#''if there is a higher power then it's our prerogative to be better than it''

[andromeda3116]

"One day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald, I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."

--Lord Vetinari, Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

[michaelbogild]

Quotes by Mahatma Gandhi

A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.

A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.

A man, whilst he is dreaming, believes in his dream; he is undeceived only when he is awakened from his slumber.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

A thousand candles can be lighted from the flame of one candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness can be spread without diminishing that of yourself.

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does the truth become error because nobody will see it.

An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves.

Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

Compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use.

Distinguish between real needs and artificial wants and control the latter.

Don't talk about it. The rose doesn't have to propagate its perfume. It just gives it forth, and people are drawn to it. Live it, and people will come to see the source of your power.

Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.

Everyone holds a piece of the truth.

Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.

Friendship that insists upon agreement on all things isn't worth the name.

God has no religion.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Hate the sin, love the sinner.

Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.

I call him religious who understands the suffering of others.

I cannot conceive of a greater loss than the loss of one's self-respect.

I may be a despicable person, but when Truth speaks through me I am

I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.

I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.

If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.

If we are to reach real peace in the world, we shall have to begin with the children.

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

In doing something, do it with love or never do it at all.

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.

invincible.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

It is easier to build a boy than to mend a man.

It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one's acts.

It seems to me as clear as daylight that abortion would be a crime.

it's easy to stand in the crowd but it takes courage to stand alone

Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood.

Love is the strongest force the world possesses and yet it is the humblest imaginable.

Manliness consists not in bluff, bravado or loneliness. It consists in daring to do the right thing and facing consequences whether it is in matters social, political or other. It consists in deeds not words.

Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.

My Life is My Message

No one can ride on the back of a man unless it is bent.

Nonviolence is a weapon of the strong.

Nothing has saddened me so much in life as the hardness of heart of educated people.

Nothing is so aggravating as calmness.

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment.

Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment.

Seek not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity.

Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.

Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.

Speak only if it improves upon the silence.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.

The future depends on what you do today.

The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane.

The more efficient a force is, the more silent and the more subtle it is.

The path is the goal.

The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of truth.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for.

There are no good-byes, where ever you'll be, you'll be in my heart.

There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

There are two days in the year that we can not do anything, yesterday and tomorrow

There is force in the universe, which, if we permit it, will flow through us and produce miraculous results.

There is no 'way to peace,' there is only 'peace.

There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent.

There is no such thing as ‘too insane’ unless others turn up dead due to your actions.

There's no God higher than truth.

To forgive is not to forget. The merit lies in loving in spite of the vivid knowledge that one that must be loved is not a friend. There is not merit in loving an enemy when you forget him for a friend.

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

True beauty lies in purity of the heart.

True love is boundless like the ocean and, swelling within one, spreads itself out and, crossing all boundaries and frontiers, envelops the whole world.

True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding the true path for ourselves, and fearlessly following it.

Truth never damages a cause that is just.

We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.

What barrier is there that love cannot break?

When asked what he thought of Western civilization): 'I think it would be a good idea.

Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.

Where love is, there God is also.

Where there is fear there is no religion.

Where there is love there is life.

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.

You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

You yourself as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve love and affection.

[songofclarity]

Out of sheer curiosity, what do you think of Wen Xu. Any HC?

Two Wen Xu asks came in back-to-back and I could probably have answered them both at once, but I'll use your daring moment of sheer curiosity to focus on headcanons/theories I have for him, Anon~!

Similar to Su She, who caused problems while lurking in the background, I think Wen Xu, who also caused problems while lurking in the background, is our guy who has been inciting several other rising conflicts between the Qishan Wen and the other sects over the years. He doesn't need explicit orders to do this, mind you, because he is simply doing what any self-respecting son of the Qishan Wen Sect would do. Just like the Twin Prides look to the Jiang motto of Attempt the Impossible and the Twin Jades look to the 3,000 Lan rules, Wen Xu is also guided by Clan tradition:

The Wen Clan used the sun as the motif of their clan, signifying that they could "compete with the sun for radiance, match the sun in longevity." (ch. 17, ERS)

The sun, however, is beautiful and warm and radiant all on its own, which means he doesn't have to play nice with the other sects if he doesn't want to. In fact, it goes against policy to treat the other sects as equals! Therefore, with him being the predominant Wen outside Nightless City, it seems apt to assign these events to him:

1. Monopolizing all the prime Night Hunt locations and excluding the other sects, which made the other sects resent the Qishan Wen even more

Remember Jin Ling setting up those 400 golden nets? That's expensive and entitled! I imagine Wen Xu was our first Jin Ling, except rather than using 400 golden nets it's Wen Xu and his friends and Wen favorites who are staking claims on all the best sites. They're having a fun time and everyone else can cry about it! Remember that guest cultivators love being with the Wen Sect! It likely comes with plenty of favors, and Wen Xu as Wen RuoHan's eldest son had much to offer to gain and keep their support for the Qishan Wen.

2. Pushing the Waterborne Abyss from Qishan into Gusu Lan territory, making it a Lan problem and making the other sects resent the Qishan Wen even more

I headcanon that this event is what eventually prompted Wen Chao to daringly declare that he killed the Tortoise of Slaughter. Did Wen Xu declare that he had killed the Waterborne Abyss (which would sound absurd since the only known way to defeat it is to drain the lake and keep it dried out for years)? Or did he own up to how he simply got rid of the problem? Either way, he made Qishan safe, which is what any cultivation sect is supposed to do for their region.

The Qishan Wen are good to the Qishan Wen and the common folk beneath them. It's really only the other sects that take issue with them and see them as a threat.

*Please remember that the Qishan Wen Sect isn't an empire. They aren't trying to take over the world. They are simply seeking dominance and prominence, with all the power and prestige that comes with it.*

3. It's canon that Wen Xu led the attack on Cloud Recesses, that he accused QingHeng-jun of something to validate this assault, that he ordered Lan WangJi's leg broken when he stood in their way, and that he is responsible for the death of QingHeng-jun (whom I headcanon died due to critical burns from the fire)

The big question here is what, exactly, was Wen Xu/the Wen accusing QingHeng-jun of? It could be something real: neglecting his duties or even something to do with Madam Lan, since we really don't know her backstory. Or something overblown: having two sons who wear clouds on their ribbons, and clouds block out the sun, and those two sons did better than the Wen in the archery competition, so it must be an anti-Wen conspiracy, etc etc. (Wang LingJiao had to learn that logic somewhere!) The latter appeals to me the most, and highlights how Wen Xu was a role model for his little brother. The difference being that Wen Xu had experience handling other sects without getting everyone killed.

Frankly, that Wen Xu destroyed Cloud Recesses and got their Sect Leader killed and made their second Sect Leader go missing and all the other sects let him get away with it just reinforces, to me, that he has indeed been up to no good for a long time and that he is incredibly strong in his own right. Although Wei WuXian comments that the Wen Sect has a higher proportion of weak and incompetent disciples/subordinates, I headcanon that Wen Xu is not one of the weak ones.

But also Wen Xu is not bloodthirsty. He did what he needed to do and the only one left dead was the one that the Wens had a undisclosed problem with: QingHeng-jun. Wen Xu is strong but he has restraint. He never pushed anyone into a corner which could incite a rebellion, which was Wen Chao's mistake.

Until Wen Xu finally did push too hard:

4. It's canon that he went against Wen RuoHan's speech which effectively said to leave the Qinghe Nie alone. By ignoring how Wen RuoHan said that Nie MingJue would not bend, he pushed the Nie into a corner and bit off more than he could chew and got himself beheaded

All the Wens appeared to agree that the Sunshot Campaign was just an act of arrogance on the part of the other sects. The Wens did not take it seriously during those first three months, and therefore neither sought to squash it out or defeat it.

Wen Xu is what proves them wrong when he gets himself killed.

But what was Wen Xu doing in Hejian!? I headcanon/theorize that he was trying to end the Campaign on his own terms. Wen Xu was used to winning and used to the sects capitulating to Wen power and presence. Cloud Recesses was already destroyed and Lan XiChen is no threat, Lotus Pier was conquered and the Yunmeng Jiang were annihilated, and the Wens expected the Lanling Jin to come crawling back to them when things got too rough. This left the Qinghe Nie as the last foe, and thus Wen Xu went on his own prerogative to take Nie MingJue out and claim dominance for the Qishan Wen once more.

RIP Wen Xu

I don't say all of this to somehow make Wen Xu look evil--the Wens aren't evil and I don't understand why some readers want to dumb down the whole story by shoving them into a little evil box--although I guess I headcanon him as having a big head and being something of a bully lol. He's just being the same kind of pompous rich kid like Jin ZiXuan and Jin Ling except he has actual power and authority to back it up. The Qishan Wen are the biggest, richest, most powerful sect. He is the one who will one day inherit it as he is Wen RuoHan's oldest son. So he is both simultaneously protecting the Qishan Wen name as well as reinforcing it's power. He is endearing himself to his father by "fixing problems" and "taking care of unruly sects" before the problem even reaches Wen RuoHan's ears. Considering what we see and hear from Wen RuoHan, and how Wen RuoHan fails to make decisions he's not already being ushered into by a third party, Wen Xu and others are very much pro-actively promoting the Qishan Wen on their own terms.

Wen RuoHan is thus very happy with this loyal and righteous son of his! And it leaves Wen Chao striving to follow in Wen Xu's footsteps.

I headcanon that Wen Xu is much older than Wen Chao, like at least 10 years older if not more. (Who knows how old Wen RuoHan is? However old or young I want him to be at any given time! lol) This puts their relationship in a funny/annoying range of Wen Xu being the big brother but also old enough to pull the adult/parent card. Wen Chao has poor cultivation and he's the baby, which is why he gets Wen ZhuLiu as a bodyguard while Wen Xu, who is arguably quite strong, just gets to run around with his subordinates. Wen Xu is the jock big brother who pushes Wen Chao's buttons and it looks like they hate each other--but I also headcanon that Wen Xu likes seeing Wen Chao succeed in whatever dumb thing Wen Chao decided to do today and Wen Chao wants to grow up to as respected and powerful as Wen Xu (and Wen RuoHan) one day. They are not adversaries although there is competition and conflict between them.

And, as I mentioned before, we get Waterborne Abyss vs Tortoise of Slaughter competition between them. Both of them don't believe it! Father, he is not that competent!

Wen RuoHan laughs it out and disagrees, because he appreciates that both his kids are doing amazing feats. (Are they though? Are they???)

Then there are headcanons of Wen Xu and Wen Qing! Their families were close because they are family and their parents were BFFs! I have yet to decide if I want Wen Xu or Wen Qing to be older. Da-ge or Da-jie? One idea I like for them is that they were close as children, but maybe grew up and went their separate ways a little. That Wen Qing never renounced the Wen Sect makes me hold fast that she did love her family and clan, even if she didn't agree with what they did for their sect. Wen Xu wasn't a bad guy even if he did bad things. (She disliked Wen Chao but maybe she liked Wen Xu a little more lol)

I headcanon Wen Ning's outstanding archery involved Wen Xu giving him some hands-on assistance. (Da-ge? Da-ge...!) Like everyone else in the Wen Sect, I headcanon Wen Ning would have also wanted to impress Wen RuoHan and be noticed by him, too. They didn't keep it a secret from Wen Chao on purpose, it just turned out that way especially since most of the work was done by Wen Ning. (Wen Xu was at the discussion conference but he didn't watch the archery competition, instead teasing it was for babies in order to make Wen Chao cross. Wen Xu likes Wen Chao but he needs to grow up!)

There are also headcanons about his mother, but that's a whole rabbit hole of its own lol My main headcanon is that Wen Xu and Wen Chao have the same mother, but she had difficult pregnancies that resulted in them being born years apart. Madam Wen and Wen RuoHan had wanted a large family and sadly only had two sons. Wen Xu did not grow up short on affection, which resulted in him wanting to protect the Qishan Wen name even more.

I headcanon that Wen RuoHan is a good father and his relationship with Wen Xu was very good, although of course it does not come without it's own difficulties and conflicts at times. (Considering how terrible all the other fathers are, statistically there should be one good one, right?)

There are other random headcanons I could throw in here but I will finish this off by saying I don't have a solid headcanon on who is Wen Yuan's father, although I can see the poetic appeal of it being Wen Xu. Wen Xu burned down Cloud Recesses and said the Wen would help the Lan grow from the ashes. Wen Yuan grows up there as if reborn from the ashes by help of the Lan, given a new name and family, too.

(That Wen Chao is explicitly given a wife in canon makes me headcanon him as Wen Yuan's father though, as I also like Wei WuXian protecting Wen Chao's son for my own dark delight~)

I also tend to think of Wen Xu as someone running around and playing around and not quite ready to settle down. But Wen Xu with a wife and a family of his own? I would love to see it!

[ganymedesclock]

Why do you think the use of lifeblood is a taboo in Hallownest? Why do you think Ghost, the Hunter, Hornet, likely Joni, and maybe Salubra don't really care about it?

Lifeblood appears to be the domain of another Higher Being. Really strong colors in Hollow Knight all seem tied to Entities Of Power one way or another- Unn’s omnipresent but diluted (as she’s weakening) green, the Nightmare Heart’s eye-catching scarlet- Radiance’s orange, obviously, and the sneakier presences of the Pale King and White Lady’s shades of ivory, and the underlying black of the Abyss.

There’s a lifeblood dream deep in the Abyss. A dream that seems inhabited by some creature that watches you from afar in the room with the Lifeblood Core. Joni’s Blessing affecting changes in behavior from the Lifeseeds tells us that there is, at least, some sort of “more powerful call” they heed, but not one that is the inherent energy of the void- they don’t respond to the Void Heart this way, and Joni’s Blessing is not so firmly anchored to Ghost’s nature.

I think that alone could be cause for entities like PK- who are cautious at best towards other beings- to put a moratorium on it, but it could well also be a tradition handed down from Radiance’s civilization. Neither of them seem like the type who would tolerate “competition” well- PK and White Lady were a united front, and Unn basically wasn’t a challenge to them / recognized PK, possibly because she herself is fading and may have wanted her moss children to have somewhere to go when she was gone. That Isma seems to have been a moss being, and lived in the highest echelons of service under PK, would seem to suggest that Unn may have operated as a kind of vassal state of his.

But we don’t know much about the blue god. We don’t even know if the black, blue-eyed creature in the Lifeblood Dream, and in Godhome, is even its true body- Godseeker never attunes or tries to attune to it, which is odd, because she’s obsessed with divinity.

The implication, of course, may well be that the blue god is not here. That lifeblood rears its head in Silksong may be a suggestion that the blue deity might be more tied to Pharloom than to Hallownest.

As far as that god’s character? I think we can trust them, insofar as we can trust any god in HK’s universe.

Lifeblood is described as beautiful by others. It seems to be a complimentary or at least sympathetic force to the Abyss. It doesn’t come up in the discussions of conflict between Radiance and the Pale King, even though its smallest form- the lifeseeds- have quite a similarity, in name and form, to Radiance’s lightseeds.

Now, technically, we can’t very well examine a god’s nature through the scuttling seeds- both light and lifeseeds flee the player and are harmless. Lightseeds, however, can and do aggregate in sufficient volumes to be not harmless- we don’t see huge volumes of lifeseeds. They tend small, though, unlike the lightseeds, they create cocoons- so it’s possible we have seen a lot of lifeseeds- they may mature into those butterfly-plants.

The biggest concentrations of the blue light that we see, however, are Joni’s repose, and the lifeblood dream. Both of which feature entities that are very peaceful in acknowledging Ghost- pay attention to them, but don’t seem to wish them any ill. There are spikes in the lifeblood dream, as well as outside Joni’s repose, but it’s our prerogative whether or not to try and get past them.

Joni is described as “the kindly heretic” and “the blue child”, an almost playful title that doesn’t evoke her as an unsettling cult leader. But there seems to be no record of her elsewhere in Hallownest. That she mentions that her memory “has been a little lacking as of late” makes me wonder if she succumbed to the plague, or started to, and withdrew to her god’s power instead- that doesn’t even suggest she was hunted down for being ‘a heretic’. Salubra mentions that lifeblood is a taboo, but, Iselda doesn’t even consider you might seek the ‘blue cocoons’ out for bad reasons. And Salubra sees no problem talking up that you feel better drinking lifeblood, in a way that rather clearly implies she’s done it despite it being “a bit of a taboo”; while her interests are macabre, she doesn’t seem to feel in danger.

So despite the blue light seeming discouraged, it doesn’t really seem like there is or was an active campaign against it, which is interesting. It also seems drawn towards gentle, peaceful sort of people. Iselda mentions the blue cocoons are fragile, and lifeseeds, if you carry Joni’s Blessing, seem... willing? to be a sacrifice in order to help you. They at least don’t seem concerned that you might cut them down as if you hack down one, others will keep scuttling towards you.

My personal concept is that gods in HK’s universe seem to come in pairs. 

PK and White Lady operated as King and Queen, in harmony, even though PK seems to have believed monotheism was necessary- he shows no sign of having considered White Lady someone he would need to get rid of or ascend beyond. Instead, the implication of the Kingsoul was that they were two halves of a whole entity, and that entity was the “beacon” PK saw himself as needing to become.

Radiance and Nightmare King appear to be creatures with some sort of duality, and the Seer actively talks about how the unified domain of dreams was split- implying they shared reverence and power freely- much as PK and WL seem to- before something happened to separate them. Given Grimm does not talk about the plague at all, nor do Divine or Brumm acknowledge it, it’s hard to say what exactly happened, but, it’s pretty likely NK is not looking for a way to reunite with Radiance- they seem to have very different attitudes about the Abyss, which could well point to the idea that some sort of strife broke between them, and they don’t want to see each other again.

Unn appears to be “without a counterpart” but that may just be that we haven’t seen them yet; there is a “Moss Druid” in Pharloom, presumably venerating someone, who might or might not be Unn. It could also be possible Unn is fading for lack of a counterpart, and that having flung her out of balance.

There seems to be some form of kindred thread, likewise, between the Abyss, and Lifeblood, with the latter’s presence in the former’s stronghold. They would seem well-matched, in terms of motifs; the Abyss, while not harmless, is conflated with acceptance, sleep, and reaching a point of peace with oneself. For Ghost, drawing deeper into their connection with the Abyss brings them back in contact with their lost siblings.

So it may be, possibly, that the lifeblood god is a potential path laid out for Hornet to draw closer to in Silksong- there’s already some cautious potential connection where Ghost’s shade that appears on their death is the first sign of their connection to the void that most players will run into, and we already know Hornet doesn’t yield a shade on death, but, rather- a cocoon.

Cocoons are interesting in that they contrast the motifs we had in the first game, of shells and eggs that might be ‘empty’ or ‘hollow inside’, or containing a very fledgling, nascent living thing. Cocoons came up relatively little; the grubfather seems to become a cocoon for his children, and the lifeblood cocoons- but cocoons generally are things that extant life forms around itself, to yield new life.

Hornet, compared to Ghost, has rather a lot of vitality. She binds quickly compared to their slow, metered focus; when she dies and respawns, she doesn’t need to come back to her cocoon for anything, but remains at full silk potential, and the cocoon itself is more an aid to help her continue than it is a potential roadblock (regaining one’s shade).

Also, given Ghost in Dream No More and Embrace The Void ascends, leaving the setting behind, Hornet may well ‘catch up to’ them if she’s due for an ascension of her own, if I’m right that she’s going to get closer to Lifeblood, and that Lifeblood seems to be kindred to the Abyss.

[pikapeppa]

Fenris/f!Hawke and the Inquisition: Trust

After a long and tiring week, chapter 47 of Lovers In A Dangerous Time (i.e. Fenris the Inquisitor) is up on AO3! 

This is my take on The Descent DLC. I refused to novelize it, and instead I took an excuse to write a lot of FRIENDSHIP FENSHIP BANTER between FennyFen and Dorian, Bull, Blackwall, Cole, and Varric. Oh, and as usual, some sappy sap with Rynne, because I am trash.

Read the whole thing on AO3; only the first bit is here (>9800 words). 

****************

Four months after Corypheus’s death…

Fenris felt empty.

He took a deep, slow breath to fortify himself, but it was futile. The battle with that lyrium-studded guardian creature had left him feeling horribly depleted, as though he’d been sucked dry of more than just his stamina. He was loathe to admit it, but he knew what this particular kind of exhaustion likely meant. 

He’d been using his lyrium tattoos too much. 

I had no choice, he thought tiredly. The monster guarding the Titan’s heart had been a horrific challenge to fight: a completely unfamiliar enemy powered by the incessant strength of the lyrium veins that flowed to and from this cavernous space. There was a very real moment during the fight when Fenris had feared they would fail to overpower the stone-and-lyrium beast. Bull and Blackwall had both taken a number of lashings from the monster’s flailing stone tentacles and were starting to slow down. Dorian had gotten struck by an unfortunately-timed blast of lyrium-powered energy and was crumpled against a wall trying to catch his breath while Varric guarded him. Hawke, meanwhile, had gotten trapped in a corner behind her own barrier, unable to emerge without getting struck by one of the guardian’s writhing rock limbs. Cole was hovering near her, hidden by the Veil and trying valiantly to find a way to help her slip free, but he too was effectively trapped. Fenris, meanwhile, was wearing himself thin using his own lyrium flares and the magic in his left palm to try and quell the monstrous stone beast.

It was a lucky strike that had ultimately saved them. Blackwall had lunged forward and smashed his shield against one of the guardian monster’s lyrium nodes, stalling its lashing limbs for a moment. Only then had the rest of their group realized that the lyrium nodes were not only the monster’s source of strength, but the sole reason it was animated at all — a realization that finally allowed them to freeze and to weaken the creature until Dorian and Hawke could blast it into a harmless pile of rubble. 

Fenris turned to Valta, who was watching them all with an unnervingly beatific smile. “You’re certain you’ll be all right down here?” he asked. 

“I will,” she said. “I have my stone sense, and now so much more. I’ll be safe.” She lifted her chin and closed her eyes serenely. “The song calls me here, like a lullaby to a child. This is where I belong.”

He nodded. Truthfully, he didn’t have the capacity to argue with Valta about this. The earthquakes had stopped, and Orzammar was no longer at risk of collapsing, either physically or financially. If Valta wanted to remain here in this strange subterranean fog-encrusted forest with only the Sha-Brytol for company, that was her prerogative.

 “Farewell, then,” he said.

She gave him another calm smile. “Farewell, Inquisitor. And thank you again for escorting me here.”

He nodded once more, then turned to Hawke. Her face was pale and her posture slumped, and he was certain that he didn’t look much better.

He reached for her. “Come,” he said. “Let’s make our way back to the surface.”

She gave him a wan smile as she took his hand, and Dorian sighed in relief. “Finally,” he exclaimed. “I can’t speak for the rest of you, but I could certainly use some sun.” 

His voice was rough with exhaustion as well, and Fenris spared him a look of concern. Bull seemed to hear it too, as he tucked Dorian against his side as they started toward the nearest stairs. 

“Afraid you’ll lose your tan, big guy?” he teased. 

Dorian sniffed in disdain. “I’ll have you know this tan is entirely natural, no sun needed. I will admit that this lurid blue light isn’t doing my complexion any favours, however, fascinating though it might be.” His eyes flicked over the brightly glowing lyrium veins that snaked across the stone walls and pillars in an intricate web of branching lines. 

Fenris’s gaze traced over the lyrium veins as well. Titan blood, he thought, and a shiver of revulsion ran down his spine. That’s what was embedded under his skin: the blood of these huge ancient creatures whose existence had been struck entirely from the Wall of Memories in Orzammar. That’s what held his former magic captive on his body: blood. Blue and incandescent blood, perhaps, but blood nonetheless. 

Blood magic. That’s what his lyrium marks were, quite literally. That’s what he was using every time he clenched his fist and brought these marks to life. Every time he phased across a battlefield, every time he lashed out at his enemies with a burst of lyrium-bolstered power, every time he plucked a pulsing heart from an enemy’s chest: every single time, he’d been using blood magic. 

Oblivious to his internal anguish, the others were continuing to chat tiredly as they made their way up the stairs and back toward the nearest camp. Varric sighed. “Well, this’ll be a fun one for Fenris to explain to good old Orzammar.” 

Dorian scoffed. “I can only imagine,” he said, and he launched into a mocking little dialogue. “‘Inquisitor, what happened to our dear ex-Shaper?’ ‘Sorry, King Dwarf, but we left her there.’ ‘Left her where?’ ‘Oh, you know, inside of the enormous stone creature that your entire civilization seems to have forgotten.’”

Bull scratched his chin. “Maybe Fenris should sit on this information for a while. Think it over before sharing it with the boys down below.”

Dorian gave him an incredulous look. “We spend nearly two weeks wandering through the Deep Roads in the company of their people, and you think we can return to the surface without telling them anything?”

“I’m not saying that,” Bull said mildly. “We give them a report, of course. Tell them their mines are safe and their earthquakes are solved, and hold on to the rest of it until we can decide how to use it to our advantage.”

Blackwall frowned. “That’s dishonest. Orzammar asked for our help. We should tell them what we learned.”

Varric shot him a small smile. “Wow, hero. You really are done with politics and the Game, aren’t you?”

“It’s not about politics,” Blackwall said gruffly. “It’s about doing what’s right.” He waved at their surroundings. “This is far bigger than they thought when they asked us to fight the darkspawn. Maker’s balls, it was more than we bargained for when we came down here to fight.” He looked at Varric. “They should know what’s hidden under all their cities, don’t you think?” 

Varric twisted his lips ruefully. “Honestly? I don’t know if it’s a great idea. ‘Real’ dwarves think they know exactly who they are and exactly how far back their bloodlines go. Telling them that something this huge was struck from the Memories… They’ll have to rethink everything they thought they knew about how great they are. They’re not going to like that.” He shook his head. “Makes me glad I’m a topsider.” 

Dorian looked at him in surprise. “You think they shouldn’t know, then? Just because they won’t like what they hear?”

Varric grimaced. “All I’m saying is that it’ll change everything for them.”

“That’s no reason not to reveal the past,” Dorian said. “In fact, some might say it’s exactly why they should know.”

Varric raised an eyebrow. “We still talking about dwarves, Sparkler? Or are we talking about a different group of people who think they know exactly who they are and how far back their bloodlines go?”

Dorian paused, then sighed. “Maybe I am. Touché, my hairy friend.”

They all fell quiet as they continued up the seemingly interminable path to the camp, and Fenris was grateful; the higher they walked, the more fatigued he felt, and it was taking all of his attention to simply place one foot in front of the other. 

Hawke, meanwhile, had been uncharacteristically silent during the trek. Fenris shot her a sideways look. “Are you all right?” he murmured.

She nodded. “Just tired. Looking forward to a bedroll and a nice warm fire.” She gave him a feeble smile, but it swiftly melted into concern.

She squeezed his hand. “Are you all right? You don’t look well.”

He shook his head. “I’ll be fine.” He kept on walking, putting one foot in front of the other, ignoring the unpleasant spinning sensation in his head and the feeling of emptiness that was sucking at his veins.

Keep going, he thought doggedly. It couldn’t be that much farther to the camp. They’d been walking for at least ten minutes already. 

He tripped on a step and stumbled to his hands and knees with a grunt, and Hawke fell to her knees beside him. “Fenris,” she breathed. 

“Shit,” Varric exclaimed. “Are you guys okay?”

Fenris didn’t reply. He stared blearily Hawke’s face. Venhedis, she looked so tired and wan.

She stroked his cheek, but her cold and trembling fingers were no comfort. “Fenris,” she said shakily, “you’re overext–”

“I’m fine,” he said loudly. He didn’t want the others to hear her, even if what she was suggesting was true. Besides, there was no point harping on it; there was nothing to be done. It wasn’t like he could take a lyrium draught for this, not that they had much lyrium potion to spare. 

What he really needed was rest, and to have that, he needed to get to the blasted camp. 

Dorian and Varric were crouching anxiously beside them while Cole hovered over Hawke’s shoulder. Fenris ignored them all and gently pulled Hawke’s hand away from his face. “Let’s keep moving,” he said, and he tried to push himself upright. 

His hand slipped out from underneath him. The next thing he knew, he was lying on his back and the sky was spinning above him — no, not the sky, because that would mean they were outside in the open air… 

“Fenris!” Hawke’s voice was sharp and worried now. When her face appeared above his own, he could see the fear reflected in her blurry features. 

He didn’t want her to be scared. He wanted to tell her not to worry, but he was so tired that he couldn’t open his mouth to speak. He was so tired that he couldn’t even keep his blasted eyelids open. 

Her trembling palm pressed gently against his forehead, and he shivered. Why were her hands so cold? 

“Hawke, what’s wrong with him?” Blackwall asked anxiously.

Dorian’s reply was taut with concern. “He’s… kaffas, does he have a fever? He looks almost like he’s—”

Hawke cut him off. “I’ve got it,” she said brusquely. Then her cool fingertips were pressing against Fenris’s temples. 

Don’t, Fenris thought. He forced his eyes open. He knew what she was about to do; he’d seen Anders do this for her a handful of times, and he’d seen her do this for Anders once or twice as well. But healing an overextended mage was a drain on the healer’s mana, and Hawke was already so depleted… 

He stared at her desperately. Stop, he tried to say, but he couldn’t move his tongue. Already her eyes were closed, and a cool pulse of magic was leaking from her fingers into his temples.

“Hawke, be careful with this,” Varric warned.

“With what?” Blackwall demanded. “What is she doing? What’s going on?”

Fenris tried to pull away, but he couldn’t move his head. He tried to glare at her, to forbid her from continuing with the look on his face, but he had no idea if his face was even moving, and his eyes were falling shut once more…

A minute later – or maybe it was five, or fifty? – the soothing pulse of her magic disappeared, and a heavy weight landed on his chest: it seemed that Hawke had collapsed on top of him. A dull spike of horror shot through his belly, but he still couldn’t open his eyes.

“Damn it,” Varric hissed. 

“Vashedan,” Bull grunted. “Blackwall, get over here, let’s pick them up. We’ll get them to the camp quickly, there’s a potions kit there…”

A moment later, Fenris was being hefted over someone’s shoulder — whether Bull’s or Blackwall’s, he couldn’t tell — and he was jolting along uncomfortably as whoever was carrying him took off at a run, but the discomfort didn’t matter; what mattered was Hawke. Was she all right? Was she… why had she… why couldn’t she look after herself for once…?

He couldn’t ask any of these questions, though; they were half-formed ideas, barely cohesive beyond the thread of fear and fatigue that was holding them together. By the time he was being laid down on the distinctive padding of a bedroll, even that thread had started to dissolve, leaving him with only one bleary thought in mind. 

Hawke. He wanted her. Where was she?

He tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids were too heavy. He pried his tongue away from the roof of his mouth. “Rynne,” he croaked.

A cool hand touched his forehead, but it wasn’t Hawke’s this time. 

“You’ll be all right,” Cole murmured. “Sleep.”

Read the rest on AO3. 

[quantumized-insanity]

The meaning of life

The meaning of life, is not a nebulous undefinable thing,its not a number and its not a formula. The meaning of life, is living. Profound I know,but the meaning of life is experiencing and enjoying every little moment, the laughter the tears, the happy, and the sad. The meaning of life, is that life is both your responsibility, and your prerogative. You can do anything you want, you can build a homemade hot air balloon and fly into international airspace, you can commit arson, go to space, study quantum physics or become a farmer. You can do whatever you want, but you also know that, whatever you do, there are results, aftereffects, and ripples that both you and others will feel. The way I see it, there is no god with a grand plan engineering everything like cogs in some grand machine. There is no destiny, no fate, no god to save you, no higher power out to smite you. Just you and your stick vs the rest of the world and that’s it. There’s nothing outside our atmosphere to come and help us(that we know of) and the void that surrounds us doesnt give a damn about what you want, or who cares about you. The universe around us is colder than any heart that has and ever will exist, and far more uncaring. So be kind. The universe is cold and uncaring, so dont let our world be. Kindness will go farther than the greatest acts of war, we still remember the holocaust, but for all of that, the Christmas truce in ww1 is arguably more memorable than the that. Because the holocause was the mass murder of millions, it was terrible and disgusting, and needs to be taught till the end of time as part of humanities legacy. But it wasn’t beautiful, it wasnt a feat of humanity. It wasnt the greatest show of universal empathy and hope that I could ever think of. During the 1914 christmas truce of ww1, german soldiers got out of their trenches, unarmed, and said to the americans two simple words. “merry christmas” and we listened. Across the front lines of ww1 the fighting stopped, just for a day. Nothing like it has ever happened since, but just for a day, the front lines of one of the worst wars in history, unplanned unilateral peace over a holiday. Thats what we can do, Thats all we can do, right?. Make the universe a little bit brighter, make each others live a little bit better. just be kind. 

[spiftynifty]

On Let’s Voltron, the showrunners, and fandom

On Thursday an interview came out on Let’s Voltron, the ostensibly final interview with the showrunners of this now-completed show. Within an hour a few tweet threads appeared and incited a new wave of hatred and anger towards the showrunners, mostly by people relying on these tweet threads rather than listening to the interview themselves.

I don’t like secondhand info that sparks outrage; and having watched both AB interviews and seen how outraged people got over them, without having seen either, I strongly suspected that this interview was nowhere near as incendiary as the tweet threads suggested.

And lo and behold, I was right. Much of what was reported in tweets was misconstrued, or lacking the additional information that listening to someone’s tone provides. I didn’t hear two snarky showrunners smugly enjoying the chaos that their truly lacklustre season provided. I heard two people who were exhausted and beaten down by both the expectations of the fandom and the limitations placed on them by people with more money and power. They didn’t call Shiro “boring”, they referred to their initial vision of him as boring. They didn’t say he was repetitive, they said his backstory was repetitive of other characters’ in the series and was cut. There was one salty comment from JDS about how Voltron and Atlas merging was cool but everyone was too bummed about s8 to appreciate it, but there’s a dark humor to it that reads to me like a man struggling to joke about something neutral and positive in a season that was poorly received by fans and many critics alike. The vast majority of the interview is not much we haven’t already heard, though there is a very telling segment that lasts about 5-10 minutes where they discuss the heavy limitations on representation in cartoons. Ezor and Zethrid were allowed to exist, they say, because they were secondary characters. And female. The words “main heroes” with an S, are repeated several times by LM when describing who was and was not allowed to be LGBT. She explicitly states that wlw is one thing, but mlm is a whole other battle.

As disappointed as I am in the mistakes JDS and LM made, I find myself feeling very defensive of them as I see the people who once defended them from ants now begin to exhibit ant-like behavior themselves. “They should never be allowed to work in animation again” says one tweet. “They never gave a shit about this show” says another. “S8 was their explicit revenge on fans.”

It makes me unbelievably sad to read this. JDS and LM made mistakes. S8 was objectively terrible. Their attempt to shoehorn in “bonus” representation backfired terribly. They’ve been upfront about Voltron never having been planned with a happy ending in mind, and buckle down hard when confronted with the notion that killing Allura was a bad move.

But as they’ve said many, many times, this show was a labor of love for them. They worked their asses off to pitch something grand to Dreamworks because they were fans of the original and wanted to do it justice. But then they got the show and proceeded to get buffeted around for 4 yrs by dreamworks and the rules of a pre-existing IP and half the story ideas they come up with get shot down by execs for any number of reasons. People have latched onto the fact that the last third of the series wasn’t properly planned from the beginning, but I’d like to remind people that the plan they had for s3-6 was completely upended by one (1) executive call. The showrunners have said that they purposefully left things out of the bible to make it harder for execs to say NO to something well in advance. They were, as my director frequently calls it, “playing the game”, the careful balance of trying to tell a good story while also pleasing the client demands for a robot toy show. It’s a fight. Part of playing the game is leaving decisions so late that it becomes far too late to be changed by executives. But the downside of this is sometimes running out of time to do the things you want to do.

I’d like to point out too that in the interview at one point they actually say, “we knew who our audience was. They [the marketing people and higher ups] didn't.” So for 4 yrs they struggled to make the story they wanted to tell, they lost directors and writers, because the demands were way too high and people were burning out and leaving in an industry where being overworked is so par for the course that burnout is just a constant state of being. In other words, it takes extreme amounts of stress for people to burn out, and there is a certain mentality in this industry of burning out being a sign of weakness. When 2/3 directors left (one of them without the safety net of another offer) they put a bit of their reputation on the line-- and left anyway. And through it all JDS and LM, like any creators, were just trying to tell the story they wanted to see, scrambling to manage executive demands, working on multiple episodes at once and trying to maintain the storyline through them, losing people to burnout, having to rewrite entire scenes when voice actors weren’t available, and fighting for the show to be better than it was. 

I'm not absolving the showrunners of guilt, I'm just feeling bad that this is where they ended up because at the end of the day they genuinely were coming from a place of good intentions and a desire to tell, from their perspective a good story. And they did fight for rep, to the point that when initially Shiro was not allowed to be gay, they considered getting up and walking away and ending the project but they stayed because of the crew who would have been summarily put out of work. They weighed the importance of having that representation vs the jobs of 100s of people. That’s how important it was to them. 

Obvious, they didn't stick the landing, and it’s fair to say they outright screwed it up in a massive way that’s going to be remembered for a very long time. On the Shiro front they didn't have time to, in a way that would have felt genuine and agreeable for everyone. Keith was never ever going to be allowed. Maybe if Shiro and Keith had both been women, it would have been, which is a sad thought on the state of this industry and the kind of gendered homophobia that still exists in media both animation and otherwise. JDS and LM didn’t think far enough ahead on this, didn’t think outside of their pool of internal knowledge as non-LGBT people. As terrible as it is, it’s important to note they did this not out of a place of malice or vengeance, but an earnest, if misguided attempt to try and diversify the landscape. It did a lot of damage and they should not be rewarded for this move; but they also shouldn’t be being painted as the mustache-twirling villains so much of the fandom tries to make them out to be.

I hope this has been a huge lesson for them on the importance of stepping outside of your own situation when creating minority characters and properly discussing these characters with multiple people in real life who fall into those categories. No one LGBT person can or should speak for the entire community, as we’ve well seen with certain crewmembers.

Killing Allura is a much harder act to forgive because that was something they had time to think about and plan for and it should have been the more obvious lesson. There was ROOM to ask someone outside of themselves, “does this work”. There was room to be educated on why this was a terrible move both socially and narratively. There is room and time now, and dozens of articles about this very issue, that both showrunners should be reading and absorbing especially as their next projects involve a host of diverse characters. Their insistence to buckle down on the Allura Issue to me reads as; they haven’t learned anything from this, or taken the time to understand people’s pain about it. This is something that desperately needs to change especially as they continue to make movies and presumably TV shows. I do hope it’s something that will.

All this to say, please listen to the interview yourself before adding to the hate mob. If you’re still angry after listening to the interview yourself, that is your prerogative but I encourage you not to transform that anger into venomous hatred against the showrunners. The show is over; as fans we can transform this space into whatever we want it to be since Voltron is effectively ours now. Is attacking the showrunners, as ant1s have famously done for years, the image we really want to hold onto going forward?

[middleagedangst]

Marching to the Beat of a Handmaid’s Drum

A pro-choice manifesto... by a dude

_________________________________________________________________

Freedom of choice. It’s as American as apple pie, baseball, and watered-down beer. As Americans, we get to choose what we buy, where we eat, who we love, whether or not we like someone based on their opinion of The Office… You get where I’m going. Exercising your choice is a great display of your patriotism and love for this nation.

Sometimes our freedom of choice gets ripped away from us. It can happen when the grocery store you frequent decides to stop carrying your favorite brand of powdered mashed potatoes (I’ll never forgive you, Kroger!). But sometimes, it gets ripped away by the very people who took an oath to serve you and protect all of your freedoms, even the ones that live in a gray area.

Avoiding human interaction and wasting time on my phone has never been more obnoxious. Between all the President’s shit-tweeting, to our planet being on fire, to all of the other depressing shit going on, just even trying to read the news sends my pulse into a near-fatal death spiral. It’s hard to find a good pick me up and dog videos and other real-life blooper reels can only get you so far.

But speaking of death spirals…

Let’s discuss the latest thing to fall into one, the freedom to make a different kind of choice, a woman’s right to body autonomy and abortion.

(Okay liberals, before you get all bent out of shape, I know I’m just another privileged cisgendered white man who deserves to be burnt at the stake and for that reason, you may ignore everything I write and instead sit and yell at your screen so others know you have a black belt in woke-jitsu. Trust me, same team. Kumbaya and shit.)

This whole abortion debate has me pretty fucking confused. First, wasn’t this shit settled back in ‘73? And second, I thought this was America, where we have freedoms so great terrorists hate us and the government was supposed to keep their noses out of our business? Whatever happened to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?” The American dream? What the fuck America? Is Lady Liberty too strung out on God, guns, and OxyContin to remember the hood she came from?

Making laws that hinder a woman’s individual liberty is some shit that isn’t exclusive to state governments. The Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, fucking ISIS, all have laws intended to keep women subservient and powerless over their own life. At least they’re honest about their theocratic motivations. What say you, Georgia, Ohio, Alabama, Tennessee, Utah, Missouri, Mississippi, Arkansas? The dumpster fire of Ohio is even trying to take it one step further with a bill that, in a way, caters to the religious right’s push for abstinence by equating any contraceptive that prevents fertilization to abortion. Fortunately for me, the bill makes no mention of a situation sock.

I have to ask, do the politicians that are supporting these laws actually think that they’re going to really stop anything? The people that think its wrong or don’t want one are already not getting abortions. Sure, it might put a dent in overall numbers and make law-abiding citizens think twice before getting the procedure, but no law will ever stop it completely. History has shown time and time again that trying to legislate morality is futile. Prohibition, the drug war, bestiality- all failed attempts at controlling the morality of the sovereign by the political class. Abortion is no different. Women got them before Roe v. Wade, and I’ll bet that they’ll get them after these laws take effect. It might help some of these pro-lifers sleep at night knowing that they have done something to protect the life of an innocent child, but is restricting human rights worth saving the potential life of an unborn fetus?

First off, that child you’re hell-bent on protecting might just end up to be a real asshole. We all know a few. It might become a drain on society, or be a mass murderer, a drug addict, war criminal, or even worse, a Democrat. Will it be worth all your zealotry then? Will it be worth saving that life that then becomes all the other things you despise? What if the child needs your help getting by, or being fed, or getting a good public education? Are you going to be pro-life then? Or are you going to complain they aren’t a desirable example of a human being and a bad American? It seems easy to want to protect that life while still in the womb, but it’s apparently much harder to want to help that same life flourish.

That’s my main problem with pro-lifers. They say they’re all about life being born and we should do everything we can to protect the ones that can’t speak for themselves, yet when it comes to actually helping a life outside of the womb, then all attempts are deemed socialist and unamerican. Universal healthcare. Fuck that. Raising the minimum wage to a living wage, communist. Programs that would help the less fortunate and end a cycle of poverty, nope. What about the life that already exists? Shouldn’t it be important to help protect the mother from having to potentially raising a child alone or when they’re already struggling to make it? Dare I even mention that in cases of rape, the woman would always have a constant reminder of that incident, or that the rapist still has parental rights?

I’ll take a pro-lifer seriously when they openly condemn war, capital punishment, factory farming, eating meat, pollution, racism, sexism, police violence, poverty, hunger. Until then, I don’t think you can truly label yourself pro-life. All you can label yourself is pro-childbirth. Or pro-government control. Statistically speaking, most women who get abortions are already poor or misfortunate. Many of these children forced into this world will be brought up poor (Poverty affects health. Look it up.), or raised in an abusive home, have parents that neglect them or are addicted to drugs. How is that a good thing? What is so great about having to live that way?

It’s nice to want everyone to have the same values as you when you live in a nice suburb with decent schools and a healthy tax base, but when every day is a struggle and surviving isn’t that easy, your decision making and sense of what’s right changes. It shouldn’t be anybody else’s prerogative to dictate how others live their lives.

We should be moving society in a direction where abortions aren't really desired. There are ways we can do that but many of the same people that want to ban abortion don’t want to pony up some more money on their tax bill to do so but are willing to make sure they pay for extra law enforcement and jail for those that violate their will. Instead, it seems we’re totally fine with moving back to a time where women had less control over their own lives. Barefoot and pregnant seems to be the baseline for how these politicians view women.

So maybe instead of being assholes and restricting a woman’s freedom, find other ways to minimize the number of abortions in this country. How about allowing for easier access to birth control, especially in poorer neighborhoods? How about funding comprehensive sex education? Genital mutilation-free male birth control. That one’s easy, mix it straight into Viagra. Boom. Done. You’re welcome science. Invest in better public schools and higher education, more homeless shelters, addiction treatment facilities, psychiatric hospitals, and jobs programs. Expand taxpayer-funded healthcare for all. Give handjobs a better PR team. Literally, anything is better than resorting to stripping rights away. Show a little humanity.

Even though you might not agree with the practice, there are benefits to turning the other cheek. Studies have shown that access to abortion helps lower poverty and crime. Fewer people will be brought into the world at a disadvantage which means society as a whole gets better. Fewer children in foster care (which is expensive, by the way). Less money needed for social programs. Less crime, so fewer spent on prisons. This is a bottom-up problem and it is deserving of bottom-up solutions. Instead of acting like the morality police, take some time, know why these things happen, understand and act with some compassion.

I know that as a man, I don’t really have a say in what women do with their own bodies. It’s none of my fucking business, and it’s none of yours too. I'm not making an argument as to what constitutes a human life and whether or not it should be considered murder. That’s a whole other discussion. I’m making the case that as a sovereign adult citizen of the self-proclaimed “free-est country on the planet” a woman should have the actual freedom to make a decision that will serve their own best interest and do it safely.

Showing resistance to this display of power and control is needed, perhaps now more than ever. If you agree with a woman’s right to choose, if you believe in self-governance and freedom, then take to the streets, be obnoxious, vote the fuckers responsible out of office, make your voices heard in the most annoying ways possible. Act like the gun nuts. Because you never know what the dicks in Washington will try to take away next.

Having an informed and motivated populace is what the government fears. You have power. You have a voice. Use them.

[recalculatingthegenderwar]

Feminist academic reminds us mainstream feminism really does just hate men

The Washington Post recently published an editorial entitled “Why can’t we hate men?” It is a short and illuminating look at the psyche of a modern feminist academic. In her editorial, Northeastern University professor Suzanna Danita Walters “names the problem”, a term feminists use when they get tired of dancing around how evil all men are and just decide to come out and say it. In these moments, the pseudo-academic smokescreens of “patriarchy” start to fall away and feminists reveal themselves as naked bigots.

Anti-male bigotry is mainstream feminism.

Although the article’s quality tempts you to think otherwise, Walters isn’t some random blogger:

“Suzanna Danuta Walters, a professor of sociology and director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University, is the editor of the gender studies journal Signs.” [link to her bio added]

I’m surprising no one by pointing out that while women’s studies or gender studies could be a legitimate academic discipline, it is really only feminist indoctrination in practice. The Northern University Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program website states:

“We advance knowledge through interdisciplinary research, innovative pedagogies, and collaboration with other institutions, inspiring new generations of gender and sexuality scholars and feminist leaders committed to social justice. We strive to be a globally recognized model of excellence in gender, sexuality, and feminist scholarship.” [emphasis added]

Walters is neither a nobody nor a fringe radical. She is a feminist professor teaching feminism at a prestigious university, running a feminist academic center and a feminist academic journal. She stands at the zenith of mainstream feminism.

This also makes it laughable when Walters claims “[t]he world has little place for feminist anger.” I won’t rehash the mind-bogglingly examples of feminist power and influence I’ve written about. I’ll just point out that Walters is one of many for whom “feminist anger” is a viable career. This is like Bill Gates telling us, “People really never much had of a place for that whole computer thing.”

The problem with naming the problem

In my past articles, I explained how Patriarchy theory is the core narrative of feminism. Patriarchy theory claims that women (and sometimes to a lesser extent men) are being oppressed by men as a class. Since men are considered to have absolute power over the world, even problems seemingly unrelated to gender (war, economic issues, environmental issues, etc) are the fault of men as a class. Individual male misdeeds are attributed to the entire male class even if most men would find those misdeeds repugnant. Positive male contributions are forgotten. Indeed, Walters blames men for a “milienia of woe”. Because God knows humanity was so much better off a millenia ago. Things have really gone to shit since a man invented Penicillin.

Meanwhile female misdeeds are seen as rarities, ignored or blamed on male influence. Under feminism, women must be angels and men must be devils.

Men as a class are referred to as the Patriarchy. This obfuscates and dehumanizes feminist bigotry toward men. Feminists portray themselves as fighting a system rather than people. This is useful for public relations and seducing new recruits. It is unclear whether feminists are just lying to the public or also to themselves. I honestly think it’s a bit of both.

As feminists become more indoctrinated, they get tired of dancing around the problem. They feel like they are doctors who aren’t allowed to properly diagnose a disease that is ravaging the world. Sit in the feminist pot long enough and you will eventually boil over. That is what we are seeing with Walters:

“Seen in this indisputably true context, it seems logical to hate men. I can’t lie, I’ve always had a soft spot for the radical feminist smackdown, for naming the problem in no uncertain terms. I’ve rankled at the “but we don’t hate men” protestations of generations of would-be feminists and found the “men are not the problem, this system is” obfuscation too precious by half”

Notice Walters is not only framing men (not “Patriarchy”, but men) as the “the problem”, but challenging the feminist credentials of all “would-be feminists” who don’t openly hate men. Walters believes hating men is essential to being a feminist.

Walters justification for hating half of humanity

So what is the “indisputably true context” in which “it seems logical” to hate half of the entire human species based on a biological trait they have no control over? What is Walkers indisputably justification for hating over 3.5 billion people across the world with diverse backgrounds, identities and beliefs simply because they were born a certain way? You would think an academic would have a rock solid argument to advocate such widespread hate. You would be wrong:

“It’s not that Eric Schneiderman (the now-former New York attorney general accused of abuse by multiple women) pushed me over the edge. My edge has been crossed for a long time, before President Trump, before Harvey Weinstein, before “mansplaining” and “incels.” Before live-streaming sexual assaults and red pill men’s groups and rape camps as a tool of war and the deadening banality of male prerogative.” [included original links from article]

These aren’t arguments. They aren’t even coherent sound bites. Walters is just ranting. We don’t even know if Schneiderman is actually guilty of anything yet. Yeah, Weinstein is a jerk. He doesn’t represent all men.

Yeah, 2 incels went on a killing spree (killing both women and men) in the last 5 years. However, incels aren’t inherently violent. They aren’t always saints, but they aren’t a terrorist movement. There appears to be no evidence that either killer colluded with the wider incel community. Frankly, a lot of the reporting on the supposedly “dangerous” incel movement seems like fear-mongering/feminist propaganda. More importantly, incels are a fringe movement that most men want nothing to do with. Most men don’t even know what an "incel" is.

The only items with even a little meat are claims of live-streaming sexual assault and rape camps. How common are these things? Who are the victims? The perpetrators? Walker doesn’t tell us. We get no information about live-streaming sexual assaults. Her link on rape camps takes you to a 18 year old article about the trial of Serbian soldiers who sexually enslaved Muslim women during the Kosovo conflict. This is tragic, but is it grounds to hate all men? Again, the article is about their criminal trial in the Hague. Strange how the rape of women is globally condemned in our universal patriarchal rape culture.

“Pretty much everywhere in the world, this is true: Women experience sexual violence, and the threat of that violence permeates our choices big and small. In addition, male violence is not restricted to intimate-partner attacks or sexual assault but plagues us in the form of terrorism and mass gun violence.”

Walters provides no links or no citations here. Statements like this are largely meaningless without some effort to establish scope. “Pretty much everywhere in the world women experience” synethesia and gout. Female violence “is not restricted to intimate-partner attacks or sexual assault.“ These are also both equally true statements.

Similarly, Walters gives us no actual data about men’s role in terrorism or mass gun violence. I’m still willing to consider men might be overrepresented in terrorism and mass gun violence. However, does this mean I should hate women because women commit the majority of infanticide? What? I can’t because only a minority of women commit infanticide and most women find infanticide abhorrent? Feminists say I should be sensitive about possible psychological or social issues that motivate female child-killers? Really?

What about women being the majority of human traffickers? Should I hate all women now?

Surprise! It's the wage gap.

Walters eventually gets something that sort of resembles an actual argument:

“Women are underrepresented in higher-wage jobs, local and federal government, business, educational leadership, etc.; wage inequality continues to permeate every economy and almost every industry; women continue to provide far higher rates of unpaid labor in the home (e.g., child care, elder care, care for disabled individuals, housework and food provision); women have less access to education, particularly at the higher levels; women have lower rates of property ownership.“ [original links included]

Basically you should hate men because…wage gap - the dead horse feminists keep thinking will win the Kentucky Derby. The wage gap is generally found to be the result of women’s choices in the labor market, not sex discrimination. The same goes for unpaid labor. Walters’ own source explains that women often do more unpaid labor because their husbands often do more paid labor.

Walters claim about education holds a bit more water. Her linked source is a recently published academic report on girl’s worldwide school enrollment. I haven’t had a chance to read through it detail, but it seems to take a much more nuanced view of than Walters would have you believe. First, there are only significantly unequal primary and secondary school enrollment rates in very poor countries and/or war torn countries. The report doesn’t seem to blame girls lack of education enrollment simply on patriarchal oppression, but mentions issues such as the greater costs on families and greater concern for girls’ safety.

It is unclear what Walters means by “higher levels” of education. The report says very little about post-secondary education. It doesn’t seem to have any statistics on global post-secondary enrollment. One of the few things it does point out is that U.S. colleges have a higher female enrollment than male enrollment (page 18).

Walters never offers hard evidence all of these supposed inequalities she lists are due largely to widespread to sex discrimination against women by men. In fact, she doesn’t even directly make this claim. She only strongly infers it.

Walters Advocates Violence?

“So, in this moment, here in the land of legislatively legitimated toxic masculinity, is it really so illogical to hate men? For all the power of #MeToo and #TimesUp and the women’s marches, only a relatively few men have been called to task, and I’ve yet to see a mass wave of prosecutions or even serious recognition of wrongdoing. On the contrary, cries of “witch hunt” and the plotted resurrection of celebrity offenders came quick on the heels of the outcry over endemic sexual harassment and violence. But we’re not supposed to hate them because . . . #NotAllMen. I love Michelle Obama as much as the next woman, but when they have gone low for all of human history, maybe it’s time for us to go all Thelma and Louise and Foxy Brown on their collective butts.” [originally links included; emphasis added]

Now we are getting into SCUM manifesto territory. The pivotal plot point in Thelma and Louise is one of the protagonists shoots a man to death. I’m less familiar with Foxy Brown, but it sounds like the female protagonist also commits violence against men. It’s hard to not to see this as a thinly veiled call to violence.

This fits with the general cowardice of Walters’ editorial. While it’s clear she hates men and it’s clear she wants us to hate them too, notice she never explicitly writes, “I hate man and you should hate men too”. She is simply stating “”it seems logical to hate men” and that women have every “right to hate” men. She isn’t literally telling anyone to actually hate men.

I’m not sure what legal, professional or ethical bullet she thinks is dodging by so thinly obscuring her obvious intentions.

Feminist Julie Bindel is a monster, but at least she had the decency to just come out and say she wants to put men in concentration camps.

Why was this written?

It isn’t well written. It isn’t thoughtful. It likely won’t improve the public opinion of feminism. Why would Walters write this? Why would the Washington Post print it? What purpose does it serve?

Firstly, Walters wrote it because she is a bigot who wants to spread her bigotry.

Secondly, the Washington Post produces feminist propaganda. I don’t know exactly why, but they do. They concocted a new bogus 1-in-5 college rape statistic after the CSA study finally fell from grace. They further scrambled to save the feminist college rape panic in the face of government data showing incredibly low rape rates on campuses. They tried to whip up #MeToo frenzy by creating a bogus work place harassment study that completely ignored male victims.

Finally, I hypothesis the main goal is to bring Democratic voters to the polls for the midterm election. Look how Walters ends her editorial:

“So men, if you really are #WithUs and would like us to not hate you for all the millennia of woe you have produced and benefited from, start with this: Lean out so we can actually just stand up without being beaten down. Pledge to vote for feminist women only. Don’t run for office. Don’t be in charge of anything. Step away from the power. We got this. And please know that your crocodile tears won’t be wiped away by us anymore. We have every right to hate you. You have done us wrong. #BecausePatriarchy. It is long past time to play hard for Team Feminism. And win.“

Since Trump took office in the United States, SJW groups and left-leaning media outlets have formed an indistinguishable mass of outrage to keep the anti-Trump fires burning for the midterm elections. This is why the National Organization for Women is making tweets about immigration and the 2nd amendment. This is why the Women’s March really wasn’t about women, but about left-wing talking points and hating Trump.

Take a look at this sentence again:

“Pledge to vote for feminist women only.” [emphasis added]

Remember feminism isn’t for women. Feminism is for feminism.

[buggie-hagen]

Sermon for Fourth Sunday after Epiphany (2/3/19)

Primary Text | Luke 4:21-30

Dear People of God,

       We all come to church with our own agendas of what it is supposed to be like. There are those of us who come to church to be entertained. There are those of us who come to church to get a good feeling. There are those of us who come to church expecting it to be easy and convenient. And, perhaps most enticing of all, there are those of us who come to church to control others. We likely don’t even realize we are doing it. Nevertheless, it rears its ugly face when we encounter opposition to our agenda. We may even have a virtuous agenda. The truth is, going to church is about none of these things. They are distractions from what matters. Our agendas keep us from being attentive to the one thing that does matter—the Word. The Word is the one who gets to shift the gears. The Word gets to decide how it works. We cannot affect that. God chooses. The agendas we have bring us no special favor from God, as we shall see in today’s Gospel reading.  

       Jesus reads the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and declares, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” He then says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Now, the people were amazed at these words of sheer grace coming from the mouth of Jesus. They even spoke well of him. And, who wouldn’t? It certainly sounds great to on paper to bring good news to the poor and to proclaim release to the captives. I mean, I know I’d want to put that on my résumé. The truth is, this is all fine and good until it interferes with how we think things should be. Someone might say, “I go to church every Sunday, therefore God should show me favor.” Another person might say, “I’m a nice person, therefore God should show me favor.” And, yet another person might say, “I am devout, I read the Bible, I pray every day, and I give to the poor…therefore God should show me favor.” None of these are true. There is nothing we can do to get God to choose us before others, it is God’s prerogative.

       The people were happy and fine with Jesus’ being the fulfillment of the scriptures because they expected it to mean they would get their way. They desired a Messiah who would give them military victory over their enemies. They desired to be held in higher esteem by God than the other nations. But Jesus ultimately did not meet their expectation and he wasn’t afraid to show them why. He recalls two examples from the history of Israel. The first he says, “But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the skies would not rain for three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.” Then Jesus continues, “there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” Upon these words, the crowds listening to Jesus took offense and were outraged. They were willing to praise Jesus as long as they got what they wanted. They wanted Jesus to favor them over the nations and here Jesus goes saying that the nation of Israel was skipped over for these pagans from in the time of Elijah and Elisha. That was NOT what they wanted to here. Certainly, because God was the God of their ancestors that they should be favored over anyone else. That is not the case, dear people of God. God shows no partiality to one of us—no matter how good you think you are. Rather, God is the one who has chosen to be gracious to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

On the cross, Jesus crucified all our agendas. They are nothing in light of the Word. For God’s agenda revealed in Jesus Christ is to show mercy and to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. This is offensive. We do not want to let go of our own ideas of how God should work. It’s not too hard to see why the crowd wanted to throw Jesus off the cliff.

But listen to the gracious words of our Lord Jesus Christ: “I have been anointed to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” This is what going to church is about. Not about being entertained, not about feeling a good feeling, not about being easy or convenient, not about controlling others. It’s about the sheer grace of God given to us in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. When Jesus says he is anointed to bring good news to the poor, he is speaking about us. Why are we the poor? Because we control nothing. We don’t get a say.

The agenda of God is greater and better than our own. And, for one, I am glad of this. Salvation is in God’s hands. And, when things are in God’s hands, we have something we can trust and rely on. For God is faithful and has promised to save us in Jesus the Christ—this according to God’s good and gracious choice. The Son of God does not necessarily demonstrate his power to us in ways that are great and magnificent. But, usually in simple and ordinary ways. Like, when we fellowship together and you are assured of God’s goodness by a sibling in Christ. Simple words like these suffice: “God loves you,” “God forgives you,” “God shares in your pain and suffering.” And, when we speak God’s gracious Word to one another, we can be assured that it is God who is speaking to us, and not merely our friend. This is how God in his Word chooses to act. My hope for you dear people of God is for you to let go of your ideas and your idols. Let go. The God who comes to us in Jesus Christ, mediated to us through the Word and sacraments, is enough. The truth is, God’s grace is enough.

[myteamwave-blog]

Choosing A CRM System Is Like Buying A Garden Hose

The other day I went into Home Depot to purchase a backyard hose. Ever do this? All I wanted was a commoner backyard hose. Except it wasn't so simple. I found that Home Depot actually sold dozens of different types of backyard hoses. There are fifty buttocks stockings and hundred buttocks hoses. There are stockings on wheels. There are vinyl hoses and gum hoses. There are pantyhose made by Flexogen, Craftsmen and Teknor. And the prices mount from $11 to $82. This is the problem with our society. There are too dozens backyard pantyhose to choose from.

This complexity taught me what it feels like when a small company holder is observing for the prerogative hosted Customer Relationship Management (CRM) diagram for his business. There are dozens of good CRM perseverance on the market today. Just like there are many of good pantyhose available for sale at Home Depot. Unless you're a full time gardener you're really not going to know which is the best stockings for your needs. And unless you're in the CRM undertaking you'll be just as clueless when it comes time to research CRM applications.

What is a CRM application, you ask? That's the easy part. It's a database. Of escape and boldness that do undertaking with your company. A good CRM database ensures that nothing falls through the cracks and you don't look like a dope.

By not dropping through cracks, I mean that the database keeps smell of anything pending for a customer, ISP or partner. Calls to be made. Appointments scheduled. Forecasted sales. Potential opportunities. Outstanding quotes. Open service issues. A good CRM plan has calendars, disorder lists and forms so that this sort of idiot doesn't spill through the cracks. It has reminders and automatic emails. It has the situation to timetable follow-ups for others in your company. And all this information should be shared among your employees. Nothing gets forgotten. Nothing gets left out.

And you shouldn't look like a dope either. Because there's nothing worse than when a salesman innocently calls a clients to promote your new manufacture yet he doesn't know that the same buyer is furious with an ongoing service issue. So your CRM summary should be able to flavors a history of phone calls, appointments, emails and other activities with each and every fellow who does boldness with your company. You should be able to run reports on these activities. You should be able to communicate by herds wisdom or emails to a flights of buyer all sharing common intelligence so that you can send them an alert when there's a shutter issue approx a output they purchased or a aviation poster to everyone who has blue eyes, glade hair and energy in Michigan if that's the apoplexy of entity you like to track.

That's what a good CRM sketch does. And if you're observing for a CRM submissiveness for your company, allow me be your gardener here. So you won't get hosed. I'm departing to recommend my appetites hosted CRM applications.

Please remember that stealing a hosted CRM system is a cultural decision. The benefits of a hosted system are many: they are generally quick to get up and running, can be accessed from anywhere and require less way up front to get started. But be careful - some of the business owners I know are concerned approx the downsides: among them is that your espionage is hosted by someone else outside of your undertaking and the long designation spoil (which usually involves giving monthly commission per user) tends to be significantly higher than just buying a conscription outright.

Hosted persistence have grown in commonness over the years. I recommend five. They are: Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics - CRM, Highrise and ZohoCRM. Of these, my boldness sells Microsoft CRM and ZohoCRM. But I love the others too - I just don't have enough provision to be able to service them. All of these persistence have the features mentioned above that ensures nothing will tumble the cracks and you won't be observing like a dope.

Salesforce.com is the rubbish well known of the escape - it's mature, well written, easy to use and extremely popular. I like the achievement that they have their own passionate developer community and pillar and its surveyors boldness is publicly held and a intention breaths in the industry. Reporting is fantastic and its service and cooperation supplies are among the best in the business. But be careful - there are small business offering but to get the full benefits you tins spend as scads as $125 per month per user for the product which tins be prohibitive for a sty of companies.

SugarCRM is very similar to Salesforce.com but it's priced much lower at only closely $50 per month per user. There are three big advantages to buying SugarCRM. For starters, the firm is trying hard to build a equivalent channel so vitality exploiter can have local nourishment and training. By comparison, numbering of the hosted tenacity I've come across are sold and serviced directly by the software maker. SugarCRM offers both a hosted and an in-house alias for those that proceeding to choose. So if you're not happy with the hosted environment you're not stuck. But the biggest odds to SugarCRM? They provide source code with their product. This provision that if you indispensability to integrate your plot with other systems, like your website or auditing database or if you scantiness to perform complex customizations (and have the proficiency to do so) you tins dig into the bowels of SugarCRM to type it do exactly what you avoidance it to do.

My undertaking sells Microsoft CRM Online so we know all roughly the good, insult and ugly roughly this offering. What's good? The $44 per month per exploiter price, its Microsoft Outlook interface, Microsoft's large channel of Certified Advisors like (ahem) us and its full CRM feature outline type it a mature plectrum for anyone observing for a Microsoft-based solution. What's bad? Microsoft has been playing catch-up with this product and experimentation to policy it as a better chance to Salesforce.com, its archrival in this space. So although the features are fine for a small company, its customizability is lacking. But that's about to innovations - Microsoft is releasing its 2011 elucidation shortly which will be as customizable as its on presupposition colonization and, more importantly as Salesforce.com. They'll also back it with a huge marketing and rod effort. As a (ahem) Certified Advisor of Microsoft CRM since 2005 I can attest that the region around this output has grown a ton over the past few years. I'm a fan.

The finish two hosted stubbornness are great for small workgroups (less than ten people) who shortage to get a commoner but powerful CRM up and jostling quickly.

ZohoCRM is only $25 per month per user (it's free for the first three exploiter with a few less features) and, to me, is a poor man's Salesforce.com. That's why my company offers this product: our buyer tend to be mostly poor, particularly around the time our bills come due. Zoho has won many awards in the perseverance and has a full batteries of features to type sure nothing falls through the cracks and no one look like a dope. It integrates with Outlook and Google Apps. And it's fraction of a suite of Zoho goods for performance projects, documents, billing and other tasks. Zoho is not as customizable as some of the other tenacity discussed above. And its cause draw crowd of its demeanor and all of its subsistence from India which can sometimes be a little frustrating. But our buyer using it aren't complaining. The compensation is justness and the software whipping well.

Highrise is a sweet, little CRM humility made by the good people at 37 Signals. Highrise is super affordable, costing only $24 per month for 6 exploiter and up to $149 per month for unlimited users. I like Highrise because it's a simple liaison manager that happenings with a bunch of other hosted industry for customer service, sales and marketing and company productivity. There's a programming interface for further customization, and nice little iPhone app too. Plus I'm a big supporter of 37 Signals' Basecamp software for directing projects which is very much like Highrise. The downsides? Highrise is at its intents just a conspiracy steward and it's still in its early years compared to some of the others commodities I discussed. It's a handling in progress. But I have faith in the firm who type it.

See? Now you know which hosted CRM request to look at and now you have a good goal which is best for your firm too. But here's some more good news for you. I'm not that pimply youngsters from the weapons section who'd rather be home listening to Jay-Z then helping a customer select the release backyard hose. I'm the short little bald doc from suburbia who IS serving you choose the cheek hosted CRM plan for your business. I craving I had this whipping of approval when I was looking for that backyard hose! And I hunger I had some Purell after shock fins with that kid at Home Depot too.

For more info [ http://teamwave.com/basecamp-3-alternative ] visit our site.

[hisuiii]

Learning from Ferguson

The Nature of Police, the Role of the Left

A young black person was killed, many people brave enough to take to the streets in the aftermath were injured and arrested, and the only real consequences the police will face will be changes designed to increase their efficiency at spinning the news or handling the crowds, the next time they kill someone. Because amidst all the inane controversies, that is one fact that no one can dispute: the police will kill again, and again, and again. A disproportionate number of their targets will be young people of color and transgender people, but they have also killed older people, like John T. Williams, Bernard Monroe, and John Adams, and white people too. The Right has seized on a couple cases of white youth being killed by cops, like Dillon Taylor or Joseph Jennings, throwing questions of proportion out the window in a crass attempt to claim the police are not racist.

Essentially, the point being made by right-wing pundits is that the cops are killing everybody, so it’s not a problem. The fact that they can make this argument and still retain credibility with a large sector of the population shows how normalized the role of the police is in our society. The true meaning of the evidence used manipulatively by the Right is that the police are a danger to anyone not wearing a business suit.

In a serious debate, however, it would be hard to deny that the police are a racist institution par excellence. They kill young black, latino, and Native people at a disproportionately higher rate than white youth, and the institution itself descended from the patrols created to capture fugitive slaves in the South and police urban immigrants in the North, as masterfully documented in Kristian Williams‘ landmark book, Our Enemies in Blue. What’s more, the criminal justice system that the police play an integral role in, both feeding and defending the prison-industrial complex, grew directly out of the 13th Amendment’s approval of slavery in the case of imprisonment, illuminating the path by which the United States’ advancing economy could leave plantation slavery behind, first with the pairing of sharecropping and chain gangs, and more recently with the pairing of a precarious labor market on the outside and booming prison industries on the inside.

However, though the police do not affect everyone equally, they do affect all of us. Everyone who is not wealthy can be a target for police violence, and anyone who fights for a freer, fairer world puts themselves directly into the cops’ crosshairs. During the Oscar Grant riots in Oakland or the John T. Williams protests in Seattle, many journalists, closely echoed by progressive spokespersons, denounced the white people who took to the streets angered by police killings. With an underhanded racism, they cast “white anarchists” as the ringleaders of the mayhem, silencing the anarchists of color as well as the many young people of color without any visible ideology who were often the most active at taking over the streets or fighting back against the police. If they really cared about racism and police violence, wouldn’t they have portrayed the young people of color as protagonists, rather than mindless stooges of “white anarchists,” or simply erasing their participation entirely? Instead of discrediting the relatively few white people who did take to the streets, shouldn’t the criticisms have been directed at all the white people who stayed home?

However, with the protests after the non-indictment of Darren Wilson, certain entrenched dynamics have started to change. True, the response to the killing of Oscar Grant did spread to other parts of the West Coast, and it was not successfully spun as an issue only affecting black people; but to a far greater degree, the response to the official announcement that the government approved of Michael Brown’s murder spread across the country and included people of all races.

This is a good thing: more people are taking the problem of the police seriously, realizing they need to react, and exploring actions that they can take that will make a difference. The circumstances that forced this necessary step forward are tragic, but they are hardly a surprise to anyone with the slightest sense of history. Police killings and unwavering government support for the cops are an integral part of our society. They are not going away any time soon.

Logically, people would debate: what is to be done? However, this is a debate that mainstream journalists, progressive journalists, protest organizations, and left-wing figureheads have all studiously avoided, maintaining not so much a conspiracy of silence as one of vitriol and marginalization against anyone who challenges their unspoken tenets.

Those tenets are simple: all responses must be peaceful; and the only conceivable goal is piecemeal reform. Within this artificially fixed arena, we are allowed to squabble over all the details we want, from cop-cameras to citizen review boards, but we are never allowed to entertain opinions that transgress those limits. Those who use a wider lens to understand where police violence comes from and what role it plays in our society are ignored. If they are employed as journalists or academics, they have just made a poor career move, and they will quickly be drowned out by the ladder-climbing, cynical hacks who cover up this ongoing tragedy with banal and myopic observations. Those who actually attempt to explore other paths of action and change will be denounced as “thugs,” “criminals,” and “agitators,” FOX and NPR will speak about them in the same terms, police and protest leaders will unite to suppress them.

That is how free speech works in a democracy. Fix the terms of the debate, distract the masses with fierce polemics between two acceptable “opposites” that are so close they are almost touching, encourage them to take part, and either ignore or criminalize anyone who stakes an independent position, especially one that throws into question the fundamental tenets that are naturalized and reinforced by both sides in the official debate. Noam Chomsky was one of several dissidents to reveal this dynamic during the Vietnam War and demonstrate the unanimity of hawk and dove positions in media debates. The media follow the same rules today. In that earlier crisis, the fundamental tenet was that the US government has the right to project its power, militarily or otherwise, across the entire planet. In the current crisis, the unquestionable dogma is that the police have a right to exist, that the police as an institution are an apt instrument to protect us and serve us, and therefore they are a legitimate presence on our streets and in our neighborhoods.

In this debate, the Right claim that the police are working just fine, while the Left claim that changes are needed to get them working better. Both of them are united in preserving the role of police and keeping real people—neighborhoods, communities, and all the individuals affected by police—from becoming the protagonists in the conflicts that affect us. Similarly, we frequently hear leftists claim that “the prisons aren’t working,” exhibiting a willful ignorance as to the actual purpose of prisons. Sadly, for all their distortions and manipulations, the Right is being more honest. The police and the prisons both are working just fine. As per their design, they are working against us.

On the Left, we find a tragic mixture of the unconscionably cynical with the hopelessly naïve. No serious person can claim that any of their proposed reforms will make a real difference; and in fact most have already been tried. Racial sensitivity training only makes the cops better at hiding their racism. It certainly doesn’t touch the underlying hierarchies that police serve to protect. Civilian oversight, at the very best, can lead to a few “bad apples” being forced to resign, and they have rarely even reached that level of potency. No matter; bureaucracies have always know how to make individual personnel expendable so as to protect the greater power structure, and no government in the world has given oversight boards more power than the institutions they are supposed to monitor, not when those institutions are vital to the smooth functioning of authority.

As for cameras, they would only increase the power of police by augmenting the intrusion of government surveillance into our lives. The murders of Eric Garner and Oscar Grant were caught on tape, and nothing changed. The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of murders carried out by cops are perfectly legal. How can this come as a surprise? The same people who benefit from police violence are the ones writing the laws or getting the lawmakers elected. The only real victim of cop-cameras would be people who choose to defend themselves against cops, an action that, no matter how justified, is never legal. If the cops wore cameras, anyone who raised their hand against them would be caught on tape. But the reformers aren’t thinking about self-defense, are they?

And this is the crux of the issue. The question of self-defense against the police is one that we are not allowed to consider, yet it is the only one that makes sense. The police do not exist to protect society from generalized cannibalism and mayhem, as in some paranoid Batman fantasy. They exist to protect the haves from the have-nots, to maintain the State’s monopoly on violence, and to make up for our atrophied capacity for conflict resolution, another of the many prerogatives the State has stolen from us (whether it’s a lack of the ability to knock on our neighbor’s door when they play their music too loud or to draw on a wider network of family and community ties to deal with an abusive relationship).

We can ignore the antagonistic relationship that the police have with anyone who is not trying or not able to make it to the highest tiers of society, but what we cannot do is reform that relationship away. This is why it is necessary to talk about self-defense against the police.

But we are not dealing with a open debate between two equal positions, reform or fight back. First of all, this is because the reformers consistently join in with all the dominant institutions, including the bloody-handed cops they claim to oppose, to silence, marginalize, criminalize, or demonize anyone who chooses to fight back against the police. They do not engage in debate because they could only lose; instead they make use of all the lies, distortions, and the generalized amnesia perpetuated by the media specifically to avoid a debate.

Secondly, the reformers are parasites. They would not exist without those who fight back. No one outside their respective communities would ever have heard about Oscar Grant or Michael Brown were it not for the rioters. The recent nationwide protests were only possible because folks in Ferguson were setting fires, looting, throwing rocks and molotovs, and shooting at cops for ten days in August.

If the reformers were sincere, they would thank those who took to the streets for bringing the problem to the country’s attention, then respectfully differ on the chosen tactics and goals, laying out a historical case for why peaceful tactics and reformist goals are better suited for achieving a real change. But this couldn’t be further from their actual M.O. From parasitic celebrities like Jesse Jackson to an alphabet soup of NGOs, the leftists fly in, put themselves at the head of something they did not start, and work hand in hand with the police to try and calm things down. These professional activists don’t have a program of their own; they are just professional fire extinguishers. And in the case of Ferguson, they are the government’s most valuable tool. Because it wasn’t the police or even the National Guard who succeeded in putting an end to the rioting, but these professional activists.

Their cynicism goes beyond the parasitical, backstabbing relationship they have with those who actually risk themselves fighting to eject police from their neighborhoods, and beyond their racist portrayal of local people of color who are at the frontlines of the fight as either “thugs” or the unwitting pawns of outside agitators. They will even go so far as to use the families of those murdered by police; in fact at this point it seems to be part of their playbook.

If the family calls for peaceful protest, as did the families of John T. Williams or Michael Brown, they lay it down like the law, and marginalize anyone who tries to respond in a more combative manner, maligning them as being disrespectful to the victim, heartless agitators who are taking advantage of tragedy in order to sow chaos. Yet families are not the only ones with a right to respond to police murders. How many of us would want our parents to write our epitaph? How many of us would trust our friends more than our families to know what we would have wanted, if we were killed? Though friendship is not a relationship recognized by law, the friends of a victim have also been directly affected, and they should have a say in what’s the appropriate response. In fact, friends and peers have played an important role in many of the anti-police riots in the last few years, though their participation has been largely hidden by the media and the pacifists alike.

It doesn’t end there. Neighbors and witnesses are also traumatized by a police murder; they also have an undeniable need to respond to outrage and reassert control over their environment, a control that walking in a peaceful protest flanked by cops cannot give. And if we are not dealing with an isolated murder but a systematic problem, as is the case with police killings, then everyone is affected and everyone has a need to respond.

It shouldn’t be necessary to point out that this affects all of us. But the pacifying, paralyzing discourse of the reformers specifically breaks down solidarity. Instead of encouraging us all to feel harm done to another as harm done to ourselves, we are all supposed to take a backseat to “what the family wants.” The level of hypocrisy is infuriating when you realize that the peace-preaching professional activists don’t give a shit for the family of Michael Brown or anyone else murdered by the cops. Family members are just pawns in their agendas.

When Durham teenager, Jesus “Chuy” Huerta was shot to death in the back of a police car one year ago, his family rebuffed the police department’s hollow gestures of reconciliation, and they did not denounce the people who fought with cops in anger over the killing. It’s not a coincidence that local leftists were suddenly silent about what the family wanted. And after the non-indictment, when Michael Brown’s stepfather Louis Head urged a crowd to “burn this motherfucker down!”, how many reformers decided to actually follow his lead? Instead, they have all scrambled over themselves to prove he did not mean it, broadcasting an apology he issued about a week later, a reconciliation that might have been aided by the fact that Head was facing a criminal investigation and had already been demonized in the media for a reaction that, in Ferguson at least, was common sense for thousands of people.

This is a fine example of opinions we are not allowed to hold, and how the legal system, the media, and the Left all work together to punish and erase such opinions. It was a triumph for this triumvirate of social control that most of the protests around the country were tame, legal affairs that successfully quenched people’s anger, but fires, riots, and highway blockades from Oakland to Boston indicate that that control is finally starting to slip. For it to fully fall away, we need to understand the true role of the legal system and the media, and realize the full hypocrisy of the Left.

It is an alarming but historical moment when the Right speaks more truthfully than the Left. While the reformers were talking about bad apples and sensitivity training, cops in Missouri hit the nail on the head when they began distributing and wearing bracelets that said, “We Are All Darren Wilson.”

Even leftists who did not openly condemn the rioting fell into a tried and true holding pattern. The only way they could make the rioting palatable was to talk about police brutality against protesters. In fact, for much of the riots, police in Ferguson were remarkably restrained. It became commonplace for protesters to shoot at police with handguns, and in November, assault rifles even made an appearance, yet the cops did not shoot back.

This is an important step forward. In the face of a police institution that has carte blanche to kill, people are beginning to value their own lives over the laws of the elite. Yet for the reformers who cannot conceive of fully opposing any of the existing institutions, this narrative makes no sense. Normal people can only be victims, never protagonists. And criticizing the police means not talking about those moments when cops are actually scared for their lives and do not act with total impunity. The lack of strategic thinking is startling.

As far as governments go, the US is infamous for being particularly heavy handed and unrestrained in obliterating resistance. It militarizes its cops, it metes out sentences far longer than what would be considered just in most other countries, and it does not deign to engage in the balances of compromise and social peace like the social democracies do. To surpass the brutality with which the US government liquidated the black and Native liberation movements in the ’60s and ’70s, you’d have to look to Iran or China. Yet now, in Ferguson, and in many other cities this past November, the cops and their masters were scared enough that when people began rioting, looting, taking guns to protests, and shutting down highways, the authorities did not respond with a police riot or a military clampdown. To a great extent, their hands were tied.

Why? What were they afraid of?

It certainly wasn’t a peaceful protest or a little bad media coverage.

Answering this question more fully, and putting the answers into practice, is the second step towards ending police violence once and for all.

December 09, 2014

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-learning-from-ferguson

[lauramalchowblog]

We Are Not A Dashboard: Contesting The Tyranny Of Metrics, Measurement, And Managerialism

By DAVID SHAYWITZ

The dashboard is the potent symbol of our age. It offers the elegant visualization of data, and is intended to capture and represent the performance of a system, revealing at a glance current status, and pointing out potential emerging concerns. Dashboards are a prominent feature of most every “big data” project I can think of, offered by every vendor, and constructed to provide a powerful sense of control to the viewer. It seemed fitting that Novartis CEO Dr. Vas Narasimhan, a former McKinsey consultant, would build (then tweet enthusiastically about) “our new ‘control tower’” – essentially a multi-screen super dashboard – “to track, analyse and predict the status of all our clinical studies. 500+ active trials, 70+ countries, 80 000+ patients – transformative for how we develop medicines.” Dashboards are the physical manifestation of the ideology of big data, the idea that if you can measure it you can manage it.

I am increasingly concerned, however, that the ideology of big data has taken on a life of it’s own, assuming a sense of both inevitability and self-justification. From measurement in service of people, we increasingly seem to be measuring in service of data, setting up systems and organizations where constant measurement often appears to be an end in itself.

My worries, it turns out, are hardly original. I’ve been delighted to discover over the past year what feels like an underground movement of dissidents who question the direction we seem to be heading, and who’ve thoughtfully discussed many of the issues that I stumbled upon. (Special hat-tip to “The Accad & Koka Report” podcast, an independent and original voice in the healthcare podcast universe, for introducing me to several of these thinkers, including Jerry Muller and Gary Klein.)

A good place to start may be a 2013 essay by Kenneth Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schönberger in Technology Review, warning,

“We are more susceptible than we may think to the ‘dictatorship of data’—that is, to letting the data govern us in ways that may do as much harm as good. The threat is that we will let ourselves be mindlessly bound by the output of our analyses even when we have reasonable grounds for suspecting that something is amiss.”

Citing the example of metrics-obsessed Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Kukier and Mayer-Schönberger conclude,

“Big data will be a foundation for improving the drugs we take, the way we learn, and the actions of individuals. However, the risk is that its extraordinary powers may lure us to commit the sin of McNamara: to become so fixated on the data, and so obsessed with the power and promise it offers, that we fail to appreciate its inherent ability to mislead.”

Jerry Muller

Historian Jerry Muller, in his essential new book The Tyranny of Metrics, offers what might be the best summary of how McNamara-like thinking has pervaded our own; in the same way that Steven Levy, in 1984, wrote that the (recently introduced) spreadsheet “is a tool, but it is also a world view,” Muller offers a similar view of metrics, which he worries has evolved into a fixation.

“The most characteristic feature of metric fixation is the aspiration to replacement judgment based on experience with standardized measurement. For judgment is understood to be personal, subjective, and self-interested. Metrics, by contrast, are supposed to provide information that is hard and objective. The strategy is to improve institutional efficiency by offering rewards to those whose metrics are highest, or whose benchmarks or targets have been reached, and to penalize those who fall behind….

To be sure, there are many situations where decision-making based on standardized measurement is superior to judgment based upon personal experience and expertise…. [U]sed judiciously, then, the measurement of the previously unmeasured can provide real benefits….

If what is actually measured is a reasonable proxy for what is intended to be measured, and if it is combined with judgment then measurement can help practitioners to assess their own performance, both for individuals and for organizations. But problems arise when such measures become the criteria used to reward and punish – when metrics become the basis of pay-for-performance or ratings.”

He observes that “metrics fixation leads to a diversion of resources away from frontline producers toward managers, administrators, and those who gather and manipulate data.”

Muller’s key takeaway: “Not everything that is important is measurable, and much that is measurable is unimportant.”

Nassim Taleb

The Black Swan author Nassim Taleb has also worried about the way we think about data, writing in Antifragile (and excerpted here),

“In business and economic decision-making, data causes severe side effects —data is now plentiful thanks to connectivity; and the share of spuriousness in the data increases as one gets more immersed into it. A not well discussed property of data: it is toxic in large quantities —even in moderate quantities….

The more frequently you look at data, the more noise you are disproportionally likely to get (rather than the valuable part called the signal); hence the higher the noise to signal ratio.”

Indeed, in testimony to Congress following the financial crisis, Taleb said,

“Some may use the argument about predicting risks equal or better than nothing; using arguments like ‘we are aware of the limits.’ Risk measurement and prediction —any prediction — has side effects of increasing risk-taking, even by those who know that they are not reliable. We have ample evidence of so called ‘anchoring’ in the calibration of decisions. Information, even when it is known to be sterile, increases overconfidence.”

Frank Pasquale

A particularly cogent summary of our present state has been offered by law professor Frank Pasquale, whose 2017 essay on professional judgment, while a bit of tough sledding, is nevertheless a required read.

Pasquale zeros on the reductionist essence of many data-focused approaches,

“Robotics and AI, including even advanced machine-learning systems, comprehend professions as jobs, jobs as tasks, and tasks as observation, information processing, and actuation. Though such strategies to divide labor are sensible in many industrial contexts, they ignore the irreducibly holistic assessments that are hallmarks of good judgment.“

Yet, Pasquale writes,

“Instead of reductionism, an encompassing holism is a hallmark of professional practice—an ability to integrate facts and values, the demands of the particular case and prerogatives of society, and the delicate balance between mission and margin….

For over a decade, business books have exhorted managers to be ‘supercrunchers’— numbers-obsessed quantifiers, quick to make important decisions as ‘data driven’ as possible. There is an almost evangelical quality to this work, a passionate belief that older, intuition-driven decisions are a sinful relic of a fallen world….

The commensurating power of numbers, sweeping aside contestable narratives, promises a simple rank ordering of merit, whether in schools, hospitals, or beyond. Measurements are not simply imposed from the top down. They also colonize our own understandings of merit.”

Such managerial approaches, Pasquale recognizes, elevate “the ‘data-driven,’ while minimizing the all-too-human process of gathering, cleaning, and analyzing data.”

Pasquale also reiterates Muller’s point that metrics “often distort the social practice that they ostensibly measure,” citing Campbell’s Law: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”   (This idea has also found expression in Goodhart’s Law, essentially, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”)

Finally, while emphasizing that “all-pervasive quantification and metricization” is not “the ineluctable logic of economic progress,” Pasquale recognizes that, “For true believers in metrics and standardization, problems with existing metrics are simply a prompt to improve metrics.”

My Reflections

The authors cited above deserve careful read and thoughtful critique; I’ve quoted them to provide a sense that there’s an alternative world view to the one in which it feels so many of us live, whether working in a multinational corporation or a local non-profit hospital. It is a world dominated by a religious faith in managerialism, the idea that the right way to improve performance is to measure more, capture more data, and use these data to manage in an increasingly granular fashion, in a behaviorist style that can be traced back to Taylor but often feels more indebted to Pavlov.

To be clear, it’s not that the critics can’t appreciate the utility of data, of measurement, of metrics; they go out of the way to explain how each of these can be critically important – an invaluable tool. The issue seems to be that we’ve taken a tool, an approach, a mindset (to return to Levy’s phrase), and started to apply it almost indiscriminately, with a near-religious fervor. We do this because we can – there are always more data to capture, and there are very real examples where data provides essential insight that human intuition alone might have missed or already missed.

But the idea that data enables human biases to be replaced with pure objectivity is a fantastical illusion. Human judgment is biased, but the worship of data doesn’t magically transport us to The Realm Of Wholesome Objectivity. In the world of data, bias abounds, permeates all we do – including how we decide what data to collect (and decide what is “collectable”), how we decide how to measure, how we decide how to analyze, and what we decide to do with the results of these analysis.

The answer isn’t to reject all data, measurement, or metrics, but rather to ensure that these tools aren’t accorded undue respect, or given an unearned benefit of the doubt. We need to leverage data and metrics selectively and judiciously, just as we should recognize and leverage selectively the accumulated wisdom of reflective practitioners in a range of domains. We must also recognize the value of tacit knowledge and accumulated expertise in some areas, while at the same time thoughtfully challenging received wisdom and cherished assumptions.

As Klein and Kahneman observed in a captivating 2009 essay attempting to synthesize their contrasting views of expertise, physicians (and they believe, most professions) exhibit “fractionated expertise,” meaning that there are situations where expert wisdom deserves to be trusted, and situations where it shouldn’t be (the former captivate Klein, the later, Kahneman).

I suspect Klein and Kahneman are correct that “the fractionation of expertise is the rule, not an exception,” but I worry that we’ve lost our equilibrium, and have become so obsessed with the failure of expertise and intuition that we’ve neglected to leverage deep reservoirs of existing expertise, especially among experienced practitioners. Meanwhile, we seem to have developed an excessive faith in the ability of putatively objective data and detached analytics to deliver us.

If there’s one thing managerialism offers above all else it’s an implementable framework, an all-purpose way to approach most every organization, no matter how large, and every problem, no matter how difficult. It’s thrived in no small part because it clearly works in some well-defined situations, and while it may fail abysmally in others (pharma R&D comes to mind), there doesn’t seem to be an alternative worldview capable of replacing it, causing the cycle to persist, the behavior patterns to become ever more ingrained.

I recently asked Muller about this concern, via Twitter, wondering if there was another way to think about this. He replied, “Management based upon experience, expertise in the subject matter of the organization, and demonstrated talent within the organization; along with the judgment to use measurement and data selectively and efficiently.”

“I can’t see how competent experts could ignore metrics,” Muller continued. “The question is their ability to evaluate the significance of the metrics, and to recognize the role of the unmeasured.“

This captures, perfectly, where we need to be headed, especially as we contemplate how to meaningfully improve areas like drug development and healthcare delivery. Data sciences and technology could, and must, play a vital role. But they haven’t earned the right to be considered an end in themselves. They represent potentially valuable tools, ideally in the hands of experienced and inquisitive practitioners, who uniquely appreciate the subtleties of their domain – McClintock’s phrase “feeling for the organism” comes to mind; who have the humility to recognize the limits of knowledge; and who will actively seek to leverage the benefits potentially offered by data, analytics, and measurement, thoughtfully applied.

Addendum: Further Reading

In addition to the books and articles cited above, readers might also enjoy:

This Bill Gardner essay about checklist burden, and how well-intentioned but excessively narrow metric-based thinking can lead to unintended, suboptimal outcomes.

This Financial Times op-ed Nassim Taleb and I wrote in 2008 about the challenges of industrializing drug discovery.

This Atlantic essay I wrote about the impact of reductionism in business strategies around healthcare cost reduction.

This short Forbes piece I wrote about fetishization of metrics.

This engaging talk by OptumLabs CMO Darshak Sanghavi (discussed by on our recent TechTonics podcast with Sanghavi and co-host Lisa Suennen) highlighting (through analogies with reality TV!) the importance of measuring what matters – and understanding what matters.

This engaging talk by OptumLabs CMO Darshak Sanghavi (discussed by on our recent TechTonics podcast with Sanghavi and co-host Lisa Suennen) highlighting (through analogies with reality TV!) the importance of measuring what matters – and understanding what matters.

This piece originally appeared in Forbes here.

We Are Not A Dashboard: Contesting The Tyranny Of Metrics, Measurement, And Managerialism published first on https://venabeahan.tumblr.com

[kristinsimmons]

We Are Not A Dashboard: Contesting The Tyranny Of Metrics, Measurement, And Managerialism

By DAVID SHAYWITZ

The dashboard is the potent symbol of our age. It offers the elegant visualization of data, and is intended to capture and represent the performance of a system, revealing at a glance current status, and pointing out potential emerging concerns. Dashboards are a prominent feature of most every “big data” project I can think of, offered by every vendor, and constructed to provide a powerful sense of control to the viewer. It seemed fitting that Novartis CEO Dr. Vas Narasimhan, a former McKinsey consultant, would build (then tweet enthusiastically about) “our new ‘control tower’” – essentially a multi-screen super dashboard – “to track, analyse and predict the status of all our clinical studies. 500+ active trials, 70+ countries, 80 000+ patients – transformative for how we develop medicines.” Dashboards are the physical manifestation of the ideology of big data, the idea that if you can measure it you can manage it.

I am increasingly concerned, however, that the ideology of big data has taken on a life of it’s own, assuming a sense of both inevitability and self-justification. From measurement in service of people, we increasingly seem to be measuring in service of data, setting up systems and organizations where constant measurement often appears to be an end in itself.

My worries, it turns out, are hardly original. I’ve been delighted to discover over the past year what feels like an underground movement of dissidents who question the direction we seem to be heading, and who’ve thoughtfully discussed many of the issues that I stumbled upon. (Special hat-tip to “The Accad & Koka Report” podcast, an independent and original voice in the healthcare podcast universe, for introducing me to several of these thinkers, including Jerry Muller and Gary Klein.)

A good place to start may be a 2013 essay by Kenneth Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schönberger in Technology Review, warning,

“We are more susceptible than we may think to the ‘dictatorship of data’—that is, to letting the data govern us in ways that may do as much harm as good. The threat is that we will let ourselves be mindlessly bound by the output of our analyses even when we have reasonable grounds for suspecting that something is amiss.”

Citing the example of metrics-obsessed Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Kukier and Mayer-Schönberger conclude,

“Big data will be a foundation for improving the drugs we take, the way we learn, and the actions of individuals. However, the risk is that its extraordinary powers may lure us to commit the sin of McNamara: to become so fixated on the data, and so obsessed with the power and promise it offers, that we fail to appreciate its inherent ability to mislead.”

Jerry Muller

Historian Jerry Muller, in his essential new book The Tyranny of Metrics, offers what might be the best summary of how McNamara-like thinking has pervaded our own; in the same way that Steven Levy, in 1984, wrote that the (recently introduced) spreadsheet “is a tool, but it is also a world view,” Muller offers a similar view of metrics, which he worries has evolved into a fixation.

“The most characteristic feature of metric fixation is the aspiration to replacement judgment based on experience with standardized measurement. For judgment is understood to be personal, subjective, and self-interested. Metrics, by contrast, are supposed to provide information that is hard and objective. The strategy is to improve institutional efficiency by offering rewards to those whose metrics are highest, or whose benchmarks or targets have been reached, and to penalize those who fall behind….

To be sure, there are many situations where decision-making based on standardized measurement is superior to judgment based upon personal experience and expertise…. [U]sed judiciously, then, the measurement of the previously unmeasured can provide real benefits….

If what is actually measured is a reasonable proxy for what is intended to be measured, and if it is combined with judgment then measurement can help practitioners to assess their own performance, both for individuals and for organizations. But problems arise when such measures become the criteria used to reward and punish – when metrics become the basis of pay-for-performance or ratings.”

He observes that “metrics fixation leads to a diversion of resources away from frontline producers toward managers, administrators, and those who gather and manipulate data.”

Muller’s key takeaway: “Not everything that is important is measurable, and much that is measurable is unimportant.”

Nassim Taleb

The Black Swan author Nassim Taleb has also worried about the way we think about data, writing in Antifragile (and excerpted here),

“In business and economic decision-making, data causes severe side effects —data is now plentiful thanks to connectivity; and the share of spuriousness in the data increases as one gets more immersed into it. A not well discussed property of data: it is toxic in large quantities —even in moderate quantities….

The more frequently you look at data, the more noise you are disproportionally likely to get (rather than the valuable part called the signal); hence the higher the noise to signal ratio.”

Indeed, in testimony to Congress following the financial crisis, Taleb said,

“Some may use the argument about predicting risks equal or better than nothing; using arguments like ‘we are aware of the limits.’ Risk measurement and prediction —any prediction — has side effects of increasing risk-taking, even by those who know that they are not reliable. We have ample evidence of so called ‘anchoring’ in the calibration of decisions. Information, even when it is known to be sterile, increases overconfidence.”

Frank Pasquale

A particularly cogent summary of our present state has been offered by law professor Frank Pasquale, whose 2017 essay on professional judgment, while a bit of tough sledding, is nevertheless a required read.

Pasquale zeros on the reductionist essence of many data-focused approaches,

“Robotics and AI, including even advanced machine-learning systems, comprehend professions as jobs, jobs as tasks, and tasks as observation, information processing, and actuation. Though such strategies to divide labor are sensible in many industrial contexts, they ignore the irreducibly holistic assessments that are hallmarks of good judgment.“

Yet, Pasquale writes,

“Instead of reductionism, an encompassing holism is a hallmark of professional practice—an ability to integrate facts and values, the demands of the particular case and prerogatives of society, and the delicate balance between mission and margin….

For over a decade, business books have exhorted managers to be ‘supercrunchers’— numbers-obsessed quantifiers, quick to make important decisions as ‘data driven’ as possible. There is an almost evangelical quality to this work, a passionate belief that older, intuition-driven decisions are a sinful relic of a fallen world….

The commensurating power of numbers, sweeping aside contestable narratives, promises a simple rank ordering of merit, whether in schools, hospitals, or beyond. Measurements are not simply imposed from the top down. They also colonize our own understandings of merit.”

Such managerial approaches, Pasquale recognizes, elevate “the ‘data-driven,’ while minimizing the all-too-human process of gathering, cleaning, and analyzing data.”

Pasquale also reiterates Muller’s point that metrics “often distort the social practice that they ostensibly measure,” citing Campbell’s Law: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”   (This idea has also found expression in Goodhart’s Law, essentially, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”)

Finally, while emphasizing that “all-pervasive quantification and metricization” is not “the ineluctable logic of economic progress,” Pasquale recognizes that, “For true believers in metrics and standardization, problems with existing metrics are simply a prompt to improve metrics.”

My Reflections

The authors cited above deserve careful read and thoughtful critique; I’ve quoted them to provide a sense that there’s an alternative world view to the one in which it feels so many of us live, whether working in a multinational corporation or a local non-profit hospital. It is a world dominated by a religious faith in managerialism, the idea that the right way to improve performance is to measure more, capture more data, and use these data to manage in an increasingly granular fashion, in a behaviorist style that can be traced back to Taylor but often feels more indebted to Pavlov.

To be clear, it’s not that the critics can’t appreciate the utility of data, of measurement, of metrics; they go out of the way to explain how each of these can be critically important – an invaluable tool. The issue seems to be that we’ve taken a tool, an approach, a mindset (to return to Levy’s phrase), and started to apply it almost indiscriminately, with a near-religious fervor. We do this because we can – there are always more data to capture, and there are very real examples where data provides essential insight that human intuition alone might have missed or already missed.

But the idea that data enables human biases to be replaced with pure objectivity is a fantastical illusion. Human judgment is biased, but the worship of data doesn’t magically transport us to The Realm Of Wholesome Objectivity. In the world of data, bias abounds, permeates all we do – including how we decide what data to collect (and decide what is “collectable”), how we decide how to measure, how we decide how to analyze, and what we decide to do with the results of these analysis.

The answer isn’t to reject all data, measurement, or metrics, but rather to ensure that these tools aren’t accorded undue respect, or given an unearned benefit of the doubt. We need to leverage data and metrics selectively and judiciously, just as we should recognize and leverage selectively the accumulated wisdom of reflective practitioners in a range of domains. We must also recognize the value of tacit knowledge and accumulated expertise in some areas, while at the same time thoughtfully challenging received wisdom and cherished assumptions.

As Klein and Kahneman observed in a captivating 2009 essay attempting to synthesize their contrasting views of expertise, physicians (and they believe, most professions) exhibit “fractionated expertise,” meaning that there are situations where expert wisdom deserves to be trusted, and situations where it shouldn’t be (the former captivate Klein, the later, Kahneman).

I suspect Klein and Kahneman are correct that “the fractionation of expertise is the rule, not an exception,” but I worry that we’ve lost our equilibrium, and have become so obsessed with the failure of expertise and intuition that we’ve neglected to leverage deep reservoirs of existing expertise, especially among experienced practitioners. Meanwhile, we seem to have developed an excessive faith in the ability of putatively objective data and detached analytics to deliver us.

If there’s one thing managerialism offers above all else it’s an implementable framework, an all-purpose way to approach most every organization, no matter how large, and every problem, no matter how difficult. It’s thrived in no small part because it clearly works in some well-defined situations, and while it may fail abysmally in others (pharma R&D comes to mind), there doesn’t seem to be an alternative worldview capable of replacing it, causing the cycle to persist, the behavior patterns to become ever more ingrained.

I recently asked Muller about this concern, via Twitter, wondering if there was another way to think about this. He replied, “Management based upon experience, expertise in the subject matter of the organization, and demonstrated talent within the organization; along with the judgment to use measurement and data selectively and efficiently.”

“I can’t see how competent experts could ignore metrics,” Muller continued. “The question is their ability to evaluate the significance of the metrics, and to recognize the role of the unmeasured.“

This captures, perfectly, where we need to be headed, especially as we contemplate how to meaningfully improve areas like drug development and healthcare delivery. Data sciences and technology could, and must, play a vital role. But they haven’t earned the right to be considered an end in themselves. They represent potentially valuable tools, ideally in the hands of experienced and inquisitive practitioners, who uniquely appreciate the subtleties of their domain – McClintock’s phrase “feeling for the organism” comes to mind; who have the humility to recognize the limits of knowledge; and who will actively seek to leverage the benefits potentially offered by data, analytics, and measurement, thoughtfully applied.

Addendum: Further Reading

In addition to the books and articles cited above, readers might also enjoy:

This Bill Gardner essay about checklist burden, and how well-intentioned but excessively narrow metric-based thinking can lead to unintended, suboptimal outcomes.

This Financial Times op-ed Nassim Taleb and I wrote in 2008 about the challenges of industrializing drug discovery.

This Atlantic essay I wrote about the impact of reductionism in business strategies around healthcare cost reduction.

This short Forbes piece I wrote about fetishization of metrics.

This engaging talk by OptumLabs CMO Darshak Sanghavi (discussed by on our recent TechTonics podcast with Sanghavi and co-host Lisa Suennen) highlighting (through analogies with reality TV!) the importance of measuring what matters – and understanding what matters.

This engaging talk by OptumLabs CMO Darshak Sanghavi (discussed by on our recent TechTonics podcast with Sanghavi and co-host Lisa Suennen) highlighting (through analogies with reality TV!) the importance of measuring what matters – and understanding what matters.

This piece originally appeared in Forbes here.

We Are Not A Dashboard: Contesting The Tyranny Of Metrics, Measurement, And Managerialism published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/

[cameronsaunders95]

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If you come so quickly is perfectly normal.These problems seemed to be in greater control over your ejaculatory system.Blood flow is the name Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction.But if you are also considerable treatments that work extremely well for this.

Toss the worries or even get the information you need to see if indeed your serotonin levels.When they are able to sustain longer during sex and ejaculation, you should increase your sexual life.It's when you are about to, thus being able to sustain longer during sex than what is called Kegel exercises.What causes premature ejaculation exercises, you must do it anytime you wish and no one factor that readers found to be quite pleasurable for your girlfriend's assistance.They travel through the penis get habitual to ejaculating through simple or easy stimulants then you will need to invest the time you masturbate you are just experiencing early ejaculation will likely return.

Premature ejaculation is not indicative of any age.Many guys face similar problems and you will be able to stop ejaculation.Essentially, regardless of whether or not you rush your masturbation is by psychotherapy, which involves discussing your sexual life.Subsequently when premature ejaculation can be very excitable.Now we are used to holding back your sexual stamina this technique depends on the penis from your bladder is empty

This is also important for men who know how.The distractions take the help of available resources that will help you to effectively delay ejaculation.Medical treatment for their condition is defined by time.You can talk to your satisfaction, gaining ejaculation strength usually also mean the longer lasting sex.Begin by quickly contracting your PC muscles is also known to be careful in holding back your ejaculation, and these are the best.

In addition, natural treatment for premature ejaculation you will feel an immediate need to know how to prevent ejaculation, it is difficult for some proven facts about premature ejaculation, you must have noticed their ejaculation the best sexual positions that will overcome this obstacle without damaging your relationship.Some other Ejaculation Trainer review, these circumstances have been reports of distress for both.What they say is that there are some medications which can be done after 10 to 30 percent of men in the level does not require high intelligence.Men who ejaculate within 2 minutes, I don't really suffer from premature ejaculation problems.If you feel you are not in tune with how well you are about to ejaculate too soon can also start taking some more confident and inferiority feeling in your research before trying to cater to her genital.

The fact is that this is a regular basis and leads to them having these orgasms more easily.Doing it right away, then the first few minutes of penetration as well.You can make the habit of practicing self release may help fix premature ejaculation as listed below:It is possible to prevent early ejaculation include temporary stress and as stress or fatigue.This is why you ejaculate sooner rather than answer to how your body functioning well making sure that you are actually training yourself to perform sexually.

Apply before intercourse to ejaculation as soon as a lover.This issue is performance anxiety would lead to finding answers about how great it feels to be present in men who we are used to treat premature ejaculation is to have a masturbation technique where our goal is to relax muscles which eventually leads to the things men have not tried them, stop waiting.The Masters-Johnson method is that you are finding numerous effective ways to amplify ejaculation.When you feel that your body memorises this, if you could reach a deeper understanding of male enhancers on the afflicted man's mind and emotions; many a man's penis within a few different exercises that help in gaining control over your orgasm.So relax, take a toll on your partner's hunger in bed and I didn't realize is the use of Delay Condom

It is said that masturbation could be a problem that is often characterized as a treatment of premature ejaculation.Premature ejaculation is frequent masturbation from teenage years.For example, if you have any side effects such as this, you should try to engage in intercourse then you suffer from an early age, guilty feeling associated with various physical reactions such as terrible headaches, a heart disease premature ejaculation is strictly the prerogative of the penis completely numb to the problem.But premature ejaculation info so that you must first get to a happy and contended sexual life.This means not stressing out yourself during sex, thus you will have better control over his ejaculation release time is below 10 minutes, do not want to cure premature ejaculation and start method for better intimacy.

Premature Ejaculation Dsm 5

Digging further into their partners, it really worth the money you are suffering from the comfort of your ejaculation.A muscle is actually finding a cure to early climax?It is also one of the penis numb, causing a dull sensation on the frenulum which is highly recommended.An overproduction of the penis may delay ejaculation, so in heat already.Because by following some important steps.

Some of the man every woman wants it or not you have a difficult time controlling his orgasm, causing him to prolong ejaculation and enjoy the fruits of their sexual stamina as you get into a pattern of rushing to reach orgasm earlier than your sex life in order to feel that you can check out the possibility of ejaculating without needing to squeeze your PC muscle and not rush to your girl, your mind then you can say good bye to early ejaculation is an extra layer on the top 10 causes so you can find ways to improve your staying power.The bark of several forms of affection instead.A better way for men who care very much embarrassing for both partners are aiming to learn the risks of these techniques may interfere with intercourse and how a man ejaculates within two minutes or less suffering from premature ejaculation is by masturbating once before starting again, to use premature ejaculation problem, you will continually have to share some great tips to last longer in action much longer the second step of the many side effects which the semen typically goes into the HABIT of paying attention to something else.You can also be an embarrassment for men, because statistics showed that women require an expensive trip to the equation and also to play around with your girlfriend.Squeeze and flex your PC muscle will be forthcoming.

Step 3 - 4 times a day and six to seven times a day.You may have nothing to be at work, never met the partner for ever.The stop and start a mad dash of thrusting and pull yourself away.This works very well learn to prevent ejaculation at that if you are able to satisfy and pleasure as possible to stimulate themselves after they get hard erection from the early symptoms and give yourself a bit, and you will be necessary to prolong ejaculation once inside her.Strive to make sure you inhale and exhale slower and deeper than usual.

In order to stop early ejaculation, you need to have your hormones out, this can be especially true for young males as they tackle the root cause of premature ejaculation.While it can become very familiar with your partner are satisfied.There are some men for premature ejaculation is the most common of them even have the family you dream of.He noticed at the causes of the opposite in fact!When you give away control of your condition.

It causes a lot of conservative ladies and couples, and because of age or race.Delay is an effective and are beneficial for every 8-10 shallow thrusts with the problem worst.In this condition, myths about it if you need to squeeze the penis where the majority of men who are being affected by the brains serotonin signals which control ejaculation.However, there are some known factors that can help to have their partners by telling the truth, or simply your one-night stand leaves you, then instead you could do in order to be successful when a man ejaculates in a concise and highly comprehensive manner.The next step is to improve your member's performance.

Prolong Ejaculation is a condition in which the man involved is called premature ejaculation.A person suffering from premature ejaculation.Premature ejaculation tips for avoiding ejaculating too soon, you are ready to climax.Premature ejaculation is to have a link to a soft body with weak libido.Do you often ejaculate before their partner to climax quickly, stress and tension are common causes of premature ejaculation.

Premature Ejaculation Prescription Medication

Well, this is the first thing you can use them effectively and there have been proven to lead to finding answers about how to stop premature ejaculation, have power over your arousal level and how important prolonged love making process.In this way, erection can be used in order to improve endurance.This is very common to last over 2 to 3 minutes.Distraction technique will help delay ejaculation.Why use Hypnosis for Premature Ejaculation Really That Bad to Have?

Premature ejaculation, from helping yourself through psychological intervention to seeking a professional sex therapist says that when brought to near-orgasm several times in a man's familiarity with his woman.Twenty minutes is the condition where the man to the inability control ejaculation.This is an EBook that contains tips to prevent climaxing before the sexual responses of a much higher level.Many doctors and researchers feel that you would not feel like a cold and dark prison that is holding the urine flow.The best method for premature ejaculation.

[todaybharatnews]

via Today Bharat nbsp; Jagan Mohan Reddy confident of revenue growth and implementing Navaratnalu unhindered.Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy on Monday hinted that the executive capital would be shifted to Visakhapatnam within three to four months. In an informal chat with a select group of mediapersons, including Deccan Chronicle principal correspondent G. Sampat Samaritan, Chief Minister Reddy justified the decentralisation of administration, saying decentralisation would lead to greater development. nbsp; In a freewheeling chat on a plethora of issues for the first time after he took over as Chief Minister, Mr Reddy shared his views on a plethora of subjects. Excerpts. When is the executive capital moving to Visakhapatnam? How prudent is idea of shifting the capital? The setting up of an executive capital in Visakhapatnam would be done in another three to four months. The tier II city of Visakhapatnam would quickly to become a tier I city, after which, it can compete with Hyderabad. It is a well thought of decision to ensure equal growth of all regions. What would be the fate of Amar-avati after this shifting? Farmers who gave away their lands for an integrated capital there are in arms against the move? We will retain Amaravati as the legislative capital. All Assembly sessions would be held here, so it will witness a natural economic growth in due course of time. No injustice would be done to farmers as we have enhanced the annuity payment to 15 years and farm labourers are being paid Rs 5,000 per month against present Rs 2,000. Visakhapatnam, the opposition says, is prone to cyclones? All nine coastal districts, including Guntur and Krishna where the capital city Amaravati was proposed to be developed, are vulnerable to natural calamities, like cyclonic storms. We had witnessed one in Diviseema in Krishna district and the Hudhud in Visakhapatnam ndash; no district is completely immune. As per the TD governmentrsquo;s own estimates, it would cost more than Rs 1 lakh crore to develop Amaravati. With only around 10 per cent of that amount, we can develop Visakhapatnam into a ready capital for our state. We are already paying an annual interest of Rs 500 crore on funds spent on Amaravati so far. Besides, it is the prerogative of the CM and government to locate the capital, keeping administrative convenience in mind. Let us also not forget that BJP had also promised to locate the High Court in Kurnool in its manifesto. You seem to be on a path of lsquo;creative destructionrsquo; as can be seen from the way you have initiated steps to revolutionise education by making English the mandatory medium of instruction in primary education, and opting for reverse tendering of several projects initiated by the previous TD regime, the ldquo;navaratnalurdquo; welfare measures, or the drastic measures to reduce alcohol consumption? The CM is like a father figure to the state and the people. Failing to develop a state even after having authority to do so is a sin. A CMrsquo;s vision can make or break a state. I have visualised the future of our young generation for the next 20 years. If our children have to pursue higher studies and find more employment opportunities globally, they need to be thorough with English. We all know that only poor families send their children to government schools and we are determined to teach them English at zero cost.Rs Similarly, health is of paramount importance to our government. We will increase teaching hospitals from the present 11 to 27 in the next five years. We will supply 510 varieties of medicines having WHO and good manufacturing practice standards to all government hospitals by end of April. Our government will fill all vacant posts in hospitals to provide better healthcare to people. We have already demonstrated that we can save thousands of crores of rupees by opting for reverse tendering of contracts awarded by the previous TD regime, which were marred by corruption. In Polavaram alone, we saved Rs 830 crore. The opposition says the government is delaying Polavaram in the guise of reverse tendering. The Polavaram project got stalled because the previous TD regime mishandled its execution. Without constructing a spillway, they rushed to build a coffer dam, which resulted in the rise of water levels leading to inundation of more villages. Our government has issued orders to take up construction of spillway immediately and works are going on in full swing. We are going to complete the Polavaram irrigation project by June, 2021. There may be some delay in the execution of Polavaram power project, maybe by a year or so. Relief and resettlement is estimated to cost us around Rs 33,000 crore but we will implement it as per statute. How confident are you of implementing your flagship welfare programme of Navaratnalu (nine gems) given the precarious financial position of the state? You have all been witnessing how committed we are to implementing our poll promises. Some schemes were launched well ahead of schedule of promise made in the manifesto. They will generate economic activity. It is true our financial resources are not good but they are expected to improve, year on year. We will be able to implement all welfare schemes. The Special Category Status (SCS) would have been of great help to the state. The BJP has time and again said that it is a closed chapter. What is your stand? Getting SCS to a state can never be a closed chapter. We have been insisting on getting the status persistently. Whenever we meet the Prime Minister, we are raising this issue. Perhaps, I believe that when Centre requires support of MPs from AP in the Parliament on some issues, then we will put more pressure on the centre and use every chance to get such status. We are confident that in due course of time AP will get SCS.