#also there were two things that felt extremely relevant that i debated adding into the endnotes
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vynegar · 19 days ago
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vyn 5th birthday ssr, part five
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a new resolution
same disclaimers from part one (note the extra one from usual, regarding story content)
youtube link to ShiroNaya’s video of the card story
links to previous parts: one two three four
more tot stuff here
do not repost
[PART FIVE]
[48:29]
Vyn didn’t want the situation to interfere with my work, so the next day I went to the law firm as usual. Online public opinion was worsening, and even his saving Zheng Yan was branded as insincere. The instigators hid behind their screens as they stirred up the masses, who were easily swayed by exaggerations or those were societally disadvantaged.
Some questioned Zheng Yan’s motives, asking why someone who truly wanted to end their life would start a livestream that was just asking for trouble. The opposition pointed out the imbalance in power dynamics; Zheng Yan’s extreme actions were simply out of desperation. He was at the end of his rope, and everyone could see his pain and despair.
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[48:47] Near the Research Center
The endless altercations and continued smearing of Vyn’s name was heartrending to see. Once I was off work, I immediately rushed over to the research center to find Vyn.
MC: (It’s so quiet… I wonder why Vyn texted me to come here instead of going inside?)
In order to prevent any incidents, Vyn temporarily closed the research center, so the street that was typically brightly-lit was now empty and silent. One streetlamp feebly lit up a corner, a sharp contrast with the lively, bustling city streets in the distance.
Vyn: Over here.
The sight of Vyn’s warm smile dispelled most of my melancholy and confusion, and I walked up and took the hand Vyn reached out to me.
MC: Were you waiting a long time?
Vyn: No, you arrived just as I finished preparing.
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MC: What are these…?
There were documents scattered haphazardly next to the flowerbed, and beside them was a shallow metal bowl. Vyn took a lighter out of his pocket and nimbly rolled the spark wheel. With a crisp click, sparks ignited then quickly extinguished.
Vyn: Just a little ceremony I have prepared.
The trees rustled in the night breeze, like background noise giving his words a sense of despondence.
Vyn: MC, I told you before about why I left Svart…
MC: Yeah.
That was when we visited Ferro Winery, and Vyn used his intoxication as an excuse to tell me about his past and his worries (1). Just like right now, that night was as quiet as if we were the only two people in the world.
MC: The Church interfered with you studying psychology. Eirik tried to resist them, but to no avail. You took the opportunity to abandon everything you didn’t care about and come to Stellis.
Vyn: Yes. I had not thought about that in a long time, until Zheng Yan appeared.
Vyn handed me an old newspaper. The bolded headline on it said: “Psychology student assists police in arresting a murderer. His true identity is…?” The contents of the article were largely consistent with what Vyn previously said, only with exaggerations to make Vyn’s performance seem prodigious. That was understandable, as a way to draw readers’ attention.
Vyn: Back then, my assistance to the police was kept highly confidential, but this article still showed up the next day as a front-page headline.
MC: Someone did this intentionally?
Vyn: Correct. Information can be leaked with unimaginable speed, even under the dual authority of both the police and the Haspran family.
I recalled that Zheng Yan had also alluded to this incident…
[flashback]
Zheng Yan: How shameless can you be?! I heard you used my case to make yourself the center of attention in Svart, and got everyone heaping praise on you and psychology. But who would’ve thought, behind all your fancy titles of “doctor” and “professor”, you’re nothing but filth!
[end flashback]
During the time, I hadn’t paid attention to the meaning behind his words. Now, I realized the irony in them.
MC: Was that also the work of Eirik’s political opponent?
Vyn: Yes…
Just as I expected, Vyn was finally filling in the gaps of what he didn’t elaborate on yesterday. It was because he had already previously been mired in controversy due to his father’s political disputes that made him so certain about Eirik’s call yesterday. He may have guessed it even earlier, once he sensed that there was someone in the shadows pulling the strings, only Vyn had still been holding out some hope.
MC: What happened next?
Vyn: Soon, news of the Haspran family heir’s study of and achievements in psychology spread throughout Svart. The Church was outraged, and pressured my father to explain and resolve the issue for them.
MC: Eirik wasn’t on your side?
Even though I knew the outcome, I couldn’t stop myself from asking. It wasn’t that I had any illusions about Duke Haspran… it was just a futile wish that Vyn hadn’t been completely isolated and abandoned back then.
Vyn: At the time, Father’s new policy reform was at a critical stage. The Church’s support was indispensable.
The words were so simple, yet they chilled my heart. If he needed the Church’s support, then he wouldn’t oppose them for Vyn’s sake… Zheng Yan kept claiming that Vyn made himself the center of attention, but what did that so-called “attention” actually get him?
Vyn: The only solution he could think of was a stalling tactic, and he asked me to temporarily give up on psychology. However, I was already determined to continue researching psychology, and I yearned to explore that in practice. I did not want to wait, and I felt I did not need to.
Vyn paused briefly, and the whole world felt suspended for that moment, even the moonlight dimming.
Vyn: I explained my passion to Father, but he felt that psychology research could be conducted at any time, while his new policy reform could not wait. In truth, neither of us was in the wrong. I should have known all along that our values were never aligned. The conflict finally became irreconcilable, and in the heat of an argument, my father threatened my right of inheritance.
At that point, Vyn looked slightly upward, avoiding my gaze. When he lowered his head again, I couldn’t see any hint of emotion in his face.
Vyn: I had no interest whatsoever in that, so the threat was meaningless. Therefore, I thought of a better solution.
MC: You decided to renounce your inheritance?
Vyn: Yes. That way, the Church could not use me to attack my father, and I could do whatever I wanted. It was a win-win situation.
Despite the satisfactory conclusion, Vyn still looked somewhat despondent. Was it a win-win, or actually a lose-lose…? They themselves might not even be certain.
“Click” – at the scraping of the spark wheel, an orange flame flickered at Vyn’s fingertips.
Vyn: As you can see, these years while I have been in Stellis, my father has always believed that I would change my mind someday. Consequently, he drew up legal documents to ensure that a majority of his assets and authority could be transferred to me.
I couldn’t tell if it was from the streetlamps or moonlight, but the stack of documents were luminous. Even without reading their contents, they seemed heavy.
Vyn: I have never had the heart to fully dispose of them, until now.
[54:23 illustration]
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Without the slightest hesitation, he brought the documents to the lighter. Fire greedily leapt across the pages, and Vyn let go before they were fully consumed. The papers that symbolized the power revered and sought by countless people fell into the bowl like shooting stars, and soon only the faintest traces remained. Page after page, the words rapidly curled, shriveled, and burned, our apprehension disappearing along with it.
Vyn: Honestly, I should have done this long ago.
His cheeks were illuminated a rosy hue by the fire; his glasses reflected the dancing flames. Vyn’s face, however, was more carefree and relaxed than I had ever seen before.
Vyn: I loathe Svart, especially all those pretentious people. They see you, me, and Zheng Yan as nothing but pawns to control. From the very beginning when they leaked my assistance to the police, I was nothing more than a pawn in their game of political chess. No one cared if I genuinely loved studying psychology or if it was profitable… just like how no one is sincerely helping Zheng Yan. What he needs is treatment, not someone who sees him and even his mental illness as an opportunity to utilize.
I think I understood the ceremony Vyn was referring to. Being used, abandoned, and framed…that was not something he could be unaffected by. The meaning in burning these documents was miniscule compared to the trouble it would be to sort out the aftermath, but he needed to do this. People commonly use fire to declare the death of something, and Vyn needed fire to make this a true farewell.
MC: What do you plan to do next, Vyn?
Vyn: You mean “we”. From now on, no matter what we do, we will decide together.
Vyn held my hand. Perhaps warmed by the flames, his hand was hot.
Vyn: For Svart aristocrats, engaging with psychology is unacceptable in the eyes of the Church. We can expose this incident, just like what they did previously, and give them a taste of their own medicine.
MC: Alright. What do we need to do?
Vyn: First, I need to diagnose Zheng Yan and begin to treat him. Zheng Yan is an alter of James, which legally categorizes him as incapacitated due to mental illness. Therefore, he cannot be held legally accountable for any of his actions, including his testimony, which is also unlikely to be admitted in court. When he is able to attend court, I would like you to seek justice for him.
MC: Are you going to sue?
Vyn: Yes. Zheng Yan and I were both innocent people who were implicated in this. Of course, I could choose to quietly negotiate with the mastermind right now… I am sure that as long as I am willing to conceal Zheng Yan for him, he will choose to stop while he is ahead. However, I am tired of these temporary ceasefires. Eventually someone has to tear down their hypocritical masks. But this path is bound to be more difficult, and I…
The light crackle of burning paper seemed to finish his sentence.
MC: You’re ready, aren’t you? To walk this difficult, uncertain path. Then go give it your all.
As if caught in turbulence, the ashes leapt up then melted into the night without a trace.
MC: I can’t promise that we’ll win, or that the path ahead will be smooth sailing. But I believe in your decisions, which is why I became your companion.
With the moon bright above us, the last embers were about to extinguish.
Vyn: To be honest, I do not have any grand convictions. I am simply trying to become someone like that person mentioned in a book I read when I was younger. “I love the one who justifies people of the future and redeems those of the past.” (2)
Vyn smiled faintly, his silver hair swaying gently under the moonlight, looking pure and clear. He lowered his head and mouthed the remaining lines, as if in silent prayer –
“I love the one who justifies people of the future and redeems those of the past: for he wants to perish of those in the present.”
“I love the one whose soul is overfull, so that he forgets himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his going under.”
“I love all those who are like heavy drops falling individually from the dark cloud that hangs over humanity: they herald the coming of the lightning, and as heralds they perish.”
[END PART FIVE]
(1) From Vyn’s Food for Thought SSR. This actually happens at the end of part 4 in the card story, before the scene where Vyn is “tipsy”.
(2) “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” Big Data Lab entry (under Works>Literature): These lines are all excerpts from Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche (translated by 钱春绮Qian Chunqi), although it is not presented in the exact order it appears in the original.
[T/N] The excerpt is from end of passage four in the prologue of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (or Thus Spake Zarathustra depending on the translation), a book by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The lines do appear in this order, however there are lines in between that are omitted. The original is in German, so the quotes I’m using are from the English version translated by Adrian Del Caro and edited by Robert Pippin (2006). You can read the first part of the book, including the passage quoted by Vyn, here: https://assets.cambridge.org/052184/1712/excerpt/0521841712_excerpt.htm
Note that Vyn comments about the Svart coming-of-age ceremony in his Journey Forth With You SSR:
"It is a bit like Stellis' legend of rebirth from fire, only that the agent of rebirth in Svart is water."
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randomsnakesimp · 3 years ago
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Attempt number two at adding my thoughts on Cedric to the theories:
He appears to have some sort of love for Meridian and its people, as seen in the fact that he seems fairly accepted in the city (one merchant feels comfortable clinging to his coat, and his response is merely a very blase insult - no punishment, no violence or threats; also, he can waltz up to a throng of rebels and pick up Elyon while a few seconds ago, there was a full on rampage against the guards going on), which makes me think he did at least try to conserve some type of order in the city. Also, he gets severely homesick while on earth, this even being seeming more relevant to him at some points than the body dysphoria brought on by being trapped in human form.
This is important for two reasons: it throws up the question why he then goes along with Phobos' destructive rage and it makes me believe that however he got to the castle, there's no love lost between him and his people.
Now, there also seems to be little prejudice against his people. Not that there is none, but I feel if his people were truly despised and he worked for Phobos, he would encounter much more hatred.
I also feel pretty comfortable assuming that Cedric can't be older, or at least more than one to two years older, than Phobos. Now why I also feel he looks like it, I am aware that they aren't the same species, so that's not what lead to this assessment. Rather I feel like both his temper tantrums and his extreme dependence on Phobos mark him as younger. Phobos doesn't seem to have had much contact with Cedric for years, so the moment they bonded must have been when Phobos was pretty young. Now Cedric seems to be both rather intelligent and rather aware of his intelligence (read: insufferable know-it-all), so if they'd met as children, where age differences are more prominent, and Phobos had been significantly younger, he would have likely kept him in mind as a younger sibling or a protégé rather than looking up to him. He would have still been overly attached, but I feel in a very different kind of way, like the mother of a problematic child who keeps telling the principal her son is just misunderstood and surely was acting on the best intentions when he set fire to the gym hall.
Now, up to this point, I feel comfortable starting a friendly debate on things. However, I am well aware that the rest of what I made of that is purely a matter of personal story telling taste and there are countless other possibilities just as good if not better. Here goes anyway:
I believe that Cedrics people, let's just call them serpentine for now cause that's what little ninjago-fan me called them, were, indeed, subject to colonial mistreatment by the Escanor. I will not go into further detail than needed for my theory here as I am too uninformed and scared of accidentally being hurtful, and please inform me if I do say something wrong.
I think that this mistreatment started when the Escanor first came to Meridian. In the centuries since, they slowly realized their mistake to an extend, but the damage was done, and they had driven the serpentine to neat extinction, with only a few tribes surviving in sanctuaries granted to them or places uninhabitable by Galhot/Escanor.
By the time Elyons mother Weira came around, the people had started a few amends, but the relationship was tense and still not equal, so she decided to take a stand and arrange a marriage to officially show her support of the serpentine. Since she could hardly marry off her cursed son of doom to them, she had the heir of their leader - or the closest the scrambled populations had to a leader - named fiancé to her daughter.
Hence, Cedric was brought to the palace to be raised and taught in the ways of a future king. Since he was very young at this point, he didn't see it this way, though, and rather felt his mother had abandoned him. Adding to it that he now lived in a world of faux niceties and gossip, and was likely met with at least some prejudice, he probably developed trust issues, including losing the trust in himself as people kept telling him that HE was the problem, or at least insinuating it. Therefore, when he met the prince, who was in a similar situation, and who understood him, and maybe as a toddler was not yet above proclaiming what an awesome monster form his new friend had, he was in head over heels.
However, as we know, Elyon was kidnapped. Which likely didn't sit too well with the serpentine, who might have started to think that the motive wasn't Phobos, but rather the attempt of "rescuing" her from Cedric. They withdrew even further and in turn fueled Cedrics resentment toward them for abandoning him even more.
The reason I believe him and Elyon were meant to be married is mainly the way they interact - like, they both know they don't love each other, he even knows she has a crush, yet they somehow both seem to try to be in a romantic relationship. And why would Cedric do this as a ruse if, y'know, Elyon had a crush, and on Wills love interest nonetheless? Wouldn't that be a much more worthwhile pursuit? Nah. Everyone in the palace knew they had to get married, and so Cedric couldn't not tell her.
It also explains the extreme reaction Cedric has when Elyon compares her life to a fairy tale. His job is to placate her, and keep her naive, yet when she just throws away this line he snaps? Twice? She tells him to stop, and he goes on. Maybe his mother used to tell him tales of true lovers finding each other, only to then dump him off to marry someone?
And last but not least - wouldn't it explain why Phobos happens to let Cedric into his gardens just when Elyon returns? Wanting him away from her? Maybe fearing Cedric might, after all, decide to switch sides for one reason or another?
As I said, this is all pure speculation now. Thanks, as always, for reading to the end, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.
I am planning on ending this little mini series with a few canon-divergent scenarios I have set in this theories' universe, and maybe a list of headcanons. Feel free to tell me if you feel that would be spam, I won't hold it against you.
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modernagesomniari · 4 years ago
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Fic - ‘The Wrong Game’
Part 15 (15!?!?!) of my Mala Suledin Nadas series, which follows my playthrough of Ellana Lavellan.  All the stories can pretty much be read on their own, but there is continuity through them.  You can check out the whole series here or read this chapter in isolation on AO3 here.
So, I'd just finished Hushed Whispers and done the rounds back at Haven, which meant that Eli and Vivienne's relationship by this point basically involved two flaming rows about the status of mages. However, the next thing I did was complete Viv's first war table quest, which rewards you with her approval. This didn't make sense to me, so I wrote a thing that made it make sense i.e. Eli is crap at politics and asks Viv's advice despite disagreeing with her. This speaks of a practicality and humility Vivienne approves of (plus we get a sneak peak of how Eli may or may not SLAY the Winter Palace).
*********************
After their second strong disagreement about the status of mages, Vivienne is dismayed to see Herald coming in her direction again.
The Wrong Game
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It had been quite some time since Vivienne had needed to calm herself down this way.  Intellectually, she knew why this was different, but that neither made the anger less potent nor curbed the irritation at being made to feel it.  Perhaps she had been at court for too long - she was getting lazy.
It wasn’t just that she disagreed with this new Herald of Andraste - she had disagreed with many people before.  Nor was it that the Herald existed outside of the Game - Vivienne had taken great pleasure in instructing many scholars from all over Thedas of their academic failings.  No, this particular woman was infuriating because her logic had no bearing to the Game at all.  Nor to the Chantry.  Vivienne was more than adept at wielding her learning to point out the flaws in most foolish arguments like Lavellan’s, but her reasoning meant nothing to this girl.  On the contrary, they had barely made it to the more mainstream discussions around mage rights, so busy had they been questioning the fundamental definition of mages that made those discussions relevant.
Lack of preparation, that was what was making her so angry, Vivienne realised.  When Lavellan had rebutted any question of the necessity of mage towers using the Dalish as an example of a society that needed no such thing, Vivienne did not have the tools available to argue the point.  As such she was reduced to simply dismissing the point outright, which felt beneath her.  She was no novice, of course. As soon as she had found out that the Herald was both a mage and a Dalish elf she had combed the library of the Winter Palace for every useful tome on the culture she hadn’t yet read.  That, she quickly learned, was precious few.  Not because she had read them all, but because every account of elven culture that was available was either monstrously out of date or so steeped in mind-numbingly simplified Chantry rhetoric she felt momentarily ashamed for the entirety of the Orlesian academic elite.
Thus, she had come to an argument she was not expecting, that had turned in a direction she should have foreseen, woefully unprepared.  This was not a situation she cared to repeat, although she was slightly at a loss for how not to.  The Herald clearly distrusted her greatly now - there was a defensiveness in her last few sentences that precluded a rather dull mental attitude suggesting any further actual intellectual debate was going to turn predictably cumbersome and personally affronted.  How exceedingly dull.  She was aware she could not blame the Herald for such an attitude.  It seemed to be true that the Dalish did not have the space to carry books with them, so Lavellan couldn’t be accustomed to truly rigorous intellectual discourse, but Vivienne would have appreciated a little more time to gather the information about Dalish culture she needed before they got to the bullish stage.
She had developed just enough of a headache that the sight of the Herald darting out of the war room at the back of the Chantry had her sigh and turn to her books, away from the main body of the building.  She did not wish to get into this discussion again, so did rather hope that the girl would pass her on her way out.
“Madame Vivienne?”
No such luck, it would seem.
“I am rather busy, darling.  Perhaps we can pick this up another time.”
“Oh.  It will only take a moment, I’m sure.  I was wondering if I could ask your advice.”
Well that was unexpected.  Vivienne turned, shrewd eyes skirting over the Herald’s crude (if rather fetching) attire to her face, where she noticed a slight rise of colour to her cheeks, a distinct widening of the eyes.  Something had shaken her, clearly.  
“My advice?” she asked, knowing that for all the frost in her voice she might as well be standing back with her arms crossed.  Lavellan did not look reassured.  Good. “I believe we just established that my advice is not particularly welcome.”
“Not on magic.  I think we’ve discussed that enough for today.” Lavellan said quietly, adding a rather surprisingly self-deprecating chuckle before looking directly up into Vivienne’s eyes.  She had courage, Vivienne had to give her that much.  
Those big green eyes still slightly panicky, the Herald took a step towards her and her words all came out in a rush.  “I was in the war room and they’re asking me to make some decisions because they can’t agree, which is fine.  But there’s a problem just south of Val Royeux to do with the letter your friend sent and it’s to do with some nobles?  Of different families?  That I can’t remember the names of?  And they’re having some disagreements about…about…um…something and the advisors want me to help them decide what to do.  Me.  Me, Madame Vivienne.  Ellana Lavellan, First of Clan Lavellan.  Being, as that name suggests, Dalish.  And I thought to myself ‘why on earth invite an expert on the Orlesian court to join the Inquisition if you’re not going to use her’?  Because, for some reason, they seem to think I’m qualified.”
There was something unavoidably charming about the genuine panic in her face that Vivienne was fighting a losing battle not to be swayed by.  Apparently, however, the Herald wasn’t finished.  “I know we don’t see eye to eye on some things.  And I’m not stupid, so your advice wouldn’t be wasted.  It’s just not my area of expertise and I know it’s yours.  Will you advise me?”
Vivienne considered her and Lavellan, rather surprisingly, let her do it.  She had to admit, she was rather taken aback by this approach.  She had assumed that Lavellan would have taken such offence to their earlier disagreement that Vivienne would now be spurned to the Herald’s detriment.  Still.
“You are aware we come from very different backgrounds, my dear?”
“That’s sort of the point, Madame Vivienne, yes. No one knows woods better than those who have had to survive in them except those who have learned to thrive in them.  My woods are made up of actual trees.  Yours are noble families with bewilderingly similar names.”
Vivienne resolved not to let the Herald see her smile at that particular comment, though from the sparkle of mischief in those same eyes that were so wide a moment ago, she perceived she had possibly failed.
“And you trust me to help you navigate these woods?”
Lavellan cocked her head, something like a smile on her face.  Vivienne realised, not pleasantly, that it seemed she herself was being considered now.  Whatever Lavellan had decided made her nod to herself, the grin widening.  Goodness but she would never survive the Game.
“No.”
Vivienne’s eyebrows raised, pausing her own assumption in its tracks.  Never say that Madame de Fer did not learn from the scant few mistakes she made.
“No?”
“No.  However, I do trust that you have your own ideas about what is best in this situation and how best to resolve it so I think I can learn a lot from listening and watching you hunt in these woods.  I also trust that you will see this as an opportunity to further any agenda you have yourself, which will be just as educational for me.  You can learn just as much about hunting by being hunted as you can by hunting something yourself.”
Well.  It had been a long time since anyone had stood in front of Vivienne and accused her to her face of planning to manipulate them.  Oh, plenty of inferences and innuendo, but never flat out.  She found it rather invigorating.
“What made you be honest with me?”
Lavellan was surprised enough by her choice of question that she laughed.  A little too loudly, so the sound echoed in the Chantry proper and she flinched a little, coming closer with a conspiratorial smile like they’d both just been nearly caught filching chocolates from a Senior Enchanter’s desk.
“I don’t have much experience with the Game,” she admitted in an almost whisper.  “But I do get the impression that plain talking isn’t part of it.  Which made me wonder whether it wasn’t then actually quite a good weapon if used right.  The huntmaster never let me go on hunts because he thought I’d be no use,” she explained at Vivienne’s questioning look.  “Then I helped my brother win a contest by freezing a deer solid so it wouldn’t run from his bow and the look on his face was like he’d just swallowed a wasps’ nest!”
“Wasn’t that cheating, my dear?”
“Not at all,” Lavellan replied, affecting an extremely convincing innocent look.  It was the touch of affronted, Vivienne thought, that sold it.  “My brother was allowed to pick a second to help him.  He picked me.  The fact that the huntmaster had already decided I was useless was his mistake, not ours.”
Vivienne had underestimated this apostate.  She had underestimated her greatly.  A small approving smile graced her lips and she watched Lavellan notice, hope and challenge in her smirk.  Vivienne could not find it in herself to care, impressed very much by Lavellan’s clear attitude to her assets and resources.  That her pride after an argument was not going to get in the way of her practicality was an aspect to her personality Vivienne very much appreciated.  Perhaps, despite their differences, she could still get her to listen, to make sure that no more damage was done to Vivienne’s people.  This war was taking its toll and the stakes had never been so high.  She couldn’t begin to forgive herself if she didn’t use every talent and skill the Maker had entrusted her to develop to protect and elevate those people who now so desperately needed someone on their side.  Whether they could see it or not.
Which meant keeping the Herald sweet.  The Herald who had just proved that she might be a lot more useful as an ally and dangerous as an enemy than Vivienne had initially predicted.  It was rather delicious being wrong.  Not that the Herald needed to know anything of the sort.
“I assume,” She began, moving away towards the open doors and expecting Lavellan to follow (which she did), “That you refer to the rumours that the Divine is not, in fact, dead?”
“Yes!” Lavellan replied, relief evident in her voice as it appeared that Vivienne was indeed going to help.  “Only apparently just refuting it doesn’t work and we need to choose carefully what we say to who and when?”
Vivienne looked down at her, seeing nothing but an earnest desire to learn in Lavellan’s upturned eyes.  She didn’t trust that look for a second.  This assignment she’d given herself had just got significantly more interesting.
How marvellous.  
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vishalkhatri9825 · 4 years ago
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6 Reasons : Why Work From Office is Better than WFH
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 6 announced the guidance for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and IT-Enabled Services (ITES) players to lessen their consistence trouble for the industry and encourage “work from home” and “work from anywhere”. He further added, “The reform will certainly unleash the potential of our talented youth by making India as a preferred destination for Information and Knowledge Outsourcing Industry and would further the vision of AtmaNirbhar Bharat“.
Leaders of the IT and BPO industry in India commended the government’s transition to loosen up rules to enable IT and BPO organizations to embrace a permanent work from home/work from anywhere [WFH], considering it a game changer that could make a great job opportunities in small towns and cities. Reacting to this, software body Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh said, “This is one of those game-changing moments. As this bandwagon continues, there are some companies that have permanently decided to make partial or full WFH feature for certain roles in their organizations. As per Daminee Sawhney, VP-HR, Zomato, “We felt the biggest advantages were flexibility of work hours and saving the workforces’ travelling time, while the biggest challenge was ensuring every ‘zoman’ working remotely continued to feel connected and well supported”.
While Rishad Premji, who is the son of Wipro Founder Azim Premji said that although 98% of the Wipro employees are working from home, he wishes that all of them return to office and work, not from home. As per him, “The reality is culture grows by osmosis. Culture grows by people engaging at the ward coffee machine, or the water cooler, gossiping about the organization, exchanging notes.” The company can only grow when there is an inherent culture found.
However, since this WFH action has caused lot of controversies among the employers, there is wrangle between employees too. It works for some and not for others who are yearning to return to life as it seemed to be. Many employees feel that there is less distraction and they can work better compared to office. There will be increase in their productivity. But at the same time, few of them complaint about tired of working in isolation. WFH has lost charm for them and they miss their workplace interaction. With the uncertainty of COVID-19 situation, some employees seem quite done working from home.
So, the point here is WFH may be good in many ways and of course as productive as in an office space, but it is not enough. There is a mass who long office culture. This blog describes about the value of an office space and find doses of office time, even if it means working out from Swiggy, Starbucks or any other delivery services. The word OFFICE itself has some relevancy towards fun, enjoyment along with discipline, seriousness.
O-Office provides a landing field
What is a landing field? The place that allow people to get away from outside noise and provide comfort zone. That is the office space gives them comfort to move away from other things and get into the working zone. Well, this field does not mean physical space but a stress buster. Chats around the coffee machine and water area in between the work hours, releases your stress and align to focus on work. But the same background is not found at home, there is something that lacks while at home. 
       2    F-Familiarity with unknown
As said by Kio Stark, “When you talk to strangers, you’re making beautiful interruptions into the expected narrative of your daily life – and theirs.” The officemates, though unfamiliar, soon becomes pals and create a space for them in our life, despite being strangers initially. The office colleagues, elevator operators, people from different office but parking mates, regular faces at coffee area relaxes ourselves and bring in the positive vibes.
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      3  F-Food during office breaks
People definitely miss the lunch/dinner time during office hours. These are the times when people have any random conversation – be it what’s happening in city or their life, any other updates, mimicking or entertainment during lunch/dinner time interval, makes oneself stress-free from office workload. People miss that loud conversation, that collective informative discussion, sporty chats and much more. Specifically, when the office lunch/dinner is not upto the mark, the collective moaning or full on gossip regarding the same with colleagues are unquestionably to be missed. Of course, not to forget the time spent arguing about the food to order for lunch/dinner.
       4    I-Interaction
Satya Nadella said to Times editors on aspects of managing during the pandemic, “More meetings start and end on time, but “what I miss is when you walk into a physical meeting, you are talking to the person that is next to you, you’re able to connect with them for the two minutes before and after.” Exactly…those intellectual interactions with your nearby colleagues cannot happen on online meeting. With WFH due to COVID-19, those brainstorming yet a fruitful interaction go missing.
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    5  C- Closure of the day
Office leads good vibes not only by just waving your officemates but also by greeting ‘Good Morning’ to the colleagues. Positive impact is generated even when other staff members bid goodbye daily to you while physically leaving from the office for their respective homes. This is just not possible with WFH situation; online goodbye never gives you that feel. It takes lot of effort to form an ‘imaginary line of exit’.
     6  E- Expression of face and body goes missing
When it comes to office meeting, it is the body language of the colleagues that plays vital role in implementing the thoughts into actions. There are non-verbal cues that make you determine the seriousness of the workplace. Online meeting may help express with words but you may miss out on body language and also the non-verbal cues that include posture to expression – extremely important for any official project meetings. One cannot gauge the body language when people login from different stations.
To sum it up, WFH is not a new concept to many now, but it may not fill the workers up with tremendous achievement. There is always a lingering sense of lack of being joyous and giving better output without having social surrounding with respect to office pals. After all, Men Is A Social Animal. He needs space to interact, converse and mingle but COVID-19 has certainly hastened the process.
Apart from this, everybody’s situation is different at home. There is a risk of higher physiological and psychological discomfort when WFH is the only option. Inadequate spacing, poor ventilation or lights, unergonomic furniture and also continuous disturbance from surrounding may increase stress and also hamper the quality of work. Social distancing and isolation from colleagues and friends have deprived those who are away from family for the work purpose, WFH have made them lonely to larger extent. There are partial chances of home being converted to office completely.
Keeping these factors in mind, many of the online digital platforms like Khatriji that provides path for mobile, DTH and datacard recharge along with utility bill payment for electricity, landline, broadband, gas pipeline have applied work from office strategy only.
Thus, despite support from the government regarding the WFH system, it is yet a debatable question among both employees and employers.
Originally Article Published :  6 Reasons : Why Work From Office is Better than WFH
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innuendostudios · 6 years ago
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Research Masterpost
This is my research list for The Alt-Right Playbook. It is a living document - I am typically adding sources faster than I am finishing the ones already on it. Notes and links below the list. Also, please note this does not include the hundreds of articles and essays I’ve read that also inform the videos - this is books, reports, and a few documentaries.
Legend: Titles in bold -> finished Titles in italics -> partially finished *** -> livetweeted as part of #IanLivetweetsHisResearch (asterisks will be a link) The book I am currently reading will be marked as such.
Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online, by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis Alternative Influence, by Rebecca Lewis The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer*** Eclipse of Reason, by Max Horkheimer Civility in the Digital Age, by Andrea Weckerle The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt On Revolution, by Hannah Arendt Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley*** This is an Uprising, by Mark and Paul Engler Neoreaction a Basilisk, by Elizabeth Sandifer This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, by Charles E. Cobb, Jr. Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson Healing from Hate, by Michael Kimmel The Brainwashing of my Dad, doc by Jen Senko On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin*** Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi Fascism Today, by Shane Burley Indoctrination over Objectivity?, by Marrissa S. Ballard Ur-Fascism, by Umberto Eco Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, by Lindsay C. Gibson Anti-Semite and Jew, by Jean-Paul Sartre Alt-America, by David Neiwert*** The Dictator’s Handbook, by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith Terror, Love, and Brainwashing, by Alexandra Stein Kaputt, by Curzio Malaparte The Anatomy of Fascism, by Robert O. Paxton Neoliberalism and the Far Right, by Neil Davidson and Richard Saull Trolls Just Want to Have Fun, by Erin E. Buckels, et al The Entrepreneurial State, by Mariana Mazzucato
Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online, by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis (free: link) A monstrously useful report from Data & Society which- coupled with Samuel R. Delany’s memoir The Motion of Light in Water - formed the backbone of the Mainstreaming video. I barely scratched the surface of how many techniques the Far Right uses to inflate their power and influence. If you feel lost in a sea of Al-Right bullshit, this will at least help you understand how things got the way they are, and maybe help you discern truth from twaddle.
The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer (free: link) (livetweets) A free book full of research from Bob Altemeyer’s decades of study into authoritarianism. Altemeyer writes conversationally, even jovially, peppering what could have been a dense and dry work with dad jokes. I wouldn’t say he’s funny (most dads aren’t), but it makes the book blessedly accessible. If you ever wanted a ton of data demonstrating that authoritarianism is deeply correlated with conservatism, this is the book. One of the most useful resources I’ve consumed so far, heavily influencing the entire series but most directly the video on White Fascism. Even has some suggestions for how to actually change the mind of a reactionary, which is kind of the Holy Grail of LeftTube.
(caveats: there is a point in the book where Altemeyer throws a little shade on George Lakoff, and I feel he slightly - though not egregiously - misrepresents Lakoff’s arguments)
Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff An extremely useful book about framing. Delves into the differences between the American Right and Left when it comes to messaging, how liberal politicians tend to have degrees in things like Political Science and Rhetoric, where conservatives far more often have degrees in Marketing. This leads to two different cultures, where liberals have Enlightenment-style beliefs that all  you need is good ideas and conservatives know an idea will only be popular if you know how to sell it. He gets into the nuts and bolts of how to keep control of a narrative, because the truth is only effective if the audience recognizes it as such. Kind of staggering how many Democrats swear by this book while blatantly taking none of its advice. Lakoff has been all over the series since the first proper video.
(caveats: several. Lakoff seemingly believes the main difference between the Right and Left is in our default frames, and that swaying conservatives amounts to little more than finding better ways to make the same arguments. he deeply underestimates the ideological divide between Parties, and some of his advice reads as tips for making debates more pleasant but no more productive. he also makes a passing comparison between conservatism and Islam that means well but is a gross and kinda racist false equivalence)
How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley (livetweets) A slog. Many useful concepts, and directly referenced in the White Fascism video. But could have said everything it needed to say in half as many pages. Stanley seems dedicated to framing everything in epistemological terms, not appealing to morality or sentiment, which means huge sections of the book are given over to “proving” democracy is a good thing using only philosophical concepts, when “democracy good” is probably something his readership already accepts. Also has a frustrating tendency to begin every paragraph with a brief summary of the previous paragraph. When he actually talks about, you know, how propaganda works, it’s very useful, and I don’t regret reading it. But I don’t entirely recommend it. Seems written for an imagined PhD review board. Might be better off reading my livetweets.
Neoreaction a Basilisk, by Elizabeth Sandier A trip. Similar to Jason Stanley, Sandifer is dedicated to “disproving” a number of Far Right ideologies - from transphobia to libertarianism to The Singularity - in purely philosophical terms. The difference is, she’s having fun with it. I won’t pretend the title essay - a 140-page mammoth - didn’t lose me several times, and someone had to remind which of its many threads was the thesis. And some stretches are dense, academic writing punctuated with vulgarity and (actually quite clever) jokes, which doesn’t always average out to the playfully heady tone she’s going for. But, still, frequently brilliant and never less than interesting. There is something genuinely cathartic about a book that begins with the premise that we all fear but won’t let ourselves meaningfully consider - that we will lose the fight with the Right and climate change is going to kill us all - and talks about what we can do in that event. I felt I didn’t even have to agree with the premise to feel strangely empowered by it. Informed the White Fascism video’s comments on transphobia as the next frontier of bigotry since failing to prevent marriage equality.
On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt Was surprised to find this isn’t properly a book, just a printed essay. Highly relevant passage that helped form my description of 4chan in The Card Says Moops: “What tends to go on in a bull session is that the participants try out various thoughts and attitudes in order to see how it feels to hear themselves saying such things and in order to discover how others respond, without its being assumed that they are committed to what they say: it is understood by everyone in a bull session that the statements people make do not necessarily reveal what they really believe or how they really feel. The main point is to make possible a high level of candor and an experimental or adventuresome approach to the subjects under discussion. Therefore provision is made for enjoying a certain irresponsibility, so that people will be encouraged to convey what is on their minds without too much anxiety that they will be held to it. [paragraph break] Each of the contributors to a bull session relies, in other words, upon a general recognition that what he expresses or says is not to be understood as being what he means wholeheartedly or believes unequivocally to be true. The purpose of the conversation is not to communicate beliefs.”
The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin (livetweets) Another freakishly useful book, and the basis for Always a Bigger Fish and The Origins of Conservatism. Jumping into the history of conservative thought, going all the way back to Thomas Hobbes, to stress that conservatism is, and always has been, about preserving social hierarchies and defending the powerful. Robin dissects thinkers who heavily influenced conservatism, from Edmund Burke and Friedrich Nietzsche to Carl Menger and Ayn Rand, and finally concluding with Trump himself. There’s a lot of insight into how the conservative mind works, though precious little comment on what we can do about it, which somewhat robs the book of a conclusion. Still, the way it bounces off of Don’t Think of an Elephant and The Authoritarians really brings the Right into focus.
Fascism Today, by Shane Burley Yet another influence on the White Fascism video. Bit of a mixed bag. The opening gives a proper definition of fascism, which is extremely useful. Then the main stretch delves into the landscape of modern fascism, from Alt-Right to Alt-Lite to neofolk pagans to the Proud Boys and on and on. Sometimes feels overly comprehensive, but insights abound on the intersections of all these belief systems (Burley pointing out that the Alt-Right is, in essence, the gentrification of working-class white nationalists like neo-Nazi skinheads and the KKK was a real eye-opener). But the full title is Fascism Today: What it is and How to End it, and it feels lacking in the second part. Final stretch mostly lists a bunch of efforts to address fascism that already exist, how they’ve historically been effective, and suggestions for getting involved. Precious few new ideas there. And maybe the truth is that we already have all the tools we need to fight fascism and we simply need to employ them, and being told so is just narratively unsatisfying. Or maybe it’s a structural problem with the book, that it doesn’t reveal a core to fascism the way Altemeyer reveals a core to authoritarianism and Robin reveals a core to conservatism, so I don’t come away feeling like I get fascism well enough to fight it. But, also, Burley makes it clear that modern fascism is a rapidly evolving virus, and being told that old ways are still the best ways isn’t very satisfying. If antifascism isn’t evolving at least as rapidly, it doesn’t seem like we’re going to win.
(caveats: myriad. for one, Burley repeatedly quotes Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies, which does not inspire confidence. he also talks about “doxxing fascists” as a viable strategy without going into the differences between “linking a name to a face at a public event” and “hacking someone’s email to publicly reveal their bank information,” where the former is the strategy that fights fascism and the latter is vigilantism that is practiced widely on the Right and only by the worst actors on the Left. finally, the one section where Burley discusses an area I had already thoroughly researched was GamerGate, and he got quite a few facts wrong, which makes me question how accurate all the parts I hadn’t researched were. I don’t want to drive anyone away from the book, because it was still quite useful, but I recommend reading it only in concert with a lot of other sources so you don’t get a skewed perspective.)
Healing from Hate, by Michael Kimmel (Michael Kimmel, it turns out, is a scumbag. This book’s main thesis is that we need to look at violent extremism through the lens of toxic masculinity, so Kimmel’s toxic history with women is massively disappointing. Book itself is, in many ways, good, but, you know, retweets are not endorsement.)
A 4-part examination of how men get into violent extremism through the lens of the organizations that help them get out: EXIT in Germany and Sweden, Life After Hate in the US, and The Quilliam Foundation in Europe and North America. Emphasizing that entry into white nationalism - and, to an extent, jihadism - is less ideological than social. Young men enter these movements out of a need for community, purpose, and a place to put their anger. They feel displaced and mistreated by society - and often, very tangibly, are - and extremism offers a way to prove their manhood. Feelings of emasculation is a major theme. The actual politics of extremism are adopted gradually. They are, in a sense, the price of admission for the community and the sense of purpose. The most successful exit strategies are those that address these feelings of loneliness and emasculation and build social networks outside the movement, and not ones that address ideology first - the ideology tends to wither with the change in environment. The book itself can be a bit repetitive, but these observations are very enlightening.
(caveats: the final chapter on militant Islam is deeply flawed. Kimmel clearly didn’t get as much access to Qulliam as he had to EXIT and Life After Hate, so his data is based far less on direct interviews with counselors and former extremists and much more on other people’s research. despite the chapter stressing that a major source of Muslim alienation is racism, Kimmel focuses uncomfortably much on white voices - the majority of researchers he quotes are white Westerners, and the few interviews he manages are mostly with white converts to Islam rather than Arabs or South Asians. all in all, the research feels thinner, and his claims about militant Islam seem much more conjectural when they don’t read as echos of other people’s opinions.)
Terror, Love and Brainwashing, by Alexandra Stein A look at totalitarian governments and cults through the lens of attachment theory. While not explicitly about the Far Right, it’s interesting to see the overlap between this and Healing from Hate. Stein stresses that the control dynamics she discusses are not exclusive to cults, and are, in fact, the same ones as in abusive relationships; cults are just the most extreme version. So you can see many similar dynamics in Far Right organizations, like the Aryan Nations or the Proud Boys. It’s made me curious how many of these dynamics are in play in the distributed, less controlled environment of online extremism, and makes me want to look further into the subject before drawing conclusions.
(caveats: book is, as with How Propaganda Works, sometimes a slog and rather repetitive. I clocked a 4-page stretch in chapter 8 where Stein did not say a single thing that hadn’t been said multiple times in previous chapters. also, when talking about people coerced into highly-controlled lifestyles, she offhandedly includes “prostitutes” among them? it’s that liberal conflation of sex work and trafficking which is really not cool. this isn’t a major point, just something to notice while you read it.)
Alt-America, by David Neiwert (livetweets) A look at the actual formation of the Alt-Right, and the history that led up to it: the Militia and Patriot movements of the 90′s, the Tea Party, the rise of Alex Jones and Glenn Beck, and so on. Having been steeped in the rhetoric and tactics of the Far Right for so long, someone doing the work of sitting down and putting it all in chronological order is immensely helpful. Generally clear and well-written, too, and would be an easy read if not for how goddamn depressing the content is. Has an unfortunate final 7 pages, where Neiwert starts recommending actual policy. Falls into the usual “have empathetic conversations with genuine conservatives to turn them against the fascist wing taking over their party,” not recognizing the ways in which conservatism is continuous with fascism, nor the ways that trying to appeal to moderate conservatives alienates the people whose rights they deny. Means an extremely valuable book leaves a bad taste in the final stretch, but everything up to then is aces.
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soundofseventeen · 5 years ago
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Ice Cream (Lee Chan)
Hello! Quick Dino post today! (I’m sorry it’s not that great I’m between jobs right now and wanted to post something I’m sorry)
Hi, Erin’s been really busy and lowkey stressed with work and her vacation planning so she let add on to this so I hope it’s okay with y’all!! i may have added a few extra prompts. Okay, back to my stuff!! Enjoy!!! -Bee
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You used to be extremely close to your older brother. You and Chan did almost everything together, and he took his job as your big brother extremely. If someone teased you at school, he always backed you up, then took you for ice cream to make you feel better. Even when he wanted to hang out with his own friends, he’d still let you tag along, keeping an eye on you so you didn’t get lost. He was your best friend for most of your childhood. 
As you got older, you kept that closeness, but still had to grow apart a bit. Started to make your own friends, have your own lives, do your own things. He still tried to keep an eye on you though, just to make sure that you were doing okay. If he felt like something was wrong, he’d randomly toss your shoes at you and tell you to follow him. He’d take you for ice cream again, just to see if you’d talk to him about it or even just smile a little bit. 
Things started to change when he went to be a trainee. At first it was extremely difficult, not seeing him every day, not being able to talk to him or hang out with him. You missed him so much. Part of you worried that this would all be for nothing, and he would never debut and come home heartbroken. But, you knew better. 
You were a proud sibling when he debuted, showing everyone you could your big brother and his group. You admired him so much and everything he was able to accomplish and wanted the rest of the world to see him like you did. 
Of course, as time went on, he kept working with his group, and you kept living your life from home. While his schedule got crazier, it got so much harder to be in contact with him. He’d still send you updates, especially from tour. You always got excited when he would send you things on tour, knowing it was some cool or bazaar photo of him or one of his members. 
You tried to visit him a lot, but it was difficult to find good days for it. Between your two schedules, it rarely seemed to work out. But it always made you smile when it worked out. You’d get to hear dumb stories about him from his members (who all adopted you as their little sibling as well), and even had them all try to teach your their dances (and laughed when you failed). 
While you tried to make these visits, it only became harder still to see him. His free time seemed to always be filled with something he could do for his group or his career. You couldn’t blame him, this was his dream and you knew he had to go for it. You were usually able to let things go, knowing that he never wanted to miss things or forget things, it just happened. 
The first time it really hurt was when he missed your birthday. You had spent the day celebrating with your friends and parents, but you still found yourself checking your phone all day for that message from him. Some years he sent a video just from himself, some years with some members screaming in the back, sometimes he actually called you. But this year... Nothing. You didn’t want to ask him about it, but you also wanted to hear from him. 
Your parents were confused when you went to bed upset, not wanting to make them feel like they didn’t celebrate your day enough. You knew Chan was busy, but he always, always remembered your birthday. 
You were even more confused when your dad knocked on your door, telling you there was someone at the door for you. Thinking it was Chan, you quickly ran to the door, heart falling when it was some random delivery dude. You took the package, walking into your kitchen. 
You were started to pout again when you looked at the box, seeing it was sent from Pledis Entertainment. Your eyes widened, knowing that was Chan’s company. You quickly opened it, pulling out a smaller box and a card. You opened the card, quickly reading. 
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
I’m so sorry I couldn’t celebrate with you today. We had an unexpected travel day today and I couldn’t find a chance to call you. I hope you did everything amazing you could today and didn’t suffer too much without your big brother. 
I just wanted you to know that I appreciate you, and miss you the most (don’t tell mom and dad). Love you. x Chan 
PS, I know you’re probably upset at not hearing from me today, so I gotta make it up somehow.
You grinned to yourself, opening the box, seeing an ice cream cone charm along with a coupon for a free cone at your local ice cream shop. You shook your head, of course he would get you ice cream. You snapped a picture of yourself that night, imagining he was there with you and it made you feel a little better.
The second time was around Christmas when he pinky promised you he’d be there at home, waiting by the tree so you could open one gift before the clock struck midnight. So you had brought all the blankets you owned and made a makeshift bed a couple of days before his flight landed and slept there every night in hopes you’d wake up to the familiar face. Christmas Eve came and with the most devastated expression you’d ever seen on a human, he apologized on the other end of the video call, explaining the latest thing that had come up and promised to make it up to you. 
“I’m trying to cheer you up,” he said when you shook your head, as if telling it’s okay. “I will fight you, and I’m not hanging up until you either smile.”
“Chan, you’re busy and I’m not gonna take up more of your time. Go, be a choreographer for your friends. I have to go to sleep now.” You had felt the energy leave your body with the bad news and all you wanted was to curl up into a ball and sleep the sadness away.
“Can you at least open my gift to you? I wanna see your reaction.”
“Chan, they’re waiting for you. I’ll open it and, stop doing that face! I’ll open it if you stop. Is it this one?” You held up a gift wrapped with little elves you saw he labelled after his members, which made you smile involuntarily. It had your name on it, so you assumed it was. You shook it, surprised by the rattling noises it made. 
“Yeah! Open it! It isn’t much, but it was the best I could do.”
 It ended up being a puzzle of a picture you had taken once upon a time where he had taken one of your toys, making you cry and him smiling evilly. (Just because he was also your best friend didn’t mean he didn’t play the his role of the older brother tormenting the younger sibling and inside the box you had found another coupon for the ice cream place. There was no explanation but you also didn’t have the heart to use it this time, so you let it expire.
The more time passed after that, the more empty promises he made, each time making it up with a coupon as if it solved everything. Sometimes you used them, but you’d only take a few licks and then throw it away. Ice cream, you realized, didn’t taste as good when it was bought under the pretense of a guilty conscience.You hated the distance, despised the consequences of Chan being an idol, resented Chan for not being here like he used to be. All you got were “I’m sorry,”s and lousy pieces of paper for ice cream and even after awhile, those stopped too which hurt more than anything. And suddenly, Iksan frustrated you and you knew you had to get out soon, so after begging your parents day and night, you snuck out and took bus by bus until you landed in Seoul City.
 It brought a strange sense of comfort to you, despite being here a handful of times. The streets were always different but it always smelled the same: fried rice and steamed vegetables mixed with smog and dog shit. It wasn’t a long trip so you weren’t exactly tired, but you needed food before you became irritated. You settled for a ramen place that you’ve been to a handful of times just because you could already taste it in your mouth.
It took a particularly long time to get food, especially with the staff running and forth with takeout plates and writing on the Styrofoam with markers what each little box contained and how it was customized but you forgot about it once someone acknowledged you and apologized for the delay, explaining that is was a common order for a big party of people, though two or three only showed up, despite it all. You smiled and shook your head, placing your own order and patiently waiting for your number to be called, thankful that yours came out relatively quickly. You watched the employees throwing whatever they found on the counter that contained the meals, packets of sauces, extra chopsticks, and the drinks. You counted 13 of them. It did seem like a coincidence, but then again small gatherings with caffeine addicts was a common practice nowadays. You texted your parents who you knew were gonna ground you when you got home, but that’d be a problem for later, and scrolled through social media, seeing the antics and lifestyles of everyone you followed. 
A moment later a little bell sounded, signaling a customer followed by a pair arguing over which brand had the better soda...in Chinese.You looked up at them curiously, eyes widening you recognized Junhui (arguing Pepsi) and Minghao (defending Coke). They broke their squabble long enough to tell the cashier they were there for an order and resume it, this time in Korean.
“Coke is a classic. Coke has been around longer than Pepsi and you can go just about anywhere to eat and they serve it.”
“Coke also has a disgusting aftertaste to it. And you can taste the cheapness of it. I figured a refined man such as yourself would know that by now.
”Minghao stared at him, debating whether to stay quiet or to fire back; he chose the latter. “Bold words coming from someone who wanted to buy a Rubik’s cube from a street vendor for the price of three.”
“That is not relevant. You know what...Y/N, please come here. Yeah, don’t think we couldn’t see you. Let me ask you this. Thank you. Have a nice day.” They waited for the shock to wear off your face and cupping the bowl in your hands, followed them out to hear Junhui’s question. “Is Coke or Pepsi better? Say Pepsi because I’m trying to prove a point here.” You slid into the backseat, Hao driving and Jun turning around to keep pestering you.
“I still say Coke.You will never go to a store that doesn’t sell it. By the way, brace yourself when we go inside Pledis. Your parents called Chan earlier and he’s been freaking out all morning. I told him not to worry because you’re smart enough to know what to do by now, but what can you do? Jun, be careful! You’re tilting the plates. Never mind, I’m calling Wonwoo. He’ll help us.”
“Beat you to it,” Junhui smiled broadly. “He’s already waiting for us outside. We just have to show up. Okay answer me Y/N! This is life or death. Your answer determines the fate of the universe.” 
You saw Mingaho staring at you in the rearview mirror. “What brought this on?”
“I wish I knew. He’s been asking everyone since we woke up. Jihoon hyung is the one who refuses to answer because he thinks it’s all the same. So I guess you’re the tie breaker.”
“It’s soda. You’re gonna drink it either way.”
“But what if you’re at a party that offers both? Which are you gonna take?”
“The first one I pull out.” Your eyes narrowed at the driver who snickered. “What’s so funny?”
“You said ‘pull out’.”
“And I’m the child.” Junhui snorted.
*
“What were you thinking?” Chan ran his hand several times through his hair, waiting for you to respond to his questions.“I got tired and wanted to do something different.”
“By running away?” He put his chopsticks down, trying to make the pieces connect in his head. “That’s not like you.”
“You left Iksan too, remember? And no one said anything about it.”
“I left because I have a job. I can’t just come and go as I please, you dummy.” He stopped, nodding slowly and letting the biggest smile you hadn’t seen he got the news he’d be debuting in Seventeen. “I get it now.”
“What?”
“You miss me, don’t you Y/N?”
“...Among other things,” you confessed after a moment. “It’s not the easiest thing to forget I had an older brother that was always there.”
“This is hard for me too. I have to constantly remind myself that Jisoo hyung is in the room next door, not you.” He remembered something that made him smile. “The other day I jumped on Jihoon hyung while he was asleep because I thought it was you. Apparently you’re not the only one who covers yourself with blankets. He locked me out until Mingyu hyung came home but I’d do it again.”
“You look like you have so much fun.”
“I do but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss you either.” He stacked his your plastic bowl on top of his takeout box, getting ready to dispose of them. “You know, if you didn’t want ice cream anymore, you could’ve just said so.”
“How’d you…”
“Dad.”
“Figures. It’s not that I was tired of it; it just seemed that they always showed up when you couldn’t and I hated that. It was never a random day when the rain was falling and watering the plants or when the sun was out, making it too hot to go outside.”
“Come on then. Let’s go have ice cream, just you and me and then I’ll take you home.”
“That’s a two hour commute though! You don’t have to do that.” “You should’ve thought of that before you came all the way here. Now let’s go. We have an overdue bonding session waiting for us.” His phone went off and he read the text message and rolled his eyes, the corner of his lip quirking up.
��What?”
“It’s just Jun hyung.”“What’d he say?”
“He wants to know if you’re team coke or pepsi.”
“Just tell him Coke.” 
You managed to hear a “Nooooooooo,” echo through the wing as you walked out, you and Chan laughing as you passed by. You hadn’t expected to see your brother today, but you were glad you did.
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mannatea · 5 years ago
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Pokémon Shield: A Review
DISCLAIMER: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS HERE!
First, my credentials/gaming history, so you can see if my opinion is valuable to you or not. I would like to make it clear from the start that I do not consider myself a ‘gamer’ by any stretch of the imagination. I’m a filthy casual at best.
I’ve been playing video games since I was maybe eight or nine years old. I’ve always enjoyed dabbling in a variety of genres, and have a great appreciation for the work that goes into creating each and every game, no matter the intended audience. Some of my all-time favorite titles include Tales of Symphonia, Fire Emblem (7), Final Fantasy IX, Legend of Dragoon, Chrono Cross, Tetris, Bust-a-Move, Project Gotham Racing, Ecco the Dolphin (PC,DC), Roller Coaster Tycoon, Harvest Moon (N64/PS1), World of Warcraft, and of course our beloved Pokemon!
I started with Pokemon Red, and enjoyed it immensely, but Silver stole my heart and my imagination. My brother and I used to sit at the kitchen table with guide books open and notebooks at the ready to craft and create new, extremely cool teams. I sank an unbelievable amount of hours into that game, and into Pokemon Stadium (1 & 2), Hey You! Pikachu, Pokemon Puzzle League, and even Pokemon Pinball. Unfortunately after Silver, my interest waned. I was an adult by the time Emerald debuted, and while I was initially charmed by it, found my interest waning quickly. I bought and played Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, SoulSilver, and Black & White, but didn’t beat any of them. I felt like the magic had…disappeared somehow.
But when X and Y released in 2013, I binged on Pokemon X, beat it, and for the first time since childhood started breeding a competitive team just for the heck of it. I also found myself really enjoying Pokemon Sun a couple of years later (though the post-game of breeding didn’t really do it for me this time).
They lost me with Ultra Sun/Moon. I wanted to like them, really, but it was too much of a rehash, and too much handholding (like the originals were, and I could only stand going through that once).
Now here we are with Pokemon Sword and Shield. They released just a few days ago (15 November, 2019) and the controversy has been wild. It seems to me that everyone has some kind of very strong opinion, and a lot of people are very angry.
Pokemon has always been one of my favorite franchises, but my history with the games is far from spotless so I like to think I can manage a mostly unbiased review, though of course everything in this post is my personal opinion.
Here’s what I’ve done in the game:
40 hours played.
200 pokemon in the pokedex.
Main story and post-game story completed.
I played with no specific self-imposed rules and was not spoiled for hardly anything before I started playing.
The Game’s Introductory Sequence [8/10]
As is standard for the franchise these days, the game flings you into the world with little fanfare regarding customization. Rather than the intro being a dialogue of sorts between your character and a professor, you are now instructed to choose what you look like (from a sparse few options) after typing in your name.
The first ‘cinematic’ is pretty boring, but I think the attempt at immersion is genuine enough (the idea being that your character is watching Leon’s broadcasted fight on your new smart phone). My character has a better house in-game than I do in real life. I’d kill for all that storage in the kitchen!
My biggest gripe with the introduction is that it reminded me too much of Sun & Moon’s introduction—in the worst of ways. I wouldn’t say it’s slow-paced, but the constant interruption by other characters is about enough to make a person rage-quit. Luckily I’ve been blessed with a lot of patience; it makes tedious content easy to bear (so long as it’s not difficult), but even I was feeling antsy before the first hour of the game was up, just because Hop and Leon never shut up and I was chomping at the bit to Explore.
Considering this is the first thing a player experiences…I really feel it could have been improved, especially the dialogue, but there were a few really positive things about it, too. The outdoor BBQ was a nice touch (considering everyone knew we’d be going off on Adventures in the morning and all), the game does let you avoid having to learn how to catch a pokemon (your mom slips a few pokeballs into your bag at one point without telling you and if you use them to catch pokemon, Leon will not teach you how to do it later), and I feel like as far as introductions go, this one was fairly short when compared to Sun and Moon’s introductory period.
While I’m being positive, the game plops you down into an idyllic little English countryside and not only do you get to enjoy that aesthetic, but the Slumbering Weald is probably one of the prettiest/most charming places in the game, and you get a peek at it early on!
 The Starter Pokemon [5/10]
I’ve experienced worse? I wasn’t spoiled for any of the starter pokemon’s evolutions starting out, and while I didn’t exactly hate any of them, I sure didn’t love ‘em, either. I named my Scorbunny “Chad” on the assumption that he was likely to turn into a chad, though I’m not sure that accurately describes the pokemon I ended up with. Clearly modeled after soccer players, my Chad is a cocky all-star jock. They went all out on his Pyroball animation but Double Kick can see itself out of my house. No love in this club.
I just really wish I found any of these starters or their evolved forms to be charming, but they’re not. Rillaboom is basically George of the Jungle but 3% less of a himbo, and Inteleon is Greninja’s younger brother in accounting.
 Gyms, Gym Challenges, & Game Balance [6/10]
This is probably one of, if not the, most debated topic over at Reddit. Is the game balanced? Are the gyms too easy? Are they making this game for 5-year-olds suddenly?
Eh. I do think the game is, perhaps, Too Easy, but a game being easy isn’t a shortcoming in and of itself. Check out my section on the story and characters for more on this topic, but I’ll post the short of it here, because it’s relevant: if the gameplay is going to be easy, we either need an option to make it more difficult, or the characters, story, and world have to carry the game in such a way that the easy gameplay still feels fun.
Shield had, uh, none of that going for it, unfortunately. The plot is lackluster (more about this later), and the gameplay wasn’t able to pick up the slack. In other words, the gameplay didn’t make the game feel Substantial in any way.
Which is kind of bad, considering Dynamaxing is a new feature!
The biggest issue for most people was the Experience Share. It’s turned on by default and there seems to be no way to turn it off. You get insane amounts of XP for defeating and catching pokemon, and your whole team seems to level pretty evenly even if you only occasionally use some pokemon in the party.
I personally played the game with the default battle option (where it asks if you want to switch out to a new pokemon when the enemy is going to send out a new one) because I barely remember half the pokemon in the game’s typing. Knowing the name of what’s coming next doesn’t always help me. (How’s that for an embarrassing truth?)
I personally liked the experience share, though I feel having the ability to toggle it on/off (or even on for certain pokemon and off for others) would have been ideal. The idea with having it on all the time is that your team will level fairly evenly so you’ll be able to switch in any of your six pokemon to battle without having to struggle through leveling some of the weaker ‘mons up individually. Additionally, it enables you to easily replace a pokemon on your team mid-game if you so desire. And I did (I replaced my shiny Orbeetle with regular cotton candy Rapidash).
My team at end-game was as follows:
Cinderace (Chad)
Greedent (Moriah)
Thievul (Penelope)
Liepard (My)
Corviknight (Octavia)
Rapidash (Calliope)
As you can see, I have no grass pokemon, no water pokemon, and no electric pokemon. I have two dark types. My move coverage mostly sucked throughout the game, because Thievul had 3 dark moves, and My had 3 normal moves. I’m an official idiot, thanks for coming to my TED talk. Usually I can struggle through no matter how garbage-tier my team is, and this game was…no exception.
I steamrolled the first few gyms and their challenges even though I wasn’t vastly overleveled for any of the content. After the ghost gym (which was easy for me with my dark types) I’d say the difficulty level went up slightly, mostly because my brain has refused to hold type advantages/weaknesses that came after Gen1. I feel like most original type weaknesses made some kind of sense to me and I was never able to incorporate dark and steel into that mix, let alone fairy.
At any rate, once you fight a pokemon once, the game will tell you if your moves are super effective against them or not. I remember people complaining about this feature when it was added (in Sun/Moon I think), but I like it. It doesn’t actually help a lot if you don’t know what the moves do/aren’t looking at move power/effects, but it’s useful for my sieve of a brain in a pinch.
Hop as a rival was almost never challenging. He always starts with the same pokemon, and his team is fairly easy to sweep. That might be kind of the point, but I wish you could have encouraged him to take the starter that’s strong against yours for a bit more of a challenge. Yeah, it’s not much, but it would have been something. Marnie is a better rival than Hop in the sense that she’s actually a better battler, but I swept her team pretty easily too, every single time we fought.
The only real challenges in the game were fighting Raihan (I only had one very weak fairy move and no ice to counter his dragons) and Leon (he definitely outleveled me). On Leon I had to use revives and potions!
The gym challenges started off as pretty cute (herding Wooloo, pipe puzzle maze) but quickly grew into lazy boring doldrums (basically gauntlet fighting of one kind or another). I guess I’d say ‘nice try’ for these and say I don’t really care if I see them again or not unless they’re going to actually give it a real go.
Overall, the story part of the game felt balanced enough for me personally but if I’m being completely unbiased: it was too easy to get levels. I could have wandered around less/caught fewer pokemon as I journeyed and enjoyed more of a challenge, but I just…gotta catch ‘em all, y’know? Most people do! GameFreak should have known this and designed accordingly.
The big issue with game balance feels like it comes…after the game, and I don’t mean the post-game so much as the Max Raid Battles that require other people, but the NPC trainers you can battle with are legit trash at what they do, which kind of forces you to find other trainers, but…
 Online Compatibility & Features [3/10]
So I think the rating speaks for itself, here. The interface is confusing, the stamps are annoying, and the ability to see other players but not interact with them in any meaningful way is rage-inducing (and not just because of the FPS drops).
X/Y had a better online system!
Sun and Moon was better!
I don’t know why we regressed. I’m glad they kept the “wonder trade” (renamed to random trade, I think), because I always did enjoy doing that, but the GTS was the best idea they ever had and they abandoned it for random trading? I don’t want to trade with randoms? If I wanted to do that, I’d just do a random trade in the first place!!! The inability to put what you’re looking for into the stamp that people see? Oversight. Or just bad design. Probably both!
I’ve never hated a pokemon online experience more than this. I’m just astounded by how bad it is. I tried to join max raid battles last night and kept being told the event was over, but the stamps just…didn’t refresh? For HOW LONG? I can’t even tell you because I don’t know, and I couldn’t find a way to manually force them to refresh. It’s like they update every 15 minutes instead of every 15-30 seconds (which they should if I’m browsing for trades to make or battles to join). There are ways around this (according to Reddit) but the interface should be intuitive and easy to use by default.
C’mon, guys, you can do better. This is legitimately embarrassing in the year 2019.
 Music [5/10]
There are some really magical tracks in this game, and there are some really terrible tracks. It doesn’t feel at all cohesive or thematic. I absolutely hated the gym battle remix; it was worse than the regular gym battle music. I feel like the gym battle theme would have really caught on if they didn’t have any other synth sounding tracks in the game, but they kind of do, so it blends in instead of sticking out as a bop.
Notable nice tracks were Hulbury, Glimwood Tangle, Slumbering Weald, and the desert route (which I can’t remember offhand). Some of the better music reminded me of the soundtrack for Tales of Symphonia, which is high praise coming from me. Unfortunately for every good track there were probably 3 forgettable ones.
There wasn’t anything particularly engaging when it comes to the music here, but it’s at least passable.
 Graphics, Design, and Animation [6/10]
I should clarify that this is 6/10 for a pokemon game, not in general. I don’t expect flashy realism in a pokemon game and neither should you. The graphics are adequate most of the time, but the animation leaves a lot to desire when you look away from the pokemon that feel like they were Chosen Ones (and received a lot more attention).
Rapidash, for example, is using the same base model and animations it’s been using since it’s been in 3D. I’m not going to claim since Stadium, but holy cow the animations are for sure the same as they’ve been since at least X/Y for all the older moves. I’m not impressed.
The characters all have dopey expressions on their faces always. The models just use one talking animation loop and it almost never changes. The main character still looks on like a smiley face emoji when turmoil occurs, and though this isn’t as bad as it was in Sun/Moon, it’s still…kind of jarring?
The Wild Area looks kind of bad sometimes, and some areas in the actual game were lackluster compared to what they should have been. Ballonlea is the town you step into after walking through the (honestly) magical Glimwood Tangle, and it’s this charming fairy wonderland…with two houses and a stadium the size of two billion football fields. Uh. Okay? You’re telling me they destroyed how much natural habitat to make this gym? It just doesn’t jive with the scenery/theme out there, especially considering Opal’s theatre is tiny. And it’s not just that I think the game is lacking thematically (though it clearly is), but there’s this…laziness to the design when it comes to places like Ballonlea. It could have been SUCH an enchanting town to explore, but it was two houses with nothing important in them and a sports arena that feels completely at odds with its surroundings. (In this town you do learn that an NPC you spoke to earlier was a ghost, but it’s not as if this is very important information/goes anywhere, really.)
Spikemuth, for all its flaws, was at least memorable. I can’t say the same for most of the towns in this game. I really enjoyed the music in Hulbury but you best bet I had to look it up to remember the name of the town! Time is partly to blame. We don’t spend a lot of time in each town, and we have no real reason to go back to them aside from visiting the nearest Pokemon Center to heal and rest up. But I would argue that, beyond that, the individual designs just…don’t feel memorable because they’re not memorable. The names are mostly meh (every time I see Ballonlea I think of Bologna for some reason), but without anything else to connect to the place as more than just a place…there’s no reason to remember any of it.
Like the music, these are all passable, graphics more than animation, animation more than design, but that’s all there is to it.
Camping and Cooking, Feathers and Fetch! [4/10]
I don’t actually have a lot to say about this. It’s a cute idea, and it’s fun maybe the first ten times that you do it, but then it’s just really boring. The game is terrible at explaining how to create different curry dishes, but it’s almost idiot-proof. I’ve yet to fail at it.
But I’m not sure I care about it, either?
You get like 1/100th of the amount of berries you need to cook while you journey along, so it feels disproportionate. I dunno. Just not a fan.
Playing with your pokemon is the only real joy that comes from camping, but its fun is limited. When you’ve tossed the ball a few times, or watched Liepard smack the feather toy a while, it has that, “Okay, I’ve seen it!” kind of feeling to it. That doing well at cooking can heal your party/cure status conditions is incentive to do it, but it’s faster to just fly to a pokemon center and run back on your bike most of the time than to pitch a tent with your ‘mons.
I feel like there should just be…more you can do when you’re camping together. I’m glad Pokemon Amie is dead (it was cringey), but it felt more personal than this.
I wish I had more to say about this feature, but it felt tacked on and lackluster after I camped a few times.
 Dynamaxing, Gigantamaxing, and Max Raid Battles [4/10]
The urge to give this a zero was high, but I am making an effort to be balanced.
That said, I hate dynamaxing. Gigantamaxing is almost the same thing, it’s just Worse Somehow. Until yesterday I thought they were basically the same thing (and that some pokemon just got extra cool dynamax forms). As it turns out, they’re not the same thing at all! Or rather, they are, but they’re also not?
Dynamaxing makes your pokemon grow large and gives it these generic MAX moves that it can use in combat (Max Knuckle, Max Flare, Max Strike). It lasts for three turns and then your pokemon reverts back to its regular ‘ol self.
Gigantamaxing is when your pokemon grows a little larger than large, gets a special Look, and gets the same generic MAX moves (but with special effects added to them). Oh, and better stats.
At least, that’s how I understand it.
Both are great for Max Raid Battles, where you team up with NPCs or other players and take down huge dynamaxed pokemon that are out in the wild.
Neither is a fun feature as part of the actual gameplay. I guess as a gimmick it works all right, but just like Z-moves it has a long annoying animation sequence, and like Mega Evolutions only some pokemon get to gigantamax (everyone else is just a pleb, I guess). I dunno. I just didn’t find the concept very engaging…maybe because it seems evil and wasteful in-universe, and this is more or less stated in the game itself, but what-the-hell-ever, we’re just going to keep doing it ‘cause it looks cool!
It’s just too goofy a concept for me. Maybe if Dynamaxing doubled or tripled their size, I’d find it more understandable and more aesthetically pleasing? I hate seeing my pokemon, or the opposing pokemon, grow 50+ feet tall and scream at three billion decibels.
(For the record I never liked Mega Evolutions or Z-moves as a concept, so it’s not like I’m nostalgic for a different gimmick. That said, at least I’d accepted Megas as a thing, and Z-moves were overall not too groundbreaking or gamebreaking.)
The design of dyna/gigamaxing is to connect it with specific places so that you can’t just max your pokemon in every battle and sweep every team you fight against, but it still feels like it gets used too much. I’m currently at a point where I find having to dynamax feels like a chore.
Considering this is what the game tried to sell itself on in the initial trailer…? Yikes? I don’t know. I think some people are more ‘okay’ with the concept of dyna/gigantimaxing than others, and I think I’d be fine with it if we only had dynamaxing. Introducing both just feels like overcomplicating things for no real reason, and maybe also poking a little hard at the hornets’ nest that is the competitive community.
Because now you have to go out and grind gigantamax pokemon to catch one, so it forces you to do the thing you might not like to get a pokemon that can do the thing you don’t like, because it’s objectively better in combat? But really, who knows? Maybe these overpowered phenomena will end up banned, anyway.
Despite my disdain for this release’s gimmick, I do think Max Raid Battles are pretty fun, at least…when I’m not getting my ass completely kicked while some NPC trainer’s Eevee is using Helping Hand… It’s actually pretty enjoyable when you can somehow find other people using the y-comm and take on a gigantamaxed pokemon with the help of actual human players. But y’know…good luck using that…lol.
Overall I think the biggest downfall of Dynamaxing/Gigantamaxing is that it doesn’t really add anything of substance to the game. I don’t think it makes it more fun. It’s also not necessary for max raid battles (this could be a phenomena we don’t understand yet that randomly seems to affect wild pokemon, just like with the UBs—hell, Anabel and Looker could return and claim this is all related to that stuff and I’d probably find that believable enough). So what does it add? Flavor? Culture? Nah. It’s just kind of there.
 Post-Game: Is That All? [3/10]
Post-game in Sun and Moon was the Alola version of the Battle Maison, breeding, and a somewhat lengthy (for a post-game) story where you assist Interpol agents Anabel and Looker in hunting down and capturing Ultra Beasts. The plot was somewhat woven into not only Sun and Moon’s storyline (Lusamine’s shenanigans), but also borrowed from the Sapphire/Ruby reboots and X/Y. If you didn’t already know Looker from Ruby/Sapphire/X/Y, or Anabel from Pokemon Emerald, you’ll still probably find them somewhat compelling/interesting as characters. Also, they did a really good job in Sun of making circumstances seem dire—of showing instead of telling you how dangerous the UBs were and how important it was to protect the people of the towns and villages you’d visited throughout your adventure.
Shield has… Max raid battles, a battle tower, and…breeding. Oh, and a storyline about the legendary dogs that barely makes any sense and is plagued by really irritating new characters.
The terrible truth is that the post-game of Sword/Shield is embarrassingly bad. You’d think they’d want to outdo themselves with every release. Sun and Moon hit it out of the park with their post-game content. Most people enjoyed the hunt for UBs, or at least the characters of Anabel and Looker. Sword and Shield have…. Sordward and Shielbert. DID I STUTTER?
They’re terribly designed characters, and so insulting as to not really be any fun at all. The Pokeball Guy mascot is Actually Fun; these dudes aren’t. They’re barely even villains? It was an excuse to try and pull what Sun and Moon pulled, but it didn’t work. I never felt like anyone was in danger at any point, probably because magically everyone was evacuated before I even arrived on the scene to stop Sordward and Shielbert’s vile schemes. :U Oh, and because I felt little or no connection to any of the towns I visited along the way, let alone the gym leaders. Maybe if these guys had showed up partway through the game and we sort of knew who they were already, this wouldn’t seem so out-of-nowhere, but it was, and that made it even worse than it had to be.
When it’s all over, you get your legendary dog (I named mine Goodest Boy), but it wasn’t a fun storyline at all. Who are these guys? Why should I care about them? I cared about Looker and Anabel because they came onto the scene and showed that they cared about each other as people (and showed it, multiple times). These guys? They wreaked havoc and didn’t even go to jail. At least Rose went to jail!
I don’t think the post-game is terrible so much as I think it’s underwhelming, especially considering what it came on the heels of. I don’t expect More More More from every game, but I do expect improvements to be made. A decent post-game storyline is all I was asking for, and I didn’t even get that.
But there’s the tower and you can breed pokemon and train EVs and all that stuff more easily now, so…
 Characters, Story, and Worldbuilding [4/10]
Let me put this as delicately as I can: I’m not a fan.
I could easily rant about bad character writing, bad stories, and weak worldbuilding for hours, but I’ll limit myself because 1) this is a pokemon game, and 2) nobody really looks for exceptional characters here.
As I said earlier, I feel like Sun and Moon did it Better. Most of the main characters in Su/Mo were likable, interesting, had a fun design, or were amusing. Not so in Shield.
Hop has a terrible name (literally a million names to choose from and they picked this?), but the biggest crime he commits is that he doesn’t get a satisfying story arc at all. When he got down about himself I had hope there would be some cool development, but there wasn’t. He ended up getting his crap together and making a Team and Picked a Strategy (which still involves sending the sheep out first I guess). And then randomly in the post-game decided he was going to be a professor…lol.
I felt like 20 different people wrote that plot, because it was terribly cobbled together and didn’t flow at all. Natural progression would have been nice.
Marnie barely has a story and barely develops. Piers seems to kind of have more ‘meat’ to his character but not a lot is done with it.
The gym leaders are otherwise really meh. Okay, so Nessa and Sonia are pals. Gal pals. Pals that are gals. Gals that are pals. Great. I don’t think we ever see them talk so it doesn’t matter. Melony has a son…and it’s just a nod to the other game where her son is the gym leader instead? Boring.
Bede is an asshole with a sob story who doesn’t really get redeemed but gets the redemption option anyway. They could have REALLY done something amazing with this guy but chose not to. His backstory is actually pretty interesting! But they didn’t utilize it worth a damn. And also he was right about the mural soooo…
Sonia was maybe the best character in the game, and that’s just from a technical standpoint. She had development, she developed, she grew as a character. Emotionally, though, I felt detached from her. Maybe it was being called a child all the time that did that? I’m not sure. I get that the protag is a child but I’m living independently and doing well for myself so maybe have a little respect idk… Especially when the first 2/3 of the game you’re told the adults will handle things, and then randomly you’re interrupted every fifty seconds to take care of other people’s nonsense. :|
In fact, I felt emotionally disconnected from pretty much every character. I didn’t really like or feel for anyone. Hop came the closest (feeling guilty about losing a battle cause it might make his brother look bad), but the bad dialogue options and inability to actually cheer him up was frustrating more than anything.
There are zones that are breathtakingly lovely (Slumbering Weald! Ballonlea! Glimwood Tangle!) but all the rest are more or less forgettable. The characters are connected to the world…sorta, but there are times it feels like they force-connected them through dynamaxing and dialogue accents instead of trying to make characters who naturally fit into the world. Like I talked about before, Opal’s gym felt completely disconnected from the reality of her environment. She lives there for a reason. Doesn’t the stadium’s presence jar her? How many fairy pokemon lost their homes when that thing took away tens of acres of forest? What’s the story here? Or anywhere for that matter?
Spikemuth was a waste of space but at least it felt like an attempt to show us a poverty-stricken area… Unfortunately it all fell flat the second they used two models for Team Yell! Team Yell could have been really cool, especially if they’d had different models with their names (challenged by Team Yell Grunt Sierra/Troy/Nellie/whatever), and the same team yell outfit/clothes/paint on. Then we could see these are just regular guys and gals from this poor area who want to cheer on their hometown girl!!!
But that was a weakness throughout the game, because Team Yell were all gym trainers, and all shared models…just like all the other gyms. It felt lazy to me. The outfits can be the same, but way to go making all the models literal clones. That’s just laziness.
The villains are all meh. Rose? Of course he was a villain. The problem is that he’s not a villain for being a capitalist pig or anything. He’s a villain for wanting to fix a power issue that’s 1,000 years from happening. Meh motivation. If it was 50 years away then we have a compelling villain! But no, not 50. A thousand years from happening. And he can’t wait five fucking minutes.
Oleana was boring.
Leon was exactly the person he was the entire game…
The taxi service is a cute idea, and a nice gameplay addition, but it doesn’t really add anything to the world because they didn’t make the effort to integrate it.
Anyway, I’ve rambled enough.
The short of it is this: I walked away from this game not really caring about the world or any of the characters. I don’t even have a favorite character. I can’t remember the last time that happened to me. YIKES.
The Wild Area [8/10]
I don’t want to cover this for too long, because I feel it’s been done to death, but the Wild Area is what the whole game should have been. Or at least, more of the game. I don’t expect we’ll ever get a fully open-world pokemon game EVER, but this foray into the true 3D tells me that it could be a lot of fun, actually, even in somewhat constrained environments. (Oh, and with a good map.)
I enjoy the idea of the Wild Area, but I think its usefulness is limited without the appeal of having more pokemon patched into the game later. Until I get sick of it, though, it’s a pretty neat concept, and it makes hunting for new pokemon to catch a little more fun than it usually is. I like that they kept the overworld pokemon in this area as well as on the routes you have to travel; it feels like more of an adventure to dodge a huge Steelix and scoot closer to see what that yellow thing is in the grass you can’t quite make out. :)
Basically: fun concept that is enjoyable for now but has limited enjoyment. As far as negativity goes, I don’t have much to complain about here that I didn’t complain about in the Online Compatibility section above.
The Pokemon Themselves [6/10]
I was challenged by @hijauindah to list my top five favorite new pokemon from the game, so here we go!
Nickit (cute design!)
Boltund (smooth, well designed—not too cluttered)
Ponyta/Rapidash (MY LITTLE PONY… I think Rapidash could look better, but I’m just glad they cared enough to try something new with them…)
Frosmoth (Super pretty pokemon design.)
Dragapult (Nifty design.)
Most of the new designs are just…okay. There are a lot I don’t actually care for. But I’m biased; I just want more creature-based pokemon that look like they could exist and function in the world they live in. Some of these designs they come up with look like they’d have died out ten thousand years ago due to being Poorly Evolved lol.
 Final Thoughts [6/10]
The worst part of the game for me personally was probably feeling like I was getting interrupted constantly by other characters. JUST LET ME PLAY. But the best part was definitely exploring the new areas, catching a shiny 2 hours into the game, and getting to the end more or less with the team I started with.
The individual scores don’t add up to a 6/10 (they actually add up to a 5.16/10) but I think it’s worth noting that I did have a fun time playing through the game, I intend to hop into the breeding stuff, and even though I don’t have to keep max raid battling and stuff, I probably will.
It’s far from the 9s that it was getting by certain people from certain places that won’t be named here, but it’s not as if it’s a dumpster fire game. I don’t regret the money I spent on it, and I hope to keep enjoying the game for a few more months (albeit more casually than I did over the weekend), but I hope GameFreak has learned from its follies and puts its best foot forward with the next game, because I will not manage to be this forgiving again.
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cornelisdemooij · 6 years ago
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Innuendo Studios Research Masterpost - With More Links
This is my research list for The Alt-Right Playbook. It is a living document - I am typically adding sources faster than I am finishing the ones already on it. Notes and links below the list. Also, please note this does not include the hundreds of articles and essays I’ve read that also inform the videos - this is books, reports, and a few documentaries. Legend: Titles in bold -> finished Titles in italics -> partially finished *** -> livetweeted as part of #IanLivetweetsHisResearch (asterisks will be a link) The book I am currently reading will be marked as such. Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online, by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis Alternative Influence, by Rebecca Lewis The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer*** Eclipse of Reason, by Max Horkheimer Civility in the Digital Age, by Andrea Weckerle The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt On Revolution, by Hannah Arendt Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley*** This is an Uprising, by Mark and Paul Engler Neoreaction a Basilisk, by Elizabeth Sandifer (Patreon) This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed, by Charles E. Cobb, Jr. Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson Healing from Hate, by Michael Kimmel The Brainwashing of my Dad, documentary by Jen Senko On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin*** Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi Fascism Today, by Shane Burley Indoctrination over Objectivity?, by Marrissa S. Ballard Ur-Fascism, by Umberto Eco Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, by Lindsay C. Gibson Anti-Semite and Jew, by Jean-Paul Sartre Alt-America, by David Neiwert The Dictator’s Handbook, by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith Terror, Love, and Brainwashing, by Alexandra Stein <- (currently reading) Kaputt, by Curzio Malaparte The Motion of Light in Water, by Samuel R. Delany Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online, by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis (free: link) A monstrously useful report from Data & Society which- coupled with Samuel R. Delany’s memoir The Motion of Light in Water - formed the backbone of the Mainstreaming video. I barely scratched the surface of how many techniques the Far Right uses to inflate their power and influence. If you feel lost in a sea of Alt-Right bullshit, this will at least help you understand how things got the way they are, and maybe help you discern truth from twaddle. The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer (free: link) (livetweets) A free book full of research from Bob Altemeyer’s decades of study into authoritarianism. Altemeyer writes conversationally, even jovially, peppering what could have been a dense and dry work with dad jokes. I wouldn’t say he’s funny (most dads aren’t), but it makes the book blessedly accessible. If you ever wanted a ton of data demonstrating that authoritarianism is deeply correlated with conservatism, this is the book. One of the most useful resources I’ve consumed so far, heavily influencing the entire series but most directly the video on White Fascism. Even has some suggestions for how to actually change the mind of a reactionary, which is kind of the Holy Grail of LeftTube. (caveats: there is a point in the book where Altemeyer throws a little shade on George Lakoff, and I feel he slightly - though not egregiously - misrepresents Lakoff’s arguments) Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff An extremely useful book about framing. Delves into the differences between the American Right and Left when it comes to messaging, how liberal politicians tend to have degrees in things like Political Science and Rhetoric, where conservatives far more often have degrees in Marketing. This leads to two different cultures, where liberals have Enlightenment-style beliefs that all you need is good ideas and conservatives know an idea will only be popular if you know how to sell it. He gets into the nuts and bolts of how to keep control of a narrative, because the truth is only effective if the audience recognizes it as such. Kind of staggering how many Democrats swear by this book while blatantly taking none of its advice. Lakoff has been all over the series since the first proper video. (caveats: several. Lakoff seemingly believes the main difference between the Right and Left is in our default frames, and that swaying conservatives amounts to little more than finding better ways to make the same arguments. he deeply underestimates the ideological divide between Parties, and some of his advice reads as tips for making debates more pleasant but no more productive. he also makes a passing comparison between conservatism and Islam that means well but is a gross and kinda racist false equivalence) How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley (livetweets) A slog. Many useful concepts, and directly referenced in the White Fascism video. But could have said everything it needed to say in half as many pages. Stanley seems dedicated to framing everything in epistemological terms, not appealing to morality or sentiment, which means huge sections of the book are given over to “proving” democracy is a good thing using only philosophical concepts, when “democracy good” is probably something his readership already accepts. Also has a frustrating tendency to begin every paragraph with a brief summary of the previous paragraph. When he actually talks about, you know, how propaganda works, it’s very useful, and I don’t regret reading it. But I don’t entirely recommend it. Seems written for an imagined PhD review board. Might be better off reading my livetweets. Neoreaction a Basilisk, by Elizabeth Sandifer (Patreon) A trip. Similar to Jason Stanley, Sandifer is dedicated to “disproving” a number of Far Right ideologies - from transphobia to libertarianism to The Singularity - in purely philosophical terms. The difference is, she’s having fun with it. I won’t pretend the title essay - a 140-page mammoth - didn’t lose me several times, and someone had to remind which of its many threads was the thesis. And some stretches are dense, academic writing punctuated with vulgarity and (actually quite clever) jokes, which doesn’t always average out to the playfully heady tone she’s going for. But, still, frequently brilliant and never less than interesting. There is something genuinely cathartic about a book that begins with the premise that we all fear but won’t let ourselves meaningfully consider - that we will lose the fight with the Right and climate change is going to kill us all - and talks about what we can do in that event. I felt I didn’t even have to agree with the premise to feel strangely empowered by it. Informed the White Fascism video’s comments on transphobia as the next frontier of bigotry since failing to prevent marriage equality. On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt Was surprised to find this isn’t properly a book, just a printed essay. Highly relevant passage that helped form my description of 4chan in The Card Says Moops: “What tends to go on in a bull session is that the participants try out various thoughts and attitudes in order to see how it feels to hear themselves saying such things and in order to discover how others respond, without its being assumed that they are committed to what they say: it is understood by everyone in a bull session that the statements people make do not necessarily reveal what they really believe or how they really feel. The main point is to make possible a high level of candor and an experimental or adventuresome approach to the subjects under discussion. Therefore provision is made for enjoying a certain irresponsibility, so that people will be encouraged to convey what is on their minds without too much anxiety that they will be held to it. [paragraph break] Each of the contributors to a bull session relies, in other words, upon a general recognition that what he expresses or says is not to be understood as being what he means wholeheartedly or believes unequivocally to be true. The purpose of the conversation is not to communicate beliefs.” The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin (livetweets) Another freakishly useful book, and the basis for Always a Bigger Fish and The Origins of Conservatism. Jumping into the history of conservative thought, going all the way back to Thomas Hobbes, to stress that conservatism is, and always has been, about preserving social hierarchies and defending the powerful. Robin dissects thinkers who heavily influenced conservatism, from Edmund Burke and Friedrich Nietzsche to Carl Menger and Ayn Rand, and finally concluding with Trump himself. There’s a lot of insight into how the conservative mind works, though precious little comment on what we can do about it, which somewhat robs the book of a conclusion. Still, the way it bounces off of Don’t Think of an Elephant and The Authoritarians really brings the Right into focus. Fascism Today, by Shane Burley Yet another influence on the White Fascism video. Bit of a mixed bag. The opening gives a proper definition of fascism, which is extremely useful. Then the main stretch delves into the landscape of modern fascism, from Alt-Right to Alt-Lite to neofolk pagans to the Proud Boys and on and on. Sometimes feels overly comprehensive, but insights abound on the intersections of all these belief systems (Burley pointing out that the Alt-Right is, in essence, the gentrification of working-class white nationalists like neo-Nazi skinheads and the KKK was a real eye-opener). But the full title is Fascism Today: What it is and How to End it, and it feels lacking in the second part. Final stretch mostly lists a bunch of efforts to address fascism that already exist, how they’ve historically been effective, and suggestions for getting involved. Precious few new ideas there. And maybe the truth is that we already have all the tools we need to fight fascism and we simply need to employ them, and being told so is just narratively unsatisfying. Or maybe it’s a structural problem with the book, that it doesn’t reveal a core to fascism the way Altemeyer reveals a core to authoritarianism and Robin reveals a core to conservatism, so I don’t come away feeling like I get fascism well enough to fight it. But, also, Burley makes it clear that modern fascism is a rapidly evolving virus, and being told that old ways are still the best ways isn’t very satisfying. If antifascism isn’t evolving at least as rapidly, it doesn’t seem like we’re going to win. (caveats: myriad. For one, Burley repeatedly quotes Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies, which does not inspire confidence. He also talks about “doxxing fascists” as a viable strategy without going into the differences between “linking a name to a face at a public event” and “hacking someone’s email to publicly reveal their bank information,” where the former is the strategy that fights fascism and the latter is vigilantism that is practiced widely on the Right and only by the worst actors on the Left. Finally, the one section where Burley discusses an area I had already thoroughly researched was GamerGate, and he got quite a few facts wrong, which makes me question how accurate all the parts I hadn’t researched were. I don’t want to drive anyone away from the book, because it was still quite useful, but I recommend reading it only in concert with a lot of other sources so you don’t get a skewed perspective.) Healing from Hate, by Michael Kimmel (Michael Kimmel, it turns out, is a scumbag. This book’s main thesis is that we need to look at violent extremism through the lens of toxic masculinity, so Kimmel’s toxic history with women is massively disappointing. Book itself is, in many ways, good, but, you know, retweets are not endorsement.) A 4-part examination of how men get into violent extremism through the lens of the organizations that help them get out: EXIT in Germany and Sweden, Life After Hate in the US, and The Quilliam Foundation in Europe and North America. Emphasizing that entry into white nationalism - and, to an extent, jihadism - is less ideological than social. Young men enter these movements out of a need for community, purpose, and a place to put their anger. They feel displaced and mistreated by society - and often, very tangibly, are - and extremism offers a way to prove their manhood. Feelings of emasculation is a major theme. The actual politics of extremism are adopted gradually. They are, in a sense, the price of admission for the community and the sense of purpose. The most successful exit strategies are those that address these feelings of loneliness and emasculation and build social networks outside the movement, and not ones that address ideology first - the ideology tends to wither with the change in environment. The book itself can be a bit repetitive, but these observations are very enlightening. (caveats: the final chapter on militant Islam is deeply flawed. Kimmel clearly didn’t get as much access to Qulliam as he had to EXIT and Life After Hate, so his data is based far less on direct interviews with counselors and former extremists and much more on other people’s research. despite the chapter stressing that a major source of Muslim alienation is racism, Kimmel focuses uncomfortably much on white voices - the majority of researchers he quotes are white Westerners, and the few interviews he manages are mostly with white converts to Islam rather than Arabs or South Asians. all in all, the research feels thinner, and his claims about militant Islam seem much more conjectural when they don’t read as echos of other people’s opinions.)
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rainbowglittr · 3 years ago
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Love and Marriage - Chapter 15 (Mature, Minors DNI)
Description:
After a loss in the family uncovers a family secret, Jaleia and her husband Jesse are forced to balance one family crisis after another along with their budding careers and their plans to expand their family. Will the pressure to keep everyone else together ruin their own relationship? Can ruined relationships be fixed before it’s too late?
Chapter 15:
"Ugh." I lifted my head from the toliet as I finished heaving. Jesse was holding my hair back since it had decided it ws not going to stay in a ponytail. Pregnancy was really throwing me for a loop. A couple of weeks ago, me and Jess went to the doctor where she confirmed that I was indeed pregnant. I was now about 6 weeks pregnant and the side effects were kicking in real strong. I had been having morning sickness almost every sngle day for the past two weeks. Like clockwork. I was tired no matter how much I slept.
"You think that's it, baby?" Jesse said. This morning sickness routine had added on at least fifteen extra minutes to my morning schedule, so to not be late I woke up fifteen extra minutes early. We were still keeping it quiet, although I think Diana was cathing on. But we decided to still keep it quiet for another month to be safe.
She only was going to stay with us for about two more weeks, just before the end of August. That was supposed to be when Jesse's mom officially closed on the house that is just three doors away from ours.
And while Jesse did did best to try and convince her to move somewhere a little further away, she was sold on that damn house. We saw her almost non-stop. She also was lucky because someone had agreed to buy her old house, but that was going to take longer to close than the one she just bought. Jesse and Di were helping her when they could to pack everything from the house and move it to storage. They had made a lot of progress and this Friday they were going to move the last boxes of stuff into storage. Once her new house closed they would have to move all that stuff into the new house. I had to say her hating me really came in handy because I really did not want to help.
Jesse on the other hand was busy in a lot of meetings to determine whether or not he was going to be the labels next new artist. They really liked him, and he was going to start doing some local performances, and creating public social media accounts, depending on how well he did, with the label's help, determined if this record deal was going to happen. And even though he was still fighting really hard to get it, his previous work with Legacy Records really gave him a leg up. It was looking good but they were really reluctant to give one of, in my humble totally and completely unbiased opinion, their best song writers a shot a making it big. The just weren't sure he had that "star qualilty" they were looking for. In other words, he was a black, non-rapping artist they weren't sure how to market him or if he would sell.
I just sat for a moment, hoping that my stomach had settled. When I no longer felt the waves of nausea crash over me, I started to get up.
"I think I'm done for today, or this morning at least." I told Jesse.
"Good, that means my job here is done." He said. He stood up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist, resting his chin on my shoulder, and his hands on my stomach.
"Our baby is in there." I said smiling.
"Yeah, our little girl." he said, kissing my neck lightly.
"How do you know?" I said as I put my hands on top of his.
"Cause thats what I told my sperm to make."
I laughed and rested my head against his chest.
"You know, I've spent so much time not wanting to be pregnant, it feels so good to actually be happy about it." I said.
"I spent so much time trying not to get someone pregnant. It's nice that when I finally did, we're both happy about it."
"Shut up." I said, still smiling.
"Are you nervous?" he asked.
"Of course Jess, I don't want to be a shitty mom. Plus with all the issues I have, I'm scared but I always wanted this and I'm excited."
"You are going to be the most amazing mom ever. You shouldn't even be nervous, Love."
"Are you?"
"Course I am. But I got you, so I ain't even sweating it."
"I see you with Di, you ain't got nothing to worry about, you're going to be amazing as a dad."
"Well if you're going to be amazing, and I'm going to be amazing, then our baby is going to have two amazing parents."
"Damn right." I said.
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"And then I took Benadryl, and it didn't get any better, and then I tried Tylenol, which, I, I,I don't even know why I tried that, I think my wife told me to, actually I think it was my mother actually who told me to take Tylenol, it didn't work and then-"
"Um, sorry to interrupt but do you have any relevant medical history that I don't already know? Anything you think you haven't already told us, um, anything you unusual that you've done or been exposed to that might be making your allergies worse, anything at all?" I said. My patient had been going on and on about stuff that I quite honestly really didn't need to know and I really didn't have time for. I just needed to know if anything had changed since the last time I saw him. But he was extremely long winded.
"Nah, not that I can think of. But you know I have been gardening a lot more, not that I haven't before but I've been doing more, and you know what my wife says, she thinks there's nothing more peaceful then gardening? I kinda see where she's coming from but at the same time it's a lot of work. have you ever done gardening?"
"Um, I used to. Maybe Mr. Ryilke, when you come back you can bring back some samples of the soil, maybe there's some sort of allergen in the soil that is making your lupus go haywire. So I'll give you some instructions on paper of how to collect the samples, how to store them, all that and next time I see you I'll get them tested. As for you nurse Jackie is going to come in and take some samples from you that we are going to test and we should have the results shortly, or within the hour. if you have no further questions, then I'll let Nurse Jackie get started. Do you have any questions, anything at all?" I said as I started to get up.
"Just one question, doctor. Is it normal for my pee to be orange?" I just stoppped and stared for a moment. Then I sat back down, this was going to be a long conversation.
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"Let me just finish up this report, then I'm going to close up. I'm out after this." I said to one of my coworkers, Marie. I was in the research lab and ready to go home. I just had one report to submit and I could have the sweet taste of freedom. I clicked submit after a quick proof read and started to gather my things.
"If you're done then James is going to walk me out if you want to come." she said. I took off my labcoat and hung it around my chair.
"Yeah, that would be great." I called out to her as I followed her out the lab. Marie and James were your typical "should be a couple" in my group of collegues. They clearly had chemistry but they were still in the "will they, won't they" part of their friend/relationship. They were two of the sweetest people I've ever met but also two of the most clueless when it came to dating- well at least dating each other. But I loved working with them, and I figure they have about three months before they can't take it anymore and finally get together.
We walked down the stairwell, with Marie and James having another one of their passionate debates about something random. I guess today's topic was cats versus dogs.
"What about you Jay?" Marie asked as we got to the last landing.
"I got to go with James on this one, sorry Marie, I'm team dogs."
"Not you? Oh God, who do i work with?" she said dramactically.
"Somebody had to say it, Marie." James said.
We all waved goodnight to the nure's station as we walked out of the stairwell and past the Nurse's station.
"Are you coming to Janet's party, Jay?" Marie asked me.
"Oh crap when is that again?"
"This Saturday. it's at the fancy resturant, I think it's french or something." she said.
"I forgot, damn. I'll definitely be there, let me put it in my phone so I don't forget it." I said whipping out my phone. Janet was another doctor in our depatrment, she was nice, I didn't know her well but well enough I guess to go to her birthday party.
James and Marie talked a little more, as we walked through the parking lot. They often got lost in their little bubble and forgot about other people but I was used to it, it was cute. It reminded me of when me and Jesse first got together. It was like no one else in the world existed.
"We parked together here Jay, are you good or do you want us to walk you to your car?" James asked.
"It's still light out guys, I'm not that far away, I'm good. Thank you. I'll see you guys tomorrow!"
"See you!" they both replied.
I walked to my car, hoping that I wouldn't get car sick. I don't know what this baby's obsession with making me vomit was but I was over it. Every now and then being in the car would make me car sick enough to have to pull over and either throw up or let the nausea pass.
>>>>>>>>>>>
"Jess, babe? I'm home!" I called out as soon as I walked in the door. I wasn't actually sure if he would be home before me today. but the lights were on so I figured he had to be. I walked to the kitchen, looking aorund for him. His mom was sitting in our nook.
"Hello." I said flatly.
"You look really fat and pudgy in that shirt. I don't know why my son would be attracted to that." she replied.
"Why are you in my house if you're going to be rude?" I asked as I put my purse down on the table.
"Why did my son marry trash? I guess we'll never know." she said as she glared at me.
"I don't have to put up with your shit Aiesha. I don't care if you're Jesse's mom. You can leave."
"I don't care if you're his wife, you will never be worthy of my son, you will always be beneath him and if I had it my way, he never would've married you."
"There is literally no reason for you to hate me and yet inexplicably you do. Why?"
"I just think Jesse could have done a lot better than you."
"What does that even mean?"
"Hey, what's going on?" Jesse's voice rang out from behind me. I wasn't facing the door so I didn't even hear hm come in. I turned to face him, giving him a quick peck on the lips, before truning to face his mother again.
"Oh, your lovely wife over here was threatening to kick me out your house. Is that acceptable to you Jesse? You don't mind your wife kicking me out?" Aiesha crossed her arms, a gave Jesse a demanding look.
"Mom, no one is throwing you out. And maybe if you stop insulting Jay, she would stop wanting to throw you out."
"So you are taking her side over your own mother?"
"Mom, there are no sides. I want you two to get along, I love you both."
"I see I'm not wanted here. You would think that after everything that is going on Jesse you would have your own mother's back, but I guess not." she said getting up and storming out of the kitchen. Jesse quickly followed after her as I rolled my eyes. She had such a flair for drama, she should've been an actress.
I could hear him calling for her. I went to reach for a bottle of wine, knowing that I was going to need it to deal with this drama before I realized that I couldn't drink anymore. I put my hand on my stomach, even though there was not yet a baby bump. Since I couldn't have wine, I did buy my favorite brand of mocktails for moments like these. I went to the fridge and poured some into my favorite wine glass. I sat down waiting for Jesse to return. After ten minutes of just waitng there and sipping a mocktail, I got up and started looking for leftovers of the steak stir fry I made last night. I was pulling it out the frigde when Jesse came back in the kitchen.
"Um so, my mom is going to stay the night." he said.
"Why?" I asked as I slid the dish into the oven.
"I'm going to be honest I don't know why, it was the only way to stop her crying." he said rubbing his face as he sat down in our breakfast nook.
"Can you just go easy on her? I know she doesnt look like it but this whole thing is really stressing her out." He said.
"She's stressing me out." I said.
"Jay."
"Jess."
"JAY."
"What? Why am I always the one who has to play nice? I'm sick of it!" I said slamming my hand on the counter.
"You don't think I get sick of you both fighting constantly?" He said.
"If you don't want us to fight then don't allow her to disrespect me."
"I can't control what she does, she's my mother not my child. At least when my dad was here it was easier to keep the peace."
"I don't know what you want from me." I said. An awkward silence filled the room for a few minutes.
"It would be really impportant to me if you went with us on Friday to the old house. It's the last time me and Di and even Ciara is coming up, but it's our last time in the house before it's sold."
"What time?"
"I'll be there all day with Di because we still have to move some stuff out but whenever you get off would be great."
"I can do that, are you doing another gig this Saturday?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Cause I have a birthday party I have to go to, well I don't have to go to, but I should go to and I was hoping you would be able to go with me but since you have a gig I'll just ask Kiara."
"Sorry." He leaned back and closed his eyes.
"It's fine." I said.
"How are you feeling?" he asked as he opened his eyes.
"Annoyed."
"Jay."
"Jess."
"Can you just talk to me?" he said, getting up from the nook. He walked over to where I was standing and put his hands out for a hug, which I gladly accepted. I tucked my face into the side of his neck.
"M'sorry, I'm just tired Jess." I said into his neck.
"I know, baby."
"But I'm fine, Jess. How was your day?"
"Boring, a bunch of meetings and stuff, but I was thinking about the baby," he said as I put my hand on my belly.
"What about a baby?" Aiesha said as she walked back into the room. I quickly dropped my hand from my belly.
"Um, nothing mom, you know I always call her that." he said as we moved away from each other.
"Then why was her hand on her stomach?"
"No reason, I just happened to have my hand there, that all." I said. Of all people I didn't want to find out early, it was his mom. She would not keep it a secret at all.
"Okay, fine, don't tell me, I'll always find out." she said as she walked out. We let out a huge breath.
"That was close." He said.
"Yeah, where's Diana?" I said switching the topic, I didn't know where his mother was lurking around.
"She's at a sleepover, I have to pick her up in the morning." he said.
"Cool, I hope she has a good time she deserves it with all you guys have been through this summer."
"Damn straight."
I went to sit down at our breakfast nook when all of a sudden his mom burst into the kitchen shouting "I KNEW IT!" holding a paper in her hands.
"Mom, what are you talking about?" Jesse asked. My heart dropped.
"She is pregnant, it says so right here! I'm going to have another grandchild!" she shouted excitedly.
"What, what are you talking about?" I said. Hoping that we could keep it a secret just a little while longer.
"I found this test result just hanging around in Jesse's office. Why wouldn't you tell me?"
"Why were you in his office?" I asked.
"Nevermind that, when were you going to tell me that I had a grandchild coming?"
Jesse looked at me. I guess the secret is out. I gave him a look that pretty much said just tell her. I figured it would be less painful that way. He gave me a new favorite look, the "I'll make it up to you" look.
"Okay, mom, you caught us. Jay's pregnant. But you need to promise us that youre going to keep this a secret, we dont want to tell anyone right now."
"Why not tell everyone this is great news isnt it?"
"It is but mom, we've already been through a miscarriage before this and we just want to keep it quiet until we really know for sure."
"How could you not tell me that, Jess? I'm your mother, you could've told me!"
"Well it's not exactly something I wanted to talk about, even with you. But we would really appreciate it if you would keep it on the low."
"Awww baby, of course! You don't know what this means, especially during this time, after your father. My baby boy is having a baby! I'm so excited, for you both."
>>>>>>>>>>>
I hurried through the parking lot to my car. It was finally friday, the day that I was supposed to meet Jesse at his mom's old house. Ciara had drove all the way out here from Philly to be here. It wasn't supposed to be this big emotional thing but I guess that's what it turned into. Everybody wanted one last time to walk through the house they grew up in, except Shaun. Ciara heard from his wife that the loss hit Shuan hard, he didn't have it in him to visit the house. Which everyone understood, it had only been about three months, not even, since his dad died.
I called Jesse as I pulled out of the parking lot. The phone rang for a while until he finally picked up.
"Hey babe, did you guys get to the house yet?" I said.
"Yeah we all just got here, we have to clear out some boxes and then we'll do the final walk through. Are you just leaving?"
"Yeah, I'll be there in like twenty if traffic's not bad. How you feeling?"
"I'm okay, right now."
"Jess, don't bullshit me, I know you too well for that remember? What's really going on?"
He let out a heavy sigh. "It's going to be hard. I know we're just gonna bring up old shit and, I don't know how to feel about that."
"Well I got you Jess. It's important that you allow yourself to feel what you feel, Allow yourself to be sad."
"I know, I will, Just get here safe, love you."
"Love you too" I pushed the button on my steering wheel to hang up. This summer had taken so many twists and turns and it wasn't even over yet.
>>>>>>>>>>>
"And do you remember how Dad chased Shaun down the stairs and around the house? He was screaming stuff but he was so mad none of it made any sense." Ciara said.
Everyone in the room was bent over the counters as they laughed at the memory. I stood there behind Jesse's shaking back as he laughed so hard tears rolled down his cheeks. What we thought was going be a very sad and somber last trip turned out to be one of the funniest trips to the house. It was so weird seeing it empty. It was a strange contrast to be an the empty house with everyone laughing and joking and the lively energy it normally had.
Jesse's mom was somewhere upstairs making sure she had everything, we were all in the kitchen, enjoying our last moments here.
Diana smiled, and pointed to a burn spot on the wall.
"I Never noticed that, where was it from?" she asked. Jesse and Ciara exchanged a knowing look.
"You know where most of the damage in the house comes from? Shaun. Second place would go to either dad or Jesse, but most of the damage in this house comes from that idiot." Ciara said.
"Shaun fucked with the roaster, broke it months before thankgiving. Don't know what the hell he was trying to do with it, but he broke it. Mom never uses that thing during the year until thankgiving so she never noticed. She went to cook the turkey and the roaster caught on fire. That was the year we had fried chicken instead of turkey." Jesse explained.
"Me and Jesse both knew it was Shaun's fault so we blackmailed him for six months after that. Mom and dad thought it was just a freak accident and so did the insurance, so Shaun knew that if we told what happened it would've been over for his ass." Ciara said.
"That was a good six months." Jesse said.
"I remember when I found out you had a little crush on Jaleia." Ciara teased. Diana tried to stifle her giggle.
"Shut up, C." Jesse warned. He stood up straight.
"No, I wanna hear, what's this? Spill the tea." I said.
"Well since you insisted," Ciara said with a michevous look on her face. "Jesse was writing a song, and he wasn't expecting me to come home."
"We don't really need to-" Jesse started walking closer to Ciara.
"It was a cute song about having a crush on someone, I didn't let him know I heard it. Would you relax, this is a cute story, would you rather me tell the story of when I walked in on you pleasuring yourself?" She said as Jesse backed her into a wall.
"So you were never good at locking doors?" I said to Jesse.
"Hahaha, you're so funny." he sarcastically said as he briefly turned to face me.
"We will never speak of that day. Why are you like this? It's like you only want to embarrass me." He said to Ciara before backing up with his hands up.
"Because you are my baby brother, and I have to. Anyway, this was in high school, I don't even remember when but I was determined to find out who the song was about. I had some theories, but I couldn't really figure it out, being in college and all. But lucky for me, the homecoming dance was coming up and it was so late at night everyone was sleep except Jess, cause he was in his room practicing how he was going to ask you out!" she said.
"Awww, that's so cute!" I said to Jesse. He was trying to hide his face.
"You should've! I ended up spending most of the night with you!" I said.
"You were in love with Tyler, I didn't think you would say yes."
"So you chickened out? Cause I sure as hell wasn't in love with that boy. Don't play me like that cause you're embarrassed."
"I didn't chicken out, I just didn't think you would say yes." He said as I rolled my eyes. I flapped my arms like wing at him.
"Why did you and the Green bean fall out? Cause y'all made up after high school. You never told me." Ciara said.
"Because he stabbed me in the back. Guess who Imani Cheated on me with?" he said.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait, you NEVER told me that Tyler, Tyler, the guy we grew up with was the one that screwed your fiance?" I said to Jesse.
"I wasn't going to tell anyone. That shit's hella embarrassing." He said. Me and Ciara just stared at him with our mouths open. I couldn't believe this shit.
"We gon talk about this at home." I said.
"So anyone else got any memorires to discuss?" he said, trying to change the subject.
"Yeah, like how the fuck the guy with three kids and no job managed to steal your girl Jess? And it was your best friend? Cause Damn, thats bad." Ciara laughed. She saw the pissed expression on Jesse's face and stopped laughing.
"Oh baby brother I'm not laughing at you, it just the stuation that's a little, you know what, it's not, it's not funny. Sorry." She said. She patted him on his shoulder as Di laughed in the background.
"And I don't know what Di is laughing at because we could be talking about her little boyfriend." Jesse said. Everyone turned and faced her as her jaw dropped.
"Jesse! Shut up!" Diana said. I already knew that Ciara was going to tear that girl apart.
"So what's this about having a little boyfriend, Di?" Ciara said as she walked over to Di.
"Nothing. I don't even have a boyfriend."
>>>>>>>>>>
I rest my head on Jesse's chest. We were back home after leaving from the house. I traced imaginary patterns on his chest as we let the air conditioning blast, with the TV lowly playing in the background. We spent so much time at that house, and eventually it did get kind of sappy and tears were shed but really, we had a really good time. I didn't realize how many memories I had in the house until tonight. Seeing Jesse and his sisters embarrass each other and bicker and fight, in a very weird way made me miss my own two sisters, I honestly hadn't even talked to them in a long time, which reminded me that I really needed to call my mother. And my father. I was such a horrible family member-who forgets to talk to their own family? Well it's not like I don't text them often, I just haven't called them, and it's not like I told them to move across the country. I have been so caught up in Jesse's family I kind of neglected my own.
"Whatcha thinking so hard about over there?"
"I am a terrible family member. I have to call like everyone in my family, I haven't spoken to anyone in so long."
"That doesn't make you horrible, it just means you've been busy"
"I feel so bad, I've been so wrapped up in everything going on over here I don't even know what's going on in my own family and that sucks. I have two nephews and when's the last time I even asked about them, I mean I did ask about them through text message but that's a shitty thing to do, just texting, I mean I am their aunt. My family must hate me I mean I never call or-" I was interrupted by Jesse kissing me. He pulled back and said,
"I'm just going to stop you there before you spiral any further. All you have to do to solve this is call them. None of your family live in this state, my family live closer than your and do you think I talk to mine every day?"
"I know I just feel bad and I kind of miss them, seeing you with your sisters, made me miss mine. And my mom and my dad."
"You know they're just one call away."
"Do you think your mom can keep the baby a secret?"
"We got maybe two weeks, three at the most."
>>>>>>>>>>>>
To Aiesha's credit she did keep it a secret.....for about a week. All of the sudden we started to get Congratulations and calls all from Jesse's side of the family, and then his brother and sister called, and they were PISSED that he didn't tell them. I think the only reason I wasn't mad about it was because after she found out she became the mother in law I had always wanted. She stopped insulting me, she started being respectful, she was a completely different person. I loved it and all I had to do is be pregnant? It was amazing. I knew it wasn't going to last though, she didn't just start liking me it was all because of the baby, I knew it but I was definitely going to take advantage of it. Jesse of course could never get mad at his mom for more than five seconds, but at least now we could tell everyone.
All we had to do now was tell my side of the family, cause I knew that if they found out from anyone else that I was pregnant all hell would break loose. So I skyped my mom. I watched it ring for a while. I was sitting on the couch while Jesse was washing the dishes. My heart was beating fast, I don't why I was so nervous to tell my mom, I guess once I told her it made it real. I actually had a baby growing inside me.
"JESSE, come here, I want you to be here when I tell my mom!" I shouted.
"Coming," he replied. I heard the water shut off and then his footsteps. My mom's face popped up into the screen.
"Finally you call. I could've been sick or something and you would never know because you don't call me." She said before I even had a chance to say anything.
"Hey mom. How are you?" I said.
"I'm okay, not that you would know, I haven't heard from you in so long. Texting doesn't count I want to hear your voice."
"Yes mom, I'm sorry, things have been really crazy here."
"Are you doing okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine, better than fine actually. Um, I have some news that I want to tell you."
"Okay, what is it?'
"Hey Mom!" Jess said, sitting next to me on the couch.
"Don't hey mom me, Jesse. What kind of son are you to let it go so long without me giving me a call? You're not exempt. What? I move down here and all of a sudden I don't deserve a damn call? I don't see a damn thing funny." she said as he tried to hide his smirk.
"Shanice, I'm sorry. Like Jay said, it has been really crazy here."
"How the hell would I know that if you don't call? And you miss doctor, don't even have the time to call your own sisters. What's that about? I raised you all to stay close no matter what and now you can't even pick up the phone to call your own sisters?"
"Mom, I'll do better, it's not even like that, it's just been crazy, it really has. I'll call them after you. But I really want to tell you the good news we have."
"Okay, what is it?" she said, finally relenting from the lecture. I looked at jesse.
"I'm pregnant!"
"We're pregnant!" We said. My mom was shocked. I never told her we were even trying so I know she wasn't expecting it and I wanted to really surprise her.
"Oh my God, are you serious?" she said with her hand over her mouth.
"Yeah, she really is." Jesse said smiling.
"I am so happy for you guys, God bless you and my grandchild! That is the best news." she said as she started tearing up.
"Don't cry ma, you're going to make me cry." I said trying not to cry myself.
"Aw, baby girl, I really am so happy for you both. I cannot wait to be a grandma again. I am so happy." she said as she wiped the tears away.
"I'm going to call you later mom, I just really wanted to tell you the good news. I'll talk to you later."
"Okay, love you both so much."
"Love you too mom."
"Love you Shanice, Bye!"
We hung up, I put my phone down on the coffee table.
"Your mom had the best reaction so far, it was cute." Jesse said as he engulfed me in a hug.
0 notes
twisttech · 4 years ago
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Here Are 6 Reasons  Why Working Remotely Is Better For Workers Than Working In A Traditional Office Environment
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 6 announced the guidance for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and IT-Enabled Services (ITES) players to lessen their consistence trouble for the industry and encourage “work from home” and “work from anywhere”. He further added, “The reform will certainly unleash the potential of our talented youth by making India as a preferred destination for Information and Knowledge Outsourcing Industry and would further the vision of AtmaNirbhar Bharat“.
Leaders of the IT and BPO industry in India commended the government’s transition to loosen up rules to enable IT and BPO organizations to embrace a permanent work from home/work from anywhere [WFH], considering it a game changer that could make a great job opportunities in small towns and cities. Reacting to this, software body Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh said, “This is one of those game-changing moments. As this bandwagon continues, there are some companies that have permanently decided to make partial or full WFH feature for certain roles in their organizations. As per Daminee Sawhney, VP-HR, Zomato, “We felt the biggest advantages were flexibility of work hours and saving the workforces’ travelling time, while the biggest challenge was ensuring every ‘zoman’ working remotely continued to feel connected and well supported”.
While Rishad Premji, who is the son of Wipro Founder Azim Premji said that although 98% of the Wipro employees are working from home, he wishes that all of them return to office and work, not from home. As per him, “The reality is culture grows by osmosis. Culture grows by people engaging at the ward coffee machine, or the water cooler, gossiping about the organization, exchanging notes.” The company can only grow when there is an inherent culture found.
However, since this WFH action has caused lot of controversies among the employers, there is wrangle between employees too. It works for some and not for others who are yearning to return to life as it seemed to be. Many employees feel that there is less distraction and they can work better compared to office. There will be increase in their productivity. But at the same time, few of them complaint about tired of working in isolation. WFH has lost charm for them and they miss their workplace interaction. With the uncertainty of COVID-19 situation, some employees seem quite done working from home.
So, the point here is WFH may be good in many ways and of course as productive as in an office space, but it is not enough. There is a mass who long office culture. This blog describes about the value of an office space and find doses of office time, even if it means working out from Swiggy, Starbucks or any other delivery services. The word OFFICE itself has some relevancy towards fun, enjoyment along with discipline, seriousness.
O-Office provides a landing field
What is a landing field? The place that allow people to get away from outside noise and provide comfort zone. That is the office space gives them comfort to move away from other things and get into the working zone. Well, this field does not mean physical space but a stress buster. Chats around the coffee machine and water area in between the work hours, releases your stress and align to focus on work. But the same background is not found at home, there is something that lacks while at home.
       2  F-Familiarity with unknown
As said by Kio Stark, “When you talk to strangers, you’re making beautiful interruptions into the expected narrative of your daily life – and theirs.”
The office mates, though unfamiliar, soon becomes pals and create a space for them in our life, despite being strangers initially. The office colleagues, elevator operators, people from different office but parking mates, regular faces at coffee area relaxes ourselves and bring in the positive vibes.
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       3   F-Food during office breaks
People definitely miss the lunch/dinner time during office hours. These are the times when people have any random conversation – be it what’s happening in city or their life, any other updates, mimicking or entertainment during lunch/dinner time interval, makes oneself stress-free from office workload. People miss that loud conversation, that collective informative discussion, sporty chats and much more. Specifically, when the office lunch/dinner is not upto the mark, the collective moaning or full on gossip regarding the same with colleagues are unquestionably to be missed. Of course, not to forget the time spent arguing about the food to order for lunch/dinner.
         4   I-Interaction
Satya Nadella said to Times editors on aspects of managing during the pandemic, “More meetings start and end on time, but “what I miss is when you walk into a physical meeting, you are talking to the person that is next to you, you’re able to connect with them for the two minutes before and after.”
Exactly…those intellectual interactions with your nearby colleagues cannot happen on online meeting. With WFH due to COVID-19, those brainstorming yet a fruitful interaction go missing.
       5   C- Closure of the day
Office leads good vibes not only by just waving your officemates but also by greeting ‘Good Morning’ to the colleagues. Positive impact is generated even when other staff members bid goodbye daily to you while physically leaving from the office for their respective homes. This is just not possible with WFH situation; online goodbye never gives you that feel. It takes lot of effort to form an ‘imaginary line of exit’.
       6  E- Expression of face and body goes missing
When it comes to office meeting, it is the body language of the colleagues that plays vital role in implementing the thoughts into actions. There are non-verbal cues that make you determine the seriousness of the workplace. Online meeting may help express with words but you may miss out on body language and also the non-verbal cues that include posture to expression – extremely important for any official project meetings. One cannot gauge the body language when people login from different stations.
To sum it up, WFH is not a new concept to many now, but it may not fill the workers up with tremendous achievement. There is always a lingering sense of lack of being joyous and giving better output without having social surrounding with respect to office pals. After all, Men Is A Social Animal. He needs space to interact, converse and mingle but COVID-19 has certainly hastened the process.
Apart from this, everybody’s situation is different at home. There is a risk of higher physiological and psychological discomfort when WFH is the only option. Inadequate spacing, poor ventilation or lights, unergonomic furniture and also continuous disturbance from surrounding may increase stress and also hamper the quality of work. Social distancing and isolation from colleagues and friends have deprived those who are away from family for the work purpose, WFH have made them lonely to larger extent. There are partial chances of home being converted to office completely.
Keeping these factors in mind, many of the online digital platforms like Khatriji that provides path for mobile, DTH and datacard recharge along with utility bill payment for electricity, landline, broadband, gas pipeline have applied work from office strategy only.
Thus, despite support from the government regarding the WFH system, it is yet a debatable question among both employees and employers.
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jamesrannochcc · 7 years ago
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Following any sport closely can be an emotional business for its fans. There can be highs but at times feelings of disappointment and anger will rise out of nowhere as you watch your football team lose a penalty shootout or you see an umpire makes a bad call against your favourite table tennis player. For fans of professional cycling things are slightly different. We get the same emotions but they often come a good time after the action has finished. There’s the disappointment that our favourite riders and their feats we’ve enjoyed have been aided by banned (and legal) substances and anger at the UCI, cycling’s governing body, for their inability to introduce the reforms that could help ensure fairer and safer competition. Although we encounter these feelings time and again we continue to follow the sport because it’s so entertaining. Because of this murky and frustrating history and the regular promises that things will change for the better three groups of cycling fan have emerged.
The largest of these combines are the ‘Optimistic Pessimists’. They still love the sport but watch things with a heavy dose of scepticism. They have been fooled in the past by cheating and don’t want it to happen again. Instead of celebrating an incredible performance the reaction is now “Mmm, not sure about that”. The UCI are still infuriating but in terms of racing things do seem to be changing ever so slightly. A few riders are now willing to speak out against doping instead of being part of the omerta which protects dopers and their feelings are that much of what they see during races seems to be credible. They watch racing in a different way now. As well getting immersed in the tactics and team dynamics, at the back of their minds they are analysing things to work out if what’s happening is believable and clean. It is obvious that doping still goes on at some level but they’re thankful that the eyebrow doesn’t get raised as often as before.
The eyebrows of are the two other sets of fans don’t move at all and they are very much at opposing sides of the “Who is doping and how much of it is going on” debate.
The first lot, the ‘Deniers’, are either gentle souls, who perhaps only follow a few races a year and are just not interested in whether doping happens, or diehards who will always defend their favourite rider or team against allegations of cheating no matter what actual evidence of malpractice is shown to them.
The last bunch of cycling fans are the Deniers sworn adversaries, though they actually make themselves enemies of anyone who doesn’t agree with them. This restless gang of ‘Truthers’ believe that everyone is on the juice and are very vocal about it. Instead of saying “Mmm’ not sure about that” their mantra is “Yep that’s dirty”. They spend plenty of time proselytising and will end up frustrated then angry if you’re not brought round to their way of thinking. Their arguments to back up their beliefs range from sarcastic coughs to elaborately formed concepts which contain ‘secret inside information’. Some say they resemble conspiracy theorists and I’ve even heard people call them a cult. If you use Twitter and follow cycling you will have seen them pop up on your feed from time to time. They are the Doperati and their illustrious leader is @Digger_forum.
Who is Digger?
My introduction to Digger came in 2011. It was the time of the federal investigation into Lance Armstrong which proved to be the prologue for the big mans fall from grace. Floyd Landis was the main witness in the case but was at that time still coming to terms with his own downfall as well being in the process of being investigated for computer hacking. There was also the question of the nearly $1 million raised for the ‘Floyd Fairness Fund’, money that I believed was donated by people being sold a lie. I decided to hit twitter to see what my 20 or so followers made of my opinion by suggesting that Landis perhaps wasn’t the most reliable of witnesses. Not long after I got a reply from someone who, if I remember right, was calling himself Big Tex Is Going To Jail or @Digger_forum for short. I was quite excited because he wasn’t one of my followers. “Wow” I thought, someone must really value my opinion. They’ve taken time to ‘engage’ with me. Dreams of commenting on pro cycling for a living flashed through my mind. Then I actually read the tweet:
“Charming” I thought. I tried to clarify my point but after becoming aware that my new acquaintance was arguing against a point which was different to the one I was trying to make I decided to finish things as it was becoming a waste of time.
As I became more familiar with twitter and started using it to follow professional cycling I set up a new cycling specific account (@JamesRannoch), mainly so my friends wouldn’t get annoyed by me adding pictures of men in Lycra to their timelines. I saw Digger get mentioned now and again and I occasionally dropped in on his profile and followed some of his ‘conversations’. He seemed to have some pretty extreme theories but to me it looked like were built out of suspicions which he was taking as fact. I didn’t disagree with everything he said, he raised and highlighted some important issues, but I held back from engaging with him when I did. It was obvious that there was no point in arguing with him because his mind wouldn’t be swayed by anyone else’s opinion. But the older I got, the grumpier I became and the less I was able to suffer him gladly. His infuriating debating style should have been scarring me away but it was drawing me into his world of accusations and innuendo. I started to become a little obsessed with disproving some of his more ridiculous theories. I felt that it was morally wrong throwing out proclamations about peoples integrity with flimsy evidence and cowardly to do so from behind an anonymous twitter handle. This would be fine if he was just prattling away in the corner of a pub somewhere because we could just nod or tut at the right moments but he was stating, as fact, things which could effect innocent people on public forums. There is also a fair amount of anger and venom whipped up among his followers and that anger and venom has been joined by spit and whatever else and is now getting directed at the condemned riders from the roadsides of the world. I’d had enough and ended up doing something I am not very proud of. I became a twitter troll. I was going to satirise this so called Digger and my shield of anonymity would be @Borer_forum.
First I tried to find out who this faceless keyboard warrior was, to see exactly what I was up against. There are many theories about his identity and background but after extensive research I could only find one reliable description of him and a photo which surfaced online a few years back.
Next I would employ my arguing skills to take apart all his theories. Unfortunately it didn’t take long for him to block me. There would be no late night debates about hidden motors as we smoked cigars. I wouldn’t receive scented jiffy bags containing long agonising letters about the differences between intramuscular and intravenous. I tried wooing him back with poetry…
….but alas, to no avail.
So I was reduced to taking incessant screen-grabs, much like the great man himself, of his more ridiculous tweets and posting them to the Borer account. Very quickly I found that following him so closely wasn’t good for my blood pressure and general happiness so I decided I would write a blog about Digger, put Borer into retirement and enjoy my life again. This has taken a lot longer than I’d hoped for thanks to the Fancy Bears but here’s what I found:
(Some of the screen grabs are straight off his time line so read from the bottom to the top.)
Diggers Doctrine
Digger purpose in life seems to be making accusations of doping within the pro peleton. He depicts himself as the investigator of all nefarious practices in cycling and when he has collected the relevant information he becomes judge and jury to deliver the verdict and pass sentence on his accused. As well his narcos gig he does work on the side calling out the media for having nationalistic biases and an unwillingness to report wrongdoings. If he ever has time spare after all this you will find that his twitter feed will also contain suggestions of corruption within governing bodies from those running sports like the UCI to the agencies charged with ensuring clean competition such as WADA. (He also has a keen interest in 9-11 and false flag conspiracies but there’s no way I’m going there).
His disdain for the media is quite UK-centric. He sees the British media as a bunch of flag waving nationalistic loonies unwilling to criticise anyone British or ask difficult questions about doping. He extends this viewpoint to cover the behaviour of British cycling fans too.
Being a tin foil hats not tin foil caps kind of guy he loves the UK global sports conspiracy theory. With so many Brits at the top of major sporting organisations there is the suggestion amongst the Doperati that this enables British athletes some protection against getting sanctioned for misdemeanours or helps them get lenient sentences. There also seems to be the belief that during races British riders have had the rules bent for them to give them an advantage over the rest.
I believe that he is right about the general standard of the press in UK. During recent elections and close referendums across the country more people have become wise to the way various media organisations report the news. They do it to try and bring you round to their way of thinking instead of simply telling the story in an unbiased and balanced way. The funny thing is though, judging by their tweets, the people who tend to disagree with Digger, including some who comment on cycling for a living, are the ones who are most aware of the standards and bias of the press. The fact they clash with Digger is perhaps because his views are also biased and one sided. He particularly has a thing about the BBC and had a go at their coverage of the Olympics by pointing out the cosy relationship between the presenters and athletes and bemoaned the fact that the thorny issue of drug taking wasn’t discussed. The coverage was certainly overly jingoistic and pretty cringe worthy. I had to channel hop and press the mute button plenty of times to retain my sanity. I wasn’t overly perturbed though because I was aware that it was a magazine show not a hard hitting documentary. He was also on Mo Farah’s case during the Olympics. And his source of information which allowed him to call Farah’s integrity into question? BBC’s Panorama documentary about Mo and his coach Alberto Salazar.
The British commentator who gets the most amount of flak though is Eurosport’s Carlton Kirby.
Well, I’ve already said he makes some good points.
On cycling journalists, his accusation of them not asking the important questions really means that they don’t believe the allegations that he makes. He also conveniently forgets about the times questions are asked. After the CIRC report plenty was said about potential abuses of the TUE system as well as the morality of using cortisone and Tramadol. Moreover, he makes out that he invented the idea that Team Sky have major problems with keeping their promises to be transparent when their transparency has been called into question plenty of times. By cycling journalists.
The main problem I have with Digger calling into question the integrity of journalists is that they would be under the threat of libel if they raised the points that he wants them to. In the meantime he is protected by his anonymity and feels he can throw out statements of guilt willy-nilly safe in the knowledge that he has the option to press the ‘delete tweet’ button. He posted this tweet in August stating that Cadel Evans and Carlos Sastre have doped. I confronted him about it and now can’t find the tweet. It seems to have disappeared.
His twitter bio even contains a flimsy defence against libel by saying the account is satire.
Apart from BBC’s Panorama his other favourite media outlet of the British press which he slates is the Daily Mail. The only good thing about this is that he screenshots most of their columns so there’s not many clicks onto their site from his followers. His other source of news and views? Who can forget the time he retweeted Piers Morgan three times in a few hours.
When you consider his allegations of corruption it’s no secret that there’s wide scale corruption within many sports governing bodies but in terms of the UCI and Brian Cookson I believe they’re far too incompetent to run the kind of UK sporting conspiracy being suggested without getting found out.
Digger on Doping
Mr Forum comes into his own when it comes to the debate around doping. He uses a range of tactics to put his views across in ways he hopes makes them fool proof. Throwing mountains of mud to increase the chance of some of it sticking is his favourite.
It is the marginal gain of debating and even if he his right 1% of the time he claims victory for his overall dogma. His views rise out of confirmation bias and he uses straw man tactics when taking part in arguments. The best description I found which explains where he’s coming from though is Digger’s Razor.
It’s fair to say that he is firmly of the belief that almost everyone is on the sauce and this makes it impossible to win without some kind of rule breaking assistance. Whether that’s pharmaceutical or mechanical depends on his narrative at the time.
His evidence to back things up is based mainly on historical comparisons of times up climbs and the company which riders keep. If you go up a climb faster than a known doper did in the past, it’s simple. You’ve cheated. If you have ever been on a team which had known dopers on it at the same time, it’s obvious that you would be on a doping programme too. Other flags which, to him, are clear indications of doping are an increase in the number of medals a country wins at various competitions, riders going to certain countries where drug testers don’t usually visit and of course anyone with asthma is seen as only pretending to be suffering from the condition to get medication which will improve performance. Most of his accusations are aimed firmly at Team Sky and in particular Chris Froome. Skys over referenced idea of marginal gains is firmly put down as BS and is seen as a smokescreen for something more sinister.
In a way Digger seems similar to most cycling fans and to give him some credit at times he raises some good points. He, along with the rest of us, understands that some top riders must be doping. We are uncomfortable with some journalists cosy relationships with certain teams and riders and know that organisations need massive reform. But where he is different is when we see a certain performance as evidence that someone may be doping he sees it as evidence that someone is doping. And when we would further analyse the performance and sometimes spot something which would call into question the suspicion of doping, he wouldn’t do that. He has found the evidence to support his theory and that’s the end of that. He would stand by his opinion and any other evidence would be denied.
The Doperati often tries to prove doping by deciding whether the watts per kilograms a rider produces up climbs during races are credible or out of the range of human possibility. Most of the figures you see for different riders W/kg aren’t from the individuals power files but are produced by people watching races, most notably @ammattipyoraily. I have to admit that I was surprised when I found out how accurate these W/kg calculations are when you consider how many things you have to factor in when making them. The riders W/kg produced and the time it was sustained can give you an indication of how far a rider is progressing towards the line which can only be crossed if you are are on PED’s. The problem is no body knows exactly where the line is. The doperati’s top scientist Antoine Vayer claims he knows where the line is and his figures are regularly used to justify accusations of cheating. Unfortunately his calculations seem to have been plucked out of the air and it is important to remember that the South African scientist Ross Tucker rightly states that we won’t know for sure where the line is until data from many riders over a number of years is collected and analysed. I think this would be a great thing to happen and the flimsy science from the doperati only gets in the way of making this occur.
Digger tends not to bother with watts per kilogram but uses the more simple times up climbs charts to prove doping. The problem is, any sort of context is ignored. When Chris Froome beat Chris Horners time up Pena Cabarga during this years Vuelta an eyebrow was seriously raised. How can you compare the times though? He asks what’s changed. Well quite alot has. If you look at the stage profiles and where they are in the race there’s no justification for making a comparison. Why even comment let alone make an accusation?
Even setting aside profiles every stage is raced differently. Tactics come into play. One day there might be attacks and slowing down of the main group of riders and another might see no attacks. And GC riders with strong mountain domestiques will perform better than riders on their own on a different day. Of course Digger knows this though. When it suits him he uses tactics to explain slow ascents (with a ridiculous caveat).
He’s right, you can compare times but they don’t prove what he says they do. His arguments are often too simplistic.
Mr Forum and the rest of the Doperati mention Marginal Gains more often than David Brailsford and every cycling journalist put together. Having to read about marginal bleeding gains all the time was probably the worst parts of following Digger. The Doperati have the belief that Sky transmit the idea that M.G’s explain their improvements in performance and use it as a smokescreen as the improvements are actually achieved through using PED’s or mechanical fraud. The argument against ‘the gains’ goes “How can it be a gain if all the other teams are doing the same thing?”. This holds some water and the Doperati are constantly demanding proof of where Sky’s supposed marginal gains over the other teams comes from. In truth it’s pretty difficult to know what each team does differently without actually being in the team itself. But just as it’s almost impossible to prove that Sky gain an advantage over say Movistar when considering the way the teams are run it’s just as difficult for the Doperati to show that they don’t. Without knowing the nutritionists, time-trial training methods and pillow manufacturers (joke) (sort of) of the two teams the argument is pointless and any conclusions which say that there are or aren’t gains can only come from confirmation bias. What we do know is that Sky are a much better team than the 2010 effort so have gained in that regard. Digger would say that’s because of doping but they look like a well oiled machine when compared to the tactical shambles that was standing about not knowing what to do when Wiggins crashed out of the 2011 Tour.
Judging by these tweets there does seem to be a misunderstanding of what Marginal Gains actually are. He seems to think it’s all about equipment. Wouldn’t getting a better understanding of and how to use analysis be somewhere you can get a marginal flippin gain? (Read from bottom to top) (In the second tweet he seems to contradict himself).
Again he gets confused when marginal gains aren’t put down to equipment. A gain could come through sports psychology and positive thinking but the very thought of this is difficult to stomach for some.
Just before the Vuelta this year Digger shared this tweet by Antoine Vayer where the Frenchman trots out the smokescreen theory and includes a table of numbers which must be his evidence. He gets a good old pat on the back from Diggsy who must be the only person who understands how a table with Chris Boardman’s numbers for his successful 1996 World Hour Record attempt and some other hypothetical numbers are proof of cheating for kids.
This is Diggers final nail in the coffin for the idea of marginal gains giving any advantage to Sky. His ultimate proof.
Sure, these Director Sportifs could take training and race tactics to other teams. But they’re not expert nutritionists or mattresses. It’s just another narrow viewpoint that happens to fit nicely with his doctrine.
A classic conspiracy theory amongst the Doperati is the idea of an inner sanctum in Team Sky where only a special group of riders are on a doping programme and no one else on the team knows about it.
This cloak and dagger nonsense ties in nicely with the question the Truthers are always asking of Chris Froome. How did he supposedly turn from a donkey into three time Tour de France champion? It’s true, his results were utter rubbish before his breakthrough in the 2011 Vuelta. His problem is that he’ll never be able to adequately explain the transformation. He has the results of a physiological test from 2007 which showed he had great potential and a more detailed lab test from 2015 which shows he has good numbers now. But without similar tests from the intervening years he won’t be able to convince everyone that he is clean. And what of the sudden improvement in results? He puts it down to suffering from the parasitic infection bilharzia from late 2010 and through most of 2011 when he seemed to get rid of the problem. Clearly the Doperati think Froome is talking schistosomiasis and they know he will never be able to prove himself right without any analysis of the infected blood and how the parasite effected him physically. The Truthers final piece of evidence which they say shows Froome started doping at the 2011 Vuelta and continues to do so is the belief that he was so bad before it that Sky were going to get rid of him and this is what spurned him on to begin a regime.
This suggests that if Brailsford was wanting rid of Froome then Froome must have gone it alone if his transformation was fulfilled through illegal means. How does this tie in with the inner sanctum? You can’t have both surely. There is evidence and counter evidence on both sides of the debate on Froome but nothing certain is yet known.
A funny thing is that even when Team Sky have an off day their use of drugs is given as a reason. When they were caught badly positioned a the start of stage 15 of this years Vuelta leaving Froome isolated most put this down to a rare instance of bad tactics for the team. Digger and the Doperati however:
Digger seemed to think he was onto a winner during the Fancy Bears TUE leaks. He felt he had been vindicated for all the innuendo, allegation making and assertions he has made during his twitter career.
Bradley Wiggins’ dodgy TUE’s certainly came as a shock and many people found them quite upsetting. His Tour win will be seen as a tainted one by plenty of cycling fans. But all through the Fancy Bears leaks Digger was still up to his old trick of throwing out allegations without knowing the full facts. Many of the people he was accusing were innocent of any wrongdoing.
Callum Skinner was one of the first to receive a suggestion of dishonestly gaining a TUE. The Scottish track rider subsequently released all his medical information pertaining to the asthma which he has suffered from for most of his life to show that he had a genuine medical need for the TUE. I don’t remember seeing an apology from Digger but there was this high and mighty tweet almost a month later.
Fabian Cancellara didn’t get that courtesy though. After his files were leaked his team explained that the TUE’s were needed to treat a bad reaction to a bee sting. They even shared two photos of Cancellara with a swollen looking face. They were the same pictures that were released at the time of the actual incident. But this clearly wasn’t enough for a suspicious Digger who seems to think that Spartacus may have been trying to get a TUE to give him an advantage in his main objective of the year, the Vuelta.
The best one though was the Alistair Brownlee TUE. He made an accusation, got it wrong, knew he got it wrong but then it was “nothing to see here, move along”. Digger never admits he’s wrong and never apologises.
My final example of the instant eyebrow raiser and accusation before all the facts were known. Then being put right by folk including Ross Tucker, perhaps upset that he couldn’t call shenanigans on it.
Diggers Own Hypocrisy and Contradictions
Diggers usual twitter name is Fuck the hypocrisy. This suggests he hates it when people don’t practice what they preach. You would also expect that he is honest and fair when he tweets something. Unfortunately for him there is evidence of his own hypocrisy on his time line, which is pretty hypocritical wouldn’t you say? There are also many, many contradictions in his doctrine.
One of his biggest gripes is that journalists don’t print stories of mass doping in sport, though it could be that he is just annoyed they don’t publish his beliefs. He believes they use the fact that they can be sued for libel if they make any accusations as an excuse for not writing that difficult article. He says why don’t they asks questions? That’s not libellous. Does he even realise what he’s asking for? Article after article titled ‘Does Chris Froome Dope?’ where the pros and cons are weighed up and in the end the is no definitive answer either way. It would drive him bananas. It’s a great idea. He seems to use David Walsh’s very close relationship with Team Sky as a catch-all for the behaviour of every cycling journalist out there. He thinks they are all wimping out.
While he comes out with accusations of not being brave enough and hiding behind libel, he regularly deletes weeks worth of tweets when he says anything libellous. The missing week on the bottom of this screenshot was at the end of the Olympics when he was at his accusatory best.
And he has the cheek to say this about Lizzie Deignen. Double standards or what?
David Walsh is the journalist that gets it most from Digger. I’m not going to defend Walsh here, I’ve thought he was a nob ever since Emma O’Reiley revealed how she was treated by him when he was writing his book on Lance Armstrong. But Digger used an interview he gave (quite a while) after the Bradley Wiggins’ TUE scandal broke to twist the knife into his countryman. The way Digger misquoted from it showed again how dishonest and how easily he changes context to suit his narrative. But he gets his likes and people think what he’s said is true so it’s all ok. He asks for transparency and honesty but this is what he gives in return. Hypocrisy. Walsh was talking about Chris Froome being potentially upset about Wiggins getting a very strong, perhaps unnecessary, injected TUE right before the main objective of the year. Digger says Froome “literally” got the same TUE so how would he be upset? Sure they both got TUE’s for cortisone but they were both very different.
Diggerooney regularly says more should be done to encourage ex-dopers and those with knowledge of the doping culture to talk about the issue of drugs in cycling. He will praise riders who come with information (usually in lucrative biographies) and come down hard on those who stay silent. At the same time though he has quite a friendly and jovial relationship with Johan Bruyneel who could say so much on the subject but has chosen to keep the omerta going, even through his various hearings.
He speaks against omerta both within the peleton and the media but at the same time claims he “knows stuff” he won’t share. So either he is part of the omerta, i.e a hypocrite, or he doesn’t know stuff, i.e full of shit.
At times Digger will take the moral high ground on issues. He has rightly condemned Shane Sutton who has had allegations against him of sexism upheld. Is he practicing what he’s preaching though? Has he done it because he believes in gender equality or was it just a chance for more Sky bashing?
This was a tweet explaining why there has never been anyone with inside knowledge of the team speaking out against Sky. I’m pretty sure whistleblowing legislation would protect anyone wanting to come forward.
And how does it tie in with this marginal gains put down? Contradiction alert!
This contradiction was within the space of a few hours.
My suspicion that Digger was a liar was confirmed quite early on during my @Borer_forum phase. I knew 100% he was lying too. I must have been getting under his skin and he may have been worried that folk would start following my account so he sent a few tweets saying I was someone called Euan and had previously shared photos of him and his children saying they looked disabled. This just shows his dishonesty. He doesn’t care whether what he’s putting out on public forums is true or not. If it suits him then great.
Diggers feelings on Betsy Andreu is his most impressive of contradictions. He says she constantly goes on about Lance Armstrong at the same time as constantly going on about Betsy constantly going on about Lance. There’s more tweets about Betsy from Digger than ones with rubbish jokes about Paypal accounts from me.
Diggers Debatable Debating
Getting into an argument with the man is infuriating. There is no doubt that he is very knowledgeable about the history of doping in cycling and he can easily recall lots of information to advance his argument during debates. He will often change the parameters of the debate though and if you’re not careful you’ll not realise you’re arguing against something resembling a human but quite straw-like in nature. These are the occasions he will enter debates but in truth he doesn’t get into many tete-a-tetes about cycling these days. I tried engaging him a few times but he rarely responded.
This was one time I invited him to expand on a tweet:
It was one of his many moot points so he never replied. One of his disciples came to his aid but the best he could come up with were Tom Danielson and the Iglinsky brothers.
Having said all this I think I’m giving the guy far to much credit. Here he is in reply to me after I questioned his accusations of doping against Sastre and Evans. To back up his point he give me a list of some top riders, many who we know for a fact (because of documented evidence) have doped.
And when he isn’t coming out with these winning arguments he is either losing the plot, contradicting himself, grossly exaggerating or coming out with statements usually reserved for the playground. This is Digger.
Eh but,
“In no time” was actually a fair whack of the climb.
Eh, no it wasn’t. Digger seriously has to re-watch Bert and Chicken.
Brilliant!
Is Digger Anti-British?
Digger is often accused of being anti-British. This might be down to the fact that he seemed to have a problem of me potentially being a Rangers fan, and all that entails to some folk. (I’m more of the Brian Smith persuasion when it comes to football) or maybe it was the nature of the only political tweet or retweet during the first month or so of trolling him.
Maybe it was because of the tone of this tweet or retweets.
But he can’t be anti-British. Some of his best friends are British.
Diggers Ego.
Diggers ego is what make him the leader of the Doperati. All cults need a brash self confident person calling the shots and Digger fits the bill perfectly.
Digger loves a compliment but when there’s none coming he’ll do it for himself. He will even will do it while speaking of himself in the 3rd person.
He also seems to think journalists hang on his every word, waiting eagerly for him to impart his next tenet of knowledge. If they have the same opinion as him on a matter he takes that as an indication that they’ve acquired the opinion from listening to him. It’s incredible.
So Digger sure has a high opinion of himself though it does seem worrying that he potentially has payed for some of his large twitter following. If you look at his twitter bio passport from a few years ago it shows that 39% of his followers are probably fake.
Diggers Crew.
Even discounting the fake ones Digger has a fair old following. But what is life like in Diggerville? There is a mixture of anger and happiness as well as a togetherness which I find quite sweet. There is a certain sense of camaraderie amongst the Doperati which is along the same lines as a bunch of lads away for a stag weekend. In jokes are passed about and sniggers are heard after sarcastic mentions of Nutella, pillows and round wheels. There is plenty of fawning around the big man as the minions plead for his attention hoping for a heart or even a retweet. This means if someone goes against the party line there will be plenty of people to take him down.
Many of his followers though are actually nice people and you can have a pleasant conversation with them while disagreeing at the same time. These people afterall are cyclists and cycling fans and even after having to put up with years of crap they can still enjoy watching the sport. His close disciples though are a different kettle of fish. They certainly know cycling but they don’t enjoy it. Like Digger they spend tremendous amounts of time trying to find ways to show how dirty it is. These are his henchmen :
Antoine Vayer
The man who is meant to give some scientific legitimacy to the operation. He once reminded me of a jovial and slightly senile uncle with his zany views and google translated tweets but I’ve come to realise he has a nasty side.
His scientific work is regularly debunked by experts in physiology as it often seems to get plucked out of thin air. Also, I hope he never drives through Milton Keynes.
Vayerism
Antoine’s protégé and someone else who likes calling me Euan. Naming a twitter account aimed at exposing doping @Vayerism is like starting one to encourage progressive and inclusive politics @Trumpism. He understands how numbers are produced but doesn’t know how to analyse them properly. He is also prone to being a little gung ho with some of his tweets.
Ross Tucker
Definitely the brains of the operation. He has the wherewithal to help devise a way to combat doping but unfortunately he has taken to emotional opinions rather than science recently.
Juicedup
Definitely my favourite. He is often Diggers go to guy for sensationalism. Part time Brazilian cycling fan, part time Australian secret agent, full time Walter Mitty. Either that or he has stolen somebodies profile picture. He’s the man with many ‘sources’.
There was this during the tour:
Then these nuggets of knowledge:
But this is the best tweet (still pinned to his profile) of them all.
The thread that follows it exemplifies what the Doperati are all about. Here’s a snippet:
And that I’m glad to say is that. It wasn’t fun following Digger and the Doperati. It was infuriating and depressing. I became aware that I was starting to lose perspective. It would have been easy to start disagreeing with something just because Digger agreed with it. I could have become one of them. I’m also glad that I can stop retweeting myself.
So I just have one last thing:
Digger and the Twitter Doperati. Following any sport closely can be an emotional business for its fans. There can be highs but at times feelings of disappointment and anger will rise out of nowhere as you watch your football team lose a penalty shootout or you see an umpire makes a bad call against your favourite table tennis player.
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madstars-festival · 5 years ago
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5 MINUTES WITH… HARSHAD RAJADHYAKSHA
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Ogilvy India’s Harshad Rajadhyaksha talks Bollywood, being a Mumbaikar, and his upcoming gig at AD STARS 2019 as a final judge with Little Black Book.
If blood, sweat, dreams and tears can seep into the fabric of a city and bring it to life, Mumbai’s heart beats strongly – and Harshad Rajadhyaksha has his finger on its pulse.
Harshad is Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy India (West) in the port city of Mumbai, India’s artistic centre and advertising capital. He attended the Sir JJ School of Art, which alongside the Bombay Art Society, has been instrumental in developing Indian creativity since late colonial days. Mumbai is also home to Bombay Cinema, aka Bollywood, and Harshad’s Grandfather was a film director.
Call it environment or call it genes – it’s probably a bit of both – Harshad will soon be applying all of that nature and nurture to judging the Film and Video Stars categories at AD STARS 2019 in Busan, South Korea. He told reporter Lee Patten all about his latest work and the art of being surprising.
You’re coming to Busan, South Korea as a final judge this year. Can you tell us your expectations for judging at AD STARS?
It’s always an enriching experience to see creative work in such concentrated doses, even though it can be tiring. However, I’m looking forward to the whole judging experience in Busan and interaction and discussions with my fellow jury members. 
As for Korea, I’ve never been there before. The traveller in me is already hoping that after doing justice to the judging, there will be some moments available to soak in at least some of the experiences that Busan has to offer. I am thoroughly looking forward to it all.
Do you consciously draw on the rich cultural and political heritage of your home city when you make ads? I believe that great ideas can be universal, but I also believe that the expression of those ideas come alive best when drawn from localisation. So to answer your question, I draw on the cultural and social heritage of not just my city Mumbai, but from India as a whole, as most of our work caters to a national market. Universal ideas are understood by all, but they make a place in the consumer's heart if they see nuances in them that are part of their everyday lives. Life in Mumbai and India provide me with plenty of nuances for my work.
Is it true your grandfather was the cinematographer Bal Joglekar? How much of an influence did he have on your career path?
It is indeed true. Frankly, in all my growing-up years, I knew him just as a loving, doting grandfather. I hardly paid any attention to his work then. As it happens with so many mistimings in life, only when a person leaves us do we miss not having spent more time asking them the important questions. Now I do wish I would’ve asked him hundreds of questions about his work, shooting feature films in the Black & White era of Indian cinema.
While my parents (both applied artists) have been a more direct influence on me falling in love with communication arts and advertising, I do believe that my love for photography has somewhere indirectly been kindled by spending time with my grandfather tinkering away with his numerous cameras and rolls of film.
You grew up in Mumbai and still live and work there. What was it like being a kid in Mumbai?
I grew up mainly in the 1980s, and I couldn’t have asked for a better era in which to grow up. Mumbai has always been to India what New York is to the world. Mumbai is a vibrant mix of people and their cultures from all over India – a melting pot of sorts. So growing up here, my neighbours and acquaintances have included people from so many states of India, all with their unique languages, cultures, and food! 
Many Indians would migrate to Mumbai to make a living, so I was exposed to a rich, encapsulated form of the whole of India itself. In our profession, nothing can be more valuable than the wealth of human observations.
We love your epic “A Close Shave in Mumbai” photography series. How would you sum up the spirit of the city and Mumbaikars?
Thank you for your kind words. What I try to capture in my photo series are absolutely simple, everyday moments that all of us lead in this super busy city. Beyond the pictures, what I think appeals to viewers are the insightful captions I write and design through typography on each frame. At times what these captions do is present a moment all of us would have seen a hundred times but in a totally different light.
Mumbai and its people are not just a great source of material for my album; they are an integral part of my life. This city to me is not just a place; it is a living entity, a tough but loving life-coach of sorts. A city that’s not easy to live in that is super fast-paced, that tries and tires you out at every turn, but then, it loves you back and rewards you like no other place can. No matter what your beginnings are, no goal is too high in Mumbai if you are ready to put in the effort and have the drive.
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You must be extremely proud to be part of Ogilvy India’s ongoing “Start a Little Good” campaign for Unilever. Can advertising be a real force for change on environmental issues?
Yes, my work partner Kainaz Karmakar and I created that campaign, along with our team at Ogilvy. The two films out are just a beginning in what will be a journey of touching upon several real issues where our client Unilever India is making a real difference on ground.
While ‘Goriya’ the cow is a story that shines the light on the issue of plastic waste with a lighter touch, the ‘Shower’ film is consciously a far more intense and heart-tugging piece of work. The response to both pieces has been great, from people from all walks of life. 
‘Shower’ has been shared on WhatsApp groups of all kinds, from spiritual gurus to their followers, to housing societies with their members, and schools with parents. Also, several schools have started showing and discussing the film with their students as teaching material on water conservation. 
As long as anyone remembers the work and its message every time they turn on the shower knob or are about to chuck away plastic waste and act responsibly, the films have already done their bit to make things a little better than they were. That’s the ‘little good’ we are referring to – and yes, advertising can absolutely be an agent of good on any social issue, if created sincerely.
“Beauty Tips with Reshma” for Make Love Not Scars wildly exceed expectations and targets, with a limited budget. Does this prove that people still respond more strongly to a great cause, and to the power and bravery of a real person, than they ever will to glamour and celebrities?
Yes, I think you summed it up well. India is a celebrity-crazy country, and their influence is everywhere through various endorsements. Also, people do respond to the messages given by celebrities when they promote products or thoughts, but Reshma’s case was different. She was a real person, severely attacked and traumatised in the most brutal way. However well-intentioned, I think no celebrity could ever come close to expressing any message on behalf of an acid attack survivor the way Reshma did. While it was a powerful idea, Reshma proved to be the soul of the campaign by agreeing to face the camera.
You’ve been working with Kainaz Karmakar since 2007 when you moved to JWT. Creatively, why do you think you fit so well together? 
Kainaz and I have been colleagues and friends far before our official partnership started in 2007 when our then boss, Agnello Dias (Aggi) teamed us up at JWT. Since we were already friends for some six years before that, it meant that there was no ‘getting the work chemistry right’ period needed and we could hit the ground running. 
While we enjoy the strongest of partnerships, we are very different people in several ways, but therein lies our strength, I think. We trust each other absolutely, but on work, are quite firm on our respective outlooks. This often sees us have strong, intense debates about the task at hand. We keep chipping at each other’s thoughts, moulding and re-moulding them until both of us share the conviction that we have the best possible outcome at hand.
Like Kainaz often says, 1+1 will logically become 2. However, when two ideal people come together to create, that same logic is defied and 1+1 magically becomes 11.
What advice would you give to young people thinking about getting into the industry today?
To all the young creatives, this is the simplest advice I’ve heard uttered from a big name in advertising – be surprising. From the first day of your professional life to as many years as you may call advertising home, if you are surprising in your solutions (while being relevant to the task, of course), you are truly creative, and the world is going to notice you for all the right reasons.
How do Indian regions differ in India when it comes to advertising?
Mumbai, having been the traditional seat of industry and commerce for India since the colonial era, obviously saw the Indian advertising industry set up and flourish here. In fact, along with Mumbai in the early years, Kolkata (then Calcutta) too had its small share of professional advertising agencies. Because of this, Mumbai has been the obvious spearhead of the industry for decades now. 
However, the scene has shifted quite noticeably since the Indian markets opened to the world in the 1990s. Several new multinationals came and set up headquarters in Mumbai, but a considerable number also started setting up their presence in Bangalore and Delhi – and then serious Indian startups also began making their intent and presence felt, emerging from all these cities. 
As a result of which, most agency offices in cities like Delhi and Bangalore, which maybe were not professionally on par with their Mumbai offices a couple of decades ago, have now caught up. In some cases, they have superseded their Mumbai offices in quality of output too. However, to again draw an American parallel, the advertising scene in Mumbai is like what New York is to the US. It is the home and capital of Indian advertising.
* Read the original interview via Little Black Book. Harshad will arrive in Busan, South Korea to judge the AD STARS 2019 Awards on 19th August
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okaynicolette · 4 years ago
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Nikki closed her laptop after ending the call with Amanda and paused for a moment, debating how to proceed with Liam. She bit on the string of her hoodie more, trying to decide what the best way to approach the situation. Before too long, she smelled the lunch calling her and got up off the couch to join her boyfriend at the table. 
“So, what do you think of Amanda?” She asked, sitting down at the chair next to him and taking her meal out of the bag. 
Liam was already half way through his food and was staring at a work email when Nikki joined him. He quickly put his phone back in his pocket and directed his attention towards Nikki. He was unsure of how to answer the question because he’d only briefly interacted with Amanda, but figured he’d go with the safest bet: “She seems fun,” he ventured, “but she didn’t want to stay over? I get it though, we haven’t actually met but I just figured...” his voice trailed off and he took another bite of his hot dog. 
Nikki covered her mouth as she chewed and swallowed, shaking her head the whole time, as if to indicate that she had a response ready. “Well yeah it was nice of you to offer– I know you were just being generous but like... you kind of shat on my place, don’t you think?” She widened her eyes, in the way that she always did when confronting Liam’s privilege. It wasn’t as though Nikki had grown up dirt poor or anything, but her family was solidly Midwestern middle/working class. And contrasting that with Liam’s flashy and wealthy LA upbringing, there were some uncomfortable differences that came to the surface on occasion. 
Liam was shocked to hear that Nikki felt like he called out her apartment. “No I didn’t! I was just trying to tell Amanda that I had an extra bedroom. Your studio might just be small for two people, that’s all I was trying to say,” he explained, defensively before taking a sip of his drink.
Nikki rolled her eyes. It was just like him to forget the words that he used. “Liam you said, and I quote: 'There probably isn’t room in Nikki’s studio, right babe,’” she altered her voice to mock Liam for effect while quoting him. “It just felt so condescending. Like how am I not supposed to be offended by that?” She asked, raising her voice an octave as she got more upset. 
Liam sighed. “I don’t know? Just don’t be! I was literally just trying to be nice, that’s it. I’m sorry that I implied that your one room studio apartment has less room than my two bedroom 1300 square foot apartment?!” He rushed through his exclamation, immediately realizing how jerkish it came off as soon as he said it. 
Nikki stared at Liam blank-faced, not wanting to give him any reaction to his yelling. “Amanda was right to dislike your showiness,” she said, looking him dead in the eyes, knowing that he would be cut to the core with the knowledge that he didn’t make a good first impression. She held the eye contact for a moment longer and then broke it to take another bite of her food. 
Liam blinked a couple times, always shocked at Nikki’s ability to go cold as ice with no warning whatsoever. It was freaky almost, but it did make him feel extremely guilty for blowing up at her seconds beforehand. “She said she disliked my showiness?” He asked, still incredulous but a bit more calm in his tone. “Why? Because I wanted to show her around my apartment that I’m proud of and because I invited her to stay if she ever comes out here? Hotels are expensive, Nik. Jeez, I was just trying to be hospitable,” he scratched the back of his head, not really sure how to make his case any further. 
Nikki rolled her eyes and took a sip of her drink before responding. “Right, but you didn’t mention a hotel. It was your place over my place which is like a direct diss,” she huffed, crossing her arms in front of her. “And no, it wasn’t just that. She also didn’t like that you mentioned us having sex this morning,” she added.
Liam resigned to the fact that he wasn’t winning this argument regarding the apartment slip up he had made. “Alright, Nik. I’m sorry I said that. I didn’t mean to make it out that I thought I was better than you or whatever. I’m sorry it came off that way,” he said, genuinely trying to be apologetic. “But honestly are you upset that I mentioned that because I didn’t think I was coming off as crude...” his voice trailed off and he scanned Nikki’s face for a reaction.
Nikki pursed her lips and thought carefully before responding. “It was a bit forward,” she admitted with a shrug. “I just think she wasn’t expecting you to be the way you are. That’s all,” Nikki looked down with no intention of continuing along that train of thought. She’d brought up Jake vaguely before with Liam, but never in full detail or anything too serious. She didn’t want to bring up the direct comparison between the two though, because she didn’t see it relevant and felt it would only hurt Liam more.
“What do you mean, ‘the way that I am’?” Liam asked, his ego somewhat bruised by the implications of that statement. Did Nikki also feel any form of animosity toward the way Liam was? Did hearing Amanda make Nikki realize that there was something flawed about him? His brain was ringing all of the alarm bells, but he tried to keep a calm demeanor. 
“Just... like,” she could tell Liam was hurt, so she searched for the words to spin the situation in a more positive light, “so proud and open I guess? I don’t know if that’s the right way of saying it... Maybe confident is the word I’m looking for. Yes, confident,” she nodded, now feeling silly for starting this argument and getting so offended in the first place. “But that’s what I like about you– you’re proud to be with me, you’re proud of your life, you go after what you want. It’s what drew me to you in the first place,” Nikki went on, feeling more assured with each word that left her mouth. She was on a new path now and Amanda could like it or not, but that didn’t change how Nikki felt about it. She liked and was attracted to Liam, and that choice was hers alone. 
Liam could feel Nikki back-peddling on her previous talking points. It seemed as though she was trying to say that she didn’t agree with her friend in the idea that he was too showy or forward. “You think all that?” he asked, definitely flattered because she had never really described non-physical aspects of him that she was attracted to before. It was nice to hear that she liked him for more than just what was on the surface.
“Yes,” Nikki nodded with a light smile. “I admire those qualities a lot in you. And if Amanda doesn’t like it then that’s fine because she’s not the one dating you,” she shrugged, knowing full well that there were some issues she did actually have with Liam (like his pretentiousness) that did actually bother her. But those weren’t in discussion anymore. She did enjoy his confident, slightly peacock-y nature because it made her feel important and flattered and desired. 
Liam grinned and puffed his chest out a little bit, hearing Nikki reaffirm what she had just said. “Well I’m glad you think that,” he nodded, “and also that you understand me on that level.” It was a rare moment of emotional intimacy between the two of them, and neither of them really knew what to do with this new feeling. 
Nikki felt a wave of relief wash over her. Things were a bit touch and go for her emotions after Amanda expressed her dislike for Liam, but after her and Liam talked she felt more reassured in her own choices. Where she was at that moment– sitting next to Liam, eating one of her favorite foods, looking out over LA from an apartment she couldn’t afford after 20 years of work– she was at peace. It was so far removed from her trauma that she could choose when and how she wanted to think about those things, and it genuinely felt like those things didn’t control her anymore for the first time in a really long time. “You’re a fun person to understand, Li,” she said with a smile, after some time taking in her own contentment. 
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biofunmy · 5 years ago
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Why Don’t Rich People Just Stop Working?
“Billionaires should not exist,” Senator Bernie Sanders said last month. And, at the Democratic presidential debate this week, he said that the wealth disparity in America is “a moral and economic outrage.”
“Senator Sanders is right,” said Tom Steyer, a businessman from California who happened to be the only billionaire onstage that night (as far as we know).
“No one on this stage wants to protect billionaires — not even the billionaire wants to protect billionaires,” noted Senator Amy Klobuchar.
It’s an idea that’s going around. Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder who is worth close to $70 billion, is apparently open to it. “I don’t know that I have an exact threshold on what amount of money someone should have,” he said in live-streamed question-and-answer session with company employees in early October. “But on some level, no one deserves to have that much money.”
Yet here we are, chugging into the 10th year of an extremely top-heavy economic boom in which the 1 percenters, by all statistical measures, have won, creating the greatest wealth disparity since the Jazz Age. This era, in length and gains, dwarfs the “greed is good” 1980s, that era of yellow ties, nigiri rolls and designer espresso machines that has come to symbolize gilded excess in popular imagination.
And yet the only thing we know in this casino-like economy — a casino that may, in fact, soon be shuttered — is that for those at the top, too much is never enough.
Many normal, non-billionaire people wonder: why is that?
Studies over the years have indicated that the rich, unlike the leisured gentry of old, tend to work longer hours and spend less time socializing. Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, whose worth has been estimated in the hundreds of millions, has said that he wakes up at 3:45 a.m. to mount his daily assault on his corporate rivals. Elon Musk, the man behind Tesla and SpaceX, is worth some $23 billion but nevertheless considers it a victory that he dialed back his “bonkers” 120-hour workweeks to a more “manageable” 80 or 90.
And they continue to diversify. Lady Gaga makes a reported $1 million per show in her residency at the Park MGM in Las Vegas, and has evolved from pop music to conquer film — but still also recently unveiled a cosmetics venture with Amazon.
Almost everything rich people touch makes money, but this current financial inferno has meant little for the bottom 50 percent of earners in the United States, who have 32 percent less wealth than they did in 2003.
The 1 percent have, as of last decade, 85 percent of their net worth tied up in investments like stocks, bonds and private equity, where value has exploded. According to Redfin, the average sale price of properties in the top 5 percent are up 43 percent nationally over the past decade, and up even more in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Fine vintage watches, which have become a must-have for the young male money class, are exploding in value, with prices on certain five-figure models of Rolexes doubling in just a few years.
Gold, once derided as a relic, is up 40 percent in the past few years.
What’s happening?
No One Has a Retirement Number These Days
“What’s your number?” asked anyone caught up in the dot-com boom of the 1990s.
Could you retire to Napa with $5 million? $20 million?
Some hit their number and some went bust, but Silicon Valley is more than ever a showcase for the unfettered capitalism of 2019.
Yet no one seems to talk about their number anymore, said Antonio García Martínez, who sold a start-up to Twitter and served as a Facebook product manager before publishing his memoir, “Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley,” in 2016.
Yesterday’s big score is just seed capital for tomorrow’s bigger one.
“There’s never some omega point,” Mr. García Martínez, 43, said. “People who get to that point don’t stop once they get there.”
“People say, ‘Why don’t you develop a hobby, or do philanthropy?’” Mr. García Martínez said. “But for many, they simply can’t stop doing it. They derive transcendent meaning from capitalism. Without their money, what else would they have?”
At a time of low taxes, friendly interest rates and torrents of venture capital available to would-be moguls, it’s a historic moment in the quest for more among the entrepreneurial class.
Tim Ferriss, the life-hacking author and podcast star who was an angel investor in Silicon Valley for nearly a decade, wrote in an email that many of these people have been “navigating work and life in sixth gear for decades.”
Without Constant Work, We Must Face the Nature of Existence
“Once they have no financial need to work — are ‘post-economic,’ as some say in San Francisco — they have trouble shifting into lower gears,” Mr. Ferriss wrote. “They’re like drag racers who now have to learn to navigate the turns and intersections of neighborhoods at 30 miles per hour.”
“Without ambitious projects to fill space,” he added, “there is often a void that makes some of the bigger questions hard to avoid. The things you neglected are no longer drowned out by noise; they are the signal. It’s like facing the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
In a sense, it has been going on in this country for two and a half centuries. “We are a nation founded on the overthrow of kings and the idle rich, so the hustle is deeply baked into mainstream notions of what it means to be American,” said Margaret O’Mara, a history professor at the University of Washington who is a New York Times opinion contributor.
And today’s competitive personality types are unable to slow down, in part because they fear slipping from their lofty perches.
“Driven people are just driven,” said Maria Bartiromo, the Fox Business anchor. “They want to stay fresh and relevant, and to do that, it requires consistent practice. If you want to win, you need to be all in.” And winning can be collecting the most cash — pressing the excitement pedal over and over again, like so many exhausted rats in a cage.
Rich People Know Too Many Rich People
With the number of Americans making $1 million or more spiking by 40 percent between 2010 and 2016, according to the Internal Revenue Service, you may think that the rich are finally feeling flush enough to ease up, kick back, chill out.
They are not.
One recent Harvard survey of 4,000 millionaires found that people worth $8 million or more were scarcely happier than those worth $1 million.
In a widely cited 2006 study, rich people reported that they spend more time doing things they were required to do.
Why do they want to do this to themselves?
The fact that there are more rich people who are, in fact, richer than ever may be part of the reason.
Sociologists have long talked about “relative income hypothesis.” We tend to measure material satisfaction by those around us — not in absolute terms.
“For most people, enough is enough,” said Robert Frank, the wealth editor for CNBC and the author of the 2007 book “Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich,” who has interviewed many plutocrats. “But there is another group of people, no matter what they have, they have to keep going. I call them ‘scorekeepers.’ They’re truly driven by competitive zeal.”
Take Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder of Oracle. Mr. Ellison always felt competitive with Bill Gates and Paul Allen of Microsoft, Mr. Frank said. “So when Paul Allen built his 400-foot boat, Larry Ellison waited until it was done and built a 450-foot boat. Larry Ellison would never be happy until he was No. 1.”
Among the very rich, it does not matter that all imaginable material needs have been met, said Edward Wolff, a professor of economics at New York University who studies wealth and disparity.
“Among the rarefied group of the extreme rich, social status depends on net worth,” Dr. Wolff wrote in an email. “Their enhanced wealth allows them to make substantial charitable contributions to institutions like museums and concert halls, that may lead to having a building or the like named after them. Think of the Koch brothers and the New York City Ballet. This is only possible if they can stay ahead of the pack and out-contribute their peers.”
Social sampling leads the rich toward a blinkered view that society as a whole is more well-off than it is, feeding their unending need — particularly as wealth becomes geographically dense. Nearly 20 percent of the world’s ultra-high-net-worth individuals — with assets of $30 million or more — live in just 10 cities around the globe, by one tally. Six of those cities are in the United States.
Money Is Like Alcohol but for Money
Living inside bubbles, the rich need greater excess just to feel the same high, said Steven Berglas, a psychologist, executive coach and author.
“If you’re an alcoholic,” he said, “you’re going to take one drink, two drinks, five drinks, six drinks to feel the buzz. Well, when you get a million dollars, you need 10 million dollars to feel like a king. Money is an addictive substance.”
Feeding the addiction becomes even more challenging in a top-heavy economy where the price tags of the status symbols keep adding zeros.
For the superrich looking to buy their way in to professional sports, it’s no longer enough to have courtside seats or a luxury box. You need a team. They’re pricey.
The Golden State Warriors, for example, sold in 2010 for an N.B.A. record $450 million to an ownership group headed by Joe Lacob, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. The team is now valued at $3.5 billion.
Even that is not enough. Now you have to build the biggest, flashiest arena. The Warriors owners recently put the finishing touches on a gleaming new waterfront arena in San Francisco called the Chase Center. It was financed largely by themselves for $1.4 billion.
Not to be left behind, Steve Ballmer, the former Microsoft chief and owner of the rival Los Angeles Clippers, is seeking to build a $1 billion pleasure dome of his own in Inglewood, Calif.
Clustered courtside together at the sporting palaces, the celebrities, naturally, begin to envy the fortunes of the moguls near them.
Even at the pinnacle of success, entertainers like Mark Wahlberg and Lady Gaga find themselves “suddenly in the same world with billionaires and financiers who own private jets and have their own boats,” Mr. Frank said. “There’s only so much you can make in entertainment, so they look around and decide that they need to get to the next level that they’re encountering socially at the Met Ball and at charity functions.”
The opportunity appears endless. But what if it’s not?
The Rich Suspect the Roller Coaster Is About to Crash
As a hedge fund veteran, precious metals adviser and financial author, James Rickards is a rich guy who talks to a lot of other rich guys. They don’t always like what he has to say.
He believes that the current debt-fueled recovery may be a prelude for an economic collapse to dwarf the Great Recession. Until recently, he said, such theories were met with polite lack of interest by many wealthy people. Lately, something has changed.
“Literally, in a matter of weeks, certainly a couple of months, the phone calls have had a different tone to them,” Mr. Rickards said. “What I’m hearing is, ‘I’ve got the money. How do I hang on to it?’ ‘Are gold futures going to hold up or should I have bullion?’ ‘If I have bullion, should I put it in a bag in a private vault?’”
“It’s a level of concern that I’ve never heard from the superrich,” he said. “The tone of voice is, ‘I need an answer now!’”
It is not just the rockiness of the stock market. The fears of the wealthy seem to be of a more existential nature.
It is as if the very people who have profited most from these good times cannot believe that times are good — or that they will stay good, in the event of, say, a Bernie Sanders presidency.
Paul Singer, who oversees the behemoth Elliot Management fund, is reportedly tapping investors for billions as a war chest for a possible market implosion.
Among the tech zillionaire classes, a place to bug out in the event of an economic collapse, environmental disaster or violent uprising became the thing to have.
After he left Facebook, Mr. García Martínez himself bought five wooded acres on an island in the Pacific Northwest equipped with generators and solar panels, as The New Yorker reported in 2017.
When any part of the denial of rich people gets punctured, the boom reveals itself to be a very weird boom. The profits themselves are confusing. Even some who have ridden the wave to outsize fortunes see something amiss.
Marc Benioff, a chief executive of Salesforce.com, recently declared that “capitalism as we know it is dead.” Corporate earnings are often tepid, yet stocks in those same companies are soaring, thanks in part to stock buybacks that fatten executive compensation but do little to help the business.
Some even notice the rest of us out here. Ray Dalio, the hedge fund billionaire, recently wrote an essay on LinkedIn that capitalism “is not working well for the majority of Americans because it’s producing self-reinforcing spirals up for the haves and down for the have-nots.”
And for those who amass fortunes, the money is the only measure of success they have, said Jordan Belfort, the real-life inspiration for “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
As opposed to people who build businesses that make actual products, “a lot of Wall Street traders didn’t create anything — all they did was trade on the value and ingenuity of what other people created, so at the end of the day, what can they point to that’s tangible?” Mr. Belfort said. (He disavowed his former excess after a prison stint and became a motivational speaker.)
“All they have is money,” he said. “So they go out and buy a house and a fancy car, and that feels good for a short while, then they buy a second house and a fancier car. Because all they have is what they earn. They’re defined by it.”
The newly rich from normal backgrounds are the most anxious of all, said Jennifer Streaks, a personal finance commentator and CNBC contributor.
“Imagine growing up middle class or even poor and then amassing millions,” Ms. Streaks said. “This sounds like the American dream, but suddenly you have a $5 million apartment, a $200,000 car and a family that has these expectations.”
A panic ensues when those people believe “that they are one bad investment away from being broke.”
And the Rich Become Anxious and Isolated
It’s not like Jeff Bezos, the $110 billion man, is going to have to auction off his $65 million Gulfstream jet if he makes a bad bet on Amazon delivery drones (or goes through a $36 billion divorce).
Even so, the isolation that often accompanies extreme wealth can provide an emotional impulse to keep on earning, long after material comforts have been met, said T. Byram Karasu, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx who said he has worked with numerous high earners in his private practice.
Apex entrepreneurs and financiers, after all, are often “adrenaline-fueled, transgressive people,” Dr. Karasu said. “They tend to have laser-focused digital brains, are always in transactional mode, and the bigger they get, the lonelier they are, because they do not belong.”
Dr. Berglas, a onetime member of the Harvard Medical School faculty in psychology, said: “If you can’t relate to people, you presume that the failure to have rewarding relationships is because of jealousy — your house is three-X your neighbors’, and they look at your brand-new Corvette and drool. It’s a compensatory mechanism — ‘I might not have a ton of friends, but I can do anything I want and I’m the most powerful S.O.B. there is.”
Limitless opportunity, extreme isolation. They already own the present. What else is left to buy but tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that? Suddenly, the fetish of the superrich for space tourism starts to make sense.
Sahred From Source link Technology
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smartphone-science · 5 years ago
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Malicious Takeovers Happen – and It Could Happen to You Too
So I want to use this post to get straight to the point. Recently I lost all admin rights on my own Facebook page, Cat. I was the creator of the page and only person with admin rights to the page. Over the last few years I have used the page to share my love of cats and certain aspects of my life with a steadily growing base of followers. To some people it is probably “just a Facebook page” – and that is a fair assessment, but without going on about it in detail I will say that it means quite a lot to me. Losing the page even for a short amount of time freaked me the heck out, and rather than pretend it didn’t happen because it was a bit embarrassing – I want to talk about how it happened so it doesn’t happen to anyone else.
If you are owner/admin of a Facebook page with a relatively large audience or high amount of cyber traffic – then you are a vulnerable target in the eyes of people with malicious intent. You may think that you are far too clever or internet savvy to fall for an online scam. I know I certainly thought I was. And that was the first of several mistakes I made on the way to losing admin rights on my own page.
Mistake Number 1: “I know that online scams exist, but I’m not actually silly enough to fall for one.”
I guess at the end of the day I’m quite quick to self-blame but I actually do see this as probably one of the most important factors. I’m not completely naive to the world of internet scammers, in fact, I ignore hundreds of fake requests to my page inbox on a regular basis. I don’t forward chain emails. I see friends fall for a scam and I think, “that wouldn’t happen to me.” The entire time I was being led on, I did have a bit of a bad feeling and on reflection can look at what happened and think “wow I was foolish,” but at the time my feelings of doubt were dampened significantly by thoughts of “surely this isn’t a scam because it’s different. SURELY I would know if it was a scam.”
Mistake Number 2: A scam by any other name is still a scam.
Scammers pretty much rely on changing their tactics to adapt to changes in the information people have about them that exposes their schemes. Most of us have stopped thinking we will win an iPhone for sharing that giveaway post, and so the people wanting to rip us off have to change their game in order to keep up with the people cottoning on to their plans. It’s easier to get caught by a scam that is set up differently than all the others you’ve seen and it was one of the first things that led to me dropping my guard. In these screenshots I’ve given an example to the type of message the page has sent to it on a regular basis that I usually just ignore.
Most of the time, when I look at the inbox at a later date the profile is no longer available and the messages removed as they have been identified as spam or abuse. I’m very accustomed to getting them and very accustomed to ignoring them.
So what happened? How and why did I drop my guard?
I’ve thought quite a lot about this as it was ultimately my own fault that the page was stolen and frankly I felt pretty bad during the whole ordeal. There were a couple of factors that aren’t really within my control that contributed and they are interrelated. I am struggling with an ongoing mental health battle due to a seemingly malevolent trifecta of PTSD, depression and anxiety. This has led to having a financial struggle as this mental state has meant I’ve been unable to continue my medical school education at the present time and have not been able to work. Feeling like a financial burden on my family and wanting to provide some economic relief was a driving factor in the entire debacle. However, what I  thought would happen and what actually happened were two drastically different things.
What I thought would happen: I would be providing links to relevant products for the people who like and follow the page – cat T-shirts and fun products for cats and their humans – while generating some income so I don’t feel terrible about staying home and making cat memes.
What actually happened: I woke up one morning to find I had no control over my page and another person had been added who was posting irrelevant spammy content every few hours. People in the comments section were saying I had sold the page and basically I went into a complete state of panic. I felt stupid, angry, and absolutely devastated that my cat page had been stolen after all. Ultimately I got it back – but this is overwhelmingly not the case for all such takeovers and so I want to write about what happened in case anyone else finds themselves in  a similar position.
The details: 
I receive a message to the Cat page from a person claiming to work for an advertising company. I see the message and initially get annoyed as I assume it is yet another scammer so I grouchily message them back to tell them I’m not interested in doing any business with them unless they will email me with the details. Not too sure why I set this strange invisible condition of a person’s legitimacy but for some reason I felt like those who were dodgy would refuse to email me.
“Velma” sends an email to me with her terms of business.
3. I agreed to proceed and “Velma” begins the next step in her process of fooling me into losing administrative rights on my own page. First she sent this email, carefully worded in a way that leads me to believe the process is to PROTECT my security.
4. “Velma” sends the invitation from Business Manager; the email comes from Facebook because the scammers are using an official Facebook tool to carry out their plot.
        5. At this point I have reached a state in which I am simultaneously suspicious that something is up, while also thinking that no harm can be done if I proceed with the invitation. After some excruciating internal debate I decide to accept the invitation. “Velma” directs me through with the following screens to add my page to the advertising account. Note that at this point I was actually kind of worried but “Velma” convinced me that it was ME sending the invitation and only me who could give anyone admin rights.
6. I sent “Velma” a message with the screenshot of the page ownership request, because to me it seemed like accepting the request would be handing over the page to her business. She convinced me that was not the case (spoiler, she lied, it was the case).
7. Up until this point, “Velma” had been kind of pushy with her messages. Once the page transfer was done, she became strangely quiet. I became very concerned that I was making a big mistake and messaged her asking why she was no longer responding.
8. After a day or two of politely waiting for “Velma” to continue the process of sponsored advertising, I became too anxious to continue and sent her a message saying I was going to contact Facebook and ask them to reverse the process because it didn’t seem like I had done the right thing by handing over ownership of the page. “Velma” insisted that she would contact Facebook herself to sort out the issues. I went to sleep. I did not screenshot the last messages, which is a same because the next morning I woke to find I had lost control of the Cat page completely. I could no longer access the messages, post as the page, remove posts by the page, or anything else other than viewing the insights, because my page role had been downgraded to “analyst” instead of admin. There were three strange, click bait, spammy videos that had nothing to do with cats posted on the page. Fans were irate and each of the posts had comments about how the page had been sold or hacked.
It felt like a bad dream but it slowly sunk in that I had in fact been duped. For an hour or two I freaked out and tried finding SOME WAY, ANY WAY, of contacting Facebook to tell them what had happened. Friends commented on how similar things had happened to them or someone they knew and the success rate of page return was quite low, involving a lot of effort. Ultimately I became extremely worried that I had permanently lost the page due to my own foolishness and finding a way of getting it reinstated seemed virtually impossible.
I found a way of submitting a report through bug feedback and wrote the details in the form, hoping for the best. Hundreds of people supported me by commenting on Cat and reporting the page for intellectual property threat. Many people encouraged me to set up a new page and start again – but to me it seemed pretty half hearted since the other page was already so large. I set a new page up anyway but felt completely devastated by the loss of Cat and furious with both myself AND the hijackers for the whole situation. However, I DID ultimately get the page returned to me – and it was much quicker and easier than I thought it would be.
Getting it Back:
During the whole ordeal I tried many different ways of getting to speak with someone at Facebook, well aware that this is pretty much impossible most of the time. A friend of mine who lost a Facebook page in the same kind of way told me about his method to get his page back and it sounded pretty arduous to be honest, involving providing identification etc. However, he also gave me this link which is a simple form that you submit when you have lost access to a page which is yours because an admin was hacked: https://m.facebook.com/help/contact/1280439701975125
Several hours after I used the above report to let Facebook know I had lost access to the page, I received a notification from Facebook with a message to say that my page admin rights had been restored.
So there you have it. Yes, I am embarrassed that I fell for this scam. Part of me did not want to tell other people how silly I can be, but I think it is important for other people to see how it can happen to just about anyone. If you are one of the people who supported me during this time, thank you! I wanted to give up several times but the large movement of people behind me really helped. And of course I found it pretty amusing to read all the messages demanding that the page be returned to its rightful owner –  don’t screw with cat people…we are a different type of human, that’s for sure. I guess it’s safe to say I probably will have a much higher degree of caution going forward.
Until next time,  Love from, 
Cat’s Human
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  via Science Blogs
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bamboozle-floozle-shiznit · 6 years ago
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First of all:
It’s interesting, this life we live. Isn’t it? Its like a movie and you’re the main character and no one gives you a script, but you feel like everyone else is reading from one and you need to improvise lines to deal with them. Here’s the mindfuck: they’re also the main character to themselves and believe they’re improvising as they go along.
“What’s my point?” I hear you say
My point is no one really knows what they’re doing here!
Most of us are just moving along, making it up as we go. Few of us have our lives planned out and even then life hits them HARD. I learnt a lot while in University, and maybe if I was a more active blogger at the time I’d have built a decent following and made use of that to push some ideas I’ve had laying dormant. No regrets though. Making a mountain out of a mole hill was my middle name in my teens. I was almost always planning, paranoid and anxious about something. I had a good way of hiding it: Preoccupying myself with other people’s problems and having a smoke or a drink with my guys in the evenings. It was very effective, numbing the anxiety and my worries but didn’t take them away. Sometimes it added more but on most days I just sat back, relaxed and enjoyed my time with people who were like me.
Now that I’m through with my philosophical musings:
WELCOME TO THE B-SIDE OF CRAB: THE DOUBLE LP by TOSAN
Hey guys! I promised a double post this weekend right? Here it is. I hope you’re happy. Bother. I deserve an accolade, blogging is a bitch to do, I love it but still.
So this post will have two topics in it:
My NYSC Experience
A life lesson I wish to share for my readers
The two will be interwoven because they’re relevant to each other, but it will be obvious when I am talking about one over the other.
In my final year of University I was extremely pressured to make it to a 2:1. In the previous post I told y’all I got out with a 3.56 but didn’t tell you how. It was a long push from my 300 level when I realized if I kept slacking I’d finish “badly”. So, I went hard and studied and was so anxious that I’d fail but I ended up getting to it. It felt really good because people knew I was on a 3.49 all the way to the end of my first semester of 400. I was on a 3.49 for a year!
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It was after my finals that I got to 3.56 and it felt really good. The congratulations, the look on my mom’s face, my statement of result was lit so if I had to go for job interviews I’d look good.
I remember how hard I worked and how scared I was. I should’ve realized that all I needed to really do was work hard, pray and live life, be happy. I stressed till I graduated. I can’t even remember some things because of it.
Fast forward to NYSC registration and all that. I got the second batch, low-key I was stressing the registration because of placement and I wanted to serve quickly and keep it moving but it didn’t go the way I wanted because I didn’t get the first batch. I was sad but it ended up for good because I was able to graduate, celebrate my birthday and buy materials and learn from others mistakes because I went with the second batch. Also I was able to pick my certificate in peace. Some of my mates don’t have it yet cause they’re in other states. See why you shouldn’t stress?
Camp was quite the experience. I was at Lagos camp, some of you will hiss and say just Iyana Ipaja, it was sha still camp and if you don’t think it was worth it because it was close, that’s your cuppa tea.
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So let’s develop a system before I start narrating the experience. I’ll divide it into weeks so I can summaries and I remember that I promised we won’t have a repeat of my month recap in the previous post.
You know what, fuck that. Take it how I type it.
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So my first week was interesting. I was still trying to get used to it all. The bugle, the meals, the morning parade and all. I was in boarding school for my Junior Secondary Years so it was not that hard.
This was a typical day at camp, NOT ACCURATE, just a loose replication
4:45 : Morning Parade
7am: Breakfast
9am: Lectures
12:30: SAED
2PM: LUNCH
4PM: Man O War/Drills
6:30PM: Dinner
8:30pm: Socials (or for some of us Mami Flexing)
10:30PM: Lights out
So, as you can see it was a regimented life. Except Sundays.
Ordinary first day o, I got to the gate and this gate man saw matches abi was it lighter and was disturbing my life about if I smoke, telling me he will not do anything, bla bla me I was looking at him like
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I acted all innocent. In the end he let me go.
God. Registration. REGISTRATION.
SEE, THIS LIFE, OBSERVE YOUR SURROUNDINGS.
Over 1000 smelly Nigerians gathered at the door of a hall and we were all tired. I had no idea I could’ve waited till the next day. Took it so seriously, put it on my head like a hawker and stayed there for hours. It wasn’t that bad though. I got in pretty early and registered did it all. I got Platoon 1.
Wait. I need to do this:
PLATOON1!!!! ACTION!!!!!
PLATOON WAAAAANNN!!!! ACTION!!!!
Okay I’m done.
So I got Platoon 1. S/O to Aunty Chioma, Poppin lady. She was awesome. We were the best platoon btw, I’m not hyping, we had the most 1sts and had the Overall best Corp member. Our Platoon leader Mr. Maleghemi Joseph aka Mr. Macho aka RJ aka baddest rapper, and inspirational leader.
After getting my platoon, I went in to get a room. See that my room ehn, we started very well but then I started to have issues with some of them because they made me welfare officer and some guy was being difficult. I digress. I went back to finish registration after getting settled in my room and got my kit . Please if your father works at NYSC, slap him for me, if it’s the two parents, slap them and then slap yourself. These people made us fill our sizes in the online registration and then we got there and almost everyone got random sizes. I was actually lucky and I got a goo jacket and crested vest. The rest were OP: OFF POINT.
I took the kit and chose not to slim them in camp because I wasn’t going to get bled dry just to look good, I found a way to look presentable for the Swearing in Ceremony.
The days went by and I applied for OBS. For those who don’t know, OBS is Orientation Broadcasting Service, the coordinators were from an older batch. S/O to Femi, Yetunde, TTuoyo, Ifeanyi and DJ Fingaz! I was advised to join OBS by my brother who was also in OBS and loved it. So I went for the interview and turns out I was good enough, they even made me Head of Editorial, that is the part of OBS that handles announcements and programmes. The engineering side handles Sound and Setup for Programmes. I was happy, not knowing that was the beginning of my problems in camp. 😦
Some fun activities I engaged in include:
Man o War Obstacle Course
Drilling (Marching Drills)
Drama (Qualifiers)
Dance (1st)
Talent hunt (3rd)
Kitchen duty (yeah, it was fun somehow)
OBS duties.
Other activities included:
Football (disqualified 😂)
Table tennis(QF)
Volleyball(1st)
Miss Petite (3rd)
Big, bold and Beautiful (Qualifiers)
SAED presentation ( 1st)
Lions den(3rd)
Debate (Quarter finals)
Cooking competition (2nd)
I engaged in some more than others and some “took my blood. Man O War literally got me slightly injured when I went the second time. (I went twice don’t ask how) I didn’t engage in drills past the first week because it clashed with other things I was doing. Dance I didn’t engage in fully, just some rehearsals. I did engage fully in drama but we didn’t get past the first stage. No regrets though it was fun. Our drama was about a village with Lassa fever and two corp members who came to the village to start a health center and a stubborn dibia (my humble self) who wouldn’t accommodate them. He ended up getting the disease too and was treated..
BUT
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  We were robbed of the second round in that play. It’s my blog let me vent. A young nigga like me, I wrote the script, and my lovely friend and someone who I admire from the depths of my heart, Faith, was stage manager and director. S/O to Ekene, Precious, Tobi, Uche, Jennifer, Vicky, , Make-up, Emmanuel, Stage hands, The guards, Extras,David (Director also but he was always busy drumming for dancers) and anyone I forgot.
We were the second platoon to present a play and the drama was spread across three days. We got the loudest applause for our day and even had to do an impromptu closing that we didn’t plan for and the crowd LOVED IT. So how, you ask, did we not qualify. Turns out on the final day another God forsaken platoon , platoon 9, did the same thing but executed it better. When we watched the second round, I wondered how some of the other platoons with a horrible play qualified over us. Some said it was because they forgot us since no one from our day qualified. Uh, Bullshit. Whatever. I still hold a grudge against them. I lost my voice over that play.
Dance group was amazing. They were first position. I’m glad I was able to famz their rehearsals and be on the group chat.
We also won Mr. Macho thanks to Joseph.
For the talent hunt i was reluctant to audition but Faith egged me on and when I did the judges said I gave the best performance of the day.
I perform like Josh Norman, I ain’t normal, nigga
Unfortunately, i couldn’t replicate it in the finals.
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  How? Well, we were third in the Talent Hunt, also thanks to Joe and I performed but apparently my mic wasn’t working I was told. Dunno why the judges didn’t stop me and tell me.
We were first in volleyball, that was for babes.
OBS was crazy. It was fun but we didn’t take advantage of our opportunities to be remembered because we were all not serious. I even chased one dead guy from the thing sef. I fell sick from the stress at a point.
We also had a camp carnival and a special night when Small Doctor, KENNYBLAQ, Ruggedman, 9ice and ahost of other scame through.
OOO, Tobi Bakre from Big Brother came and most of the girls lost their shit:
Some girls were like:
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  One weirdo in particular did this
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HAHA YOU THOUGHT.
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The food was… Food. I ate it sometimes but mostly patronized Mami.
All in all it was quite the experience
Tips for prospective corp members
Carry money at least 20k
Make friends but good with everyone
Try to enter your room first when they’re allocating so you can pick a good spot.
Don’t charge you phone at Mami if you can help it. People’s panels got destroyed because so many phone were charging.
Use the laundry if you can’t wash. There’s never really time. Laundry’s cheap.
Balance the days you eat at Mami.
Befriend your platoon inspectors.
Be active in camp, it’s a stepping stone to success.
Over rules
Come a day early or a day late. Not on the main day.
Carry your credentials. All of them. Especially certificate and statement of result and an ID card
Join an SDG group.
Don’t dodge morning parade if you can, Information is  passed and Man O War chants are really fun
Be humble, do not engage soldiers when they order you because they’re just following orders. They will miss you when you are gone.
Take a leadership role in camp at least once. It builds character and patience
Carry a Sweater, preferably white, for Cold days and Shades for Hot days
One fulfilling moment in camp was when I was recognized by the Camp commandant. We had a bad start because he came to chase us from rehearsals when it was coinciding with drill and I threw a fit. He saw it and was pissed and I legit stared him down till my platoon mates pushed my head to look down as a sign of submission. Then I apologized. In the final night of camp I came to drop asun and drinks for my OBS colleagues assigned to the staff party, he called me and reminded me of the altercation and said I changed his mind about me because I was really active for my platoon all over camp and he also saw me Emceeing the Camp Carnival. I was blushing like a fool because he is known to be very difficult. His nickname is delete because he chased a couple corp members from camp, yeah, he de-camped them and so he threatened others with the term. His favourite quote “I will delete you!” .
The man ended up being most popular camp official. See why you should not fuck with anyone, just be a badass and people will love you. This was me
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It felt good to be recognized and I learnt that people are always watching and admiring from afar when you do good or bad, you end up building a reputation for something. So don’t look for recognition just enjoy when it comes to you and do good in any endeavor you’re in.
Now to the life lessons I learned
Don’t take yourself too seriously: in camp I fell sick because I was stressed by someof the activities I was involved in. OBS was tasking because of a certain man who keppt threateningly us cause we were pretty lazy tbh and I’m ashamed about that. I took things on my head and rarely asked for help
Ask for help: people around you are ready to do things if you ask nielg. Even as a leader delegate wok and remind them that you trust them and need them. Don’t boss them around. It’s hard to remember in the eat of the moment of.but if you do you’ll make a great leader
Challenge yourself and Do it: if you feel like doing anything, do it. Don’t be shy or scared because fear is an illusion. Even if it is something you have never done, challenge yourself. If you feel nervous tell yourself you’re excited and your body is gearing up to shock the world. It works!
Have a support system: every other day I’d go to Mami with pals and drink and gist. Having a support system to take care of you when you’re stressed and need to vent helps you get over things. I appreciate my friends I made in camp and they’re all headed for greatness.
Be disciplined: I watched my friend Joseph in camp and noticed that the he was highly disciplined. Probably from his man o War days. Admired that. He was also platoon leader ad when he became most outstanding corp member. I was screaming in elation because he desred it.
Celebrate yourself and others: I know I said I had a grudge with the drama thing but really it’s no biggie. Learn to celebrate others victories and also be kind to yourself when. You lose. I learnt that from Faith who I told I’m always hard on myself that it won’t do me any good. I learnt to take it easy and always be kind to myself. So I’m leaving that with y’all!
DANCE: God I danced well in that case. Dancing is a joyous activity. You don’t need to know all the latest steps just have fun at the party. Or even if it’s not a party, play some music and dance. Take someone else along to dance with you, especially if you are the shy type. You’ll be happier for it
Ignore naysayers and Don’t be a naysayer: Ignore people who tell you you can’t do it. In the words of Kanye West. “Any pessimist I don’t talk to them, plus I ain’t have no phone in my apartment. ” Also don’t be a naysayer. Be a cheerleader!
Be grateful: gratitude goes a long way. Be grateful to God, to your neighbour, to the air, and everything around. When you can remember to just say thank you to think air. It sounds like some mystic weird zen shit but it works either way
Everything works out for good: While trying to crate this post I typed on my phone and my laptop but I did not have the full draft on PC, so when I got to work this evening, I did not see the full draft. I tried to connect my phone to the work Wi-Fi and it was misbehaving. I panicked a bit but in the end  I called the neighboring hotel that is under the company and got it reset and voila! Do not sweat the small stuff, the extra time I got helped me refine the post for your reading pleasure and  I got an idea I will share at the bottom of the post!
So, that’s that!
Here are some pictures from camp!
      Sometimes I will do reviews of the songs of the week courtesy Wax Poetic. I will also do movie reviews and opinion polls.
Next week’s topic will be about the candidates running for the office of President. I will do an expose on them. Also, its payday! Yaay, so i will be doing my first giveaway. So check in on my next post next weekend!
If you want me to review your album or track or want me to do something on this blog or a collaboration with you, hit me up here. I won’t review my upcoming project because it’s unethical.
See y’all next week
  Give some love to a stranger today
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BYE
CRAB: THE B SIDE First of all: It's interesting, this life we live. Isn't it? Its like a movie and you're the main character and no one gives you a script, but you feel like everyone else is reading from one and you need to improvise lines to deal with them.
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