#admission essay examples

[simply-ivanka]

Who’s Afraid of Project 2025?

Democrats run against a think-tank paper that Trump disavows. Why?

Wall Street Journal

July 29, 2024

By The Editorial Board

Americans are learning more about Kamala Harris, as Democrats rush to anoint the Vice President’s candidacy after throwing President Biden overboard. Ms. Harris wasted no time saying she’s going to run hard against a policy paper that Donald Trump has disavowed—the supposedly nefarious agenda known as Project 2025. But who’s afraid of a think-tank white paper?

“I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party—and unite our nation—to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda,” Ms. Harris tweeted shortly after President Biden dropped out. She’s picking up this ball from Mr. Biden, and her campaign website claims that Project 2025 would “strip away our freedoms” and “abolish checks and balances.”

***

Sounds terrible, but is it? The 922-page document doesn’t lack for modesty, as a wish list of policy reforms that would touch every part of government from the Justice Department to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The project is led by the Heritage Foundation and melds the work of some 400 scholars and analysts from an eclectic mix of center-right groups. The project is also assembling a Rolodex of those who might work in a Trump Administration.

Most of the Democratic panic-mongering has focused on the project’s aim to rein in the administrative state. That includes civil service reform that would make it easier to remove some government workers, and potentially revisiting the independent status of agencies like the Federal Trade Commission.

The latter isn’t going to happen, but getting firmer presidential control over the bureaucracy would improve accountability. The federal government has become so vast that Presidents have difficulty even knowing what is going on in the executive branch. Americans don’t want to be ruled by a permanent governing class that doesn’t answer to voters.

Some items on this menu are also standard conservative fare. The document calls for an 18% corporate tax rate (now 21%), describing that levy as “the most damaging tax” in the U.S. system that falls heavily on workers. A mountain of economic literature backs that up. The blueprint suggests tying more welfare programs with work; de-regulating health insurance markets; expanding Medicare Advantage plans that seniors like; ending sugar subsidies; revving up U.S. energy production. That all sounds good to us.

Democrats are suggesting the project would gut Social Security, though in fact it bows to Mr. Trump’s preference not to touch the retirement program, which is headed for bankruptcy without reform. No project can profess to care about the rising national debt, as Heritage does, without fixing a program that was 22% of the federal budget in 2023.

At times the paper takes no position. For example: The blueprint features competing essays on trade policy. This is a tacit admission that for all the GOP’s ideological confusion on economics, many conservatives still understand that Mr. Trump’s 10% tariff is a terrible idea.

As for the politics, Mr. Trump recently said online that he knew “nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.” That may be true. The chance that Mr. Trump has read any of it is remote to nil, and he doesn’t want to be tied to anyone’s ideas since he prizes maximum ideological flexibility.

The document mentions abortion nearly 200 times, but Mr. Trump wants to neutralize that issue. The project’s chief sponsor, Heritage president Kevin Roberts, also gave opponents a sword when he boasted of “a second American revolution” that would be peaceful “if the left allows it to be.” This won’t help Mr. Trump with the swing voters he needs to win re-election.

By our lights the project’s cultural overtones are also too dark and the agenda gives too little spotlight to the economic freedom and strong national defense that defined the think tank’s influence on Ronald Reagan in 1980.

***

But the left’s campaign against Project 2025 is reaching absurd decibels. You’d think Mr. Trump is a political mastermind hiding the secret plans he’ll implement with an army of shock troops marching in lockstep. If his first term is any guide, and it is the best we have, Mr. Trump will govern as a make-it-up-as-he-goes tactician rather than a strategist with a coherent policy guide. He’ll dodge and weave based on the news cycle and often based on whoever talks to him last.

Not much of the Project 2025 agenda is likely to happen, even if Republicans take the House and Senate. Democrats will block legislation with a filibuster. The bureaucracy will leak with abandon and oppose even the most minor reforms to the civil service. The press will revert to full resistance mode, and Mr. Trump’s staff will trip over their own ambitions.

Democrats know this, which is why they fear Trump II less than they claim. They’re targeting Project 2025 to distract from their own failed and unpopular policies.

[amphorographia]

Something interesting about Pathologic that I don't see people talk about very often is the fact that technically none of the protagonists are doctors and, of the three, it's actually Artemy that's the closest to a real physician.

The fact that Daniil is specifically referred to as a "Bachelor" of medicine is something that was always sort of confusing to me but is actually extremely telling when put together with all the other details we get about him.

There's an excellent video essay about Daniil's character by Horror Game Analysis which goes into more detail about this [x], but he points out two things about thanatology that I think are really significant:

It was first conceptualised as a field of study in 1903 by Ilya Mechnikov, a Russian-Ukranian immunologist and microbiologist, who felt that there was not enough known about the phenomenon of death itself; and

Thanatology straddles the line between the humanities and the sciences because it's investigations grapple with the physical, psychological, socio-cultural, philosophical, and spiritual elements of death

With all that in mind and Pathologic's ambiguous time period, Daniil could very much be read as the in-game world's equivalent of Mechnikov. Despite his (sort of) alignment with the philosophically-minded Kains, Daniil is consistently shown to be very much focused on the physical components of death. He came to the town hoping that "[Simon's] tissues will help [him] defeat death." Rubin, Artemy, Victor (and Lara, Yulia, Aspity, Anna, and Clara) all need him to collect and examine blood samples for evidence of the disease. Once the plague begins, his focus in on the creation of a vaccine - a tool for immunisation - instead of a cure.

All of the evidence points to Daniil, at his core, being a microbiologist and researcher. His medical knowledge, while far above average, is highly specialised and doesn't indicate that he has any practical experience as a physician. He's not a doctor, he's a bachelor of medicine using his theoretical and academic expertise to fight an impossible disease in the only way he knows.

Now, Artemy does have some practical knowledge. Isidor taught him about the traditional medicine of the town while he was growing up before sending him to "study modern medicine in the academy" when he was 16. However, in his opening description, all we are told is that Artemy is returning from several years of "travelling from town to town learning theoretical and pratical surgery." In Pathologic Classic, Artemy is canonically 26 years old so if he spent 6-7 years travelling, his formal medical education was likely either short or incomplete. Not to mention that the emphasis on Artemy as a surgeon and menkhu (much like Daniil as a bachelor and thanatologist) implies a very specialised area of expertise which, although closely related to practical medicine, is not the same thing.

This is reinforced in a number of ways. For example, while there are multiple dialogue options which let you dismiss the town's local medical practices, they appear mostly (or only) in conversations with outsiders - responding to Daniil's admission of underestimating the value of "steppe medical knowledge" with "there's nothing medical in their knowledge" and telling Block that he has "an education in the civilized world and ha[s] forgotten two thirds of the specific local practices." Ultimately, Artemy is more consistently aligned with the Kin's more bodily approach to medicine. That distinction between Kin and Town is important, since the traditional medicines Artemy makes are not valued or trusted by townspeople and the kin refuse almost all of the modern medicine (specifically antibiotics) sold in the town.

He also seems to be either unfamiliar or seriously out of practice with the more formal language of science and medicine a university-educated physician should know. At several points, Artemy is shown to be dependent on Daniil's medical knowledge, and various members of the town poke fun at him for asking clarifying questions - Boy: "You graduated from a university and this is your question…?" Rubin: "I thought you were [away] studying." Artemy's story is about trying to fill his father's role and, while he succeeds in becoming a menkhu, his position as the town's doctor is less clearly defined even after the plague. While he begins the game with the most practical experience of the three protagonists, the fact that he's not qualified to be a physician but has to act as one is what drives his story forward.

I won't go into Clara since it's obvious she's not a doctor. If anything, she's more like a personification of a cure for this one specific disease (just like her 'twin' is the plague). She couldn't reset a bone or diognose the flu any more than she could synthesise antibiotics or distinguish between bacteria in a blood sample. Still, she's an interesting comparison point and does serve to remind the player that the protagonists don't really represent different approaches to medicine, but different approaches to healing.

The Bachelor is the modern healer of formal scientific practices who sees healing as the result of understanding the body, disease, and their interactions.

The Haruspex is the traditional healer with the spiritual or ancestral right to protected knowledge and practices who sees healing as a reflection of cultural duty, customs, and community.

The Changeling is the divine healer chosen by a Deity (or Deities) to carry out their will on earth who sees healing as an act of religious faith and demonstration of the existence and power of God(s).

[centrally-unplanned]

I saw this slightly-old post making the rounds recently by former alt-right memelord Walt Bismark, on how the alt-right "won" in the late 2010's - positing that as the cause of why it generally vanished. I agree overall with the vanishing part, its not gone-gone ofc but it waned as a cohesive movement. But I saw a lot of people (and generally not alt-right figures) agreeing with its conclusion and I am a bit more skeptical of those.

Its largely a personal essay so I wont address most of it, but it has a summary of five main points that outline essentially "the agenda of the Alt Right at the beginning" to evaluate success upon. Bismark thinks they won on all five, but overall I think this is playing a trick of inventing an enemy to claim you defeated. Anyway, the points:

1: Shift the “Overton Window” of acceptable public discourse to make it politically viable to openly discuss the interests of white people in mainstream politics, in the same way black people or Jewish people discuss their collective interests. 

This one I will grant a partial victory - there was a legitimate intensification of "white as identity" in politics, a making explicit what was implicit in the 2010's. Now ofc I consider this to be a classic horseshoe moment; the hard left at the time was also extremely interested in abandoning race neutrality and valorizing racial identity as an organizing principle, and did it in a very ham-fisted way that the right capitalized on, so it was an easy battle to win - but that is what it is, ofc the wider environment defined the goals & strategy. I mention it however because I do think this is only partial, and the gap between implicit and explicit isn't that relevant. He mentions as an example of this success:

Affirmative action was of course squashed by SCOTUS and the necessary legal infrastructure is being deployed to burn it down. Mainstream conservatives are mobilizing a lot of resources and energy to this end.

But conservatives have been fighting affirmative action for 20+ years, easily. Here is a 1999 article on precisely such a campaign, I literally just googled "conservatives affirmative action [year]" and I get results each time, 2003 had big cases (the Bollinger cases) on AA, etc. I remember "affirmative action bake sale" memes from like 2006 at my uni! What changed between Bollinger and 2023's Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard is that conservatives had just had enough time to stack courts, and wait for Supreme Court justices to die. That just...takes time to do! The strategy hadn't changed between 2003 and 2023. And meanwhile, did they win? They won that court case, sure. What do you...think the ethic makeup of the next Harvard class is gonna be? Wanna take some bets?

His other listed victories are things like:

"Vivek defended the Great Replacement Theory on national television and remained a major Trump surrogate. The SPLC would have marginalized him for that 10 years ago. Today because of polarization and MAGA closing ranks they can’t do shit."

And like, the Southern Poverty Law Center would have successfully marginalized a Republican politician in idk 2003 are you completely high right now? Strom Fucking Thurmond was an active Senator in 2003! This is the repeated tactic here, the imagined enemies - there was never a time where liberal institutions could consistently force conservative politicians to kowtow, so you can't claim it as a change.

This is why I mention the social justice horseshoe, because he has this point here:

These days you can complain about quotas etc. being unfair to you as a white man and it’s not inflammatory or low status among centrists and conservatives. Even non-woke liberals won’t really hate you for it, just quietly think you’re a bit of a chud. This was not the case in 2015. 

And this is partially correct, I agree there was some norm shift. But that is because in ~2010 there really weren't any quotas against white men, it wasn't a thing almost anywhere outside of university applications, so the complaint would make no sense. What happened was that starting in ~2012 a huge left cultural movement started that just openly supported active discrimination against whites, Asians and men. They were a small minority of course, and never had much power, but they got enough power in certain institutions like non-profits and universities that there was a string of just very obvious cases of clear racial discrimination against in particular whites & asians (both men and women, white women often got it very bad in this wave). And the large majority of people just saw that and went "uh yeah racism is still bad?" and so now you can say that because its actually relevant to say. From that lens, is this a successful cultural victory on the part of the alt-right? In some sense sure, but really its more a cultural failure of the hard left. The status quo just kept on chugging along.

Ugh that point went long, the others repeat so we will go through them quicker.

2: Elevate identity issues like anti-immigration and the promotion of traditional gender norms to the center of Republican politics. 

A fake enemy here - anti-immigration was already a huge issue for Republicans in the 2000's. It had a huge wave under Obama actually, it goes in cycles like that. And it responds to material conditions; it's a big issue again right now because the immigration numbers spiked massively under Biden, its just way worse of a problem now (primarily due to the booming economy of course). Again a partial victory for the first part, I agree its more salient due to Trump platforming it, but I'm skeptical that it is a big shift - people are memory-holing the Tea Party movement really badly here for example.

And the second point is just obviously false, Republicans always cared about that, and they care about it less now, giving up the ghost on gay marriage for example. The Alt-Right coincided with a decline of the influence of the Religious Right, and it shows on this issue, 0 points.

3: Make it socially acceptable to discuss HBD and the resulting moral implications for leveling mechanisms like affirmative action. 

Peak "log off" moment, it was always acceptable to discuss this outside of liberal/professional circles and there it still isn't acceptable to discuss it. Charles Murray wrote the Bell Curve in 1994 and his been an American Enterprise Institute Scholar for this entire span of time. This is confusing churn for change - the mid-2010's had a bunch of big, mainly online fights about HBD, and then everyone just sort of moved on with the status quo pretty much unchanged. Nothing like education policy, even in Republican circles, has shifted over this.

4: Convince conservatives to stop ceding moral authority to liberals and allowing them to determine who on the Right is verboten or beyond the pale. Make it unacceptable among conservatives to “punch Right” or purge people for wrongthink. 

Sigh, again when have Republicans ever ceded moral authority to liberals? Harvard University could not condemn Newt Gingrich in ~2009 and make him change his mind about anything. And "Republicans don't self-criticize while Liberals eat themselves alive" has been a complaint for literally decades, you would hear that as far back as say Clinton and things like the 1999 WTO protests. Its both true and exaggerated - the Tea Party primaried Republican candidates for wrongthink in 2010, and Trump did the same thing! With disastrous results for the Republicans in 2022. I really, really don't think you can look at Trump's Republican party and say they solved the Wrongthink problem.

5: Expose and dismantle the hypocritical attitude that allows neocons to militantly support Israeli ethnonationalism while brutally repressing any white identity politics domestically.

This one is just a lolwut moment, "brutally repressing any white identity politics domestically", like what does that even mean? Name the concrete policy proposals George Bush implemented in 2007 than Donald Trump didn't in 2018 around this topic. Again a fake enemy, they were never repressed by the right, and ofc are still hated by liberal institutions like universities.

Moving on from any specific point, I think its very telling that very little about free trade vs protectionism or isolationism/support of autocracy abroad enters this list. Because beyond immigration those are the big shifts the Trump movement (which is the mechanism the alt-right has to claim for making its impact) has ushered into the party. They didn't change its stance on sexual politics or "race & IQ" or anything, those haven't changed, but meanwhile the party has completely flipped on things like tariffs or opposition to Russian military expansion. But of course those don't align neatly at all with the issues the Alt-Right fought about in 2015.

The reality the Alt-Right can't escape is that they used Trump as their mechanism for change, and Trump never really cared about any of their goals beyond immigration. He used them and then pursued either bog-standard Republican policy or his own mercurial, autocratic whims, eventually channeling all of this energy into election denialism. I really don't think if you pulled aside frikkin Ryan Faulk in 2014, asked him to put down his graphs about Raven's Progressive Matrices of black Caribbean students, and said "Hey 10 years from now all of this energy is being channeled into pretending that a failed real estate mogul didn't lose the 2020 presidential election", that he would look at that outcome and think Mission Accomplished.

I don't want to fully oversell, there are for example wins Bismark doesn't mention (School choice comes to mind, the biggest conservative win of the past decade besides the protectionist swing). The Alt Right was an influential movement, it earned its place in history. But I do not think it is an example of being a "victim of its own success". I think instead it should be understood as part of the "radical froth" of the 2010's, that bubbled over and then evaporated like its more intense leftwing peers did. It made some mark and then got left in the dust.

Net ranking of the 5 points: 0.5 for Point 1, 0.25 for Point 2, 0 for the rest, 1.25/5.

[funishment-time]

long DR post of the day

everyone is free to have their own DR Opinions forever, but it hurts my heart a bit when people say Kodaka hates or favors X character because half the time it's...Patently Wrong. i mean objectively.

like, as an example per the DR1 art book, Hifumi's his (and Komatsuzaki's) absolute favorite, hands down. i don't expect everyone to go looking for the fan translations of the art books or anything but i also wouldn't seriously say something like "yeah so i know Hifumi's just there to be the Fat Comic Relief that no one likes" without doing a bit of research first. that is not a thesis that holds

Kodaka created all these characters with love by his own admission. these are His Blorbos and he is the main person directing all the writing on them. (seriously. go look up the DR credit rolls on the main franchise games. this isn't a team in a board room Doing Things For Marketing, this is him overseeing people teasing out his outline with his little guys.)

anyway. to him, they are all main characters: i'm not making shit up and assuming something about a Random Middle Aged Japanese Guy, this is fact. see his BlueSky stuff, see the fact that he does birthday Tweets in-character for almost every character still every year, or see his lecture from 10ish years ago on character creation. (it's online, and translated as it was done here in America. i'll have to find the link and add a reblog when i do)

now: this doesn't mean the characters' writing isn't XYZ Problematic Thing in execution, no pun intended. but in terms of intent, sometimes the fans' assumptions aren't right, esp if it's kind of a rude one.

another example: the one that makes me the most sad is when folks genuinely assume Kaede was there just to be a sexist girl death in service to Shuichi's character development and nothing more. in execution? we can debate all day 'n' night about it. that's fine, that's worthy of essays. as for intent? Kodaka STILL gets emotional when her birthday trends. her Japanese VA was his friend (source: V3 artbook), was Junko's stage show actress, and unfortunately committed suicide in 2021. let's not contribute to the attitudes of the folks that spam him demanding he apologize for murdering Shuichi's girlfriend for his Man Pain, huh?

i fall victim to making Serious Assumptions about creators too! no one's perfect! but i think we could all stand to see if our initial theses actually hold first

[marxandmore]

Can you explain like I'm five years old exactly what Marxism is and how it works? What would a Marxist world look like for you?

I know Karl Marx was a guy like 200 years ago and he had certain ideas about how the world should run.

I just can't understand the original sources and like i tend to think in more practical every day person terms and less...society planning. If that makes sense.

I'm anarchist myself, but like at the end of the day we all want human rights I think so idc. Your thing is just as valid as mine. :)

What Is Marxism?

Marxism is a deep philosophy with a rich intellectual history, which, without even taking into consideration the philosophy that came before it, has developed over the course of more than 180 years. 

It was first outlined by Marx and Engels over the course of more than four decades, and by Marx’s own admission should be called Marxism-Engelism (Bertsch et al 1976, 15). After the death of Marx, and later Engels, it was then developed by novelists, theoreticians, philosophers, economists, and many others up to the present point. Prominent examples are Lenin, Mao Zedong, Angela Davis, Herbert Marcuse, and Franz Fanon. The relevance of Marx’s philosophy has never been greater. The economic system that Marx and Engels originally set out to critique still exists. More than that, it has spread to almost every corner of the globe and has developed significantly, and thanks to advances in education, the possibility of comprehending the system that shapes our daily lives, from work, to friendships, to familial relations, to culture and religion, and even politics, has become ever greater. Yet many people do not understand the work of Marx and others like him. This is due to a variety of factors. Technical and outdated language, lengthy texts, complicated economic formulas, lack of time to study or read, these are all commonly heard reasons and complaints as to why people presently do not comprehend Marx’s work and thus fail to grasp its significance. Although the best way to learn Marxist philosophy is to read and critically engage with the original texts, this series of essays aims to promote Marxist philosophy, past and present, and help newcomers understand its basic premises and claims. This first essay in the series aims to outline the basic components that are necessary to comprehend all later works. Later essays will focus on each individual component and provide a more complete overview. The two basic components that Marxism bases itself on are philosophy and political economy. More specifically, Marxism synthesizes the philosophical theories of dialectics and materialism, and most completely analyzes economic processes in capitalist society, and based on its discoveries, promotes a new economic form and a new society. These components will be further outlined and explored in a little more detail in the upcoming paragraphs. The first essential philosophical concept that Marxism builds upon is the dialectic. Dialectics are essentially a way of viewing all sorts of processes. A form of reasoning already practiced by the ancient Greeks (Engels 1880). Dialectical thinking has two primary aspects. First of all, a dialectical way of thinking acknowledges that everything constantly moves and changes, that everything is interconnected, that things do not exist in a vacuum (Engels 1880). Regarding this, Engels wrote: “[...] we observe the movements, transitions, connections, rather than the things that move, combine, and are connected.” (Engels 1880), as opposed to “[...] observing natural objects and processes in isolation, apart from their connection with the vast whole; of observing them in repose, not in motion; as constraints, not as essentially variables; in their death, not in their life.” (Engels 1880), like a so-called metaphysician or idealist would do. The second main aspect is the aspect of contradiction, the idea that things and processes, both natural and within societies carry within them contradictory aspects. It is impossible to see everything as binary, for example, in the case of life and death. Death is a protracted process that does not happen instantaneously, from a physiological point of view at least (Engels 1880). We can thus speak of a time period in which a human or animal is not quite dead, yet also not quite alive, two contradictory aspects that exist momentarily together, until one process turns into the next. In the aforementioned example, that would be the process of living being completely finished, and then starting the process of decomposition. Within economics we see the principle of two economic classes that depend on each other for their existence within a particular economic system, and as soon as one of these classes abolishes the other, a new economic system is created.

The second essential philosophical concept that Marxism builds upon is materialism. Materialism too, has a lengthy philosophical history, which will be covered in later essays in this series. Materialism is the opposite of idealism. Idealism is the notion that the real world reflects ideas. An example of this would be objective morality or human rights. The idea that there is some sort of objective morality that is true regardless of time and place, or that human rights are an inherent thing that we are all born with, instead of morals and views on human rights being informed by the kind of society we live in, like we see when we analyze history, or even just contemporary societies. Materialism then, is the notion that our ideas, actions, and desires, are shaped by the physical world around us. Marxism aims to not only apply this materialist view to the natural sciences, but also to human society and its history. Regarding this, Engels wrote the following: “The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch.” (Engels 1880) 

Now with the philosophical aspects out of the way, let us look at the second basic component of Marxism: economics. An economic system can be defined as “The institutions that organize the production and distribution of goods and services in an entire economy.” (The CORE Team 2017 ,22). As far as defining an economic system goes, this is an acceptable definition, but of course this is an incomplete definition if we want to look at what the economy itself is. It suggests that the economy is merely about production and distribution, and implicitly consumption. However, ultimately, as Engels has pointed out, as humans we produce and consume to support human life. The economy as a whole then, can be defined as the way in which we as humans organize production, distribution, and consumption, in order to sustain human life. Studying economics then, is about studying the ways in which we produce, distribute, and consume, and expressing this in laws, tendencies, formulas, and mathematical models.

The economic system that we currently live under is called capitalism. In order to understand what capitalism is, it is useful to compare it with what came before it: feudalism. Under feudalism, land and bureaucratic positions were held and passed down on a hereditary basis, people generally had their own tools with which they produced products. Sometimes they required the help of others, but the vast majority of the labor necessary to produce a product was put in by the individual producer, with their individual tools (Engels 1880). After they produced a product, the product was then generally theirs to do with what they pleased. Eventually feudalism collapsed as a result of its own unique set of contradictions, which then resulted in various political revolutions in the UK, France, the USA, etc, around the end of the 18th century. After these revolutions, hereditary positions and hereditary property were largely abolished in favor of all sorts of rights, as well as private property and free competition on a more or less free market. 

Capitalism is the result of a long historical process, and developed gradually out of feudalism, but it did not fully develop until these aforementioned political revolutions completely broke the old feudalistic order. Unlike under feudalism, under capitalism, production no longer happens by individual producers with their individual tools (Engels 1880). Under capitalism production is concentrated (Engels 1880). People, in general, no longer work on an individual basis or together with their close family, but instead, they work in workplaces that employ tens, hundreds, even thousands of people, all in the same place. Under capitalism, production has also been socialized (Engels 1880). Whereas before, people produced products using primarily their own labor, under capitalism, workers are only responsible for a small part in the production of the final product. Now nobody can truly say that they produced a product (Engels 1880). This process was made possible by the rise of large industry, which can produce commodities of the same quality as before, on a much larger and more efficient scale, and against far lower cost (in terms of labor), utilizing mechanical machines.We can clearly see that under capitalism, production has become concentrated instead of loosely organized, socialized instead of individual, yet there are still only few owners of the tools with which the commodities are created, henceforth called the means of production, and on the basis of this ownership over the means of production, they claim the products, and thus by extension the labor of others (the labor of many others is now necessary in the production process). This is one of the great contradictions in capitalistic production.

This new form of industrial production has made old forms of production superfluous because of its more efficient nature, and has consequently forced the owners of older, now obsolete tools, to purchase industrial equipment and continue producing in that way, or in most instances, due to a lack of money, become reliant on the sale of their labor to those who own these new means of production. In this way, capitalism has created two main economic classes: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The former sells their labor on an, often hourly, basis to be able to purchase the basic commodities necessary to maintain life. The latter appropriates the labor of others, by virtue of owning the means of production, and by that virtue alone, gets to keep the difference between the price at which a commodity is sold, which is determined by the laws of supply and demand, and the costs of production, including labor costs. In other words, they get to keep the profits. The interests of these two classes are completely opposite and irreconcilable. The proletariat seeks to receive the full worth of what their labor contributed to the finished commodity, while the bourgeoisie seeks to enlarge their profits as much as possible, and utilize these profits to expand their means of production, or capital (hence the name capitalist, and capitalism). This is the main contradiction, along class lines, within capitalism.

The capitalistic way of organizing production and exchange also leads to countless other contradictions that this essay will not go into. Things like the crisis of overproduction, of free competition leading to monopolies, etc.

More important is the way in which Marxism wants to solve these contradictions. Marxism wants to solve these contradictions using communism. As Engels wrote: “Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.” (Engels 1847) Now what exactly is communism? Communism is the next logical step in the development of the economy. Production has already been concentrated, made incredibly efficient, and socialized, all that remains is to also socialize the ownership over the means of production. Or as Engels wrote:

“Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society.

It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association.” (Engels 1847)

In doing so, the contradiction between socialized production and individual appropriation of labor will be solved, and the bourgeoisie, which relies upon the individual appropriation of labor, will be abolished, thus solving the contradiction between proletariat and bourgeoisie. In its most developed form, it will make money completely unnecessary, as we will no longer need to exchange meager wages for basic commodities, but instead communally produce and consume. It will also abolish the state, which Marxism defines as the oppression of one economic class by another, but that will be topic for a future essay in this series. 

In conclusion, Marxism aims to bring together dialectical thinking and materialist philosophy, and apply this, in a scientific way, to analyze societies past and present. Its analysis, which largely revolves around economic classes, incorporates and developed many economic theories, and has formulated and applied many economic laws and formulas. Its conclusion is simple: capitalism is contradictory and will bring about its own demise. From the contradiction in socialized production versus individual appropriation, the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie, to the repeated crises of overproduction, and the tendency of free competition to lead to monopoly, and thus unfree competition. These are all inherent to the capitalist economic system. History has shown us that contradictions can only exist side by side in one system for so long. Sooner or later, it will have to make place for a new economic system that completely negates the old one. Workers of the world, unite! Revolutionary regards, MarxAndMore Bibliography:

Bertsch, Gary K, and Thomas W Ganschow. Comparative Communism : The Soviet, Chinese, and Yugoslav Models. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1976.

Engels, Frederick. “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.” Marxists.org, 1880. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm.

Engels, Frederick. “The Principles of Communism.” marxists.org, 1847. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm.

The CORE Team. “The Economy.” www.core-econ.org. Oxford University Press, 2017. https://core-econ.org/the-economy/v1/en/.

V.I. Lenin. “Lenin: The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism.” Marxists.org, 1913. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/mar/x01.htm.

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 51 – Women Warriors: An Unexpected History by Pamela Toler

This was a book I never would have heard of were it not for the magic of word of mouth marketing (here meaning ‘ recommended on tumblr.com), so I went in with basically no expectations. It’s a history book, but very much pop history – this is a collection of fun anecdotes for a general audiance wrapped in a persuasive essay, not any sort of academic work. Which is to say it’s also extremely accessibly written and easy to read, excellent for when a hurricane hit and you lost power for the day and have nothing to do but laze.

The book is, well, what it says on the tin – a collection of historical woman warriors from across the globe (if disproportionately but not mostly European) from classical Scythian warrior-aristocrats through to Soviet tank drivers (Well, I presume there’s someone out there for whom the ‘unexpected’ bit is still true, anyway. But it’s about women warriors!) The book begins with an introduction that lays out its thesis – that woman fighting in war is thoroughly historical unremarkable, and not any sort of freak aberration or insignificant exception to war being a uniformly masculine affair – and the agenda its trying to advance – that woman should be allowed to serve in the US military on equal terms with men – with I’ll say admirable clarity. Each following chapter is then dedicated to a specific typology of historical woman warriors (e.g. who become warriors due to their fathers, their husbands, patriotic fervour, those who disguised themselves as men to fight), generally consisting of a light coating of theory before diving into the examples and case studies that make up the meat of the book.

I, needing no convincing of the thesis and having limited interest in the politics of who gets to go kill in uniform for America, was reading this entirely for those anecdotes. Those were entirely worth the price of admission – Toler specifies in the introduction that she’s only talking about woman warriors, as in those who either personally fought or directed troops like a man with an analagous command would have, with the result that e.g. Elizabeth 1 gets skipped and some figures I’d genuinely never heard of get included. There’s also something of an attempt to focus on woman who served openly, rather than those who disguised themselves as men, though that’s hardly universal (there’s still at least a couple crossdressing 18th century bravos, don’t worry. Though shockingly enough no Julie d'Aubigny). Each woman profiled gets a short potted biography: her origins, the sources for her exploits and the historiography around her, then a recounting of her exploits, and a short epilogue of her life afterward if there was one (these are rarely particularly happy).

The book’s very much written for the general audience, with some effects on the choices of women to feature I’d call regrettable (e.g. Katherine of Aragon is very clearly only there because people already know her as Henry VIII’s first wife, the historical Mulan probably gets more wordcount than was strictly needed), but overall they were fun and interesting stories, and (thankfully) focused more on explaining why the women profiled were interesting or notable than getting twisted in knots trying to explain why a given mercenary captain or feudal magnate or pirate queen was actually a moral role model or feminist icon or something (an issue a lot of works in this vein do fall into, I’ve found).

I do wish there was more of an attempt to theorize about the general role of religion, given (if nothing else) the sheer wordcount Joan of Arc gets. But overall? No complaints, plenty of fun interesting historical figures I’d never heard of before.

The author does have a couple very clear pet peeves that each get called out often enough I felt like I should start a drinking game. These range from the entirely sympathetic (yelling at how previous generations of historians have applied wildly different amount of skepticism when reading sources about male versus female warriors) to very fair points that are probably a bit belaboured (by orders of magnitude more woman have fought openly as woman in e.g. sieges of their homes than ever disguised themselves as men to join the army) to the sort of thing that only really makes sense as a pet peeve when you remember Toler spent like a decade reading the source material for this and got pretty sick of the tropes (her visceral annoyance whenever anyone is refereed to as ‘th Joan of Arc of [X]”).

Speaking of pet peeves – Toler keeps a very casual, conversational sort of tone throughout the book, full of asides and tangents. She’s got a very strong voice, and it’s just a matter of taste whether that’s a positive or negative, I suppose. She also uses a lot of footnotes for her asides, especially about historiography and sources, and very annoyingly just uses a basically random series of symbols that I couldn’t distinguish half the time to mark them instead of just using numbers. The combination can grate on occasion, though that might just have been my eyes getting sore reading all the small text.

Politically the book is very consciously and explicitly liberal feminist propaganda, in a way that feels oddly dated for something that came out in 2019? Also incredibly American (woman across the globe are profiled, but she clearly assumes a lot of prior familiarity with, like, the folktale of some woman who loaded a canon during the American Revolution once, and similar). Toler is, as mentioned, incredibly passionate about the cause of women’s service in the united states military, something which I haven’t seen mentioned in the news for so long it almost seems quaint (even though I have no idea whether anything’s like, changed.) Honestly given my social circles at this point it was mostly just deeply bemusing to read a book by someone who clearly considered ‘being able to serve in the US military’ as, like, something to fight for and take pride in. But even beyond that, a lot of the avuncularly and style just felt very 2010s online feminist, I suppose? I really would have assumed the book came out in 2014 or so if I hadn’t checked.

Speaking of – it was just deeply strange how the book had no framework to discuss trans-ness? As in, several of the people the book catalogues disguised themselves and joined the army as men and even after being found out just, never stopped. To the point of fighting duels over the matter, sometimes! And the book never figures out a graceful way to handle referring to them (the ‘him’, scarequotes included, makes a few appearances), let alone really discuss identity. Again, makes the whole thing feel like a bit of a time capsule – it’s about the handling of the issue I’d expect from, like, an old Cracked listickle about ‘10 badass women warriors you’ve never heard of!’, not a recent book clearly marketed towards a progressive audience.

Anyway, as a work of theory or historical scholarship, not going to set the world on fire. But did teach me about the times the Pope and Emperor of Russia separately gave people written permission to crossdress and stab people, and also an actual written pocket biography of Matilda of Tuscany I can cite instead of just ‘forum threads arguing about Crusader Kings 2 circle 2013”. So on balance not a bad read. Just don't go in expecting theory or political enlightenment.

[yuurei20]

Riddle Info Compilation part 8: Intelligence vs Common Sense(pt2)

In another example of Riddle prioritizing rules over logic he tells Azul that he would intentionally allow an enemy to hit him if it were a rule, and despite how Azul—by his own admission—“can barely ride a broom,” Riddle insists that Azul drives a Chariot during Book 6, explaining, “I don’t have a driver’s license.”

Riddle seems to be confident in his potionology abilities: when Silver cautions him about botching a potion during Vargas Camp Riddle responds, “Who do you take me for?”, and in a voice line Riddle says that he enjoys mixing chemicals because, “Unlike cooking, all components must be added in precise amounts.”

In a vignette Riddle warns Jamil and Azul about a difficult potionology lesson explaining a task that no one had been able to accomplish, to Jamil’s surprise.

Riddle explains that he did not deserve the “abject humiliation” of Crewel insulting the 2nd-year students for their poor results, which is why he is so willing to share his information.According to Jamil, Riddle is always at the top of his class, but Riddle tells Jamil not to patronize him. Jamil reflects, “Riddle always takes everything so seriously.”

(The solution to the problem that Riddle could not solve is later revealed to be emulsification a process used in cooking, which would explain why it was unknown to Riddle.)

Riddle says he does not look at exam results because “What would be the point, when the results are always the same?” Azul concedes that Riddle earns perfect scores in every subject.

Riddle explains an essay assigned to the 2nd years that he struggled with, as a paper proposing the wholesale reevaluation of the topic was published three days before the essay’s due date.

Azul says that the Riddle was the only student who submitted a perfect assignment as he was the only one to refer to new findings, which resulted in points being deducted from everyone else in the year.

Riddle apologies, but Azul insists that he does not need to, as they all had the same access but he was the only one who noticed it.

Riddle volunteers to tutor Cater in third-year-level homework as “any self-respecting housewarden should be capable of resolving his dorm members’ problems, regardless of what year they are.”

Ace reacts with surprise to learn that Riddle gets perfect scores on every exam and nearly accuses Riddle of cheating.

Riddle cautions him and Ace responds, “But with all the studying you do, it’s no wonder you don’t know what’s going on in the real world.”

[smart-academic-solutions]

How to Write a Compelling College Application Essay

Composing a persuasive college application essay is pivotal in unveiling your distinct qualities to captivate admissions officers. With a blend of creativity and sincerity, this essay serves as your narrative gateway into academia.

Self-Reflection:

Begin by introspecting deeply to identify pivotal experiences, values, and defining moments that have shaped your character.

Engaging Opening:

Capture attention from the outset with a compelling and unique introduction, be it an anecdote, question, or a thought-provoking statement.

Show, Don't Tell:

Use vivid descriptions and concrete examples to illustrate your qualities, allowing the reader to connect emotionally with your narrative.

Highlight Growth:

Demonstrate personal growth and resilience by sharing challenges you've overcome and emphasizing the lessons learned.

Align with Institution Values:

Tailor your essay to align with the values and ethos of the specific college, showcasing why you're an ideal fit for their academic community.

Conclude your essay with a powerful reflection, summarizing your key points and leaving a lasting impression on the reader about your uniqueness and potential contributions to the college community.

[eretzyisrael]

by Bruce Bawer

Indeed, in his heyday as a slick apologist for villainy and a merchant of lies, Said was downright awe-inspiring in the extent to which he ignored brutal Islamic actions while accusing the West – Israel included – of precisely those kinds of actions. In his Guardian essay, Bayoumi quotes the following passage from Said – not as a sample of his hero’s extraordinary duplicity, but as an example of the Great One at his eloquent best:

I cannot understand how raw, naked evidence can be overridden by American intellectuals just because the “security” of Israel demands it. But it is overridden or hidden no matter how overpoweringly cruel, no matter how inhuman and barbaric, no matter how loudly Israel proclaims what it is doing. To bomb a hospital; to use napalm against civilians; to require Palestinian men and boys to crawl, or bark, or scream “Arafat is a whore’s son”; to break the arms and legs of children; to confine people in desert detention camps without adequate space, sanitation, water or legal charge; to use teargas in schools: All these are horrific acts, whether they are part of a war against ‘terrorism’ or the requirements of security.

First of all, full points to Bayoumi for – in the wake of October 7 – quoting a passage in which Said put the term “security” in scare quotes, as if Israel’s concern for its own security were a myth, a lie, a ludicrous pretext. Having thus dismissed that concern, Said went on to accuse Israel of several kinds of transgressions. Recall that Said has elsewhere charged Westerners with crying “terrorism” without ever seeking “explanation[s]” or “mitigating circumstances” or context; but when it came to charging Israel with a litany of crimes, Said had no interest in discussing what might have led Israel to commit them – if, indeed, it did commit them.

If Bayoumi – who, not incidentally, is co-editor of The Edward Said Reader (2001) as well as of The Selected Works of Edward Said: 1966–2006 (2021) – quotes Said’s j’accuse, it’s obviously because he wants us to see it as applying to Israel’s conduct of its current war on Gaza. Typically absent, however, is any acknowledgment that Israel gave Gaza to the Palestinians, let them elect Hamas to run it, and looked the other way for years while Hamas spent international humanitarian aid on weaponry and tunnels. Absent is an admission that the Israeli government allowed Gazans to hold jobs in Israel proper, where many of them worked for families who trusted them and, in many cases, surely loved them – families to which, early on the morning of October 7, those trusted and beloved Gazans led Hamas terrorists, step by wicked step, so that they might commit acts of rape, slaughter, and dismemberment.

Hospital bombings? If Israel bombs a hospital, it’s because Hamas has used it as a cover; if Israel has killed civilians, it’s because Hamas has used them as human shields. Breaking the bones of children? It’s Hamas, not the IDF, that targets civilians. And whereas hospital staffs in Gaza have been shown to be heartless Hamas collaborators, Israeli hospitals consistently respond to Palestinian terror with compassionate medical care for sick and injured Palestinians. Then there’s the fact that Palestinians are taught from infancy to hate Israelis beyond all reason – whereas October 7 would never have happened if so many Israelis living near Gaza hadn’t been brought up to think far better of their Palestinian neighbors than they turned out to deserve.

Of course, as the pro-Hamas protests in the streets of North American and European cities have shown us in recent months, millions of people in the West firmly reject all of the above facts. Many of them are Muslims. Others are non-Muslims who attended schools and colleges where the postcolonial pap dreamed up by Edward Said is absolute, unquestioned orthodoxy. Islam is, in point of fact, a totalitarian, triumphalist ideology of bloodthirsty conquest; but Said managed to convince a large swath of the English-speaking world that it is, on the contrary, a peaceful faith whose adherents are innocent victims of irrational prejudice. The deeply unfortunate fact is that while Said is no longer with us, the intellectual snake pit that he constructed out of wholesale slander and evasion is, thanks to countless ideologically twisted professors, and to keepers of the flame like Bayoumi, a more powerful – and inimical – force than ever.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

What is your take on the Supreme Courts decision to to uphold the ban on race as a deciding factor for admission to college?

“I just opened a brown girl who’s an 810 [SAT].”

“If its brown and above a 1300 [SAT] put them in for [the] merit/Excel [scholarship].”

“Still yes, give these brown babies a shot at these merit $$.”

“I am reading an Am. Ind.”

“[W]ith these [URM] kids, I’m trying to at least give them the chance to compete even if the [extracurriculars] and essays are just average.”

“I don’t think I can admit or defer this brown girl.”

“perfect 2400 SAT All 5 on AP one B in 11th”  “Brown?!” “Heck no. Asian.” “Of course. Still impressive.”

“I just read a blk girl who is an MC and Park nominee.”....

“Stellar academics for a Native Amer/African Amer kid.”....

“I’m going through this trouble because this is a bi-racial (black/white) male.”

This, as noted by Coleman Hughes in his recent "10 Notes on the End of Affirmative Action" post, is the ugly racist reality of "Affirmative Action." The above logs from Harvard's chat system come directly from the Supreme Court documents. This is how the sausage is made. This is racial discrimination.

If what these institutions are doing is so good, then it's curious that this process is not made transparent. Harvard were even insisting that they don't do it, simply because they changed the name so that, technically, they were telling the truth. Shouldn't they be proud of their "equity" work? If it's something that's good, own it.

A lot of the discourse around this is exactly the same tactics we've seen with CRT and gender stuff: "Literally nobody is doing this, but if they are doing it then it's a good thing and you're a bigot for trying to stop it. But nobody's doing it so that's why we have to stop it from being banned. Because of the fact it's not happening." #KettleLogic

They should also be honest with applicants. After all, Harvard's motto is Veritas (i.e. "truth").

https://colemanhughes.substack.com/p/10-notes-on-the-end-of-affirmative

Imagine if every college rejection letter contained an honest account of why every kid was rejected. Imagine, for example, if the Asian-American kid who would have gotten into Harvard were she not Asian received an honest statement attesting to that fact in her rejection letter: “We regret to inform you that you’ve been rejected in part because you are Asian-American. Had you been black or Hispanic with otherwise identical qualifications, we would have accepted you.” 

Coleman didn't go further, but I'd like to suggest the text for an acceptance letter: "We're pleased to inform you that you've been accepted to Harvard. This has occurred in part because of the color of your skin. Had you been white or Asian with otherwise identical qualifications, we would have deemed you as unsuitable."

Welcome to Harvard.

These institutions are neither transparent nor honest. This fact alone suggests they know what they're doing is wrong.

This is the result of what Harvard's system produces.

Sources:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf - Case

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/is-it-time-to-replace-race-with-class-in-affirmative-action/ - Chart

That is, an Asian person in the top 90-100 range on the academic index (higher scores are better) has a lower chance of acceptance than a black person in the 30-40 range.

Let's be frank: this is about expensive social signaling. Luxury beliefs.

Expensive, because it throws both black and Asian people under the bus. It's a way for elite progressives to signal how Good™ they are, without doing anything. Because it means they never have to wonder what could be done to actually lift black academic performance upwards, instead of lowering standards.

There's some suspicion that the quoted tweet is a parody account, but the fact it's so hard to tell these days means it kind doesn't even matter.

"You see that over here students are struggling, and instead of helping them more, you say, 'alright, well, we'll accept your failure.'" -- Dr. Amir Whitaker

If you're trying to "solve" academic disparity in the gap between high school graduation and university admission, you're out of your damned mind, you're over a decade too late, and you have no clue what the causes are, and therefore whether your "solution" will even do anything.

For example, it's uncontroversial that SAT scores correlate to study time, and that lower study time also corresponds to lower household income.

[ Source: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/analyzing-the-homework-gap-among-high-school-students/ ]

Why, and how can we address this, are all very interesting and worthwhile questions to pursue; there are few studies of enquiry that would be more noble and worthwhile.

Here's the thing: Roland Fryer did uplift very low performing black students to above the level of white students. But it took hard work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8xWOlk3WIw

• "Aggressive Human Capital Management" - i.e. firing lots of teachers "You ask the teachers what you think you need to educate these kids. We got answers like, 'well, all we need is smarter kids.' I said, 'all you need is a new job.'" • Extra time "If you're behind, you either got to spend more time, or ask the white kids to please take Thursday and Friday off." • Small tutoring groups • Use data to drive instruction • High expectations and no excuses for failure

All of this is doable. It won't even cost all that much. But doing the hard work around student study time, performance expectations, staff management, etc, isn't as glamorous as online screaming to show off your progressive bona fides by calling everyone a racist. #MoreHomework isn't a hashtag that's going to go viral. And there's a certain class of person - usually white progressive elites - who wants to claim that the above common sense, pragmatic list is some kind of cloaked message of racism. "bLaMiNg pOc iNsTeAd oF DiSmAnTLInG SyStEmIc rAcIsM" or whatever. You know the song; it's the same one they always sing.

There are dozens of other problems in the way the US education system works which I've talked about before: teaching reading the wrong way; stupid woke classes in fake-math rather than real math; the lack of a fixed, defined curriculum; the pathological avoidance of teaching content. Many of these issues are magnified at the lower socio-economic classes. The failures in teaching reading, for example, can be offset among those in the middle-class if you're engaged in reading at home with involved parents and access to books. In poorer households with parents - or indeed, single-parents - who are time-poor and where books might not be as plentiful, the deficiencies of the education system aren't as likely to be mitigated at home.

So the problem often isn't an issue of race but of poverty. People pay attention to it as it affects race, but that misses the rest of the forest.

Remember the Harvard academic decile rankings table I posted earlier? It comes from an article by Ian Rowe titled "Is It Time to Replace Race with Class in Affirmative Action?" It makes, obviously, the case that assistance should be applied at the level of socioeconomics, not race. The idea that middle and upper-class black people - and yes, most black Americans are middle-class - need assistance, while poor whites, such as the Appalachian areas, do not and are "privileged," is pretty perverted. It assumes black people are incapable, while also redirecting help from people who would benefit from it, simply because they're white. It makes gross assumptions about everyone, while helping very few. If you help poor people, you'll help poor black people as well. Which is what the left used to be about. Remember those days?

I mean, have you ever actually looked at the Nation's Report Card? It's a portrait of a broken, inadequate education system.

[ Source: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/dashboards/schools_dashboard.aspx ]

My point being that by the time you're talking about admission to university, it's already too late. This should have been addressed right from the beginning as children start school. Then you would have closer parity in terms of academic results, and closer parity in academic admissions.

One other thing that should be mentioned is something I recall John McWhorter discussing which is called "mismatch."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CU3hQfyEKQ

Studies on mismatch show that those lowered academic standards cause black people to attend schools where they're less likely to earn degrees than they otherwise would be.

That is, throwing a student of average academic capability into an elite institution is more likely to have them either fail out or drop out. It would be better to have them attend a university better fitting with their academic ability.

Especially as it relates to ambition. Why everybody needs to aspire to a pretentious, expensive - and let's not forget, woke, as clearly demonstrated - university as Harvard is beyond me.

“I wouldn't want to belong to a club that would have me as a member” -- Groucho Marx

Maybe that's just me, though.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465029965/

Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It Sander and Taylor have long admired affirmative action's original goals, but after many years of studying racial preferences, they have reached a controversial but undeniable conclusion: that preferences hurt underrepresented minorities far more than they help them. At the heart of affirmative action's failure is a simple phenomenon called mismatch. Using dramatic new data and numerous interviews with affected former students and university officials of color, the authors show how racial preferences often put students in competition with far better-prepared classmates, dooming many to fall so far behind that they can never catch up. Mismatch largely explains why, even though black applicants are more likely to enter college than whites with similar backgrounds, they are far less likely to finish; why there are so few black and Hispanic professionals with science and engineering degrees and doctorates; why black law graduates fail bar exams at four times the rate of whites; and why universities accept relatively affluent minorities over working class and poor people of all races.

And even for black students who legitimately make the admissions standards, their framed Harvard certification will have a cloud permanently cast over it. Did the black Harvard-attending economist you're interviewing for your company get there by merit or by lowered standards? Should you even bother with Harvard graduates any more?

Some of the other discourse is like "you're going to stop affirmative action..." - i.e. racial discrimination - "...but you're not going to stop legacy admissions!?" This is literally WhatAboutism. Both things can be wrong and unfair. "This thing being wrong justifies us doing this other wrong thing."

This case is about race-based selection, filed by Asian students who were being racially discriminated against. The case was not about legacies. You don't rule on a case that nobody has presented. And as far as I know, legacies are not explicitly in violation of the U.S. Constitution. If you think legacies should go away, then make the case. Find something in the Constitution, find a legal precedent, or make a challenge some other way.

But don't make excuses for perpetrating one wrong thing on the basis of another wrong thing.

Coleman's analysis is interesting and goes into depth, so is worth a read.

I won't reproduce the whole thing here, but the headings are worth a read at least:

“Affirmative Action” is a Euphemism for Racial Discrimination

“Affirmative Action” Affects the Elites, Not the Masses

The Benefits of “Affirmative Action” are Dubious

Mismatch is Real

“Affirmative Action” is Not the Product of The Civil Rights Movement

Quotas are a Red herring

We’re Confused About Diversity 

Affirmative Action as Reparations?

The Equilibrium Will Change

If Not Affirmative Action, then What?

Finally, what I will say is that it's simultaneously interesting, gratifying and alarming all at the same time to witness the open and proud denunciation of the "colorblind" ideal espoused by MLK Jr, by people purporting to be "progressive."

When you criticize "equity" as discrimination by authoritarians to artificially manufacture their pet outcomes, people sometimes act like you're just making it up. Then a reaction like this happens and people start saying the quiet bit out loud, proving you right. Not that you necessarily want to be.

[eliteprepsat]

Mastering the University of California Personal Insight Questions: Effective Strategies for Success

Most colleges and universities require high school students to provide information about themselves as a part of the college application process in the form of a personal statement or essay. On the University of California (UC) application, this writing component is known as the Personal Insight Questions (PIQs). Students are presented with eight questions and must respond to only four of the eight questions. These essay prompts give students an opportunity to showcase their individuality, achievements, and personal experiences, and each response is limited to a maximum of 350 words. Crafting compelling responses to the PIQs can greatly enhance your chances of admission. 

The UC system is composed of nine undergraduate campuses, and students apply to UC campuses through a single online application. While students choose which UC campuses they want to apply to, all of the campuses receive the same information provided by the student in the application, including the PIQ responses. As a result, you should not direct your PIQ responses to any particular UC campus.

In this article, we will delve into each prompt and provide effective strategies to help you tackle them with confidence and create standout essays that capture the attention of UC admissions officers.

Prompt 1: Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes, or contributed to group efforts over time.

To answer this prompt, start by reflecting on your experiences as a leader and choose one that truly stands out. Highlight specific instances where you influenced others, resolved conflicts, or made significant contributions to a group. Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to structure your response, and emphasize the impact of your leadership on the individuals involved and the overall outcome. Focus on demonstrating your ability to inspire, motivate, and bring about positive change.

Prompt 2: Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem-solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

This prompt invites you to showcase your creativity in various domains. Identify specific examples that highlight your problem-solving abilities, innovative thinking, or artistic pursuits. Describe a project or experience where you were able to apply your creative skills and explain how it allowed you to express your unique perspective. Be sure to discuss the thought process behind your creative endeavors and the impact they have had on your personal growth or the community around you.

Prompt 3: What would you say is your greatest talent or skill? How have you developed and demonstrated that talent over time?

When addressing this prompt, choose a talent or skill that you are genuinely passionate about and have invested significant time and effort into developing. Discuss how you discovered this talent, the steps you have taken to cultivate it, and any notable achievements or recognition you have received. Provide concrete examples of how you have demonstrated this talent in different contexts, showcasing your growth and commitment. Additionally, consider discussing any challenges you faced along the way and how you overcame them.

Prompt 4: Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.

For this prompt, focus on a specific educational opportunity or challenge that has had a significant impact on your academic journey. Discuss how you took advantage of the opportunity or approached the barrier and the steps you took to make the most of the situation. Highlight any skills, knowledge, or lessons you gained as a result. Be sure to emphasize your resilience, determination, and willingness to go above and beyond to overcome obstacles and achieve academic success.

Prompt 5: Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome it. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement?

When addressing this prompt, select a challenge that had a profound impact on your life and academic journey. Clearly articulate the nature of the challenge and the difficulties you encountered. Discuss the specific steps you took to tackle the challenge and the personal growth or valuable insights you gained as a result. Show how this experience shaped your academic achievements and how you developed resilience, adaptability, or a unique perspective in the face of adversity.

Prompt 6: Think about an academic subject that inspires you. Describe how you have furthered this interest inside and/or outside of the classroom.

To answer this prompt, identify your favorite academic subject and elaborate on why it captivates you. Explain how this subject has influenced your perspective, personal growth, or career aspirations. Discuss any specific projects, research, or extracurricular activities related to the subject that have deepened your understanding or sparked your passion. Highlight the connections between your favorite subject and your broader academic goals, showing how it has shaped your intellectual curiosity and drive for knowledge.

Prompt 7: What have you done to make your school or community a better place?

For this prompt, outline the specific actions you have taken to improve your school or community. Discuss any initiatives, clubs, organizations, or projects you have been involved in that have had a positive impact. Describe how your efforts have brought about tangible changes or fostered a sense of unity and inclusivity. Highlight the skills you have developed, the relationships you have built, and the lessons you have learned through your community engagement. Show your commitment to service and your ability to make a meaningful difference.

Prompt 8: Beyond what has already been shared in your application, what do you believe makes you a strong candidate for admissions to the University of California?

This prompt provides an opportunity for you to share something about yourself with the admission committee that didn’t quite fit into one of the other prompts. Conversely, you can also use this space to discuss another skill, talent, challenge, or opportunity that you think will help the committee know you better. Whatever you choose to write about, emphasize your growth and development—personally, socially, or intellectually–and discuss how you can contribute to the campus community, whether as a student in the classroom, a roommate in the dorms, or a member and leader in a student organization.

Essay Writing Tips

Here are a few tips to get you started:

You get to choose which of the eight PIQ prompts to respond to, and the UC PIQs are designed to give you the flexibility to highlight the parts of your life you want to share. That said, you are going to college to further your education and thus should discuss your academic or intellectual interests in prompt numbers 4 or 6. 

Almost all of the PIQ prompts explicitly or implicitly invite you to discuss your growth and development (for example, “[h]ow have you developed and demonstrated that talent” and “how you have furthered this interest”). Focus on this aspect of your experience in your response. The UC campuses want to know not only what you accomplished and achieved but also how you grew (intellectually, emotionally, and socially) and what you learned along the way. In other words, how did the experience shape you into who you are today?

Elaborate on a particular experience in your response to provide information and context about your personal growth and development. When drafting your response, you should address the 5 Ws (who, what, when, where, and why) and put particular focus on answering the “why” question. Why did you respond or react the way you did? Why were you interested in a particular subject or topic? Why were we motivated to pursue a particular activity? In answering the “why” question, you reveal your thoughts, perspectives, and values–and doing so will make your response uniquely about you. 

You are asked to discuss your life experiences in the PIQ responses, and doing so requires you to understand how those experiences shaped you as an individual. Many students find it difficult to reflect on how they grew or changed over time because they are constantly focused on the future (studying for the next test, preparing for the next game, or planning the next volunteering event) rather than the past. Start the writing process early to give yourself plenty of time, and expect to write multiple drafts. Sometimes a brilliant idea turns out not to be so compelling after you start to work out the details–so, it’s okay to go back to the proverbial drawing board and brainstorm another idea.

Final Thoughts

Crafting compelling responses to the University of California Personal Insight Questions is a crucial step in the admissions process. By following the strategies provided for each prompt, you can create essays that effectively showcase your unique qualities, achievements, and personal growth. 

Remember to reflect on your experiences, choose concrete examples, and clearly communicate your impact and the lessons you have learned. With thorough preparation and thoughtful introspection, you can present yourself as an exceptional candidate who is ready to make a meaningful contribution to the UC community.

Elite Prep has helped thousands of high school seniors apply to the University of California and other selective colleges and universities. Contact an Elite Prep branch office to speak with one of our experienced counselors about how we can help you get into your dream school.

[yuniemaki]

On beiguang, yin/yang symbolism and the blessed dragon/fenghuang pairing

The Beidou x Ningguang ship in Genshin is heavily inspired by two main symbols in Chinese culture: Yin and yang, and the dragon and fenghuang pairing. In this essay (literally) I will deep-dive into the nuances of these two symbols that make this ship so complex and enthralling to me at least?!

Yin/Yang

Let’s talk a bit about the concept of duality in Chinese cosmology. Yin and Yang are complementary forces that interact together to represent duality and balance in all aspects, i.e a shadow (Yin) cannot exist without light (Yang).

Yin and yang are always opposite and equal qualities. Whenever one quality reaches its peak, it will naturally begin the transformation into the opposite quality: for example, a flower that blooms in spring (fully Yang) will wither and die back in winter (fully Yin) in an endless cycle.

This can be applied to all cyclic events in life, for example the rise and fall of things: Yang being the rise and yin being the fall. Creation (Yang) and entropy (Yin) are also two sides of the same coin. 

阴 Yin can be translated in several ways: the moon, concealed, overcast, hidden, shade. Generally, it represents the direction North.

The character 阴 can be broken down into two components:

The radical 阝, the graphical variant of 阜, meaning “mound, abundant, rich”, 

and the character 月, meaning “moon”.

阳 Yang can be translated as, male, the sun, overt, belonging to this world, activity. Generally, it represents the direction South.

The character 阳 can also be broken down into two components:

The radical 阝, the graphical variant of 阜, meaning “mound, abundant, rich”, 

and the character 日, meaning “sun”.

The terms “male” and “female” here don’t refer to gender specifically and are used very loosely – the Chinese believe in “feminine”/”negative” and “masculine”/”positive” energy as two halves of a whole, i.e. both must exist for balance to be. Neither can thrive without the other.

An interesting thing to note about Yin/Yang’s entomology is the way this phrase is written in Chinese. Chinese linguistics typically plac the “male”/”positive” energy first in the language, e.g. 男女, man-woman, and 天地, heaven and earth.

But in yinyang, 阴阳, the “female”/”negative” energy comes first. Scholars theorise that proto-Chinese society was perhaps matriarchal (Empress Dowager being more powerful than the Emperor), or that it was a way to challenge existing cultural preconceptions.

Dragon/Fenghuang

In Chinese mythology, the dragon and fenghuang are the two most powerful celestial symbols. The dragon represents "Yang" while the fenghuang represents "Yin”. 

The Chinese dragon is traditionally drawn without wings. Oftentimes it may be depicted together with a flaming pearl under its chin or in its talons. The pearl is associated with spiritual energy, wisdom, prosperity, power, immortality, thunder (electro!), or the moon.

The fenghuang is sometimes referred to as the “Chinese phoenix”, but it has a completely different mythos to the Western legends of rebirth and fire.

The fenghuang is a peace-loving celestial being that is believed to only appear in places blessed with the utmost prosperity and happiness. It is said to live atop the Kunlun Mountains, the Chinese version of Mount Olympus.

Together, the dragon/fenghuang pairing is known as the celestial pairing. The fenghuang is a symbol of luck, prosperity, and success; the dragon is a symbol of status and power. The two are said to strengthen each other when paired. Their union is a symbol of matrimonial bliss and more importantly - balance. 

Balance is a recurring theme in Beiguang, from Ningguang’s life and philosophy to Beidou’s (reluctant) admission that Ningguang balances her (more on that later when we deep dive into them individually).

It’s also worth noting that in some areas, the dragon/fenghuang symbol only appears to herald a new era - very much like what Liyue is going through now, heralding a new era of humans without an Archon’s guidance. And how fitting is it that the two most powerful women in Liyue now carry this symbol as they lead the nation into uncharted waters?

How Beiguang parallels Yin/Yang

The duality of Yin/Yang is visible in many aspects of life, from nature to society. One example is the sun moving across the sky. As the sun moves across the sky, things that are once illuminated (Yang) give way to shadow (Yin), revealing what was hidden, and hiding what was revealed.

Similarly, it represents the crux of Beidou and Ningguang’s relationship: infamously public yet ultimately secretive. The Captain and Tianquan talk about each other all the time, but what exactly is their deal? No one really knows.

Another example is their prized homes. The Jade Chamber is known to block out the moon over Liyue, yet is iconic in its skies – literally seen as the moon. It is passive in nature, still and motionless, and is also the epicentre of intelligence - aka covert activity. All these are symbols of Yin. 

Now we don’t know exactly where True North is in Teyvat’s map, but Polaris, the North Star, has always been known as a fixed point in the sky, which is why sailors use it to navigate their way home.

Similarly, the Jade Chamber is this fixed point in the sky of Teyvat that could be used as a “North Star” to return to Liyue Harbour. North is, after all, the direction that Yin represents.

I digress a little here, but also consider that Beidou is the Chinese name of the Big Dipper, the very constellation used to point sailors towards Polaris. We know from Beidou’s namecard that she believes in looking to the skies when she wavers, and “the stars shall light the way”.

There’s a poetic beauty in the Jade Chamber being representative of Liyue’s Polaris, and Beidou finding her way back to her “North Star'' each time the Alcor sails for home. 

Back on topic. In contrast, the Alcor on the other hand, is constantly moving and full of activity. It sails across the oceans; it is a symbol of power much like Beidou herself is (slayer of Haishan, Beidou tames the seas). 

And just like the sun, the Alcor docks and leaves Liyue Harbour - a reflection of how only the sun travels across the sky, illuminating different sides of the moon that patiently waits for light to be cast upon its surface (again, something we’ll return to later).

Water itself can also be separated into Yin (still bodies, lakes) and Yang (moving water, river, ocean). The Jade Chamber is home to still bodies of water (Yin symbol) both inside and out; the Alcor’s very home is the ocean, a powerful Yang water symbol.

Ningguang and Yin/fenghuang symbolism

Alright, let’s deep-dive into Ningguang’s character first. Her strongest fenghuang link is seen mainly in her namecard, and it carries a lovely name:

凝光・凤仪 (Níngguāng - Fèngyí): the admiration/ceremony/rites of the fenghuang

The duality of the fenghuang

What’s interesting about the fenghuang is its duality: in ancient times, the fenghuang was a cohesive yin/yang symbol on its own. Over time when the dragon came into the picture, the fenghuang was altered. When paired with the dragon, it now symbolises Yin. But alone, it symbolises Yang instead.

And that’s why Ningguang’s storied history reflects elements of Yin/Yang balance. She rises (Yang) to power by herself; she retreats from the public eye, hiding (Yin) in the Jade Chamber, yet she is known to publicly flaunt (Yang) her position as a member of the Liyue Qixing.

The diverse nature of the fenghuang and its original symbolism as balance in and of itself contributes to Ningguang’s enigmatic nature, and why she has so many seemingly contradictory opinions - fame being usually associated with Yang, yet secrets being more of Yin.

When the dragon/Yang is not there, the fenghuang shines, becoming the “sun”/Yang - Ningguang is, after all, the de-facto leader of Liyue at this point. She has the awe and the attention of the masses, her chamber is unmissable, she is a ruthless business mogul yet adored by the children like an elder sister. 

The parts of a fenghuang

It's also interesting to note that the fenghuang's body parts represent Ningguang's character well: 

virtue (head), 

duty (wings), 

propriety (back), 

credibility (abdomen), 

and mercy (chest).

Beidou and Yang/dragon symbolism

Perhaps the most obvious link between Beidou and the dragon is her Chinese title: 无冕的龙王 Wúmiǎn de Lóngwáng - “Uncrowned King of Dragons”.

She is specifically given the title “King”/王wáng instead of “Queen”/女王Nǚwáng - masculine energy being a strong Yang quality.

A symbol of Yang quality

Unlike the fenghuang, the Chinese dragon has always been a representation of Yang, which is why Beidou’s character very clearly represents the quintessence of Yang: well-liked, respected, reputed, masculine (in her feats - slaying Haishan, leading a pirate fleet, taming the seas), always on the move, never on land for long.

Traditionally, the dragon has always symbolised power and confidence. The Chinese dragon is the ruler of water and weather, especially moving bodies of water such as the sea, which might suggest why Beidou is able to navigate the sea so very well, to the point that her crew “believe her capable of taming the storms and billows on the sea.” 

She also “understands” the sea almost intimately, as seen in her CN voiceline “About us: an eye for people”:

“I’m good at reading people. When you’ve seen the wide ocean, the little splashes (changes) on people’s faces are just too easy to understand. Haha, so, I noticed you from the start.”

Beidou refers to the “changes on people’s faces” as “小水花/splashes (of water)”, implying that once you learn to read the sea (often known as a cruel mistress), people become easy to read in comparison. And to read the sea, you observe. You study every wave, every detail, so you can understand her subtleties. 

Despite being a pirate, Beidou’s dragon-symbolic traits show up in her honourable personality, her ability to command the loyalty of her crew, and her commitment to helping the less fortunate.

The dragon's history

Initially, the dragon was benevolent, wise and just, but the introduction of Buddhism added malevolent influence to the dragons. Water can raise and water can destroy. So dragons became able to destroy through floods, tsunamis and storms. 

Similarly, that could also be why Beidou, although symbolising the dragon, was also named to be a cursed child – perhaps a tribute to the dragon’s newfound duality.

Yin/Yang Symbolism in relation to Beiguang

Okay, we’ve got that all down, so now we can study Beiguang in the context of Yin/Yang and dragon/fenghuang symbolisms. Remember the bit earlier about how the sun is the only celestial body to travel across the sky in astrologers’ eyes, illuminating different sides of the moon? 

Present-day Ningguang resides in Liyue Harbour and (as far as we know) rarely leaves the nation. Beidou comes and goes as the sun rises and falls, and it is with her return that we have been seeing different facets of Ningguang come alive under the light of the sun (Yang). 

Ningguang has a voiceline in particular titled “About Us: Observing”. There is one key difference in the CN version of this voiceline, which I’ll translate:

“You’ve followed me for so long, (I’m sure) you’ve learned how to observe. Then, try to observe me, until you become my trusted confidant.” 

She asks Traveler to observe her. But what can you observe in the obscured until it is illuminated? Who illuminates her beyond the Tianquan that the masses know? 

Most of the key Liyue events in 2021 featuring Ningguang, Archon Quest aside, have also featured Beidou in some capacity. And we learn the most about Ningguang from and through Beidou, like how Yang casts light on and reveals what was previously hidden (Yin). 

Romantic gestures aside, their business relationship is also reflective of the dragon/fenghuang motif. Now the dragon symbolises the Chinese Emperor, known as a descendent of the celestial dragons, and the fenghuang symbolises the Empress. To be more specific, the fenghuang represents "power sent from the heavens'' to the Empress. 

This brings me back to the way Yinyang is written: female first. 

Traditionally although the empress dowager (Yin, fenghuang) supposedly holds more power than the Emperor (Yang, dragon), she works from the shadows, often more covertly. For all intents and purposes, the emperor has the final say. Similarly, Ningguang uses Beidou to do her dirty work.

Yin/Yang - two halves of a whole

Beiguang is essentially a perfectly balanced couple, and the game alludes to this in various ways. One is this interaction between Paimon and Beidou during Moonchase, after Ningguang and Beidou have their little squabble in front of the giant rock and all their friends:

The idiom she uses for "evenly-matched" (势均力敌) is usually used in context of a game/polls/tournament/etc. If you break down the etymology, it literally means "power/influence are equal (in a situation), (so our) strengths match".

Reminder that yin and yang are not just equals - they are also opposite qualities. Life and death, light and darkness, rise and fall. This is why Beidou and Ningguang “profess antipathy to each other’s way of life”, and yet they are united for Liyue’s greater good. They are the direct opposites of each other (law vs crime, elegance vs boorish, luxurious vs simple, light vs dark), but they are also equals. 

And Ningguang values this very much -

“Of the many candidates available, she picked Beidou.” 

She values time as her greatest resource, making businessmen bid for her time - but Beidou is given the permission to “come up any time” for a game of chess. 

All that said, their yin/yang dynamic is not new in Chinese romance stories. Off the top of my head, the titular characters of C-drama Who Rules The World essentially share the same Yin/Yang dynamic as Beiguang does. It’s a lovely trope that adds great complexity to character dynamics.

I do love how hyv has interwoven the dragon/fenghuang symbolisms deep into their lives however, such that Ningguang and Beidou both live and breathe the cultural symbols that they are inspired by, rather than letting it simply be a romantic trope. 

Beiguang nation, this be my first gift to you. Hope it’s been a fun read! Next up: GINKGOS.

Beiguang masterlist

[chronicrabbit]

Operation Parent Trap: Birdwatching

Ao3 Link

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Lucas Sinclair had always considered himself a romantic.

He was smooth, he was charismatic, he always kept the ladies coming back for more.

Or, well, lady in the singular considering he’d been virtually obsessed with Max and only Max since she’d moved to Hawkins.

But he still managed to keep her coming back every time, so he’d count that as a definite win.

Anyone could see he was good at romance, which is why he took it upon himself to plan out phase two of Operation Parent Trap, because:

“No offense to Dustin, but it’s time for someone with wooing experience to take the reins.”

Dustin had, of course, tried to argue with the typical “Suzie” point, but Lucas was not to be swayed.

This was his specialty.

In theory.

With the fast approach of Valentine’s Day looming overhead, along with it the promise of dreamy Hallmark romance and an over abundance of heart themed paraphernalia, the plan had basically formed itself:

Fake Valentines.

It was simple, elegant, and pretty damn risky, but if it worked, it would be more than worth it.

It would be yet another triumph of love for one Lucas Sinclair.

El and Will had already spent the better part of an hour working, crafting sweet little cards in red and pinks, cutting out hearts and covering every available surface in the Hopper-Byers living room with glitter.

Hopper would be livid, but risking his wrath would be worth it for the pursuit of love.

He hoped.

As each cut and decorated card was completed, they were passed to Max and Dustin respectively, the two armed with an array of coloured pens and exhaustive examples of Steve and Eddie’s handwriting in the form of one crumpled and heavily annotated college admissions essay and notes from an old Hellfire campaign.

With the cards signed and sealed, their next step was to deliver them, first to Steve, then to Eddie.

Of course that was much easier said than done considering Eddie spent much of his time during the working hours of the week glued to the counter at Family Video, trading snappy words and witty banter with Robin whilst figuratively and literally kicking his feet and twirling his hair at Steve.

-

It had been two hours.

Two hours stuck loitering in the parking lot of the arcade adjacent to Family Video waiting for Eddie to exit the store.

Lucas knew it’d been two hours as it seemed that Mike had taken up a promising new position as the world's most annoying timekeeper, announcing the passing of virtually every minute with increasing annoyance.

Lucas knew exactly how he felt.

“Ugh! Are they seriously still talking?” Max groused from her spot leant up against the side of the building, arms crossed, head tilted back, and gum smacking.

The tops of her freckled shoulders were a toasty pink from the prolonged sun exposure, but Lucas and the others knew better than to enforce sunscreen upon her.

Mike sighed in response, pulling his gaze away from his watch- thank Christ- to send a glare toward the windows.

“I know, I mean, doesn’t Eddie have anything better to do?”

Lucas nodded in agreement as he stared through the binoculars into the mostly empty store, watching as the DM leaned a hip against the front counter, hands flying as he spoke enthusiastically to Steve who was working on a display right beside him.

Steve exaggeratedly rolled his eyes at whatever Eddie was saying, Eddie responding by throwing his head back and laughing.

Or screaming.

It was hard to tell from that distance, and with Eddie it could honestly be either.

“Goddammit,” Dustin exclaimed, aggressively stirring his mostly melted Slurpee. “How long does it take to return a damn movie?”

“Isn’t it good that they’re talking? Isn’t that what we want?” Will interjected with a look of confusion that El perfectly mirrored.

It was uncanny, honestly.

Lucas shook his head, though he didn’t pull his gaze from the front counter.

“Not when it directly interferes with our plans,” he started when sudden movement caught his eye.

Eddie lifted his hand, brandishing a tape before setting it on the counter and sliding it toward Steve.

“Oh! He’s returning the tape!” Lucas announced, the others immediately shooting up to attention, staring over his shoulder and hanging on his every word.

“Steve opened the case. I think he just thanked Eddie for rewinding the tape. Eddie’s taking out his wallet to pay the late fee- Steve waved him off. He's deleting it from the system.”

“Wait,” Mike scoffed. “Why does Eddie get to skip the late fees and I don’t?”

“Cause Steve isn’t in love with you,” El shot back without a hint of sarcasm, Max and Dustin immediately responding with falsely sympathetic hisses and ooooh’s that had Mike scrunching up his face in his trademark look of annoyance.

Lucas went to reply when Eddie suddenly turned away from the counter, giving a two fingered salute before sauntering toward the door.

“Shit. He’s coming out! Everybody act natural!”

In a flurry of movement, the group rearranged themselves into a different formation that, upon closer inspection, looked no less suspicious than before, but there was no time to adjust or dwell on it as Eddie spotted them and diverted his course from his van with arms widespread in greeting.

“Ah, all my favorite little people, all in one place with-“

Eddie’s eyes snapped down to Lucas’s hand, one eyebrow hiking up beneath his bangs. “-binoculars. For some reason.”

An awkward bout of silence followed the observation, and Lucas scrambled for an explanation, racking his brain for something- anything- to say before Dustin could-

“We’re bird watching.”

… say something like that.

The rest of the party winced in unison as both of Eddie’s brows rose, his expression shifting to that familiar wide eyed dubious look.

“Wow,” he nodded, pressing his lips together into a thin line as he seemed to struggle for a proper response without sounding too devastatingly sarcastic.

It still translated perfectly well. Eddie wasn’t one for subtlety.

“Bird watching and night swimming,” he continued. “What wild and rambunctious lives you lead. Well, don’t let me interrupt you.”

He slapped one hand on Lucas’s shoulder, and one on Mike’s head, sharply jostling the two of them around as he was wont to do.

When he released them, he dropped into a bow towards the rest of the party which El returned with a grin before he spun on his heel and started off back toward his van.

“And hey! Hellfire tomorrow night at Castle Harrington, 8 o’clock on the dot. Don’t be late, or I’m cursing your character with warts and disadvantage on all rolls. I’m serious.”

With that, he climbed into the steel beast, the engine sputtering and struggling to start up three times before roaring to sickly life along with the intense wail of a guitar and the deafening slam of drums.

He peeled out of the parking lot in a puff of smoke, wheels screeching as he took a sharp turn and disappeared.

A series of smacks sounded as the party rained down retribution on Dustin for yet another pathetic ad-lib, the victim of their attack hissing and swatting at them ineffectively before settling to take his lumps.

“Bird watching? Come on, dude,” Mike groaned, knocking Dustin’s hat clear off of his head.

“Fuck off, guys! He left, didn’t he?”

“He did,” Erica agreed, pulling her backpack off and unzipping it to dig around inside. “Which means our window of opportunity is closing fast.”

“She’s right,” Lucas nodded. “Lets begin phase three!”

Lucas handed Erica his binoculars as she in turn handed Will one of the Valentines which he stashed in the pocket of his button down.

Quickly but casually, the group moved together towards the front doors of Family Video, taking a collective sigh of relief as they stepped out of the glaring midday sun and into the slightly mediocre air conditioning.

They didn’t have long to linger under the vent as they were caught under the sharp scrutiny of familiar blue eyes, squinting with clear annoyance.

“Hey! Children, what have we said?” Robin called out by way of greeting, shooting them a half hearted glare from behind the counter.

“Three at a time and no loitering!”

Mike scoffed.

“How do you know we aren’t here to rent something?”

Robin leveled him with an unimpressed look that made him visibly shrink back.

“The plan, Mike. Remember the plan!” Lucas hissed out of the side of his mouth.

“Actually!” Mike piped up, glancing briefly toward Steve who was focused sorting through the returns.

Fuck, they really didn’t have a lot of time.

“Uh, I was hoping, uh…” Mike floundered for a moment, looking back towards the others for help.

El stepped up beside him, placing a calming hand on his shoulder.

“I was hoping you could help me find a movie. I can’t remember the name, but I know what happens.”

Robin’s expression instantly softened, and she stepped out from behind the counter with no further snark.

“Alright, kiddo. Shoot.”

El smiled softly and motioned for Robin to follow her, the two heading into the shelves toward the back of the store.

Lucas fought the urge to beam with pride.

Way to go, El.

With Robin gone, that left Steve.

Steve, who wore the same goofy grin he always sported after a conversation with Eddie- it was honestly a wonder they hadn’t recognised the signs of his crush sooner- turned his gaze up to the remainder of the party.

“So,” he said as he plucked up one of the tapes in the pile, opening the case to check inside before setting it in the pile beside the rewinder with an eye roll.

“You all needed to be in here for that? What, are you moral support?”

Mike let out a giggle at what was barely a joke, and Lucas fought the urge to audibly gag.

He and Dustin shared a quick glance, the two wordlessly nodding and nudging Max forward with tandem whispers of:

“Go on.”

She rolled her eyes behind her glasses, but approached the counter with a very convincingly uncertain look.

“Actually, Steve… I was hoping to talk to you about something? Privately?”

Steve looked almost surprised for a moment, his hands stilling just over the case of the movie Eddie had returned, ‘Excalibur’, as he seemed to consider her request.

He nodded with a significantly more somber frown and motioned toward the unoccupied office at the back of the store. As they moved towards it, a blushing Max spun to face the rest of the party, very clearly and concisely mouthing out:

“You owe me big time.”

They waited until the door was shut behind them before Mike, Dustin, Will, and Lucas rushed the counter with scattered whispers of, “go now!” and “hurry up!”

As Lucas snatched up the tape and opened the case, Will plucked the Valentine from his pocket, sliding it in on top of the ‘Be Kind, Rewind’ note.

Lucas snapped it shut, replacing it on the counter just as El signaled her and Robin’s approach by ringing the bell above the entrance twice.

The four of them tripped over each other to retreat from the counter, met with Erica’s derision though that hardly phased any of them anymore.

Lucas and Will had just managed to steady a flailing Mike as Robin strolled into view, El following behind with a movie clutched in both hands and an inquisitive look on her face.

Will nodded shortly and she smiled a reserved little smile, setting the movie on the counter for Robin to enter it into the system.

“Good choice, El,” Robin mused as she typed in the information rather noisily, black lined eyes flickering back and forth from the screen to the cover of ‘Little Shop of Horrors’.

“Ok, there we go,” she announced as she pushed the tape over towards El, leaning in conspiratorially. “I went ahead and rented it in my name, so there’s no charge. Just remember to rewind and turn it in on time, ok?”

El nodded fervently, her brows furrowing seriously under her curly bangs as if Robin had given her a sacred task.

“Ok, good.” Robin paused, eyes scanning across the group with a crooked smile. “Where’d Max go?”

“Oh, she-“

“She’s talking with Steve,” Lucas interrupted Dustin, not willing to chance another ‘night swim’ train wreck of an excuse.

Robin shrugged with a sound of acknowledgment before standing and approaching the pile of returns.

Uh oh.

The party traded urgent looks as Robin reached out towards Eddie’s tape, every single one of them frozen in place.

Before he could fully think it through, Lucas launched himself forward and slapped a hand down on top of the tape, meeting Robin’s startled gaze with one he was certain matched down to the record height of their eyebrows.

“I… can I, uh, have a look at this one, actually?” he managed to get out, attempting to wiggle the tape out from under their hands.

Robin’s red stained lips dropped down into a grimace, his only warning before she was suddenly wrenching the tape out of his grasp completely and holding it out of his reach.

“Ok, something is definitely going on with you gremlins, and I’m willing to bet it’s got something to do with this,” she said as she waved the tape, snatching it back away as Lucas swiped at it.

Before any one of them could speak, could make up an excuse or a reason to stop her, she opened the case and glanced inside.

Slowly, painfully slowly, her expression sunk into an odd sort of blankness. Her eyes moved back and forth as she scanned over the lines Max had carefully written out on the red construction paper, lips pursing thoughtfully.

“Steve,” she read out loud, glancing up across the party before focusing back on the forged Valentine. “Are you a rogue? Cause you stole my heart. Eddie.”

That unimpressed gaze returned tenfold as she turned the card over in her hands, taking in the glitter and hearts and frills El had added on to it.

She looked like she had something else to say, but couldn’t quite find the words as she set the card on the counter beside El’s tape and used her vest to wipe wayward glitter from her hands.

“Is this supposed to be convincing?” she finally settled on, Erica letting out a remarkably loud snort in response to the simple but scathing sentiment.

“What do you mean?” Mike tried to ask, his mouth snapping shut at a pointed look from Robin.

“I mean, what’s the play? Is this some kind of prank? Because if it is, I will personally see to it that you-“

“Robin, easy! It’s not a prank!” Dustin spoke up, head bowed and hands raised in supplication or surrender.

Either was appropriate in this case.

“We have some for Eddie, too. We’re just…”

As Dustin hesitated, El stepped forward, making her way determinedly to Erica.

She unzipped her backpack and pulled out the other cards, walking up to the counter and dumping them in front of Robin with a pointed little nod.

“We’re trying to get Steve and Eddie together,” she stated.

“They like each other and they won’t do anything about it.”

Silence filled the air, all eyes glued to Robin as she looked over the rest of the cards, carefully considering each one.

Lucas could almost hear the gears turning in her head.

“Alright,” she said finally, her lips shrugging as she seemed to accept El’s explanation.

“All… Alright?” Lucas asked softly, looking to the older girl with no small amount of caution.

She nodded.

“Yep. I mean, I was getting pretty sick of watching their daily routine of flirting and eye-fucking with absolutely no follow through, so I fully support this endeavor. However,” she raised a finger, tapping one of the cards twice.

“This very clearly didn’t come from Steve, just like that other one definitely didn’t come from Eddie. Now, I can help with the Steve side of things, mostly because if I have to listen to one more ‘he loves me he loves me not’ rant I’m gonna yak.”

“Ok,” Mike agreed instantly, clearly as eager for the help as the rest of them.

“So what about the Eddie side?”

“Oh,” Robin started with a knowing smirk.

“For that, we’re gonna need an expert. But don’t you worry, Gremlins. I know just the nerd for the job.”

………

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[writingquestionsanswered]

Hi! I was wondering if you take commissions for admissions essays and supplements or are you strictly for fiction/stories?

Actually, I my commissions aren't for writing at all, but rather for helping people with their writing. So, for example, I provide general writing feedback, first chapter critiques, character development feedback, and that sort of thing. :)

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[slowdesire]

How do you write a college essay? Does the person fill out a questionnaire and a resume or something? Cause I’m guessing the essay has to be pretty personal

omg it's like genuinely crazy... yeah it definitely has to be personal! usually the students we work with have been with the company since around middle school so the college consultants know them really well and we have a lot of meeting notes on them. students write drafts for the prompts per university, and we work with the college consultants (who typically have meetings with the students--i don't, lol) to figure out the outline and content of each essay! so we write/edit based on the student's answers combined with whatever admissions strategy the company wants the particular student to go in (like for example if we should depict them as someone very into agriculture or whatever).. half of the time that means starting from scratch and ditching the kid's (usually terrible) drafts 😭 then every time we finish our edits we send the essays back to the family/kid for their feedback and it's a back and forth process until everything's fully ready for submission

[schraubd]

Never Have I Ever .... Banned Affirmative Action

Yesterday, the Supreme Court functionally banned race-based affirmative action.

The day before that, I finished the series finale of the Netflix series Never Have I Ever. The first season of that show I continue to think is one of the greatest in television history. The remaining three couldn't keep to that unsustainable height, but were also very good.

Two of the main through arcs of Never Have I Ever were Devi (the main character, a California teenager whose parents immigrated from India to America) working through the grief at the sudden death of her father, and Devi's relentless, all-consuming obsession with attending Princeton  For most of the show, these were mostly treated as unrelated. In the first season, a character rather callously suggests that the circumstances of Devi's father's death would make for a standout college essay; Devi recoils on the ground that it would be exploitative. In the final season, however, the two threads are drawn closer together. We get a flashback where a first grade Devi announces to her dad that she wants to attend "Princess University", and when informed that there isn't such a place but there is a "Princeton University", she confidently declares that will be her dream instead. The ferocity with which Devi clings on to this passion is, in many ways, part of the ferocity through which she clings to her father's memory. And in the final season, Devi changes her mind about the collegiate essay -- writing about her father and his death because "you can't understand me without understanding him."

There is nothing crass or exploitative about Devi's decision. She wrote honestly and sincerely about an important piece of who she was. And yet, Devi's initial instinct is entirely reasonable as well. She shouldn't have to bare this element of her life to the judgment of strangers if she does not want to. She shouldn't have to be defined by it if she doesn't want to be. There is something terrible about the way that college admissions encourages, even demands, of teenagers to produce trauma porn. Nobody is immune to this -- even as we speak, Cornelius Buckingham IV is composing (possibly with the help of ChatGPT) an essay about the time his yacht got caught in a storm but he and his Phillips Academy buddies pulled through, showing the importance of overcoming adversity and proving that nobody goes it alone -- but it's fair to say that this demand falls heavier on minority students. Every admissions officer loves a comeback story, and the deeper one can present oneself as having fallen into the dirt, the more glorious it is to rise out of it.

At the conclusion of the majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts lays a booby trap for admissions directors:

[N]othing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.... A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.

It is hard to know how the first sentence is supposed to relate to the second. When does giving favorable treatment to students who document "how race affected his or her life" become simply a closet way of reestablishing unlawful affirmative action? Indeed, there's a basic incoherency in the entire formulation: the majority has always viewed racial discrimination as solely consisting of the formal use of a racial classification, and not a matter of results that replicate a particular racial pattern. This is why the Court believes that de jure school segregation is unconstitutional, but "de facto" school segregation that yields schools with nearly identical racial compositions (all-White or all-Black) are constitutionally permissible. Once a university abandons the racial classification, the constitutional violation is over. So it's barely possible, even in concept, for a university to stop using racial classifications yet "establish" a unconstitutional racial classification (save, perhaps, if we adopt the more radical call for explicit judicial resegregration I articulated in my recent article).

Be that as it may, most observers think that the manner most schools will respond to the Supreme Court decision is to accord more weight to "diversity statement" essays where a student can explain "how race affected his or her life" (that the Court tacitly endorses these statements at the precise moment they're under fire by the same political coalition that sought to terminate affirmative action should not be lost on anyone, nor should it remotely reassure that such statements will not be the next target). Instead of generalizing the notion that race affects applicants' lives, opportunities, outlooks, and so on, these essays individualize the endeavor -- each applicant must explain how they are affected by race, racism, and identity.

An inevitable upshot of this shift will be inordinate pressure on students to frontload this aspect of their identity, giving it pride of place so that admissions officers -- thirsty for anything that can substitute for the tools taken away by the Supreme Court -- can find a "race-neutral" way of ensuring a racially diverse class. The irony, of course, is that this practice will make race more important and essential, not less. Until now, a Black applicant could frame their application around their love of robotics or their interest in comedic storytelling or their passion for ancient Chinese art, or -- if they so chose -- on the importance of their racialized experience as they moved through the American educational system. They could make one of the former choices secure in the knowledge that their application reviewer would not assume that such a frame meant that their racial identity didn't matter to them or hadn't mediated their life or development -- it just wasn't what they would choose to accentuate. After this week's decision, the last choice becomes nigh irresistible for any applicant who thinks their racial identity matters at all to who they are. It's all or nothing -- a terrible choice to put students in even if the boiling temperatures of the college admissions hothouse didn't exert tremendous pressure on students to go the former route knowing that these are the stories admissions readers are forced to look for when seeking a "diverse" class.

In his initial thoughts on the affirmative action decisions, Ilya Somin articulates what I think is one of the more common misapprehensions about the "diversity" rationale for affirmative action. 

As Chief Justice Roberts explains, this kind of lumping also inevitably leads to crude stereotyping, based on the assumption that all members of these broad categories have relatively similar views and backgrounds, different from those of all the other broad aggregates. That is pretty obviously false in many cases.... [T]he exchange between  Clarence Thomas' concurring opinion in today's cases and Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissent powerfully demonstrates how two native-born African-Americans from southern states can have vastly different perspectives on the black American experience, its history, and what that history implies for today.

The idea behind this critique is that the diversity rationale seeks to elevate the presence of particular opinions, opinions that are assumed to be shared in common by members of specific racial groups. That assumption would indeed be a foolish one, but it is not the basis for the diversity rationale. If Harvard wants students who hold particular views on specific policy questions, it hardly needs affirmative action to do it -- have students write essays on why Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard is a terrible ruling, and then pick your favorites.

But of course, a dream of ideological uniformity is not Harvard's desire. Indeed, the impetus behind the diversity rationale is the opposite. Michigan's defense of the "critical mass" concept in Grutter was precisely to avoid the presumption that all Black students think alike, such that if one is admitted it can be assumed he or she speaks for all. A critical mass of Black students, far from amplifying an echo chamber, demonstrates the breadth and range of ideas, passions, interests, opinions, and desires that all can emerge from the fertile soil of the Black lived experience. This is why Iris Marion Young makes the crucial distinction between "opinion" and "perspective". Opinions -- "steel tariffs are good", "affirmative action is racist", "taxes should be higher" -- do not have any claim to particular representation in democratic or social spaces. But perspective -- the way in which "differently positioned people have different experience, history, and social knowledge derived from that positioning" -- does have such a claim, again, precisely because it doesn't reduce to uniformity in opinion or interest. Far from falsifying the point, the disagreement between Justices Thomas and Jackson underscores it (and, on a similar note, it also explains why I dedicate a unit of my anti-discrimination to Justice Thomas' jurisprudence -- as much as I disagree with it, it is an important permutation of ideas that clearly germinate from Justice Thomas' perspective as a Black man).

People young and old relate to their racial (or ethnic, or religious, or national) identity in different ways. For some, it's not something they think about at all. For others, "you cannot know me without it." For many, it's somewhere in between -- a feature of their life that permeates but does not dominate their choices and decisions; part of the soil that grew them and nourishes them but not something they have much interest in giving top-line billing on the marquee of their life. Under the old regime, they didn't have to. They could tell any story they wished about themselves without stopping to think "am I spelling out in excruciating detail how this relates to my being a member of this or that racial group?" Under the new regime, it's all or nothing. Of all the stories an applicant could tell about themselves, they'll be inexorably pushed towards the one where race, racism, and racial identity are the most salient. 

The problem isn't that the stories would be a lie. We can assume in many cases they're perfectly sincere, just as Devi would not be lying in writing an essay about her father's death. But it was not, at that time, the story she wanted to tell, the one that was most true to her in the moment. To insist that she write it anyway is a demand for more trauma porn. And, for all the pomp and rhetoric about hoping to transcend race once and for all, I am convinced that the Court's decision will have the opposite effect -- forcing students to speak of their experiences vis-a-vis race in the loudest and most extravagant voice possible, no matter how they themselves would prefer to present themselves.

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