#also my knowledge on pop media remains non existent

[shellsan]

Every number from the wlw ask meme!

soft wlw asks

1. how long have you known you liked girls?

I’ve never counted them out as an option in the first place, so it depends on how you look at it? I labelled myself bisexual in like 2014, and changed that to homosexual by the time 2016 ended.

2. talk about the girl who made you realise you liked girls

None in particular, that I can think of? As mentioned above, I never really counted them out to begin with and I’ve always found them to be cuter and more ‘my type’ I guess?

3. are you in a relationship at the moment?

Nope. I haven’t been in a relationship since like 2014/5?

4. do you have a crush at the moment?

Nope~

6. do you tend to like more masculine, feminine, or androgynous girls?

I don’t mind, but I do lean more towards feminine~

7. do you look/dress more masculine, feminine, or androgynous?

Feminine usually.

8. what’s your gaydar like?

Meh. I try not to try and ‘call’ someone else’s sexuality, and I’ve never been in a situation where its mattered before. 

9. tall girls or short girls?

Short~ (But it really doesn’t matter)

10. intimidating girls or kind girls?

Kind.

11. hugs or kisses?

Either, both? I don’t have much experience so I can’t say for sure.

12. do you have an ideal ‘type’? what would they be like?

I’ve never really thought about it? Is that weird? A girl who can make me laugh, and enjoys physical contact would be perfect though, because I’m a naturally touchy-feely person.

13. what’s your favourite personality trait of yours?

Oh man, nothing? Maybe my self-awareness? I try to recognise my own bad habits even if I don’t ultimately do anything about them.

14. what’s your favourite personality trait for a girl to have?

A sense of self-awareness (knowing their own faults and being able to acknowledge them).

15. what’s the best thing about liking girls?

How freaking good them look? Have you seen girls? They’re QUEEN.

16. do you have any friends who are wlw?

Nope, but a large majority of my female friends are bisexual, and open about it~

17. have you ever been to pride? if so, what was your first pride like?

No, I’ve never been.

18. do you like the lesbian flag?

I have nothing against it.

19. what was your first kiss with a girl like?

Soft, and nerve racking. It was my first kiss ever, and I had no idea what to do, or how to go about anything.

((I still have no idea what to do or how to go about it))

20. who was your celebrity/fictional gay awakening?

Most female kpop stars and Katie McGrath (Aka Morgana from Merlin)

21. what’s your favourite lgbt+ movie?

I don’t have one, since I’m not much of a movie watcher. I adore the anime yuri on ice though~

22. who’s your favourite openly wlw celebrity?

I honestly have none? I’m so bad with traditional celebrities and media, since I’ve never cared much for either, so the only w/w celebrity that I know is Ellen.

I went through the effort to google some and see if I recognised any, and the answer was pretty much a resounding nope.

23. do you wear makeup?

For special occasions, or if I’m really feeling it~

24. who was the first person you came out to (if you have)?

I don’t think of it as ‘coming out’, since the people I surround myself with have never been hetronormative (except my father, but we won’t go there), but I dropped to my mother that I was bisexual in the middle of a random conversation, and she didn’t blink, and we just kept on talking? I was like 11 or 12 at the time.

25. has anyone ever come out to you?

Not dramatically in the way that this sounds, but after people at work found out I was gay, a few of them revealed that they were bisexual to me, and some friends have been the same.

26. have you found a community of lgbt+ people?

I’ve never felt the need to look for one.

27. do you have any older lgbt+ people you look up to?

Not really? I look up to plenty of people, but none of that is due to their orientatio or label.

28. do you identify with butch/femme labels?

Not really. I can definitely fit myself into a femme box, but I try not to use too many labels, since I feel like they’re constricting and over all aren’t too necessary? A lesbian is a woman who loves other women. Why do we need to fit into any other roles and stereotypes, ya feel?

29. who’s your favourite fictional wlw?

Shion and Yayoi from Psycho-pass, is probably my fave, just because they’re the first to come to mind, and I adored their dynamic.

30. what experiences are you looking forward to having in the future (kissing a girl, going to pride, etc)?

Honestly, I’m mostly excited to have an actual relationship, and any of the things that come of having a relationship. The only relationships I’ve ever had have been with men when I was still considering myself as bi (and they helped me to figure out that this was not the case), and since then I’ve had nothing. 

[youcantfiremebecauseiquit]

idk if u care but crispin gray recently had an interview about his entire career and it kind of changed my perspective of queenadreena…idk if for better or for worse lol. it was weird to see him so dismissive of a lot of his catalogue w katie except for ‘love your money’ just because that was the only remotely chart successful song. i get you want to be able to sustain yourself but jeez him and katie really had a weird back and forth relationship

Sorry i'm replying late, i've seen the interview pop up on Youtube but honestly i was too invested in university shit recently & generally not in the good mood for that but i'm planning to watch. How did it change your view on Queen Adreena, did he say something mean specifically on QA or Katie? I mean i gotta watch it but honestly? Not surprised in the slightest. A few years ago he was asked to describe fave songs he recorded throughout the years and he listed more of Daisy Chainsaw ones than anything else, with Love Your Money as number 1. The differences in their points of view are real something, Katie Jane absolutely HATED Love Your Money, same as Daisy Chainsaw. Kinda apparent he wanted bigger fame but DC dropped fast and QA failed to live up to their predictions.

i had a time when i liked to dig up old Queen Adreena interviews that are lost in the old internet & generally not available for years (which i planned to post on is-she-suffering but my investment in that site is... varied in its intensity). Also that was back in the days when i wrote Queen Adreena book during manic phase and tried to sell it but lost motivation Well since i don't do anything with that knowledge anyway i'll put what i know here as i love fan discussions

So they sure had/have odd back and forth love-hate relationship & that's the reason why their career went how it went. There's been a huge tension between them at some point. I'm sure you know she had a major mental breakdown (probably schizophrenic episode) after Daisy Chainsaw, or even beginning before her leaving, and then she went into isolation and lived with an old woman in Lake District for awhile. She left Daisy Chainsaw cause Crispin didn't want her to come up with her own songs (all of DC was by Crispin except for Lovely ugly brutal world by KJ).

They almost split up as Queen Adreena after Drink Me. The material for The Butcher and The Butterfly was written at different times, originally it was meant to be called Atom Bomb at Bikini but it was constantly delaying and they eventually recorded everything they've got live. So that's obvious right? But i was surprised to find out they were writing songs separately. Some of them (i forgot which though) were written by Katie Jane and Pete Howard's sons band (they're even credited) + some with Melanie Garside, Richard Adams + some other musician. Katie Jane didn't like it. They intended it to be their last album at the time. She also hated live at ICA show but they released it cause they were broke

But that's a digression. I just wanna say that at this point they were done with each other but kept pushing it. Katie had her own art projects and stuff, Crispin started Dogbones with Nomi and i just remember how vaguely pissed at Katie he waas in the interviews. Like he stressed that Dogbones is his number one priority and if Katie wants to do something with Queenadreena, she must wait til Dogbones have a break first or something, and it sounded oddly bitter.

RaCH and Djinn era are just so weird, they had opportunities but let them go in a way. I don't think many people know but they were huge demand in Japan. They entered album charts and were interviewed by 11 magazines and 6 (!)TV stations there (wtf happened to that material i want to know???). But they only played 5 times or less.

Katie said she considers the band dead but they decided they can try to play for a couple more months. But aside from that she 100% lost the interest in the band around Djinn. There's an interview where she says "the overall image is Crispin but the shape will change again at rehearsals". And you can hear it, it’s more blues rock than anything. IMO it's their worst production wise. Instruments are fine but Katie's voice is so badly produced that sometimes i find some songs fucking irritating, cause they didn’t cut out her breaths and the vocals are TOO LOUD, to the point of distorting. As if she stands too close to the mic. The album is fine but it feels unfinished.

And here we come back to Crispin... here's what he said after the QA split:

Why the Dogbones started? “I needed to work more than the previous band I was in was working, the previous band who shall remain nameless, haha… um… Queenadreena. I wanted to work more than the singer of Queenadreena wanted to work… so that’s why it started. Fine by me… but I really like to be in a band, I’m not a solo project kind of guy. The last album (‘Djin’) did come out in the UK, but it was so low key because Katie kind of disappeared so there was little point in promoting it. Personally it’s my favourite by far so it was a shame but there you go… So here are Dogbones, it’s not been an easy ride but we are trying very hard.

Ok so the bitterness is kinda apparent isn't it. I think there were two reasons why they argued so much, first musical differences. Katie at some point lost interest in loud rock music for some years and went the folk way in Ruby Throat. I have a theory that Taxidermy and Drink Me are more influenced by Katie Jane and Butcher and Djinn are more Crispin. During first albums i think Katie more actively took part in music composition and choosing arrangements. She wrote lyrics, melodies but also composed a lot of songs on some little electronic keyboard thing and 4 track (Heavenly Surrender, Pray for me, My Silent Undoing, all Lalleshwari +more). Plus she wanted more peaceful/dreamy sound on Taxidermy than full on rock, Crispin complained about it in some 00's interview, that he'd like it to be more rock. Then there are 2 versions of Drink Me, the original has rough and alt versions of songs (it was sold by Katie and it's leaked on FB and probably YT). Crispin Gray apparently really hated the final Drink Me. Now next album is The Butcher & The Butterfly and it's more standard blues rock, no more crazy dreamy things of previous albums etc., Djinn is even more blues rock but darker. Djinn was his favourite at some point while KJ hated Butcher, not sure about Djinn. So i think they had different views on where they should go, Katie made her weird simplistic creepy tunes (like Lalleshwari) and folk melodies adding that strange things to noise rock. Crispin probably wanted blues & rock.

Other than that, i’m convinced they are bitter exes, lol. There’s been rumours about them dating during Daisy Chainsaw for years, plus Katie had a history of dating band members. Crispin wrote X-ing off the days about her. I don’t know if they dated again in Queen Adreena. Then there’s this interview, timeline is unclear, either The butcher & the butterfly or later:

„Katie writes all the songs herself and often looks for melodies and structure with the drummer. With Crispin - her husband or ex-husband, which is not entirely clear to me - for almost three years she has no longer been in a room. "Sometimes we send him a letter with a new song and that's all we can do. All we have are our lungs and our musical talent and we have to do with it. It is repugnant difficult life, I know most of the time how I should deal with it." But Queenadreena will still remain even exist? "I think so, we are now pretty busy and I see where the ship aground.”

I always wondered what exactly happened after Djinn, i’ve seen Katie Jane say „i think they gave up on me” while others said she disappeared. Other times CG said there’s no bad blood between them but at the same time there’s been some weird tension.  As of recent i thought they reconnected somehow through the internet and had a good relation but who really knows.s

I get why Crispin gets irritated when people compare everything he does to „stealing from KJ” but honestly, he gave them good reasons, at least in the 90’s. I can believe Starsha Lee singer isn’t copying Katie cause she’s from Brazil or something and she didn’t know Queen Adreena before. But everything else… Crispin’s problem is that he doesn’t know what he wants. He spent 90’s chasing something, tried singing himself, had girl singer replacements and even one KJ copy. Dogbones was ironically his most original non-Katie band, even with all their grunge influences. In a way he wants to be a frontman and at the same time doesn’t. Idk if he’s very controlling, but Daisy Chainsaw shows he valued his songs/lyrics first & in Queen Adreena he had to step back a lot, cause Katie’s condition was she would be in charge of the lyrics. I don’t think he realizes how strongly Daisy Chainsaw issues affected Katie, i mean from her own words you can read that aside from media attention/hate, her being unable to write lyrics had a role in her breakdown. I think she now let go but for years she hated remembering Daisy Chainsaw and she felt kind of worthless cause she was only somebody else’s mouthpiece. I’m not trying to say he’s cruel or anything, but i firmly believe rock lyrics writers should sing their own songs or else there are problems.

They both were writers-composers with different vision and i have impression they struggled a lot while shaping their songs, cause they both stuck to their ideas. Hence 2 versions of Princess Carwash maybe. Katie once said that he „gets terribly upset with her” cause she writes her songs on a simple wind organ and uses a few chord buttons only. Clash of writer ways/personalities/egos and at some point they had to let go.

Maybe he prefers music/bands where he was 100% in control including lyrics (note he wrote/sang some lyrics in Dogbones too). Daisy Chainsaw achieved bigger success US and UK wise as they were offered to play Top of The Pops, and they’re more well liked/remembered by „general alt public”. Queen Adreena however is way more valued as a cult band, with cult following and admiration in UK & France. Most people think Pretty Like Drugs and other QA songs are his best work and he probably finds it irritating cause truth is, he never managed to be more successful than Daisy Chainsaw/Queenadreena. Love Your Money is ironically the least Crispin Gray/DC/QA sounding song in my opinion. I kinda find it irritating that he downplays Queen Adreena cause it was probably his best work in this band but whatever

So yeah sorry for the word spill, that’s what i can think of it right now but as i said, i haven’t watched the interview yet, it’s just this kind of treatment is in a way consistent for him

[carewyncromwell]

Hey guys! So, in the past, I’ve done “inspiration posts” centered around my HPHM MC Carewyn Cromwell, Carewyn’s mother Lane and her brother Jacob, and my HPHL MC Jackson Knightly...and now it’s my HPHL vampire boy Bartholomew “Bat” Varney’s turn!

As hilarious as it sounds, I can actually blame the Twilight films for the initial spark behind Bat’s character. I admit that I’ve never really been a Twilight fan -- I read the first book because of my interest in vampires and the (rather shallow) comparison the mass public made at the time between Twilight and Harry Potter, but the second Twilight book lost me once main character Bella started trying to hurt herself just to try to see her OTL Edward again, and I’ve never picked them up since. Skip about fifteen years, and I get invited to a friend’s house to watch and rib Breaking Dawn Parts 1 and 2. Even if I hadn’t read the books, I knew the overall trajectory of the story, so I was able to basically follow what was going on, but those films were and remain the only Twilight movies I’ve seen. And after seeing them, the main emotion I came away with was absolute exasperation...because the entire time Breaking Dawn Part 2 was playing, I couldn’t give a damn what was going on with Bella, Edward, Jacob, Nessie, the Cullens, the werewolves, or the Volturi. All I wanted to do was focus on one of the most minor, bit-part characters placed in the background -- a vampire who was a soldier in the Revolutionary War and later went on to fight in just about every other American War since, played by Lee Pace, named Garrett. I was absolutely beside myself that we had an engaging, snarky, charming vampire who’d once lived in the 1700′s, one of my absolute FAVORITE historical eras, and he was shunted out of the way to make room for such a boring, stake-less, and kind of dysfunctional romance. I wanted a whole book about Garrett -- I wanted a whole TV series! It still boggles my mind that Stephanie Meyer could create such an interesting character and then only feature him for a fraction of the very last book in a four-part series.

The feelings I had about Garrett sort of lingered in the back of my head for a while, and one thought led to another, and I got to thinking about why I’d even tried reading Twilight to begin with. The answer, honestly, was that vampires was one of the biggest question marks left open in the Potterverse by Jo Rowling. She’s claimed in interviews that she didn’t think she could add anything to the vampire mythos through her work, hence why she referenced them existing, but didn’t feature them much at all in the story. And yet from my point of view, the vampire as seen in traditional folklore sort of contradicts one of the core themes of Rowling’s books -- namely, that death is both irreversible and inevitable. Because of the very diverse ways vampires have been depicted in different cultures and media over the years, there were so many questions left unanswered regarding which powers if any Potterverse vampires have, what their weaknesses are, why Voldemort never looked into becoming a vampire when searching for immortality, what their status in the Wizarding World is, why we don’t see any fighting with Voldemort like we do other “Dark creatures” like werewolves, and how their undead status fits in with the tenant of death being something you can’t escape. And the more I thought about it, the more exciting that potential became -- so I fleshed out a kind of vampire that could answer those questions and fit comfortably in the Potterverse without running the risk of “god-modding” or being too overpowered.

Vampires have more weaknesses than powers -- lessened magical ability, hypersensory sensitivity, the inability to sleep and dream, poor health, and intense and constant blood lust VS. lengthened life and increased durability.

Voldemort never sought becoming a vampire because someone else has to curse you both before and after your death, and not only are you not guaranteed to end up in the body you died in, but your magical ability is close to non-existent.

Vampires are on the absolute fringes of magical society and largely live in isolated colonies, hence why we so rarely see them or know much about them.

Vampires didn’t get involved in the Wizarding Wars because most truthfully don’t want to hurt anybody or create more of their kind by sharing the knowledge of their creation with wizards.

Vampires are similar to ghosts in the way that they died, but returned to Earth and cannot pass on, but are different in the way that they have a physical form and someone else forced them to come back against their will, rather than it being a choice on their part. They’re similar to Inferi in the way that they were brought back from the dead by Dark magic cast by another person, but they have a soul and are so trapped in the bodies they’re cursed into that they almost always outlive the person who originally cursed them and can only be killed through the traditional “stake through the heart and beheading” technique. Vampires also all end up dying sooner or later, whether by their own hand or intervention by wizards after they’ve lost so much of their sanity and humanity that they become dangerous.

With the vampire lore plotted out, I had to go back to figuring out who this vampire of mine was as a person. At that point, I hadn’t had an MC that was a Ravenclaw yet (unless you count Carewyn’s brother and mother), so I decided that could be something fun to explore, particularly if I wanted to steer clear of the brooding vampire trope. (All of the Ravenclaws I’ve known in my life are much less prone to self-loathing and depression than I am. XD;;;) Sure enough, though, one of the influences that popped up right away was Garrett. Like Garrett, Bat was originally from the 1700′s, only to die and become a vampire while fighting in the American War for Independence -- the biggest difference, of course, is that Garrett was an American Patriot, while Bat was a British regular!! LOL!! As I hashed out Bat’s backstory as a Muggle-born wizard who went to war with his best friend, however, I found Bat (or, more specifically, his original human self, Robert) picking up traits from another character -- Sirius Black! Like Sirius, Robert was disinterested in rules and a bit cocky, but also incredibly talented and intelligent and a deathly loyal friend, especially to his male best friend, who was like a brother to him and he would’ve died rather than betray. If Barty was the popular, well-liked leader of the group, Robert was his right-hand man and foil. Sadly, like Sirius as well, Robert also ended up losing his male best friend far too soon and being condemned to a fate worse than death thanks to a betrayal by his other best friend. They’re also both dog Animagi who become surrogate parental figures in later life! ^.^

As Robert, Bat’s face claim is Josh Groban. As a vampire stuck in his BFF Barty’s reanimated corpse, Bat’s face claim is Lee Pace, specifically in his role as Fernando Wood in the film Lincoln.

[dustyard]

What do you think about dinosaurs as daemons? They are commonly considered to represent traditionalistic view on reality and "primeval rage" in symbolic form-finding, but I am not agree with that. Most of the content on dinosaurs we have in modern media is primarily focused on science, and sci-fi in terms of fiction, so it's very hard for me to see any relation to traditions in dinosaurs. And "primeval rage" is also not that true, because scientific research on dinosaurs' behaviour shows that even t-rex was probably not that agressive as this species is portrayed in fiction. However, I assume that it should be something in the person which would make them settle as a dinosaur, instead of a behaviourally close modern animal.

Okay I've been thinking about this question for like, a week, because I realized when I first got it I had absolutely no idea how to answer it. So, let's just see how this goes.

Symbolic form-finding with dinosaurs is really complicated because the public's opinion on dinosaurs has changed a lot in a very short time. We've only known about them for what, 180 years? That's really not very long.

Altough, humans have definitely had access to fossils and dinosaur bones before the first one was "discovered" in 1677. Like, not only did they have dinosaur bones and other fossilized remains, but they understood what they were in the sense of they knew that these remains were from once-living animals, even if they didn't know what kind of animals. So there's a whole wealth of stories that have existed and possibly been lost that tried to conceptualize the giant, strange animal bones people were finding. I'm not an anthropologist, I don't want to do too much hypothesizing, but I can give some examples. Solinus, a Greek historian, wrote about the town Pallene that had once been a host to some massive battle between giants and the gods, and that there were bones there to prove it. And there were. You know what kind? Mastadon bones, which aren't dinosaur bones, I know, but these were ancient people telling stories about old bones they found in the ground. The Lakota people talked about creatures they called the Unktehi and the Wakinyan in the Badlands of South Dakota, a place that is filled with a variety of dinosaur bones. They even understood the difference between the different kinds of bones, because there were mesasaurs and pterosaurs, which were water and flying reptiles, and this is incorporated into the Lakota's stories of these creatures. One I don't have any actual evidence of but that I think might be a connection is Aztec myths of Quetzalcoatl, a giant serpent, which popped up suspiciously close to where titanoboas used to live.

All this is to say that our modern concept of dinosaurs is such a small portion of humanity's cultural perception of dinosaurs, even if we haven't always called them that. I don't really agree with the whole "primeval rage" thing anyway because dinosaurs were just, like, animals. Animals aren't constantly vicious, mindless beasts.

I don't know why, exactly, someone would settle as a dinosaur, but I think it might have to do with a person feeling extremely disconnected from modern life to a degree that they can't get over. I also think there would maybe be some kind of larger-than-life quality, because dinosaurs and mythology are so intertwined. These might be the kinds of people who have stories told about them, but that are hard to actually grasp onto, if you know what I mean.

I don't really follow the concept of viable and non-viable dæmons because I don't think it's helpful, but I will say that I don't suggest dinosaurs as an analytical form to newer dæmians simply because our understanding of them changes all the time in really drastic ways. We didn't even know about the feathers thing until what, a decade ago? Don't get me wrong, regular animals have this happen; biologists only learned about cougar social interaction like three years ago. So I guess my real suggestion is just to do a lot of thorough research and to be aware that our knowledge of them may well change on a dime.

[sultrysweet]

Supercat - "Are you stupid or stupid?" (Pretty please?)

Are you stupid or stupid? x

Kara almost crash landed on her couch after her latest rescue with soot from the house fire smudged across her forehead, cheeks, and even a knuckle-sized swipe across her chin. Too drained to shower before she stretched out on the cushions, she at least had enough energy to speed change into her gray-sleeved baseball tee and pastel pink shorts that did little to cover much of anything. She opened the rarely used Postmates app on her phone a minute later when someone knocked on her door.

With a sigh, she stood up and tossed her phone on the couch. She trudged toward the unknown visitor and didn’t think to use her x-ray vision, or to even check the peephole, before she yanked the door wide open. 

Expecting anyone else, Kara rested her head against the doorframe and stared disinterestedly at the person in the hallway until her nose caught the scent of pizza. Her unfocused eyes looked down at the set of stacked boxes and widened. She noticed a familiar cross section ring with a green stone tip against the side of the warm boxes right when an even more familiar voice startled her into a more alert state of mind.

“Feel free to take them off my hands any time now.”

“Ms. Grant!” Kara pushed herself away from the door and stood at attention as though her former boss was a drill sergeant. Kara only added to that impression when she grabbed the pizza from Cat without having to be told, as soon as the older woman’s words finally registered. “You’re here! Why are you here?”

“Does it matter?” The former CEO cocked her hip and rested her ring-bearing hand on it while she gave Kara one of her infamous looks that some people might see as an open invitation to challenge the woman. Some people would be wrong.

Kara stared at Cat for a long enough moment of inactivity that it must have felt like a challenge all the same, if Cat rolling her eyes was any indication.

“Fine, someone sent a little birdie to me in D.C. and, now that I know the multiverse has collapsed into...whatever the hell this timeline is, I thought I’d thank you for saving the world. Again.” Cat breezed by her as she walked into the apartment without invitation. “Not to mention that fact that you won your first Pulitzer, which I sadly couldn’t see you receive in person, and I’m sure you haven’t had much of a chance to bask in the glory of that accomplishment.”

Kara stuttered as she turned and watched Cat stroll through her apartment like she owned the place. Knowing what Cat Grant was worth, even after selling CatCo, Kara didn’t dismiss the idea that the other woman could easily own the entire building.

“So, are you going to offer me anything to drink to go along with that pizza?” Cat settled in one of the bar stools at the kitchen island and then squinted at the refrigerator. “Do you even have anything to drink?”

Kara frowned. The usual judgment in Cat’s voice kickstarted higher brain function and led her to close the door and the space between them. “Yes, I have things to drink. And I don’t know what bird would have told you about...the multiverse…” She trailed off as she pieced together a possible, though still unlikely, situation that explained how Cat knew anything about the Vanishing Point. 

“Are you with me yet, Supergirl?”

Kara only stopped staring at the dimly lit kitchen backsplash when she felt the pizza slip out of her grasp. She jolted forward in an attempt to catch the boxes before she could drop any of the food only to nearly push the boxes out of Cat’s hands as the woman guided them onto the counter. “Sorry,” she muttered when she realized her mistake.

“That answers my question.”

“Sorry,” Kara said a little louder, and even managed to make eye contact with the other woman. “It’s been a long day.”

“The grime on your face suggested as much.”

“What?” Kara raised a hand to her cheek with the same urgency as though Cat had pointed out she’d shown up to work in her underwear. “Oh, there was a fire. Wait, go back to how exactly you know about the multiverse. Former multiverse.”

Cat sighed and popped open the top pizza box. “Agent Mulder paid me a visit two days ago and pulled a very E.B.E. move with a finger to my temple.”

“Uh, e-b-what?”

“Extraterrestrial biological entity. Have you never seen The X-Files?” The question came out like an accusation, another judgment, but Cat waved her hand and then pulled a slice of sausage and pepperoni pizza from the box. “Anyway, he zapped me with the knowledge of a world that no longer exists and I was faced with the new reality that Lex Luthor is worshipped instead of reviled, but that wasn’t even the most upsetting thing about all the new memories I gained, or that he unlocked. I’m still not entirely sure how that mind-meld thing works. Although, if you could get him to explain it to me—”

“What,” Kara interrupted with a sharper than intended tone and relaxed a little, “was the most upsetting part?”

“If you or your friend are worried that I’m only interested in knowing how or what he did just to write an expose on it, don’t forget that all my journalistic drive comes from  natural curiosity first and foremost.”

“Cat.”

Another sigh and then, “The most upsetting part was that I could have gone another handful months or even years wrongly believing everything about this new Earth because you were never going to tell me yourself.”

“What?” Kara gripped the edge of the counter and stared wide-eyed at Cat as she gave the woman her full attention. 

“And the only reason I can think that you’d do that is because you still weren’t ready to tell me who you are.”

“Who I…? What?” Kara shook her head as if to a clear dense fog in her brain that prevented her from understanding, or more accurately believing, Cat’s words.

“I know that it’s mostly my fault that you feel you can’t trust me. When I found out the first time, I gave you an impossible ultimatum. I had no right to force that kind of decision on you because it’s your life, your powers, and you will always have control over what you do with them. But I also never stopped to consider that just because you have these abilities doesn’t mean you wouldn’t need to feed, cloth, and house yourself like anyone else living in this world. Pushing you out of a job with me would have only left you to find a paying one somewhere else because I’m sure that government agency you work with doesn’t subsidize their alien associates.”

“Well, there is a great medical plan,” Kara said without thinking. She clapped a hand over her mouth less than a second later.

Cat grinned, never one to miss the opportunity to gloat. “I shouldn't have done that, but I still wish you’d at least told me before your friend hit me with his best shot.”

Kara resisted the urge to chuckle and said, “It’s not that I don’t trust you. I had way more reservations about telling Lena than I ever had about you, and it’s not like you’re going to pretend to still be my friend just to learn about any of my weaknesses to use against me later. Wait, you’re not going to do that. Are you?”

“No! Kar-” Cat sighed and slid off the stool. “I know I forced you to out yourself to me before, but I confronted you about it. I didn’t hide, I didn’t pretend, and I never once went public with anything I’d found; even before you pulled the Houdini act with your stunt double.”

“Um.” Kara did laugh that time and felt her cheeks warm ever so slightly. “That was J’onn. The man who gave you memories of the original timeline, that was him.”

“A shapeshifter. That’s...well.” Before Cat lost herself to critical thinking, she said, “My point is, why would you think I’d do something like that?”

Kara winced. “Because it’s what Lena did.”

Cat balked. “Lena as in Lena Luthor? The woman who tried to mass produce a device that identifies aliens and would coincide with the Alien Registry that’s basically a pre-imposed rap sheet on any non-human and perpetuates profiling? The woman who bought my company just to give it away to that sensationalist who prefers clickbait to actual journalism less than a year later?”

“Uh, yeah?”

Cat shook her head. She took a deep breath and her shoulders rose toward her ears with the movement. Her body remained tense, even when Cat unleashed her newfound anger. “Are you stupid or...stupid?”

Kara stepped back like Cat’s words had lanced her.

“Great.” Cat huffed. “Now that I’ve dumbed down my speech to what would pass as good grammar with your latest boss, I’d say this trip has been more frustrating than I thought.”

“I’m...sorry?”

“I can’t believe you told her of all people. Forgetting the fact that she carries the Luthor name, which I know doesn’t automatically make her like the rest of that family, she’s done nothing to prove herself worthy of your trust.”

“Nothing? She was my friend!”

“A friend with a skewed moral compass that never favors you.”

Kara scoffed. “At least she was here! She helped me figure out what I wanted to do with that open-ended promotion you gave me. And then, even as a lowly cub reporter, she still took my calls and scheduled meetings. But then she also sat with me, shared working dinners with me, and talked to me. She was my friend. And now she’s an adversary.”

Kara hadn’t felt the tears form or fall, but she felt Cat wipe them away and close the small gap between them. 

“Kara.” Cat breathed her name like a prayer. “I’m sorry for what you lost.”

Kara sucked in a deep, watery breath and fell into Cat. She wrapped her arms around the smaller woman while more tears streamed down her cheeks and dampened Cat’s hair where Kara buried her face in the Queen of All Media’s neck.

“Thank you,” Kara said, her words muffled against Cat. “You don’t even know the half of it, either.”

“What do you mean?” Cat pulled away but kept her hands on Kara’s biceps. She even squeezed a little when Kara ducked her head toward her chest.

“Lena isn’t the only person I lost. Another friend of mine sacrificed himself for this new Earth.”

“Oh, Kara.” Cat stroked her thumb over Kara’s cheekbone a few times, the back and forth motion enough to draw more tears before Kara sniffled and lifted her head.

“I just keep thinking it has to stop, that I won’t have to lose anyone else. Or that I can at least get them back. I can’t get Oliver back, but at least she’s here. Lena’s alive and in National City and I tried. I tried to get back what we had, but she might as well have found new waters to swim in. Like you.”

Cat slid her hand from Kara’s face to her neck and grazed Kara’s jawline with her thumb. “I’m not sure what her or her brother’s plans are, but I can tell you about mine.”

Kara fisted Cat’s shirt where she continued to hold the woman at her waist and held the form-fitting, black V-neck tightly enough to tug the woman closer. Their noses nearly touched and one of Cat’s heeled feet stepped on Kara’s bare toes.

“Kara, I can’t promise you things will get easier with me around. I might actually make it worse some days, but—”

“But you’re staying?”

“If I’m not then I made a huge mistake buying out Andrea Rojas for my company two hours ago.”

Kara sucked in a breath as her lips curled into an unbidden smile. In the next breath, she eliminated the barely-there space between them and crashed their lips together. She clawed desperately at Cat’s shirt until the material stretched loose and Kara needed to feel more within her grasp. 

Cat moaned as Kara gripped the woman’s hips a short distance from where she’d previously clung to Cat’s shirt. Cat arched into Kara and her hungry touches. After several heated kisses, the Queen of All Media slid one hand down Kara’s arm and placed it over Kara’s while she moved her other hand to Kara’s sternum. With a light shove, she urged Kara away and pulled back from the kiss.

“Much as I’d love to continue this and explore everything those thighs of steel can do,” Cat said with a lingering stare at Kara’s tanned, toned legs, “I’m sure you worked up an appetite earlier and that pizza’s getting cold.”

“Let it.” Kara licked her lips while her eyes wandered over Cat’s form. “I’d rather skip to dessert.”

[superchartisland]

Trivial Pursuit (Domark, Spectrum, 1986)

Gallup all formats chart, Your Computer Vol. 7 No. 1, January 1987

Trivial Pursuit the board game divides the world of knowledge into six categories; six wedges of cheese for six spaces in a wheel with six spokes. In pursuit of rounded knowledge from Trivial Pursuit the computer game of the board game, there seems no better framework to adopt than its own.

By the time 1986 turned into 1987, electronic games had become well established as a leisure pursuit in their own right. For the teenagers of the time, they had been popular in some form for their entire lives. The ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 had been out for five years, and increasing numbers of parents were being persuaded of their educational and fun value. That would carry on -- I got my own Commodore 64 several Christmases later. As discussed a few entries back, computer games were sold in the biggest high street shops. Meanwhile, sports are a familiar subject for AAA. Making games about subjects people already know well is an easy route in for an audience. Taking an already popular activity like football with its own set of defined rules and turning it into computerised form is an even more obvious thing to go for, on both the developers’ side and the players’. With that background, it is no surprise at all to find other existing leisure activities being successfully translated into computer games. The board game Trivial Pursuit was of a similar age to the Spectrum and C64, still in an initial swing of popularity which meant that an electronic version of it wasn’t trying to replace a well-established favourite like Monopoly, but offering an alternative or addition to the fun thing you’d recently come across. The computer game’s manual explicitly calls it a game that “the whole family (Mum and Dad included!) enjoy enormously.” On Christmas Day 1986, many British families must have gathered round the Spectrum after dinner for a game of Trivial Pursuit.

Computer science, particularly at the kind of price that was able to reach large numbers of game-playing households, had only advanced so far. This presented some technological barriers to recreating the Trivial Pursuit experience. Representing the colour brown, for instance, was apparently an unachievable task, and so the art & literature wedge becomes black. Still, Trivial Pursuit is a very viable candidate for transfer to computer form, comprising as it does of a series of trivia questions with a limited appendage of choosing movement and collecting tokens. So the dice also go, replaced by a random dart-throwing animation which captures a miniscule fraction of the tactile sense of ceremony, but mostly the game is intact. Expanded on, even, since the board game couldn’t offer musical rounds where listening to “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” is an essential part of the experience, or easily offer picture rounds. The one remaining issue is that of the mechanics of answering questions. I assumed going in that there would be some kind of multiple choice arrangement, but the actual solution is much more simple and elegant. The game just poses each question and then asks whether you got it right, Y/N? Players of the board game similarly get an answer written down and have to determine among themselves whether the player asked it answered satisfactorily, so why should a computer recreation of the experience be any different? The psychology of presenting an irreversible button-press and relying on players’ honesty in this way is nonetheless a fascinating sideshow all of its own.

I’ve talked previously about the strength of games as ways of presenting spaces. Trivial Pursuit has several spaces to present. One is the board, a recreation of a physical object with functionality retained and resemblance to the original object at the forefront. Another of its spaces is the more completely imagined room in which the question master paces backwards and forwards, surrounded by items to represent the different question categories. Sometimes it goes dark, giving the idea of an image being cast by a projector, the game turning into both test and lecture at the same time. Among the items in the room is a world map up on the wall. And what is a chart but a map of territory, of tangible or intangible space? The Gallup charts by which we are finding our way through the AAA journey are maps of their own territory, suspended between imaginary and real. SalesSpace, we could call it. In SalesSpace, the things that count are time and format and sales, and that’s what’s reflected in the picture of relationships between games that charts of SalesSpace show. In SalesSpace, board game recreation Trivial Pursuit and World War II shoot-em-up 1942 sit together in the same top ten. In SalesSpace, Trivial Pursuit goes between well-remembered arcade games Paperboy and Gauntlet along the route through the UK’s #1 games. Look along the right axes and what you might have thought of as very separate places turn out to be right next to each other.

One of the first things that’s obvious on playing Trivial Pursuit the computer game is its commitment to being as accessible as it can. It’s notable that it uses the keyboard’s arrow keys for directional controls, rather than QAOP or one of the other arcane combinations other Spectrum games tended to go for. Anyone was clearly meant to be able to turn up and figure out what was happening as quickly as possible, and that holds up. Admittedly if I didn’t already know the rules of Trivial Pursuit I would need the manual at hand, but that goes for the board game too. Past that, the basic action of answering trivia questions is fun, its questions are pretty well-pitched as easy but not too much so, and the attention to detail seems reasonable (I haven’t encountered any Hugh Jackilometresans so far). The choice of questions goes for timelessness, even more than the board version since the music question choices are backwards looking, presumably to keep the sound samples copyright-free. Where it doesn’t achieve that timelessness, the perspective on what has changed in three decades makes for intriguing wrinkles -- you could probably still ask “What was Mrs. Fawlty’s Christian name?” but not in those words. Trivial Pursuit is one of the most straightforwardly entertaining games I’ve played for AAA so far.

But is it art? It’s not a question that I’ve engaged with on this blog elsewhere, because it’s not very interesting, but it’s one that somehow doesn’t go away. An inferiority-complex-driven need to justify video games to outsiders as being art seems to have infinite lives. Worse, within some very loud pockets of game culture, that need sits alongside a vicious refusal to tolerate the kind of cultural criticism that art tends to get. Sometimes the same people are the ones saying both, and more. There’s no place for politics in games, apparently. Narrative events only ever happen inside the context of the narrative and not a wider context of authorial choice. Games should just be fun, OK? But, of course, the right kind of fun. The wrong kind of fun means a non-game, a phrase I became familiar with as I re-engaged with video games in the Wii and DS era and read NeoGAF, a gaming forum which was relatively open and welcoming (i.e. it was merely toxic rather than a seething hellscape). Wii Sports was a non-game. Non-games are successful games which are too popular and do too many things which games don’t do to count as games. In a weird inversion of the ‘how is this art?’ Turner Prize winner phenomenon, the mainstream audience sees non-games as a perfectly fine type of game and the enthusiasts proclaiming themselves at the centre of the culture completely deny non-games a place in the category. Not in the sense of them being too lowbrow, but of trying to define them out completely. Trivial Pursuit would surely have counted as a non-game. Which is nonsense, obviously. It provides an experience of a virtual space that’s dependent on the player’s actions, producing an emerging narrative within its bounds. I can’t work out a plausible game definition which wouldn’t include it without going absurdly narrow. Its selection of questions is a meaningful creative decision, illustrating and reinforcing what knowledge is seen as worth knowing. As for the wider art question, let’s just say that I have an equally tough time with any argument that identifies Frank Bruno’s Boxing as art and doesn’t do the same for Trivial Pursuit.

One of the more successful tactics of the kind of gatekeepers who talk about non-games is an appeal to history. They were here first. People who want something different than monolithic hardcore games are trying to change the rightful way of things proven by time. The whole idea of non-games has that idea of definition-by-precedent built in. Yet find the right maps and this appeal to history is revealed as not only bogus, but bogus even within the boundaries of its own arguments. Casual games and casual players have been here thriving all along. As 1986 turned in 1987, more people were going to their local high street WHSmith and buying Trivial Pursuit the computer game than were buying anything that has outlasted it as an emblem of retro gaming. The world mapped out by the games charts has always been a big one with room for many perspectives and interests. It’s not surprising, because it’s the same story for other media. And yes, other media have their own purer-in-the-old-days crews, too. Music discussions are crowded with talk of how things were better in the past when real music ruled. But significantly, it’s almost as common to see the response that there has always been music of different types in every era, even if it’s likely to be phrased as ‘there has always been disposable pop’ or something more derogatory. The narrative of aberration can’t stand when enthusiasts are engaged with the reality that refutes it. It’s much tougher for ahistorical nonsense to gain any credence when reality is a matter of public record, the charts that map history still accessible. But what if your medium has failed to keep its history up so well? What if the only history most get to see is filtered through the nostalgia and commercial goals of a specific set of winning viewpoints? What if Gauntlet is commemorated but Trivial Pursuit isn’t? Then the gatekeepers can just keep on pretending that the current version of what they don’t approve of is a new aberration, restarting their game to fight the same fights over and over again from a position of illusory strength. The selective retention of knowledge is anything but trivial.

Q: What was the UK’s best-selling computer game at the turn of 1987?

A: Trivial Pursuit.

[aridara]

Verifying a list of “hateful feminist quotes”. (From F to M)

Continuing my checking of whether these quotes are actually hateful opinions of feminists (instead of, say, non-hateful opinions, or opinions we can’t know where they came from, or fictional opinions made by fictional characters...) or not.

"I was, in reality, bred by my parents as my father's concubine... What we take for granted as the stability of family life may well depend on the sexual slavery of our children. What's more, this is a cynical arrangement our institutions have colluded to conceal.".

Sylvia Fraser Journalist

Unverifiable. Once again, the only places where this quote is cited is from this same copy-pasted “hateful feminist quotes” list, which I’ve shown (and will keep showing) over and over to be fucking dishonest, to say the least. By this point, NOBODY would give it the benefit of the doubt.

"All men are rapists and that's all they are"

Marilyn French, Authoress; later, advisoress to Al Gore's Presidential Campaign.

Fictional - it comes from "The Women’s Room" (1977). Specifically, Val (one of the fictional characters in the book) says it right after her daughter has been raped.

"All patriarchists exalt the home and family as sacred, demanding it remain inviolate from prying eyes. Men want privacy for their violations of women... All women learn in childhood that women as a sex are men's prey."

Marilyn French, The Women's Room, Summit Books, 1977

True, but not hateful (and not from "The Women's Room"). It's definitely a denunciation of the rigid gender roles that put the man as the family’s head, and the woman as the servant who has to serve the man - even sexually. Notice how she talks about “patriarchists”? Yeah, those are the people who want to enforce those gender roles.

"The media treat male assaults on women like rape, beating, and murder of wives and female lovers, or male incest with children, as individual aberrations...obscuring the fact that all male violence toward women is part of a concerted campaign."

Marilyn French, The Women's Room, Summit Books, 1977

True, but not hateful (and not from "The Women's Room"). She was talking about rape culture, or one aspect of it - specifically: the refusal to see violence against women as a systemic issue. It’s easier to blame social problems on single deranged individuals (which are “not me”) rather than admit that they’re social problems (and thus “also me”); but it doesn’t solve those problems. This is what French was denouncing.

"My feelings about men are the result of my experience. I have little sympathy for them. Like a Jew just released from Dachau, I watch the handsome young Nazi soldier fall writhing to the ground with a bullet in his stomach and I look briefly and walk on. I don't even need to shrug. I simply don't care. What he was, as a person, I mean, what his shames and yearnings were, simply don't matter."

Marilyn French, Author "The Women's Room"

Again: fictional. "The Women's Room" is a fictional book.

“As long as some men use physical force to subjugate females, all men need not. The knowledge that some men do suffices to threaten all women. He can beat or kill the woman he claims to love; he can rape women…he can sexually molest his daughters… THE VAST MAJORITY OF MEN IN THE WORLD DO ONE OR MORE OF THE ABOVE.”

- Marilyn French

True, but not hateful; it has been massively (I suspect deliberately) edited. Here's the full quote, with the parts that anti-feminists chopped away in bold:

"As long as some men use physical force to subjugate females, all men need not. The knowledge that some men do suffices to threaten all women. Beyond that, it is not necessary to beat up a woman to bear her down. A man can simply refuse to hire women in well-paid jobs, extract as much or more work from women than men but pay them less, or treat women disrespectfully at work or at home. He can fail to support a child he has engendered, demand the woman he lives with wait on him like a servant. He can beat or kill the woman he claims to love; he can rape women, whether mate, acquaintance, or stranger; he can rape or sexually molest his daughters, nieces, stepchildren, or the children of a woman he claims to love. THE VAST MAJORITY OF MEN IN THE WORLD DO ONE OR MORE OF THE ABOVE."

So, yeah. Anti-feminists forgot to include job discrimination, general disrespect, and treating your wife like a servant to the list; with their omission, they try to make French appear as if she was saying "most men are rapists, murderers, or beaters of women". Pretty fucking dishonest, to say the least.

"My own informal survey of adult women suggests that very few reach the age of twenty-one without suffering some form of male predation--incest, molestation, rape or attempted rape, beatings, and sometimes torture or imprisonment."

Marilyn French, The War Against Women, Ballantine Books, 1992, p. 195)

Unverifiable and not hateful. Given the massive bullshit that happened with the previous quote, I now suspect that anti-feminists attempted the same trick here - cutting away stuff like job discrimination/general disrespect/being treated like a servant.

"The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race."

Sally Miller Gearhart, in The Future - If There Is One - Is Female.

Huh, look at that: a true and actually hateful quote. Good job. Have a cookie.

"[Men are] freaks of nature... full of queer obsessions about fetishistic activities and fantasy goals."

Germaine Greer, The Whole Woman, Knopf, 1999

Unverifiable. While various sources report the quote to try and attack Greer, I cannot find any part of the quote in the "The Whole Woman" ebook. Maybe there is, and I just cannot see it because it's just a preview, but I'm very doubtful.

"If women are to effect a significant amelioration in their condition it seems obvious that they must refuse to marry."

Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch, McGraw-Hill, 1971, p. 317)

Unverifiable - same as the above - and probably not hateful, given that this is, once again, about forcing women into heteronormative gender roles and marriages. Maybe the quote really exists in the "The Female Eunuch" ebook; but I can't find it.

"...men bash women because they enjoy it; they torture women as they might torture an animal or pull the wings off flies."

Germaine Greer, The Whole Woman, Knopf, 1999

Unverifiable - see the previous. However, there are a few quotes where Greer points out that some men torture women, and very probably enjoyed doing so.

"The man regards (woman) as a receptacle into which he has emptied his sperm, a kind of human spittoon."

Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch, McGraw-Hill, 1971)

Once again: unverifiable. But it looks like Greer here is talking about the attitude of many men at the time.

"Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release."

Germaine Greer

True, but not hateful. Here's the original quote from 1970 (again, the bolded part is the one that anti-feminists cut out):

"Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release. The problem of recidivism ought to have shown young men like John Greenaway just what sort of a notion security is, but there is no indication that he would understand it. Security is when everything is settled, when nothing can happen to you; security is the denial of life. Human beings are better equipped to cope with disaster and hardship than they are with unvarying security, but as long as security is the highest value in a community they can have little opportunity to decide this for themselves."

This isn’t about whether men should be all thrown in prison or not. This is about how putting “security” above everything else means stripping any choice from your life - which would make it so that it couldn’t even be called “life” at all.

In an interview Germaine Greer (radical feminist, writer) was asked the question, "You were once quoted as saying your idea of the ideal man is a woman with a dick. Are you still that way inclined?" Greer first denied that she had said it, and then replied, "I have a great deal of difficulty with the idea of the ideal man. As far as I'm concerned, men are the product of a damaged gene. They pretend to be normal but what they're doing sitting there with benign smiles on their faces is they're manufacturing sperm. They do it all the time. They never stop. I mean, we women are more reasonable. We pop one follicle every 28 days, whereas they are producing 400 million sperm for each ejaculation, most of which don't take place anywhere near an ovum. I don't know that the ecosphere can tolerate it."

Germaine Greer At a Hilton Hotel literary lunch, promoting her book, The Change-Women, Aging and the Menopause, Knopf, 1992 from a news report dated 11/14/91)

Unverifiable. It should say “SUPPOSEDLY from a newsreport THAT NOBODY SEEMS TO BE ABLE TO FIND”. So, yet another unsourced quote.

Oh, and the “My ideal man is a woman with a dick” quote? ALSO unsourced.

"The nuclear family must be destroyed, and people must find better ways of living together…. Whatever its ultimate meaning, the breakup of families now is an objectively revolutionary process…. No woman should have to deny herself any opportunities because of her special responsibilities to her children…."

Linda Gordon in "Functions of the Family," WOMEN: A Journal of Liberation, Fall, 1969

True - this quote is actually a really existing quote. It’s also distinctly non-hateful of men. It’s distinctly angry at the social imposition of marriage and the nuclear family system, though - but remember: the wife was supposed to stay at home and obey her husband in everything, back in 1969.

"And if the professional rapist is to be separated from the average dominant heterosexual (male), it may be mainly a quantitative difference."

Susan Griffin

True, but not hateful. I’ve managed to track the quote. And guess what? It was a talk about how the social expectations of the time (this part was written in 1971) expected the woman to turn down sexual advances even if she desired them, because it was considered “unchaste” for a woman to desire sex; and expected the man to wear down the woman’s “reserves”, without checking whether the woman in question actually wanted the sex, or not. It the same part, Griffin explains how, *with this social system* (that she did NOT create, nor is she advocating for) the difference between “a man who wear down a woman’s reservations” and “a rapist” is simply in how much pressure they use to make the woman have sex with them.

“We live in a culture that condones and celebrates rape. Within a phallocentric, patriarchal state the rape of women by men is a ritual that daily perpetuates and maintains sexist oppression and exploitation. We cannot hope to transform “rape culture” without committing ourselves fully to resisting and eradicating patriarchy.”

–Bell Hooks, “Seduced by Violence No More,” in Stan, Adele ed. Debating Sexual Correctness (New York, 1995)

True, but not hateful. The book is specifically talking about rape culture - aka a culture that, even if it claims that rape is wrong, in practice it fails to adequately deal with rape, instead blaming women for getting raped. This, in turn, allows sexist men to oppress women with next to no consequences.

"When a woman reaches orgasm with a man she is only collaborating with the patriarchal system, eroticizing her own oppression..."

Sheila Jeffreys

Unverifiable. HOORAAY!

“In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them”

(Dr. Mary Jo Bane, feminist and assistant professor of education at Wellesley College, and associate director of the school’s Center for Research on Woman).

Unverifiable, and probably not hateful. For starters, the source for this quote is Lew Rockwell, which is an INCREDIBLY far-right-biased source.

For another, the quote sounds like part of an argument in favor of the communal parenting, which is an argument that has been pretty explored. Also, note how she refers to communal parenting - not to women-only parenting.

"I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which a man structurally does not have. He does not have it not because he cannot have it. He's just incapable of it."

Former US Congresswoman Barbara Jordan

Huh, look at that. This quote (it’s reported in a 1992 issue of Texas Monthly, but the actual quote doesn’t have a date) is actually true, and does sound hateful. Can someone check out the score? Because, at the time of this writing, I checked 42 quotes, only 2 (possibly 3) of which were verified to be true and actually hateful.

"Marriage has existed for the benefit of men and has been a legally sanctioned method of control over women.... Male society has sold us the idea of marriage.... Now we know it is the institution that has failed us and we must work to destroy it.... The end of the institution of marriage is a necessary condition for the liberation of women. Therefore, it is important for us to encourage women to leave their husbands and not to live individually with men."

Nancy Lehmann, Helen Sullinger, Declaration of Feminism, 1971

Unverifiable. Apparently there is a book titled "The document: a declaration of feminism" published in 1971; but there's no way to verify if that quote actually exists. And the link I provided is basically the only source of that book's existance - outside of the edited quote above, which is present only in anti-feminist websites.

There is also the "Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen", written by Olympe de Gouges in 1791. Coincidence? I have no idea. Maybe it is.

"Man-hating is everywhere, but everywhere it is twisted and transformed, disguised, tranquilized, and qualified. It coexists, never peacefully, with the love, desire, respect, and need women also feel for men. Always man-hating is shadowed by its milder, more diplomatic and doubtful twin, ambivalence."

Judith Levine

Maybe true, but there is no context. I can’t make heads or tails of what it actually means. It’s the same case as some of the Dworkin quotes - no indication of the work or the context it was taken from.

"I feel what they feel: man-hating, that volatile admixture of pity, contempt, disgust, envy, alienation, fear, and rage at men. It is hatred not only for the anonymous man who makes sucking noises on the street, not only for the rapist or the judge who acquits him, but for what the Greeks called philo-aphilos, 'hate in love,' for the men women share their lives with--husbands, lovers, friends, fathers, brothers, sons, coworkers."

Judith Levine, My Enemy, My love

Unverifiable. The only sources talking about this quote are anti-feminist ones.

"There are no boundaries between affectionate sex and slavery in (the male) world. Distinctions between pleasure and danger are academic; the dirty-laundrylist of 'sex acts'...includes rape, foot binding, fellatio, intercourse, auto eroticism, incest, anal intercourse, use and production of pornography, cunnilingus, sexual harassment, and murder."

Judith Levine; summarizing comment on the WAS document, (A southern Women's Writing Collective: Women Against Sex.)

The quote itself is unverifiable and not hateful, given that all of those acts have been (1) used by men against women, and (2) justified as “normal” sexuality by those same men.

However, the bit where the anti-feminist author of this list talks about “Women Against Sex” is false: the real title of the document Levine was talking about was "Sex resistance in heterosexual arrangements: Manifesto of the Southern Women’s Writing Collective". Because making up a false title to demonize feminists is acceptable behavior, am I right, anti-feminists? (# sarcasm)

"Men's sexuality is mean and violent, and men so powerful that they can 'reach WITHIN women to fuck/construct us from the inside out.' Satan-like, men possess women, making their wicked fantasies and desires women's own. A woman who has sex with a man, therefore, does so against her will, 'even if she does not feel forced."

Judith Levine

Slightly unverifiable - I can’t find neither a scan, nor the citation for the full Levine quote. What I did find was the book Levine was looking at - My Enemy, My Love (1993), a book that talks about “gender roles, the social definitions of masculinity and femininity, the culture’s assignment of certain exclusive traits to each biological sex, [which] have imprisoned us on either side of a divide”. Also: no mention about whether the women interviewed by Levine were feminists or not, and in particular, no mention of the context for the quote.

"All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman."

Catherine MacKinnon

False. The quote apparently comes from Playboy, Oct 1986; but it wasn’t written by MacKinnon, nor anyone was able to track the instance where she supposedly originally said/wrote that.

"You grow up with your father holding you down and covering your mouth so another man can make a horrible searing pain between your legs."

Catherine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses of Life and Law – Sex and Violence: A Perspective, Harvard University Press, 1987

True, but out of context. From what I can understand, this is from yet another discussion about non-con pornography (“Only Words”, 1993); MacKinon wasn't talking about families in general.

What's with anti-feminists taking discussions about problematic and sexist porn and deciding that feminists were talking about everyday life? What, do anti-feminist believe that pornography is an accurate representation of real li-

Nevermind, let's move on...

"Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism."

Catherine MacKinnon" Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (First Harvard University Press, 1989), p.10

False. The quote is completely absent from MacKinnon's book, or any of her books. Apparently, this is a slightly modified quote from "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism".

"In a patriarchal society, all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent."

Catherine MacKinnon

Misattributed. The quote itself comes from "Professing Feminism", which wasn't written by MacKinnon, but by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge; they were talking about MacKinnon and Dworkin's opinions - they weren't quoting them. (And no, neither Dworkin nor MacKinnon believed that intercourse is rape.). The misattribution was caused by right-wing columnist Cal Thomas, who wrote an article about "Professing Feminism" and mistakenly attributed that quote to MacKinnon.

“The care of children ..is infinitely better left to the best trained practitioners of both sexes who have chosen it as a vocation…[This] would further undermine family structure while contributing to the freedom of women.”

–Kate Millet, Sexual Politics 178-179

Misattributed. Here, Millet isn't talking about his own beliefs; he's talking about Engels's. Specifically, he's talking about how the idea that "The woman is naturally the one best equipped to raise a child" has the effects of:

Put a limitation on the woman, but not the man. If the woman wants to, say, pursue a career, she's forced to deal with child-raising AND with pursuing the career; the man has to deal only with the latter, because society pressures the woman into doing the former.

It's inefficient, because you just decide that the woman is the one most capable of raising a kid, instead of looking at which person is the most capable.

"We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage."

Robin Morgan.-From Sisterhood Is Powerful, (ed), 1970, p. 537

True, but not hateful. Again: “marriage” presupposed that the woman stayed at home and obeyed her husband in everything. I fail to see how being against the imposition of this kind of marriage/gender roles is hateful.

"I feel that 'man-hating' is an honourable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them."

Robin Morgan.-former president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and editor of MS magazine

True (1973). I also fail to see what’s wrong with “class-hatred”, aka being justifiably angry with the oppressing class while fighting against its privileges. I mean, I do understand that nobody shouldn’t oppress anyone else even if they were oppressed beforehand, but here we’re talking about expressing justified anger against an oppressive system, and wanting to dismantle it. What, is that illegal now?

"I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire."

Robin Morgan.

True, but not hateful. I fail to see where’s the problem with this quote. It’s basically the concept of “yes means yes” - you don’t have sex with anyone unless they want it. ...Oh, wait, now I see why anti-feminists have a problem with this quote.

"And let's put one lie to rest for all time: the lie that men are oppressed, too, by sexism--the lie that there can be such a thing as 'men's liberation groups.' Oppression is something that one group of people commits against another group, specifically because of a 'threatening' characteristic shared by the latter group--skin, color, sex or age, etc. The oppressors are indeed FUCKED UP by being masters, but those masters are not OPPRESSED. Any master has the alternative of divesting himself of sexism or racism--the oppressed have no alternative--for they have no power but to fight. In the long run, Women's Liberation will of course free men--but in the short run it's going to cost men a lot of privilege, which no one gives up willingly or easily. Sexism is NOT the fault of women--kill your fathers, not your mothers".

Robin Morgan.

True (1970), but not hateful. This shows a big miscommunication problem between MRAs and feminists. See, many feminists define sexism not as “acts of individual discrimination against a gender”, but as “an oppressive social system where one gender is treated as inferior”. By that logic, what MRAs claim is “sexism against men”, feminists call it "discrimination against men", but not "sexism against men", because women did NOT create this system where masculinity is put on a (very narrow) pedestal and femininity is derided. As Morgan put it:

"The oppressors are indeed FUCKED UP by being masters, but those masters are not OPPRESSED. Any master has the alternative of divesting himself of sexism or racism—the oppressed have no alternative—for they have no power but to fight. In the long run, Women’s Liberation will of course free men—but in the short run it’s going to cost men a lot of privilege, which no one gives up willingly or easily."

You can’t compare the situation of an oppressed class (who has to tear down the system biased against it) with that of the privileged class (who actually made the biased system in the first place and could fix it). And what Morgan is saying is correct. Systematic oppression divide society in a privileged group (which has a certain amounts of benefits that the oppressed do not have, and/or is exempt from various disadvantages that instead the oppressed do face) and an oppressed one. Dismantling such a system DOES damage the privileged group, because it takes away their privileges - privileges that they shouldn't have in the first place, and that are based on the oppression of marginalized groups.

“My white skin disgusts me. My passport disgusts me. They are the marks of an insufferable privilege bought at the price of others’ agony.”

-Robin Morgan

Not hateful. From the looks of it, here Morgan is talking about the effects of white colonialism and racism - specifically how they benefit white or white-passing people such as her. For example: being allowed to travel or emigrate wherever you want and be treated as a person, while non-white immigrants are by default believed to be violent criminals, murderers, and rapists.

[malphiguswrites]

The Evolution of Art

Denada Permatasari, 23 March 2018. Edited 26 September 2020.

Through analysing some contemporary artworks in the duration of my arts diploma, I have discovered a trend with art periods, what each period emphasises on and why they change overtime. I shall provide a gross oversimplification of the progression of art throughout history as far as my own knowledge goes: At first, humans made art to communicate and to leave a mark, evidenced by cave paintings. This purpose is purely practical, before people discovered that they can communicate while at the same time making it look pretty. The moment people start decorating their clay vases and walls, using colourful feathers for their clothes, is when art starts to become a vehicle for aestheticism.

From there, the subsequent art periods focus on how to make the images better and more enjoyable to look at. They also focus on making art as a social and political tool. Enter the Medieval period and see all the artworks done to promote the church and the goodness of God. By the Renaissance, balance, composition, and perspective started to enter the picture, and ideas on objective beauty were bolstered by the Enlightenment. Next, the Baroque takes the meaning of objective beauty through the grand, the wealthy, and the opulent. Romanticism sprang as a counter to the vanity of Baroque, as the Romantic era embraces the natural, the emotional, and the imperfect self as beautiful. Romantic art also emphasises on self-expression, which was unprecedented at the time.

Before you know it we enter the Modern era, which is basically ‘out with the realistic drawings and paintings and in with art that is unreal’. This unreal-ness is the cause of experimentation that exploded in this era. Impressionism, Expressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and many other sub-movements are all just different ways of making art non-realistically. As a follow-up from Romanticism, the Modern era also further explored the personal aspect and incorporating the artist’s personal identity and flair to their artworks. The Modern period introduces the concept of relative aestheticism, which is a direct counter to the mindset that there is an objective beauty in art that has been prevalent for centuries.

Contemporary art has been, then, as the execution of this relative beauty. Artists seek to challenge what does beauty look like and what even counts as art. From Warhol, the commercial and the consumerist is now art. Vandalism and illegal markings are now considered its own art form, thanks to Graffiti. A whole new trend started when Marcel Duchamp first posited that a fountain can also be considered as art. Conceptual art is therefore where the idea behind the artwork is an artwork in of itself, and the actual artwork does not mean as much.

At the same time art is being constantly questioned and redefined, art has also become increasingly more personal, more accessible to the everyday people. Self-identity is also a major theme in Contemporary art, particularly when discussing identity politics. Names like Barbara Kruger, Frida Kahlo, Robert Mapplethorpe and others constantly pop up in the background of social and political reform.

Now, why is this important? Why I am even discussing art history and its progression? Well, I feel that it’s important to understand that with art periods and the attitudes in them explain the progression of human values and what society deems important. Nowadays, contemporary art has reached a point where it is so personal, it is impossible to understand the work without understanding the artist. The artist, their identities, life experiences, and personal values have become so deeply entrenched in the artworks, it is as if they become an artwork all on their own. In the past, especially pre-Modern Era, artworks were judged by their skill and objective beauty. One can appreciate an artwork and the artists behind them remained largely unknown and unpopular, the popular being the masterfully skilled at rendering realism.

Nowadays, and I realised this as I was analysing the likes of Jeff Koons and Martin Creed, the world has finally made room for personal and conceptual art to a whole new degree, to the point where I think the aesthetic aspect of art is ignored completely, in favour of the idea and meaning. When reviewing art, it is like I’m reviewing the artist more than the work itself. This is not always a bad thing, but the problem arises when the idea and meaning are even not there! Art has evolved from a purely practical tool to a purely objective thing, then to a purely meaningful thing, and now finally art is just a thing. In one case of David LaChapelle’sArchangel Michael: And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer, he uses art for a socio-political critique. In the case of Jeff Koons’ Popeye sculpture, he uses art to express just how objectively amazing he is. In the case of Martin Creed’s Work No. 1092 (alt. title ‘MOTHERS’), he doesn’t even know why he creates art, and he doesn’t even think that what he makes is art! In three artists I have described the progression of art: from the practical and rational to the personal and finally to just is.

Public outrage when David LaChapelle as good as committed blasphemy is not wholly unfounded, and so on and so forth when Jeff Koons’ sculptures are sold for millions of dollars, and Martin Creed has a whole gallery space for him displaying canvases painted in one solid colour, chairs stacked high, cacti arranged from small to tall, and a 12 metre wide monstrosity that is a possible danger to heads. What does this tell us of the human condition at large?

I think it is important to remember why we make art in the first place. Why we want something that has not existed yet to exist. In every era of art, their emphasis comes from what was lacking at that time. The Renaissance focused on the elegant and beautiful, in a world full of injustice, death, and disease. The Romantics focused on the natural and the self, when the Industrial Revolution hit and now everyone was dull and the same factory workers. Modern art focuses on personal identity and social critique as Martin Luther King orated his I Have a Dream, as feminism started, as LGBT rights soared to new heights.

Now, in a day of individualistic self-importance, supported by platforms like Facebook and Instagram, in a day of every man for himself, in competition with other 7.5 billion people, in a day where suicide rates has reached never before terrifying, unprecedented levels, one must ask: how do we make our art in response to all that?

With rapid advancement of technology and rise of the middle-class, making art has never been so accessible as it is now. Art is no longer exclusive to the privileged few of the educated, upper class. Technology has advanced far enough that physical limitations such as colour-blindness or paralysis does not make it impossible to create art. Accessibility makes art come from anyone, anywhere. It is maybe a point to my own bias, but I am seeing more and more diverse artworks highlighted made by diverse artists. Diversity has always existed but it is only now that they’re starting to get properly celebrated and given the spotlight it deserves in mainstream media. Diverse storylines coming from minority experiences and voices. Unique narratives that are non-white, queer, and or neurodiverse.

It is an era of self-conscious art, where we are finally brave enough to confront the fact that facets of our identities influence our perceived worth and place in society. An era of celebrating the unwillingly-invisible. An era of clearing away the fog from the fringes. 

The era of unsilenced truths.

[cromeromeromero]

Forever Fornever: Tokyo Window Sessions

In September 2016 I traveled to Japan to observe media art and digital culture in Tokyo. While conducting research and curatorial activities - during residencies at Tokyo Wonder Site and 3331 Arts Chiyoda -  I created a web-based project entitled Tokyo Window Sessions. The ongoing project features essays, artist interviews, an exhibition, and an archive of my personal experiences in Tokyo. The intention of these activities was to form a better link between media art communities in the U.S. and Japan. Both countries, despite an affinity for new technologies and contemporary art, remain surprisingly disconnected in discourse specifically related to media art.

In September 2016 I traveled to Japan to observe media art and digital culture in Tokyo. While conducting research and curatorial activities - during residencies at Tokyo Wonder Site and 3331 Arts Chiyoda -  I created a web-based project entitled Tokyo Window Sessions. The ongoing project features essays, artist interviews, an exhibition, and an archive of my personal experiences in Tokyo. The intention of these activities was to form a better link between media art communities in the U.S. and Japan. Both countries, despite an affinity for new technologies and contemporary art, remain surprisingly disconnected in discourse specifically related to media art.

It can be said that when we view images we either see a window, door, or mirror. Each way of seeing comes with benefits and obstacles. You can look into a window, but will not see everything inside a room. You can enter a door, but sometimes it is locked. Mirrors offer self-reflection, but also trick and reflect narcissism. Using the title of  “Windows” is meant to evoke a temporary glance into Tokyo. The idea of “sessions” comes from the phrase “jam session”, originating from American jazz music of the 1920s in which desegregated gatherings of musicians took place.

Tokyo Window Sessions is improvisational and experimental, at the same time it is critical and investigative, emblematic of digital culture itself. The website itself features three sections Windows, Ephemera, and an Exhibition.

Windows >

This section features essays and interviews. Essays drift between discussing exhibitions and specific artworks. Artist interviews contain a mixture of questions about an artist’s work and personal interests. This section also features what I call “bonus questions”, prompts or exercises where an artist sends a picture of their computer desktop or shares some of their favorite YouTube videos. Every page features illustrations I created related to the artist I was interviewing.

Ephemera >

In this section I accumulate data or artefacts from my time in Tokyo. This includes receipts from Lawson, museum brochures, as well as every video and photo I recorded Tokyo. I live in the digital and I often wonder what content is important to keep and share. In the arts we often focus so much on the ‘work’ but what about the moments that influence the work? Or those that take place outside of it? As an independent curator, my work and personal life are mixed and I wished to share it. For me, it is important that I create projects that are inviting, warm, and sometimes weird.

Exhibition >

An exhibition entitled ASDFGHJKL;’ was produced. It was shown in two different formats (as the studio space I was in was constantly changing). I will discuss the exhibition at the end of this essay.

Through the project I have met many amazing people and had many wonderful experiences. I also observed a few similarities and divergences between media art in the U.S. and Japan, (specifically New York and Tokyo) which I will overview in the following text.

PAST

The U.S. and Japan have different histories with technology, which affects their histories with media art. This spills into arts education and culture. A few differences stand out. The U.S. is without an electric town. Videogame arcades boomed in in the 80s and 90s but fizzled out shortly thereafter, meanwhile, personal technologies such as cell phones developed at a slow pace comparative to Asia. Regarding cultural differences, emojis have only recently gained a cult status in the U.S., but their Japanese origin is not mainstream knowledge. These aspects bleed into one another and are toppled by language barriers and cultural institutions that dictate how and which types of art are disseminated to the public.

Growing up in the United States I was ingrained in videogames and the internet, however, art and technology were entirely separate conversations. Only until I moved to New York, from a small town in New Jersey, did I learn about media art. While studying in art history I never gained a strong understanding for Japanese (or non-western) media art. Considering major arts institutions in the U.S. rarely focus on art outside of the west, it is even rarer to find them focusing on non-western media art, let alone publishing a text about the subject.

Rather, my interest and understanding for Japan and technology (like many others) came through the media I consumed. Prior to this project I was unaware of Akihabara’s connection to World War II, consumer electronics, and post-war black markets. As an outsider one sees Akihabara very differently and might simply be surprised by the amount of SEGA centers and idol cafes.

Nowadays, when I consider Akihabara and how commonplace technology is in Tokyo, I begin to think about how that history and presence affects emerging artists in their work and daily life. In many ways, I feel media art and digital culture in Tokyo hides in plain sight, whereas in New York it sticks out like a sore thumb.

PRESENT

Comparing both countries, there are a few differences in what subject matter is featured in exhibitions. From my perspective, I see more media artists in the U.S. approaching social and political subjects than in Tokyo. However, institutions in the U.S. act quickly, absorbing what is “new” and “trendy”, but quickly move on to something else as if checking off a list. Virtual reality as “the new painting” has become popular as of late, and so too were selfies, drones, and augmented reality. The biggest factor of New York’s art ecosystem are commercial and capitalist ventures (especially art fairs). This impacts what art is featured in museums or written about. Startup culture is also an interesting entity in the U.S. and influences media art, but I am more excited about how it will crash rather than its present dance with art and creativity.

Regarding arts institutions, both Tokyo and the New York have very different approaches. Rhizome in the U.S. for example exists predominantly online and focuses on Internet based art. Institutions like Eyebeam and Harvestworks focus on residencies and creative experimentation with technologies. Regarding museums, I find that most in New York have an occasional exhibition of media art but nothing purely devoted to art and technology.

As for museums, the obvious leader in media art is perhaps the Museum of Modern Art. Still, their treatment of the subject is problematic. Although the museum has a curatorial department of media art, I feel the curatorial department of architecture and design produces more consistently intriguing content on emergent issues. The museum’s conservation department is also prestigious and on the edge between the present and future. As all of this occurs in the realm of museums, we should also not forget that several commercial galleries exist in the U.S. devoted to media art.

In Tokyo I am still impressed by the ICC. The exhibition series Emergencies is particularly profound to me, as it is dedicated to emerging artists. This really does not happen in New York, unless a small gallery is willing to take a “risk” or there are some financial connections happening. In Tokyo I also had the opportunity to see the Japan Media Arts Festival. While I feel the festival had a few issues, it is important that such a thing even exists. In the U.S., festivals occasionally pop up, but they lack major government support as mostly everything in the U.S. is privatized. Although not-for-profit institutions exist, they are often influenced by board members and commercial interests.

What I find more prevalent in Japan are artists and collectives that openly work in or on commercial projects, dabbling both in fashion and advertising. For better or worse, the art scene in the U.S. attempts to remain clandestine about connections to wealth, whereas Japan does not hide it. In this regard, commercial ventures in the U.S. attempt to hide in plain sight, where as in Japan they stick out like a sore thumb.

BAD FUTURE

Another worthwhile conversation between Japan and the U.S. is to consider what Postinternet art means and what it looks like. The Japan Media Arts Festival took on this subject, but fell flat. The exhibition seemed to make a generalization that artists of younger generations are all Postinternet. For example, video content of the Internet Yami-Ichi and IDPW was included in this section. While IDPW and the Internet Yami-Ichi were born out of the Internet, they were not formed with the Western notion of Postinternet art in mind. Furthermore, the event brings together internet pros with novices.

Generalizing Postinternet proposes that we are all as equally influenced by the web as one another, which is a complex and flawed assumption. The danger of labeling something as Postinternet is that if every emerging artist is put into this category than we alienate media art and create a pigeonhole. Artists should feel encouraged to create their own groups and genres apart from what other countries, individuals, or institutions might have in mind to capitalize on. It is also okay to make fun of the genre itself and not take things so seriously.

Ultimately media art is on the fringe in both countries. This will not change unless museum curators and leaders of arts organizations make stronger efforts to understand and interpret our contemporary digital society and its relation to art. I hope that, both in writing this text, and conducting the Tokyo Window Sessions project that can be more open about the faults of our media art ecosystem, what we can do to make it better, and how we can get people outside of the ecosystem to feel less skeptical of it.

Both the U.S. and Japan remain fairly territorial in what they represent inside their museums. However, arts organizations in the U.S. have a prestige of touting diversity while often falling flat. This can be found in researching the statistics of who and what contemporary art museums feature. I often feel the lack of collaboration is blamed on language barriers and funding. These are weak excuses to me as the first iteration of this project faced both of those obstacles.

Now that the world is entering an increasingly tumultuous time, it is important to look to curators and leaders of institutions and ask them to create more experimental projects and mix things up. Genuine and honest collaboration can change our future from a bad one to a good one.

GOOD FUTURE

During my time in Tokyo I organized an exhibition at 3331 Arts Chiyoda’s studio residency which alludes to conversations and concerns about media art. The exhibition, featuring U.S. and Japanese artists brought together different genres and subject matter in an attempt to provoke new inquiry surrounding art, technology, and digital culture.

Appropriating its name from Internet slang, ASDFGHJKL;' x あｑｓうぇｄｒｆｔｇｙふじこｌｐ；＠ was an exhibition of emerging digital artists from the U.S. and Japan.  The exhibition featured three artists from Tokyo alongside four artists in New York. The selection of these artists was meant to present a wide range of media art. ASDFGHJKL;' (in english) or あｑｓうぇｄｒｆｔｇｙふじこｌｐ；＠  (in Japanese) originates from the act of running your hand horizontally across a keyboard. The phrase, when typed, kind of defines a scream, shout, or yell. It is an action of bewilderment, frustration, or confusion.

So long as there is a keyboard, emerging artists have taken to the Internet and digital culture as a source of inspiration and influence. My decision to title the exhibition this way comes from my own frustration or shout regarding media art communities in the U.S. and Japan not connecting more. If technology leads our evolution, we have been stalling on exchange (via exhibitions, research, and experimentation) between the U.S. and Japan [and more broadly the west and everywhere else].

If the digital embeds itself into the work of contemporary artists, and in our daily life, so do it’s terminologies’. ASDFGHJKL;’ is a response to what I view as a “regional lockout” of culture. The term, used in the tech industry, represents restrictions on digital content per location or territory. For example, some YouTube channels in the U.S. that I want to watch in Japan are inaccessible. In the case of this exhibition, the shout is to acknowledge the feeling that a regional lockout exists between both countries. Perhaps the artists of the exhibition feel a similar way, as shown through their eagerness and supportive nature in producing the exhibition.

artists >>

Kenta Cobayashi’s work employs various tools including digital photography, iPhones, his MacBook, screen captures and photo sticker booths. He uses these to capture images of his life, himself, and the people around him. Kenta’s interventions with photographs diffuse the border between images, photoshop filters, and digital graphics. www.kentacobayashi.com

Nozomi Teranishi, is a photographer and digital artist from Fukushima. Many of her works are influenced by experiencing the earthquake in Fukushima and visions of health alongside artificiality. Her digital photograph series The Regeneration of Complex Societies addresses the Fukushima earthquake and makes use of digital editing to clone stamp people, places, and things, to heightened amounts. Nozomi new series of works under the title “Health Freak” references body image, and is the artist’s first time utilizing 3D animation tools. www.nozomiteranishi.com

Multimedia artist RAFiA utilizes animated gifs, selfies, and sound to create a distinct visual aesthetic that merge photography, image manipulation, and painting. Almost always using herself as a subject, she creates visually arresting images that are balanced between joy and trauma, divinity and humanity. www.raf-i-a.tumblr.com

From Shanghai and based in the U.S., Wang Yefeng specializes in 3D animation tools, creating bizarre and surreal worlds. His newest animation, “The Drifting Stages” features a pulsing red and blue backgrounds inspired by the Porygon Flash from the original Pokémon anime. An array of objects fills a room and comments on the artists displacement between Shanghai and New York, and the things he has accumulated in his life. www.wangyefeng.com

Terrell Davis creates hyper real 3D renderings of still-life tabletops consisting of cluttered technology, consumer products, plants, and junk food. The hyperrealism of his imagery evokes a snapshot into contemporary life, consumerism, and pop culture. The glowing coloration and saturation in his work illuminates the objects we often use but rarely pay attention to. www.terrelldavis.me

Daniel Johnson’s work often deals with appropriation and photography. In ASDFGHJKL;’ were videos he created for the Internet Yami-Ichi in New York. At the event he sold DVDs with misleading titles. Buyers may think they are purchasing a hollywood film, but the DVD actually contains short clips of the artist doing mundane activities. www.itsallstrange.com

FOREVER TODAY

In working with these artists, I am left to wonder what patterns I can see forming between media artists of both countries. I have noticed in the U.S. there are more media artists experimenting with 3D animation tools, virtual spaces, and data. In Japan I notice an excellent and original use of digital photography, two-dimensional effects, and a rewiring of physical materials. Of course I found some overlap, but it is something I wish to investigate further.

In December 2016 I returned to the U.S. While my home country is undergoing a frightening and backwards shift in ideology it only motivates me to continue the Window Sessions initiative and expand it to other locations. Starting this project I never had an end goal in mind, but always thought of it as an alternative archive, one that is always growing and meant to preserve present media art activities for future audiences. In the next few months I will continue to upload content to Tokyo Window Sessions. In September 2017 I will expand the project to Seoul, where I will conduct a residency at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.

After that is my intention to return to Japan and continue my curatorial activities. Presently I am studying Japanese and intend to translate Tokyo Window Sessions in the future. Now more than ever I have an opportunity and responsibility to create something truly meaningful and timely. I welcome collaboration with emerging artists, forward-thinking institutions, and residency programs who might be reading this.  

Special Thanks:

Eri, Exonemo, Fiona, Luis, Glenn, Shirin, Shunya, Yosuke

~ and many others

[lauramalchowblog]

Coronavirus Update: New Developments on COVID-19

It’s been a couple months since I did a post explicitly about COVID-19, or SARS-COV2, or coronavirus, and since the pandemic is still happening and is on everyone’s mind, I’m going to do another one today. This time, I’m going to do a big picture look at where we stand on transmission risks, reinfections, immunity, and what I think we need to keep in mind as we go forward.

Where do we stand with coronavirus?

How is it transmitted—and how can we avoid it?

What’s the deal with herd immunity?

What are my thoughts on the biggest challenges yet to come?

What’s the riskiest place to be?

Indoor areas with low air circulation. Things seem to be spiking in hot areas where everyone stays indoors blasting the air conditioning and breathing in recycled air because it’s so damn hot outside. In regions where people get out into hot weather, like Hawaii, the virus is virtually non-existent. There are certainly other factors at play—Hawaii is an island protected by thousands of miles of water, for one, and they have a strict quarantine protocol for visitors—but many transmissions have been linked to indoor areas with AC.

Furthermore, all indications are that it’s harder to get infected from a “glancing blow.” Viral load—the number of viral particles you actually take in — is a big factor. If the initial load is small enough, your immune system has a better chance of fighting it off. If the load is too big, your immune system can get overwhelmed. What’s “too big” a load is different for everyone, but all else being equal, a larger viral load is worse. That’s why health care workers who spend a lot of time around infected patients are at a greater risk. But if you’re passing someone on the street? It’s going to be a much lower risk.

Is coronavirus easy to transmit outdoors?

I asked about this on Twitter the other day, wondering if anyone had good evidence of outdoor transmission. There were many responses. Some of the more notable ones.

A 4th of July beach party in Michigan. Hundreds of people standing close together in knee high water, lots of house boats, “several” cases of coronavirus. There was also a house party a couple hundred miles away the same weekend that produced 40 cases. The indoor house party was much more virulent than the outdoor beach party.

A Memorial Day party at the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. Very crowded, looked iffy. One attendee ended up with coronavirus, but officials haven’t identified any other positive cases linked to the party. I wasn’t able to find any recent updates to the contrary. The outdoor lake party didn’t seem very dangerous in this instance.

No cases detected after the July 4th speech at Mount Rushmore. They could still pop up, given the potential lag time between exposure and symptoms, but it looks good so far.

There were also transmission cases after an outdoor graduation event and indoor prom on the same weekend. 19 students tested positive. All students attended both events, so it’s hard to determine if the cases occurred at the graduation event (which probably had indoor parties afterward) or at the prom (or both).

An earlier Chinese study found that out of 7,300 instances of person-to-person transmission, only one occurred outdoors.1 It happened during an extended conversation.

Overall, the most recent study I could find on the subject came to a similar conclusion.2 Researchers searched through PubMed, media stories, and any other legitimate reports on transmission events and found that the vast majority of transmissions occurred indoors.

This is good news, if it holds. It means people can feel a little safer about going outside, getting sunshine, getting physical activity, and living their lives. Avoid crowds and wear a mask when you’re around people, but I’m cautiously optimistic that being outdoors is the safest place to be.

Does COVID-19 spread through breathing?

This has always been the great fear. Does the virus spread through aerosol from simple breathing, talking, or are sneezes, coughs, and yelling required? Are aerosolized viral particles enough? Or do we need larger droplets?

A new pre-print just came out that has people worried. They took breath samples from symptomatic COVID-19 patients, found live viral particles in the aerosolized droplets, and found they could replicate on isolated human cells.3

However, before you freak out, the story is more complicated than that.

Not all the samples grew; some subjects’ breath samples “didn’t take.” Some samples actually saw their viral particles decline in number. The smallest particles were the most successful at replicating, but the smallest particles also contained the lowest viral load.

The rate of growth was fairly low compared to how actual infections play out. The most successful samples only grew by 400% after six days. And that’s in an isolated human cell. When an entire human gets infected with COVID-19, the virus grows by thousands of percentage points every 8 hours or so.

That said, the virus is aerosolized, some of that aerosol contains replicable viral particles, and if you breathe enough of them in—probably by staying indoors with an infected person or people for an extended period of time — it’s possible to be infected. It’s pretty clear that larger droplets remain the big risk, though.

Can you be reinfected with COVID-19?

A pretty convincing thread of anecdotes out of Iran (one of the earliest and hardest-hit countries) claims that reinfections are occurring. This would suggest that immunity wanes, at least in some people.

Some experts have floated the idea that COVID-19 may be the type of virus that stays with you and cycles through active and dormant periods, like Epstein-Barr or herpes does. It hasn’t been around long enough to know yet whether or not that is the case.

Can we reach herd immunity for coronavirus without a vaccine?

At first, the antibody immunity data wasn’t very encouraging: antibody levels in the population weren’t anything close to crossing the herd immunity threshold, and the antibody response to COVID-19 seemed to diminish and wane after a few months.

But more recently, scientists are finding evidence of robust and widespread T-cell immunity. T-cells from other coronaviruses, like SARS, various animal coronaviruses, and perhaps even the common cold may work on COVID-19. This cross-immunity is long-lasting, too; even though SARS hit 17 years ago, many of the subjects in the study still had T-cell immunity against it.4 In another study, between 20-50% of unexposed people showed t-cell activity against COVID-19.5

From what I’m reading and hearing from experts, this has the potential to be a hugely positive development. My hope is that the huge death numbers are behind us, or at least trending that way. I hope those T-cell cross-immunity numbers persist in subsequent reports. I hope we start looking at T-cell immunity and not just antibody immunity.

Where I Stand

We’ll beat this thing. Of that there’s no doubt. We’ve made it to the other side of epidemics with much more primitive knowledge, tools, and technology. But here’s what I really worry about, other than the deaths, potential long-term health ramifications, and anything “physical.”

I’m seeing a lot of fear. I’m seeing people lose their appreciation for the rest of humanity. I’m seeing people use dehumanizing language to describe people who have different views on the seriousness of the virus. Neighbor doesn’t wear a mask? Don’t assume they’re evil or callous. Neighbor wants people to shelter in place? Don’t assume they’re authoritarians-in-waiting.

I worry about people who are too scared, too paralyzed to do the kinds of activities that are actually quite low-risk and would probably increase health and resistance, like going outside for hikes (even, gasp, with friends and family), getting sun and fresh air and exercise, moving through space and time rather than sitting hunched over your smartphone, scrolling through your echo chamber of choice.

Relax. Stay cautious and vigilant, yes. Stay safe. Don’t put yourself or anyone else at risk. No flippancy. But don’t forget to have fun and loosen up where you can. Low- to no-risk activities are out there. Do those.

If you have kids, they’re stressing out too. Believe me, they’re like sponges. They reflect what you’re giving off. Do it for them, if nothing else.

Lose the vitriol and the fear, more than anything. That stuff doesn’t go away so easily. Those divisions we’re building up between neighbors and family members and citizens may persist long after the pandemic has ended. Don’t let that happen!

We can do this.

Anyway, that’s how I’m viewing this whole coronavirus thing right now. Cautious but optimistic. What about you? How are you handling everything? Where do you see things going in the next few weeks?

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References

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v1.full.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7327724/

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.13.20041632v2

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z

www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-0389-z

The post Coronavirus Update: New Developments on COVID-19 appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Coronavirus Update: New Developments on COVID-19 published first on https://venabeahan.tumblr.com

[jesseneufeld]

Coronavirus Update: New Developments on COVID-19

It’s been a couple months since I did a post explicitly about COVID-19, or SARS-COV2, or coronavirus, and since the pandemic is still happening and is on everyone’s mind, I’m going to do another one today. This time, I’m going to do a big picture look at where we stand on transmission risks, reinfections, immunity, and what I think we need to keep in mind as we go forward.

Where do we stand with coronavirus?

How is it transmitted—and how can we avoid it?

What’s the deal with herd immunity?

What are my thoughts on the biggest challenges yet to come?

What’s the riskiest place to be?

Indoor areas with low air circulation. Things seem to be spiking in hot areas where everyone stays indoors blasting the air conditioning and breathing in recycled air because it’s so damn hot outside. In regions where people get out into hot weather, like Hawaii, the virus is virtually non-existent. There are certainly other factors at play—Hawaii is an island protected by thousands of miles of water, for one, and they have a strict quarantine protocol for visitors—but many transmissions have been linked to indoor areas with AC.

Furthermore, all indications are that it’s harder to get infected from a “glancing blow.” Viral load—the number of viral particles you actually take in — is a big factor. If the initial load is small enough, your immune system has a better chance of fighting it off. If the load is too big, your immune system can get overwhelmed. What’s “too big” a load is different for everyone, but all else being equal, a larger viral load is worse. That’s why health care workers who spend a lot of time around infected patients are at a greater risk. But if you’re passing someone on the street? It’s going to be a much lower risk.

Is coronavirus easy to transmit outdoors?

I asked about this on Twitter the other day, wondering if anyone had good evidence of outdoor transmission. There were many responses. Some of the more notable ones.

A 4th of July beach party in Michigan. Hundreds of people standing close together in knee high water, lots of house boats, “several” cases of coronavirus. There was also a house party a couple hundred miles away the same weekend that produced 40 cases. The indoor house party was much more virulent than the outdoor beach party.

A Memorial Day party at the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. Very crowded, looked iffy. One attendee ended up with coronavirus, but officials haven’t identified any other positive cases linked to the party. I wasn’t able to find any recent updates to the contrary. The outdoor lake party didn’t seem very dangerous in this instance.

No cases detected after the July 4th speech at Mount Rushmore. They could still pop up, given the potential lag time between exposure and symptoms, but it looks good so far.

There were also transmission cases after an outdoor graduation event and indoor prom on the same weekend. 19 students tested positive. All students attended both events, so it’s hard to determine if the cases occurred at the graduation event (which probably had indoor parties afterward) or at the prom (or both).

An earlier Chinese study found that out of 7,300 instances of person-to-person transmission, only one occurred outdoors.1 It happened during an extended conversation.

Overall, the most recent study I could find on the subject came to a similar conclusion.2 Researchers searched through PubMed, media stories, and any other legitimate reports on transmission events and found that the vast majority of transmissions occurred indoors.

This is good news, if it holds. It means people can feel a little safer about going outside, getting sunshine, getting physical activity, and living their lives. Avoid crowds and wear a mask when you’re around people, but I’m cautiously optimistic that being outdoors is the safest place to be.

Does COVID-19 spread through breathing?

This has always been the great fear. Does the virus spread through aerosol from simple breathing, talking, or are sneezes, coughs, and yelling required? Are aerosolized viral particles enough? Or do we need larger droplets?

A new pre-print just came out that has people worried. They took breath samples from symptomatic COVID-19 patients, found live viral particles in the aerosolized droplets, and found they could replicate on isolated human cells.3

However, before you freak out, the story is more complicated than that.

Not all the samples grew; some subjects’ breath samples “didn’t take.” Some samples actually saw their viral particles decline in number. The smallest particles were the most successful at replicating, but the smallest particles also contained the lowest viral load.

The rate of growth was fairly low compared to how actual infections play out. The most successful samples only grew by 400% after six days. And that’s in an isolated human cell. When an entire human gets infected with COVID-19, the virus grows by thousands of percentage points every 8 hours or so.

That said, the virus is aerosolized, some of that aerosol contains replicable viral particles, and if you breathe enough of them in—probably by staying indoors with an infected person or people for an extended period of time — it’s possible to be infected. It’s pretty clear that larger droplets remain the big risk, though.

Can you be reinfected with COVID-19?

A pretty convincing thread of anecdotes out of Iran (one of the earliest and hardest-hit countries) claims that reinfections are occurring. This would suggest that immunity wanes, at least in some people.

Some experts have floated the idea that COVID-19 may be the type of virus that stays with you and cycles through active and dormant periods, like Epstein-Barr or herpes does. It hasn’t been around long enough to know yet whether or not that is the case.

Can we reach herd immunity for coronavirus without a vaccine?

At first, the antibody immunity data wasn’t very encouraging: antibody levels in the population weren’t anything close to crossing the herd immunity threshold, and the antibody response to COVID-19 seemed to diminish and wane after a few months.

But more recently, scientists are finding evidence of robust and widespread T-cell immunity. T-cells from other coronaviruses, like SARS, various animal coronaviruses, and perhaps even the common cold may work on COVID-19. This cross-immunity is long-lasting, too; even though SARS hit 17 years ago, many of the subjects in the study still had T-cell immunity against it.4 In another study, between 20-50% of unexposed people showed t-cell activity against COVID-19.5

From what I’m reading and hearing from experts, this has the potential to be a hugely positive development. My hope is that the huge death numbers are behind us, or at least trending that way. I hope those T-cell cross-immunity numbers persist in subsequent reports. I hope we start looking at T-cell immunity and not just antibody immunity.

Where I Stand

We’ll beat this thing. Of that there’s no doubt. We’ve made it to the other side of epidemics with much more primitive knowledge, tools, and technology. But here’s what I really worry about, other than the deaths, potential long-term health ramifications, and anything “physical.”

I’m seeing a lot of fear. I’m seeing people lose their appreciation for the rest of humanity. I’m seeing people use dehumanizing language to describe people who have different views on the seriousness of the virus. Neighbor doesn’t wear a mask? Don’t assume they’re evil or callous. Neighbor wants people to shelter in place? Don’t assume they’re authoritarians-in-waiting.

I worry about people who are too scared, too paralyzed to do the kinds of activities that are actually quite low-risk and would probably increase health and resistance, like going outside for hikes (even, gasp, with friends and family), getting sun and fresh air and exercise, moving through space and time rather than sitting hunched over your smartphone, scrolling through your echo chamber of choice.

Relax. Stay cautious and vigilant, yes. Stay safe. Don’t put yourself or anyone else at risk. No flippancy. But don’t forget to have fun and loosen up where you can. Low- to no-risk activities are out there. Do those.

If you have kids, they’re stressing out too. Believe me, they’re like sponges. They reflect what you’re giving off. Do it for them, if nothing else.

Lose the vitriol and the fear, more than anything. That stuff doesn’t go away so easily. Those divisions we’re building up between neighbors and family members and citizens may persist long after the pandemic has ended. Don’t let that happen!

We can do this.

Anyway, that’s how I’m viewing this whole coronavirus thing right now. Cautious but optimistic. What about you? How are you handling everything? Where do you see things going in the next few weeks?

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References

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v1.full.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7327724/

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.13.20041632v2

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z

www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-0389-z

The post Coronavirus Update: New Developments on COVID-19 appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

Coronavirus Update: New Developments on COVID-19 published first on https://drugaddictionsrehab.tumblr.com/

[goodra-king]

Small Business Marketing Insights for 2020

Small Business Marketing Insights for 2020 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch on 2020 Small Business Marketing Insights

I wanted to close out the year with a solo show looking ahead to the next one; let’s talk small business marketing insights for 2020.

While there have been some big trends in the world of marketing—things like AI—getting a lot of buzz, I’m not here to talk about those. Trends like that are often not relevant to small business owners. Instead, I want to cover what I think are the insights for 2020 to give you some things to think about, that can actually add to what may be your long list of planning elements.

Insight 1: Audio Content Will Prevail

I think audio content is going to be something that people need to really embrace for 2020. If you’re not podcasting already, now is the time to start. It’s a great way to produce content. It’s also a great way to open up lines of communication with people you want to speak with, whether those are authors and influencers or folks in your target market or even your very own customers.

So podcasting is a great way to build relationships. But beyond that, the format appeals to the needs and sensibilities of a modern audience. People have less time and attention to sit in front of a monitor and read content. I certainly know I’m that way! Same with video. I have a lot of trouble sitting in front of a monitor and devoting time to a video when I could be doing other things.

Audio content, on the other hand, is totally portable. I can download a podcast, stick my phone in my pocket and go for a walk. I can turn it on in the car and listen during my commute. I can walk the dog, I can go for a run. The portability of the format makes it incredibly easy for even the busiest of people to consume the content at some point during their day.

So, if you are not producing audio content, I’m going to encourage you to do so. And there are a number of ways to get started. If you have videos you’ve already produced, you can strip out the audio from those videos and run it in another format. You can use audio to talk about your business, then get the audio transcribed and use that on webpages as written content.

And you can create a non-traditional podcast. It doesn’t have to be all guest interviews. You can occasionally do a rant (like this one I’ve done on marketing insights!) to get results.

Getting started with audio now isn’t just about getting immediate results—it’s also about the long game. I see smart speakers eventually playing a bigger role in the way people consume more of their daily content. So “Alexa: play my flash briefing,” might deliver a daily recap of audio content. While I think this is a ways off, it’s never to early to get prepared for a shift like that!

Insight 2: Take Your Marketing In House

As a marketing consultant and person who trains marketing consultants, I think more small businesses should bring things in house. And there’s two areas in particular that should be outsourced less: marketing tactics and technology.

In the case of both of those areas of focus, it’s not an either-or proposition. You hire a marketing person to handle routine things that include both sides of that coin, from writing content to doing social posts to getting reviews to making Instagram posts. Those are all things that I think you should have an internal resource to do, but the secret ingredient is to marry that with a strategic marketing partner.

A lot of times, small businesses will hire a marketing person who knows how to manage social media, but isn’t given any broader direction when it comes to marketing strategy. (And that’s because there often isn’t a bigger strategy.)

That’s where a marketing consultant or advisor comes in. They can help you with the strategic component, the plan, the operations of the plan, the analysis of results, and make sure that you remain on track in working towards your big goals. Meanwhile, the internal person who knows the intricacies of the business can be directed to execute on this plan and craft messages that align with your strategy. That way, you get the best of both worlds.

In fact, I think this is going to be so critical in 2020 that we’re creating a certified marketing manager program, where we’ll train small business marketing staff on how to hire internal people and have that person directed by an outside resource, like a Duct Tape Marketing Consultant.

Insight 3: Humanize and Automate

Remember how back in the day, every deal was done with a handshake with a trusted partner you could look in the eye? Then technology came along, and suddenly you could do business without ever actually speaking with another human being. Now, it seems the pendulum is starting to swing back the other way, and we’re finding a happy medium.

So this insight sort of seems counterintuitive, but I’m saying you need to both humanize and automate. It comes down to finding the right balance. Both customers and business owners want things to be convenient and efficient—which is where automation comes in—but they also want that human touch.

There’s a tremendous amount of research being done around what makes someone love a company. And in many cases it’s things like convenience, knowledge, communication, efficiency, friendliness—all human traits. But a lot of the reasons a company is convenient and efficient are now aided by technology.

So I think that we need to get to the point where we are automating everything that can and should be automated and we are humanizing or re-humanizing everything else. My insight for 2020 in terms of a recommendation in this case, is get back on the phone. Let your phone ring, answer your phone, call people, that is one of the easiest ways I think to re-humanize our businesses. I’ve certainly been guilty of the opposite, and I look forward to picking up the phone more this year.

Insight 4: Focus on Customer Experience

Customer experience and retention is the golden opportunity for every single business.

PwC did extensive research into why customers stay loyal. They found that very few reasons had anything to do with the actual product or service. For the most part, it was all about customer experience—things like convenience, knowledgeable communication, efficiency, and a friendly staff.

So, how can we look at this in our marketing? You’ve probably heard me talk about the marketing hourglass, where we get people to know trust, try, and buy. But then we think marketing ends at the repeat and refer stages.

In reality, though, all seven stages must come together under the marketing umbrella. Everything from building knowledgeable, efficient communication to reporting results and providing friendly interactions for customers all go hand-in-hand.

I think we as marketers ought to spend at least half our time on creating a better customer experience and then you can spend the other half on generating more leads and converting more leads.

Insight 5: Paid Search Matters More Than Ever

Paid search—Google ads, Facebook advertising, LinkedIn, all the banner ads—have been around forever. So it’s not their existence that’s a new insight. In fact, certain types of businesses, like e-commerce brands, have used paid search to dramatically grow their businesses. But we’ve now entered and era where the small local business of any stripe must embrace paid search. Increasingly, Google is where people turn to find any and every piece of information about a business. Even if they’re already a customer!

An interesting anecdote for you: I did a search the other day for a plumber in Kansas City. And the first real result, meaning an actual business that wasn’t either an ad or an aggregator like Angie’s List or Home Advisor, showed up on page two. So, pay to play is definitely here. Making paid search a real, significant part of your overall marketing plan is no longer optional.

My first bit of advice on that front is to make sure you’re involved in the paid search process and are doing it in a smart way. Do your research about what paid search actually entails. You don’t have to do it for yourself, but you need a baseline knowledge to know you’re not getting scammed.

I see so many small business owners that work with pay per click firms that basically set up templated campaigns and forget them and don’t communicate and just say, “Oh, you got 27 clicks this week”. Well what does that mean? It means I spent X amount of money, that’s all you can tell me. It’s not about how many clicks you got, it’s about how many customers you won.

My next piece of wisdom is the use paid search to capture people with the highest purchase intent. There’s a lot of categories of business where paid searchers converted two to one over people that just went out and had a long tail search and found your blog post.

I’m not saying abandon everything else. In fact, never abandoned your website, SEO, or content. But you want to supplement it with paid search to get that high intent stuff. Maybe there’s categories where you’re having trouble getting your content to rank. Maybe there are certain really competitive search terms like an emergency service for something that you know if somebody finds your ad they’re going to buy it, because they’re trying to fix something.

I believe that the local service ads are going to only get bigger as a category. Eventually, you’re going to find accountants, lawyers, and more in those service ads because Google is making more money on those ads than anywhere else. And, consequently, the ads are going to take up more real estate on the results pages.

One final note on paid search: if you set your campaigns up correctly and are checking in on reports regularly, you come to understand that you’re not really bidding on keywords. You’re bidding on search terms: what someone puts into a search term to make your name pop up.

Once you begin thinking of things in those terms and use analytics to track your results, then you can build a complete roadmap for your marketing plan. When you understand the tactics that are working, and how people are moving throughout their customer journey from start to finish, then you can tailor your content further to encourage others to take that same path to conversion.

Those are my five insights for 2020. I hope you get out there and make moves to implement some of the tactics around these insights, because I really do believe they can make a huge difference in your marketing.

To help you in your marketing efforts, I wanted to announce that—while I don’t have a release date yet—you should keep your eyes peeled for a significantly revised edition of Duct Tape Marketing, the original book. Also, we’re creating a certified marketing manager program, which should be launching at the end of Q1 2020. The program will allow business owners to provide personal development and training to their team. You’ll have your own private coach or consultant, and they won’t just go through the plan, but will also apply the plan to your business.

So keep an eye out for all that and more in 2020. Take care and have a great rest of your 2019. See you in the New Year!

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by SEMrush.

SEMrush is our go-to SEO tool for everything from tracking position and ranking to doing audits to getting new ideas for generating organic traffic. They have all the important tools you need for paid traffic, social media, PR, and SEO. Check it out at SEMrush.com/partner/ducttapemarketing.

from http://bit.ly/2Qbsbfz

[nicoleignn]

INMOOV|ROBOT LOVE - digging deeper

INTRODUCTION

In 2012, French sculptor and designer Gael Langevin started his project called ‘InMoove’. It started as a hand prothesis and, over time, developed into a human-size 3D-printed robot that is able to talk, see,  move and hold onto something. It is now even possible to build your own version of this robot, since there is an open access to all information. The network shares the knowledge and innovation about the robot and its technology. Langevin believes that a huge benefit of this project being open-source is that it is enabled to have a wide reach and thereby goes through a larger development.

In 2015, a photographer Yethy proposed to do a photo session in Gael’s workshop with whatever moods and feelings the author of the artwork had.  The photograph they made is the piece I want to apply digging deeper to and express my feelings towards it.  

Unfortunately, I can't post the photograph because of Tumblr restrictions, however, it can be found here : http://inmoov.fr/gallery-v2/ (robot holding a baby)

What I find particularly appealing about this artwork is the contrast and the controversial meaning behind it. Baby skin in the photograph looks very soft, warm and sensitive, while robot ‘skin’ looks rather cold and harsh. Moreover, baby is sitting in a very natural way comparing to the robot, whose moves look dramatically artificial and have absolutely nothing to do with love and happiness that comes from a real person holding a baby. Also, the high contrast dissimulates the face of the baby, just like InMoov seem to come out from the darkness. Robot is not even looking at the baby, its face looks emotionless, and the baby himself/herself is turned away from robots’s face.

All these aspects that I have noticed might be pointing out the down-side of technological revolution. I strongly believe that soul and emotions are the things that separate us, human beings from animals, plants and machines. However, as can be seen through this artwork, there is no way robots can replace humans in these manifestations of humanity, because they are lacking the most important ingredients that I have aforementioned.

Even though the robot holding a baby might have been an attempt to convince that the future of technological revolution is alright and we can absolutely trust robots (since babies are really fragile and the one who’s holding it must be extremely trustful), I wouldn't agree with such statement. This photograph is giving me scary thoughts about our future: are humans going to be replaced with robots? Are robots going to raise children? If this robot is holding a baby, might he/she be baby’s parent? If yes, how does it feel like to be in a relationship with a machine? I do hope that we will never know.

Even though this piece gives me goosebumps, I find it very meaningful and successful, since it has literally brought my ideas about the frightening future to life and gave me some thoughts about the power of lighting, arrangement and photography itself. I feel that a strong quote added to this photograph would make the message even stronger, although, making a poster out of this work rather than a photograph.

3:1 KEY THEMES OF THE ARTWORK

Robot

Technology

Photography

Contrast

Relationship

3:2 WORD ASSOCIATION

Robot: artificial, emotionless, soulless, artificial intelligence, individuality, uniqueness, character, habits, attitude, person, human being, humanity, humanism.

Technology: progress, future, computer, robotic, mechanism, remote-controlled, programmed.

Photography: art, white balance, ISO, arrangement, lighting, background, model, message, hidden message, meaning.

Contrast: black and white, comparison, difference.

Relationship: love, trust, human, real, natural, fake, artificial, unreal, sci-fi, future, disaster, apocalypse.

3:3 RELATED ARTICLES:

‘Hi, Robot’ by Frieze

An article focusing on the second-wave effects of the ‘digital revolution’, or the capacities for automation, AI, and robotics to fundamentally shift the ways we work, speak, relate, love, criminalize and, yes, perhaps obliterate one another. It insists on asking yourself: so will the robots kill us all or will we do it ourselves? In an age of automation and robotics, how will we relate to one another? Do we need a new code of ethics? It also includes a review of the exhibition ‘Hello, Robot”, focused on ‘design’ as an interface between human and the machine. There is a small extract from the article that summaries my thoughts and gives a hope for a better future: ‘If our robots have developed, then our feelings for and against them largely haven’t: they still serve as playthings for us humans to live out our dreams, hatred and perhaps love.’

‘Artificial Amsterdam: The City As An Artwork’ by e-flux

An article about the exhibition, that depicts how the dynamic of cities is causing dramatic changes in society and culture worldwide. Cities are experiencing vast damage, economic, social and cultural shocks that they are not prepared to assume. Amsterdam is the opposite example of a city from disappearing into the waters. The term ‘artificial’ pops frequently when referring to Amsterdam. It does not only allude to the physical character of a city ‘stolen’ to the sea, but to a general feeling about the city’s life, culture, its submission to tourism, its paradoxical ruled liberality… a place where everything is under control, impost card city.

‘All Too Human Dinner” by TATE

This article does not aim to review any artworks, it is rather an announcement, informing that visitors go the ‘All Too Human’ exhibition will be able to have a dinner provided by Tate Britain afterwards. The relationship between the name of the exhibition and picture of food made me think of humanity and our natural habits regarding consuming food, which has become a ritual, even a cult nowadays. Is this food religion going to disappear along with the digital revolution?

3:4 WHAT I THINK ARTIST HAS RESEARCHED WHILE MAKING THIS WORK

Ironically, human body and its functions, in order to build a proper, human-looking robot. As for the photograph, I think he must have researched old renaissance paintings illustrating bright emotions and feelings, human relationship, in order to compare it to relationship between human and a machine. I feel that the famous icon of Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus was taken as an example for the arrangement and composition of the photograph. Comparing Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ to a robot holding a baby is extremely brave and provoking; a throwback to history of humanity and sneak-peak to the future where it might disappear. Obviously, an important aspect of the research must have been human feelings from the psychological point of view; how people are going to view the artwork and what kid of feelings towards it are going to appear, what this piece reminds of and how it can provoke the debate insight viewers’ mind.

HOW THE ARTWORK RELATES TO CURRENT NEWS

One of the most considerable and questionable inventions of our century is, undoubtedly, crypto currency, which arises questions similar to those that appear while thinking of digital revolution and robots: why was it created? How is it going to change our lives? Is it going to replace or destroy the existing system? Cryptocurrency, although being decentralised, is not gaining trust from the major percentage of population, just like artificial intelligence and robots. Nobody knows the true aim of making those aforementioned and how cryptocurrency and robots are going to change our lives. Even though crypto currency, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, is made for human-use, it seems like someone is giving us a hint that soon we will only have digital currency for digital beings.

Since technological revolution is taking our world by storm, this artwork can relate to many current events in this field: the strikingly expressive android child’s face, developed on November 15, 2018 in Osaka University, flexible electronic skin for human-machine interactions, presented on November 28, 2018 by American Chemical society and many more. All these inventions are super promising and high-brow, yet so frightening and warning.

HOW THE ARTWORK RELATES TO HISTORY

The first historical event that pops in my head while looking at this artwork is the invention of the first computer. The first mechanical computer, created by Charles Babbage in 1822, doesn't really resemble what most would consider a computer today. Therefore, this document has been created with a listing of each of the computer firsts, starting with the Difference Engine and leading up to the computers we use today. The word "computer" was first recorded as being used in 1613 and originally was used to describe a human who performed calculations or computations. The definition of a computer remained the same until the end of the 19th century, when the industrial revolution gave rise to machines whose primary purpose was calculating.

I feel that this life-changing invention has started the thing we now call ‘digital revolution' in its worst sense, exposing peoples’ personal space into social media and replacing spiritual values with those non-existing digital ones.

RELATED ARTICLES

‘Hi, Robot’ by Frieze

An article focusing on the second-wave effects of the ‘digital revolution’, or the capacities for automation, AI, and robotics to fundamentally shift the ways we work, speak, relate, love, criminalize and, yes, perhaps obliterate one another. It insists on asking yourself: so will the robots kill us all or will we do it ourselves? In an age of automation and robotics, how will we relate to one another? Do we need a new code of ethics? It also includes a review of the exhibition ‘Hello, Robot”, focused on ‘design’ as an interface between human and the machine. There is a small extract from the article that summaries my thoughts and gives a hope for a better future: ‘If our robots have developed, then our feelings for and against them largely haven’t: they still serve as playthings for us humans to live out our dreams, hatred and perhaps love.’

‘Artificial Amsterdam: The City As An Artwork’ by e-flux

An article about the exhibition, that depicts how the dynamic of cities is causing dramatic changes in society and culture worldwide. Cities are experiencing vast damage, economic, social and cultural shocks that they are not prepared to assume. Amsterdam is the opposite example of a city from disappearing into the waters. The term ‘artificial’ pops frequently when referring to Amsterdam. It does not only allude to the physical character of a city ‘stolen’ to the sea, but to a general feeling about the city’s life, culture, its submission to tourism, its paradoxical ruled liberality… a place where everything is under control, impost card city.

‘All Too Human Dinner” by TATE

This article does not aim to review any artworks, it is rather an announcement, informing that visitors go the ‘All Too Human’ exhibition will be able to have a dinner provided by Tate Britain afterwards. The relationship between the name of the exhibition and picture of food made me think of humanity and our natural habits regarding consuming food, which has become a ritual, even a cult nowadays. Is this food religion going to disappear along with the digital revolution?

BOOKS IN THE LIBRARY

‘Is man a robot?’ by G.L.Simons, 1939

‘Becoming a robot’ by Narn June Paik, 2014

‘A guide to digital revolution’ by PACS, 2006

‘How machines think: a general introduction to artificial intelligence’ by Nigel Ford, 1987

‘Artificial Intelligence’ by Patrick Henry Winston, 1992

3:5 SUMMARY

In conclusion, referring to the expanded research and applying it to the original artwork, it becomes obvious that digital revolution is both a great invention and a huge issue of our age. As anything else, it has both benefits and drawbacks, however, looking back at the original artwork, it seems that those down-sides outweigh the pluses of robots and digitalising process. The more digital creations are being developed, the more humanity is dying. InMoove is a very successful piece that illustrates frustrating and frightening future, a future without kindness, love, individuality and, unfortunately, humanity.

This expanded research gave me an astonishing abundance of thoughts regarding digital revolution and my own artworks. I might relate my art to my apocalyptic view of the future, expanded and developed by this research.

I would like end by summarising the moral of this research through Erich Fromm’s quote: ‘he danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.’

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Copywriting For Websites

Copywriting For Websites

The Key To Having A Successful Cosmetic Surgeons Website That Performs Well On The Search Engines And Generates The Leads You Desire

Content that is informative, engaging, and highlights the strengths of your plastic/cosmetic surgery practice….

  These days the level of competition among plastic surgeons and cosmetic surgeons is extremely high. It’s not enough to rely only on word-of-mouth referrals or a prominent office location with external signage.

But this is great news for you as a plastic surgeon.

Tell you what, why don’t you ask yourself these five questions about your cosmetic surgery or plastic surgery website:

  Does it convey your professionalism and compassion?

Does it explain your various specialties?

Does it list your training, education, experience and practice history?

Does it compare well with competitor plastic surgeon sites?

Does it entice prospects to pick up the phone and schedule a consultation?

Did you answer “yes” to all these questions? If not, you REALLY need to consider making changes. “You can’t keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.” I know you’d heard of this quote before….

It drives me nuts when people throw this quote in my face because they haven’t evolved pass the basics of innovation….

These days where the internet is saturated with content, a skilled copywriter for plastic and cosmetic surgeons will come to save your practice by improving your website content.

High quality website content for plastic surgeons will have a drastic impact on many factors associated with the success of your marketing and advertising campaign.

Search engine rankings

User experience

Converting users into leads and new patients

Creating rapport and credibility with users

Establish rapport with prospective clients even before they meet you for their initial consultation.

Website copywriting is attention to detail and commitment to developing high quality, original content. Show your potential patients what makes you unique and why you are the right choice to perform their desired procedure.

Use Strategic Marketing and Quality Copywriting

to Grow Your Surgical Practice

You’ve been told this before and I will gladly say this again, your website serves as your storefront. Potential patients do not casually drop by your office to browse surgery procedures or treatments, the way they shop for clothes or furniture.

Instead, today’s patients search online. When they find you, they click over to your website to learn more.

Will they stay? Maybe…

Will they eventually become new patients? I hope so….

Use your plastic/cosmetic surgery website as a comprehensive promotional tool for your practice. You should consider creating a unique landing page for each type of procedure you’d like to target such as:

Breast Enhancement — augmentation, lift, reduction

Facial Contouring — rhinoplasty, chin, or cheek enhancement

Facial Rejuvenation — facelift, eyelid lift, neck lift, brow lift

Body Contouring — tummy tuck, liposuction, gynecomastia treatment

Pediatric Plastic Surgery — correcting deformities from  birth defect, injury or illness

Reconstructive Surgery — fixing developmental abnormalities from trauma, infection, tumors or disease

Related Non-surgical Procedures — chemical peels, dermal fillers, collagen fillers, laser treatments, botox

Each landing page will give the impression that you are uniquely qualified to perform that specific type of surgery or treatment.

When a prospective patient is comparing your services to a general plastic surgeon or cosmetic surgeon, your ability to look like an industry leader via your landing page could be the tipping point for his or her decision.

It would be easy to think that marketing isn’t critical. But the truth is……

IT’S HOW TODAY’S MOST SUCCESSFUL COSMETIC SURGERY AND PLASTIC SURGERY PRACTICES THRIVE AND CONTINUE TO GROW EVERY YEAR.

Make a significant difference on the number of new business inquiries you get as well as repeat business from existing customers with well-written copy on your website.

Working with a cosmetic surgery copywriter who understands strategic marketing for plastic/cosmetic surgeons can help ensure the money you invest in promoting your practice gives you a solid return in the form of increased market share and revenue.

After all, you need to penetrate the market. PERIOD.

While interest in plastic surgery and cosmetic enhancements is greater today than ever before, the market is also significantly more competitive with more practitioners angling for their piece of the pie.

Smart, strategic marketing combined with engaging copywriting will help you separate your image from other surgeons and give you an edge in growing your practice.

The Habits of Potential Plastic Surgery Patients

Look at it from the patient perspective….

Imagine you are someone that has concerns about their body, and is interested in seeking out a local plastic surgeon. You aren’t going to take out a local magazine, hoping to find an advertisement for the nearest cosmetic surgeon.

You aren’t going to watch TV, hoping an advertisement comes on TV. You aren’t going to stroll by billboards, hoping to see a plastic surgeon marketing themselves on a big sign.

What you’re going to do is come online, search for “CITY plastic surgeon,” and examine the first few that pop up. If you’re not one of the first choices they see, chances are they’re not going to choose you for their surgical care.

Don’t be that plastic surgeon that spends thousands on their offline advertisements, yet very little on marketing their website.

Investing in a customized plastic surgery website copywriting along with SEO, will have greater benefits for less of an investment, and reflects the changes to the way that patients seek out surgical care.

In addition, high quality content writing can improve conversions of all of your other forms of marketing, including:

Word of Mouth

TV Ads

Magazines and More

Word of mouth marketing – and all plastic surgery marketing strategies – will continue to have an impact. But people do not simply trust what they see any more. Even when recommended by a patient, the potential patient will still go online, search for your information, and see if you are someone they trust.

That means that even without SEO, content copywriting will help you improve your business and boost conversions by making it more likely that those that seek out your services will turn into clients.

As with the design and user experience, good marketing copy is a vital piece of your overall web strategy. A website cannot survive without good copy, no matter how well it may function otherwise.

We sweat the details to know what I’m talking about

Plastic surgery is a complex field, and that means the minutia matters. Breast Lift Candidates want to know the difference between a lollipop incision and an anchor incision.

Breast augmentation candidates want to know whether a silicone or saline implant is better for their needs. Because we start the writing process with a broad base of knowledge and a strong foundation of experience, we’re able to create more content on our own—easing the burden of involved surgeons.

Unique To You: Your Website Is Special

It represents you and it represents your brand. That’s why you need to take special care to ensure that any copy written for surgeons maintains that brand identity. That includes incorporating specialties or technique that might make you stand out with your patients.

Quick Communication….

Most surgeons choose their own level of involvement when it comes to writing copy for their websites. Whether you want to make detailed notes or simply approve and move on, you best stay in constant communication with your copywriting team.

I know how frustrating it is when simple questions go unanswered; that’s why you need to make sure to remain engaged with at all times throughout the copywriting process

Okay, so key takeaways….

In many ways, your website represents your brand, your identity. The copy on your website is no different. That’s why, when working with copywriters and content strategists, surgeons are encouraged to choose their own level of participation.

In many instances, plastic surgeons are too busy to provide much input at all, so they entrust their practice manager with this important input.

We look at our copywriting for plastic & cosmetic surgeons as a partnership. Ultimately, no matter how clearly and expertly plastic surgery procedures are described, any good marketing copy also has to pull in the user. Our copy is designed to move qualified users into the next stage of the lead lifecycle, whether that’s contacting your office directly or subscribing to a mailing list.

Sincerely,

Casandra Valentin

P.S. Change your copy and get qualified leads. It all boils down to how you can separate yourself from your competition by using copywriting services that make your website content tailored to you. We are in the “ME INC” generation, your practice will shine above all general surgeons if you incorporate a bit of you in your online presence.

P.P.S Would like some direction in marketing innovation? Contact me today to for a free strategy session on what you can do to expand your practice reputation online and offline. Contact Me Now

The post Copywriting For Websites appeared first on Marketing and Advertising Agency | Valentinas Media.

Copywriting For Websites published first on http://www.valentinasmedia.com/blog/

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Psychologist Evaluations Cersei's Behavior In 'Game Of Thrones' Season 6.

Once a person possesses the basics from meals and shelter, all they wish is to think cherished, valued and also worthy. A little plus indicator alongside each activity permits you promptly create a new branch to each activity and also the map may be commented on, annotated, delegated as well as provided a conclusion time. EPub will likewise me this convenient for individual authors to observe non-DRMed components without having to go by means of Apple (which is just how I get my 'Reilly manuals). The centers are actually all of as well going to exploit the psychology from their customers that yearn for efficiency, but from time to time, for cash as well as advertising and marketing, they are going to gladly, automatically get rid of the viewer, making all of them for good gun timid. And also while the method originated within Buddhist, Hindu, Chinese and Oriental lifestyles, its existing form in the United States drops a lot more within the realm from psychological science and also medicine. It greats to see that folks are actually being actually paid out to accomplish this occasionally frustrating job. Yet another choice I have is mosting likely to grad university to come to be an institution psychological science, assessing kids's marks at university and also finding out far better ways for youngsters to find out. Eloquence quick guides our thinking in conditions where our experts have no concept that it's at work, and also that impacts our team in any kind of circumstance where we must refine details. The initial associates with how we transmit as well as include sporting activity psychological science knowledge right into strategy. It could be true, as several of the comments condition, that the area draws in a certain kind of seeking information and also open mind that tends to accept liberal values, and that conventional self-select from the industry. They typically aren't mosting likely to go back and also review a million crappy applications so as to quickly come to be a curated establishment. No, I am actually not thrilled with that remedy either, but until self-driving cars come true, that could be actually needed. In short - iThoughts is actually a fantastic resource, beneficial for maintaining the project details at hand, in addition to for brainstorming as well as just keeping track of things. Once red-hot-growth, in several techniques the plain area and psychological science of an iPhone 5se recommend Apple is actually operating out of product concepts to preserve its. In the information world, providers have long aimed to offer companies, however, for the best component they have actually ended up being dumb bit pipelines. Rumours proposed that Nokia was actually hoping to offer its own deluxe phone label Vertu to an European personal equity company ... Which is actually exactly what happened - although the headlines arrived as the Finnish agency decreased it Q2 2012 expectation as well as announced programs to reduce 10,000 tasks due to the side from 2013. The fixed decays down and also you experience quality and calmness again when you stop listening to your Individual Mind thus much. Managing a lot of notebooks or even keep in minds constricted in size (instead of unrestricted or multi-paged size keep in minds) will become challenging as the numbers of all of them improve. The open-core design that keeps some special Internet Protocol is a lot more prevalent, although there remain stalwarts like Hortonworks as well as Reddish Hat, which are actually adhering to the pure 100-percent open-source design. Apple has actually become the primary cellular phone provider through amount in the United States for the first time ever before. http://invaloaredecumparare.com/hondrocream-crema-de-psoriazis-pret-comentarii-efect-compozitia-cumpara-de-la-farmacie-sau-de-pe-site-ul-producatorului/ : The Connection Inspiration Range assesses the magnitude of your needs to belong to a group, to have a blast, to care for others, to become the centerpiece, and to become publicly acknowledged for your attempts. I have actually located I must choose powerful and circulation -causing activities throughout my time off or else my thoughts drifts back to function and my physical body back to the office.

While these brand new mechanics are welcome, and also the soundtrack has 40 songs of pretty assorted genres off pop to dubstep and rock, the setlist does not have any sort of timeless tracks that you will find in license-heavy games including Stone Band. Tapping on black sections of the goal chart will definitely pop up an explanation of the actions required to unlock that desire. This is actually a concept that is actually largely related to Rene Descartes, the 17th century theorist that supposed that the thoughts is actually a nonphysical material (in contrast to physicalist interpretations from thoughts as well as awareness). After that, having said that, its result endures clear distortion, network constricting, as well as reduction from definition in each frequencies. The initial thing you must do is actually collect four components around the chart and create a hitch near the Courthouse. Effortlessly, you do not need to take a trip out of the PokeStop for that to revitalize, thus if you work or reside on a PokeStop you can receive things usually! NovaMind is actually a little bit costly, however those which know with mind charts will definitely discover it worth the loan. As well as by the way, when you possess an assignment or a deal, the inspiration still originates from within, which is actually why this is so beneficial for authors to teach on their own in the solitude of darkness. Closed up betas, even making use of Apple's new Examination Trip circulation procedures are confined to 1,000 folks. Nonetheless, also when the MIND diet regimen was just reasonably followed, it still minimized the danger from Alzheimer's through 35 per-cent, while moderate obedience to the some others two diet regimens seemed to be to have just minimal protective benefits. I was actually commonly a satisfied person, able to take care of regular anxiety and also complications like a well-adjusted individual. As you walk through the degrees in game your powers come to be stronger and stronger. I do not mind f2p on its own, as there are actually f2p carried out correctly, and also f2p performed mistakenly. Similarly those topics are actually persuaded and reeducated, information media carries out a large scale mind control job, which begins at start along with Disney movies and also carries on with Hollywood flicks and also video. Moneyball writer Michael Lewis' recent publication, The Downfall Project, tells the multi-decade switch in both business economics and also psychological science far from the premise that people are generally sensible creatures in cognitive command of their decisions. A research through psycho therapist Joanne Ruthsatz at Ohio Condition College attempted to calculate the defining biological attribute of natural born players.

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Germany Must Abandon Its Military Reluctance and Lead

Essay by Anne Applebaum, Der Spiegel, Aug. 23, 2017

We wanted to leave as soon as we heard the news. But back in that now impossibly distant era of fuel shortages, pointless regulations and bad roads, it was not so easy to drive a car from Warsaw to Berlin. By the time we arrived, it was the night of Nov. 10, 1989--or rather, very early on the morning of the 11th. East Berlin was dark, lit only by eerie, orangey streetlights, and mostly silent. Without a map, we drove straight to the city center, through Checkpoint Charlie--the guard let us through, against the rules, after we shouted at him: “The Wall’s open, who cares about the rules?”--and arrived at the Brandenburg Gate.

We were late to the party. The champagne corks had stopped popping; instead of cheering, the crowd was taunting the East German guards, still dressed in riot gear, who were still standing along the border. One man suddenly stood and jumped off the Wall, from the west to the east. Immediately, the guards rushed over, picked him up and threw him back over. The crowd hissed. This wasn’t a cheerful game: The established order had broken down, men with guns--and without clear orders--were facing a hostile crowd.

This was the moment when something violent could have happened--and it almost did. Years later, a German historian told me what he had read in Party documents: The men of the East German Politburo had debated whether to shoot at the crowd along the Wall.

They did not shoot. Nor did they shoot in Leipzig, although the hospitals were told to prepare for casualties. There was no violence at all in Germany in 1989. Instead, the East German state just gave up. It did so in part because the regime had lost confidence, and was no longer willing to use violence to stay in power. But it also gave up because it was inexorably drawn to West Germany. The attractions were clear: West Germany was peaceful and rich, open and generous, an integral part of a great Western, democratic alliance. Even from the very first days, unification seemed obvious: Why would anyone want anything else? And with amazing speed, it happened.

That midnight trip was the beginning of my relationship with Berlin, a city whose archives I’ve since worked in and whose politicians I’ve since interviewed, a city where my son chose to spend this past summer, studying German. A lot has changed over the past three decades. The city I saw in November 1989, with that surreal empty space at its center, looks nothing like the city that I know today. Bureaucrats and politicians now jostle with the hipsters--and even the hipsters seem a lot busier and better dressed than they used to be.

But some things have not changed. The country I saw that night--the Germany that avoided violence; the Germany that immediately embraced reunification; the Germany that remains skeptical of all forms of extremism, the Germany that is firmly anchored in the trans-Atlantic democratic community--that Germany is still there. You can still hear it in German political debate; you can still see it in the German press. The question, now, is whether that Germany can survive.

I realize that might sound like an odd thing to say right now. If anything, Germany’s claim to be an integrated member of the Western alliance has never been stronger. Some even speak of Germany as the West’s new leader. As Donald Trump’s America turns inward, possibly abandoning its free trade agenda and its longstanding commitment to democracy, Germany seems like a possible replacement. A poll taken in 2013 showed Germany to be the most admired country in the world; Chancellor Merkel is one of the most trusted public figures in Europe. Germany’s public commitment to environmentalism, multilateralism and human rights give Germany moral standing; Germany’s industrial strength and export clout have given Germany economic power as well.

But in a world where American power is weakening and authoritarian powers are rising, how long can this last? From 1945 to 1989, the American army gave West Germany the safety and security to develop its unique political culture. But now there are many, many countries, including some right on Europe’s borders, that don’t share reunified Germany’s national commitment to pacifism and non-violence. And there are many, many reasons to doubt that America will confront them. Trump may be an aberration, but he does reflect a very real American exhaustion, and real American doubt about the worth of the trans-Atlantic alliance. Germans should have a plan to deal with threats in America’s absence. Right now, you don’t.

At the very least Germany, by itself, lacks the military power and therefore the foreign policy clout to keep Europe safe from future Russian aggression; to help bring peace--and thus an end to the refugee crisis--to the Middle East; to do anything about the reconstruction of Libya except talk about it. Germans once confronted the problem of unification, and they spent time and resources on solving it. But when it comes to problems in the wider region, Germany has been absent.

Instead, Germans sometimes seem determined to pretend they don’t exist. President Trump has been rightly criticized for his verbal attacks on NATO, but German politicians have also helped undermine the West’s defenses. Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel has made Germany’s defense budget into an electoral issue. Given the poor condition of Germany’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr, this seems extraordinarily irresponsible.

Nor is the problem merely one of military defense. Today’s authoritarian powers, whether in Islamic State (IS) or the Kremlin, are more sophisticated than the Soviet state that once occupied the eastern half of Germany and that built the Berlin Wall. They seek to recruit supporters or impact politics through social media. Wealthy foreigners, Russians as well as others, seek to shape German policy and opinion through money and corruption. You are rightly proud that rule of law is so strong in Germany--but of course it can be undermined here, just like anywhere else, if you are not vigilant in defending it. But vigilance requires knowledge: Before you can defend against a challenge, you need to realize that it is under attack, and I am not sure that Germans do.

I can understand the historical reasons for Germany’s reluctance to think about confrontation. And I respect them: As I’ve said, the postwar Federal Republic’s belief in the non-violent resolution of conflicts, its conviction that problems can be resolved through institutions is the most admirable thing about it. But that is no excuse for naivete. If Germany does not want a powerful army, it should still, as a matter of urgency, work with the institutions it has built, most notably the European Union, and especially with France and even Britain (this might be a way to give Britain a future European role) to create a multinational European force that can be deployed in defense of Europe’s borders, and in Europe’s name, at any time. It could be part of NATO, and should work with NATO. But the era of total dependence on the U.S. military is over.

While it’s true that the best responses will be European responses, it’s also true that they require Germany, Europe’s richest country--and its most admired country--to lead them. Or at least to co-lead them. And this, I know, will require an effort of imagination on the part of many Germans. But this is not the moment to become complacent: As in 1989, if you want to keep what you have achieved, you will have to change.