#also it makes me trust less and less those video essay youtubers who take on the role of science communicators

[lipstickontheglass1985]

you know what i respect science communicators so much now how do they go through tons of scientific papers in major detail to extract key information from them and then present it in a way thats accessible to the general public. without wanting to kill themselves

[dgcatanisiri]

Y'know, I do get worried sometimes about the way that even in leftist anti-terf spaces, there's often an... I'm gonna call it a reflexive worst case response to still assume the worst of men, like there's this inherent attitude of assuming that anything they do that is deemed wrong is also done with intention to cause discomfort.

It's even in the way of "hey guys, don't do this," when there's like DMs of what are probably parasocial relationships making an impression of assuming a closer friendship than there actually is. Y'know, there've often been cases of women who get these kinds of DMs and then post pictures of it (hopefully blacking out the names) on social media as an example of what not to do.

Cuz like... doing that tends to prompt the social media mob to start investigating and try to figure out who did the creepy thing - the story gets taken out of the posters hands and made into the absolute worst possible thing, when the worst "crime" was assuming that someone was closer than the other person thought they were.

To be clear, I do understand why there's a jump to this on the part of women in general, I'm not saying that it's a response that comes from nowhere.

But at the same time, there's also still what sometimes comes across as an undercurrent of always assuming the worst of the men involved in these situations, which... feels like it might come from terf talk of assuming all men are inherently dangerous and not to be trusted because of the fact that they are men.

I mean, I'm basically word-vomiting this out right now because I read some stories that involved various drama on this, and just thought about how I respond in a lot of scenarios. Like... I've outright worried in the past if me responding to like various YouTubers on Twitter is overstepping my bounds, when honestly, I'm saying this about a YouTuber who probably has had their notifications set to only show them responses from mutuals anyway. I've even held back from making comments BECAUSE I worry about coming across as overstepping those bounds.

So like... I could easily see myself doing this with people. I mean, I've had a few occasions where I've said something on Twitter that got a like from actual celebrities, but like... That may be a thing that makes my day, but they probably would never recognize me by my screen name if I were to like speak with them at a con or something.

Also, probably there's some commentary to be had about how we turn random voices on the internet into micro-celebrities, simply because they sit in front of a camera for a few hours at a time and rant about their views on X, Y, and Z, and how damaging that can be for both the person in front of the camera and the audience - I have like a less than nothing of a platform here on Tumblr, but if I went and made like YouTube videos that were basically me reading my venting and rants as a script, slapped some footage on top of that audio... I could probably end up being able to give myself a trajectory into the Video Essay Community™ because of it. And then I'd have to become MUCH more concerned about the inevitable Discourse™ that comes from it - even to the point of potentially being doxxed and having to move, just because someone disagrees with my opinions and thinks that I deserve to pay for not agreeing about the portrayal of video game characters or something.

Like the most drama I've ever been a personal party to was that weirdness a couple of years back of someone accusing me of wishing violence upon ACTUAL women because of my lack of sympathy for a FICTIONAL race of female-only aliens, due to their portrayal and actions during the FICTIONAL existential war, and then listing off a series of either wild misinterpretations or outright lies to try and make that out as a pattern of behavior. Beyond that, I've had a couple of instances of people taking my saying X means that I don't give a shit about Y...

But amplify that the way that inevitably comes when you end up with a platform of thousands, of hundreds of thousands, all taking the worst possible interpretation of your words and then amplifying that so that people who've never heard of you now hear those interpretations...

And when I think about it, yes, honestly, I do kinda fear what would happen from that because of my being male - obviously, again, I don't want to frame myself as being more vulnerable than women to doxxing and all that associated concerns, but... I feel somewhat like my vulnerability would be played down by others because of my gender, because of my sexuality, that I would be seen as being less "at risk" just because I'm male, even though I'd theoretically be just as much at risk as anyone else - hell, I'd inevitably be speaking leftist rhetoric while living in a red state, which... I mean, I see plenty of signs of support for the guy who just got his mugshot taken on a daily basis, so it'd be dangerous for me all the same.

That's what I'm getting at in saying that sometimes you see this downplaying of and dismissal of men, the kind that comes from terf rhetoric dismissing what men go through because it's not as persistent and socially pervasive as what men go through.

But it seems sometimes like what women get as waves of harassment, men can end up getting in a series of piling microaggressions that everyone - not just those hurling them at them, but even by the men in question - downplay.

I mean, it's not like I don't know about the way that MRAs have ruined the whole concept of "men's rights" and that sort of thing, but... I DO genuinely think there needs to be more discussion of the way that patriarchy broadly hurts men AND how sometimes attempts to undo the damage it's inflicted towards women can be overcorrected for to continue inflicting damage on men.

Again, this is a lot of word-vomit on my part, so this may well not necessarily read right, but... I mean, that's kinda going back to the "worst case interpretation" thing, isn't it, that I'm trying to process this as best I'm able, but maybe not able to put it into the best words, so some random person can come along and decide I'm saying that men are the real victims or something like that...

[jyndor]

At this point I'm just convinced that most Star Wars fans are simply not used to thinking of their characters as nuanced, and the sequels and the disney+ stuff before andor didn't really help our case lol.

The fact that the writers retconned Luke-fucking-skywalker, the dude who gave a big F You to all Jedi traditions in the original trilogy, and also used him at Bait for the mandalorian is a true indictment of the current scenario lol.

At this point, I'm just trusting Tony and Diego more than the execs at Disney- it's clear that they want to create a specific story, and don't really give much of a fuck about the fandom which involves guys with 4+ million subscribers who have such AMAZING takes like "star wars doesn't have bricks"

jessie gender has a good video essay on youtube about andor and while i don't necessarily agree with all of it, i think the parts about how disney depoliticized star wars and made the first order almost exclusively reminiscent of nazi germany (to the exclusion of a lot of the references the empire had to us empire) as well as through use of intertextuality (almost exclusively referring to other star wars things instead of referencing to real world things like the original trilogy, the prequels and rogue one did) are 1000000% on point.

as a result fans expect cameos and easter eggs out the ass (easter eggs and cameos are fine imo as long as they make narrative sense - ie: rogue one has good cameos - mothma, saw*, bail, leia, tarkin and vader ALL make sense in the context of the story- and bad cameos - artoo and threepio are just distracting imo and don't really add anything of value except to get audience members to say HEY OMG I KNOW THOSE GUYS) and for everything to directly connect.

which... sometimes again it makes sense (the prequels being about anakin and obi-wan makes total sense, it's the point of the prequels to explain how we got to the point where luke has to fight the empire and anakin has to redeem himself and destroy the emperor) and sometimes it's just absurd and cheap. "somehow palpatine returned" auihiuahduash oh my god it's funny because it's not even like it doesn't make sense for sheev to be so obsessed with living forever and having absolute control over the galaxy, plus legends also had a story about palpatine cloning himself... but it feels absurd because the sequels weren't leading to that, we all know lucasfilm didn't have any plan whatsoever, largely bc disney wanted a fast return on their investment, but rey being a palpatine is... just insulting. rey being a skywalker is less so because of we know the main trilogies are about the skywalkers.

i don't know that i'd call any of what happened with luke in the sequels a retcon unless we're talking about how disney got rid of the entire expanded universe and now it's called legends. i mean i consider it more of a reset (especially because george lucas wasn't really involved directly with legends stories and didn't really care about any of it - not that i care what he cares about, give me my mara jade back lmfao).

but im gonna push back on luke giving the jedi order a middle finger in the OG trilogy. first off, from an out-of-universe perspective, while i'm sure lucas had some idea of what the jedi were about, i doubt he really had the order's practices worked out because lol this is the guy who didn't know that he was going to make luke and leia twins before rotj. sometimes he had his shit worked out, other times he was just figuring stuff out as he went along - and hey i get it, but lol fandom can be a bit too referential about him.

i don't know as much about how he developed the jedi so please correct me if im wrong, but there's no way that luke was intended to be a refutation of jedi practices since... luke was written decades before the prequels came out. before the prequels came out, no one in the fandom even conceived of the jedi having rules against romantic relationships and/or attachments - that's why you've got so many jedi falling in love and being married in the legends 'verse, including and especially luke.

i know my generation is much more okay with the jedi order's practices because we grew up with it and understand it more, but there was a big pushback at the time of aotc because no one had thought of the jedi being celibate or not having attachments or being raised by the order as children. but that wasn't a retcon so much as george lucas going in a direction pro fanfic writers hadn't known he was going to go in. and while he did have a final say over what legends writers could do, those weren't his stories. now i don't care lol the thrawn trilogy is great and losing mara jade as thrawn's foil makes his story less compelling (and frankly it reeks of misogyny to bring him back and not the most important character of that story but whatever). but a lot of fans were annoyed about the direction the jedi took in canon because it didn't jive with decades of pro fic.

i'm sympathetic to that. and of course add into it that the prequels were poorly executed, good intentions and ideas aside.

i don't agree that the jedi were told to fuck off by luke (obi-wan and yoda perhaps to some extent but by then their religious group had been killed off in a genocide. and only because obi-wan and yoda withhold information from luke about his father, not because they are believers in jedi teachings). in universe, remember that luke doesn't know any jedi, he isn't brought up in the order, he doesn't have that cultural context. he doesn't know about them like that. he doesn't even really get into the jedi teachings besides the sparknotes version yoda gives him in empire (and a little bit with obi-wan). he knows very, very little - so he's a new kind of jedi because the jedi were killed off by the sith.

in the time between the originals and the sequels i guess luke does try to rebuild the order but lol idk i cannot even with the story he gets in the sequels because it doesn't work with what i grew up with, it's not the luke i knew and loved as a kid. i mean im not sure how anyone can make the argument that he makes choices that are consistent with who he is at his core but whatever. that's not a retcon though (unless we consider the retconning of legends but i mean that's kind of complicated since legends was pretty inconsistent itself) since it doesn't erase his story. even if he is out of character in the sequels.

god i cannot believe im defending the sequels but yeah they didn't retcon luke's story in the original trilogy. they did retcon legends but i mean again legends was never really as canon as the films or anything that george lucas worked on.

as far as his appearance in the mandalorian, imo it is an example of a cameo done right. it was consistent with who luke is, it made some narrative sense (no reason why luke wouldn't sense grogu reaching out to him, and since he is trying to rebuild the order why not bring in someone who had some experience with the old order?) and it helped establish scale of power (similar to vader massacring the rebels at the end of rogue one) in a story mostly about a character who is an extraordinary ordinary guy (like rogue one). it doesn't take away from the core of the show - the relationship between din and grogu, and din's relationship with his identity as a mandalorian - and helps propel the story forward. similar to how ahsoka is used in mando, there's a point to it. is it fan-service? yes! absolutely, and i would argue it was sorely needed given luke's treatment in the sequels was so polarizing and hurtful to so many fans, myself included. bo-katan also makes sense since she is a literal mandalorian lmfao like it works and helps build on the differences between sects of mandalorians.

HOWEVER. juxtapose that with the book of boba fett. you've got a show about a beloved legacy character who has been a fan-favorite for decades (despite me not really caring about him before his appearance in mando lol i can't deny his popularity) and finally he's getting his story fleshed out in a way that so many fans have wanted for ages.

and not only is the story arc poorly received (imo the best parts are the stuff with the tusken raiders but even that is handled terribly because they just kill them off off-screen) but in the middle of the show, we cut away to... the mandalorian season 2.5 which then goes on to resolve the conflict set up at the end of s2 far too quickly to be as effective as it should have been.

and then as a result of the writers using 2 episodes of an 7 episode season, boba fett's story is not only structured poorly but feels rushed. he gets sidelined. in his own show. as much as din djarin gives pure 'im trying to be a secondary character in my own show' energy, he is still the core of mando. he is centered even if he isn't always the hero or the most powerful guy on screen. with boba, he feels many times to be an afterthought in the show. about him.

and that's because these cameos are really poorly used. luke could easily show up in boba fett's show because it's set on tatooine. luke could be poking around his childhood home. they have history, it's not like it wouldn't be interesting - even if i'm like meh on the idea myself. but luke doesn't show up to further boba's story. he shows up for GROGU, for the mandalorian's story arc. same with ahsoka who has no business being in bobf imo. din i can see because boba showed up in mando and they have ties to each other, but as a CAMEO. as a secondary character. poor guy can't even be the side character in a show about someone else lmfao.

this stuff is not just fan-service done poorly to me, it feels like studio meddling, like the studio was nervous about splitting up din from their cash cow baby yoda. why couldn't that have been part of mando s3? idk there's really no good explanation for it.

cameos, fan-service, even retcons and resets can be used effectively. but it depends on how they are used and why. andor handles its cameos really well because they make sense in the story. rogue one mostly does too. mando does too imo but i get why people would be frustrated with how s2 seems to overemphasize cameos... but again imo they make sense. bobf's cameos are ridiculous and insulting.

*saw gerrera isn't handled as well as the others but i'd say it isn't out of the bounds of reason for saw to be jyn's adoptive father. i think we should have seen jyn as a teenager with him.

[yoitscro]

HOMESTUCK RAMBLE

The most troubling thing about the Sarah Z situation is that everything felt like damage control, tactical intimidation, and knee-jerked censorship. Right off the cuff of Hussie’s patreon message*.

(*Does anyone ever notice how Hussie only talks to the fandom when some kind of trouble eventually boils over, usually pointing a finger in one direction, versus addressing things earlier or addressing things period? Such as him having the power to speak against the actual anti queer jargon toward his employees prior to them leaving when things got worse? Or him mentioning the concerns of HS2 that people only found out through word of mouth and were reasonably upset about, such as them getting rid of the content warnings, or the fact that Hiveswap Act 2 was released without credits?

Would certainly make me less irritated if I didn’t know that that message is probably going to be one of his only few that he chooses to write and not mention other things, such as the returned antagonism toward fans. 

But this is also the same guy who continues to write passive aggressive messages in his comic and game scripts that calls everyone else a loser for still being mad about the racism and ableism. (Seriously, Psycholonials is just a vague post in game form and it’s chaotic as fuck to do things like using riots (racially prominent a year ago) in the toned environment of 2020 as goofy plot points. I thought we were suppose to do BETTER after Skaia Net.)

Idc if he’s not apart of WP anymore. Even then, he certainly left a lot of baggage for other people to handle. It’s incredibly irresponsible.

Anyways.)

Those journals have existed forever. Whether right or wrong, they have. They’ve gone unaddressed despite being known for existing. A big name youtuber giving an auditory version that doesn’t take up all the video probably shouldn’t have been the reason that fans finally got some kind of answer, and it’s blatantly transparent that it was to protect the IP from having it’s name tarnished. As if Homestuck doesn’t already have issues that it refuses to acknowledge after a decade that everyone else has talked about.

I can imagine that some kind of NDA was keeping them from talking about Hiveswap to their kickstarter backers, but the convenience of that expiring once Sarah said something gives me an inkling that the people who’ve actually stuck around to support Homestuck could’ve heard sooner. Not to mention that before this big blowout, people just wanted to know that the game was being worked on period. There was actually no NDA preventing that communication.

People wonder why there’s such a rift between WP and the homestuck community, and it’s stuff like that. The fact that Hussie only comes down to address damage when it piles up to a breaking point, rather than earlier. The fact that if you have one criticism, friends or associates of the people who write their favorite characters will maul you in the name of whatever marginalized group they happen isolate you from.

And at the end of it all, it’s almost like some big, surface level moral, because no one cared 3 days after Sarah’s video. Everyone treated it like usual youtube commentary essays about troubling developments and moved on.

Instead, now, still, everyone cares about the fact that an opinion video about Homestuck was getting legal threats during 4/13. After years of a troubled relationship with it’s fandom, this was the last thing they needed to do. I’m trying to wrap my head around what the favorable outcome was here; to look GOOD?

I can’t even imagine what this stunt looks like to other studios and IP groups. I wonder if Homestuck is secretly blacklisted at this point because so much bad behavior has been normalized instead of having a healthy blend between criticism and sympathy.

BC again, a transphobic bigot sending death threats bc homestuck “isn’t what it use to be”, and responding to that rightfully, isn’t the same as someone thinking that more jarring post-canon content and execution of things like toblerone wishes suck some, and figureheads deciding to insult minors, stir character drama, and call other bulk criticisms from the queer community homophobic or transphobic. That in fact loses support, money, and causes infighting, actually.

I’ve never seen a fandom decline in stable activity as hard as 2019-2020 Homestuck.

This is the part where I say that my caliginous crush from wanting to see this IP improve itself flares up from time to time, but is starting to die down knowing that, unless there’s a massive overhaul on how things are run, things aren’t changing...seriously. There are things HS can do even without Viz Media’s overbearing presence, but it doesn’t want to. Starting a feud on your holiday wasn’t one of those things to do, maybe, actually.

I think it’s telling that it’s actually bad enough that I usually refrain from talking as much as I am now, because some part of me knows that some ex WP member, or a friend of one, is reading this and potentially sharing it in whatever snotty chat to once more emphasize how evil of a person I am for saying what everyone else is thinking, lmao.

I think that if anyone wants to pride themselves in not being “terminally online” and in fandom, they should refrain from putting their hands on a story that’s literally embedded and literally about it’s fandom. Go join a private discord instead, or try a different franchise. Maybe have some self awareness. Just a thought.

Anyways, the trust is tainted. The fallout has been followed by quiet, and the current members are reshaping the ground of this community before the weeds eventually rear their heads again.

[kaylinpak]

The ArtCenter Files

I was accepted for the Fall 2020 Illustration program at ArtCenter College of Design. Just like with the post I made after being accepted to Ringling, this one will also be a list of tips I gathered during my application process. This is not a guarantee of your acceptance, but just something to help inform those looking into ArtCenter, primarily for Illustration. (You can skip to number 3 if you just want help on your portfolio.)

1.) BEFORE WORKING ON THE APPLICATION:

Please schedule either an in-person or online meeting with an Admissions counselor first. This is important as no one knows the programs and curriculum better than they do. Just by talking to a counselor about my interests, she was able to help narrow down what major would be a good fit for me, as well as give insight as to what the coursework would look like. (Not to mention portfolio help!)

ArtCenter also has different terms: Fall, Spring, and Summer. You’d have to look for the exact starting dates to determine which term would work best for you, or speak to the counselor. You can schedule a meeting with a counselor by going to ArtCenter’s website; under the Admissions tab, you will see “Schedule an appointment.” If you can’t find it, there’s also the option to either email or call the Admissions desk (both contacts on their website.) 

If you or your parents are at a loss on what to ask the counselor, consider these: Scholarships and how to get them, tuition + costs, terms, curriculum details, what the major is like, show examples of your work + get feedback, and how well-connected the school is (ie internship opportunities).

2.) WORKING ON THE APPLICATION:

If you decided ArtCenter is a good fit, make sure you don’t immediately jump into the portfolio. The Application is equally important; personally I prefer to complete it first. Under the Admissions tab, you will find the link to the Application Requirements page, which lays out all the steps like a checklist. Either bookmark it or write them down so you can keep track what of you’ve completed!

3.) (ILLUSTRATION) PORTFOLIO HELP:

You will be uploading your pieces to ArtCenter’s SlideRoom. There’s a page on ArtCenter’s website that details what the portfolio requires, but I’ll copy and paste it so I can refer to it for the rest of my post. I’m writing this in 2020, so please check the site yourself in case there are changes. 

“Submit 10 to 15 figure drawings from a live model that include both gestural and more developed pieces. Other observational drawings from life are also required such as self-portraits or portraits of others, sketches of animals and scenes from nature and cityscapes. Include imaginative drawings that demonstrate your passion for and understanding of illustration in both color and black and white.

Submit three or more pieces that highlight drawing or painting skills, and show the development of a story or concept. Sketchbooks that display a range of interests and skills are welcome and we recommend a limit of 10 to 15 sketchbook pages submitted as one PDF.”

What if you don’t have any pieces that fit into this? Here are some of my ideas: 

Figure Drawing: If you can, sign up for figure drawing classes. Speaking as someone who has some art school experience, please don’t just search up nude figures and draw those for your portfolio, especially if you’ve never drawn figures before, unless you have absolutely no choice. That’s what I had done in high school, but taking actual figure drawing classes in college made me realize that having a teacher to give you advice and look for your mistakes helps you so much more. Not to mention, you will be training yourself how to quickly capture the human figure, sometimes in 1 minute or less.

Life Drawings/Observations: These are basically “cafe sketches” or observational drawings. Still lives count as long as they are polished. Googling pictures for you to draw for your portfolio should be a last resort! You don’t have to visit any where fancy to make a good portfolio piece; with practice, you can make an interesting drawing out of any subject. Start locally, and then try working out of your comfort zone if needed. First draw your friends, family, pets, rooms, or garden. Then you can move onto parks, zoos, and other public places. 

Sketchbook Pages: You can include less-polished life drawing sketches from your sketchbook in your portfolio. I also recommend sketching out your story ideas, any character designs, story boards, or comics. Be sure to include some color! Even if you think an idea is silly or dumb, sketch it anyways. You’ll then have a larger pool of sketches to choose for your portfolio.

Story Illustrations: Your illustrations do not all have to be paintings, but if you forgo the painting aspect, it should be a really strong drawing (ie with good line work and details.) Despite “illustration” being a broad term, what they are asking for aligns more with illustrations for books, and concept work for movies and games. To get inspiration, search up concept art for movies by Disney, Dreamworks, BlueSky, etc. Remember, don’t get caught too much in the scenery of your piece, your characters and their interactions in your illustration should be the main focus. Be sure to thumbnail your ideas (a rough drawing) and experiment with different composition, angles, and lighting before working on your final piece. If you are still not sure if your idea fits what ArtCenter wants, you can email an admissions counselor your work and ask for their feedback.

Tips I got from an admissions counselor: 

- Slideroom only allows 10-15 upload spaces, but there is a way to work around this if you have more than 15 pieces. You can upload PDF files; SlideRoom acts as though 1 PDF is the same as uploading one “artwork,” therefore only taking up 1 submission space even if your PDF has 10 slides on it. (Great for your figures and sketchbook! Either organize your pieces on Google Slides or PowerPoint, then save it as a PDF file.)

- You should have a mixture of traditional and digital work.

- Your sketchbook pages should feature some color even if they aren’t polished drawings.

- Aside from your illustrations, not everything in your portfolio has to be a finished drawing or “polished.” In fact, if your sketchbook has sketches of animals, landscapes, interior environments etc. that counts as a life drawing submission. 

- The presentation and order of your pieces on SlideRoom are important. Don’t have some random order like “sketchbook, paintings, animals, illustrations.” I don’t know if this is widely accepted at ArtCenter, but for my portfolio, I was told to order it like: Still life paintings, Illustrations, Sketchbook pages, Observation drawings, Figures. The only logic I gleaned from that was it was a gradual shift from the most polished work to the least. Ask a counselor if they have a preferred order.

-  Despite the minimum requirement for story illustrations being three, I was actually asked to do 4, as they felt it would make my portfolio stronger. 

4.) PORTFOLIO VIDEO ESSAY HELP:

Honestly, the site’s description couldn’t have said it any clearer. There is an entire page dedicated to its instructions, but I do have extra tips for this. SlideRoom will have its own page for you to directly upload your video file, but if the file is too big, the best solution is to upload your video essay to YouTube. Instead of submitting the video file directly, what I did was upload a PDF with the YouTube link to my video. (I made a Google Docs, copy and pasted the link, then saved it as a PDF. Yes it is allowed.) Just make sure your video is published publicly. If I can overcome my embarrassment, so can you.

5.) FINAL TIPS:

- Don’t try to study examples of accepted portfolios, as it may cause you to emulate their style or pieces in hopes of getting a higher chance of acceptance. Trust me when I say the reviewers can tell if your work lacks passion or your own creative input. 

- Find out which medium works best for you; some new passion may be discovered just from experimentation. For example, I struggled with figure drawing until I tried using Prismacolor colored pencils, which then became my go-to medium for figures. If you’re feeling bored or uninspired with one medium, go and try something new.

- PLEASE always email the admissions team for help if you’re stuck. You can even send an email asking if there were steps you missed preventing them from reviewing your application. I did, and it saved my butt. Furthermore, keeping in contact with the school in this manner helps to attach a face to an application, and may demonstrate to them that you’re really passionate about getting into the school.

I hope this was helpful, but don’t be afraid to message me with more questions! <3

[marginalgloss]

a beginner’s guide

I have been neglecting this blog in recent months. My last post was written in fits and starts over many, many weeks. I’ve been preoccupied with other things and, like many people right now, my productivity has ebbed and flowed. I haven’t stopped writing, and I certainly haven’t forgotten about this blog, but I confess that I’ve slightly given up on writing so comprehensively about every book I finish. Most of my time and energy in writing has gone towards trying to write a book about video games. (The subject is a bit more specific than that, but I don’t want to give the thing away just yet.)  

This is something I always thought I could do. I have been playing computer and video games since I was able to do anything at all. I have a lot of ideas on the subject. But it’s also quite difficult, not least because I never thought I wanted to write non-fiction. In fiction you can more or less do whatever you want, but in this other thing the problem of imposter syndrome sometimes seems (to me at least) to be overwhelming. How much do I need to cite? At what point does a generalisation become intolerable? Am I supposed to anticipate every potential objection or counter-argument in advance? Is my authority worth anything at all? Is it worth trusting my own experience, or is it all just, like, my opinion? 

Of course in asking all these questions I forget that I’ve spent years pottering around on this blog, actually doing all the non-fiction writing I am supposedly so worried about. But I still feel like I’m trying to un-learn all the habits of supposedly serious writing that I learned at university. I studied English Literature, which teaches a mode of formal discourse that is useful now only in the abstract, and mostly quite worthless in terms of creating something worthwhile outside of academia. The problem is basically one of tone. It’s one of what kind of book am I trying to write. 

I know what it’s not. It is not a history of games, and it isn’t an academic treatise. There might be a thesis, but it’s not a TED talk. I want it to describe what it feels like to encounter and experience games. I don’t want to try to second-guess player motivation from a distance, and I don’t want to study game design in the abstract, as if it were secretly the most interesting part of games. Above all I don’t want to fight battles on behalf of an imagined movement. There is no shortage of books arguing that games are (or aren’t) worthwhile, either as art or as tools for productivity or creativity or brain longevity or mental health. Some of these are quite good. But it seems to me like the arguments for the quality of games are omnipresent and overwhelming for anyone who cares to look. 

It’s strange, though, that ‘books about games’ are relatively rare. I know that there popular works of non-fiction on this topic, but I’m being a bit more specific: I mean this in the sense of ‘books about particular games’, and ‘books that take a thematic approach to what games do and how’. There are some interesting exceptions: You Died: The Dark Souls Companion by Keza McDonald and Jason Killingsworth comes to mind. There’s also the Boss Fight Books range of short-ish texts that typically focus on an author’s experience with a single game. But for the most part, books about games either fall into one of a few categories. You might get a general record of an author’s life in gaming that argues for the experiential benefits of games; or you might get a semi-academic thesis about games, often supported by evidence from psychological or sociological studies; or you might get a potted history of game development. Or some combination of the above. 

Which is fine. Some of these books are very good. But there aren’t many books of cultural criticism applied to games. Take the question of violence in video games: there are plenty of books which argue the case one way or the other about whether this is ‘harmful’ or not. It’s much harder to find books that forego this angle in favour of taking a long, hard look at the games themselves; that consider what it really means for a game to be called ‘violent’ in the first place, or why violent games can be satisfying and horrifying and amusing all at once. Too often what it feels like to play violent games becomes immediately subordinate to the question of what these games are supposedly doing to our brains, to our sensibilities, and to our sense of right and wrong – as if players weren’t aware of this in the first place – as if the effects of any work of art could only be considered by judging how people behave around it. 

Games are often portrayed as a sort of inscrutable ethical problem for modern society, as if they weren’t the product of human imagination at all. Often an accessible book about games will come loaded with disclaimers and framing devices intended to put the reader at ease, to reassure them that what they’re about to encounter won’t hurt them. It feels like there aren’t many books which try to take us inside specific games, to show us how they work, and to make the reader feel how they make the player feel. 

And that’s odd, in a way, because this kind of game criticism is omnipresent online. In the weeks after a major release, every gaming website will have a whole buffet of hot takes available. People are keen to produce stuff to support their favourite titles, sometimes for years afterwards. To pick a random example, the Mass Effect games are still enormously popular, and have spawned all kinds of novelisations and comic book spin-offs. Doubtless you can still find hundreds of thousands of words of opinion out there about why those games are good. But I don’t think anyone has written a book about Mass Effect.

You could argue that this is not especially unusual. Any of the following arguments could apply:

cultural criticism is best left to specialist magazines and journals

people who play video games do not (for the most part) read a lot of books

people who don’t play video games don’t want to read about games

people in general don’t want to read books about media which they aren’t likely to experience themselves. 

There is a sense in which the most successful games of this sort belong to the fans foremost. The culture that grows up around big games is fan culture. Movies have something of the same thing — especially since the Marvel and Star Wars movies exploded in popularity again — but that’s only one wing of the superstructure that is film culture. There are whole other wings dedicated to serious cinematic avant garde, to art films; you could spend a lifetime studying Hong Kong cinema and barely know a thing about Bollywood, and vice versa. Which is fine because film caters for taste at all levels. There are popular film magazines and blogs, serious journals about film, and occasionally works of critique that bust through into the mainstream: I’m thinking of stuff like Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s De Palma, about the director of the same name; and Room 237, about some of the more outlandish theories that have grown up around Kubrick’s film of The Shining. 

Granted, those examples were only moderately successful. They’re semi-popular but not exactly mainstream. But my point is that it’s inconceivable for me to imagine something similar coming out of the video game community. Whether it’s Ready Player One or the latest Netflix documentary High Score, games are stuck retelling their own histories from scratch each time. Which is not to say that new and fascinating stories can’t be brought to light — but so often games media aimed at a general audience begins with a long, laborious retread of game history. 

There is very good, very specific stuff out there, but it’s hard to find. Video games are very good at reaching people who already play games. Many game critics are good at the same thing. But neither are very good at bringing the most interesting aspects of games to people who have no prior interest. The Beginner’s Guide is one of my favourite games of all time, and I think it’s one of the finest ‘games about games’ ever made; but so much of it is ‘inside baseball’ of the kind which would be incredibly difficult to explain for someone not already steeped in it. YouTube is increasingly a great source for insightful video essays about games that go far beyond ‘hot take’ culture, but in a similar way, it’s kind of impossible for an audience to find any of this stuff if they’re not already out there searching for it. 

Is there a way out of this? I don’t know. Maybe it’s worth a shot.

[marshmallowgoop]

But Do You REALLY Want to Be Internet Famous

A theatre professor of mine once talked at length about YouTube stardom. He said that it’s the dream of a good chunk of young people today.

And I get it, I do. When I first dipped my toes into the world of Internet content creation in my teens, YouTube was never initially a goal... but as the years went by, it became clear that plain-old-oatmeal blogging was falling out of fashion. If I wanted to reach a larger audience online, the way to do it was to kiss text posts goodbye and embrace video editing. A YouTube channel has been on my To Do list for what feels like a millennia.

YouTube, Twitch, and other video-hosting sites are just attractive to people like me—you know, the kind of folks who don’t know how to shut up and want to believe that their opinions are worth listening to. You don’t have to have a degree to YouTube, you don’t have to go through a peer-review process to stream on Twitch, and you can be your own boss in terms of what you want to say and what you want to create. Sure, you’re not gonna have the credibility (nor the stability) of a permanent, “real-deal” career in the field of your choice if online videoing is all you do, but the freedom and flexibility of the pure Internet content creator is appealing.

And, personally, while I sometimes feel I should have pursued academia instead of devoting thousands of hours of my life to this blog, I’m also not particularly interested in being seen only by other academics. I want anyone to be able to interact with my work... and I’m not gonna get that via academic journals.

So, I get it. I wanna YouTube like all the cool kids, too.

But be a YouTube star?

Yeah... can’t say I’m down with that.

The more I Internet, the more being Internet Famous seems appallingly dreadful. When you’re Internet Famous, no matter who you are, there will be people out there who will do anything to slander you. They’ll go back a decade in your Tweet history to find anything that could be even slightly morally suspect. They’ll feel entitled to personal details about you—to your race, your sexuality, your gender identity—and grow angry if you don’t wish to share such private matters that are your own business. They’ll examine every little thing you do as though you are a specimen under their microscope, and I can’t imagine even a day goes by that someone doesn’t throw hate upon you. Maybe being an Internet content creator is freeing, fiercely independent... but being a famous Internet content creator is perhaps anything but. It’s just as scary and restrictive as being famous anyway else.

To those who have known me for a while, it’s no secret that I received my first-ever barrage of anonymous hate last year. These kinds of situations aren’t odd online, of course—in fact, I felt it was quite belated, especially considering my massive array of Unpopular Opinions. I figured it would happen eventually, and I hoped I’d be able to handle it well. I don’t like brushing off any pushback as unwarranted, I’m always open to criticism, and I know answering rudeness with rudeness doesn’t help things. I know that when these things happen, people often sigh at the person receiving the backlash and say, “Well, you absolutely deserve to be called out for those Bad Takes. If you’d just apologize and be better, you wouldn’t have to deal with the abuse.”

Spoilers: I did not handle any of my own situation well. At all. But I did a lot “right.” I apologized profusely for speaking poorly. I devoted hours to composing a new essay to better explain myself and make amends. I tried so hard to be better, more thoughtful, more considerate.

And none of it mattered. A little sleuthing revealed that my harassers were apparently a group of friends who had “meant it at first,” but later found it a fun game. It was a joy to torture me and drag me down. My apologies didn’t matter, and my intentions were worth less than a smashed candy bar on a grocery store bargain rack.

And perhaps I had known it before, but it didn’t fully dawn on me until that moment that it literally does not matter what you do. If there’s a world of people watching, there will always be someone who feels you deserve to be hated and abused. There will always be someone who is disgusted by your mere existence. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

The hate has stopped for me. But its effects are far from gone. I’m suspicious of all anonymous compliments in my inbox. Is it just those same people, prepared to laugh at me for believing their lies? I’m afraid to trust anything or anyone. My heart pounds every time I get a new mail. What did I do wrong this time? I’m scared and exhausted. And I’ve only received about 50 anonymous hate messages in my entire time of being an Internet content creator.

So, how can it feel to have my experiences multiplied by 10? 100? 1,000? 10,000? How can it feel to deal with what I dealt with for a few months every single day? 

Maybe you grow numb to it. Maybe it gets better with time. Maybe the support you receive outweighs the hate so much that it’s all worth it to you.

But as for me? Internet fame is a horrifying goal I could only dream of reaching in the first place... and I don’t think I ever want to reach that dream. Does anyone, truly?

Well, you’re stronger than me if you do.

Because I’d love to attract a wider audience and impact more people, and I’m always working to improve so that I can do so. But the very idea of getting to Internet Famous levels scares the crap out of me. It’s not at all a dream in my eyes—it’s a nightmare.

[tinystudyingbean]

Study Tips

When I began tutoring back in 2010 I would recommend that my students use the study methods that worked for me; sometimes this went really really well and the student thrived with the techniques I tought them, other times what worked for me didn’t work for a student and they would get frustrated, and one of them just gave up studying in the subjects I was tutoring them in all together because they “couldn’t study the right way” which forced me to try a different approach. I did some research and realized something I’ve been hit over the head with time and again since then what works for one person may not be what works for another. This list of study tips is a list I’ve compiled over years of interacting with a lot of different types of students and hopefully someone will find something useful in here for them.

Focus on what works for you. If a certain method of studying makes you less likely to actually study ditch it. Does your friend say your method of studying is a bad way to study but that method helps you retain the information, ignore your friend’s advice. Do what you have to do to study well and keep studying, you’ll thank yourself at test time.

Create a schedule. This tip applies to almost all students (I have yet to run into the person this doesn’t help in some way but I am sure there is someone out there that this doesn’t work for). How you set up this schedule is entirely up to you and your personal preference, and I will be making a separate post on some of the best scheduling methods I’ve seen people use for those of you who haven’t practiced creating a schedule for yourself before or haven’t found a method that works well for you yet.

Establish a regular sleep pattern. I cannot stress this one enough. Our brains need sleep so they can absorb information and commit it to memory. Our bodies need sleep so they can fight off diseases and recover from a day of hard work (and yes even days where you stay in studying are hard work for your body). When you don’t get enough sleep your memory and attention span lag and you are more susceptible to mental and physical ailments which is dangerous and even if it weren’t it is definitely bad for your ability to study effectively. Give yourself a bed time and stick to it every night unless something major pops up. It’s okay to cheat on this occasionally but most nights you should be sticking to your routine.

Go to class, unless your sick, something physically prevents you from going (a broken down car for example) or there is an emergency. If one of these things happens email you professor politely explaining the situation. If you don’t go to class you can’t expect to do well in the class, but you also have to take care of yourself (because trying to study or take a test with a 101 degree fever doesn’t go well, trust me I’ve been there).

PAY ATTENTION IN CLASS! Seriously this is the single best thing you can do for yourself when you are studying, if you don’t pay attention in class you will miss out on the clues professors and teachers drop as to what is important and what isn’t. Also students who pay attention take better notes, and class notes can be incredibly helpful study tools. So focus and put your phone away. (The exception to this is if the class is directly based on the readings or you are 100% sure you understand the material and can ace the test, at which point I give you permission to work on other stuff on your computer in class, just be productive and keep at least one ear on the professor in case they call on you).

Make friends with someone in your class! Not only will this give you a new friend to hang out with, which is always good, having a friend in class can help you study and do well in the class. Having a friend in class will possibly give you a study partner, a partner for group projects, and someone to turn to if you miss class for some reason.

Do the assigned readings and take notes. Notes help you to remember the most important things about the reading without having to go back and reread the entire thing when you go to study for the exam. Your notes do not have to be elaborate, though they can be if that helps you. Personally my favorite method was writing down the main argument (thesis) of the reading, the main supporting argument(s)/evidence, one question the reading left me with, maybe a quote (especially if I thought I would use the piece in a paper later), and one short essay question about the reading in my note book under a heading that stated the title of the reading and the authors’ names. Some people would do the same on notecards. Other methods include printing a hard copy and underlining/highlighting the important information and writing notes in the margins, QQTP (Question, Quote, Talking Point), and writing a short summary of the paper in paragraph format. Whatever helps you study and retain the information in the readings is what you need to do!

Textbook readings are a little different but the principle of using whatever note taking method works best for you still applies. Some people prefer to mark up their textbook so the most important information is easily visible when they go back while studying and review, while others prefer to take meticulous notes in a notebook summarizing the information in each chapter. Some people find doing the practice questions in the textbook helpful tools to prepare for the exam, other people find this bogs them down too much and they don’t get any studying done besides the practice questions (even if you are usually this type of person if you are taking a math or science heavy class including things like economics or accounting and you are not a math or science major do the practice problems, trust me in those fields unless your professor tells you not to use the textbook the practice problems will help you). Some people find it useful to write down any vocab with their definitions in their notes, other people find this tedious and unhelpful.

If you don’t understand something either ask for clarification in class (I guarantee you someone else has the same question, and your teacher/professor will not bite your head off for asking them a question so long as you are respectful about it) or go to office hours. Your teachers/professors want you to succeed and they want you to learn. When you understand the material studying it is a lot easier!

If your teacher doesn’t give you a study guide create your own! Make a list of the most important things that will be covered in the exam. In math or science fields this will include formulas, theories, methods, and data for the discipline. In a liberal arts field this will include things like people, ideas, events, dates, places, and things specific to the field. Language study guides should include the grammar structures you learned, the themes your lessons covered (good, places, weather, business transactions whatever the case may be) and the most important vocabulary for those topics.

Make practice questions. If you exams are likely to have an essay look at the main themes you have covered and create essay questions related to those themes (and answer them). Try your had at creating questions that may appear on the exam itself as you study and then towards the end of the session go back and try to answer those questions without consulting your notes. If you find yourself having trouble with certain types of questions you know what you need to review again (and maybe go to office hours to consult your professor about).

Rewrite your notes. Some people find rewriting their notes to be tedious and pointless. Other people like making their notes pretty and the visual things they add helps them to recall the information later. Other people find reviewing and revising the information in their notes by either rewriting them or typing them up (or writing them down from the computer based notes they took) to be immensely helpful (and a good way to prevent losing all of your notes if you lose your notebook- I did that once in high school and it was the worst).

Make flash cards. Some people absolutely love flash cards for all kinds of information and think of them as the ultimate study tool. And for some people they absolutely can be! You can keep them in your back pocket and review them on the bus, in the supermarket line, and wherever else you go. Easy on the go studying with none of the hassle of varying notebooks everywhere you go. I’ll be honest though, outside of vocabulary study and maybe notes on certain reading I’ve never been very good with flash cards, they just aren’t the best way for me to learn, and most of the people I’ve tutored over the years either make flash cards on their own to review at home and come to me for bigger broader picture stuff or they aren’t big flash card people either so my tips may not be the best on this one.

Read out loud. Whether it’s your notes, the assigned readings, the textbook, or assignments reading out loud can help you retain information. By engaging another one of your senses you give your brain another avenue to remember what you studied, and it can force you to slow down enough to make sure you are reading the information correctly.

Make up little sayings, mnemonic devices, stories, or mental pictures to help you remember key pieces of information. Remember Roy G. Biv? Yeah that’s still the only way I remember the order of the colors of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). Little mental tricks like that can be very effective ways to help you remember information later! The more unique or ridiculous the image/story is the more likely it is to stick in your mind! But again as with anything if this isn’t how your brain works don’t try and force it, use the tricks that work for you!

Watch YouTube videos on the subject you are studying. Sometimes you need someone besides the professor to explain something to you and YouTube can be an awesome resource to help you learn! For example I used the CrashCourse Biology videos to help me study for the AP Bio exam when I was in high school and I understood the material significantly better after watching them.

Make use of the technology available to you! There are great study apps like Quizlet and productivity apps like Forest that can help you to maximize your study time.

Try teaching what you’ve learned to someone else. If it makes sense to them after you’ve explained it you probably have a good grasp on the material. Bonus if you have a good relationship with your parents or grandparents you can call them and explain it to them, they’ll be happy you called and excited to hear you talking about what you learned or that you thought they were a good person to help you study.

Try not to cram the night before. Everyone has been here, and don’t beat yourself up to much if you wind up doing this but instead of cramming the night before try to study a little at a time (even if it’s just 15 minutes) every day for 2 weeks before an exam. You’re more likely to retain more information if you spread it out and see it a few times and in a few different ways before the exam than if you study really hard all at once the day of the exam. And even if you do wind up cramming for the exam try to stick relatively close to your normal bedtime. Studying all night does you no good if you go to the exam too tired to think straight or if you sleep through the exam because you fell asleep at 6:30 in the morning on top of your books.

Take study breaks, but set alarms to hold you accountable to keeping such breaks to a reasonable time frame. It’s never good when your fifteen minute break turns into a three hour break because you got sucked into social media. But at the same time studying until your brain turns to mush and you are no longer actually comprehending what you’re reading isn’t going to help you either.

Figure out what environment you study best in. Some people study best alone in complete silence, others study best in groups or in noisy areas like coffee shops. Library, coffee shop, outside, church basement, bedroom, or student center? Alone or in a group? Music or no music? Wherever and however you study best make a conscious effort to put yourself in that environment and take advantage of the time you can make to study.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT PRODUCTIVITY

Ditto for PayPal. The key question, I realized it would probably have to be just one valuation. The founders all learned to do every job in the company. Instead he can ask What would make the painting more interesting to people? I only thought of when I sat down to write them.1 It does not, for example. With Socrates, Plato, and particularly Aristotle, this tradition turned a corner.

Among them was Frederick's of Hollywood, which gave us valuable experience dealing with heavy loads on our servers. Few were sufficiently correct that people have forgotten who discovered what they discovered.2 It means these ideas are invisible to most people your age, others that will appeal to most people because it only recently became feasible. Economist J.3 2, because that also seems to be to start with good people, to make something customers want. It's often mistakenly believed that medieval universities were mostly seminaries. Technical tweaks may also help them to grasp what's special about your technology.

It was impressive even to ask the questions they asked were new to them, or cut them off.4 Will I ever read it?5 There is room for a new search engine, when there were already about 10, and they did it. Popular magazines made the period between the spread of literacy and the arrival of TV the golden age of the essay. It's not for the discovery that most previous philosophy was a waste of time?6 Those hours after the phone stops ringing are by far the best for getting work done. If you're curious about something, trust your instincts. Meaning everyone within this world was expected to seem more or less the same.

When they appeared it seemed as if search was a mature market, dominated by big players who'd spent millions to build their brands: Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, Infoseek, Altavista, Inktomi. Instead of trying to discover them because they're useful.7 Whatever you make will have to be disciplined about not letting your hypotheses harden into anything more. In the humanities you can either avoid drawing any definite conclusions e. Those whose jobs require them to judge art, like curators, mostly resort to euphemisms like significant or important or getting dangerously close realized. At this stage, all most investors expect is a brief description of what you plan to do and how you're going to replace email.8 I answered twenty, I could see at the time, a lot of valuable advice about business, and also did all the legal work of getting us set up as a company. When people sit down to watch a show, they want to live in the suburbs.

If you go to see Silicon Valley, what you'll see are buildings.9 Design by committee is a synonym for bad design. Will I ever read it?10 Customers loved us. And they each have.11 That may seem a frivolous reason to choose one language over another. Restaurants with great food seem to prosper no matter what you do. Like most startups, we changed our plan on the fly.

When you're just typing expressions into the toplevel, you want to invest in them.12 Writing was one of the founders we funded asked me why we started Y Combinator is neither selfish nor virtuous. If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything, and that's likely to be done with levers and cams and gears are now done with loops and trees and closures.13 The only place to look was in the tradition of skateboards or bicycles rather than medical devices. They've applied for a lot of investors hated the idea, but the overall experience is much better than the soul-crushing suburban sprawl. If a nonprofit or government organization had started a project to index the web, Google at year 1 is the limit of what they'd have produced. Among them were Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, who went on to found Intel, and Eugene Kleiner, who founded the VC firm Kleiner Perkins. Aristotle's goal was to find one angel to act as the lead investor.

Partly because, as components of oligopolies themselves, the corporations knew they could safely pass the cost on to their customers, because their competitors would have to as well.14 So it is with design.15 The real problem is that you look smug. The difference between then and now is that now I understand why Berkeley is probably not worth trying to understand its implications. It would have been better off; not only wouldn't these guys have broken anything, they'd have gotten a lot more done. It would be a curious state of affairs if you could get to the same spot. So if you're developing technology for money, you're probably not going to use TCP/IP just because everyone else does. In the old days, you could create a situation indistinguishable from you being that manufacturer, at least working on problems of minor importance.

That will tend to produce results that annoy people: there's no use in telling people things they already believe, and people answering it often aren't clear in their own mind how much is deliberate.16 Curiously enough, what got Segway into this problem was that customers didn't want the product. At the time it seemed the future.17 There's nothing more valuable than the advice of someone whose judgement you trust. It didn't shake itself free till a couple decades ago, geography was destiny for cities.18 Arguably it's an interesting failed experiment. The American way is to make money by creating wealth, you're always going to be fighting a losing battle against increasing variation in productivity.19 So there could be other ways to attract them, but they were only a little more out of their sales channels. The result was that I wrote it. Not any more.

Notes

I remember are famous flops like the intrusive ads popular on Delicious, but explain that's what they campaign for. But you're not allowed to ask, what you call the market. These two regions were the case. It will seem more interesting than random marks would be very promising, because the proportion of the Web was closely tied to the Pall Mall Gazette.

I'm not saying it's impossible to write your dissertation in the time 1992 the entire West Coast that still requires jackets: The Duty of Genius, Penguin, 1991, p. As Secretary of Labor Statistics, the big winners are all about hitting outliers, are better college candidates. Bad math is merely an upper bound on a weekend and sit alone and think.

Gary and I don't know of one investor who for some students to get elected with a company. That way most reach the stage where they're sufficiently convincing well before Demo Day. I was not just the local builders built everything in exactly the opposite: when we were quite sore from VCs attempting to probe our nonexistent database orifice.

And it would not know his name. It's conceivable that a skilled vine-dresser was worth about 125 to 150 drachmae.

So 80 years sounds to me like someone adding a few that are only doing angel deals to generate everything else in the next round is high, so it may have been seen mentioning the site was about bands.

This phenomenon may account for a long thread are rarely seen, when we created pets. This point is that the highest returns, it's implicit that this was hard to avoid using it, whether you have to be spread out geographically.

So where do we draw the line that philosophy is nonsense. You also have to resort to raising money. Most of the reasons angels like to invest at a public company CEOs were J.

Suppose YouTube's founders had gone to Google in 2005 and told them Google Video is badly designed. I replace the url with that of whatever they copied. Even as late as Newton's time it takes forever.

Digg is notorious for its lack of results achieved by alchemy and saying its value was as much as people in any case, because they are to be a quiet contentment.

An investor who invested earlier had been trained that anything hung on a hard technical problem. One sign of a handful of lame investors first, and b not allow them to tell them everything. Algorithms that use it are called naive Bayesian. Xxvii.

You're investing your own morale, you need a higher growth rate to impress are not mutually exclusive. This essay was written before Firefox. Google's site.

Founders also worry that taking time to come up with elaborate rationalizations. Words we use for good and bad technological progress is accelerating, so they made more that year from stock options, of course. The two 10 minuteses have 3 weeks between them.

A more accurate or at least once for that reason. This is one of a handful of consulting firms that rent out big pools of foreign programmers they bring in on H1-B visas.

Confucius claimed proudly that he transformed the field they describe. There is archaeological evidence for large settlements earlier, but one by one they die and their hands.

If you wanted to go to work with founders create a great idea as something you need to be actively curious.

The facts about Apple's early history are from an angel-round board, consisting of two founders and one of the biggest discoveries in any case, because you couldn't do the opposite: when we got to the World Bank, Doing Business in 2006, http://doingbusiness. Acquisitions fall into in the room, and the super-angels hate to match.

Is what we need to go to grad school you always see when restrictive laws are removed. It would be unfortunate.

People were more dependent on banks for capital for expansion.

What they forget is that the web and enables a new Lisp dialect called Arc that is not so much control, and the exercise of stock the VCs I encountered when we were working on what you have to be about 200 to send a million dollars out of the canonical could you build for them, if you get stock as if you'd invested at a 3 million cap, but they seem like a month might to an adult. But Goldin and Margo think market forces in the 1960s, leaving less room for startups that are or feel weak. Sometimes a competitor will deliberately affect more interest than they expected and they hope will be the fact by someone who doesn't understand what you're working on your thesis. Even in Confucius's time it filters down to you.

[eddtober]

Eddtober Masterpost: About, Rules, Boundries and Prompt Lists.

I hadn’t done anything about it until now due to no response - however the wonderful @ldhenzel​ suggested that I do it this way for mobile users. 

About Eddtober

Eddtober is a list of prompts made in an effort to encourage the Eddsworld Fandom to spread their wings of creativity beyond the norms that they are used to, during the month of October.

It is all without harming others or causing drama, a neutral ground for all fans of Eddsworld to come and have fun, no matter what side of a discourse they’re in.

It hopes to promote inspiration beyond the usual angsty and over-dramatised content, to revive a spirit in Eddsworld that hasn’t been seen in many years, and to stretch the invitation to all who can create.

Eddtober calls not only the artists who have a talent for drawing, painting and so forth, but also: the authors (fanfics, journalists, essayists, diarists, poets, ramblers), the cosplayers, the video-makers (animators, video essays, memers, youtubers) and all those who want to be inspired with unconventional creativity.

Eddtober’s motto for the fandom it came from is this: To come forth, be inspired and break from the old and the mold!

With that out the way, buckle up. This post is gonna be a long one under the cut.

RULES 

Base Rules need to be set so everyone can participate in Eddtober safely and in a fun way. Please read them carefully!

Always tag it with #eddtober. Gore and related NSFW is allowed in the challenge, but please tag it as #Eddtober gore, etc. Also, no shortenings or reimaginings of those tags, so the minors on this site don’t find it on accident. Though many of us may be over 18, please keep these things in mind.  

Be Sensitive and Respectful to Others. I know many of us here in this fandom can take easy offence to certain types of art, so please consider and think on your creative piece before you post.

Credit Where Due. This should be blatantly obvious right now, but please, please don’t steal other’s creative fanwork or post it without credit. Always have permission from the creator to post something of their’s, and always have their username when you post it, not just ‘credit to the artist’. If you do not follow this, actions will be taken for your consequences.

Keep yourself chill. You can do one prompt for Eddtober, some of the prompts or all of them - up to you! It’s understandable if life gets in the way. The goal of Eddtober is not to do every prompt, but to be inspired to create fan-content in a way you usually wouldn’t have.

Spread the word. This is less of a rule and more of a personal request from Admin Panda, but since she doesn’t have many social media accounts you’d expect, spreading word of Eddtober would mean a LOT, so they can join in the fun too!

Sharing is caring. Reblogging and sharing from your fellow creators doing Eddtober would be great to give them a motivation and confidence boost!

Go Beyond the Boundries of Your Imagination. The whole purpose of Eddtober is to promote new, fresh things to come up in the Eddsworld fandom and break a cycle of the same old that’s been there for a while. Take a leap, spread your wings, do your best, and go have fun.

BOUNDRIES

Most of this list will be related to Rule Two of Eddtober:

Be Sensitive and Respectful to Others.

Quote:

‘I know many of us here in this fandom can take easy offence to certain types of art, so please consider and think on your creative piece before you post.‘

Whilst Eddtober is a fun, neutral place to spread our creative wings, there are boundries that need to be taken in order to keep everyone safe. Which means certain parts that are usually seen as ‘common’ within the Eddsworld Fandom will not be acceptable in the challenge.

Edd Gould’s death. Admin Panda wishes to make it clear that creative pieces that draws clear lines to Edd’s passing IS NOT okay. This includes Edd in hospital for cancer, Angel Edd or any AU that depicts him as a divine being of any sort (including Blessworld) unless Tom, Matt and/or Tord are also similar divine beings in the AU. Here at Eddtober, Edd's life is something to be celebrated, not his death. While Admin Panda isn’t 100% offended by this, many others are and it should be more recognised as such.

Sinsworld. Believe it or not, the sinsworld tag was specifically made back in the day to keep the porn out of the main. But due to a certain in-fandom event, this intended action has been long-lost. Because of all of these events, any sinsworld (porn, lewds and related NSFW) that’s Sinspired by the Eddtober prompts WILL NOT be accepted into the event by any means. This is because many in this fandom are minors/underage and more who are 18+ are repulsed to porn and such (Admin Panda is part of the latter group). So please, it is fine to be sexually inspired by the prompts, PLEASE keep your Sinsworld content away from the Eddtober tag - don’t put both tags into that post, essentially.

Abusive/Self-Harm Creative Content. No. Just. No. Death or pain like this isn’t allowed to be depicted in the challenge and should never be romanticised or supported. Eddtober aims to be a safe and uplifting space for all creative people, no matter what their space is at the moment.

More sensitivities and boundries will be added onto this list as Admin Panda recieves questions and requests for this area through the askbox here.

PROMPT LIST

Quick reminder: when this list says ‘create something for’, it’s not just referring to fanart - it refers to any medium, digital, traditional or unconventional, that can be used. The challenge here is to be creative as possible, not to stay conventional.

The List features Admin Panda’s Commentary. Some useless, some useful.

Create something for Edd. (Not his real-life counterpart, but the character. That needed some clearing up based on 2017’s results.)

Create something for Tom.

Create something for Matt

Create something for any pre-legacy season episode, except WTFuture. (You can do WTFuture if you want, but seeing that much of this fandom is currently made of people who came in after The End… It’d be worth having a crack at pre-legacy episodes.)

Create something for the crew’s symbols.

Create something for Superhero Alter Egos! (It doesn’t have to stop at PowerEdd’s canon either! Go nuts! Give Edd and his friends new superhero alibis and outfits!)

Create something for Supervillain Alter Egos! (Reminder that it doesn’t have to stop at the ‘Green/Blue/Purple/Red Leader scenario! Again, go nuts! Get wacky if you must!)

Create something for Minor characters of the show. (Except the Neighbours - they already have their own prompt.)

Create something for descendants of the main four guys. (Sure, you can make it about the love children of your favourite ships, but the point of this prompt specifically is to not be ship-related. See if you can come up with descendant characters from the bloodlines of the main four.)

Create something for Tord. (He’s late in this list for a reason. Trust me.)

Create something for the neighbours of 29 Dirdum Lane. Are Kim and Katya still there, or are there newbies in the street?

Create something for the neighbours of 25 Dirdum Lane.

Create something for unlucky things happening to the guys, or one of them. Feel free to go as dark or as humourous as you like!

Create something for genderbends of the guys, maybe as if the Ellsworld we know never existed. Or you can stick to canon, up to you.

This prompt is a wild card. Do with it as you wish. (In 2017 everyone was told to quote: ‘go whole hog on this’. The next thing we all knew, everybody literally drew pigs with the guys. That wasn’t supposed to be literally taken, but by god it was hilarious.)

Create something for your crew. Whether you’re the main character with your friends or have OCs taking that place or a mix of both is up to you.

Create something for an AU of Eddsworld. You can make one up on the spot, or even fan content for an AU that already exists is cool too. (As of rule number two of Eddtober, the Blessworld AU will not be accepted for this prompt. I know it is a popular AU, but if you have any issues with this, please contact me in the blog asks myself.)

Create something for Eddsworld as a video game. Whether it’s concepts and covers for your own ideas or fanart for games in the making such as Eddsworld Armageddon, up to you.

Create something for Todd, or whoever the ‘Tord’ figure is of 25 Dirdum Lane.

Create something for a Saloonatics-WTFuture Crossover. (What? Shenanigans could be made here, guys. Just take it!)

Create something for the future selves of the guys. Or if you want to take it up a notch, make your own versions of them! Have them all be hobos (#HoBrosforlife), or have cola not be banned in the future… up to you!

The End who? Create and elaborate on how you would finish off the Eddsworld Legacy season. (For the purposes of this prompt, I can accept an angsty end for this, but I personally do not recommend it. The Eddsworld fandom has had enough unnecessary angst already.)

Create something for Zanta. (I guess you could call him a Nightmare Before Christmas, then.)

Create something for an Eddsworld movie. Whether it’s stuff for the Eddsworld Fan Movie or your own ideas, up to you!

Create something for the deal with Tom’s eyes. If you want to call them that.

Pick a song, any song, and put that on repeat. Use it as inspiration to create something in relation to Eddsworld.

Create something for Edd Gould himself. Not his character in Eddsworld, the real-life person.

An obligatory prompt without Eddtober in the beginning: create something for Edd’s birthday. (This was made into a prompt and will permanently remain as one as Edd’s birthday shouldn’t be taken away from today.)

Create something for someone/multiple someones in the fandom who inspire you - even the small artists and writers and such who are just starting out!

Are you afraid of the dark? Are you getting goosebumps? Create scary/monstrous/terrifying things happening to the guys. Interpretation and how far you go with it is up to you.

Happy Halloween! Create something about the guys on this special spooky day. Interpretation is up to you.

If you have any questions, concerns or queries as to all of this, don’t be hesitant to come shoot an ask through this blog. Have fun and a safe Eddtober!

[etudaire]

A big bang of “how to” stuff

There I was again tonight forcing laughter faking smiles so I made up this long ass post for y'all!

So you a potato. Me a potato. World conquered by we potatoes. But potato need survival tips. So your brotato (get it? Bro potato?) help you out. Yay potato. Go go potato.

Study related stuff :

1. Get good grades

Catch concepts, not chapters. Your portion is most likely gonna be super vast, so it’s helpful to know a little something from every chapter rather than knowing just 50% of your syllabus.

Figure out which concepts are important and master them.

Keep all assignments completed at least 1 day before submission date. This isn’t always possible but trust me if you do this you’re guaranteeing marks for proper submission. Job done early? Proof check and add touches to enhance that essay!

Let the teachers know that you’re working hard. I actually passed math because my math teacher knew I was working super hard on my math skills. Participate in the class, gather a bunch of doubts and then dump them on your teacher when the chapter ends.

Try not to miss lectures because chances are you’ll remember that silly mnemonic your friend made up in class and get the answer correct.

Analysis of your exam type is super important. Want me to make a long ass post about it?

2. Be more productive

Having a stuydjo/bujo by your side helps hella lot.

Plan plan plan. Lists, organise lists and colour code them. Basically become Monica Geller Bing and you’re set for life.

Motivational quotes from pinterest almost make me guilty for not being productive and force me to do something.

Before starting your study session, dance around to upbeat music for like 5 minutes. You’ll see the difference I promise.

Seek out inspiration from your smart friends /tumblr friends /people you look up to by constantly reminding yourself about them. I always think of hermione granger because even randomly picturing her with books in my mind ignites that badass boss feeling complying me to study tf up.

3. Manage your time

Studyjo/bujo saves your life.

Wear a watch all the damn time, it will remind you of how much time you’re spending doing nothing. You’ll end up saving several extra minutes!

List out what you’re gonna do every hour of the day on a sticky note and refer to it when you feel lazy.

Get a super nice friend /parent /sibling who will constantly remind you to utilise your time.

Think of time as currency and pretend that it’s all a game where you need to save up as much money as you can to become a billionaire. Save up your time and become rich af.

4. Avoid procrastinating

Stduyjo/bujo again. You know the drill now.

A little bit of exercise before starting work generally works you up and sets the correct mood.

Knowing how ahead your friends are from you often makes you wanna catch up so try getting that motivation.

Set goals + rewards that actually matter to you. Maybe a face care spa day isn’t your thing but munching on a snickers bar is. Treat yo self.

Tell someone a detailed plan of what you are going to accomplish the next day. Now whenever you see that person you’ll want to prove to them that you’re doing what you promised. Or the guilt may drive you too.

Appearance related stuff :

1. Look more put together

Try the lipstick trick. There are days when you do not have the time /want to put on makeup, so just put on a lipstick that matches your outfit and you’ll automatically create an illusion of being more put together, boss af and fabulous.

Try out cheap (potato can’t afford sorry) but elegant accessories. If it’s a necklace try tucking it under the collar of your shirt and see the magic. Stick to one staple accessory that’s gonna be your trademark.

Tame that mane potato. Your hair isn’t gonna detangle itself. You gotta do it. I mean, don’t you love your hair?

Minimalistic colours rock. Some outfits never go old like flannels or white shirts or black dresses.

2. Feel beautiful

The lipstick does the trick for me.

Putting my hair in a sky high ponytail makes me feel like I’m a queen or something.

Save little compliments for yourself as reminders and when you get them you’ll feel 10x more beautiful than before.

Mind related stuff :

1. Deal with burnout/slump

Try to accomplish super tiny stuff. Break down every task into micromolecular basics.

Give yourself a ted talk. It works.

Sometimes the best way of dealing with burnout is by detoxing from the thing that caused burnout. Stay away form books and after some time you’ll actually want to study.

2. Study with slumps/mental illness

Step one is to finish homework /assignments. If you can concentrate on them, you’re good to go.

Do not take up a lot of load, just skimming through textbooks, reviewing notes, going over flashcards should do the trick.

If you desperately need to get shit done, just ignore the fact that you do not want to do it. It’s harsh on your mind but desperate times require desperate measures.

Avoid forcing yourself to study because you’ll not retain info like that.

Take it easy. But consistently. Maybe just one topic a day. But do not miss a day. A steady everyday practice goes long way in the future.

3. Strengthen self control

There are several apps that can help you with this, like forest. My top pick is the Tide app which has a gorgeous interface and super aesthetic timers with new pictures everyday. I shit you not every time I quit my pomodoro I feel the guilt of having killed 1000 puppies its worse and I avoid doing that at all costs.

If you study in your room, keep your phone in the kitchen for some time. Your lazy ass is less likely to get up and use the phone.

Switching the phone off before starting a study session works because I care for my phone like a baby and it feels horrible to switch it on and off and on and off.

Practice 30 minutes of digital detox everyday. You don’t have to study at that time, just stay away from everything that is technology. Read and book, eat a fruit, make a sandwich, paint, sing, dance, exercise. Study if you want. Just no gadgets.

4. Deal with stress

Yoga works. Potato body ain’t that flexible so just breathing exercises for a start is also enough.

Highly recommended : brain dump every night before sleeping can ensure that you’ll not stay up too late pondering over the meaning of your existence and world politics.

Having a hearty talk with someone you trust will also lift weight off your chest.

Pin point the cause of your stress and annihilate the problem. Slay it.

Life related stuff :

1. Drink more water

Carry a cool ass bottle of water with you every frigging where.

Make it a rule to have a drink everytime you go to the loo or you take a bath /shower.

Replace one of your daily caffeines /sugars with water. You don’t have to get rid of coffee because that’s just non potato ish, but maybe that third cup could be replaced with water.

Try a game thingy. Maybe everytime the word ‘procrastination’ pops in your mind take a drink. Wow, I’m so creative *sighs for eternities*.

2. Be more healthy

5 minute stretches right after getting up works you up.

Try one of those YouTube videos of 15 minute workouts. You can have 3 such workouts through the day and call yourself a fit potato.

Replacing one packet of junk food with nuts/fruits also works.

Everytime you hear someone say something related to money, have a banana. Random much? Nope, bananas are known to increase hormones that make you happy in your body, meaning you’ll feel full and happy. Maybe offer the person a banana too.

3. Be more happy

Eat bananas!

Take pictures of things you love, not things your followers love.

Puppies are a source of eternal joy.

Reading goofy/cheesy/romance books make you giggle and feel good in general.

Watching cheesy films or good ass romcoms works just well.

Friends was created for a reason.

Writing down what you accomplished today gives a sense of pride and satisfaction. Take that shit.

Tumblr has shitposts made basically to make you happy.

4. Find your true calling /figuring tf out what you wanna do with your life

Lists lists lists. Subjects you love, you hate, you’re good at, you suck at.

Consulting your teachers, family etc and find out what they think you’re good at. Sometimes other people can see traits of yours better than you.

Career tests rock.

You’ll figure it out in the end somehow.

And that’s about it for now folks, hope this helps. See y'all laterz~

Etudaire ♥

[admissionsmadness]

College Admissions Cheaters Often Win

The biggest myth that admissions offices present is that the review process is a science. Holistic review isn’t a precise thermometer that measures temperature accurately. In reality, it’s neither an art nor a science but a series of hunches and gut feelings.

Even supposedly objective criteria such as grades and AP scores can be gamed by savvy students, further calling into question whether reviewers can decipher what is authentic or not.

By cheating, I don’t have in mind falsifying resume credentials on an application or lying on an essay.

I see posts from time to time about admissions counselors who claim they can tell fraud or not, but can they really when they read applications in less than ten minutes and hundreds if not thousands of applications each cycle? They’re reading way too quickly to assess the claims you make at anything other than face value. Reviewers usually take the applicant’s word for it.

Some portals, such as the University of California, have shifted to students self-reporting their grades and SAT scores. Because that information is easily verified with an official transcript required for enrollment, very few students cheat on that portion of the application. I imagine for every thousand students who misrepresent themselves on an application, perhaps one is actually caught and “blacklisted” with their name circulated among elite institutions. Reviewers can’t detect fraud with any reliability, although they love to claim omnipotence on the subject to scare would-be deceivers.

By cheating, I have in mind the time-tested tradition of looking over your classmate’s shoulder. Donald McCabe with the Center for Academic Integrity conducted a longitudinal survey of 70,000 high school students from 2002 to 2015. Two-thirds of students admitted to cheating on a test or plagiarizing a paper, with 95 percent of respondents admitting to some form of cheating. 

Because the penalties for academic dishonesty are so high, no student will ever publicly admit to fraud. On the contrary, people accused of cheating will deploy any means to denounce the charge and preserve their reputations, often committing themselves to further lying on top of the initial cheating. There are no incentives to come clean unless it’s to snitch on other cheaters and receive leniency.

Rutger Bregman in Humankind undermines the conventional narrative that humans are innately selfish and prone to evil. He argues that people are generally decent and aren’t intrinsically motivated to lie and cheat. We want to get along and feel included in our family and communities. Poor incentives within society nudge people toward bad behavior.

Our modern society inverts pro-social virtues such as honesty and integrity in favor of winning, even if that means fraud, deceit, or manipulation. 

“Blaming the system” doesn’t excuse or absolve the cheater who deserves some form of punishment. “Everyone else is doing it” also isn’t an acceptable defense. We’re left with a situation where the unfortunate few who are caught pay steep penalties. As long as the admissions arms race persists, cheating will be a natural response, a problem most educators and admissions staff prefer to ignore. Consequently, cheating is a silent yet systemic social problem.

Many of my clients go on extensive rants about pervasive cheating in their classes (although, predictably, none ever admit to cheating themselves). Some even write college essays criticizing their underhanded classmates.

A group of students once pulled me aside at a high school visit when I worked for UT-Austin, begging me to do something about their unscrupulous valedictorian. Honest students resent their classmates who show up to class unprepared and swipe scantrons from a teacher’s desk or circulate answers among a group of cheaters. Traditional definitions of plagiarism are inadequate for the smartphone generation.

There is no part of the college application that a determined family can’t manipulate. One recommendation by Varsity Blues ringleader Rick Singer involved referring students to online schools where students could independently study AP classes. Earning high grades at less-rigorous high schools boosted the applicant’s overall GPA and class rank.  Supplementing coursework isn’t explicitly illegal. Few if any artificially inflated GPAs will get detected by admissions counselors. Many students opt to take summer school classes at their primary campus to earn more grade points and free up space for more GPA-boosting AP classes.

In the past few years, I noticed a substantial uptick in students earning 4s and 5s on more than 15 AP exams, many of who self-studied. I asked a few how they managed to balance what seemed like an impossible course load for even the most ambitious students. Never implicating themselves, they admitted that on obscure corners of the internet, you could illicitly access AP question test banks provided by College Board intended for use explicitly by teachers to help their students prepare. Memorize the test bank and skim official preparation resources, and there is a decent chance you will pass, especially during the COVID period’s online exams reduced to less than an hour. Cheating is an efficient strategy for overworked and sleep-deprived students.

A Redditor laments in a mocking post, since deleted, about a cheating classmate who gained early admission to Harvard. “[Their cheating] coupled with all those posts about people faking passion and being admitted to schools that are like wE cAn TeLl WhEn yOu ArEn’t PassiOnate, should remind you that AOs AREN’T ALL-KNOWING JUDGES OF YOUR WORTH.”

Because most students know at least one cheater who will inevitably gain admission, cheaters’ successes undermine the entire higher education system’s integrity. The college admissions madness incentivizes everyone to cut corners, with few unwilling to face social exclusion by being labeled a snitch.

Another user responded to the disgruntled post that “[the saying] ‘cheaters never prosper’ is absolute bullshit.” They’re right.

Admissions counselors aren’t Saint Peter with an all-seeing God on their side that can pierce the hearts of any soul. They’re more like a Judge Judy that squawks a lot but doesn’t have any unique insights into human character. Cheaters often win, including electing to the presidency a man who cheats on his wives and lies about everything from recorded phone calls with world leaders down to his golf handicap.

Cheating Lessons

Professor James Lang argues in Cheating Lessons that academically dishonest climates are pervasive at all levels of education.  He estimates at least two-thirds of all students will cheat at least once. A few become the habitual deceivers that appear in college essays or frustrated Reddit posts. Extrinsic rewards such as gaining admission to elite universities or earning a prestigious internship normalize dishonest behavior because the means justify the ends. Students are responding to incentives in their environment. Honesty requires more courage than surrendering to the pressures to take shortcuts.

Professor Mollie Galloway expands in a review of Lang’s book that cheating isn’t necessarily more pervasive than in previous generations. Still, dishonest behavior is less stigmatized and perceived as increasingly normal. “The [educational] culture encourages students, particularly those from upper-middle-class and affluent communities, to see cheating not as a compromising of their values but rather as a warranted and morally sound mechanism by which to attain the status they believe they are afforded.”

A few high schools cultivate a culture of cheating.

Administrations feel pressure to maximize their AP exams passed or SAT scores earned to recruit future cohorts of students. Schools receive accolades when their graduates earn prestigious scholarships or university spaces. There are subtle pressures for teachers to turn a blind eye or administrators to cover up academically dishonest behavior. Teachers who are committed to honesty fight a never-ending battle like trying to stop alcohol consumption during Prohibition. Alcoholics will find a way to drink, and students will find a way to cheat.

Institutions punishing cheaters and plagiarizers is so rare that, when it happens, the incident often makes national news.

Cheating at New York City’s most prestigious magnet school, Stuyvesant, didn’t end after they fired their principal, Stanley Teitel, for covering up a 66-student cheating ring in 2013. The New York Post reports five years later, “Cheating is most common among students in their third year, the most academically challenging because the grades count heavily on college applications, the December survey found. A whopping 97 percent of juniors said they had engaged in academic dishonesty, while 56 percent of freshman said they had already cheated after just four months in the school.” Stuyvesant is the second-largest feeder high school in the country for MIT, Princeton, and Harvard.

The Tragic Case of T.M. Landry

The most heartbreaking example of a culture of systematic cheating occurred at Louisiana’s T.M. Landry. Named for the husband-and-wife-founders and principals Tracey and Mike Landry, it is an unaccredited college preparatory school housed in an abandoned factory. When Landry seniors started gaining admission to Cornell, Stanford, Princeton, and Harvard, among many other elite universities, between 2013 and 2018, it seemed like a tremendous success story.

Landry enrolls mostly black students from rural Louisiana, a state with one of the nation’s lowest-performing education systems. Black families placed their trust in the Landrys, who promoted family and unity and an alternative education outside of white society’s norms. The Landrys announced their 100 percent four-year college acceptance rate, made famous by viral YouTube “decision reveal” videos viewed millions of times. Wealthy families and organizations donated hundreds of thousands of dollars, and white and Asian students began enrolling.

Educators and school administrators nationwide wondered how Landry students could overcome such long odds. A New York Times investigation revealed a culture of violence, abuse, and outright fraud. “Visitors and cameras paraded through what had become a Potemkin village.” 

Because the school wasn’t accredited, they do not receive any government funding and consequently fall outside regulations and oversight. Class attendance was optional. It was, as one student described it, a “house built on water.”

Mike Landry humiliated and demanded absolute obedience from his students, resulting in a 2013 conviction for battery. He required students to begin class by saying “I love you” in different languages, including an invented language, Mike-a-nese, to him directly. “Love” in Mike-a-nese is the word “kneel.”

Students and families began speaking out following abuse allegations and substandard classroom instruction. Mr. Landry threatened to withhold transcripts if anyone left the school or blew the whistle. Students who chose to leave had their grades altered to ruin their future college prospects. He threatened students that elite university admissions officers had cameras in the school, so they better behave themselves.

T.M. Landry’s Ivy League success comes down to outright fraud. Mike Landry doctored transcripts to show outstanding grades for loyal students, even for advanced courses that they never took or weren’t offered at the school. The Landrys pressured students to report their family incomes as low as possible on the applications. Teachers recycled recommendation letters to laud students for extracurricular activities that didn’t exist. In some instances, teachers recycled recommendations from previous years for future students without changing the names.

The Landrys counseled students to “go deep” on their essays, which pressured students to exaggerate or fabricate hardships that play into racial stereotypes and poverty tropes. They were the kinds of hardship stories that elite universities eat up. The only genuine instruction that students received revolved around the ACT. It was the only admissions factor that T.M. Landry staff couldn’t easily manipulate. One graduate, Bryson Sassau, commented, “If it wasn’t on the ACT, I didn’t know it.”

T.M. Landry’s graduates had mixed results at their respective elite colleges. Some earned their degrees despite entering college with writing and math skills that were many grade levels below their college classmates. Others, especially those who spent the most time at T.M. Landry, floundered and dropped out.

Because their high school degrees weren’t accredited, some alumni had to earn their GED to enroll at local colleges and begin their studies again. Landry college prep destroyed dozens of families whose elementary-age children didn’t learn phonics. High school juniors tested in reading at a fourth-grade level.

Mike Landry defended himself by appealing to a culture that values credentials over character. “So what, we’re not accredited… Three years in a row, Harvard took us. Stanford has taken us.”

Taking a page out of the corporate public relations playbook, the Landrys employed the law firm Couhig Partners to respond to the Times’s allegations. Couhig based their 23-page report on five interviews that excluded the dozens of testimonies investigated by the Times. Predictably, their internal investigation minimizes the claims and amounts to “move along now, nothing to see here,” while noting that there might be areas for minor improvement.

In other words, the means justify the ends.

The tragedy of T.M. Landry embodies the admissions madness taken to its logical conclusion. The Landrys are a symptom of the admissions madness, not a cause.

Elite universities seek diverse, academically stellar students. High schools everywhere will respond to these incentives, and families want to send their children to schools with a noted track record of success. In the worst-case scenarios, school cultures cater their entire curriculum and deploy any measures to meet those expectations at the expense of genuine learning or even a safe learning environment.

Universities are to blame

T.M. Landry and Varsity Blues are two sides of the same coin. The former exploited an admissions system that values diversity, whereas the latter defrauded universities by leveraging extreme wealth and privilege. As with the Varsity Blues scandal, university administrators responded in horror, wondering how such a thing could occur. Yet, they’re the architects of a system that creates such perverse incentives that distort basic human decency. Look in the mirror!

It’s also ironic that, on the one hand, admissions officers claim to know the context and resources of a given high school, while on the other, the Landrys hoodwinked dozens of elite colleges over a series of application cycles. If universities can’t reliably catch a fraudulent high school, why would we believe they can consistently identify individual cheaters?

In Talking with Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell suggests that we’re generally trusting and tend to default to the truth. In UT admissions, senior staff trained us to presume what a student writes or reports on their resume is true. Admissions processes aren’t set up to identify fraud or look for subtle discrepancies in transcripts relative to a school’s profile.

I don’t believe the posturing of a former Stanford admissions counselor who posted a Reddit thread under the username “empowerly,” insinuating that applicants will get caught if they cheat.  Given infinite time and resources, it’s theoretically possible to catch most cheaters most of the time. However, there simply isn’t enough time, sufficient information, or willpower to detect fraud in practice. Admissions gatekeepers are not the gods that they convey themselves to be publicly. Pretending to be all-powerful causes more harm than good and injects more anxiety into the system.

The immediate result of posts like that of the former Stanford counselor was to create a sense of paranoia among student Redditors. Dozens of comments wondered, “Will my ECs seem exaggerated? What if they contact my counselor?” The most honest response reads, “I presume you know that some students will take advantage of this information and lie better.”

Sentiments like /u/empowerly’s reinforce college admissions counselors’ omniscience that provides the architecture for T.M. Landry to deceive their students that universities watched them. We are reluctant to acknowledge cheating unless there is overwhelming evidence suggesting fraud occurred.

Educators are also averse to leveling claims of fraud against a student unless they’re highly certain. Their reputations and careers are at stake if they wrongly accuse a student. It isn’t surprising that the Landrys’ deceit succeeded for many admissions cycles. To their credit, at least some of their unwitting alumni earned life-transforming elite college degrees that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

Cheaters, whether they are aware of their dishonesty or not, often win.

[mochidust]

Yes, i am 100% a Jikook supporter.  My blog is a safe haven for those who love them as well as for those who love OT7.  I have zero tolerance for negative asks so if i don't post and answer your ask, most likely it was negative and i don't want to address it and start wars or... Tumblr ate it. Choose your option :) Also, I'm only going to talk about how I view them, not how anyone else should so don't get those panties up in a wad, thanks. Oh and this is gonna be a pretty fcuking long essay so please have your coffee, tea, bubble-tea, wine ready... you have been warned ;)

Shipping has never been my thing and even if i liked a pairing, it was always just platonic. Right off the bat, i liked the VMIN ship.  They were just the cutest kids/friends/siblings/soulmates. VMIN became my favorite/first BTS ship - again, it was strictly platonic shipping.  Bromance, that cute jazz and i still ship them like that. And besides, who doesn’t?!

One day, after watching a cute VMIN vid on youtube, i forgot to toggle off autoplay and a JiKook vid started playing and i...just... fell and i still haven't managed to get up yet. I tried really hard to just stan them as platonic, like i do VMIN but apparently, JJK is having none of that.  

And i really do mean that.  JJK was the person who changed my mind on their dynamics - even before the famous G.C.F. video.  He is my meme for that whole: You don't choose your ship, it chooses you dictum. After that vid, i got very interested and started re-watching their RUN eps and concert clips and boy oh boy. The amount of staring aka heart-eyes, the way JJK constantly hovers over PJM, the way he's always so attentive to ONLY PJM, the way he always strives to make Jimin laugh...i'm still dumbfounded.  I can't remember ever looking at a single man i've ever dated like that or received looks like that back.  Because trust me, if someone looked at me with the emotions of their heart spilling out of their eyes the way JJk does PJM, i would never let him go.  You know that familiar old saying of one wearing their heart on their sleeves? Well, that is not JJK at all. He is the only person i know who takes it up a notch and wears it in his gaze. And what is subtlety to this boy.

It's almost like this is a drama and i am watching it unfold in real time.  We started with the usual one-sided feelings, Jiminie who was so aggressive and open with his affections in chasing around the maknae.  I used to just brush those moments off as child's play...but they've become significant in the Jikook relationship. Stepping stones that mired what was inevitable.  It's like Jimin grew up and he turned into this beautiful swan that matched his beautiful personality and suddenly, everyone noticed - JJK first. This is where I'm really in awe...Their dynamics started shifting and as Jimin dialed back the public affections, JJK poured it on x10.  It almost seemed like the more JJK pushed Jimin for attention, the less PJM gave it and it resulted in JJK not giving a damn what anyone thought except for making PJM aware of his feelings. The hunted is now the hunter ;)

In the beginning, i tried to tell myself, hey, this is all in your imagination, quit trying to see things where they aren't!  They're just very fond group members! And as soon as i think that thought, JJK goes ahead and blows it to smithereens. He just won't let me live.  Following will be some reasons why it's so damn hard to breathe around these two:

When these two are together, they either sound like they're flirting, look like they're flirting or ARE INDEED FLIRTING. I can't shut up about this.  There's this level of intimacy that just dusts the air when these two are standing, sitting, laying next to each other.  But you know what's even more marvelous is that that air somehow gets even more intense when they are separated by other members. It's like the members become obstacles they have to overcome to let their love flourish so they amp things up even more lmao.  Off the top of my head is the moment recently in their vlive where they were toasting to their AMA performance and Yoongi was in the middle like a barrier but those two...the flirting and giggling and stuttering...I'm sure Yoongs was just like...get me the fcuk away from these lovesick fools. I know i would've been running.

They can be quite fiercely protective of one another. Jimin is affectionate with every member, true, but no one can deny that he's particularly soft for JJK, as proven in a Run ep when he gave the extra food flag to JJK and made his own teammate/soulmate V beg for his lol... There's also BV2 when he tries to win a meal for JJK with the table game, when he offers his bed space to JJK...Jimin is always trying to feed JJK when he loses in games, making sure he's comfortable when they're sleeping, encouraging him to speak up, say whats on his mind,  and JJK reciprocates in kind, albeit more quietly; waiting for PJM’s slow butt, defending PJM when others poke fun at him, complimenting him when he's unsure (especially when it's unwarranted), even going as far as defending PJM before anyone can tease him!  An example of that is during BV2 when the boys were cooking for one another and Jimin made that dish that tasted like pickled pollack roe.  I'm sure JJK didn't want the other's comments to hurt Jimin's feelings (even though it didn't come off that way) so he pepped up with the whole "I love pickled pollack roe" even though no one else cared. Thats the kind of love and devotion JJK shows to PJM - it’s quiet, uplifting, supportive and it is endearing beyond all.  And don’t forget...whenever the groups play games, JJK always finds a way to cheer on Jimin, even if they are on opposing teams. Talk about being sweet on someone. I'm actually quite jealous.

Satellite Jeon has got to be my most favorite JJK. I've, in all honesty, never seen anyone orbit before until Jungkook.  He can be at the opposite end of the stage and somehow, come hell or high water, he will make it to park beside Jimin.  Like Jimin is his security blanket and he needs that source of comfort and warmth. I am just overly fond of that one vlive for Hobi's birthday when freaking JJK worked his away behind the camera to stand right behind PJM.  As if that wasn't enough, he had to place his hands on PJM's shoulders to make it be known that "hey, I'm right here behind you."  We see you, Jeon, trust me, we do. It's really endearing to watch Jimin's personal hoverboard in action.  In interviews, during speeches...there are so many circumstances where he either moves to stand closer to Jimin or moves to stand where he can see Jimin more clearly and i haven't seen him do that with others. It's like Jimin is a magnet for his eyes.  Love songs always quote: I only have eyes for you. And Jungkook proves that quote true.

G.C.F Tokyo broke me out of my musings of them being just friends permanently.  Who does this?!  Who goes out of their way to cart around a huge camera all day and take videos/photos of someone else on a vacation?  Either a photographer who is working or a LOVER. Obviously JJK’s profession is not that of a photographer so...yeah. Listen, I love my siblings/friends but you’ll never catch me lugging that around while im on vacation, no way.  After i watched that video, i sat in silence for a good long time.  Can you imagine the planning that goes on behind something like this? It’s no overnight thought-process.  Neither is the piecing together of it.  The amount of time, dedication, love, affection JJK put into this video is heartwarming. Seeing PJM the way JJK sees him is breathtaking. While sitting there in the afterglow of that marvelous tribute, i realized that in this world, all i ever want is for someone to love me, see me, the way that JJK sees PJM.  I want that glow that PJM emitted while frolicking freely with JJK, that happiness that is threatening to burst out of both their chests, that pure, unabashed tenderness for one another.

I’d have expected something like that from PJM, the open, brazen, affectionate little bean. But to have it come from JJK the introvert, shy, always in his own bubble guy... It’s baffling. I’ve always thought JJk was quite a chameleon. There's layers upon layers upon layers with this man.  If i were to compare them to food, i would say PJM is decadent mousse in a glass cup where you know and can see the layers and appreciate them thoroughly.  JJK is that delicious chocolate cake where you have to cut inside the cake to see how many layers are present.  He's an awesome anomaly. And...maybe that is why they fit together so well.  What JJK lacks, PJM makes up for and vice versa. Jimin is all things dainty and Jungkook is all things masculine.  It's a perfect fit.

None of us know them personally. We can only ship from afar so please ship respectfully.

---

damn. i didn’t think it was this long.  If you got through this, kudos to you, my friend :)

[zacharyleishmanfilmstudent]

FILM 303 Creative Professional Conclusions: Crowdfunding and Sourcing Deep Dive – Lecture Notes and Thoughts:

This session featured a deep dive look into the many resources available to secure and utilise crowdfunding in for our grad film projects, or for use in future projects across our practice. The session was designed to discuss the many options available to us to secure funding, and then use this research to begin planning how we may utilise these resources.

Crowdfunding as a concept in itself is fairly simple. In all productions, producers are required to develop a budget that covers all below and above line costs from cast to shooting and development processes. This budget is typically financed by a studio but frequently in independent endeavours media makers have to find means to finance themselves.

The most common form of funding independent filmmakers can gain is found through crowdfunding. Taking the place of the involvement of friendly investors, this is where strangers who have been convinced to donate to the project contribute to the budget with their own money, in an effort to support the project/creator.

Crowdfunding can come in three different forms. All take place usually on social media the forms consisting of, equity crowdfunding, where investors receive a return on their payment, rewards crowdfunding where non-financial incentives are offered for donations and finally simple donation crowdfunding which is just simply charity.

Rewards crowdfunding is the most popular and the method I have the most experience with and would personally offer. It is the less risky option should your production run into issues and you find yourself unable to return funds to your investor and is ultimately a good show of gratitude in any small form to your backers.

Rewards crowdfunding involves the artist offering specific rewards once certain milestones are achieved in your push to gain funding. An example of this could be offering concept art, a copy of the script, pieces of your soundtrack or early test screenings. It assures the donor of the feasibility of your project, that actual work is going towards it, whilst also maintaining interest in the project, possibly helping develop communities around it, if enough people want to work to access all of your available rewards. It is effective in being in its own way, supplementary content creation but does also pose the risk of fitting into the gig economy, you are putting all of your eggs in one basket and there is zero guarantee of success.

The overall benefits do though greatly outweigh the risks. It generates a maintained social media presence for your work, doesn’t come across as corporate, allows you to directly appeal and pander to niche audiences and you can sometimes be lucky enough to gain extra funds even after the donation period has ended.

There are several platforms on which artists can crowdfund but possibly the two platforms that bare the most use and benefit to my practice are Kickstarter and Patreon. Kickstarter is effectively the epitome of the rewards crowdfunding system previously discussed. A site specifically designed to creators to pitch projects and find support it operates on a reward system utilised to draw up attention but is reliant on the project reaching its total funding goal to access any of the funds you’ve gained during the process.

Patreon in contrast to this differs in that it is a support network for artists not their projects. Here artists can offer rewards in return for directly funding their livelihood. Used particularly by YouTubers they offer rewards such as exclusive content or direct communication in return for money they use when ad revenue is not available. There are no direct downsides to Patreon but there is a very tricky formula to maintaining audience interest and does require you to be producing regular and quality content if not quality rewards to make the donation seem worthwhile.

Both have been used to scam and cheat certain audiences and like any social media there are adverts for even the most useless and inane of the causes. However, both platforms can be used to really provide positive support to creatives and really help make or break their art in a time where it is increasingly difficult for artist to gain the likes of major studio support or just have their platform on which they operate, treat them fairly.

After having discussed the styles and functionality of these platforms we were tasked individually with researching the successful instances artists have found on these platforms and then determine how we might create our own campaign or programme on these platforms.

An extremely successful Kickstarter campaign that I have previously researched at great lengths due to the sheer impressiveness of its success, is the Kickstarter campaign for the Indie hit game, ‘Shovel Knight’. Through Kickstarter, indie development team Yacht Club games were able to launch their 8-bit homemade platformer into one of the industry’s most beloved and well-known titles.

The success of Shovel Knight was born out of the game not just being a legitimately fantastic product but through the approach Yacht Club took when trying to fundraise for the project. Setting the bare minimum target for their total goal their approach focused on acquiring what was necessary, it made the project seem trustworthy. The team wasn’t seemingly asking for any more than they needed just what they needed to make the game and survive financially. The honesty present was a huge reason to place trust in this team, when the platform had previously been used to take excessive amounts of money from fans and not committing it to the actual listed project, as seen in the case of the now industry hated ���Mighty Number 9’.

Gaining publicity for the game was something Yacht Club was able to quickly get their hands on, sending early test models of the game’s beginning stages to streamers focused on retro game content, attracting both their fans and support. It signalled this was a project that was meant for the fans and was a love letter to the fans who missed this era of games as well as to the era itself.

The real killer of this Kickstarter however were the reward tiers. The make-or-break factor of many a Kickstarter, Yacht Club promised new character campaigns that would be released as full DLC once the stretch goals for the main game had been reached. Effectively saddling themselves with even more work, work that they didn’t finish until years after the full game’s eventual release in 2014, the team once again sold donors on Shovel Knight as a product. This was not a one and done hit, this was a product that would be supported and would become a long-time investment to the fans good enough to believe in the product.

A larger risk had the game failed, but one that they were ultimately able to pull off, the main lessons I would take from this campaign is the importance of getting your name out amongst the fans and giving them decent incentives to back you that are actually valuable.

A Kickstarter campaign is not something I intend to start for my grad project film ‘Eulogy’ given the film has already been self-financed and doesn’t likely require further funds. However, I still believe that the project could possess a strong campaign that offered a variety of rewards to those who chose to donate. The budget I would hypothetically want to reach would range between £200-£300 and whilst lacking the funds or manpower of Yacht Club to produce the same quantity of rewards or the scale they possessed I would still attempt to produce a quality and modest set of rewards.

£1 Patrons = Name in credits and a signed copy of the script

£5 Patrons = Name in credits, signed copy of the script and behind the scenes featurettes and commentary videos

£10 Patrons = Name in credits, signed copy of the script, BTS videos and original limited print of the artwork featured in the film.

£20 Patrons = All of the above and early access screening of both work in progress and final cuts of the film.

These rewards I would envision to be a decent incentive for donors to consider donating and given the low rate of the budget and rewards available at every tier, it seems likely that even if the majority of donations were on the lowest tiers, I may still be able to finance the film and the donors will be thanked for their contribution.

A platform I do greatly intend to make use of in my future though is Patreon. Whether my practice continues to focus on filmmaking or not a great hope that I have is that I will be able to commit to the creation of video essay material on YouTube analysing media I have a knowledge and affinity for. Ad revenue is famously a poor means of supporting oneself through YouTube so if in some reality I could attract a following, I would offer a Patreon through which they could support me.

My Patreon model would be based on a current Patreon I currently donate to, the patreon for the ‘Let’s Fight a Boss’ podcast. An Irish podcast the trio discuss the media they’re consuming and offer livestreams of obscure video game series, their playthrough of ‘Shenmue’ being possibly their most famous content. Their Patreon model is quite modest, there not being many rewards, they can offer in a Podcast format but still being worthwhile enough in themselves. The rewards I have been able to access by donating, is access to their private discord for fellow patrons, shout outs for actual patrons during episodes of the podcast and access to exclusive episodes not featured on their channel.

Any rewards I would offer on Patreon would follow a similar model, I myself wanting to produce some similar digital rewards that also focuses on thanking and involving fans in my work to show gratitude for their charity. Whilst there’s no guarantee this plan will ever actually take shape, this is the hypothetical rewards system I have long planned to offer.

£1 Patrons = Name in the credits of videos and access to channel discord.

£5 Patrons = Name in credits, access to channel discord, a verbal shoutout at the end of the video and access to behind the scenes editing commentary videos.

£10 Patrons = All of the above with early access to videos, access to private vote to determine topic of videos and access to four Patreon exclusive videos not featured on YouTube.

This is model I think I could feasibly create and that ultimately isn’t greedy. I doubt I will commit to YouTube full time, but this is enough of a rate where I could consider it a viable side project/earning if I can hopefully develop enough of a following, and I believe this reward programme is quite generous in that regard and wouldn’t lead to burn out.

The many benefits and pitfalls of crowdfunding have been apparent to me even before I considered entering this industry myself. My desire to utilise crowdfunding within my current practice is undeniably minimal as I do not have the confidence to consider asking for money for an amateur project. However when my practice does eventually alternate to this new video essay focus, considering crowdfunding on Patreon will be completely necessary if it is media I want to make viable.

[youhave1newmessage]

I hope you’re happy with yourself anon. This ask had ME STRESSED. Have you ever seen those women with a bunch of children around them and even though they only have two arms, it almost appears like they have six?

Yeah. That was ME.

So prepare yourself. You’re in for a one HECK of a response. 

For the sake of everyone that will be seeing this post around their dashboard, or on whatever tag you’re on, I’m putting a “Keep Reading” thing because dear mother of Neptune, this post is LONG.

If what you’re about to read doesn’t satisfy your thirst, we have an about us post! There you’ll see in more detail (and MUCH less writing) just exactly what groups we bias and who we bias.

-  Admin  🍌

Admin  🍌

I love being recognized as, “The one that stans Yongguk” because yaaaasss, that means I’m doing my JOB RIGHT. Now, WHY I bias the man, that’s a legit good question...Why DO I bias Yongguk? I actually used to bias Junhong (I still love the kid though, trust.) I actually used to think the COMPLETE opposite of Yongguk; I literally called him some things I feel horrible about and I would say he was scary looking and how could one ever like him. What I didn’t know was Yongguk was sneaking up on me slowly until he suddenly went on his hiatus. I had done this little tribute thing for him of having him on my phone and I kept telling myself that after his hiatus, I would put my biases back on my wallpaper but it just...never happened? xD I just slowly fell for him and the guy wormed his way into my heart and became my ultimate bias. He’s the guy I always say is the only one I would ever truly marry haha thanks for asking this! I wish we got more questions like this. Maybe we’ll do a text post like this soon! :)

Admin 🔞

Trust me, the noona life chose me…  haha see, I remember the first BTS video I ever saw and my boy was a cop! Yup this is “Dope” we are talking about.  As you can imagine my noona heart could not contain the kookie attraction. I tried really hard to not choose kookie as my bias. In my early days I even switched between Kookie and Jin (it’s become a running joke now, until Kookie was an “adult” I actually had 2 biases and I would average out the ages hahaha) Kookie was always my number 1 though! As I was trying to decide if Kookie was indeed my bias, I came upon a gem on youtube: Jungkook vs Kookie search that up and you’ll see how he finally won my heart. It was his personality! He is so shy and goofy all at once, and he’s so kind and I am just crazy about him! He stole my heart and he will forever be the only maknae that makes my knees weak!

Admin 🦀

It all started many years ago, when a friend of mine showed me a music video of BTS. I believe the first one was Bulletproof and I wasn't into it whatsoever. But then, the next one she showed me was Boy In Luv and I didn't like it much at first, but I was very fascinated by the blond hottie. I later found out his name was Rap Monster (RM now) and it was a downward spiral from there. I watched all of their Bangtan Bombs and looked up Namjoon’s covers and tracks he had released when he was basically a fetus *cough* expensive girl *cough*. I used to be, as some would say, a kpoppin hoe because I was always jumping from bias to bias. But guys, I kid you not, I have stayed loyal to my bias. I can never love no other lol. He’s just a piece of art! His deep voice, his dorkiness, his intellect, the way he speaks english, HIS DIMPLES!  I love that he has such a beautiful heart and that he’s such a great leader. I love everything about him! Even the way he dances lol. Gosh… I’m getting emotional now… Every time I see or hear this man, I literally hyperventilate and cry. The other admins are witnesses. I’m crazy for this man! I would like to say more but I will literally talk nonstop if I don’t pause now. 👋

Admin 🍓

J-Hope hands down. I just admire him so much. He is everything I wish to be as a human being. Funny story is, when I was first introduced to BTS I told a friend of mine “For sure I'm not going to bias him. I have enough hyperactive energy from T.O.P.”  Life is funny that way and now I wouldn't have it any other way. 😘

Admin 🍇 

If I really sit down to think about it, there are many reasons as to why Namjoon is my bias, I mean what isn’t there to love about him?! Firstly, Namjoon is a wonderful leader. He’s able to care for six other boys and able to complete his duties as a leader, while at the same time always taking into account all the other members’ opinions and never making it seem like he’s above them. Namjoon is one of the most intelligent people I have ever come across and he seems like the type of person you can talk to for hours without feeling bored. He has this way of making everything sound interesting and I love how in interviews he always shares way too much information when you ask him about a topic, it’s so adorable. I love that even though he’s extremely busy he manages to make time to appreciate the little things in life (nature) and even draws inspiration from them! All in all Namjoon is far from perfect and that’s what makes me love him so much. It may seem ironic and somewhat contradictory, but it’s true. Throughout his career he has struggled a lot, has had many scandals, and has made many mistakes,  but he has learned from it all and has grown as a person. I love that I've had the opportunity to be a part of this, and I hope to continue to be able to do so!

Admin🍍

Weelllll  at first I was not that into RM because in the Dope MV he looked like a little f-boii but i was completely wrong. His dorky and philosophical self just creeped up into my heart and nestled there for a good while. Now I have discovered MONSTA X and my heart is shaking again. I don't understand this thing i have for weird/dorky rappers with deep voices, but freaking Im Changkyun is creeping up and is neck to neck with RM. Stay tuned to see what happens next!

Admin 🍑 

Wellll if we’re going down memory lane...I’m kind of new to KPOP so when I discovered Got7’s Just Right about a year or two ago I immediately jumped on the Jaebum wagon. I was a goner for I’d say a good month or so. But then Jinyoung happened lol. You see I didn’t pay too much attention to him and I’m not really sure how I didn’t considering the fact that I did think the group was really cute and funny. But when I finally noticed him it was in the Stop it Stop it mv and I just lost it after. I’m pretty sure it was his voice that got to me first almost as if my heart was being tugged at each time I heard him sing so I was practically already in danger. Then all it took was for me to watch If you do and I was done for, completely loving that beautiful human being. I love love his smile like I can’t get enough of it anytime I see him smile I’m just pudding and when he laughs and his eyes crinkle it’s the best thing ever. Like I live for the times that I’m able to see him laugh wholeheartedly. I also love the fact that he loves reading (as I’m a book lover myself). I also can’t help but love that little mischievous side that he brings out when he’s having fun it’s the best thing ever. Oh and one crucial point I..Love..His..Peach, when I tell you that his peach is my top fave I MEAN IT. I’d say more but then it would probably come out to be an essay 😅.

Admin 🐣 

Originally my bias was Hwasa because. She’s. Beautiful. And her voice is amazing. But then my best friend actually showed me one of their music videos and I saw one of the idols (I didn’t know any of their names at the time lol) squish her face against the camera screen at that moment Solar became my bias. 

[evanvanness]

Week in Ethereum News December 28, 2019 annotated edition

When Christmas falls on a Wednesday, not many people choose to ship that week if they want publicity.  So this was a pretty light issue.

Layer 1

Reminder: update your nodes for Muir Glacier upgrade

A proposal to make eth1 the first shard of eth2, post-phase1 and pre-phase2. Would require 1) stateless clients and 2) increase in gas prices for opcodes that call contracts

Trinity v0.1alpha34, ready for Muir Glacier

Vitalik's proposal to make eth1 the first shard of eth2 is the news of the week.  Of course, anything that turns off eth1's proof of work (PoW) chain is a good thing, plus there is the advantage that it would obviate the need for a bridge between eth1 and eth2.  However, I'd be fine with eth2 finalizing the eth1 chain so that we can reduce issuance and electricity waste by 90% and I think we can get there faster, depending on which tradeoffs we are willing to make. (For example, eth2 stakers could hold eth1 state and this would happen sooner, though this would violate Eth2's design principles).  It is a wide design space, and I am not qualified to evaluate which is the better call, since this seems entirely like an engineering estimation.  

There is a post on r/ethereum right now that asks whether someone can confirm that there is no need to upgrade nodes because there is no hard fork.  Siiiigh.  MUIR GLACIER IS COMING.   This further confirms my belief that we should have added the bomb delay into Istanbul.  We also would have had less FUD from the anti-ETH crypto clickbait media who is always looking to create fake news for page views.  In general, I think the risk of an unintentional chain split is highly overrated.  Miners and exchanges are very motivated to stay up to date, many hobbyists would prefer to update once (and tend to do so closer to the fork date)

Meanwhile I went through all of 2019's issue last night for the Year in Ethereum and it was interesting to see how the classfication evolved week by week.  Since there was so little news this week, I combined eth1 and eth2 into layer1 like I was doing in the beginning of the year, but in general I am much happier with the classification lately.  Also happy that client releases finally got moved up in prominence, since the client maintainers do relatively thankless work.

Stuff for developers

Solidity and Vyper feature reference guide

Tutorial on using Open Zeppelin’s Solidity Hot Loader

Enigma’s first networked testnet, with Eth mixer contracts on Eth testnet

Gas Station Network support in Nethereum

Build a distributed appstore with React and 3Box SDK and Plugins

Random thoughts: There were some cool things built with Enigma at EthWaterloo.   A lot of people were excited by the Solidity and Vyper syntax cheat sheet. Zeppelin keeps churning out tools improving the dev experience.  3Box continues to become a fundamental primitive for devs.

Ecosystem

Tornado.cash mixer added cDAI, cUSDC, USDC, and USDT, plus ETH100 and USDT100k now available

John Wolpert, Haseeb Qureshi and I talked about about 2019 in retrospective and the year ahead in Ethereum

Ben Edgington: building in the open is Ethereum’s superpower

Ben has written a piece relatively similar to this one previously, but I still enjoyed it.  A worthwhile read.

Meanwhile, I think it is great that Tornado.cash has added more levels, but I do worry a bit about the anonymity set being stretched thin.  Bruno Škvorc had an interesting tweet about leaving a bunch of ETH in the mixer just in case. He calls them notes because you use a note to withdraw your ETH from the mixer into an untraceable address.

Application layer

Zippie gets 20,000 users in Kenya in under a week for their cell phone minutes platform

rDai is now rDai and rSai

KeeperDAO: a liquidity pool for frontrunning

Pepo: crypto TikTok using a Gnosis Safe. Apparently this launched at Devcon, I missed it until now. Here’s my referral link, or without.

I had seen things about Zippie previously but didn't get it. However, getting a bunch of users is the best way to get attention!  I did a quick trial of the product and it was neat.  Using airtime retail in Kenya to onboard people into web3 wallets is promising.

I had somehow missed Pepo until now and have played with it daily since.  The hard part for me is feeling like I have something I want to record a video on, unless it is a super spicy take on orange memecoins.  I have a few of those, they tend to leak out on Twitter despite my attempts to contain them.

Tokens / Business / Regulation

Post-drama, the vote failed to add a time-delay (governance security module) to MakerDAO

Gabe Shapiro’s regulatory philosophy for tokenized networks

For all the drama after Micah's article a few weeks ago, no one subsequently noticed that the vote failed.  MKR holders decided they did not yet think it was time to add a time delay to governance decisions.   

Meanwhile, Gabe Shapiro put a lot of words onto paper about regulation and tokenized networks.  I don't agree with all of it, but for being so long and written by a lawyer, it is a very quick read.  

General

Google had an anti-crypto Christmas week. First it banned copious crypto YouTubers, before mostly unbanning. Then it banned MetaMask from the appstore.

Eric Wall says proof of stake is less wasteful

Vitalik: what is necessary in a minimum layer1 chain

Cheon’s attack and its effect on the security of trusted setups

So trusted setups might not be as future-proof as we hoped, though since Week in Ethereum News was published some of the ZCash cryptographers have pushed back on some of the claims in the thread.  

Vitalik's post was the essay equivalent of subtweeting.  He never mentioned Bitcoin, but his point is that the maximalists who say "Bitcoin is a perfect layer1 as-is, because you can do everything on layer2" are wrong.  You can't do rollup right now on Bitcoin, and we all know Bitcoin will not make the changes necessary to do so.

Respect to Eric Wall for saying something that is so obvious to many of us, but in his tribe it has become dogma to be anti-proof of stake.

And going in reverse order, Google's anti-crypto week was likely a coincidence, but who knows?  It is super frustrating that they have done this again to MetaMask, coincidentally right after banning so many crypto Youtubers.

To build on that point: some people say that in the long-run Ethereum will just be a neutral platform for devs and not change the world much.  I would say that is already a huge change.