss called the song a "fluke hit" but noted it was historic and would uplift more listeners than it offended. Sullivan stated that while the track's palatable nature and retro-inspired "cuteness" contributed to its success, the unwavering body-positive message of its lyrics was its biggest appeal.


title: All About That Bass

text: "Stereogum"s Chris DeVille considered criticisms of the lyrics valid but praised the "pleasant swagger" in Trainor's expressionless delivery and its joyful nature, finding it a clever update on its retro influences. Yahoo! writer Paul Grein called "All About That Bass" one of the greatest and most successful contemporaneous "message songs". Evan Sawdey of "PopMatters" called the song optimistic, lively, and "absolutely delightful", and concluded that it was one of the most enjoyable songs of 2014.


title: All About That Bass

text: "All About That Bass" reached number 23 on "The Village Voice"s annual year-end Pazz & Jop critics' poll of 2014. The song was nominated for Best Song with a Social Message at the 2014 MTV Europe Music Awards and for Favorite Song at the 41st People's Choice Awards.


title: All About That Bass

text: At the 2015 "Billboard" Music Awards, it received three nominations, winning Top Hot 100 Song and Top Digital Song.


title: All About That Bass

text: At the 57th Annual Grammy Awards in 2015, "All About That Bass" was nominated in the categories Record of the Year and Song of the Year.


title: All About That Bass

text: The song was also nominated for the Dorian Awards, iHeartRadio Music Awards, LOS40 Music Awards, Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, Radio Disney Music Awards, and the Teen Choice Awards.


title: All About That Bass

text: "All About That Bass" was a sleeper hit; it debuted at number 84 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 issued for July 26, 2014, and reached number one on September 20, making Trainor the 21st female artist in "Billboard" Hot 100 chart history to do so with her debut single.


title: All About That Bass

text: "All About That Bass" spent eight consecutive weeks at number one, the longest run for a female artist in 2014, and any Epic Records artist in the chart's history.


title: All About That Bass

text: During the first six weeks at number one, the song led an all-female top five, breaking the record for the longest time women occupied the top five. It was also the first debut single to spend at least 15 weeks in the top two and the 10th song to spend 25 weeks in the top 10.


title: All About That Bass

text: "All About That Bass" was the best-selling song by a female artist in the 2010s, selling 5.8 million digital downloads in the United States.


title: All About That Bass

text: The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the song Diamond, which denotes 10 million units based on sales and track-equivalent on-demand streams. On the Canadian Hot 100, "All About That Bass" peaked at number one, sold 408,000 copies in the country, and was certified 8× Platinum by Music Canada.


title: All About That Bass

text: In the United Kingdom, "All About That Bass" accumulated 1.17 million local streams and reached number 33 on the singles chart, becoming the first song in the chart's history to reach the top 40 based on streams alone.


title: All About That Bass

text: Following its release for digital download, the song peaked at number one and sold 884,000 copies; the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) certified it 2× Platinum.


title: All About That Bass

text: It also reached number one in Australia and New Zealand, attaining 9× Platinum and 3× Platinum certifications respectively, and peaked at number one in 58 other countries, including 12 in Europe. The song also peaked at number two in Belgium (Wallonia), Czech Republic, Israel, Norway, and South Africa; number three in the Netherlands and Sweden; number five in Belgium (Flanders) and Italy; number six in Romania; number eight in Finland and France; and number 10 in Japan.


title: All About That Bass

text: The song received a 4× Platinum certification in Mexico, 3× Platinum in Norway, Sweden, 2× Platinum in Denmark, Italy, Spain, and Platinum in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), "All About That Bass" was the fourth best-selling song of 2014 with 11 million copies sold worldwide.


title: All About That Bass

text: Fatima Robinson directed the music video for "All About That Bass". Trainor described Robinson as "the best of the best" and that Robinson made her "a rock star in two days". Trainor wanted to make the video enjoyable to reflect the fun nature of the song. To that end, Robinson suggested using subdued pastel colors, which would popularize the video during summer, and depicting Trainor as an ingénue doing "booty-bumping dance moves and just shaking it up". Trainor told "The Boston Globe" she considered the caricature "a cartoon" that she only ever intended to portray in the video. She felt pressured to retain the look after the video became popular. The first time Trainor watched the video, she cried because she felt insecure about her appearance in it. As a result, Trainor "edited the crap out of it", changing the scenes in which she thought her face looked awkward, and said the final version made her "look like a pop star". Music website "Idolator" premiered it on June 10, 2014. Social media played an important role in the video's creation and marketing. Robinson cast Sione Kelepi as a dancer after discovering his popular dance videos on social media platform Vine. Kelepi shared the music video with his followers, which led to initial public interest in the video and it being recommended to more YouTube users.


title: All About That Bass

text: The music video has a 1950s visual theme. Trainor is dressed in a pink sweater and long, white socks; she sings and dances in front of a pink backdrop. In following scenes, she dances with female dancers and exaggerates her facial expressions. Kelepi appears throughout the video; in one scene he pirouettes and performs a full split. Two girls are shown playing with dolls in a dollhouse, dancing in a bedroom, and riding bicycles. During a repetition of the line "I won't be no stick-figure, silicone Barbie doll", Trainor throws away a doll. Writing for "Out", Stacy Lambe stated the video delivers a "retro pop world" that "makes you want to dance in your seat".


title: All About That Bass

text: Jim Farber of the "New York Daily News" said the discourse about Trainor's weight in the video's YouTube comment section "had taken on a life of its own". YouTube was instrumental in the success of "All About That Bass"; the video was Vevo's second-most streamed music video of 2014 while YouTube ranked it as the ninth-most popular upload of the year based on "views, shares, comments, likes", and other factors. "Entertainment Weekly"s Miles Raymer wrote the video's dance sequence and colorful sets were perfectly designed to attain online popularity. Grein suggested the video was most likely to win Best Video with a Social Message at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards. Sawdey called the video "fun and buoyant" but said the song's lyrics were responsible for its popularity. Caramanica felt the video complemented the song.


title: All About That Bass

text: "USA Today" writer Brian Mansfield described the clip's theme as a fusion of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" (1992) and "Beauty School Dropout" from the 1971 musical "Grease". DeVille said despite its flaws, the visuals are endearing and effective. "Billboard" writer Andrew Hampp interpreted the video as "slyly satirical". Julie Zeilinger of the same magazine criticized it for drawing inspiration from the thin women Trainor criticizes in the song's lyrics, and noted that Trainor failed to acknowledge body diversity as a spectrum and instead depicted only its extremities. Emma Garland of "Vice" found the video enjoyable, cautious, and easily digestible but she criticized its choreography. Diana Cook of Cracked.com felt it displayed a double standard, saying there would be much more of a backlash if Taylor Swift created a song about men preferring smaller bodies and mocked an overweight woman eating a cupcake in its video.


title: All About That Bass

text: Robin James and Kat George of "Vice" found cultural appropriation in the scene where Trainor is surrounded by black women twerking; according to James, Trainor appropriates "respectable chubbiness" to improve her own body image. "The Fader"s Larry Fitzmaurice shared a similar opinion and placed the video third in his list of "Music's 8 Most Cringe-Worthy Acts Of Cultural Appropriation In 2014".


title: All About That Bass

text: Trainor performed an acoustic rendition of "All About That Bass" at an Emily West concert in Nashville on July 16, 2014, after West saw Trainor in the audience and insisted she perform. Trainor reprised the song on "Live! with Kelly and Michael" on August 7. She sang an acoustic ukulele version of the song on "Entertainment Tonight" that was posted to their website the following month. Two days later, Trainor performed "All About That Bass" on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon", with Fallon and The Roots, who used classroom instruments. "Rolling Stone" writer Ryan Reed commented the unlikely arrangement maintained the quality of the original version with its "sparse percussion and intimate doo-wop harmonies" supporting her impassioned delivery. On September 11, Trainor reprised the song on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show". On September 15, she sang it on "The X Factor Australia". Trainor performed a mashup of "All About That Bass" and Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" (2014) for Australian radio station 2Day FM; "Billboard" published this performance on September 18. A journalist from the magazine, Erin Strecker, wrote it was unsurprising a mashup of "two super-catchy tracks" was also catchy.


title: All About That Bass

text: Trainor reprised "All About That Bass" as a duet with American singer Miranda Lambert at the Country Music Association Awards on November 5; the two singers wore little dresses and Trainor wore a Nasty Gal jacket over hers. Lambert praised the song's message in an interview and recalled playing it before every performance on her Platinum Tour (2014–2016). On November 26, Trainor sang a medley of "All About That Bass" and "Lips Are Movin" (2014) on the finale of the nineteenth season of American television series "Dancing with the Stars". She included the former song in her set list for the Jingle Ball Tour 2014.


title: All About That Bass

text: On the final episode of "The X Factor UK"s eleventh series, Trainor performed the song with finalists Andrea Faustini, Fleur East and Ben Haenow. She included "All About That Bass" on the setlists of her 2015 That Bass and MTrain concert tours, as well as her 2016 The Untouchable Tour. Trainor reprised the song on November 22, 2018, while wearing "a glittery jersey and sparkly blue pants" at a Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins game, which launched The Salvation Army's 128th annual Red Kettle Campaign. She also performed it while headlining the Philadelphia Welcome America Festival as part of the 2019 Fourth of July celebrations. On January 8, 2020, Trainor sang the lyrics of "All About That Bass" over the "creeping, insidious beat" of Billie Eilish's "Bad Guy" (2019) for BBC Radio 1's game "Your Lyrics Different Song", which "Billboard"s Glenn Rowley considered an impressive and successful rendition.


title: All About That Bass

text: Josh Duboff of "Vanity Fair" stated "All About That Bass" achieved "pop-cultural touchstone-status" while "The New York Times"s Joe Coscarelli called it "a cultural phenomenon". "Vogue" cited the song's impact and said in a 2014 article; "We're Officially in the Era of the Big Booty". Steven J. Horowitz of "Billboard" wrote "All About That Bass", along with Jennifer Lopez's "Booty" (2014), helped "booty records" make a commercial return to the mainstream. The song's stay at number one in the United Kingdom coincided with the number-three debut of Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda", which "The Guardian" and "The Independent" dubbed "the battle of the booty songs". "Rolling Stone"s Steve Knopper wrote; "if we assume the latest sing-about-your-butt trend in pop music has finally reached its, uh, conclusion, the unquestionable winner is Meghan Trainor's 'All About That Bass'". According to Sullivan, the three songs reflect a change in pop culture, in which female artists frequently endured criticism from society for their weight, while Adegoke wrote the songs helped curves reach culture's forefront. In November, American company Booty Pop reported a 47% increase in demand; New York doctor Matthew Schulman told "Billboard" demand for Brazilian buttock augmentation surgery had risen by 25% at his practice in 2014, and Boston entrepreneur and gym instructor Kelly Brabants stated she experienced a waiting list for her Booty by Brabants class because "it's not about being stick-thin anymore, every girl now wants a booty"; "Billboard" attributed this to the three songs.


title: All About That Bass

text: According to Sullivan, "All About That Bass" resulted in Trainor being viewed as "the poster girl for the larger woman" and "pop's emblem of self-acceptance". "Billboard" wrote the song's success made Trainor a "breakthrough star virtually overnight" and one of the "biggest breakout stars" of 2014. In a press release, Trainor recalled meeting female fans who told her: "I've hated myself. I hated life. I didn't want to go to school. I get bullied. And then I heard your song and I cried". The song's success led Sony/ATV Music Publishing to sign Kadish in October; the publishing company's CEO Martin Bandier stated the track is "clearly one of the biggest songs of the year and we know there is a lot more to come from him".