#We are the 99% WE OCCUPY VIRTUALLY
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If I ever hear another abled say they wish they could stay home 24/7, I will personally tear them apart. Ableds had been saying that to the Disabled community for years. Then covid hit, and they lost their damn minds after just a single fucking week.
I'm Disabled and, prior to covid, was home 90% of the time. Nowhere to go, no one to see, and I cannot go anywhere alone. Now? My life is spent at home 99% of the time because nowhere to go, no one to see, I cannot go anywhere alone, and virtually no one is wearing a mask.
"Only the Elderly and Disabled are at risk."
We make up over 25% of the population!!! Thousands of ableds who survived a covid infection joined us because now they're Disabled. Still, ableds have this mentality of "it'll never happen to me," and brag about being infected over and over again.
I've lost over 40 friends and acquaintances to covid. The last thing many of them said/posted was "I tested positive for covid." Since then, radio silence. Because ableds can't be bothered to give half a flying fuck about us.
Sure, go to events where there will be crowds not wearing masks. If you survive your infection and are left with permanent health issues afterwards, you can join the community y'all hate so damn much. We'll be here, waiting at home, because millions of us cannot leave. I hope you enjoy being home 24/7 and have hobbies to occupy your time. You're gonna need them.
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Corporate Activism With a Cherry on Top
Blog 3/23
Social media does not exist in a separate virtual reality but is embedded in more traditional forms of activism and helps facilitate and organize these actions. The motivations behind its use impact social media’s impact on behavior.
The article “Social media and activism: A literature review,” by Allsop 2016 discusses social media’s role in activism and its effects on social movements. There has been an increase in interest in the role social media plays in facilitating activism, particularly since the wave of protest that erupted in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, embodied in the Arab spring, the Occupy movement student protests in the UK and several widespread protests in Spain Greece and Ukraine.
During the Arab Spring, activists at the anti-consumer organization Adbusters sent an e-mail to their subscribers suggesting similar action on New York’s Wall Street. A movement fueled by Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr took off, and soon there were Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests in many locations. The movement’s physical and philosophical Wall Street home was in Zuccotti Park, where thousands of protesters set up a community for a long-term protest. Their goal was to raise public awareness of the country’s growing level of income disparity-the gap between the richest Americans and those in the shrinking middle class and the swelling ranks of the poor. OWS’s slogan, “We are the 99%,” was designed to highlight the fact that the income and opportunity gap between the richest Americans, the 1%, and everyone else was rapidly growing and becoming a permanent part of American life. Making New York’s financial district the site of its main activities was intended to signify that it was the practices of the nation’s financial elites that were responsible for people’s increasing economic issues. It aimed to raise awareness and, through its non-violence actions, make the moral argument for economic fairness.
The New York Times, the self-proclaimed paper of historical record, wrote nothing about the occupation, which was occurring only a few blocks from its offices, for the first five days. By 2011 the presence of phone cameras, Twitter accounts, Facebook, and YouTube could spread what was happening instantly to millions. Instead of a couple of thousand people coming to Zuccotti to rally or assemble for marches during the day, the crowds swelled to the tens of thousands.
The article “Effects of Issue Ownership, Perceived Fit, and Authenticity in Corporate Social Advocacy on Corporate Reputation,” by Lim and Young 2021, analyzes the rise of social media that has provided contemporary firms. It creates a new gateway to interact with consumers and take stances on diverse social and political issues, known as corporate social advocacy. The current research examined the effect of corporate social advocacy on corporate reputation.
The article “Measuring consumer digital engagement and political consumerism as outcomes of corporate political advocacy,” by You and Hon 2022, discusses the polarized political climate that consumers increasingly expect corporations to use their influence by taking stances on sociopolitical issues. Corporations’ engagement in sociopolitical issues through CPA/CSA as a public good for democracy, corporations become political actors. Corporate engagement with CPA/CSA can increase awareness of controversial sociopolitical issues and impact voting behaviors. Corporations act as political actors in civic mobilization and policy-making through community engagement. The measurement of political consumerism corresponds with this concept’s focus on political ideology expression through supportive and unsupportive purchasing behaviors.
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I personally don't think deposing/not deposing the emperor did much of anything. Its not like there was this completely alternate ruling class that the US as a highly temporary occupying force was going to build a government around that would stick it out, and its not like the Emperor was at all involved in the governments that were forming (surrendering to the US was virtually the only moment in Hirohito's life where he actually played a substantial role, even if its exaggerated at times). So if you depose the emperor you get the same bureaucracy, the same political families, and so on.
Which honestly is probably how it should be? The US set up free and fair elections in Japan, which it continues to have and like yes I have one million complaints about Japanese politics but in the global scale its ~fine, its a liberal democracy. I don't think "radically changing the domestic politics of a country against the will of said country" is a level of imperialism I would have wanted the US to engage in even if it could succeed at it; which it definitely could not have, the US would have absolutely fucked it up to high heaven.
Also yeah Japan's opposition to gay marriage has absolutely nothing to do with the constitution; this is a little America-brained actually, in Japan if Parliament says a new law is in line the constitution 99/100 times it is because they say it is, the judicial branch of the government is very quiet when it comes to legislative review. Their leading party opposes it, because they are conservatives, I don't think there is a grand mystery here.
The fact that we are getting these recent court cases by lower district-style courts saying same sex marriage bans are unconstitutional is a pretty rare sign of activism on the part of the judiciary - and of course hilariously going in the opposite direction as OP claimed. But I think the smart money is on these getting quashed at higher levels.
(Obviously Hirohito was a war criminal and should have been jailed in an ideal world. But it wasn't in the cards, and definitely worth getting an earlier surrender for.)
Every time someone says that Japan doesn't have marriage equality, I think they should be required to add "despite polling indicating that a majority of the population supports same-sex marriage, implementing it is politically unfeasible due to the wording of the US-imposed postwar constitution". I just think they should be required to add that.
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Home Upgrade Hacks with 9 Smart Tech Gadgets
This is a great opportunity to upgrade your home into a smart home without burning up all available resources. You can discover gigantic investment funds on speakers, surveillance cameras, lights and more and make a smart home center. These gadgets work with the Google Assistant to streamline your innovation and help fill your heart with joy to make day-to-day life considerably simpler. You can likewise discover Google device limits with our gathering of the best Walmart bargains that are occurring now.
Regardless of whether you need to customise and control your lighting, stream music and recordings or secure your home, we have discovered an assortment of top of the line smart home gadgets to assist you with beginning to structure your smart home. A large portion of your items work with Alexa or the Google Assistant so you can control the devices with the order of your voice. We have additionally incorporated the Aukey Smart Plug-in our rundown which gives any device you plug into smart capabilities.
Peruse on for our rundown of the best smart home gadgets that incorporate the best prices and arrangements that are as of now accessible. Remember that a large portion of these device bargains are at a record-breaking low price and are restricted time offers. You can also check direct digital reviews on the internet for the best deals.
9 Smart Tech Gadgets for Modern Home
Best Smart Display: Google Nest Hub Max
When your home is hurling with many gadgets, humming and turning about the spot like some Wallace and Gromit bad dream, the Google Nest Hub Max is intended to comprehend everything. It ties unique smart home devices together under one control board, permitting you to turn off lights and turn up warming and friend out at the cool, tech-infertile boulevards you have gradually come to fear. It's a smart speaker, with a showcase that makes video calls, shows you up and coming schedule arrangements, gatherings and flights, just as any postponements on your drive. At the point when not being used it turns into an image outline, utilising light sensors to make a trustworthy paper-like impact.
Smart Lock
Mutual or lost keys can open the entryway to inconvenience. When the "key" to your home is on your telephone, however, or went into a keypad, you don't have to stress as a lot over the chance of deceitful individuals entering unnoticed. At the point when you upgrade the deadbolt on your entryway with the August Smart Lock, you'll deal with who enters your home and when. Make transitory virtual keys for visitors who are planned to show up at prearranged times, or just buzz them in immediately from your telephone. For genuine feelings of serenity, you can inquire on the application for a full log of late guests.
Ring Video Doorbell Pro
Help secure your home with the Ring Video Doorbell Pro that permits you to answer your entryway from anyplace. The Ring Pro works with Alexa and will send cautions to Echo devices which permit you to hear and address guests altogether without hands. The Ring Video Doorbell Pro additionally sends alarms to your smartphone when movement is identified or when somebody presses the doorbell so you can screen your home from anyplace. The Pro highlights propelled movement discovery with a camera see that creates movement cautions inside client set movement zones. The Ring doorbell associates with your current doorbell wiring so you don't need to stress over re-charging the battery and highlights four diverse faceplate alternatives.
Nest Learning Thermostat
You may think about your warming framework principally as a wellspring of physical solace, yet it can ensure your home against destroying winter harm. To guarantee that your warming framework continues acting in any climate, consider a Wi-Fi-associated indoor regulator like the Nest. The innovation offers you the accommodation of having the option to control your indoor regulator from anyplace, through any Internet-empowered device. In any case, more significantly, the smart indoor regulator gives continuous framework cautions, so if your warming framework were to come up short, you could make a move promptly - before solidified funnels and different risks threaten your home.
Google Wifi
This router makes a solid and stable wifi signal around your home, utilising a focal mothership center point and a few beneficial focuses set deliberately in rooms. Science causes the entire thing to carry on like a solitary wifi arrangement. You can without much of a stretch offer a need to a device, or limit access to the web after a specific time, on the off chance that you have children or web dependence.
Neato Botvac D7 Connected
If you have a stage free level, get a Neato Botvac. It hurries around vacuuming up earth and pet hairs, shrewdly keeping away from impediments and utilising its laser mapping rigging to guarantee it cleans each and every inch of floor. It's deft enough to climb up onto mats, sufficiently small to sneak by beds and loveseats, and consequently comes back to its base when it needs to charge.
Smart Feeder
How many gadgets can vow to keep the two pets and pet proprietors cheerful? This programmed pet feeder conveys on the two checks by overseeing eating times and bit estimates, and in any event, conveying more food to your entryway with a solitary swipe on your iPhone. Perfect for occupied or voyaging pet proprietors, this contraption will make you and your four-legged companions similarly cheerful.
iRobot Roomba 960 Robot Vacuum
Clean your floors with the order of your voice and totally sans hands with the Wi-Fi associated iRobot Roomba Robot Vacuum. You can utilise the iRobot home application to clean and calendar your vacuum from anyplace and get warnings when the activity is finished. The Roomba 960 can consistently tidy for as long as 75 minutes and will consequently revive. The robot vacuum includes a three-phase cleaning framework and a high-effectiveness channel that catches 99% of allergens, dust, and residue. The Roomba is likewise good with Amazon Alexa and the Google Assistant so you can control the vacuum with your voice. You can verify direct digital reviews on the internet for the best deals.
Security Camera
Cloud Cam is an indoor surveillance camera that screens your home in 1080p full HD. You will have the option to watch your home from anyplace whenever with the good Cloud Cam application. You can see live streams, replay cuts and get cautions when the camera recognises movement. You can redo your alarms so you'll just get cautions for that issue. The Amazon camera highlights night vision so you'll additionally have the option to screen your home in obscurity. This security camera is best for the security of your home’s outer and inner space. You can fix them anywhere inside or outside the home.
The Cloud Cam additionally offers two-way sound so you can address visitors in your home through the application. The surveillance camera works with Alexa so you can utilise your voice to show your live feed on the Amazon Fire TV, Fire Tablet, Echo Show, or Echo Spot.
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Bitcoin Evolution Review
Bitcoin Evolution are a lot of exchanging openings that show up in the crypto market. At the point when you are occupied with a task you may be botching these chances. Bitcoin Evolution assumes responsibility for the exchanging cycle for your sake. This mechanized programming continues evaluating for exchanging openings the market.
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Among the good deeds which the Muslim should strive to do during the first ten days of Dhu’l-Hijjah are:
• Fasting: It is Sunnah to fast on the ninth day of Dhu’l-Hijjah, because the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) urged us to do good deeds during this time, and fasting is one of the best of deeds. Allaah has chosen fasting for Himself, as is stated in the hadeeth qudsi: "Allaah says: ‘All the deeds of the son of Adam are for him, except for fasting, which is for Me and I am the One Who will reward him for it.’" (Reported by al-Bukhaari, 1805).
The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) used to fast on the first nine days of Dhu’l-Hijjah. It was narrated from Hunaydah ibn Khaalid from his wife, that one of the wives of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) used to fast on the first nine days of Dhu’l-Hijjah and the day of ‘Ashoora’, and three days each month, the first Monday of the month and two Thursdays. [Narrated by al-Nasaa’i, 4/205 and by Abu Dawood; classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in Saheeh Abi Dawood, 2/462.]
• Takbeer: It is Sunnah to say Takbeer ("Allaahu akbar"), Tahmeed ("Al-hamdu Lillaah"), Tahleel ("La ilaha ill-Allaah") and Tasbeeh ("Subhaan Allaah") during the first ten days of Dhu’l-Hijjah, and to say it loudly in the mosque, the home, the street and every place where it is permitted to remember Allaah and mention His name out loud, as an act of worship and as a proclamation of the greatness of Allaah, may He be exalted.
Men should recite these phrases out loud, and women should recite them quietly.
Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):
"That they might witness things that are of benefit to them (i.e., reward of Hajj in the Hereafter, and also some worldly gain from trade, etc.), and mention the name of Allaah on appointed days, over the beast of cattle that He has provided for them (for sacrifice)..." [al-Hajj 22:28]
The majority of scholars agree that the "appointed days" are the first ten days of Dhu’l-Hijjah, because of the words of Ibn ‘Abbaas (may Allaah be pleased with him and his father): "The ‘appointed days’ are the first ten days (of Dhu’l-Hijjah)."
The Takbeer may include the words "Allaahu akbar, Allaahu akbar, la ilaaha ill-Allaah; wa Allaahu akbar wa Lillaahi’l-hamd (Allaah is Most Great, Allaah is Most Great, there is no god but Allaah; Allaah is Most Great and to Allaah be praise)," as well as other phrases.
Takbeer at this time is an aspect of the Sunnah that has been forgotten, especially during the early part of this period, so much so that one hardly ever hears Takbeer, except from a few people. This Takbeer should be pronounced loudly, in order to revive the Sunnah and as a reminder to the negligent. There is sound evidence that Ibn ‘Umar and Abu Hurayrah (may Allaah be pleased with them) used to go out in the marketplace during the first ten days of Dhu’l-Hijjah, reciting Takbeer, and the people would recite Takbeer when they heard them. The idea behind reminding the people to recite Takbeer is that each one should recite it individually, not in unison, as there is no basis in Sharee’ah for doing this.
• Reviving aspects of the Sunnah that have been virtually forgotten is a deed that will bring an immense reward, as is indicated by the words of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him): "Whoever revives an aspect of my Sunnah that is forgotten after my death, he will have a reward equivalent to that of the people who follow him, without it detracting in the least from their reward." (Reported by al-Tirmidhi, 7/443; this is a hasan hadeeth because of corroborating asaaneed).
•Performing Hajj and ‘Umrah: One of the best deeds that one can do during these ten days is to perform Hajj to the Sacred House of Allaah. The one whom Allaah helps to go on Hajj to His House and to perform all the rituals properly is included in the words of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him): "An accepted Hajj brings no less a reward than Paradise."
• Doing more good deeds in general, because good deeds are beloved by Allaah and will bring a great reward from Him. Whoever is not able to go to Hajj should occupy himself at this blessed time by worshipping Allaah, praying (salaat), reading Qur’an, remembering Allaah, making supplication (du’aa’), giving charity, honouring his parents, upholding the ties of kinship, enjoining what is good and forbidding what is evil, and other good deeds and acts of worship.
• Sacrifice: One of the good deeds that will bring a person closer to Allaah during these ten days is offering a sacrifice, by choosing a high-quality animal and fattening it, spending money for the sake of Allaah. (more information to follow, in sha Allaah).
• Sincere repentance: One of the most important things to do during these ten days is to repent sincerely to Allaah and to give up all kinds of disobedience and sin. Repentance means coming back to Allaah and foregoing all the deeds, open and secret, that He dislikes, out of regret for what has passed, giving it up immediately and being determined never to return to it, but to adhere firmly to the Truth by doing what Allaah loves.
If a Muslim commits a sin, he must hasten to repent at once, without delay, firstly because he does not know when he will die, and secondly because one evil deed leads to another.
Repentance at special times is very important because in most cases people’s thoughts turn towards worship at these times, and they are keen to do good, which leads to them recognizing their sins and feeling regret for the past. Repentance is obligatory at all times, but when the Muslim combines sincere repentance with good deeds during the days of most virtue, this is a sign of success, in sha Allaah. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning): "But as for him who repented, believed and did righteous deeds, then he will be among those who are successful." [al-Qasas 28:67]
The Muslim should make sure that he does not miss any of these important occasion, because time is passing quickly. Let him prepare himself by doing good deeds which will bring him reward when he is most in need of it, for no matter how much reward he earns, he will find it is less than he needs; the time of departure is at hand, the journey is frightening, delusions are widespread, and the road is long, but Allaah is ever watchful, and to Him will we return and render account. As the Qur’aan says (interpretation of the meaning):
"So whosoever does good equal to the weight of an atom, shall see it,
And whosoever does evil equal to the weight of an atom, shall see it."
[al-Zalzalah 99:7-8]
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What To Do If You Are NOT Going For Hajj?
The first ten days of Dhul-Hijjah are the most beloved to Allah.
The Prophet testified to that. He said:
...
There are no days in which righteous deeds are more beloved to Allah than these ten days. (Bukhaari)
WHAT ACTIVITIES IN THESE 10 DAYS WILL BRING THE REWARD OF JANNAH?
Obviously, Hajj is one of the best deeds that one can do during these ten days. However for those of us who were not invited to His House this year, there are still many, good deeds that one can do and earn the Pleasure of Allah.
Some of these are:
1) Fast all nine days and especially fast the Day of Arafah
The Prophet (PBUH) said:
Anyone who fasts for one day for Allah’s pleasure, Allah will keep his face away from the (Hell) fire for (a distance covered by a journey of) seventy years. (Bukhari, Muslim)
The Prophet (peace be upon him) used to fast on the ninth day of Dhul-Hijjah and he said:
Fasting the Day of Arafah (ninth Dhul-hijjah) is an expiation for (all the sins of) the previous year and an expiation for (all the sins of) the coming year. (Muslim)
2) Do a LOT of Dhikr and Takbeer
The Prophet (peace be upon him) said:
There are no days on which good deeds are greater or more beloved to Allah than on these ten days, so recite much Tahleel (saying Laa ilaaha ill-Allaah), Takbeer (saying Allahu Akbar) and Tahmeed (saying Al-hamdu Lillaah).(Ahmad -Saheeh)
Ibn Umar and Abu Hurayrah used to go out in the marketplace during the first ten days of Dhul-Hijjah, reciting Takbeer, and the people would recite Takbeer when they heard them. (Bukhaari)
Takbeer at this time is a Sunnah. So recite it in the masjid, in your home, on the street and every place where it is permitted to remember Allah.
Revive the Sunnah that have been virtually forgotten and earn great rewards for doing so.
The Prophet (peace be upon him) said:
Whoever revives an aspect of my Sunnah that is forgotten after my death, he will have a reward equivalent to that of the people who follow him, without it detracting in the least from their reward.(Tirmidhi- a hasan hadeeth)
Men should recite these phrases out loud, and women should recite them quietly.
3) Stand in Night Prayers: (Tahajud, Qiyam al Layl)
Remember the virtues of spending the night in prayer, and its sweetness in Ramadan?
Why not revive this beautiful act of worship during these nights as well?
Remember, how in the last third of every night, Allah Almighty calls out to us, His servants: Is there anyone to invoke Me, so that I may respond to his invocation? Is there anyone to ask Me, so that I may grant him his request? Is there anyone seeking My forgiveness, so that I may forgive him? (Bukhaari, Muslim)
Why do we miss this golden opportunity? So, seize the chance NOW and expose yourself to His Divine Generosity and Mercy, ask Him to forgive you and guide you and set things aright. He will surely listen.
4) Make Sincere Repentance.
One of the most important action during these ten days is to repent sincerely to Allah and to give up all kinds of disobedience and sin right away because we do not know when we will die and thus become unable to repent, and also because one evil deed leads to another.
But what does repentance mean?
It means that you come back to Allah and give up all the deeds, open and secret, that He dislikes. that you regret whatever you did in the past, giving it up immediately and be determined never ever, to return to it, and resolve to adhere firmly to the Truth by doing whatever Allah loves.
But as for him who repented, believed and did righteous deeds, then he will be among those who are successful. [Al-Qasas 28:67]
5) Come back to the Quraan
It is time now to dust off your copy of the Quraan and return to its refuge. Make it a daily habit, using these 10 days the beginning of a strong and beautiful relationship with it. Read it with meaning, reflect on it, understand it, and then implement it in your daily life.Remember that reading one letter of the Quraan earns you ten rewards.
In this way, reading Surat Al-Fatihah, which doesn’t take more than two minutes, will give you more than one thousand rewards!
This is on ordinary days, so what about these magnificent days! Certainly the reward will be far greater, Insha Allah.
6) Increase ALL the types of good deeds.
If we are unable to go to Hajj this year, we should occupy ourselves in the worship of Allah; pray extra prayers (Nafilah) recite the Quraan. Make Dhikr of Allah, send Salaams on the Prophet, make dua, give charity, honor our parents, uphold ties of kinship, enjoin what is good and forbid what is evil, and add other good deeds and acts of worship during these days.
So whosoever does good equal to the weight of an atom, shall see it; And whosoever does evil equal to the weight of an atom, shall see it.[Al-Zalzalah 99:7-8]
7) Get the reward of Hajj wherever you are:
You may be unable to do Hajj this year, and you may feel sad. However, you can get the reward of it right where you are.The Prophet said:
Whoever prays Fajr Prayer in congregation, and then sits and remembers Allah until the sun rises, then (after a while) prays two rakas, he will gain a reward equal to that of making perfect Hajj and Umrah.[He repeated the word "perfect" thrice.] (At-Tirmidhi)
Slaughter an animal and distribute the meat.
Ibn Umar said: The Prophet lived in Madeenah for 10 years and every year he slaughtered an animal. (Ahmad-Saheeh by al-Albaani)
9) Attend Eid prayers
But remember that Eid prayer is a form of worship and we should avoid unislamic behavior (especially) in dress and in etiquette during these times.
10) Thank Allah
One of the best forms of worshipping Allah Subhaanahu wa Taala is to thank Him, deeply, sincerely and continuously.
Alhamdulillah, there is much to be gained in these coming days. Hasten to do good deeds and striving hard in worship .
And worship your Lord until there comes unto you the certainty (death).[Al-Hijr 15:99]
#hajj#dhulhajja#arafat#fasting#roza#whattodo#lifestyle#islam#muslim#howto#reminder#time#jannah#sunnaah#bestdaysintheyear
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Slice an Dice: An Acedemic Review of Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film by Carol Clover
Since its induction, horror films are one of the most evocative genres of film of all time. Horror has the power to evoke virtually any emotion out of its viewers. The genre has the power to make its audience feel fear, it can make them feel happiness, it can make them feel empowered, and it can even make them cry. But what is most interesting about the genre, perhaps, is the hidden codes and allegories contained within the film that have a lot to say about the socio-political climate of society at both micro and macro levels, Despite this, prior to the time of the release of Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, horror had been a grossly understudied subject and when it was studied it had been largely subject to the kinds of scrutiny felt by no other genre of film. In her seminal study of gender in horror films (particularly those taking place from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s), Clover provides a detailed and enlightening analysis of the underlying codes allegories contained in modern horror films as it pertains particularly to gender. She largely does this through the analysis of three subgenres in horror that have a (seemingly) central focus on female characters: the slasher film, the rape-revenge film, and the occult film.
At the heart of the book lies Clover’s central argument. Herein, Clover argues for the reasons why it is that young men – the majority audience of these particular genres – are able to identify with female protagonists in these films despite – and perhaps because of – traditional sentiments around cinema spectatorship of the time largely through the theoretical framework of psychoanalysis. Though the majority of the book roughly revolves around this argument, Clover does make interesting arguments on gender in horror as a whole, the role it places in spectatorship, and the notably frequent amount of times the genre makes use of dual gaze of the assaultive and reactive gaze where the subject of the gaze (at least temporarily) shifts between men and women. Despite the dominant discourse on horror films at the time which frame the genre as a wholly exploitative and ridiculous display of the worst misogyny has to offer, Clover provides a detailed, convincing argument to the ways in which horror (particularly subgenres covered) both reinforces and disrupts traditional notions of Western cinema spectatorship. Though she does not completely refute arguments made by film theorists and critics alike, Clover does provide at the very least an interesting analysis on the ways gender performs in horror movies and the implications it has on not just its spectators, but society as whole – something that had been scarcely covered prior to the time of its release. Succinctly, Clover is arguing that horror has a lot more to say than its gory exploitative exterior might imply. Through the analysis of multiple prominent (and infamous) films in each subgenre covered and framing it predominantly around a psychoanalytic framework, Clover provides an incredibly insightful – if not noticeably limited by its very theoretical framework – analysis on both women in horror and the men who watch and create them.
The book begins with an introduction that largely serves to form the base of the rest of the book and details not only Clover’s central arguments, but what the book as a whole will seek to uncover. This introduction begins with an analysis of the occult film Carrie. What is interesting about this beyond its analysis is the way in which the framing of this analysis broadly ties in the rest of the book. By giving her own understanding of the film and juxtaposing its seemingly feminist undertones to Stephen King’s (the author of the book version of the film) argument that Carrie herself is meant to be an embodiment of adolescent male anxieties, Clover is able provide a surprisingly apt summary of the entire book that becomes increasingly clearer as the book concludes: young men are able to identify with female protagonists (coined victim-heroes) not despite of their differing genders but because of it – something distinctively rooted in one-sex theory.
The following chapter begins her first subgenre analysis, the slasher film. The chapter opens up with a description and explanation of what a slasher film is, including all its tropes and narrative devices. What is immediately interesting is that Clover uses slasher films that are not incredibly critically acclaimed and are largely dismissed for their brutality and vulgarity (with the exceptions of Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street) that on the base seem superficial and generic on their exteriors (such as her detailed analysis of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), yet, for better or worse, say a lot interiorly. As the chapter progresses what was insightful is her analysis of the Killer and the Final Girl (a term she coined herself). Herein we have Clover describing the Final Girl as the (almost exclusively female) lone survivor of the Killer’s rampage, and the only one able to thwart and defeat the (male) killer (35). Though more prominent in the 1980s than mid-1970s, the Final Girl does so almost entirely on her own where male help is almost useless and entirely disposable – a stark subversion of the traditional cinematic apparatus situating the female as solely a victim and the male as solely heroic (37). More interesting – and a running theme throughout the book – is Clover’s analysis of the gender-swop that takes place here. As the movie progresses, Clover notes the feminization of the Killer (such as a stunted childhood) and the masculinization of the Final Girl (such as her usage of phallocentric tools). Together with the gaze swop from the Killer in the beginning to the Final Girl in the end, genders are swopped psychosexually and where gender now is not contingent on sex and the story becomes explicitly hers (49). The young male viewer is then able to swop identification with the male killer and distinctly towards the female victim-hero (i.e. the audience becomes both victim in the beginning and hero by the end). The story might be hers but it is still expressively male-centred (59).
The second chapter centres on occult films. Beginning much the same as the previous chapter, Clover describes the occult film in detail. On a literal level, Clover describes the Occult film as white science’s battle and submission to black magic. However, as this is distinctly coded through gender, occult films become yet another seemingly subversive narrative account on gender. Here, white science is coded as masculine whereas black magic is coded as feminine (with the exception of priests and children). What stands out as most interesting is then its subtle expression of gender swopping and Clover’s argument that though occult films have women at its core, is still decidedly male-centred – a story about a man in crisis (90). The woman serves as the body and site of black magic due to her femininity being more openness to the penetration of the black magic force (a vessel/accessory), the man serves as the psyche whose story the film is ultimately about. In such, the male, in order to save the female body, must renounce his white science conceptions of rationality (coded as masculine) and become open (coded as feminine) to the ideas and happenings and existence of black magic (99). Through openness the male is able to adopt a ‘good’ masculinity and fully renounce his old cold, distant and closed off ‘bad’ masculinity – if not he is likely to die or lose the woman. For Clover, the nature of the occult film and its psychosexual underpinning leave seemingly feminist readings of the film on hold because it implicitly implies that the creation of the new ‘good’ masculinity comes at expense the female and is still largely male-centric – for the male to more emotionally open, the female must become hysterical (113).
The third chapter introduces the rape-revenge film whereby the story centres on a woman who is brutally raped by one or more men and the similarly brutal revenge she enacts on the men/man involved (and sometimes even those complicit in rape). In a procaqtive study of I Spit on Your Grave and its influencer Deliverance, Clover details the socio-political underpinnings of the rape-revenge that veer away from just gender and incorporate class in its analysis (the only chapter to integrate satisfactory intersectionality). Many rape-revenge films in horror, Clover notes, often occupy on the double axis of male/female and country/city. Succinctly, this entails that these films have an intrinsically class nature to them that is intertwined with its gender-bending. In the rape-revenge film country is coded as masculine and is depicted with the male antagonists where these male country folk are more often than not depicted as poor, highly patriarchal, borderline uncivilised, and live beyond the norms of social law and order; whilst the city is coded as feminine depicted by a (mostly) affluent female protagonist who serves as the films victim-hero and represents civility and capitalist wealth (and exploitation) (144). In such, country men are ideologically positioned as wrong and their act of raping our city female victim-hero is depicted as an inevitable, making the revenge half of the film all the more justifiable. Much like the Final Girl in slasher films, the victim-hero and male antagonists have a gender swap where the men are metaphorically (and sometimes physically) castrated and penetrated by the now masculinized woman (representing psychosexual male anxieties on castration) (159). Rape becomes the problem of the woman to solve on her own and through her masculinization, the story once again appeals to male identification with the female victim-hero where the woman’s brutality is labelled as sweetly justifiable despite his own psychosexual desires/fears on castration and penetration (164).
The final chapter is perhaps the densest in the book that has three distinct but interlinking parts: a critique on film theory and its depiction of horror as solely sadist (i.e. assaultive), an analysis of horror as being both sadist and masochistic (i.e. assaultive and reactive), and the reiteration and settlement of Clover’s central argument. Beginning with an analysis of Peeping Tom, Clover highlights ways in which the film (argued to itself be a critique on cinema) occupies at a level of sadism (Mark Lewis’ murder of the women in front of his camera) and at a level of masochism (Lewis’ own experiences as a child study in front of his Father’s camera and his own eventual suicide) (179). By doing this, Clover argues for the inconsistencies of film theory to wholly regard horror as purely sadistic on the grounds of an assaultive gaze (coded as masculine) and dismissive as one of the vilest forms of modern cinema in its treatment of women. Here, film theory argues that modern cinema looks at women largely through the male gaze where the man serves as the subject, objectifying women by occupying at a level of voyeuristic sadism (the assaultive gaze) with horror being one of the extreme examples of this (206). However, Clover makes an interesting argument that what film theorists ignore, “in the name of feminism,” is that by positioning of horror movie occupying a purely assaultive gaze is to ignore a glaring blind-spot in their argument. Once again bringing forth the subgenre’s described (particularly the rape-revenge film), Clover notes that viewer identification with the victim being one of the tantamount features of the modern horror films, a fact that is heavily exploited by its filmmakers (210). Being that horror’s intention is to cause fear and pain onto its spectators, Clover argues that it is the filmmakers who largely occupy the assaultive gaze whilst the spectators occupy the reactive gaze (but there is an element of the assaultive gaze) which prove its tendency to occupy not simply in the realm of sadism, but of masochism as well despite what common criticism imply (212). Thus in terms of psychosexual fear and desire, the modern horror film, through its exploitation of Freudian notion of ‘feminine masochism’ and the tendency of repetition compulsion in its viewers, is able to locate the (young male) spectator in the reactive gaze (with secondary influences of the assaultive gaze) by aligning his identification with that of the (female) victim(hero) and locating his psychosexual experiences almost firmly is masochism and not simply in sadism as implied by film theorists (222). And it is because of this tendency of feminine masochism that Clover argues answers her overall argument as to why young male spectators would “choose to ‘feel’ fear and pain through the figure of a female – a female, in fact, whose very bodily femaleness is at centre stage” (226).
Clover’s argument, here, is entirely plausible. By positioning horror in the discursive framework of psychoanalysis, Clover is able to sufficiently argue the various ways in which gender plays out in Horror whilst still securely situating it in her initial argument. Though some of her claims would have been dismissible, her extensive use of actual film examples provides a detailed understanding on what Clover is actually trying to say, making the employment of her ‘evidence’ wholly convincing – especially highlighted in her critique of film theory. Lastly, it is interesting the way she positions women in horror. Though there could arguably be a number of feminist undertones in the subgenres described and it is impressive the extent of their subversive natures, they still comes across as heavily male-centric as Clover makes it seem that despite what may seem the story still revolves almost entirely around the experience of it majority audience – young white men.
However, her analysis is not without its faults. Perhaps what strikes as her most glaring problem is her over-usage of her theoretical framework. Though positioning gender psychoanalytically provides at the very least an interesting analysis and heavily influences her argument, Clover’s sole usage of psychoanalysis leaves a few things to be desired. Instead of situating gender in horror under the realms of their social and cultural contexts, Clover misses out a few interesting argument that would add further nuance to her argument(s). For example, in her study of slasher films in the 1980s, by extending her framework to incorporate socio-cultural backgrounds of the time, Trencansky (2001) is able to highlight the many potential allegories within the slasher film (such teenage transgression of neoliberal suburban values marked by the ‘transgressors’ in the film and the ascent to adult agency marked by the Final Girl triumphantly defeating her oppressor) and the analysis of the killer as being an allegory of rebellion gone wrong that is ‘othered’ by society (Trencansky, S., 2001: 68-70)
It should also be mentioned that her use of psychoanalysis itself holds some problems. In essentially trying to identify why it is that young white men are so invested in horror, Clover runs the risk of reducing her audience to a set of more or less fixed characteristics that further homogenizes her study (Tudor, A., 1997: 445). Instead of situation horror in a variety of different fields, and especially by little attention the socio-political climates and context of the period in which these films were made, Clover places a heavy influence on the inner workings of gender and spectatorship whilst largely ignoring any external factors that arguably have just as much impact(Tudor, A., 1997: 452). In the same vein that Clover critiques film theorists through imposing essentialist binaries on horror cinema, Clover runs the risk of reducing a very heterogeneous group to largely homogeneous characteristics. What then becomes interesting is the ways in horror and cinema spectatorship play out when one is to consider not only psychosocial factors that influence the genre and those who watch it, but the socio-political contexts they were made in as well.
As it stands, Clover’s seminal study of gender in horror movie stands as one of the most influential and cited works of the study of horror and spectatorship. Though not without its faults, the book is still able to convincingly argue the interplay and intersections of gender in horror and the broader implications it has on cinema spectatorship. Far from just another critique of horror gratuity, Clover’s book presents itself as an essential read for anyone even vaguely interested by the genre and especially those who study it.
References:
Clover, C., 1992. Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. United States of America: Princeton University Press.
Trencansky, S. 2001. Final Girls and Terrible Youth: Transgression in 1980s Slasher Horror. Journal of Popular Film and Television. 29(2): 63-73
Tudor, A. 1997. WHY HORROR? THE PECULIAR PLEASURES OF A POPULAR GENRE.
Cultural Studies
. 11(3): 443-463
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Coaching Your Dog Humanely: Part One
Welcome the Dog into the Human World
Have You watched The Dog Whisperer and thought,'Wow, that guy is amazing! What a great way to train a dog!" I know I have many occasions. Cesar Milan instructs one fundamental principle about puppies - that a dog is a pack animal by instinct. In accordance with Cesar, your work is to become the pack leader, a dominant Alpha male/female with'balance'. I figure by'balance' he means you ought to deal with the animal fairly, since they'd expect to get treated at a wild bunch. He has really nice and quick results with this technique. I will not say it is a poor method, but it is not how I decide to train my dogs and that is why.
There is 1 thing quite Incorrect with the'you're the pack leader' notion - it presumes that the dog occupies a puppy's world, and also for one to restrain it, you need to behave as a puppy could, the Alpha male or female of the bunch. For nearly all dogs that are household pets that this usually means the operator will deal with the creature as though it'd just instinctual processes happening in its mind, no logical thought processes. To refute that believing go and watch both of these brief videos of Lucy's behaviour: Lucy Remembers Her Ball along with Lucy and The Vacuum Cleaner (links look in bottom). A puppy doesn't occupy a puppy's world unless it is in a bunch of dogs, roaming the wilderness like a wolf, bringing prey down and sharing its own kill. This isn't your dog. Your puppy would not pursue its dinner when it went starving for a week! It would no longer kill a raccoon and tear its own flesh apart than will your six year-old kid! Should you have this kind of animal it is a sure bet that it is a dangerous dog, one which causes individuals in your area to cross the road to avoid.
Should you become the pack leader, you have Descended to the puppy's world. Having done thus, the puppy will integrate nicely with other dogs, reside in a bunch thankfully, understand its location in the human package, and usually behave nicely, but it will not achieve its entire potential. When you embraced the dog in your loved ones, you did not make a decision to turn into a primeval growler, (that can work when you've got the cahones to back up the dangers ), you made a decision to present a creature to the human world. Since the 2 movies reveal, Lucy is a creature with human-like trends developed to the complete potential of her younger dog mind. She, like 99% of puppies now, belongs to a household, was introduced into human theories, and resides in a human universe. It is better for you to train your puppy to live well on earth, as opposed to you in its own, for the interest of your dog as well as yourself. You'll have a far better companion, so will the puppy. The puppy will learn how to love people above dogs.
Lucy is a dog. Lucy will place herself The prepared based on where a individual puts their foot supporting a chunk. She properly expects how the ball is going to be propelled from the positioning of the foot. She cheats quite badly, coming at the destination of a pitched toy until it gets there. Her mind has calculated where you are most likely to throw or kick an item. Lucy knows how you'll kick a ball by simply shifting your weight from 1 hip to another, without so much as moving your toes! Greater than a goalie in soccer (soccer).
Lucy understands several hundred theories and controls, from Jump In The Boat, to Don't Go In The Street. She plays today but when she had been younger I would toss her ball to the road (a rural highway) and if she recognized that the ball had gone out of reach, rolling into forbidden territory, she'd wear the brakes and stop before crossing an imaginary line. That line was a bit of yellow rope lying round the driveway about 20 ft in the road. After she discovered the concept that the rope was removed, she had been permitted to venture out to pee on her I could expect her to not move beyond the imaginary line. This notion, Don't Go In The Street, is fundamental to a puppy being able to live happily in the world. It is the distinction between a deer or even a raccoon crossing the street along with your furry friend's thinking. It's heard that highways (an individual build not appearing from the puppy pack language ) are extremely bad.
Dogs Have logical thought processes. Dogs possess feelings. Dogs have a conscience. Dogs learn how to love. Dogs possess language abilities and may comprehend about five hundred individual theories with words. Not one of those things have a pup when you buy them, they're learned behaviours.
A Puppy can't do differential calculus, that is clear, but it can reason out how to control a person into giving food. Lucy has been given a treat each time she requested me to go pee out. If she gets somewhat thirsty, she's learned to ask to go out, and wait for thirty minutes and then return at the house to receive her reward. She will do so every hour or so until I've clued in and observe her. If she does not urine, the rewards quit, and thus does the manipulative behaviour as it is currently a waste of time. But this shows you a puppy can control people. It is not surprising actually; a puppy manipulates its owner several times over the course of the day. Should you wrap its leash, it is going to waken from a dead sleep and ring, pant and bark in the idea of going for a stroll. This is doggy manipulation. The dog is stating how happy they'd be if they went for a stroll, and you are feeling guilty if this was not your strategy.
So Higher justification aside, what could a dog do? It may learn. A puppy could learn so many things which you'd be amazed. If you merely instruct it what it must learn to operate well in a human universe, it might knock off your socks. Daily that Lucy and I wake upwe inform each other with hugs and kisses happy we are that we've got each other. Lucy loves people, so much so that she virtually ignores dogs. Can they create her meals for her? Can they throw her ball? Her stick? Her small teddy bears?
There is A Border Collie in Germany that may remember any of two hundred and fifty toys. Alan Alda of Mash fame visited this puppy for Nova on PBS. The puppy has all of her toys in a huge heap in 1 room. In a different room she's shown a tiny sample of the desirable toy (roughly one fifth scale). The puppy leaves, enters the area with the huge heap of various frogs, teddy bears, squirrels, puppets, dolls, devils, Muppets, rummaging round and returning immediately, and astonishingly, with the right toy. She does so perfectly, even if it is a brand new toy which she has never noticed before.
But once you've educated that puppy human theories, it is no Longer a puppy - it is a Canine Sapiens, a hybrid between puppy and Homo Sapiens (that is Latin for Thinking Man). It can't happily return to the package. Without needing to run this experiment, I moved to England for a couple of weeks and Lucy went into the kennel. The kennel is a member of a respectable breeder and Lucy had her very own'penalty box' (cage) placed in just a three by six foot . There were other dogs so that you'd think she would be OK, but those were'Pack Dogs'dogs the breeder retains solely for breeding. One traces, all of them bark. One runs round the yard, all of them run across the lawn. Lucy was having none of it, and their crude antics had her worried out. When I returned to pick up her she went crazy with joy! She ran across the truck around ten occasions barking, crying, tail wagging, face licking, and all manner of expressions of love. I started to talk with the breeder around England however Lucy jumped to the truck through an open doorway and barked off her head so loudly she couldn't be discounted. "I guess I'm being summoned," I told the breeder. Man, was happy to escape there!
This is Why many universities at the U.S. have ceased instructing gorillas and other primates American Sign Language in doctoral theses. After the research are over the creatures are returned into cages in the uterus. No longer riding around in automobiles for you! No more ice cream cones for you! The critters, capable of reasoning into a level, are back in cages languishing for the fantastic old times with their friends, not able to relate to another primates round them. The universities have determined that it is unethical behaviour to leave them when they have formed attachments for their coaches. You require a PHD in behavioural psychology to figure that out?
It may be frustrating to try teaching a puppy an Innovative idea. If you end up crying or becoming frustrated with all the dog back off. Stop. The issue is too complicated for her current state of comprehension and she does not understand exactly what you would like. The remedy is to split the issue into smaller measures. You did not learn algebra until you learned to count, add, subtract, multiply and divide. You did not learn to multiply till you learned to bring the exact same amount three times to itself. Dogs possess similar minds to individuals, except that they are somewhat limited in possible. But if you provide your dog credit for having the ability to think together with the capability of a 3 year-old kid, you are going to be amazed at what they could learn.
Your pet has a conscience. How do I know that? Your puppy dreams, and it is a certain sign of a bifurcated head using a conscious and a subconscious mind. The dog fantasies after a fantastic day, or even a bad moment. When they have had a fantastic daythey fall asleep and over five minutes go into the REM period of the sleep routine. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement, and it occurs almost right off in puppies. In people it takes about one hour and half an hour. During REM sleep that the dog could be whining, barking, chasing, wagging its tail, chewing, eating gum, swimming. You will recognize a puppy who's dreaming when you see it, trust me, however, what that fantasy indicates is that it's a subconscious mind that is free to relive the adventures of this day. When it's a subconscious mind then it should have a conscious mind, since you can not have one without the other, unless it is in a coma.
The conscious mind Comprises the principles build - What I'm permitted to do, in addition to what I'm not permitted, but wish to perform. The subconscious mind includes the whole spectrum, memories, emotions, cognitive capabilities, but it is missing one important thing - that the principles build. It is ungoverned. Should you take that, then you take a dog's mind is built similarly to ours and is effective at a number of the very same things our mind can do. To love, to feel guilty, to believe, to want, to cause, to control, to anticipate, to comply, not to violate certain rules. A puppy learns over four weeks old to not pee in the home. Amazing once you consider it spent the first 10 months during its mother's breast. How then, in case it didn't have a conscious mind with a principles build? By instinct? By package mentality? No, from studying , which you'll be liable for.
So That is where it begins: simply by giving the dog some credit for having the ability to think. If you do not you will be treating her like The Keller parents handled her blind and deaf daughter Helen. Helen Keller became a successful writer and public speaker but only after a wonder worker, Anne Sullivan, made a decision to charge her with a mind that worked. Her parents had written off as peacefully. That is your job, to be the wonder worker for the four legged Helen. Do not charge your dog with thinking capability and it will not find anything helpful.
Your pet is Handicapped in lots of ways. The first is the fact that it devotes ten times more of its mind to scents than we do. It frees one tenth of its own mind to visual data than we do. A dog may have a cookie directly in the front of it, however if it is looking for it with odor, it can not see it. A puppy appears to close off its memory in favor of olfactory memory. When they're sniffing you can listen to the nose whoot, whoot, whoot, since they sample fast to get a hint. Additionally they move their minds when sampling in order that they know which path to proceed. You will learn how to divert the dog's mind to develop into a listener and a watcher whilst giving your own lessons. They will learn quicker when they understand they are being taught something. Having a verbal and visual hint, your puppy will listen,"Aha, the Master is trying to show me something important."
Your First Lesson: The Binary Method
I Have always had it simple training my puppy - I live alone. When you've got a household, all of whom are doggy pros from visiting the Whisperer, tell them to take a hike. If they will not go, then take the puppy outside for a walk in a personal setting. Be alone with the dog, span. No distractions. No dogs or people. You're the only sensory inputs which the dog might need to take care of. This makes the task much easier. When you have educated the dog one thing, be certain all family members and friends use the identical technique of communicating. The puppy has a limited capability, which can be large enough, but it's going to be wasted when it must find three ways to sitsix approaches to come here, etc. When it's your pet, take responsibility and get different folks to tackle the puppy on your way or leave the animal alone.
Your dog learns really Fast and easily with the binary procedure. Together with the binary procedure, the puppy learns quite a lot and very quickly. In addition they learn by institution. The binary procedure is the way we start a puppy's instruction and it works wonders for dogs or dogs that are new. The institution system is for afterwards, as soon as your puppy has learned the fundamentals and is ready for more. We are going to discuss the binary process first, and institution in later sections of the report.
What Is the binary procedure? Binary signals two. There are just two things your dog must learn from you. That is all, two. Everything else follows from there. Once they have discovered those 2 items, you have got it made in the shade. Your puppy will grow to be the very obedient, happy small fur monster on the road. And she will be prepared to find out more. After a dog has picked the binary procedure, there is no going back, she thinks like a person.
In my walks with my puppy, I show off her to individuals And let them know about the binary procedure. "There are two things your dog must learn and once it has, she can learn everything else. Do you know what those two things are?" I inquire. I am amazed at the answers I receive, and have yet to listen to the right reaction. "Patience and humility," one man says. I have not taught my puppies humility however, so I need to refrain from laughing at a few of those stabs at a really straightforward idea. Does he think I'm prepping her Divinity College?
What are Those 2 items you have to first educate your four legged Helen Keller? Here we go - Yes No. Yes, you're permitted to perform something. No, you aren't permitted to do something. That is the first lesson to teach your puppy. Once he/she has discovered these 2 theories, everything else you are trying to have it to perform is very much simpler to achieve. Two things, thus the binary procedure.
How Can I instruct the dog both of these Seemingly simple theories? First, substitute the term Yes using the term Okay. The term No stays No. So that is exactly what you wish to educate the dog. Alright, and No.
If You've Got a dog that does not like food, then take it Back, for a refund, it is likely not a puppy. If your puppy does enjoy food and is drawn to a specific deal then have a purse of these treats at exactly the same time. The smaller the cure, the better. Little treats allow you lots of repetitions of this lesson before the dog catches on. It may take many repetitions of a lesson prior to the puppy accomplishes, but it is going to surprise you how couple times each puppy has to be revealed something to find out it entirely. Ordinarily, a very simple notion is learned in below ten repetitions.
Inform The puppy the next,"Lucy! Watch!' And point to your eye with your finger touching your face below the eye. Do this each time you start a lesson. Repeat it a couple of times and then start the lesson. In the beginning, it is meaningless to the puppy, but it is going to pay off because the puppy will have heard YOU ARE TEACHING SOMETHING.
Now Put the dog at the Sitting place on the ground or floor. Say'Lucy, Sit' clearly and clearly because you get it done. The easier the control the greater. 1 syllable, how much easier can it be. After the puppy is sitting and just when the puppy is sitting, place a minumum of one little treat on the ground around one foot in front of her. Give her a treat for sitting. Leave another food in sight near by.
Always, always preface an action control Together with the puppy's name. "Lucy, Sit", "Lucy, Come Here." There is a really good reason behind this. The puppy learns its title , but more importantly, she discovers she is being treated at the instant. Whenever you're using a bunch of individuals and do not use her name here's exactly what the dog perceives:"... bla bla bla bla bla bla bla - sit - bla bla bla bla bla." The'Sit' got lost in all of the bla bla. The puppy has tuned out you as you are all speaking gibberish and boring her to death. Give the puppy a warning that something is forthcoming. First pause your speaking and state'Lucy!" Pause until you see her respond, then give her the control -"Sit!" , making the hands gesture as you can.
All dog training will be to Be accomplished with'theatre'. I feel the dog reacts to signs initially, and because they are accompanied by voice commandsthey will react to this latter on it's own at a later date. Always, always offer a control with hand signs or other sorts of visual cues to get started. I call it 'theatre'. I've a'Come Here' sign that my puppy can see and reacts to when she is too far off to listen: I flap up one arm and down from my side.
So going back on the ground already covered, inform your Puppy to'Sit' by putting her firmly but softly in the sitting posture. Give her a treat when she sits. If you say'Lucy, Sit', create a hand gesture by placing your entire hand. Any puppy that's worth its salt won't immediately comply with the command, he/she will lunge to the meals onto the ground. That is instinctual behaviour, to consume. Dogs, particularly Labs, can write the book on'There is food, therefore I eat'. That is exactly what you are expecting for the puppy to perform. There are just a few things that inspire a puppy more than meals, particularly a puppy.
Wait a minute. When the Dog pliers in the sitting position to make it to the food, this is where you leap in. Put your hands, palms and hands outstretched securely, right in the front of her face and say in a loud, unmistakably officious tone'NO!" Just like a traffic cop. No, means no, you twit, and if you proceed that automobile one inch I'm hauling your idiot supporting to jail. That is exactly what I mean by theater. The hand is throw aggressively, the tone of voice is intense and stentorian, and the appearance in your otherwise nice face is mean and nasty. You might also preface the entire charade using a'Psssshhhht!" Which distracts the puppy and gets its own focus on the origin of the odd sound.
As Soon as You've given her this quite Theatrical admonition, sit back down, and say"Wait until I say OKAY," highlighting the term OKAY by pointing into your lips. The puppy at this time is simply confused. After three or four tries to lunge for the meals she will sit down and wait patiently. She will not go for the meals. Ensure that she does not get food before she does exactly what you desire. This is essential. It is not unkind. You are using positive stimulation to find a desirable outcome. Your boss does it to you every week using a paycheck.
The Puppy has learned by institution to take a seat. It is from pleasurable stimulation. Each time I sit gives me a deal. The ideal thing to do would be to sit he'll give me a puppy treat. I really don't understand what the hell he wants but I do understand to sit. I really don't understand why he is preventing me from getting that food on the market, but he is nice enough once I sit , so I'll sit down.
After The puppy has learned to sit down and remain silent without lunging to your meals, then you'll allow her to receive it. You may say in a gentle and mild tone,'Lucy, Okay get it," and point to the meals.
Here Is What the Dog is believing. If I choose that food he is going to shout at me and place me back and say"Sit' again. I am not going for this. I am sitting here. If I sit gives me treats. If you have waited until your puppy is unsure of things to do at this stage, you've done the ideal thing. Your pet is afraid to choose the food and will not budge at it. It'll ask consent with head motions toward the meals. At this time it has not a clue what OKAY means.
So today you will show your puppy what acceptable Means, and softly lift off its buttocks the ground and permit it to approach the snacks, all of the while saying'Okay, Lucy, get it' in sweet tones and pointing into the meals. You might even transfer the food nearer until it is within reach for your first couple of iterations.
When he states OKAY and Pushes me toward the meals, he appears to be saying it is quite okay when I go get it. So that is what OKAY means. Eureka, I do it!
With Roughly five repetitions of the exercise that your puppy will have learned the distinction between Okay, I'm enabled and No, I'm prohibited. It really learned the 2 theories employing the institution strategy, but it has an instrument, known as the binary procedure, where all other behavioral theories are learned. Everything, from Come Here, to Heel, to Don't Go In The Street will probably be much easier to teach. A lot of things have to be heard by means of a dog. No pooping or peeing in the home. No jumping on people or other dogs. No downtime when not known for. Come Here, Sit, Inside, Outside, Go to Sleep, Get Up, Get , Stop That, Be Quiet, Get In, Get Out, Heel, Lie Down, Stay Here, Wait... the list is very long.
All Learning has to be bolstered. When you begin to learn multiplication in mathematics, your instructor will review inclusion . She'll also teach the innovative notion of multiplication using the inclusion classes as a stepping stone. "Add ten plus ten. How much is that? Twenty. Right. How many times did we add ten? Twice. We added ten two times to get twenty. How much, therefore, is Two times Ten?" Educate furry Helen, the Okay and No controls every lesson prior to instructing her Come Here, or to Wait Until I Say Okay (Stay). Furry Helen will be quick to learn that this concept in the three months old for a kid of eight may find out the times tables.
A puppy is very similar to a person in Intellectual developmental skills. In this 1 lesson, your four Legged Helen Keller has heard quite many vital things. One, you're In control of everything. Food, most significantly. Two, collaboration means Positive stimuli like food and love, defiance means damaging Stimuli, for example disapproval and refusal of meals. A puppy, as a part of a Family seeks acceptance and positive reinforcements and avoids unwanted stimuli. If it prefers negative stimulation you have got a neurotic in your hands. Neurotic dogs, like individuals, are created, not born, and Now's that the Time for Cesar to perform his magical since this is where his strategy Outshines others, rehabilitating a tired dog. Thirdly, your pet Has learned when you are attempting to teach it some thing to allow it to fit into A family of people. Finally but above All, the puppy will have Heard the binary process and may even learn how to ask permission like Lucy does when she wants to sleep on the sofa. She stops and waits for An OKAY before leaping up.
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Week 10: Social Gaming
In the last week of this semester, we have covered ‘social gaming’ - how people change their characters, personality online. Online gaming, especially massively multiple online role-playing games brought issues as people get to ‘interact’ online like our daily life to play games. Users make societies, alliance, join together to defeat enemies that cause argument. Johan Huizinga (1955 p11) suggested a theory ‘the magic circle’, how people change physical, mental boundaries when playing a game. Even though this theory was introduced about 60 years ago, I totally agree with the concept. Johan might have found people behave differently when they play games like chess, the theory still implies and more implies when we play a game online as we do not physically contact with others. With game characters and avatar, users have a different personality to the real-world which could lead to cyberbullying, scamming.
Moreover, because the nature of multiple online role-playing games based on grows their own character with items. Games are created to encourage users to purchase virtual goods. These virtual goods are important on the online worlds as “objects take on meaning based on perceived status, scarceness and emotional value” (Greengard 2011 pp.19). The problem is that users can trade, monetize virtual goods with extra fees. Due to the nature of the virtual community scam and fraud between users have been reported frequently.
As there have been similar concepts games made, users acknowledge the need for setting up governance, because originally online game terms and conditions do not cover player-to-player interactions or disputes.
‘EVE online’ is an interesting example that shows how the virtual community sets up their own governance. Fraud, Ponzi schemes, corporate raiding, and theft scams happened to EVE (De Zwart, M, and Humphreys, S 2014, p.78). Platform managers banned users according to their terms and conditions, and the scandal was being discussed between users. From this case, in my opinion, I agree to Suzor’s point that even though its an online world, consent of participants must have arbitrary power to protect the interests of participants (Suzor 2010).
Our lives are not apart from the online worlds anymore. Social media, internet are not the only elements we use for our everyday life, online games occupying a major part of our leisure times, acknowledged as one of the sports. With the change of the view of online society, I think we should find ways by giving an opportunity to the cyber citizens to build our online society more healthier.
De Zwart, M\ and Humphreys, S The lawless frontier of deep space: Code as law in EVE online [online]. Cultural Studies Review, Vol. 20, No. 1, Mar 2014: 77-99. Availability: <https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=225934593111540;res=IELLCC> ISSN: 1837-8692. [cited 27 Jan 19]
Greengard, S 2011. Social games, virtual goods. Commun. ACM, April 2011, 54 (4), 19–22. New York, NY, USA, ACM
Huizinga, J 1949 Homo Ludens - A study of the play-element in culture Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd Boston
Suzor, N. (2010). The role of the rule of law in virtual communities. Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 25, 1819.
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A New Angle Is Needed To Observe Today’s US
— Jin Canrong | July 21, 2022
Illustration: Chen Xia/Global Times
Given the situation in US domestic and foreign policy, rounds and rounds of discussions among academic and public opinion circles on whether the US' self-correction ability has failed and whether the US has declined, have been going on for some time. The fundamental issue behind the questions is how should observers understand today's US?
The US is a superpower. Normally, for a major power, as long as there is no domestic chaos, its challenges from the outside are relatively controllable. But the current challenge for the US is that it faces a number of intensifying internal controversies.
To begin with, the US is faced with conflicts among different social classes. This contradiction has always existed, but has been aggravating in recent years. In 2011, Occupy Wall Street, a protest movement against economic inequality and the influence of money in politics broke out. Its slogan was, "We are the 99 percent," referring to income and wealth inequality in the US between the wealthiest 1 percent and the rest of the population. The movement came to an end in November 2011, but the contradiction has continued, leading to rising populism.
The second is political polarization, or growing contradictions between the left and the right. In the past, both Democratic and Republican parties had strong moderate forces. But somehow the moderate forces have been waning over the years. The left-wing forces in the Democratic Party are keen to engage in identity politics and pin labels on others. In the Republican Party, populist right-wing forces have obtained the upper hand. This has made it increasingly harder for both sides to reach any compromise. The US is thus trapped in a vicious circle of "veto politics," and has run out of governance capability.
The third is racial contradictions and tensions between blacks and whites. After the civil rights movement in 1950s and 1960s, the problem has been alleviated over time, but it is rising again today with more complexities, such as growing discrimination against Asians.
Whilst the above-mentioned problems are old issues for the US, there are also new headaches.
The fourth is the contradiction between the real economy and the virtual economy. As internet economy has been growing several times faster than US real economy, divisions and contradictions have emerged among US capitalist groups. This has never happened in the US before. It means cracks are growing amongst US elites and the ruling class.
The fifth is the contradiction between globalism and nativism. People in US coastal areas and capitalist groups support globalization, as they have strong bonds with the outside world and have gained benefits from it. But those living in inland tend to support nativism.
Both old and new problems have made the US more complicated than ever before in modern times. Worse, the US lacks real politicians. There was a time when the US had Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and other leaders with visions. But there is no one like them nowadays. There are numerous politicians, but they are mostly the puppets of different interests groups. The US once had a system that could correct its errors, but now, people are not sure whether they could still say so.
Whether the US can once again demonstrate its resilience among all the puzzles depends on whether it can confront its problems, pool its resources and utilize strength to promote economic and technological development, slowing down its political infighting and bringing social contradictions under control.
But it seems the US can hardly face up to its problems. The Biden administration has kept blaming the Russia-Ukraine conflict for surging inflation, and blaming China for its domestic employment and broader economic problems. The fundamental logic of Washington is finding a scapegoat for its own failures, forcing others to take the medicine when itself is sick.
Moreover, the US is not as strong as it used to be. Years after the attack on Pearl Harbor during the World War II, the US built a considerable number of aircraft carriers, destroyers and fighter jets. But now, as its virtual economy squeezes its real economy, the strength of the US no longer exists. The US is like an old man, who had his glorious days, but has lost its ability to correct his own errors. Against the backdrop, a simple tumble could be fatal.
Granted, the US is still the superpower. But with all its contradictions, observers need to view the country with a new angle.
— The author is a professor at School of International Studies at the Renmin University of China.
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If You Love Me (Bucky Barnes x Fem!Reader)
Title: If You Love Me (Chapter 5)
Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Fem!Reader
Summary: Bucky and the reader are sent out on a long-term mission together under the guise of a married couple.
Chapter Genre: Pure Fluff
Chapter Warnings: None
A/N: This is like...... 99% domestic fluff lol pls enjoy. Also debating just posting this on AO3 from now on since it doesn’t get much traffic here, but we’ll see!
Tag list(let me know if you want to be added!): @farfromjustordinary @frigginbored @thebadassbitchqueen @maximofos @lordemjay @works-of-fanfiction
Chapters 1-4: X (AO3) / X (Tumblr)
Chapter V: Breaking the Ice
It had been almost a week since Bucky’s little incident, and things had calmed down significantly. You were on better terms, and Bucky seemed a lot happier than before. It was like having an entirely different person around, and you liked it a lot. Maybe a little more than you should have.
It was a Friday night, which meant you closed early, much to your pleasure. After you closed up shop for the weekend, you and Bucky were lounging in the apartment, eating dinner and chatting away. It was something you did more often now that you weren’t virtual strangers anymore. Cooking dinner- either together or on your own- was a regular occurrence that both of you enjoyed.
“You know,” Bucky said between bites of spaghetti, “It’s a Friday night.”
“Very observant,” You quipped, “What brings this up?”
“Well,” He said, “We’re married, right?”
“Not technically, no, but I know what you mean so go on.”
“Married people go on dates,” He went on, ignoring your comment. “So I think we should go out tonight.”
You nearly choked on your water.
“Mrs. Peters was telling me about this old ice skating rink not too far from here,” He continued, “I think we should check it out.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” You said, standing and walking to the kitchen sink. “I trip over my own feet pretty often, I don’t think adding shoes with knives on them to the equation would be very safe.”
“It can’t be that bad,” Bucky replied, rolling his eyes. “Besides, you deal with knives all the time. You should be able to handle having them on your feet.”
You sighed and placed your dishes in the sink before turning back to face him with a hand on your hip. “You’re not going to stop pestering me about it until we go, are you?”
“You would be correct.”
“Then I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”
“This was a bad idea,” You muttered, “Oh god, why did I let you convince me to do this?”
“You’re fine,” Bucky laughed, “Just get out here.”
“I’m gonna fall, Bucky,” You shot back, throwing him a glare.
“You’re not gonna fall,” He said, extending his hand out to you. “I won’t let you. Trust me, okay?”
You clung to the sides of the ice rink wall, gripping it like your life depended on it. Bucky was already on the ice, and had been trying to talk you into joining him for five long minutes. Luckily, the building was mostly empty aside from the two of you and a group of kids, so you didn’t have to worry about embarrassing yourself in front of a crowd.
Just Bucky.
“Y/N, you’ve done scarier things than this,” Bucky said, “You’ve got this.”
“How is it so easy for you?” You asked, touching the ice with the tip of the blade on your skate. “You make it look so easy.”
“It is easy,” He said, “But you have to get on the ice.”
Sighing, you hesitantly reached out and took his hand, locking his fingers with yours in a firm grip. You took a deep breath and put one foot on the ice, then the other.
“See? I told you, you’re fine,” Bucky said, reaching out and placing his free hand on your waist to steady you. “I’ve got you.”
“I don’t feel fine,” You replied, focusing on keeping your footing while the two of you slowly slid out onto the ice.
“Just don’t think about it,” He said while flashing you a smile, “It’ll get easier the longer you’re out here.”
“How do you know how to do this?” You asked.
“Ice skating existed when I was a teenager, Y/N,” He answered, “So did swing dancing. But it’s probably best not to do them both at the same time.”
“Yeah, please don’t,” You laughed nervously.
“I can teach you that another time,” Bucky said with a wink.
The night was spent skating around at a snails pace. You stayed as close to the wall as you could, just in case. Bucky was surprisingly helpful; holding your hand and catching you every time you nearly fell on your face. When you weren’t busy trying to stay upright, you talked with Bucky about anything you could think of to keep your mind occupied. You told him about something funny Pistachio had done the other day, and about an old man who left you a $10 tip, and what it was like becoming an agent for SHIELD. It didn’t take long for you to start enjoying yourself. Even though you still couldn’t figure out how to ice skate properly, you were glad Bucky was there to make it fun.
As the night wound down and you left the skating rink, you found yourself feeling suddenly very drawn to Bucky. The thoughts from the night he had his incident returned to your mind and you couldn’t seem to stave them off. It certainly didn’t help that you’d spent almost two hours in close proximity with him. It was the first time you noticed he wore cologne, and you wondered if he’d always worn it and you just never realized, or if he’d worn it just this once. Either way, the warm smell was stuck in your nose the entire night.
“Did you and Steve ever go ice skating together?” You asked on the walk back to the apartment.
“Once,” Bucky said, half smiling. “He wasn’t as good at is as he thought he’d be. I think he had fun though.”
“Maybe you should ask him if he remembers,” You said.
“He remembers a lot of things,” He sighed, shoving his hands in his coat pockets. “Just never anything important.”
“Like names and birthdays?”
“Exactly like names and birthdays.”
You shared a small laugh and continued on your way home through the barren streets. The cold air was starting to get to you, so you shivered once and wrapped your arms tightly around your torso. Bucky slipped his arm around your shoulders and ran his hand over your upper arm in an attempt to warm you up a bit more. You instinctively moved closer to him, shivering again at the heat coming off of his body. Down the street, you noticed a group of people huddled outside of a bar, but they didn’t seem like they were having a very good time.
“Stay close to me,” Bucky said, his voice low and his tone serious. “Don’t look at them, act like they’re not even there.”
You nodded and looked down at the sidewalk below, clearing your throat as you got closer to the group.
“I talked to Mrs. Peters today,” Bucky said, his voice having returned to normal. “She thinks we should go out with her to dinner sometime.”
“That would be fun,” You replied, “She’s really sweet.”
“She is,” He said, “She talks about you a lot, but you didn’t hear that from me.”
The two of you exchanged smiles as you passed the silent circle of people, and you did everything you could to ignore their presence. You found it strange that they would just stand around doing nothing, which must have been what Bucky was thinking as well. Once you knew they were out of earshot, you let out a tense breath.
“That was weird,” You whispered, looking up at Bucky.
“Tell me about it,” He whispered back.
Not before long you made it home, where Pistachio was waiting impatiently on the countertop in the kitchen. Still feeling uneasy from seeing the strangers outside of the bar, you picked up the cat and held him close to your body, letting him nuzzle your neck and chin. You kissed his forehead and carried him to the bedroom where you removed your heavy winter clothes and put on your favorite sleepwear. Bucky shouted something about taking a shower as you crawled into bed. You laid there with Pistachio on your chest for a long time, talking to him like he could understand you.
“What do you think, buddy?” You whispered to Pistachio, “Do you think I’m paranoid about those guys from earlier?”
He blinked.
“Yeah, I thought you’d say that,” You sighed, patting his forehead. “Why can’t you ever take my side?”
He yawned.
“Sure, sure. Ignore me. I see how it is. You always do this.”
“Are you talking to the cat?”
Bucky sauntered into the room, now dressed in loose sweatpants and a painfully tight crimson t-shirt. As he approached your side of the bed, you looked up at him from under your eyelashes and pursed your lips together, stroking Pistachio lovingly.
“No,” You answered in a guilty voice, “I am not... talking... to the cat.”
“Was she talking to you?” Bucky asked Pistachio, “Tell me the truth.”
“He pleads the fifth.”
“Now you’re talking for the cat. You two have such a weird relationship.”
You glared at Bucky playfully and he laughed, patting Pistachio once before walking around the bed and crawling in beside you. He laid on his side, his forehead touching your shoulder and his wet hair dripping on your skin.
“Why don’t you dry your hair enough?” You asked, brushing his hair off of you. “Do you not know how to use a towel?”
“Oh, I do,” He said, glancing up at you. “They’re just all covered in cat hair.”
“Please go dry your hair. You’re getting the pillows wet,” You whined, trying to push his head away.
“What, you don’t like damp pillows?” He asked with a small laugh.
“No, I really don’t,” You replied, “Don’t make me ask again.”
“What do you have against my wet hair?” He asked, his tone very lighthearted. He sat up and moved over top of you, making Pistachio jump down from the bed as he placed his hands on either side of you. His body was dangerously close to yours, but you were too busy swatting his hair away from your face to notice.
“You don’t like wet hair?” Bucky asked again, shaking his head slightly and sending tiny droplets of water all over your face.
“Oh my god, what is wrong with you!” You tried to push him off of you, which only made him move closer, basically shoving his head against your cheek. Laughter filled the room as you tried to fight him off, with little success. It took you begging through your laughing to get him to stop. He tucked his hair behind his ears and looked down at you, still grinning like an idiot.
Your eyes connected and the atmosphere changed in a matter of seconds. As you both calmed your breathing, you stared at each other, almost like you were both thinking the same thing but not saying it aloud. You wondered if that was the case, or if it was just wishful thinking. All you knew for sure was that you wanted to kiss him right then and there.
“Can I tell you something?” Bucky asked in a whispered voice.
“Um, yeah,” You replied. In your head, you began to panic. His features were softer than you’d ever seen them, and the look in his eyes was unfamiliar. The room was dark aside from a single string of lights opposite the bed, making the contours of his face stand out.
“I think maybe-” He hesitated, “I don’t know. I was just thinking that-”
Before he could finish, Pistachio wormed his way between you, meowing and rubbing his face against Bucky’s nose. This caught you both off guard, making you jump and separate.
“Pistachio, you little shit,” You said, prying the cat off of your chest and setting him aside. Bucky retreated as well, going back to his side of the bed and lying down. His smile had returned while he watched you quietly scold the cat.
“Not everything is about you,” You muttered to Pistachio, who responded by flopping onto his side and looking up at you with his big green eyes. Why did he have to be so cute?
“I think that’s his way of saying he disagrees,” Bucky chuckled beside you.
Scoffing, you rolled onto your side to face Bucky while Pistachio curled up in the space in front of your stomach. “He’s such a spoiled baby.”
“You wanted him.”
“Would it kill you to be at least a little supportive, Bucky?”
“How do you think I’ve lived this long? By being nice? HYDRA didn’t kidnap me because they thought I was a decent person.”
You rolled your eyes and nudged him playfully. “You are a decent person.”
“I’m barely even a person,” He replied, shooting you a smirk.
“You’re at least 75% person,” You argued while reaching out and tapping his metal arm with your fingertips. “Just because you’re 25% Terminator doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.”
“The hell’s a Terminator?”
“Forget it. Just go to sleep.”
“Fine,” He said, sitting up on his elbows and leaning closer to you. As you started to wonder what he was doing, his lips pressed against your forehead, lingering there for a moment before he pulled away and looked you in the eye. “Goodnight, Y/N.”
#this was so fun to write omg#even if im exhausted#it is done#bucky barnes x reader#bucky barnes imagine#bucky barnes fanfiction#bucky barnes fluff#marvel imagine#marvel fanfiction#mywriting#ifyoulovemefic#q
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The Popularity Of Cloud Computing, As Reported By Google Trends
Source: Researchgate - Popularity-of-Cloud-Computing-as-reported-by-Google-trends
If you utilize a computer or mobile device reception or at work, you almost certainly use some sort of cloud computing a day. It might be some popular applications like Gmail, Dropbox, Google spreadsheets, or platforms like Salesforce and familiar others. According to a recent survey, 92% of organizations use the cloud today while others decide to use it more often in the coming years.
The term ‘cloud computing’ also refers to the technology that creates the cloud work. This includes advanced IT like server systems, OS software, networking, and others core competent technologies to make it more valuable to user experience.
The industry says Y - ‘AAS’!
In computing, we call it IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service), and SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) the core models on which the cloud platform is built. Many are confused with their applications in the industries but it has an enormous impact on the cloud applications and their behavior. Despite the catch, the industry finds it difficult to differentiate the trio with its functionality. To have a better understanding of each we are going to brief on each.
SaaS (Software-as-a-Service)
The Global SaaS market occupies a hefty share of 99 bn USD and is estimated to grow at the rate of 11% CGAR, during the forecast period 2021-2025. The hype around SaaS is solely due to its diverse usage and how frequently it’s used as a definitive cloud tool.
SaaS—also referred to as cloud-based software or cloud applications—is application software that’s hosted within the cloud which you access and use via an internet browser, a fanatical desktop client, or an API that integrates together with your desktop or mobile OS. In most cases, SaaS users pay a monthly or annual subscription fee; some may offer ‘pay-as-you-go’ pricing that supported your actual usage.
PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service)
Today, PaaS is usually built around containers, a virtualized compute model one step far away from virtual servers. Containers virtualize the OS, enabling developers to package the appliance with only the OS services it must run on any platform, without modification, and without need for middle-ware.
With PaaS, the cloud provider hosts everything—servers, networks, storage, operating system software, middleware, databases—at their data center. Developers simply pick from a menu to ‘spin up’ servers and environments they need to run, build, test, deploy, maintain, update, and scale applications.
Red Hat OpenShift is a popular PaaS built around Docker containers and Kubernetes, an open-source container orchestration solution that automates deployment, scaling, load balancing, and more for container-based applications.
IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service)
Lets tally the statements with some statistics for backup. As per the global forecast reports, the IaaS market will grow by 136.21 bn USD during 2021-2025, further, the growth monitor indicates it to be staggering at a CAGR of 27% during the forecast period.
IaaS provides on-demand access to fundamental computing resources–physical and virtual servers, networking, and storage—over the internet on a pay-as-you-go basis. IaaS enables end-users to scale and shrink resources on an as-needed basis, reducing the need for high, up-front capital expenditures or unnecessary on-premises or ‘owned’ infrastructure and for overbuying resources to accommodate periodic spikes in usage.
In contrast to SaaS and PaaS (and even newer PaaS computing models such as containers and serverless), IaaS provides the users with the lowest-level control of computing resources in the cloud.
IaaS was the most popular cloud computing model when it emerged in the early 2010s. While it remains the cloud model for many types of workloads, the use of SaaS and PaaS is growing at a much faster rate.
Why miss out on FaaS?
Function-as-a-Service is often confused with serverless computing when, in fact, it's a subset of serverless. FaaS allows developers to execute portions of application code (called functions) in response to specific events. Everything besides the code—physical hardware, virtual machine operating system, and web server software management—is provisioned automatically by the cloud service provider in real-time as the code executes and is spun back down once the execution completes. Billing starts when execution starts and stops when execution stops.
What makes the industry lean on to a cloud privilege?
Virtualization enables cloud providers to make maximum use of their data center resources. Not surprisingly, many corporations have adopted the cloud delivery model for their on-premises infrastructure so they can realize maximum utilization and cost savings vs. traditional IT infrastructure and offer the same self-service and agility to their end-users.
Cloud computing is on-demand access, via the internet, to computing resources—applications, servers (physical servers and virtual servers), data storage, development tools, networking capabilities, and more—hosted at a remote data center managed by a cloud services provider (or CSP). The CSP makes these resources available for a monthly subscription fee or bills them according to usage.
Compared to traditional on-premises IT, and depending on the cloud services you select, cloud computing helps do the following:
Lower IT costs: Cloud lets you offload some or most of the costs and effort of purchasing, installing, configuring, and managing your own on-premises infrastructure.
Improve agility and time-to-value: With the cloud, your organization can start using enterprise applications in minutes, instead of waiting weeks or months for IT to respond to a request, purchase and configure supporting hardware, and install the software. Cloud also lets you empower certain users—specifically developers and data scientists—to help themselves to software and support infrastructure.
Scale more easily and cost-effectively: Cloud provides elasticity—instead of purchasing excess capacity that sits unused during slow periods, you can scale capacity up and down in response to spikes and dips in traffic. You can also take advantage of your cloud provider’s global network to spread your applications closer to users around the world.
The cloud computing industry has taken a huge leap in the past year on its profound usage of cloud computing during the pandemic. According to global prediction, the market price for cloud computing will be sprung from 371.4 Billion USD in 2020 to 832.1 Billion USD by 2025 with an annual CAGR of 17.5% during the forecast period.
The predictions are welcoming more software developers to make the transition to cloud computing, more than ever. To taut, the demand market, IIT Roorkee – Wiley is offering post Graduate Certification in Cloud Computing & DevOps. It includes a foundation concept of virtualization, networking, and the cloud ecosystem and outlines their role in enabling cloud models.
It’s a 7 months course with the collective knowledge influence of industry experts who have carefully curated this unique program that builds skills to design and implement the complete workflow of cloud implementation. For this program Miles education is the official channel partner, please visit Miles Education- PG Certification in Cloud Computing & DevOps
#cloud software#cloud development#cloud computing#cloud technology#aas#saas#paas#iaas#devops#developer
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Who would you pick as Tameside and Glossop’s best manager of the last 40 years?
WHO was the best Tameside and Glossop non-league manager of the last 40 years? I can already hear some of you shouting out names. But let's just take a moment to put the question into some context.
If you asked me which was my favourite Hyde United team over the period in question I would immediately say Les Sutton's Cheshire League treble-winners of 1981-2 because I knew the squad so well and still keep in touch with them. The most exciting team? Probably Mike McKenzie's mid-1990s line-up.
But the best? Well that might be the National League North title-winning side of 2011-12. So does that make Gary Lowe the best manager? What about Steve Waywell who won back-to-back championships, albeit at a lower level.
Do you take into account achievements at clubs outside Tameside? Peter Wragg led Stalybridge to the Cheshire League title in 1980 and performed the seemingly impossible in getting them to avoid relegation from the Conference in 1995 when they looked dead and buried.
Yet Wraggy will be best remembered for his time in charge at Macclesfield. Since the demise of the President's Cup his place in history is safe as the only manager to win the Northern Premier League treble. Do his exploits at the Moss Rose influence his reputation from a Tameside perspective?
And does quality have to be defined in terms of titles and trophies? Is it easier to win something if you have a large wagebill, although there are plenty of examples of managers who have squandered money. Can you qualify as the best if you've avoided relegation over a period of time or just kept a club afloat?
Several men have managed more than one local club and sometimes with various degrees of success. Pete O'Brien had the highs of Hyde United and Stalybridge Celtic, a respectable period at Glossop and a brief but awful time at Droylsden. Les Sutton's success at Ewen Fields wasn't matched at Curzon or Mossley.
Clearly there is no easy answer when it comes to working out who is Tameside and Glossop's best boss of the last 40 years. There are so many factors to take into account. Let's try and look at it on a club by club basis.
ASHTON UNITED
The obvious candidate here would be Dave Denby who led the Robins to the NWCL double and Manchester Premier Cup in 1992. He was also doing well in the NPL first division in the few weeks before his shock resignation.
Unfortunately, Ashton have not managed much silverware over the last four decades. However, we have to mention Albert Pike who triggered the club's revival by winning the NWCL second division title in 1988.
Jody Banim took Ashton into National League North, via the play-offs, in 2018. Danny Johnson's side won the NPL Cup in 2011.
But then we have Sammy McIlroy who was at Hurst Cross only briefly, completing the 1992-93 season after Denby quit. Ashton finished third, two points behind Knowsley, but he went on to take Macclesfield Town into the Football League and later managed Northern Ireland.
Kevan Keelan (1993-95) was no mug and would probably have done better if he hadn't lost the support of owner Terry Liversidge. And then we get John Coleman (1996-99). He was sacked by Ashton after a three-year spell in which he failed to win promotion, moved to Accrington Stanley, and took the famous old club all the way back to the Football League.
Coleman didn't put any cups in the Hurst Cross trophy cabinet, but does he have a claim to being the Robins' best manager since 1980?
CURZON ASHTON
At Curzon it must surely be a question of Gary Lowe or John Flanagan, although a case could be made for Steve Waywell who took over when the Nash were way out of their depth in the new NPL first division and made them into promotion candidates. If he'd picked a better goalkeeper in 1993 they may even have made it to the FA Vase final.
Lowey was in charge at Curzon for 11 years from 2000. He joined the club when they were in the NWCL second division and courtesy of some reorganisation led them into the NPL. Then there was the FA Vase semi-final in 2007 and who could forget 2008 and that famous first-round victory over Exeter City?
John Flanagan (2011-18) also got Curzon to the first round of the FA Cup although his side somehow managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, squandering a 3-0 lead in the last 20 minutes. However, what no one can ever take away from him are the promotions that took the Nash from the NPL second tier to National League North in the space of two years. Moreover, despite what must have been the division's lowest wage bill, he regularly managed to assemble sides that punched above their weight, and not only avoided relegation but never became involved in a relegation dogfight.
DROYLSDEN
This is a tough one as Dave Pace was manager for almost a quarter of a century until the club went into suspended animation last year apart from a very brief break in 2001 when Owen Brown occupied the hotseat. And Pace did more than respectably — the NPL championship in 2007 and some exciting FA Cup runs. Only a clerical error kept them out of the third round in 2008-09 after they beat Chesterfield at the Butchers Arms.
Albert Tivey also engineered some FA Cup runs in the late Seventies. Mark Fallon's side won the NWCL second division title in 1986-87, and in 1990 Phil Staley got the Bloods promoted even though they had eight points deducted — a total that would have given them the title.
Otherwise, the Butchers Arms was a wasteland for managers. Men of the quality of Pete O'Brien, Stan Allan and Tommy Lawson all failed to fashion a winning side. Manchester United and Scotland defender Arthur Albiston lasted five weeks in 1996 before being sent away with a flea in his ear.
GLOSSOP
Chris Willcock would seem to stand head and shoulders above the others here. His team reached the FA Vase final in 2015 and at the same time won the NWCL double and promotion to the NPL. The following season, the Hillmen were in the promotion play-offs. It's hard to argue with that sort of record, and all within only four years at the club.
But what might Brent Peters have achieved 30 years ago if he'd had a more reliable chairman than Peter Smith? He fashioned an effective side including players like Oldham Athletic keeper Andy Gorton and Manchester United and Hyde striker Peter Coyne. A league and FA Vase double was looking possible before the financial rug was pulled from under him and the club.
Revival came under the guidance of Syd White. The Manchester Premier Cup victory at Old Trafford in 1997 must rank as one of the greatest moments in the club's long history and signalled Glossop's return from the brink of disaster.
I'd also throw in the name of John Birchall in 1988-90. He restored some self-respect after Alex Ross's rocky reign when the Hillmen had even struggled to beat Old Glossopians in the Derbyshire Senior Cup. In those pre-floodlight days at Surrey Street they took the tie to a penalty shoot-out which was held in semi-darkness with the near-by windows supplying the only illumination.
Under Birchall, Glossop rediscovered what it was like to winn and he even claimed a manager of the month award. He often refused to tell me about his team because he didn't want other clubs to know about his players.
HYDE UNITED
Pretty much been through this in the intro. The Tigers have a surfeit of riches. They've had some under-achievers in charge at Ewen Fields but they've also had some stars.
Les Sutton won most trophies and Mike McKenzie twice got within a whisker of Wembley with an exciting side that regularly outclassed Conference opposition. Yet Steve Waywell claimed two consecutive titles, and of course Gary Lowe's squad lifted the NPL crown and promotion to the Conference.
Then there's Pete O'Brien, who won many cups, reached the FA Trophy semis and two Clubcall Cup finals. Had he managed at a different time, when mega-rich Colne Dynamoes weren't racing through the divisions, he might well have won the NPL championship. It's worth noting that his Hyde teams regularly got the better of Colne when Chalky White's side were virtually invincible.
MOSSLEY
There's only one name here — Bob Murphy. As the Seventies turned into the Eighties the Lilywhites were easily the top team in the NPL with two titles, three runners-up spots and an appearance in the FA Trophy final. It's fair to say they would have more than a match for anyone in the newly-formed Alliance Premier League.
Unfortunately, the club hit the financial skids in 1983. After their five-year run at the top of the NPL they plunged to the bottom and within ten years had been relegated to the NWCL. Most of Bob's (many) successors were left fighting a rearguard action with just the occasional piece of silverware such as Bryan Griffiths's league cup in 1989.
Kevan Keelan got Mossley to the FA Vase quarter-finals in 1997, Jason Beckford won promotion to the NPL in 2004, and Steve Halford's side reached the play-offs in 2013. But the club has yet to find anyone able to enjoy a sustained period of success.
STALYBRIDGE CELTIC
Like Hyde, Stalybridge have had some highly skilled and respected managers. Peter Wragg, Pete O'Brien, Kevan Keelan, Brian Kettle and Phil Wilson have all occupied the Bower Fold hotseat. Even post-2001, when Celtic have found trophies hard to win, they have had men of the calibre of Steve Burr, Liam Watson and Jim Harvey.
Phil Wilson would surely have to be the frontrunner although in terms of the type of football he played that could be a controversial suggestion. However, while Wizzo might not have put out the most entertaining teams his record speaks for itself. In two spells at the Bridge he won two championships that led to him being lured away by bigger and richer clubs. In 2000-01 he claimed the Cheshire Senior Cup and NPL President's Cup too.
Yet he does have competitors. Peter Wragg won the Cheshire League title in 1980 and in 1995 somehow got Celtic to safety against all the odds.
Pete O'Brien, who was successful at other clubs such as Hyde United and Witton, led Celtic to the NWCL title in 1984 but they were denied promotion because their ground wasn't deemed good enough. The honour of leading them into the NPL went to Kevan Keelan, whose side were NWCL champions in 1987.
CONCLUSION
So who would you choose as Tameside's top manager of the last 40 years? I'm not going to suggest anyone beyond the various names I've thrown into the mix. As I used to tell guests in my radio days, it doesn't matter what I think because no one's interested in my opinions. It's what you think that matters.
With any luck I've provided the basis for a little discussion and debate — hopefully over an indoor pint in a few days' time.
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Test - Gigabyte Brix S GB-BXi7H-5500: Review| Specs| Pros & Cons| Hashrate | Set-up
Test - Gigabyte Brix S GB-BXi7H-5500: Specs | Price | CPU | Profitability| Hashrate| best Coins | Config | Advantage (Pros) and Disadvantages (Cons) and other important features that will help you make better decision. Mini-PCs are flourishing and all manufacturers offer more or less small models, Gigabyte has its Brix series (which I tested in its Pro i7 4770r version here), a range that offers several models equipped with processors ranging from the Intel Celeron 3205U to the powerful 5th Generation i7 (Broadwell) 5500U. Let's see what the Brix of today's test (which is none other than an update of the first Brix) has in the belly! Specification: Hashrate - Gigabyte Brix BXi7H-5500 Gigabyte Brix BXi7H-5500Dimensions4,68 x 10,7 x 11,4 cmProcessorIntel® Core™ i7-5500UProcessor frequenciesTurbo: 3,00 GHzNon Turbo: 2.40 GHzGraphics chipsetIntel® HD Graphics 5500Graphics chipset frequenciesMaximum: 950 MhzBase: 300 MhzMemory2 x SO-DIMM DDR3L 1.35V1333 - 1866 MHzMaximum de 16 GoNetworkGigabit LAN (Realtek RTL8111G)IEEE802.11ac, Dual Band & BT 4.0AudioRealtek ALC283Maximum resolutionsHDMI: 4096 x 2304 @ 24 HzMini Displayport: 3840 x 2160 @ 60 HzSlots d'extension1 mSATA slot1 mini-PCIe slot occupied by WiFi + BT card1 SATA slotFront connectors2 x USB 3.01 x prise jackConnection at the back1 x HDMI1 x Mini DisplayPort2 x USB 3.01 x RJ451 x DC-In1 x KensingtonStorage1 x Sata3 6GbCompatible hard drives / SSD 2.5 "(7 or 9.5mm)FoodInput: AC 100-240VOutput: DC 19V3.42ASupported operating systemsWindows 7 32/64bitWindows 8.1 64bitGuarantee2 yearsPrice550 € TTC The first thing that strikes you here is the size of the machine, a small cube of 11cm sides and 4.68cm high, we still lose almost 1.5cm in height compared to the original Brix, which was already very small. The processor is therefore a Core i7 5500U running at a maximum turbo frequency of 3GHz (2.4GHz base), contrary to what one might think and at the original Brix this i7 only has 2 physical cores with hyperthreading against 4 cores physical with hyperthreading, performance should therefore be lower but more in line with the size and use of the end. The graphics part is left to an HD 5500 chipset clocked at 950 Mhz in turbo mode and 300MHz when the processors are used at 100%, the performance should also be less good than the Iri Pro which equipped the Brix Pro that I tested previously! In terms of memory, it is possible to install SO-DIMM memory (the same as laptops) 1333, 1600 or even 1866 MHz (in OC mode) with a maximum voltage of 1.35V for a maximum of 16GB .The storage part consists of an mSata port intended to accommodate an SSD and a Sata 3 6Gb / s connector for a 2.5 ″ hard drive or SSD. Of course, the network part is very well supplied with 1 Gigabit RJ45 port and 1 811ac / Bluetooth WiFi card which should allow everyone to connect the Brix to their network.The connection is not left out either with 2 USB 3.0 ports at the front as well as a 3.5mm jack output and at the rear 2 USB 3.0 ports, 1 HDMI port, 1 Mini DisplayPort, 1 RJ45 port as well. than a Kensington slot is not bad for such a small device! Well that's all well and good, but what about the price? Offered at around 550 € the Gigabyte Brix GB-BXi7H-5500 is not cheap, but cheaper by around 150 € compared to the Brix pro equipped with an i7 4770R, you also need to get an mSata disc (or 2.5 ″) And memory to have a functional machine.Place the unpacking of the beast! Here is the box! It will certainly not take much space in the cabinet you can be sure, on the top there is a profile photo of the product with only the mention of the model and a small listing of the beast's strengths, a module without wire (Wifi and Bluetooth) as well as support for 2.5 ″ format discs.At the back we find various photos highlighting the connections, the internal layout as well as the third-party components necessary for the operation of the Brix (2.5 ″ hard drive or mSata Drive, SO-DIMM memory and of course an operating system) . Once the box is open (very rigid, however, the transport should not damage the precious!) There is a first compartment accommodating the tiny Brix in a foam bag. Once the first compartment has been removed we come across the second housing the driver CD, the VESA plate (for mounting behind a screen) as well as the various screws and the power supply. Here's everything that's in the Brix S box!The bundle consists of: - 1 Brix GB-BXi7H-5500 - 1 external power supply - 1 mains cable - 1 VESA plate - 1 CD de drivers The bundle is therefore rather basic with the essentials necessary for connecting and placing the Brix. The VESA plate will be particularly practical to hide the mini-PC behind a screen. Here is the beast! All dark gray shiny metallic, the little one is very sober and very compact and robustness is essential. The power button is placed on the top and will therefore be easy to access. We can see very clearly that the beast is lower than its big brother Brix Pro, which was already really very compact, as you can see here. On the front we are entitled to 2 USB 3.0 ports as well as a 3.5mm jack that makes headphone and microphone, let's not forget the little Intel Core i7 sticker that goes well. There are small ventilation grilles on both sides, they will be needed to evacuate the heat of all these little people. The rear connection is rather well provided for a device of this type with 1 HDMI port, 1 mini DisplayPort port, 1 Gigabit RJ45 port as well as 2 USB 3.0 ports. Of course ventilation grilles are present here! Below we find again a small ventilation grid as well as the various labels of use, we learn that the Brix is made to work with a 19V and 3.42A power supply or 65Watts, much less than the Brix Pro and its 135 Watts , that should be more than enough for this small configuration.Why not open the beast now! The motherboard! Everything is really miniaturized here, we see the 2 memory modules and the unused mSata port which is located just above the Wifi / Bluetooth module. The layout of the components is identical to the Brix Pro but the motherboard itself is not identical. Below we can see the cooling system, which is all in all tiny and much smaller than that of the Brix Pro, given the size of the fan we will have to expect it to run very quickly and therefore to the noise pollution that go with it, but we'll see that later Here is the location for a 2.5 ″ drive / SSD, it will be glued to the bottom wall just like on the Brix Pro. The test platform The Brix S i7 5500 will be compared to the following configuration: - Processor : Intel Core i7 4770K - CPU Fan : Noctua NH-D15 - Motherboard : Gigabyte Z87X-UD5TH - Mémoire: Kingston HyperX 4 x 2 Go 1600Mhz - Disque dur: WD Raptor 150 Go - Ventirad Graphics Card : Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 - Alimentation: be quiet! E9 580CM - Case : Corsair Carbide 300R Of course the results will necessarily be to the advantage of the test configuration, but it will be a good point of comparison! The graphics card has been removed in favor of the integrated Intel HD4600 chipset.The temperature, consumption and noise tests were carried out under OCCT in order to push the machine to its limits. Cinebench R15 With 2 physical cores and 2 virtual cores less, the Core i7 5500U is no match for the other 2 Core i7s in the comparison, and that's normal! However, let's be relativistic because 305 is very close to a desktop Core i3 Haswell. SuperPI 32M Using only one thread the frequency plays a major role here, as on Cinebench R15 the Core i7 5500U is behind with 11 minutes compared to the 8 minutes of the other Core i7s. This is easily explained by seeing that the turbo mode of the 5500U is “only” 3 GHz. Aida64 4.60 In terms of memory under Aida64, the speeds are not far from the other solutions in the comparison, which is quite normal. The result under CPU Queen is once again in line with what we saw above namely more than 50% worse, again this is quite normal. 3DMark Fire Strike & Jeux The graphic part of the i7 5500U is clearly not made for playing, or you will have to pay great attention to graphic details and not expect miracles (games like LOL, HOTS or even Diablo 3 should however be fully playable. ). We can see that the HD 5500 chipset is also behind compared to the HD 4600 of the Core i7 4770K, which is itself far from the Iris Pro 5200 of the Core i7 4770R which equips the Brix Pro. Débits Sata – CrystalDiskMark I purposely removed the Brix Pro from the comparison as there was no point of comparison, so I took a Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB SSD (tested here) and it was tested on the Core i7 4770K and the Brix S (the Brix Pro is no longer in my possession).As we can see the Brix defends itself really very well by having read and write performance almost identical to its big desktop brother, we can say that there is really no clamping here and the SSD responds to the finger and at the eye. Network speeds The throughput was tested by transferring a 7GB iso file hosted on a machine running Debian Wheezy and all over a Gigabit network. At the network level, the Brix S has no problem keeping up with the speed with 970Mb / s in download and 960Mb / s in upload, same results as with the Brix Pro, the Intel chipset present on the Gigabyte Z87X-UD5TH is more efficient but nothing that changes from the ordinary here. The Gigabyte Brix S GB-BXi7H-5500 WiFi card has been tested in real conditions, and not glued to a high-end router specially purchased for the occasion, in fact in 99% of cases the PC is connected to the box so it will be the same for this test! The connection is made to a SFR NB6 box (optical fiber with a speed of 1Gb / 200Mb) and through a wall. By the way, we see that the Wifi chipset is really very good with 38.07 Mb / s in download and 41.81 Mb / s in upload, better than the Brix Pro but very slightly worse than the Wifi card installed on the Z98X-UD5TH motherboard . It is very likely that the possible speeds will not restrict your connection (unless you have fiber or VDSL2). Temperatures In terms of temperatures at rest, the Brix S behaves very well (for such a small PC of course) with 51 ° for the processor and the motherboard as well as 45 ° for the SSD. The SSD is a little hot but nothing that should endanger its life.In load we go up to 85 ° for the processor and the motherboard and 46 ° for the SSD, again even if this may seem high it is not so because this processor can remain at this temperature without the slightest concern for its duration of life (The Brix Pro's Core i7 rose to 97 ° to compare). Consumption So there is as much to say that Gigabyte has worked very well, at rest the complete machine consumes 8.6 Watts at the outlet, which is quite simply ridiculous and buries its big brother Brix Pro of about 10 Watts (which was already low in energy with its 18 Watts). On the other hand, the gap widens even more with a maximum of 49 Watts at the outlet for the Brix S against 89 Watts for the Brix Pro, nothing to say in terms of consumption the Brix S i7H-5500 is doing. perfectly. Noise Warning: Part to be taken with a grain of salt, unfortunately not having access to the appropriate equipment and using an android application to take the readings The measurements below are only indicative! The readings were taken 20cm from the machine. Here again the Brix S behaves very differently from its big brother the Brix Pro, indeed at rest and with its 32 dB it is almost completely silent, in any case it will clearly not be heard if there is every other sound source. Under load on the other hand and with 48 dB it is clear that we will not be able to miss the little beast which cries from the top of its more than 5000 RPM, but it remains well below the Brix Pro and its 70 dB which was almost unbearable . Here we are at the end of this test, what about the Brix S GB-BXi7H-5500?For starters Gigabyte took a Brix Pro which was already tiny and reduced its height even further, making placement very easy, behind a screen for example with its VESA mount. The build quality as well as the robustness of the whole are really excellent, no worries at this level. In terms of performance, we are below a Brix Pro with 2 fewer physical cores but the Brix S manages to do almost as well as a desktop Core i3 Haswell, so as much to say that it will be more than enough for all daily tasks. The integrated graphics chip will allow you to do whatever a user needs, and even play a few small games (LOL style for example) but clearly you should not expect miracles.Unlike the Brix Pro, the S version manages to keep temperatures correct for its size, as well as much more contained noise pollution, even if the beast will be clearly heard in load, in office use (which is the main use of this device). Brix S) it will be very discreet. Regarding the price on the other hand there is no miracle, the Core i7 5500U itself is offered at $ 393, the Brix S i5H-5500 is offered at a price between 550 and 600 €, so yes it remains expensive for the performances offered but the miniaturization of the whole has to be paid for, and as usual we have nothing for nothing! It is also necessary to take into account the fact that in addition to the Brix S itself it is necessary to add memory (between 40 and 50 € for 2 x 4 GB) and an SSD (from 60 to xxx €). If you are looking for the smallest possible office PC without losing performance compared to a classic office PC then the Brix S GB-BXi7H-5500 is undoubtedly an excellent choice, if the budget allows it Advantages - Cut - Performances - Build quality A big thank you to Wilfried from Gigabyte who allowed me to do this test. Where to find the Brix S GB-BXi7H-5500? Read the full article
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Between Gods and Rats, the Moynihan Train Hall Is a Temple to Modern Mediocrity
There are three types of photos of the original Penn Station in midtown Manhattan, the one that got knocked down in the mid-1960s. The first type are photos of it being built. The second are those of it being used throughout the first half of the 20th century. Finally, there are the photos of it being destroyed in the 1960s.
As it happens, these periods roughly coincide with three definitive eras of New York City lore. The early 1900s is when modern New York became itself, the early-to-mid 1900s were arguably its peak, and the post 1960s saw its rapid decline. In this sense, the photos of Penn Station are a handy starting point to understanding the city's 20th Century story.
It is a story that doesn't end as much as it sloppily devolves. In 2019, New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman likened the historic preservation movement—born from the Penn Station rubble—to collective pessimism. The destruction of the old Penn Station "flipped the optimistic narrative" of the city, Kimmelman argued. People began to assume that anything good that was lost would no longer be replaced with something better. Instead, they felt a growing sense that what came next would be worse. The main goal was no longer to build back better, but to cling to what we have.
And so it is in a sense fitting that the Moynihan Train Hall, the city's first real attempt to replace a portion of what was lost some 55 years ago, opened on January 1, 2021, the day after one of the most dire, harrowing years New York has ever faced. If buildings can be narrative-shifters, this is quite the timing.
That's a lot of pressure to put on a building. Moynihan could never be a true Penn Station successor, much less change the tune for New York City. For starters, the old Penn Station is still there underneath Madison Square Garden, just as it has been for the last half-century, and will continue to be used by hundreds of thousands of people every day whenever we return to some semblance of normalcy. All New Jersey Transit riders will still descend under the Garden. Many Long Island Railroad riders will, too. Like the original Penn Station, which was for Pennsylvania Railroad customers first and foremost, Moynihan is largely for Amtrak riders.
The new train hall—it is not accurate to call it a new station, as the tracks and platforms are the same—also occupies a different physical space than the old Penn Station. It is across the street, in part of the old James Farley Post Office Building, which was constructed just a few years after the original Penn Station, designed by the same architects, and intentionally mimicked the Penn Station Beaux Arts style (it received landmark status in 1966, thanks to the preservation movement Penn's destruction ushered in, so the original facade has not been altered).
But the main reason Moynihan cannot and will never match the original Penn Station is because it is an ornamental decoration to an otherwise private office building.
The train hall may be the headliner, but it is just a part of the Farley Post Office rehabilitation. The United States Postal Service sold the building to the state, which then leased it for 99 years to private developers. Per the lease, 475,000 of the total 1,112,000 square feet—less than half—are for the train hall, LIRR and Amtrak facilities, and "transportation-oriented retail space." That's much smaller than the massive, eight-acre old Penn Station, which was on a similarly sized plot. The remaining 637,000 square feet have been leased as office space to Facebook, plus some 70,000 square feet of developed outdoor roof space for the social media giant.
This was not merely a happy accident for the private developers, but in many ways the key that unlocked the entire project. The state authority that orchestrated the plan, which has been decades in the making, is called the New York State Urban Development Corporation, otherwise known as Empire State Development. As ESD vaguely alludes to in an environmental impact document outlining the project's history, Amtrak originally proposed using most of the Farley building for a new Penn Station site in the 1990s, but "further refinement of the project scope and more detailed cost estimates revealed that the project would only succeed through a funding partnership between the federal, state, and city governments and the integration of a private development component." Only once "economic opportunities afforded by the utilization of the unused development rights associated with the Farley Complex" did the project finally get off the ground and through the gears of bureaucratic morass.
The project's backers have argued the private development was the only way to make it viable, and so it is either a smaller train hall with lots of office space or no train hall at all. But this, like many other aspects of urban development schemes, demonstrates a lamentable lack of imagination. The total cost, which includes funding from Amtrak, a federally funded agency, was $1.6 billion, a lot of money by any measure but hardly insurmountable for a project with local, state, and federal financing, and about half of the original Penn Station's cost in inflation-adjusted dollars. Like so many other redevelopment projects in the city over recent decades, this whole project is not about palaces by and for the people. It is about "economic development," and the people get a little something for the trouble of selling off a massively valuable real estate asset that we used to own.
The bar of what to do with underutilized publicly-owned spaces is so low that the mere presence of the Moynihan Train Hall can, justifiably, be hailed as a victory of sorts. Steve Hutkins, who has documented the gradual sell-off of American post offices at his website Save the Post Office told Motherboard via email that "this fate is a lot better than what happened to many other historic post offices, like the one in the Bronx that got sold to a developer who never finished the project. Ditto for the Venice, CA post office, sold to a movie producer for his offices and now sitting empty for years. Selling off buildings is the worst; repurposing them in ways that the public can still use them is much better."
So, it is with this it-could-have-been-worse spirit I will attempt to look on the bright side for a minute. The hall does what it can, and it does it well enough. Without venturing too far into architecture criticism, a field in which I am wholly unqualified, I found the train hall about what it promised to be. It is sleek, modern, and bright. Without a doubt, it is a vast improvement over the contemporary Penn Station experience, but that is a bar so low it has been buried under a sports arena. For this sometimes-Amtrak traveler's money, the biggest upgrade over Penn Station is probably not in the main hall, but in the bathrooms. They feel legitimately fancy and have those slick three-faucet setups—which Penn Station got during a 2018 facelift—where the first one is for soap, the second for water, and the third a hand dryer. Considering the bathrooms are some of the most frequently-used facilities at train stations, this is no small deal. Doubly so considering the dearth of publicly available bathrooms in Midtown Manhattan and the historical state of Penn Station bathrooms as the single worst room in the entire city.
Fancy new bathrooms oooooooo Photo: Aaron Gordon
Yet, it seemed obvious to me this is not a building that was designed to be a train hall, but rather an office building that happens to have a train hall in it. To start, the main hall itself—from which riders are supposed to converge and access the platforms—is simply not very large. The size struck me as so inadequate for a major transportation hub that this basic observation is what led me to investigate the lease terms in the first place. Even on New Years Day, in which virtually nobody was using it for its intended purpose but a few hundred architectural tourists wandered about, the station felt populated, even crowded.
In theory, the building is supposed to accommodate some 225,000 passengers a day. I find that difficult to envision. The passenger waiting area is smartly designed with modern wooden benches and could maybe fit two train cars' worth of people. As of now, there is literally nowhere else in the station to sit. Other than that waiting area and the exclusive airline-style lounge on the second floor for Acela passengers, there is a total absence of seating of any kind. (On the one hand, that is also the case for Grand Central, where the only seating is in the food hall downstairs, and a food hall is opening at Moynihan later this year. On the other hand, there's less of a need for seating at a commuter rail station like Grand Central where riders do not buy tickets for specific trains that in theory depart frequently versus an Amtrak facility.)
Still, the lack of seating is perhaps a secondary concern to the limited access from the hall to the trains themselves. From the main hall, there is just a single escalator, wide enough for one person, down to each track. This, almost assuredly, will result in the same long, snaking lines and masses of humanity Northeast Corridor riders are already too familiar with, the kind of lines that clog spaces much larger than the Moynihan hall.
Those not wishing to wait in a long escalator line can circumvent the main hall entirely, take the stairs down to the lower hallway, and then another set of stairs to the platform. But if the smartest, most efficient way to board the train is to circumvent the main hall entirely in a roundabout fashion, then what does that say about the train hall to begin with?
Mostly, this is not the building's fault. There is an insurmountable geographical problem: the train platforms are, for the most part, not underneath the train hall. As I mentioned above, these are the same tracks and platforms that stretch from Seventh to Eighth Avenue Penn Station riders have been using for decades. But the new hall is a block over, between Eighth and Ninth. Only a small portion of the platform extends beyond Eighth Avenue underneath Moynihan, creating a natural bottleneck for anyone who wants to enter or exit through the fancy new building.
This problem was perfectly illustrated in a station directory map in the train hall itself:
Photo: Aaron Gordon
At the very bottom, you can see a faded diagram of a train stretching mostly underneath Penn Station, with only the very edge of one end below Farley. Needless to say, there is something fundamentally flawed about a train hall that only just barely connects to the train itself.
This spatial problem encapsulates not just the Moynihan Train Hall's conundrum, but a lot of our other problems too: it is the public infrastructure we get when we try to fix the mistakes of the past without fully reckoning with what the mistakes actually were. The problem with Penn Station never had anything to do with the Farley Post Office. The problem was, of course, the demolition of Penn Station, which bathed passengers in light and grandeur from the second they stepped off the train, an architectural achievement that can only be accomplished by having the station above the actual tracks. The problem with the current Penn Station is, of course, the absence of an actual train station.
We will never top this. Photo: Library of Congress
And here we arrive at the ultimate question the Moynihan Train Hall poses: should we be happy with it because it exists? When opening the hall, Governor Andrew Cuomo said Moynihan is "a testament and a monument to the public and they deserve the best and they can produce the best." For all its nice touches and pleasant aesthetics, Moynihan is a middle ground inextricably linked to two extremes: the majestic yet tragic glory of the original Penn Station and the squalid tangled cavern of the current Penn Station. It is, to paraphrase the infamous Vin Scully quote about the new and old Penns station, somewhere between gods and rats. By definition, Moynihan was always going to be better than the worst and worse than the best.
The destruction of the original Penn Station helped instill a bleak conservatism over the city, but the Moynihan Train Hall offers neither doom nor gloom. Instead, it offers a quiet acquiescence to the forces that have reshaped New York City since Penn's destruction, a kind of surrender to the "privately owned public spaces" (POPS) in office tower lobbies in exchange for tax breaks or turning streetspaces into "business improvement districts" (BIDs) that often exacerbate inequality and erode at the meaning of an actual public space. POPS, BIDs, and all manners of public-private partnerships do more for the people than selling out entirely—or doing nothing at all—but it will never get us another Penn Station or Farley Building. There are plenty more Moynihans where that came from.
In a deeper sense, the Moynihan model encapsulates the flaws of Cuomo's pragmatic optimism about the power of government. "Faux progressives frustrate the public by raising false expectations and by failing to improve matters," he wrote in his hastily published book. As Gothamist's Christopher Robbins noted in his review, "Cuomo never states what 'real progressives' will do, just that they will do it." It's a neat rhetorical trick; the right thing to do is the thing that happened, meaning whatever didn't happen was wrong. By that logic, I am wrong to say that the train hall's existence is not enough, that we lost something important by selling the rest of the building off, that with each sale, we make it even harder to save what little we have left under the public's name, that the 700,000 square feet of the Farley Post Office that used to be ours is yet another capitulation to the very impulses that destroyed the original Penn Station to begin with.
I left Moynihan with no particular desire to ever seek it out again, in the way I would never willingly hang out at an airport, even if the airport has solid food options. Walking down Broadway to sit in Madison Square Park, I thought of one old photo of Penn Station that doesn't fit neatly in the three-part structure. Taken on July 6, 1965, the photo is of passengers waiting, reading, looking at one another. Fourteen suitcases are arranged neatly on the floor. A wrecking ball dangles in the background, waiting for the people to leave. The building is doomed, but it is still there.
Specifically, I thought about how at the time, this was billed as progress. The people were told Penn Station was too expensive to maintain, a relic of an antiquated era. Madison Square Garden and One Penn Plaza were the future, they said. It was, they said, unrealistic to keep Penn Station around.
I suppose, to a certain type of person at the time, advocating for the city or state to step in and purchase the old Penn Station for the $50 million for which its air rights were sold and rehabilitate it could have been rephrased as "raising false expectations by failing to improve matters." In hindsight, it would have cost substantially less in inflation-adjusted dollars than the entire Moynihan project (assuming rehabilitating it would cost less than 1.2 billion in today's dollars). That same type of person would likely be telling us today about the false expectations of redeveloping the Farley Post Office into a truly public space. But I am not that type of person. Those 700,000 square feet could have been anything.
Between Gods and Rats, the Moynihan Train Hall Is a Temple to Modern Mediocrity syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/
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