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budo-bujo · 4 months ago

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Intro to Literary Studies

This is my intro post for cyberstudious's masterpost jam challenge! I wanted to participate because 1) there doesn't seem to be a lot of representation for humanities in studyblr spaces and 2) there are a lot of misconceptions about literary studies as a field (what do you mean it's not just reading books all day?)(Well, it kind of is but not like you think!)

Disclaimer: I study contemporary "American"* literature and while I have very close contact with people in other fields in my program, I will inevitably be biased.

What is literary studies?

Literary studies is a general term that describes the study of literature very broadly. In the US, this is mostly housed in English departments**, but there are a lot of overlaps with fields like comparative literature, film studies, visual studies, etc.

Generally, I think people's views of what literary studies is is incredibly skewed by high school English classes or maybe some general education courses in college, but those classes do not paint an accurate picture of the field at an advanced level. Literary scholars are performing intensive research, not just teaching or reading books all day! I will say that I didn't even completely understand what an "English major" does academically until graduate school because the work is just on a completely different level.

What are notable career paths/organizations?

Most people who do literary studies are interested in traditional academic careers as professors. However, with the state of higher education in the US, those jobs are insanely competitive and very rare. Other "alt-ac" careers include publishing, academic administration, or other public humanities work. Many people also get concurrent or extra degrees in library and information science, book arts, digital humanities, education, or other fields which can additionally open up your career options.

From an academic standpoint, it's difficult to list specific journals/organizations since the field is so broad. One kind of universal organization in the United States is the Modern Language Association (MLA) (yes that MLA) which has several regional and one large conference every year along with a journal that is pretty much the pinnacle of the field. However, there are countless smaller journals, conferences, and organizations for every specialization that are way more accessible.

What are different fields/specializations?

There are generally two ways to describe what you study: Time period and special area. People often dabble in other things, especially post-PhD, and some people end up switching fields entirely. However, PhD's are about specializing and going deep, unlike a Bachelor's English degree which usually has students completing survey courses and going broadly through a lot of different areas. Here is some more detail about time periods and special areas.

Time period is pretty self explanatory. This is just the time period of literature that you study. Again most people read more widely than this, and we do have to have general knowledge of all of them, but picking one to specialize in is pretty much required. Here are common, incredibly general, ways of categorizing time periods with some example texts/authors***:

Medieval (pre-1400): This is things like Beowulf that require learning Old English and also Chaucer which is Middle English.

Early Modern (1500-1800): Also sometimes called the Renaissance especially for the early texts. This is your Shakespeare and Marlowe etc.

Early American/Victorian (1800-1900): This is where American literature starts to show up with your Hawthorne and Melville. This is also British literature like Dickens, Austen, Bronte, Shelly, etc. Romanticism is huge here.

Modernism (1900-1945): Modernism is more of a style than a time period that includes many non-literary works, but because it was so dominating during the interwar years it's shorthand for the time period. This includes Eliot, Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Woolf, etc.

Post-Modernism/Contemporary (1945-present): This is where things get silly in my opinion, because quite literally everything post WWII is generally referred to as contemporary literature. This is my area of specialty so I could go off on it forever, but just know it's a very, very broad time period (arguably the most broad because it's so undefined).

While again these time periods are very broad, the distinctions are pretty significant. It drives me nuts when I tell people I study literature and they ask me questions about Shakespeare! It's also why most people's understanding of "Classic Literature" is very silly. Putting Dickens, Chaucer, and Toni Morrison on the same list makes very little sense!

Special Areas are kind of the core of the field regardless of your time period. This is also where I think the misconceptions around what we do comes from. Special areas can pull from literally any other field alongside literature/literary studies itself, and many literature scholars these days end up becoming very skilled in history, political science, psychology, sociology, art history, film studies, religious studies, or really any other field as a method of complementing their analytical skills. We read A Lot, but so much of it is actually theory!

Some common areas of expertise you will encounter include: Race/ethnicity, ecocriticism, postsecular studies, regionalism, postcolonial/decolonial, book history, performance, sexuality/gender, Marxism, Deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and so many more. Literature provides an avenue to study pretty much anything else you want!

What are the biggest goals/questions?

As I've already described, literature can be used to answer pretty much any question you want. If I were to describe a single question, it would probably be something like "What do literary texts show us about social and cultural issues and vice versa?" This question is very broad, but so is the field! And it allows you almost infinite possibility on how you want to approach the literature.

The central skill to all of this is close reading. Close reading describes the ability to understand a text down to the level of the word and pull out meaning much deeper than a general surface-level reading. This is a skill that takes tons of practice and years of reading to be good at, but is something that anyone can learn how to do! If literature is something that interests you, this is the skill you need to learn to build. If you care about "critical thinking" or "media literacy," it's the same skills!

Conclusion:

That's all I have for now! I may or may not post more of these this week for the challenge, but I am always available to answer questions about literature! I love talking about this stuff!

*I put "American" in quotes because I mostly mean texts written/published within the United States, but that's a bit of a nebulous category. **To add on to my note about bias, this is coming from the perspective of a scholar in the US who mostly works in English. I'm sure the field has some nuances and differences in other languages/countries, but this is not meant to be exhaustive. ***Note that these time periods are very vague and also incredibly Anglocentric so please take them with a grain of salt.

#studyblrmasterpostjam #studyblr #grad studyblr #challenge

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dragoneyes618 · 7 months ago

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The major lesson that reviewer Christine Rosen extracts from Rob Henderson’s new memoir, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, is: “The people who control a great deal of our cultural and political conversations are a rarified elite with little understanding of how most people live their lives.” (I have not yet read Troubled, though I’m eager to do so. What follows draws primarily on Rosen’s review in the Free Beacon and on Henderson’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.)

To comprehend the gap between those elites and the vast majority of Americans, consider a recent Rasmussen survey of what the authors call “elites” — more than one post-graduate degree, an annual income of $150,000 — and a subset of those “elites,” who attended an Ivy League school, or another elite private school, such as Stanford or University of Chicago, whom Rasmussen dubs “super-elites.”

Three-quarters of the elites and nearly 90 percent of the super elites describe their personal incomes as on the upswing, while almost none describe their incomes as on the decline. For all Americans, however, nearly twice as many view their income as worsening as view their financial situation as improving — 40 percent to 20 percent.

Despite having eventually made it to Yale as an undergraduate in his mid-twenties and later earning a PhD in psychology at Cambridge University, Henderson most certainly did not stem from the elite class from which so many of his classmates came. Students at Yale from families in the upper 1 percent of wealth are more numerous than those from the bottom 60 percent.

One of Henderson’s Yale classmates, who had attended Phillips Exeter Academy, America’s top prep school, once lectured Henderson on his white privilege — even though he is actually half Asian and half Hispanic. Yet it would take a certain obliviousness to label Henderson a child of privilege. One of his earliest memories is of his drug-addict mother being pulled away from him in handcuffs and hauled off to jail, when he was three. He never knew his father.

After that, he was shuttled between various foster homes, none of them stable, until he joined the US Air Force after high school. The discipline of the military helped him overcome some of the chaos that had characterized his life until then. But many of the old demons remained, including his penchant for self-medicating with alcohol, and he ended up in a detox program, where a talented therapist helped him work through some of those demons.

One of the central messages of Henderson’s memoir is that a non-stable childhood family life is not just bad because it hurts your chances of getting into an elite college or attaining a high-paying job later in life, but also because those raised in such an environment experience “pain that etches itself into their bodies and brains and propels them to do things in the pursuit of relief that often inflict even more harm.”

Given their difference in backgrounds, Henderson found many of the social rituals of his classmates incomprehensible. One example was when the Yale campus erupted in hysteria over an email from Erika Christakis to the students of Silliman residential college, of which she served as co-master with her husband Nicholas, suggesting that they were old enough to work out themselves which Halloween costumes to wear, without asking the administration to issue an elaborate set of rules to avoid “microaggressions” or “cultural appropriation” — e.g., a white student wearing a sombrero. After the childhood and teenage years he experienced, a fellow student in a sombrero did not seem like such a big deal to Henderson.

Erika was eventually force to resign her position in Silliman and on the Yale faculty, much to Henderson’s disappointment, as he had been eager to take her course on early childhood development. Meanwhile, the black undergraduate who confronted Nicholas Christakis in the Silliman courtyard, in an expletive-laden tirade, in front of a group of students cheering her on, was given an award for extracurricular excellence at the next Yale graduation.

Henderson offers an invaluable term to describe the opinions expressed so fiercely and with no tolerance of opposing views by his fellow undergrads: “luxury beliefs.” Luxury beliefs, as Henderson defines them, “confer status on the upper class at little cost, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.” The conspicuous displays of wealth and leisure activities that broadcast elite status in Thorstein Veblen’s time have been replaced by opinions and beliefs that give proof of one’s elite education. After all, Henderson notes ironically, how many non-Ivy-League-educated Americans can easily toss off terms like “cisgender” or “heteronormative”?

Mantras such as “defund the police” are luxury beliefs because their impact on those living in gated communities or the most affluent neighborhoods is likely to be negligible. Henderson comments about the policies implemented to combat white privilege, “It won’t be Yale graduates who are harmed. Poor white people will bear the brunt.”

He recounts the story of a refugee from the North Korean police state, attending Columbia University, who raised concerns about the anti-free speech movement on campus, only to be taunted with “Go back to Pyongyang” on a social media site for Ivy League students. Normally, nothing will earn faster exile to social media purgatory than telling an immigrant, “Go back to where you came from,” but this particular refugee was deemed deserving of insult, writes Henderson, because she “undermined these people’s view of themselves as morally righteous.”

Incidentally, I would rank as near the top of “luxury beliefs” the familiar chants about Israeli genocide and apartheid. They cost their proponents nothing, yet effectively broadcast one’s moral righteousness and humanity, not to mention elite education, especially when terms like settler-colonialism and intersectionality are thrown into the mix.

Henderson is primarily concerned with the way that bad ideas — e.g., dismissal of matrimony and monogamy as passé, decriminalization of drugs — filter downstream in the culture, where they wreak havoc. As Charles Murray thoroughly documents in Breaking Apart, rates of marriage, children living in two-parent homes, and attendance at religious services have remained more or less constant in the most affluent quintile of the population, while plummeting in the lower quintiles. But on elite campuses, marriage is more likely to be portrayed as a prison for women, just as the same students for whom the words “capitalist oppression” roll trippingly off their tongues can be found the same day lining up for interviews with Goldman Sachs.

But the danger posed by the holders of luxury beliefs lies not only in their pernicious cultural influence. Holders of those views are quite comfortable with the use of coercion to advance their beliefs. Four-fifths of the super elites, interviewed in the Rasmussen poll cited above, would ban gas-powered cars. Just under 90 percent support strict rationing of meat, gas, and electricity, and 70 percent would ban all nonessential air travel.

The impact of these restrictions on the most affluent would likely be relatively small. They can afford electric cars, and would buy carbon offsets to circumvent some of the most onerous rationing or purchase them on the black market. And dollars to donuts that their air travel would be deemed necessary. The impact of such policies on the less affluent doesn’t figure into their calculations.

Elite campuses have been focal points for the limitations on free speech, and over half of the super elites educated on those campuses describe Americans as possessing too much freedom. That goes with a general contempt for markets, which allocate equal weight to the choices of the unenlightened and the enlightened.

That concern with “too much” freedom goes together with a remarkable trust in government among 70 percent of the elites and 90 percent of the super elites. Government is beneficent, in their eyes, because it can force people to do what the enlightened have determined is good. The elites know that their hands will be on the levers of coercion, particularly administrative agencies. (I would wager that the majority of those lower-level staffers staging mini-rebellions in the White House and the State Department over American support for Israel’s war on Hamas are holders of elite credentials.) Ronald Reagan’s quip, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,’ ” does not resonate with the elites.

Sixty years before Rob Henderson first stepped onto the Yale campus, another man already in his mid-twenties entered Harvard as an undergraduate. Like Henderson, Thomas Sowell came from a deprived background and served in the military before entering college. He was born in the Jim-Crow-era South, in a home without electricity, and served in the Marines during the Korean War, after dropping out of high school.

The 1969 black student riots at Cornell, where Sowell was an economics professor, and subsequent pressure at UCLA to lower his standards for students, soured Sowell on academia, which he left for a position as senior fellow at the Hoover Institution almost half a century ago.

Over 50 years and almost 40 books, most still in print and many of them standard texts in economics, and ten volumes of collected columns, Sowell has leveled a sustained critique at the dominant intellectual doctrines of our day, in particular those of his fellow black intellectuals, whom he views as having spectacularly failed the black masses by advocating for policies that may serve their interests but not those of the large majority of American blacks. (Only about one-third of his writing concerns issues of race, and he has penned classic works in intellectual, social, and economic history.) Jason Riley’s intellectual biography of Sowell is appropriately titled Maverick.

In a short new work, Social Justice Fallacies, which I would commend to every college student and social justice warrior, Sowell fleshes out many of Henderson’s observations, including the detachment of elite theorists from the lives of those whom they purport to advocate, and their sometimes subtle, sometimes not, contempt for those whom they view as their inferiors.

The second chapter compares the Progressive movement of the early decades of the 20th century to present-day progressives. At first glance, it would appear that little connects the two groups, apart from their position on the political left of their day. A strong streak of racial determinism characterized the early progressives, and many of their leading lights fretted about the disastrous impact of an influx of people of inferior races to America. By contrast, today’s progressives start from the premise that there are no differences between races and that all differential outcomes are a result of systemic racism.

In the earlier period, Professor Edward Ross, the chairman of the American Sociological Society, warned that America was headed toward “race suicide” by virtue of being inundated by people of “inferior types.” American universities and colleges taught hundreds of courses in eugenics, defined as the reduction or prevention of the survival of people considered genetically inferior. The most famous economist of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes, was founder of the Eugenics Society at Cambridge.

Irving Fisher of Yale, the leading monetary economist of the period, advocated for the isolation or sterilization of those inferior types. Or as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, “Three generations of idiots are enough.” Sowell remarks upon how casually Fisher spoke of imprisonment of those who had committed no crime and the denial of normal life to all regarded as inferior. Not by accident did Hitler yemach shemo term a work on eugenics by Madison Grant, a leading conservationist and advocate for national parks and the protection of endangered species, his Bible.

At first glance, today’s progressives could not seem further removed from their namesakes. They are the opposite of racial determinists. In the modern progressive creed, all differences in outcomes between people of different races can have one and only one explanation: discrimination by the majority group.

Despite the opposite views on race, Sowell finds important continuities between the progressive movement of the early 20th century and that of today. Today’s progressives share, according to Sowell, their predecessors’ aversion to confronting empirical evidence that challenges their fixed verities, and a similar inclination to respond to empirical challenges with ad hominem insults — racist being the most powerful — rather than with counter-arguments and evidence.

And they are similarly inclined to use government power to coerce the less enlightened to behave in accord with their “expert” opinions, and too frequently oblivious to or unconcerned with the impact of their policy prescriptions on those constituting the “lower orders,” in their minds.

Woodrow Wilson, perhaps the leading figure of the Progressive era, served as president of Princeton before being elected president. Like many of his fellow progressives, he was an unabashed racist who insisted that black employees in government offices be physically segregated.

But what joins him to present-day progressives is his enormous confidence in government by experts. He presided over a massive expansion of the federal government and the creation of many of the largest administrative agencies, run by “experts.” He viewed the Constitution as outmoded for a modern age. But not to worry, government agencies headed by experts would usher in a “new freedom,” albeit not quite the freedom of a constitution limiting the power of government and enshrining individual rights.

Today, DEI bureaucracies on almost every campus seek to enforce right-thinking and enter into every aspect of university governance, including faculty hiring. Those mushrooming bureaucracies account for a large part in the explosion in higher education costs.

Sowell takes aim at the racial theories of the early progressives and contemporary ones alike. He seeks to empirically refute the claim that each race has a different “ceiling” for intelligence. (If anecdotes were data, his own genius would serve as refutation.) He met with and debated Professor Albert Jensen, one of the leading modern proponents of that view.

Sowell argues that environment, not inherent ceilings, underlies much of the difference in IQ between races. For instance, those raised in the Hebrides Isles and the hill country of Kentucky, though of pure Anglo-Saxon stock, have IQs comparable to American blacks. And like American blacks, their IQs tend to decline from childhood to adulthood. Social isolation appears to be the key. Sowell cites another study that blacks raised by white adoptive parents had IQs six points above the national average.

As an amusing example of the fallibility of IQ tests as measures of inherent capabilities, Sowell quotes Carl Brigham, who developed the SAT test. Brigham claimed on the basis of army mental tests administered in World War I that the myth that Jews are on average highly intelligent had been refuted. At least he had the good grace to admit by 1930, as Jews excelled on standardized tests, that his earlier conclusions had been without merit, and had failed to take into account that most immigrant children were raised in non-English-speaking homes.

Sowell is equally effective skewering the present-day progressive belief that all differences in outcomes are explained as products of racial discrimination. He chafes at the resultant cult of victimization that stands in the way of examination of cultural behavioral factors that prevent black advancement.

He insists that behaviors count and explain a great deal of the differences in income levels between different racial groups. For instance, black married couples have experienced poverty rates of less than 10 percent for decades, which is less than the national poverty rate for all families. And black married couples have higher income levels than white single-parent families. The problem is that black marriage rates overall are lower.

It is often said that the high illegitimacy rate in the black community is attributable to the “legacy of slavery.” But for nearly a century after slavery, the rates were relatively low. In 1940, they were one-quarter of what they are today. Sowell suggests that the rapid expansion of the welfare state in the 1960s explains much of that rise, as births to single mothers have also risen rapidly in Sweden, the welfare paradise, where there is no legacy of slavery.

Evidence cited to show discrimination against black children by “white supremacists” — e.g., discipline rates two and a half times those of white students — proves the opposite, Sowell suggests. For white students are themselves twice as likely to be disciplined as Asian students. Perhaps, then, disruptive behavior, rather than discrimination, explains differential rates of discipline. To get rid of school discipline in the name of equity leads to schools in which it is impossible to learn, and ends up harming black students, he argues. Attacks on discriminatory school discipline is thus another one of those “luxury beliefs,” like defunding the police.

One of the major causes of the burst housing bubble of 2007, which Sowell predicted, was government pressure on lenders to greatly reduce credit requirements for mortgages. The regulators’ theory was that blacks were being discriminated against in the mortgage market, as evidenced by the higher rate of rejection for black mortgage applicants. The only problem with the discrimination hypothesis, Sowell shows, was that black-owned banks rejected black mortgage applicants at even higher rates.

The hypothesis that different income levels are exclusively a function of discrimination founders on the fact that other minority groups — e.g., Asians — have, on average, incomes well above the medium national income, and dark-skinned Asian Indians earn on average $39,000 more per annum than full-time, year-round white workers.

The victimization narrative, in Sowell’s eyes, is not only unhelpful but damaging to blacks, as it shifts the focus from one of encouraging the types of behaviors that are associated with success. In the immediate wake of slavery, and for nearly a century afterwards, almost all graduates of all-black Dunbar High in Washington, D.C., went on to college. Black and Hispanic kids in New York City charter schools are six times as likely to pass city math proficiency exams as their counterparts in the regular public schools. Why? Sowell wants to know.

Focusing on the behaviors that foster success rather than wallowing in a narrative of discrimination — which he personally experienced in his younger years and does not deny still exists today — is for Sowell the key to black advancement. And that requires more empirical study and less airy theorizing.

Many of the panaceas that derive from au courant theories have been conclusively refuted on the ground. Black political power in most of America’s largest cities, for instance, has done little to change the lives of the vast majority of black citizens. And affirmative action has, in Sowell’s view, reinforced stereotypes of black inferiority, among whites and, even worse, among blacks themselves, while doing little to help inner city blacks.

Without a clear-eyed attention to empirical evidence and an openness to debate based on facts and logic, in Sowell’s terminology, we are forever consigned to the realm of “luxury beliefs.”

#mishpacha magazine #yonoson rosenblum #woke #woke madness #woke liberal madness #liberalism #leftism #sjw idiocy

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luxnebula · 6 months ago

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My master's thesis was accepted today! It's available at OuluREPO now.

My research questions were 1. How do fiction writers use the library? 2. What kind of services do fiction writers want from libraries?

Previous studies that have researched writers and libraries have found that writers rarely use libraries as an information source or an information channel, but the fiction writers who are inclined to using the library, use it often. However, writers still value libraries and librarians despite lack of use. Writers prefer fast and easy information sources, and libraries are not thought to be fast and easy. Previous studies have also indicated that writers would like more material available online and more guidance on finding material.

I conducted my study as a survey, that I sent to a few forums for writers: r/fantasywriters, r/scifiwriting, r/worldbuilding, r/creativewriting and on the forums of SCP Wiki and its sister site's, Wanderer's Library's, Discord server.

The most popular library services according to my study are checking out books, using the library's website and using the library as a writing place. One of the main things that my study proved is that fiction writers do use the library, but not for information seeking.

I presented the question about wishes for library services as an open question in my survey, so the answers were qualitative. While analysing the responses, I found 12 categories: accessibility; basic library amenities; library premises; academic and scientific material; events and clubs; education and classes; writing and publishing; technology, digital and online; information services; "I'm already satisfied with library services"; "I don't use libraries" and other.

Accessibility focused on having a library nearby in the first place. Basic library amenities includes everything to do with books, libraries' collections, loaning and so on. This category also included for easier, faster and cheaper inter-library loans and better categorisation for books and book lists.

Library premises mostly hoped for designated areas, spaces and rooms to write, read or listen to audiobooks in. A lot of respondents emphasised silence and privacy.

Academic and scientific material included wanting access to academic libraries, article databases and journal articles about different subjects. Cooperation and the possibility for inter-library loans between academic and public libraries was also brought up, which could be a very interesting and important possibility for libraries themselves and patrons who also aren't fiction writers.

Events and clubs were about social gatherings for writers, which was the biggest category. Most comments simply wished for a group where writers could gather to write together and give critique to one another. Book clubs, author meet-and-greets, panels and guest lectures were also mentioned.

Education and classes of course included classes about writing, but other subjects too. Classes about self-publishing, social media, photoshop and so on was also brought up.

Writing and publishing was mostly about wanting resources for writing careers and getting one's writing published. This category was mostly divided between resources to hone one's writing skills and resources for publishing and becoming a professional fiction writer.

Technology and online category was mostly about wanting more digitised material, easier access to digitised material and more online services, like databases.

Information services were divided into two kinds of comments: concerning seeking information and concerning information sources. In this category there were many comments that wished for services that libraries already have, hinting that people are simply not aware of what services libraries have. This could be something that libraries want to work on.

"Other" category included everything that I couldn't fit into the previous categories. Some wished for cafés or coffee dispensers at the library. One comment wished that libraries could pay royalties to authors whenever their books were checked out. One comment wished for a "person who is expert in Photoshop and could help with book covers".

The demographic that my survey reached is mostly young and writes as a hobby, but wants to be a professional some day. This means that professional writers and older writers are absent from the study, so my study isn't representative of all fiction writers. However, I think it's important that my study represents this demographic that it does, because young, beginner and amateur writers don't have the same resources and skills as more experienced writers have. It's important to listen to their voices and give them resources they need so they can advance their careers. After all, they might have their future work included in the library's collection as well!

One of the biggest questions for future research that I personally found is the awareness and visibility of library services. As many respondents wished for library services that already exist, it hints that there is lots libraries could do to market their services.

Because my survey didn't reach many older adult, published or self-published writers, future research could fix this gap by asking these same questions from these demographics as well.

#original #in english

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bisexual-in-every-gender · 3 months ago

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Survey

What are three names you like that start with the same letter as your first name?

Amalia, Annika, Anjali

How old will you turn on your next birthday?

33 :/

What are three things you like about your birth month (besides it being the month your birthday is in)?

It's usually warm and sunny but not too blazing, it's Pride month and everything looks gay

And what are three things you dislike about it?

Sometimes it rains, I get older and it's the month we have a big work event every year

List three celebrities that are the same height as you.

Danny de Vito, Melissa Rauch, Judy Garland

Are you happy with your height or do you wish you were taller/shorter?

Taller. Much, much taller.

Which family member did you inherit your hair colour from?

My dad.

List three things in nature that are the same colour as your eyes.

Moss, fir trees, algae

What was your favourite class in high school?

English and Arts

How many sisters do you have?

Two.

How many brothers do you have?

Zero.

If you had a twin sister, what would she be named?

Salome? That's the name I was almost given.

How many dogs did you have in your lifetime?

One (Luna) for a very short amount of time. We only had her for three months, then we had to give her back to the shelter, unfortunately. She was sold to us as a "family dog", but she had been severely abused and re-building her trust in people would have required an expert's knowledge, not that of a first-time dog owner, and time that I as a full-time employee did not have. In the end, it was better for her to find someone better suited to her needs.

How many cats have you had in your lifetime?

Two: Kaveri (bless his little heart, he is now in his final resting place 💔) and our current cat Bertha

Do you prefer dogs or cats?

I like both, but cats flock to me naturally.

Where was your dad born?

Berlin, Germany.

Where was your mum born?

Berlin, Germany.

Where were you born?

Three guesses.... Berlin, Germany.

Have you ever met anyone unrelated to you with the same surname as you?

No, but it's common, so I'm sure I will at one point in my life.

How many sisters-in-laws do you have?

Technically 5, but Izzy only grew up with two of them. The other 3 are her half sisters.

How many brothers-in-laws do you have?

Two

How many nieces do you have?

Technically 7. My own sister has three daughters to whom I'm not allowed contact, my sister-in-law has twin daughters and one of Izzy's half sisters got two daughters as well, but Izzy's got no contact to said half sister. So I only really know two of my nieces

How many nephews do you have?

6. One of my sisters-in-law has a son, the other has two. Then Izzy's half sister to whom she has no contact has two sons and my brother-in-law who Izzy also cut off due to transphobic behaviour has a son as well.

How many of your grandparents are still living?

One.

What are three things you have been complimented on?

My organisational skills, my intellect and my humour

What is your dream job?

Probably an employee in a cat cafe or something.

Do you consider yourself religious?

I believe in God, but I wouldn't call myself religious.

When was the last time you stepped foot into a Church?

A good few years ago. I have a complicated relationship to the Church and like to separate it from my faith.

Do you regularly attend a Church? Why or why not?

I used to. I grew up very religious, going to Church was normal for me. However, it's a breeding ground for abusers. I was sexually and emotionally abused by Church members of different Churches and different affiliations, which made me lose hope in the Church as an institution. I still believe in God, but I am of the opinion that you can live your faith without attending Church.

Have you ever been to a mosque?

No.

Have you ever been to a synagogue?

No.

What is your favourite religious holiday?

Christmas.

If applicable, does your faith mean a lot to you?

It does, but I don't try and convert people. I also stopped believing in the kind of God that is spoken about by so-called Christians. I have read the Bible three times and attended Bible studies, so I know the historical context of the Scriptures and know that the reason a lot of the rules in the Bible exists is because it served a purpose at that time, especially hygienic reasons. Also, that book was written over 1,000 years ago by cishet men who couldn't imagine homosexual people even being a thing. And also, Jesus never mentioned gay people. At all. That was Paul, and he hated women, too. Don't listen to that misogynistic prick. In other words, yes, my faith means a lot to me personally, but I practice it within the confines of its historical and logical context.

Do you have the same worldview as your parents?

Absolutely not. They're creationists and while they accept me being queer, they think it wasn't intended for me to be so and that originally, God had other plans for me. We butt heads over it a lot.

Have you ever attended a Christian school?

Yes, twice. Though with all the bullying taking place there, you'd hardly know it.

Have you ever been baptised and if so, when or where?

Yes, when I was 14 in a big pool at my Church.

Are you happy with the current state of your nation?

No, Germany is becoming more and more right-wing and xenophobic, so as a queer person, it definitely worries me.

How many different medications do you take each day?

Three: Blood pressure pill, diabetes prevention and antidepressant

Which medication do you hate the most and why?

I'm frustrated I'm reliant on antidepressants, they also reduce my fertility which is already a problem and they sometimes give me auditory hallucinations.

Is your current doctor male or female?

Female.

Do you prefer male or female doctors? Why?

Male, just because female doctors often include me in this "us women" speak, which gives me dysphoria.

How is your mental health?

F***ed. I suffer chronic depression and anxiety disorder and lately, I've felt more burnt out than usual.

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princemick · 8 months ago

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hi! should have put this in the survey, but i guess needed to marinate this in my brain a bit. i love thinking about what is art and the correlation with sports fans is sooo interesting! it instantly made me think about folk art and how it was never considered "real art", was separated from fine arts while being arguably more influential on the masses. the chants in my eyes are basically a direct descendant of folk rhymes (like doggerels), even the ones that mimic already existing rhythm of a song while changing the lyrics require creativity. the banners with drawings are straight up pieces of art to me, full stop. and how the colors and symbols of sports teams are literally tribal culture, with a deep desire of belonging, social connections and establishing ourselves. art is a way to communicate and unite in this case.

and a lot, i think, comes down to class, since the ones that create the fan culture around sports have been and are largely working class, regular people, the die hard fans who spend time making banners, songs etc. and the "high society" do sometimes engage, but they don't really patriciate and often even look down upon it. so it just comes down to "the art that is not museum (or theater etc) worthy is not really art" argument, even though it has many needed characteristics and definitely has creative and artistic value. i just find it so cool that we are always finding ways of connecting through different art forms no matter where or who we are! anyways sorry for the long text and disregard if my ramblings are off topic😅

the connection to folk art is actually so fucking good and relevant to my research thank you! I completely agree with this I think the art that we create in sport is the same kind of intrinsiek motivation as prehistoric and folk art had.

we do it because we feel a need to not to validate or make money just because it feels right to make something that's a part of something bigger or just to tell a story.

the classist element is something I'm really trying to show and talk about in this research because I come from the elitist art side and deeply despise it I want to show it and pull it down to that level.

over time I've realised I dont directly agree with my own stance but I want to call it art just to spite the art world. to say that something as 'easy' and primal as this is also art because I, an artist say so.

#thank you for the response dude deff using this #kyle.answers #sport.art.tag

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megarabane · 9 months ago

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JUST SAW YOUR ASK ON HELLSITE-GENETICS AND NEEDED TO SEND YOU AN ASK!! /POS

you are like literally the person i want to be with the bird stuff i absolutely LOVE belted kingfishers they are so pretty. they are also one of my favorite birds (i have too many favorites i cant just pick one) but birds are so smart and their feathers are so cool like omg i love birds

im currently a small senior in highschool/sophomore in college and want more people who like birds in my life :))

anyway whats your favorite thing to study about birds? mine is how smart they are but also like how bluejays have the feathers that reflect the sun to show the blue :))

[id: screenshot of two text messages that say "oh good i get to get [sic] explain this to you" / "you will regret this" followed by the ellipses of someone typing. end id]

FELLOW BIRD ENJOYER SPOTTED

(sad my ask to hellsite-genetics didn't get me a bird tho but i did get the added satisfaction of knowing the goofy goober song is a member of the genus i exalted in my ask so all in all it's a solid win)

let me preface all of this with saying that while a lot of my experience with birds and learning about birds has been in a classroom setting i've also spent *checks watch* three summers now (including this upcoming one) doing field work working almost exclusively with birds in the midwest united states, so honestly a lot of the things i've learned have been incidental knowledge i've obtained working in the field. i'm not an *expert*, i just have a BS in environmental science and a lot of birding experience.

full slapshod essay rant of me going on about birds (edit: i just reread it and good GOD i went on for a while) of me talking about birds below the cut bc i already know this is gonna be far too long but you asked about my favorite thing in the world so this is on you my friend (affectionate)

i'm definitely ENRAPTURED with how smart birds are. They're so fucking intelligent it's almost scary.

since you brought em up imma talk about bluejays first!! i did part of a project my last year of college on bluejays!!

blue jays will often mimic the calls of other birds, esp predators like red-tailed hawks, with such accuracy that even bird id apps like Merlin (shameless plug) will mistake a mimicking bluejay for a real red-tailed. when i was doing audio surveys for northern bobwhites we had to have a separate training day where the only thing we focused on was how to tell if a mockingbird / thrasher / blue jay was mimicking the distinct bobwhite call and how that wasn't to be counted as a sighting.

(in my experience a lot of it has to do with pitch, repetition, and completion of what's considered the 'full song' of the NOBO, since a lot of mimids won't do the 'full song' and will just handpick bits to weave into the rest of their noises. bluejays especially will do this. mockingbirds will sometimes do the full song, but NOBOs have a pretty measurable repetition gap between their songs, at least in the areas we were doing surveys).

i remembered learning in a class that some bluejays will find bird feeders and spy on them, then mimic red-tailed and red-shouldered hawk calls to get the other birds to scatter, so they can then fly down and eat without having to fight for the tastiest bits.

when i was working with birds over the summer, one of the things we did was setting ground traps for mourning doves so they could be banded and then tracked for hunter take (they're a game species in my state). there were always blue jays in those traps. they're so fascinating to see up close, with their heavy bills and tough little feet and they're so full of rage. and they're loud.

also the thing about their FEATHERS - YES. it fucked me up to learn blue jays are naturally brown. iirc it has to do with the way the barbs on their feathers are put together with modified cells, which scatter the light in a special way to make them appear blue. If you get a bluejay feather in your hand it's only blue at certain angles and the undersides are almost usually completely brown unless you hold them in the light just so.

blue jays are part of the family Corvidae so it makes sense why they're so smart, in the family with other birds like ravens and crows.

well i didn't mean to go on for so long about blue jays. they are wonderful tho aren't they?? <3

my favorite thing to study about birds??? hoooooo boy what a question. everything?? is everything an option??

habitat effects on population size and habitat selection at the individual level is fascinating. i've done a lot of work with population studies, basically doing audio-visual surveys (point counts) of how many of x and y and z target species live in this area at a given point in time, then using that data to extrapolate potential population numbers in an area as narrow as a few square miles and as wide as the whole state (i worked for the state department of natural resources so we were focused only on our state obv).

in that effort, using that information to both directly and indirectly learn what environmental factors affect which bird species and how was so so interesting to me, and some of them are things so small we don't even think about them sometimes!! if there's as few as a handful of pine/cedar/evergreen trees in a field or grassland, you're far more likely to find cedar waxwings and indigo buntings, and you rarely see them in areas dominated by deciduous trees. red-winged blackbirds love wetlands, and while they aren't (iirc) specifically wetland-dependent, something as small as a single pond is enough to attract them in droves.

behavior is also such a cool topic to me, which i've learned more and more about just by birdwatching and attending bird-related conferences and working with wildlife biologists.

birds like the brown creeper are bark foragers that almost exclusively move upwards along a tree. they'll start at the bottom and move up, and once they reach a point they deem 'too high', they'll fly to the bottom of the next tree and move up. conversely, birds like nuthatches, still bark foragers, almost exclusively move down trees in the same way - they'll start at the top, forage downwards, and when they reach the bottom, they'll fly back to the top and do it again.

the yellow-bellied sapsucker (woodpecker family), as the name implies, eats a lot of sap, so they drill holes into a tree, like woodpeckers do, but they lay them down in 'bands' that run horizontally around the tree, often with multiple rows on top of each other, leading to a grid-like pattern of shallow holes only an inch or two apart from each other. that's often the best way to figure out where to look for sapsuckers when you're birding!! (apart from actually seeing or hearing the little guy, obv.)

incidentally, i learned that it's really really hard to put backpack trackers on henslow's sparrows, not bc they're so small and hard to catch, but because they're smart enough to realize there's a thing on their back and will, somehow, pull the backpack around to their front and completely mangle it beyond repair, and that's before they chew it off.

god i could go on forever. kestrels. ospreys. owls. nightjars. songbirds. fisherbirds. albatrosses. puffins. kinglets. sparrows. starlings. they're all so good and perfect and wonderful and fascinating and if i could learn everything about all of them forever i would.

in an extremely roundabout way of answering your question, if you're still reading and haven't run for the hills yet, i can't pick just one thing to call my favorite to learn about birds. everything about them is so interesting and makes me so excited to learn and see and talk about.

belted kingfisher lovers unite!

edit: I DIDN'T EVEN TALK ABOUT TURKEYS EITHER I'M DOING TURKEY RESEARCH TOO -

#megara.txt #birds #ask #you found it #the bird button #ya push the bird button ya better be prepared to hear about birds #there's a channel in my dungeons and dragons discord server reserved for them to let me talk about birds #in an unsurprising turn of events this is why i go by starling

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girderednerve · 2 years ago

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reading that very fun piece against queer presentism & thinking again about the idea of the literary canon

the main contentions in this piece are that queer writers ought to look for historical queer writing, and that there's a lot of it which is often & unjustly ignored, to our detriment. at least some of the problems the article writer is getting at seem to me to be historiographical, which is what i say about nearly everything. anyway it helpfully lists several things i'd never heard of, alongside some things i had. i am admittedly a lazy reader & as a result not at all well-read. most of my interesting or difficult reading was done in school, which i don't think is that uncommon.

you can kind of tell that this is common to some extent because on tumblr where there's a strong interest in evidence of historical gay people, there's a continual air of surprise around evidence of queer lives & a particular focus on arguing that certain people you've already heard of are gay (shakespeare was gay! fight your english teacher about it! keynes was gay! fight your econ teacher about it! they don't want you to know!!). i don't entirely disagree with this preoccupation—i spent my fair share of time arguing with teachers—but it seems kind of sad, honestly! as a dull & boring gay myself i like to hear about the less- and even non-famous historical gays. but more importantly there's more writing out there than they teach in school, & as various ongoing astroturf campaigns make unpleasantly evident, what makes its way into school libraries & onto school curricula is extremely political.

i guess this is the question i find most interesting. whence canons, wherefore canons, will we ever be done with them? probably the solution instead of long tumblr posts is to actually read a) more books and b) scholarship about those books, plus what other very clever people have said about canons, but i am simply not going to do that because my focus is shot & i am, anyway, a fool.

so a few things, i guess:

1. many people do most of their expansive reading & get a sense of what they like & what literary history looks like from school, which is a solid intention of high school & college literary survey classes.

2. these surveys tend to focus on a certain set of works, which are understood to be both good & influential or important, and are thus 'canonical.'

3. there's a lot of fighting about what goes or doesn't go in the canon or whether we ought to have a canon at all; the survey of literature with which one is usually presented in one's eleventh grade english class or one's required freshman english class or whatever tends to be eurocentric, white, male, & straight, which sucks

4. there have been various initiatives to open the canon, with mixed success; my own high school education was comparatively fairly wide-ranging (we read achebe, morrison, ondaatje, and wang wei, in addition to our shakespeare, steinbeck, and austen). but consider, e.g., 'the yellow wallpaper', which was not an enormous success in its own time but was successfully championed by feminist scholars of the 1970s, who argued that it reflects an important sort of 19th century women's writing. kate chopin, too, benefited posthumously from this activism. there are probably others whom i am failing to think of, due to knowing almost nothing about anything.

5. why not argue for expanding the literary canon? why not argue that some of these writers ought to be taught in school? i love the focus on the queer self-education, but why stop there? the piece includes a call to publishers (print these older works anew! make cheap editions, new translations, accessible anthologies!) but none to curriculum composers, who surely look for what is available but can also generate demand in a way which is miserably familiar to anyone who works in a library & abruptly finds themselves expected to produce >15 copies of some school book on no notice.

6. is it just passé now to talk about the canon? are we anti-canon? this seems kind of pointless to me because surely we are all still going to be (peripherally, at least) subjected to AP english & so on for several more years, & we may as well try to get the kids to read some interesting things. i don't really see how we could get out of The Canon, however limiting we find it; it seems kind of unavoidable to me that we should have some sort of list of widely-known, well-read literature which is generally understood to be good, useful, representative, or educational in some way.

but if you got this far please do feel invited to comment!

#sorry 2 be like this. unlikely 2 improve but still sorry #it is just soup in here #you should read the article instead of my post

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chaoticoctopi · 4 months ago

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Listening to an episode of Radiolab called How to Save a Life. And thinking about how very thankful I am that I've had access to regular first aid/CPR classes for the last *20 years* through my work.

There are people in my building who go out on survey vessels every year, and so at least two people became actual certified *instructors* so we could had yearly classes without even having to host an outside person to teach. And even though I don't go out on boats, they throw the classes open to everyone in the building.

I've done the old school compressions-and-breaths on dummies so many times now, and the updated compressions-only/hands-only system as well. I've had a chance to get that movement and rhythm into my bones, to feel how exhausted you get after only 2 minutes so I'm ready and not surprised by it. I've seen all the videos of wacky staged workplace injury hijinks so many times. Even though I'm a theater person and being loud and bossy isn't scary to me, I still take comfort in the rehearsal - "YOU! Call 911! YOU! Get the first aid kit..!"

There was a season where everyone seemed to be pregnant at my workplace. The guys brought in *infant rescussi-annies* for us. No babies would EVER be going out in a boat but they taught us how to do CPR on an infant anyway.

I forget how uncommon this is. That not everyone has had so much access to these classes - not only free for me to take, but done during *paid work time*, that the lessons begin to feel like second nature.

In the Radiolab episode, they mention that the odds of surviving a heart incident are something like 8%, because the public really just doesn't have CPR training. But in casinos the odds go up PAST 50%! There's old people! There's stress! There's a higher chance that someone is going to have a heart incident! But there's also cameras! And every worker in the place has been trained in CPR! So if you're not in a hospital, your next best place to have a heart attack is in a casino. 😂

We've all seen CPR depicted on TV. You know what it looks like, but the feel is so much different - harder, more work, and on TV it almost always results in the victim suddenly breathing again within seconds. In real life... In the Radiolab episode, they talk about a woman who did CPR on her husband for ten minutes before the EMT's arrived. Ten minutes. An eternity. And even then it took five shocks to get him back.

But he wouldn't have come back at all if she hadn't worked her ass off for those ten minutes.

If you can get yourself to a class, for the love of everything please do. And even if you can't, if you're in the wild and see someone go down - action is better than inaction. You don't even have to do *breaths*. Just interlace your hands and push hard and fast in the center of their chest. Just push. You could save a life.

...I don't really know where I'm going with this. It just brought up memories of witnessing someone totally bite it on their bike just DAYS after one of my first aid courses. No helmet, full faceplant on concrete. And me and my friend just leapt into it without thinking. I told her to hit the hazard lights and bailed out of the car before it even really stopped fully. The gal was rattled but ok. Mostly road rash. But we were able to assess the situation and keep traffic away while wrangling her, her bike and her dog. It wasn't just the theater kid in me that did that, it was the first aid classes too.

Get trained if you can. 💙

https://radiolab.org/podcast/how-to-save-a-life

#cpr #radiolab #first aid #learn cpr #how to save a life

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williamlintoneportfolio · 8 months ago

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Week 5. Teamwork.

For a team to succeed, everyone needs to combine their own strengths together to achieve optimal performance (Schmutz et al., 2019, p.1). Our first assignment that was due for the Academic and Professional Communications class was to write a research report in groups. We had to choose one out of the three topics of women’s sport media coverage, governance in sport, and advertising and sponsorship. My group chose to do the women’s sport media topic where we had to write a report focusing on the factors that impact the coverage of women’s sport in the media so that Cricket Australia could know how to improve their coverage of women’s cricket in the media. I hadn’t written many reports before this and especially one that was two thousand words long, and in a group. I had to learn what academic references, paraphrasing, a literature review, in-text citations, and an executive summary all were and also how to reference correctly using APA 7. It was quite challenging having to learn all of that while having to communicate with people I had only just met. In the end, we got the assignment submitted in time, though not without our fair share of challenges. Deciding who was going to do what and the research aspect was what I think worked well. I thought we had some good information to base our report off, and it covered all of the points we wanted to make. The communication was sometimes good and sometimes bad. I feel like once we started communicating it was fine, but it was the starting part that was a bit tricky. Apart from talking to each other during class, we only started communicating a day or two before the assignment was due. Though only three out of the four of us were actually communicating. The other person decided to drop out of the course, and we didn’t find out until a week after this assignment was due because he didn’t tell us. He also barely did any of his share of work, so we waited until 10:00 on the night that it was due, and when he still hadn’t done anything, we had to do his part. The teamwork survey in the photos attached also shows my thoughts on our teamwork. For future group assignments, I think getting the communication going early, holding team members accountable, and not leaving the work until the last minute is key. I hope the same scenario doesn’t repeat itself in the future.

Schmutz, Meier, L. L., & Manser, T. (2019). How effective is teamwork really? The relationship between teamwork and performance in healthcare teams: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ Open, 9(9), e028280–e028280. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-028280

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xtruss · 6 months ago

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'We Are Broken': Muslim Professionals Quit “Fascist War Criminal France” in Silent Brain Drain

According To a Survey “71 Percent” Say They Have Left in Part Because of “Racism” and “Discrimination.”

France has long been a country of immigration, including from its former colonies in North and West Africa. Photo: AFP

Highly-qualified French citizens from Muslim backgrounds, often the children of immigrants, are leaving France in a quiet brain drain, seeking a new start abroad in cities like London, New York, Montreal or Dubai, according to a new study.

The authors of "France, you love it but you leave it", published last month, said it was difficult to estimate exactly how many.

But they found that 71 percent of more than 1,000 people who responded to their survey circulated online had left in part because of racism and discrimination.

Adam, who asked that his surname not be used, told AFP his new job in the United Arab Emirates has given him fresh perspective.

In France "you need to work twice as hard when you come from certain minorities", he said.

He said he was "extremely grateful" for his French education and missed his friends, family and the rich cultural life of the country where he grew up.

But he said he was glad to have quit its "Islamophobia" and "systemic racism" that meant he was stopped by police for no reason.

France has long been a country of immigration, including from its former colonies in North and West Africa.

But today the descendants of Muslim immigrants who came to France seeking a better future say they have been living in an increasingly hostile environment.

They say France's particular form of secularism, which bans all religious symbols in public schools including headscarves and long robes, seems to disproportionately focus on the attire of Muslim women.

Another French Muslim, a 33-year-old tech employee of Moroccan descent, told AFP he and his pregnant wife were planning to emigrate to "a more peaceful society" in southeast Asia.

He described wanting to leave "this ambient gloom", in which television news channels seem to target all Muslims as scapegoats.

The tech employee, who moved to Paris after growing up in its lower-income suburbs, said he has been living in the same block of flats for two years.

"But still they ask me what I'm doing inside my building," he said.

"It's So Humiliating."

"This constant humiliation is even more frustrating as I contribute very honestly to this society as someone with a high income who pays a lot of taxes," he added.

Second-Class Citizens

A 1978 French law bans collecting data on a person's race, ethnicity or religion, which makes it difficult to have broad statistics on discrimination.

But a young person "perceived as black or Arab" is 20 times more likely to face an identity check than the rest of the population, France's rights ombudsman found in 2017.

The Observatory for Inequalities says that racism is on the decline in France, with 60 percent of French people declaring they are "not at all racist".

But still, it adds, a job candidate with a French name has a 50 percent better chance of being called by an employer than one with a North African one.

A 30-year-old Franco-Algerian with two masters degrees from top schools, told AFP he was leaving in June for a job in Dubai because France had become "complicated".

The investment banker, the son of an Algerian cleaner who grew up within Paris, said he enjoyed his job, but he was starting to feel he had hit a "glass ceiling".

He also said he had felt French politics shift to the right in recent years.

"The atmosphere in France has really deteriorated," he said, alluding to some pundits equating all people of his background to extremists or troublemakers from housing estates.

"Muslims are clearly second-class citizens," he said.

Adam, the consultant, said more privileged French Muslims emigrating was just the "tiny visible part of the iceberg".

"When we see France today, we're broken," he said.

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marmee413 · 8 months ago

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Another minute and today's my Birthday

Yesterday I ranted about the school district. Today, I’m sad. I surveyed the students in my classes this morning, and only 5% of them found any -ANY-value in high school.

I’m sitting in a class where it’s obvious the teacher cares, who assigns assignments to encourage students to think about their subject matter. Seniors care a little, Juniors, too. Freshmen? They see high school as a complete waste of time. Maybe that’s just because they are, well, freshmen.

There are so many confounding variables.

________________________________________

Just finished Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.

What a read. I read it before. I was young and couldn’t completely comprehend the depth of his words. I know it impacted me, though. I read everything I could get my eyes on.

After finishing the book today, I became despondent. Have I done enough to be remembered? Have I become one of the people of the city who only wanted fun and to laugh (not bad things to want), live as shallowly as the people around me, only concerned with hair and appearances as well as nail polish, and the car they drive? Have I lost my depth of thought?

Am I a calamity howler? Do I still think too much?

I’m sickened that I don’t remember things. Events, thoughts, things I’ve read that I thought were important to know. I’m ashamed I don’t have a bucket of knowledge to ladle from in order to help others, especially my children, have a wise and good life.

I’ve lost the quote that shot me. A man’s grandfather died. He lamented not the loss of his grandfather the person so much, but the man’s things he did. “...he was a sculptor. He was also a very kind man who had a lot of love to give the world…made toys, did a million things in his lifetime, he was always busy with his hands. …when he died…he would never carve another piece of wood, or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard, or play the violin, or tell us jokes the way he did. …when he died…there was no one to do [the things] just the way he did.”

The grandson went on to say how his grandfather was important; “The world was bankrupt of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.”

The grandfather had said “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched in some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die/ And when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.”

It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as your work changes it into something different from what it was before you touched it. [paraphrased} It has to be something you have touched.

“Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made of paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal and if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping life away. To hell with that, shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.”

After reading this, I felt a total failure. It hit me so hard, I believe it is the basis for my continuing depression. What have I done for anyone? Do I have a legacy? I can’t find a positive slant to give this feeling. And it has to come from within. My friends can’t say, “Well, you’re good for [blah blah blah].

In my shallow head, I thought maybe I just wasn’t getting enough sleep. But I have, and I’ve been drinking enough water. These are two of my triggers, dehydration and lack of sleep.

Not sure what I will do with myself.

#health #depression #fahrenheit 451

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2024inwords · 9 months ago

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I’ve always thought that when companies donate to non-profit organizations, it's considered a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative. However, recent class discussions taught me that CSR is not about how a company spends its money, but rather, about how they earn it. A company can donate funds to organizations, but if they acquired the money through illegal means, they are not doing their part for society. Another thing I learned in class is that CSR is a change in mindset that requires businesses to be more socially responsible and ethical in their operations. It's about treating people well, including employees, customers, and partners. Although this may sound basic, if we reflect on practices of companies around us, we can see that it is an area where many companies have an opportunity to improve. Often, businesses prioritize profits over these values, but it is important to realize that treating people well can have a significant positive impact on a business. For example, creating a culture of kindness and respect can help attract and retain talented employees. I have personally experienced this in my current workplace. The company I work for has a culture of kindness that permeates through the organization, allowing me to work with teammates who share the same values. The company's culture of kindness is one of the reasons I have remained with them for seven years now. Although there have been changes here and there, the culture of kindness is still evident with the people I work with, and for that, I am truly grateful. Similarly, I realized that being a "nice" company can also improve customer satisfaction. A few years ago, our company was ranked as one of the nicest to do business with, particularly with partners, through an official survey done by an external party. Although some may see this as a derailer for success, I felt proud when I heard this because it is not common to hear about businesses being "nice" these days. Business is business, and tough conversations are inevitable, especially during negotiations. However, staying polite and respectful during these push-and-pull situations is the ultimate test of true character, and I believe our company culture is what allowed me to embody this. I am a firm believer that being "nice" is synonymous with practicing common courtesy. How we treat others is how we will be treated in return. As someone who has worked in sales, I have encountered difficult partners who would not release a purchase order (PO) simply because they were unhappy. This could be due to something I did directly or something completely unrelated to me or our company. Despite an out-of-stock situation that prohibits shoppers from getting access to products, POs were still withheld. I have always struggled with accepting this kind of behavior because while I understand that in business, there will always be difficult conversations, I believe that everything can be settled in a proper manner. Professionalism is one thing, but common courtesy and basic respect should always be present. It is a sad realization that common courtesy and basic values are not so common and basic after all. But at the same time, this makes me grateful to have grown up in an environment that taught me the importance of good manners and right conduct. In conclusion, I have come to realize that being a socially responsible company is not just about how one makes or spends their money. It is also about operating in a socially responsible and ethical manner. By treating others well and being a "good" company, businesses can create a positive impact on their employees, customers, and partners, which if we think about it – is the main reason why businesses exist - to serve the community.

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kayliemusing · 9 months ago

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70 horrible questions ...

01: Do you have a good relationship with your parents? - Yes

02: Who did you last say “I love you” to? - My kitty, Archie

03: Do you regret anything? - Too much lol

04: Are you insecure? - Yes, but not inherently. It depends on what it is.

05: What is your relationship status? - Single, forever

06: How do you want to die? - I don't

07: What did you last eat? - Sweet Potato fries

08: Played any sports? - No

09: Do you bite your nails? - Too much

10: When was your last physical fight? - Never

11: Do you like someone? - No 12: Have you ever stayed up 48 hours? - No

13: Do you hate anyone at the moment? - No

14: Do you miss someone? - Yes

15: Have any pets? - One cat, Archer or "Archie"

16: How exactly are you feeling at the moment? - Tired, but mostly content. Excited to get four days off.

17: Ever made out in the bathroom? - No

18: Are you scared of spiders? - Deeply

19: Would you go back in time if you were given the chance? - Yes, but I think I'd find it wasn't what I thought

20: Where was the last place you snogged someone? - Never and nowhere

21: What are your plans for this weekend? - It's my birthday!! I'm going out for breakfast with family and having a DQ Blizzard cake (strawberry cheesecake)

22: Do you want to have kids? How many? - I can see myself with 2 or 3

23: Do you have piercings? How many? - No :( But I want to get my ears pierced again this year (I've been saying this for two years)

24: What is/are/were your best subject(s)? - English and Health class lol. Specifically writing assignments and spelling.

25: Do you miss anyone from your past? - Toooo many people. I'm haunted.

26: What are you craving right now? - DQ. I've been wanting it all week.

27: Have you ever broken someone’s heart? - I think so, but not majorly.

28: Have you ever been cheated on? - No

29: Have you made a boyfriend/girlfriend cry? - No, but I accidentally made a guy who liked me cry because I rejected him :( Sorry man

30: What’s irritating you right now? - That full-time work is a thing.

31: Does somebody love you? - Yes

32: What is your favourite color? - Red, but I also really like pastel yellow

33: Do you have trust issues? - A little bit but nothing crazy (it's more like control issues lmao)

34: Who/what was your last dream about? - I don't totally remember, but one dream was about my sister lol

35: Who was the last person you cried in front of? - My mom

36: Do you give out second chances too easily? - No. I think very black and white (sometimes to a fault) so I'll only extend second chances where I see fit depending on the situation (Also not giving out second chances does not mean not forgiving someone, because I'll forgive people without giving them a second chance to be with me/around me)

37: Is it easier to forgive or forget? - Forgive. Forgetting isn't a thing.

38: Is this year the best year of your life? - No, but it's been better so far (it's only February so I hope I didn't jinx myself)

39: How old were you when you had your first kiss? - I've never had a first kiss rip

40: Have you ever walked outside completely naked? - No (Survey randomly skipped/deleted so many questions...)

51: Favourite food? - Cheesecake or Chicken Tortilla Soup

52: Do you believe everything happens for a reason? - I don't think so. I feel like things happen because of consequences or choices or the butterfly affect and then good things can happen anyway.

53: What is the last thing you did before you went to bed last night? - Read one of my favourite books.

54: Is cheating ever okay? - No

55: Are you mean? - No

56: How many people have you fist fought? - None

57: Do you believe in true love? - Yes

58: Favourite weather? - Either a cool-morning and luke-warm afternoon autumn day or a Luke-warm, sunny spring day.

59: Do you like the snow? - I do actually! I just don't like when it gets freezing cold AND I don't like shovelling so snow is nice, but only for a short time.

60: Do you wanna get married? - Yes, but feeling jaded that it won't ever happen

61: Is it cute when a boy/girl calls you baby? - Only if it's a significant other. I don't like being called that otherwise. A girl at my job calls me babygirl and she's so nice but I just don't like it lol

62: What makes you happy? - Taylor Swift and Jesus (that was dead serious and I want that as my life motto)

63: Would you change your name? - Yes because I find my name childish or I just feel like it doesn't sound professional.

64: Would it be hard to kiss the last person you kissed? - I've never kissed anyone ever

65: Your best friend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do? - Contemplate the rom-com potential of it all

66: Do you have a friend of the opposite sex who you can act your complete self around? - No

67: Who was the last person of the opposite sex you talked to? - A coworker

68: Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with? - My mom, but I also had a really deep conversation with a girl I work with the other day and it was really nice!

69: Do you believe in soulmates? - Yes and no. I feel like you end up with who you're supposed to end up with, but not really it's lore or that it's one person and that's it.

70: Is there anyone you would die for? - Literally Taylor Swift

#survey

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reviewfor-all · 1 year ago

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stonewallsposts · 1 year ago

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Political Compass Test

This is the political compass test.

The description below is from the website.

Please note that this isn’t a survey, and these aren’t questions. They’re propositions. To question the logic of individual ones that irritate you is to miss the point. Some propositions are extreme, and some are moderate. That’s how we can show you whether you lean towards extremism or moderation on the Compass. Your responses should not be overthought. Some of them are intentionally vague. Their purpose is to trigger reactions in the mind, measuring feelings and prejudices rather than detailed opinions on policy.

The survey statements are written in italics. The agreement spectrum responses are after in capital letters. SD strongly disagree, D disagree, A agree, SA strongly agree

On many of these I wrote my response as to why I answered the way I did. On some I didn't feel like it needed a response.

Page 1- Just a few propositions to start with, concerning — no less — how you see the country and the world.

If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations. A

I’d always support my country, whether it was right or wrong. D

I'd hope I have principles that I live by, and that when those principles are violated, I would stand by the principle, rather than the actor.

No one chooses their country of birth, so it’s foolish to be proud of it. D

I get the logic here, but I don't know why a person shouldn't be proud of where they are from. But of course it also depends on how far you take that. I'm American and Sicilian. I'm genuinely proud of some things America has done. I'm also proud of the Sicilian heritage. It's cool to read of places where my ancestors were from in works from thousands of years ago. What does the founding of America, and the things that happened in Sicily mean for me as a human? Not much. I'm still just me and I'll have to make my way through the world on my own merits.

Our race has many superior qualities, compared with other races. D

No. It's not a matter of race. I do believe certain cultures are superior to other cultures. But that isn't divided along racial lines. In fact, a superior culture can be multi-racial.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. D

I have principles that I want to live by. If I have an enemy, it would be someone who perhaps hates those principles. A third person who hates my enemy may still not accept my principles, and therefore not someone I want to align with. They may be my friend, but they are not necessarily so.

Military action that defies international law is sometimes justified. A

Agreed. International laws are made by people. If those people's principles don't align with what is morally right, they may sanction something that is morally wrong. In which case, I don't have any problem with a military intervention that contradicts a morally deficient law, even when supported by a majority. I realize this is tricky, and there is wisdom in trying to seek redress through the established channels. And I'm not advocating a military adventure every time. I just don’t want to rule it out. I think it could be sometimes justified.

There is now a worrying fusion of information and entertainment. A

I don't necessarily have a problem with fusing information and entertainment; that probably should be done at some level so the information isn't so dry as to be ignored. But entertainment can be used to obfuscate information... and it probably is being used that way currently.

Page 2- Now, the economy. We're talking attitudes here, not the FTSE index

People are ultimately divided more by class than by nationality. D

Wrong. This is a fundamental mistake Marx made in his internationalism. Poor people in America will identify more with upper class people in America more than with a poor person in Vietnam. American's still share the same language, culture, food, etc. The fascists actually got this correct when they sought to align people along national consciousness rather than Marx's class consciousness.

Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment. D

This is a trick question for me. I don't believe the government ought to be controlling either. A properly working free-market will adjust itself to control both those things. So I disagree not because I think controlling unemployment is more important, but because trying to control either with anything other than the free-market is a problem.

Because corporations cannot be trusted to voluntarily protect the environment, they require regulation. A

While I like free-markets, they require a set of rules and a referee. this is an area where a referee must step in, and the only referee would be the government.

“from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is a fundamentally good idea. SD

One of Marx's axioms, and absolutely wrong. It sounds good in principle and turns out to be deadly in practice. It is dependent on humans fundamentally changing their nature from self-interested to community minded. When the Bolsheviks engaged in actually implementing this, Lenin decreed that it would take an iron fist to people's heads for an undetermined amount of time to change them. In fact, he said the communists couldn’t promise the change would take place, but they knew it was a goal towards which they were working. The only thing he could promise was the iron fist. They killed millions in the pursuit of this noble-sounding goal.

The freer the market, the freer the people. A

Yes.

It’s a sad reflection on our society that something as basic as drinking water is now a bottled, branded consumer product. D

It is no reflection on our society whatsoever. Drinking water is also available for free from the tap.

Land shouldn’t be a commodity to be bought and sold. SD

Another Marxist belief. Of course, he took it further to say that there should be no private property whatsoever. But it turns out that if people have no hope of ever improving their lot, they give up trying at all. My own view is that justice is a state of affairs that allows people to enjoy the fruits of their labor, and a fundamental part of that is the ability to own a plot of land and work it to produce fruits of your labor.

It is regrettable that many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society. A

I can agree that it's regrettable. I don't think we can regulate it out, but it would certainly be better to reward people for contributing.

Protectionism is sometimes necessary in trade. A

I'm against protectionism in general, but there may be times when the principle is being violated by another side that would merit reciprocal action.

The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders. D

There is an argument to made for this, but I'm not going to subscribe to it. I think companies do have a responsibility to do what they do without offloading negative consequences to the public.

The rich are too highly taxed. A

I agree that their rates are too high. I can't say, because I don't know, about how much they are actually paying. There are all kinds of tax write-offs, and I'm ignorant about the reasons those exist, or for what reasons they were implemented in the first place, so I can't say whether it would be better to remove them or not.

Those with the ability to pay should have access to higher standards of medical care. A

This sounds like I mean poor people should get less because they are poor. But because I believe in a free market, I believe health care should be removed from insurance and any government intervention. In that case, naturally, those who can pay more will have access to better care. On the flip side, it should bring the cost of care down across the board. But that would never result in absolute equality of care.

Governments should penalise businesses that mislead the public. A

A genuine free market requires restrictions on the ability of predator multinationals to create monopolies. A

Yes. A free-market still requires rules of fairness and a referee, and the only possible referee is the government.

Page 3- Now a look at some of your personal social values …

Abortion, when the woman’s life is not threatened, should always be illegal. D

While I'm against abortion, I would always choose the life of the mother. In general, I agree with the statement, but there may be other reasons and I don't want to preclude them.

All authority should be questioned. A

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. D

This is a proposition for proportional response. And in general, I agree with proportional responses to injustice. But there may be occasions where mercy should be shown and I think we need to leave these cases up to humans to make judgment calls.

Taxpayers should not be expected to prop up any theatres or museums that cannot survive on a commercial basis. D

Taxpayer support for cultural institutions is a benefit for all. I am in favor of their support.

Schools should not make classroom attendance compulsory. D

I'm not sure who would attend if it weren't compulsory.

All people have their rights, but it is better for all of us that different sorts of people should keep to their own kind. D

In general, I think we're better off being exposed to different ideas. It broadens our understanding of life.

Good parents sometimes have to spank their children. A

It’s natural for children to keep some secrets from their parents. A

Possessing marijuana for personal use should not be a criminal offence. A

The prime function of schooling should be to equip the future generation to find jobs. D

I think the prime function of schooling should be to equip the future generation to develop their thinking across a broad spectrum of life. Apprenticing junior to a trade will equip him for work, but we wanted to move away from condemning classes to only certain types of work. A general education is how we open up doors to different areas.

People with serious inheritable disabilities should not be allowed to reproduce. D

The most important thing for children to learn is to accept discipline. D

It's important that kids learn to accept discipline, but it's not the most important thing.

There are no savage and civilised peoples; there are only different cultures. A

I agreed with this, but there are certainly cultures that are better than others. I don't feel like I can support the 'savage' v 'civilized' dichotomy proposed. There are certainly 'civilized' cultures that I don't want anything to do with.

Those who are able to work, and refuse the opportunity, should not expect society’s support. SA

When you are troubled, it’s better not to think about it, but to keep busy with more cheerful things. A

In general, I agree because I think getting your mind off your troubles will help you.

First-generation immigrants can never be fully integrated within their new country. D

It's tough for adults to fully integrate, because they come with fully formed cultural ideas from the old country. But if they come with the desire to integrate, they can. Children coming will, on the other hand, end up fully integrated.

What’s good for the most successful corporations is always, ultimately, good for all of us. D

This one is worded in a way that I can't really agree with. What's "good" for the corporation anyway?

But in another sense, if we, the consumers, vote with our dollars to support that corporation and make it successful, then the corporation aligns with our values.

But there can be examples of crony capitalism that give corporations success, that isn't necessarily good for all of us.

No broadcasting institution, however independent its content, should receive public funding. A

Not a fan of this, which I see as different from museums and parks etc.

Page 4- … and how you see the wider society.

Our civil liberties are being excessively curbed in the name of counter-terrorism. D

I gotta admit, I don't feel qualified to answer this, but I disagreed because I can't really think of a way in which I ever notice any curb, so I suppose I can't agree that my civil liberties are being 'excessively' curbed.

A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system. SD

Bogus wording. While it is true that a significant advantage to a one party state is that it avoids arguments that delay.... implementation of that parties strategies... it may not be 'progress' at all, and it certainly isn't democratic.

Although the electronic age makes official surveillance easier, only wrongdoers need to be worried. D

The problem with this statement is: who is going to decide what constitutes 'wrongdoing'. It establishes a turn-key authoritarian state, whereby any actions decided in the future as wrongdoing can be retroactively scraped to identify enemies of the state.

The death penalty should be an option for the most serious crimes. SA

In a civilised society, one must always have people above to be obeyed and people below to be commanded. A

Ah, if only we could all get along without any kind of government. But our collective experience is that as soon as we congregate, the various individual ideas begin to step on the toes of others. This requires a government to act as a rule maker and arbiter. So there needs to be a law, and police, that are obeyed by the populace. I would disagree if one were to frame this as: there should be a hereditary class of citizens who rule, and another class of citizens who must submit to them.

Abstract art that doesn’t represent anything shouldn’t be considered art at all. SD

My answer is mind your own business.

In criminal justice, punishment should be more important than rehabilitation. A

While the possibility of rehab should be part of the criminal justice system, it's primary function is to remove the threats that criminals hold to society and hold criminals accountable for their action.

It is a waste of time to try to rehabilitate some criminals. A

There will be some who will not respond to rehab efforts. That doesn't mean rehab shouldn't be on the table, just that certainly some will not respond to it.

The businessperson and the manufacturer are more important than the writer and the artist. D

Both are important, in different ways.

Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers. A

I do think that where kids are involved, parents have a duty to the home over career. So while this says 'mothers', I would also apply it to fathers. But on second thought, I perhaps would answer disagree, because the father could be the one who becomes the primary caregiver.

Multinational companies are unethically exploiting the plant genetic resources of developing countries. D

Uh... wut? I'm ignorant about this, so I just put disagree.

Making peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity. D

I suppose it depends on the establishment. In general, yeah, but there can be times when it wouldn’t be. I wouldn't have wanted to make peace with Communist Russia or Nazi Germany at citizens of either.

Page 5- If you got through that okay, you'll find these propositions on religion a breeze.

Astrology accurately explains many things. SD

You cannot be moral without being religious. D

I think christianity has been the driver of morality in the west, and people in the west will operate, consciously or unconsciously on those assumptions even when they no longer subscribe to the religion.

Charity is better than social security as a means of helping the genuinely disadvantaged. A

I think it's better in principle- because it more directly connects humans with other humans. I don't know if it's more effective.

Some people are naturally unlucky. D

Perhaps on an individual level, there are some people who suffer through an inordinate amount of 'bad luck'. Something about the question feels off to me though, and it's of course difficult for anyone to self-analyze the difference between bad luck and consequences. In general, 'luck' will even out over time and populations, but at the individual level, given that luck, by definition, is something that happens randomly, it's probable that there are cases where individuals suffer from an imbalance of poor luck.

It is important that my child’s school instills religious values. D

Nope.

Page 6- Finally, a look at sex.

Sex outside marriage is usually immoral. A

A same sex couple in a stable, loving relationship should not be excluded from the possibility of child adoption. D

I know same sex couples exist, but I don't think their relationships are marriage material and I don't think they ought to have children.

Pornography, depicting consenting adults, should be legal for the adult population. D

I wrestled over this. On one hand, I want to leave people alone even if I don't agree with them. But there are things we recognize as having societal repercussions, and I think this is an area that I'm growing more comfortable in regulating. I think the downstream effects of this on the population have gone beyond just people enjoying themselves in the privacy of their own homes. What could we practically do? I'm not sure it's possible to do anything.

What goes on in a private bedroom between consenting adults is no business of the state. SA

No one can feel naturally homosexual. D

These days openness about sex has gone too far. D

The political compass defines the spectrums as right and left in economic terms, and authoritarian and libertarian in social terms

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