#and actually modern publications are probably an easier way for students to learn the basics. since lesson plans don't have to include the

[pentiryn]

op left a ton of stuff in the tags, see below

#due to the Great Data Decay academics write viciously argumentative articles on which episodes aired in what order #at conferences professors have known to engage in physically violent altercations whilst debating the air date number of household viewers #90% of the couch gags have been lost and there is a billion dollar trade in counterfeit “lost copies” #serious note: i'll be honest i always assumed it was english imperialism that made shakespeare so inescapable in the 19th/20th cent #like his writing should have become obscure at the same level of his contemporaries #but british imperialists needed an ENGLISH LANGUAGE (and BRITISH) writer to venerate #and shakespeare wrote so many damn things that there was a humongous body of work just sitting there waiting to be culturally exploited... #i know it didn't happen like this but i imagine a English Parliament House Committee Member For The Education Of The Masses or something #cartoonishly stumbling over a dusty cobwebbed crate labelled the Complete Works of Shakespeare #and going 'Eureka! this shall make excellent propoganda for fabricating a national identity in a time of great social unrest. #it will be a cornerstone of our elitist educational institutions for centuries to come! long live our decaying empire!' #'what good fortune that this used to be accessible and entertaining to mainstream illiterate audience members... #..but now we can strip that away and make it a difficult & alienating foundation of a Classical Education! just like the latin language :)' #anyway maybe there's no such thing as the 'greatest writer of x language' in ANY language? #maybe there are just different styles and yes levels of expertise and skill but also a high degree of subjectivity #and variance in the way that we as individuals and members of different cultures/time periods experience any work of media #and that's okay! and should be acknowledged!!! and allow us to give ourselves permission to broaden our horizons #and explore the stories of marginalized/underappreciated creators #instead of worshiping the List of Top 10 Best (aka Most Famous) Whatevers Of All Time/A Certain Time Period #anyways things are famous for a reason and that reason has little to do with innate “value” #and much more to do with how it plays into the interests of powerful institutions motivated to influence our shared cultural narratives #so i'm not saying 'stop teaching shakespeare'. but like...maybe classrooms should stop using it as busy work that (by accident or designs) #happens to alienate a large number of students who could otherwise be engaging critically with works that feel more relevant to their world #(by merit of not being 4 centuries old or lacking necessary historical context or requiring untaught translation skills) #and yeah...MAYBE our educational institutions could spend less time/money on shakespeare critical analysis and more on... #...any of thousands of underfunded areas of literary research i literally (pun!) don't know where to begin #oh and p.s. the modern publishing world is in shambles and it would be neat if schoolwork could include modern works? #beautiful complicated socially relevant works of literature are published every year. it's not just the 'classics' that have value #and actually modern publications are probably an easier way for students to learn the basics. since lesson plans don't have to include the #important historical/cultural context many teens need for 20+ year old media (which is older than their entire lived experience fyi)

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[elles-writing]

When The Worlds Collide - VI

Kili x reader

A/N: Hey guys, sorry for not posting my own works in like two weeks or so. It was rough for my mental health and school was kicking my ass and I was not in a mood for doing many things, so now I hope you will like this long chapter!! It’s not really about the main plot, just some fluffy moments to enjoy. Also, it was my birthday 23rd September and it’s finally autumn!! I also don’t really know when am I going to draw, because like I said, I was not doing mentally well, but I think I could give it a shot in a next few days, because I’m on my autumn break, finally! I’ve been finishing a cake w my mom in past hour or so and I created a moon on it and waves in Gogh’s paintings style, I’ll show you a photo of it in next part.

gif not mine

gif not mine

gif not mine (inspo for the bun and cooking scene)

Also, I’m not sure in which year in modern world this shall be oriented, but songs I’ve been thinking of (aka you playing these to them):

Spanish: Volar – Alvaro Soler, also We Don’t Speak Americano

French: Amour Plastique – VIDEOCLUB, La Vie En Rose – Edith Piaf

Korean: Sweat, Blood & Tears – BTS (because I don’t know almost any Japanese songs, but I like this one and some other songs in Korean)

Vegetable pie – quiche (I’ve had a pumpkin one in a cafe and it was real good)

Warnings: fluff

tags: @moony-artnstuff​ @whenputtingpentopaper​

One of the fun things while having this group around was that they would constantly look around some rooms in your house and tell you how pretty it was, even if you haven't been tidying and cleaning it in two weeks at least. They also loved to explore your library and spended countless hours by reading the books. You've decided to introduce them to human culture. Only the basic things, really.

"So, here, the race of Men has developed into a different coultures and languages all over the world. Can you guess, for example, how many languages is here?" Kili didn't even thought about his answer.

"Well, you have one common language, so I guess just one, maybe two or three," He said with proud confident smile, changing in his typical cheeky grin as he winked at you. You chuckled and shook your head. Balin looked up from his book.

"There must be more. What about five, or ten?" You looked over others.

"Any other answer? C'mon, try out some number." You felt like a teacher in a class of many different students.

"Thirty languages, that could be," said Legolas calmly.

"Well, this is much bigger world, but it can't be that much. I guess twenty." Bard was thinking aloud.

"So, how is it, lass?" Fili asked and you couldn't help to cover a smile that was forming on your face.

"Well, actually, it's much more than that," you said. You've heard Gandalf to chuckle.

"It's over six thousand languages." Kili's eyes widened and his jaw fell down, Fili did pretty similar face. Most of them looked at you as if you'd told them you personally know Smaug and he's your best friend. And that dragons are the biggest cuddly softies.

"Bold of you to assume that whole population in this world speaks one language or a few dozens of them," you jokily murmed to yourself. Of course, elvish ears have picked that up. Thranduil looked at you with his icy glare.

„How does they sound, then?“ You pulled out your phone and opened YouTube.

„Well, this is a language called Spanish,“ You‘ve played one song in Spanish and all of them were listening to it, deeply in thought. You’ve noticed some dwarves trying to catch the lyrics, and when the song ended, you looked over them.

„This was Spanish, it’s one of the most largely-spoken languages all over the world. It can be slightely different, it depends on where you go. Then, there is another language, and it’s called French. It’s also called the ‚language of love‘, because it sounds softly and even as some sort of charm or magic.“ You looked to the elves.

„I think you may like it, it sounds a bit as an elvish in a way,“ You shrugged your shoulders, not wanting to offend them. They looked more interested in what you were about to play to them.

„This song is in French, but it’s a sad song. It’s also quite old, but I think it’s quite a good example, because it’s well-known, so,“ you left the sentence unfinished and played La Vie En Rose by Edith Piaf, then one more modern song in French so they’d get the idea. When it ended, you’ve spoken again.

„Well, then there are much different languages. This one is Korean,“ you said and played a song, around fourty seconds.

„What were they saying? It’s all so different!“ You’ve heard Fili and smirked.

„You haven’t heard Russian, Fili.“ Kili sat closer to you, just as a puppy needy for attention.

„They are all so different!“ He threw his hands into air. You smiled.

„Oh yeah, they are. But it’s better to know at least two languages, to get higher chances of getting a job. The more languages you know, the more likely will people want you to work for them.“ Bard piped up.

„How can you learn them? Some of them sound way too difficult to learn, that Korean for example, how would you learned that?“ You looked over to your library.

„Oh well, you can go to some classes and learn the language here, or you can learn them by yourself. There are many textbooks you can use for learning grammar, and you can use books in your target language to help you to learn the vocabulary. Or you can watch movies in that language, listen to a songs, read articles instead of books, text or call with somebody who speaks that language...there are plenty of ways to do so, there is probably even more of them. Also, depends on the language and the person. Some people learn easier when they’ll learn the basic grammar first, someone needs to learn the pronounciation first, and so on.“ You finished talking and they were staring at you, surprised.

„How many languages do you know, if I may ask?“ Balin looked curiously down at you, sitting with crossed legs on the floor with Kili sitting next to you. You’ve thought about his question.

„Well, I’m fluent in two languages, and I’m learning another one. It’s a great way to relieve stress and it’s really fun thing to do, even though sometimes you have to learn to write completely different letters.“ You showed them Koren, Japanese and Russian letters, and they couldn’t believe their eyes.

A few minutes later

Fili sat down to the other side, so you were seated between them and they could look on your phone and into your book about Korea and Japan.

„How can you write that? How can you read that? It’s impossible! It all sounds the same!“ Kili and Fili cried out when Google Translate pronounciation have proved them wrong after another attempt of reading the languages.

„Every language has it’s own rhytm and you have to really listen to it, so you will recognize the words. If you don’t know the languages, it does sound close. Maybe we could try out some French and Spanish, what do you think?“ You said after seeing the elves being annoyed that they could not pronounce it, but not complaining as the dwarf brothers.

But oh boy, French and Spanish, that was another challenge. Even if not that big, but still.

„How do you do that with your mouth?!“ Kili asked you, looking as unhappy, flustrated puppy whom you took it’s ball and refused to give it back (or throw it).

„There are some rules for something called grammar and pronounciation, which you are purposely ignoring and then you complain you don’t understand how to do it!“ You said and rolled your eyes.

„You always tell me it’s wrong!“

„Because it is! You are pronouncing it wrong! It’s leviOUsa, not levioSAAA-!“ You stopped and then you started laughing. Kili furrowed his eyebrows.

„What, what are you laughing about? What is so funny? Y/N? Y/N, are you okay?!“ Kili looked at you, lying on your back on the floor, tears from laugh sparkling in your eyes.

„I sound-I sound just like a Hermione! It’s not LevioSAA-“ You started laughing again and they all looked at you worried.

„Shall we be concerned?“ Fili asked and you shook your head.

„No, no, it’s okay, I just-“ You looked at Kili and tried to not to laugh again.

„I’m okay, it’s okay.“ You breathed in and out, slowly, closing your eyes. You didn’t noticed how most of them looked at each other. As if they’d ended up with some crazy person.

You spoken.

„Okay, I think that was enough of languages for today. I know you have Khuzdul, Elvish and common language in Middle-Earth, but here is much more. Human culture in here has been developing for thounsands of years on many different places, so that’s why.“ You said and got up to your laptop to find some pictures of a certain places. They all came closer.

„Well, this is Rome, in Italy. Then, we have Paris, in France, now some Scandinavian countries. This is Stockholm, Sweden. Then, there is London, Great Britain. Now, this is Los Angeles and New York, that’s both in United States. This is in Japan and this is in Australia.“ You showed them well-known places all over the world and especially Europe, since you assumed it was the closest to Middle-Earth style of living.

After a while, you’ve decided to make some dinner. It wasn’t too much left, and you knew you’d have to go shopping soon, but you didn’t wanted to stress yourself about leaving some fictional characters alone in your house for an hour. No. You prepared a recipe and ingredients and started making dough and left them in living room with another pile of books. They especially loved classics, because they had similar language to what they were using, but they liked even more modern books. You didn’t even counted the time you were thanking yourself for collecting books and being a bookworm. And being a „public library“, as you and your friend would say.

Meanwhile, Kili looked up from his book to Fili, whom was reading one book series and seemed to like it, but now his brows was furrowed as if trying to solve some problem that came up. He quietly closed it and noticed you weren’t here with them, so he‘ve decided to find you and maybe talk with you about the book he was currently reading.

The first place, where he’ve decided to take a look to, was kitchen. He stood in the doorway, more to the side so you wouldn’t noticed him right away, but you seemed to be deeply in thought and mentally far away.

You were making a dough, with your hair up in a messy bun, your apron had quite a lot of flour on it, some flour ended up on your face and especially on your cheeks and up to elbows your hands were covered in it, even in your hair was a flour, but you didn’t seemed to mind it here. Next to you, there was a bowl of some cutted vegetables and a smaller bowl of cheese and a few eggs, some spices and herbs.

He didn’t noticed when you‘ve looked up as his memory flew back to his mother back in their old home in Middle-Earth in the kitchen cooking and his and Fili’s failed attempts they called cooking. They were much better at cooking from mud and twiggs than from real food. He imagined his mother and you in that kitchen and that you’d both tell him to get out from the kitchen and he’d sneak in afterwards to steal some piece of pie or cookies or sweet pasteries to prepare for you and him a picnic under the stars...

„Are you going to stand here and stare at me while I’m cooking?“ You placed your hands on your hips and a smile was dancing across your face. Kili’s head snapped and his cheeks blushed.

„I, uh, I wanted to talk with you about this book, I think it’s a good one.“ You came back to your dough and started working on it, again.

„Well, what books is it?“ You looked at the book he was holding.

"Oh, so The Picture of Dorian Gray. How do you like it so far?“ Kili looked at the book in his hands as if it could answer instead of him. He didn’t wanted to embarrass himself in front of you.

„Well, I...uh...it’s-it’s interesting and-“ You softly chuckled and his head snapped up.

„You can sit by the table rather than to stand in the doorway, Kee. Or you can help me out.“ You clapped your hands and big cloud of flour appeared in the air. A cheeky grin found a way to his face.

„Oh, so you would risk cooking with me, miss Y/N?“ You grinned back at him.

„Well, maybe. And still, you can sit down and talk about the book, I’ll listen to you.“ You said and a soft chuckle escaped your lips when you’ve seen how eager he was to sit near you, somebody whom was ready to listen to him.

„Tell me what you honestly think of that book, Kili. I won’t get offended or anything.“ You smiled at him and you’ve seen his eyes to shine as he spoke and when you were talking about all the characters and the storyline from different points of view, but that didn’t lasted long, because...food.

„What are you cooking?“ Kili asked curiously as he’ve checked the dough you were doing, the vegetables, spices and herbs.

„I’m baking a pie with vegetables and cheese, Kee.“ He scrunched his face and furrowed eyebrows.

„Why would you bake it with vegetables? Pies are sweet, aren’t they?“ He looked up at you with his questioning soft brown eyes and you’ve melted once again. You sighed and started explaining.

„Well, they are, but this type of pie is made with vegetables and cheese and eggs. It tastes good, I promise. It’s something like a pizza, but...well, it’s just a bit different, but good too!“ You said and he nodded, remembering that you baked a pizza a few days ago. Then he was standing next to you, looking sleepishly down at it.

„Put your hair out of the way, Kili, or they will end up in it. And that would not be good.“ You said, pulled out a hair-tie from the pocket of your apron, and created a messy bun out of his hair. You’ve realized that touching someone’s hair is (well, at least in the movies and books) intimate for dwarves, so you felt your face to heat up in embarrassement. You realized that it was probably true when Kili was suddenly stiff and his ears became red.

„Oh, I didn’t realized, I’m sorry-“ He cutted you off.

„It’s okay,“ You noticed he was sleepishly looking at you, but there was a twinkle in his eyes telling you he was not mad at you. (As if he could be possibly actually mad at somebody, you thought.) You shyly looked away.

„I, uh, wanna help me out?“ You looked down at floor, suddenly too embarrassed to look at him, so you didn’t noticed how his eyes widened in surprise.

„Y-you would let me to cook?!“ His voice came out as high-pitched and you glanced at him. His eyes were set on you, he was clearly surprised and excited.

„I will keep an eye on you, but yes, at some point I will.“ You said a bit hesitantely. He looked a bit concerned, but excitement overtook him. You handed him an apron. Yours was dark blue with little stars on it, this one was creamy with brown fabric around the edges. You helped him to put it on and stepped a bit away, hands on your hips and slightely narrowed eyes.

„Yeah, that’s good. But we need to do something with your bangs,“ You said and pulled out a few hair clips and bobby pins in more sizes from pocket of your apron. You went through them and then slightely nodded, chose a few of them and the rest gave back. You looked up to Kili.

„This will help to hold all of your hair out of your face,“ you said and he took them and suspiciously glanced at them. You sighed and rolled playfully your eyes. You took one of your pocket, took a strand of hair that escaped to your bun and inhaled.

„That’s how to do it. It’s not like it will bite you.“ You said, clasped the strand to it’s place, placing your hands on your hips and rising your eyebrow. He grinned and winked at you.

„Okay, let’s get the pie done!“ You quickly said, trying to cover your rising blush.

You broke the eggs into the bowl with vegetables and let Kili to put the herbs into it, but you added spices and heavy cream into it.

„Now, mix it-carefully, so it won’t end up on the floor and stay in the bowl-and then carefully pour it onto the dough,“ you motioned to the prepared dough on pie dish. Kili, when he calmed down (which almost didn’t happened, he seemed to be excited somebody trusted him enough to let him to kitchen to do something else than just eat, drink or sneak in for food), was a quick learner. You placed the pie to oven and let it to bake. You leaned against the counter and with a huff you wiped off your forehead.

„I think it’s time to get cleaned up,“ you sighed, your eyes falling shut. Kili nodded, but it seemed something on your face cought his attention. He came closer, he was close enough for you to see his soft gaze filled with concern and his brows slightely scrunched, him being concentrated.

„You have...a bit of flour left here...“ he said and his thumb runned across your cheek. You slighely flinched on that sudden contact. Your eyes met his and you’ve seen in his gaze he was thinking about something. His touch was sending shivers down your spine. You slightely opened your mouth, but closed it again, not wanting to ruin the moment. His eyes had a sparks in them, but he looked more nervous than cheeky and confident this time.

You couldn’t help but looked quickly on his lips and back to his eyes. It was only you two now, as if the whole world disappeared. You were holding your breath, nervous what was about to happen.

„I-,“ Kili whispered and you felt his breath on your lips. He was looking deep into your e/c eyes, thinking about how beautiful they were and how close he was. He could kiss you, your lips were just a few inches away, and he’d lie if he said he have never, at least once thought about how it would felt like to kiss you, at least once, since he met you.

„Kili, where are you?!“ You both flinched, quickly parted and looked away. You’ve heard Kili groaning as his older brother appeared in the doorway.

„You need to read this series Kee-wait-“ he slightely frowned, looking at his brother more properly.

„You were...cooking?“ You nervously smiled.

„Uhm, yeah, I was making a dinner and, uhm, Kili was helping me out,“ You said.

„Kili, you can go clean up, I will clean here a bit,“ You didn’t gave him a place for an answer when you pushed him to go to Fili. When a door fell after them, you sat down on the floor and thought about that moment you almost kissed. And then Fili came in, you thought and groaned. He was definetely keeping an eye on his brother.

[rotationalsymmetry]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/business/covid-economy-parents-kids-career-homeschooling.html?fbclid=IwAR08j8RwbP4SbSW3gY07NCYr_2-g5M61ps72nQi5CMmz1CYe0DCoO-MnJ0A So. On one level, there is a very pragmatic concern here and I don’t really want to take away from it: a lot of families are in really, really bad situations and aren’t sure what to do, and the individual solutions are not good ones. Parents need a massive financial bail-out and also it’d be kind of I guess nice to figure out a way to counter the fact that lots of women are going to have their careers and lifetime earning potential dramatically harmed by this. On another level, this is what happens when you try to make child-raising as cost-efficient as possible. (And an awful lot of what goes on with schools makes a lot more sense if you see it in terms of childcare being the primary goal, socialization* being the second goal, and actual imparting of knowledge and skills to be in third place at best.) We act as though it’s reasonable to have 15-30+ kids all the same age in a room with a single adult, rather than having mixed age groups with multiple adults, including seniors, and multiple children and teenagers of different ages. This is not normal in the sense that for most of human existence, people didn’t do things that way. Mass education is a modern phenomenon just a couple centuries old. And it doesn’t have to be this way (and it also doesn’t have to be this way for kids to get a decent education) -- things are this way so that adults can go off and work in the factory office and their kids will neither get in the way of them working nor be workers themselves. (The trend of children working in factories under appallingly unsafe conditions before the rise of mass education, was really, really bad. At the time, sending all children to school was a much better alternative to having poor kids work in factories under high-risk conditions.) Point is, his is a choice we’re making. Some different choices we could make while still having an industrialized society and a mass education system:

Have decent amounts of parental leave (for dads too) like most industrialized countries. So at least daycare wouldn’t have to start as young.

Also substantial vacation time, as vacation time can be important for parent-child bonding and creating positive memories and just general enrichment.

Normalize part time work, normalize having part time work with full benefits, replace the forty hour week with a shorter length of time. The forty hour week was seen as a reasonable length when it was normal to have one parent work and one stay home; now that it’s normal to have almost all adults working, and with dramatically increased efficiency due to automation, the default week should be much shorter.

Normalize work with flexible hours.

Raise minimum wage. By a lot. (This goes hand and hand with shortening the work week: as long as fewer hours = less pay, a lot of people are going to figure they can’t afford to work fewer hours.)

Reduce stigma against stay at home parents of all genders.

Universal health care (to make it easier to work part time jobs or to be an entrepreneur, and to make it easier to take time off from working entirely.)

Have better social services in general, and possibly a Universal Basic Income. (One way to deal with the lifetime earning hit of staying home with a young child for a couple years is to tell women to not do it (and assume men already know not to); another way is to make it less painful to be poor.)

Pay for this by taxing the rich at New Deal rates and reducing the military budget. This would be a good idea even if we did nothing with the money.

Have more adults in classrooms -- which might or might not mean more teachers. Have adults who are there for the kids’ emotional needs and not just their academic needs. Separate out the teacher role from the “classroom cop” role or ideally change school’s approach to discipline/classroom management entirely (we’d have far more teachers entering and staying in the profession if teaching didn’t require enforcing discipline; at minimum we could have public tutors who work one-on-one and in small groups with struggling (or gifted) kids be a common supplement to the primary classroom teacher, as an option for teachers who don’t want to eg supervise detentions) and allow opportunities for kids who just aren’t up for participating in class on a given day to not be in class without having to go home either. (That would probably dramatically improve behavior problems right there.) Have enough counselors that seeing your counselor isn’t a once a year experience for most kids. Sometimes these extra adults should be selected based on who the community thinks is qualified and who is from the same racial/cultural background as the students, not necessarily on education credentials, since there’s massive racial and class elements to who gets educated. And pay should not be based solely on education credentials either. Have enough adults that they can respond not only to kids who are causing problems but also look out for the wellbeing of the quiet well-behaved kids too.

Encourage ways for unrelated adults and children (and children of different ages) to interact outside of daycare/school, including structured Big Brother/Big Sister type things and less structured activities.

Many nuclear families don’t live anywhere near their extended family; I’m not sure what to do about that, but it’s not ideal for children. Close relationships with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins can be very good for children’s health and development.

Pass laws restricting unpredictable shift work, which is known to be bad for worker’s health and is undoubtably terrible for parent-child bonding as well.

Fully support kids with special needs (in the sense of, kids who really do need one-on-one adult presence at all times, or perhaps more accurately situations where other people need the child to have one-on-one attention for them to be comfortable) including outside of school. Comprehensive age-appropriate education from pre-K through college about all disabilities, including developmental disabilities and mental illness, with a focus on how non-disabled kids/adults can treat disabled people respectfully.

I feel like there should be something here about how schools tend to suspend and expel black students at higher rates, but I don’t really know what to say about it.

Encourage kids to want to grow up to be well rounded human beings who are compassionate, responsible, and ethical, over being “successful” (ie having a high-status well-paying job.) Reduce the stigma of working lower status jobs for adults, and reduce the prestige of working higher status jobs. This starts with asking kids questions other than what do they want to be when they grow up, and asking adults questions other than “what do you do?” 

Kids need close personal relationships with adults, and there is a limit to how close a classroom teacher can get to a class of 15 kindergardeners or multiple classes of 30 highschoolers. But, if we had a reasonable adult:child ratio -- a ratio closer to what people would experience without institutions -- and some of the adults were their primarily to build those relationships? Kids could form meaningful bonds at school as well as at home.

But also, parents should have more time available to spend with their children. And other adults as well. “It takes a village to raise a child” and all that.

*When a group of schoolkids is on a field trip, they for the most part look at you while you’re speaking, raise their hands when they have a question, etc. Homeschool groups don’t. It’s not really that raising one’s hand is necessary behavior, but if it’s behavior that you’re expecting and you don’t get it, that creates problems. Socialization is also: learning to be punctual, learning to hold your pee, learning to accept authority, learning to tune out your personal desires when they’re incompatible with the environment you’re in, learning gender roles and classism and so on, learning to evaluate whether you got the right answer or not based on what your teacher says, learning to see sparkly stickers as a reasonable substitute for personal attention, learning to keep your feelings to yourself, etc. It’s not that socialization is bad; socialization is adapting yourself to the world that you live in. Socialization is also washing your hands after using the bathroom and complimenting people on their haircuts and (right now) wearing a fucking mask.

[arcanalogue]

Notes on the Tetractys: Vol. 1

I have promised to do some writing about the Tetractys, so here it goes.

The first time this symbol blipped onto my radar was in 2009, when I learned about the it via somebody else’s artwork. At that point I had studied a bit of Greek philosophy and a heap of that Hebrew-adjacent mysticism that modern occultists appear to have bet everything on.

There’s literally no end to the amount of information out there about all of my favorite subjects, just waiting to be learned! This is why it’s so daunting for beginners who want to connect to certain magickal traditions: you want to know your shit, but we’re talking about areas of study which are notoriously difficult to access, and in many cases have been selected against in the great evolutionary arms-race of education. And then there are the gatekeepers upon gatekeepers upon gatekeepers...

The internet is an amazing tool for educating oneself, but there are so many ways to use it, and not a lot of instructions (just endless corrections). It takes a dexterous and inquisitive mind to exercise its potential in any focused way — to know what there even is to search for in the first place, and then how to search for it, how to dig into the crevices you find between related subjects and mine them for additional information... which informs future searches, etc.

But we still have it so much easier than anyone who came before us! Reading about the ways in which knowledge was passed down from teacher to student, from generation to generation, during the times of Pythagoras and other Greek philosophers is just fascinating to me. How did they manage to keep the chain from breaking? 

Then you realize how many chains did break along the way. Those we have access to are just the ones which gained a critical mass of interest, or happened to be preserved, or managed to survive all the historical incidents that have wiped out massive amounts of history. 

We gradually realize that at virtually any point during its existence, a thing can be lost. Sometimes these things are lost on purpose, other times they slip through our fingers as we reach for other things. And then in some rare instances, a lost thing can be found again. So there’s often a continuity in a thing’s existence that isn’t evident in our historical record — which, from a distance, could probably be visualized as a string of lights blinking on and off again as various things (ideas, objects, people) are lost, forgotten, rediscovered, and then lost again, blipping across humankind’s awareness and then retreating, over and over across centuries.

Basically we humans are playing a giant “don’t let the balloon touch the floor” game with our own history, except with billions of people and balloons in play at once, and some of the players unfairly seem to be armed with pointy sticks. It’s an absurdly clumsy scenario, and no matter how well we try to play together... suffice to say, there will be casualties.

The Greeks knew this. They’d already seen it! Which is why some of the traditions you read about were so strict, or so eccentrically intense. These teachers knew their entire body of work could go up in smoke, literally anytime. In many cases they’d observed it firsthand. In some instances, they’d personally wielded the torches! Since the very dawn of technology, probably pre-dating language itself, humans have been engaged in informational warfare.

This is one way that teachers, inventors and explorers actually manage to change the course of history: by determining who can be trusted with emerging information. That’s why security and access remain central to conversations about technology to this very day. What is beneficial to keep secret, and what should be made available to the public? 

Some make these choices wisely, others choose unwisely, and everything we see around us is basically the grand result of all those choices.

Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be about the Tetractys? 

*bops balloon back toward ceiling*

There’s a reason why certain symbols and designs from antiquity remain in play today, thousands of years later. It’s the same reason that creators are constantly trying to create new ones, or in some cases just scooping up old symbols, dusting them off, remixing and repurposing them for a new mission.

Symbols and patterns are sticky. We like looking at them, thinking about them, playing with them. Remember how you did this as a child, over and over: encountering a new symbol, you would draw it, repeat it. As a product of embedding it in your own memory, you leave it where it may be found by someone else. As a technology, symbols are uniquely equipped for longevity in the human world.

The human eye and brain are linked in a way that’s predisposed to recognize patterns, and pattern recognition is key to learning (among many other things) mathematics.

Mathematics (which I’m terrible at, so don’t worry, this isn’t about to become a math blog) will always the key to understanding the reality we inherited, and to seeing its potential as we gradually fabricate a new one.

The Tetractys is both a symbol and a pattern, which makes it especially sticky and especially fun to play with. With very little explanation, its layers of meaning begin to unfold in the mind. It teases, it reveals, it obscures. The Tetractys nudges us new toward thresholds of awareness, echoing the cascading effect of reality’s formation described in the Tetractys itself.

As such, it remains its own best recommendation. Is it any wonder that Pythagoreans flipped their collective lids over it?

The author at Organelle writes:

“What [Pythagoras] was gave us is nothing like what it at first appears to be. This is why people were swearing by his name for having brought this simple diagram into the world of human experience: a toy which none could own, and anyone with a stick and some dirt could instantly play with. It requires no manufacture — it cannot not be stolen or co-opted, and ‘giving it away’ causes the giver and the gifted to become ‘exponentially more wealthy’ — in ongoing progressions.“

As early mathematicians fleshed out new concepts, and invented new symbols to represent their discoveries, they were basically just skipping stones further down the stream, packaging ideas in ways that other humans would be able to recognize and access and build upon. Sometimes this was done in full public view, but often they worked in secret, because their bodies of work (as well as their actual bodies) were vulnerable to being dismantled by anyone who found them threatening.

The reason I chose to begin writing about the Tetractys this way was to highlight that there are many different forms of information, many forms of teaching, many forms of learning. And, as we have finally proven, the world is also full of different kinds of human intelligence, capable of many different things. We’re slowly digging out from preconceptions imposed on us by minds that were overly concerned with ideals; any deviations from the ideal were considered to be of lesser value, selected against.

That’s one consequence of hierarchical religious thinking, and it’s not hard to see how even the Tetractys — with its depiction of reality cascading downward from a perfected “monad” state to an earthly “tetrad” — could end up appearing to confirm earlier humans’ preconceptions about what human perfection ought to look like, sound like, be like. Contemplating the pure language of mathematics, or seeking the pure spiritual experience, we crave to reform ourselves and our world to reflect this pursuit. 

Science and religion were conjoined for so long in our ancient history, it’s not surprising that notions conflating scientific purity and spiritual purity still turn up everywhere you look. We’re hooked on them! You see it a lot in New Age thought, and the desire to find confirmation of our spiritual beliefs in “natural” phenomena; the dreaded quest for “authenticy.”

I wanted to start by pointing out that I am not qualified to teach others in the formal sense. I have no accreditation. My academic pedigree is limited to... well, words written in a blog post, however thoughtfully I manage to string them together.

To learn tarot and other various practices, first I had to learn how to learn. For the most part, my education was missing this crucial step. I’ve always been quite naturally absorbent, but the moment my curiosity in any subject was satisfied, I considered my work done. 

That’s probably how most people function when left to their own conclusions... unless survival dictates otherwise. But some of us discover we simply have to keep evolving, keep looking for answers, in order to endure. How do I adapt to survive in this world? What are its qualities? Where are its boundaries? What am I actually capable of?

Taking responsibility for my own education in the longer term is one of the greatest accomplishments in my life. I never thought so before; it’s been too easy to focus on everything I’m still lacking. But now that I’m looking back from my forties, I see a surprising amount of continuity and steady progress. By now I’ve also noted the way knowledge fades when it’s seldom-used, so that means I’m often stuck with the humbling, non-glamorous chore of re-learning everything that used to be right at my mental fingertips.

The Tetractys flickered in and out of my awareness back in 2009, and then lit up again years later when I was working on a series of instructional posts about the minor arcana cards. 

This was the phase in my own practice when I began to leave the Tree of Life and other Qabalistic studies behind; the deeper I’d dug into them, the more I had to admit that my questions weren’t being answered — and in the meantime, I was being inundated with information that I had no practical use for. And as a non-Jewish person who reads and discusses the tarot quite often, I became uncomfortable relying on concepts related to the Hebrew alphabet that had been passed down by Western occultists.

At best, I had to admit that it was no longer helping me survive in this world.

Researching the overlapping history of the Tree of Life and the Tetractys, I realized this was a much firmer basis for my own personal investigations. The history of numbers and of symbolism has no direct path! But it’s very easy to end up sticking to the most well-trod path, even if it’s not going exactly where you’d hoped.

The Tetractys jewelry I created with Azamel was a way of marking that commitment with a reminder to keep learning, to question and refine my own interest in the subjects that appeal to me. I must be willing to adjust course, even if it means wandering through grass higher than my head. That feeling of ignorance and vulnerability is reminiscent of being child again, and comes with all of the wonder and discovery of childhood, as well as the requisite bumps and mistakes and redundancies.

In upcoming posts, I will share some of what I’ve learned from the Tetractys and how I’ve reinvested that into my tarot practice. I’m not “teaching” you how to use the Tetractys in your tarot practice, but I’m happy to help give the balloon another bump, and point to sources that might give you that delightful cascading sense of awareness. 

By now I know many of you personally (even if just a bit!) and I know that our love of that feeling is one that knits us together. It also unites us with all the teachers and students of past traditions, many of whom made tremendous sacrifices just to be able to pursue and relive that feeling.

Thanks for reading! And special thanks to those who snapped up this bit of jewelry early on, it has meant the world to have SOME small thing to show for the long months sitting here in the vast semi-darkness of 2020. Developing the consecration ritual for the Tetractys jewelry, I felt almost like I was visiting people, imagining their surroundings, their cards, their questions.

It’s comforting to be surrounded by so many who are still searching, still learning. I do not believe this ever ends, even after death.

[hrk4]

My Sanskrit Story

I am an ardent student of Sanskrit.

Over the past few years, I’ve been learning Sanskrit in a slow, schizophrenic manner – a few weeks of frenetic study of grammar and literature with long months of lackadaisical, lukewarm engagement with the language, mostly through ‘study circles’ (we’ll come to this later) that I’m a part of. But I have kept at it constantly and never regretted it once.

My earliest exposure to Sanskrit was perhaps at the age of two. Born and raised in a typical Hindu middle-class family, I was taught simple shlokas and stotras. My father took me to Cubbon Park or Ulsoor Lake on Sunday mornings and on the way he would teach me verses from the Mukunda-mala (a poetical work composed by Kulashekhara azhvar, a ninth century king and poet-saint). My grandmother taught me the Krishna-ashtakam (usually during power-cuts) and my mother taught me verses from the Venkatesha-suprabhatam. At age three or four, I became a sort of ‘installation art’ at weddings where elders gathered around me, coaxing me to recite verses from the Mukunda-mala. (But of course, getting children to recite verses is not uncommon in our families. Many of you might have experienced this in your childhood.)

That was it, pretty much: Some stray verses committed to memory and the strong notion that Sanskrit was a great language. In spite of my rejection of orthodox theism, rituals, and outdated religious/superstitious practices during my rebellious adolescent years, strangely, I never lost respect for Sanskrit.

Most of my cousins studied Sanskrit in school but I didn’t have that good fortune. I wanted to learn the language but I didn’t know where to start; for years it remained a pipe dream.

By sheer chance, I got involved in co-writing a translation of the Bhagavad-Gita with Dr. Koti Sreekrishna in 2006. At that time, I didn’t know any Sanskrit. My role was to review and edit the English; after Dr. Sreekrishna produced a rough translation, I would work towards presenting the verses in the simplest way possible. By the time we published the book five years later, I had learnt a few words here and there, particularly when we discussed the meaning of difficult verses.

In early 2011, when the manuscript of our Gita translation was being sent to reviewers, someone suggested that I get the opinion of the renowned scholar, poet, and polymath Shatavadhani Dr. R Ganesh. Until then I hardly knew anything about him. When I phoned him, he spoke in an encouraging manner and I felt like I was speaking with a family elder rather than a celebrity-scholar. He graciously reviewed the manuscript and gave his feedback. I casually mentioned to him about my interest to learn Sanskrit and my helplessness at not knowing where to start. Not only did he give me general guidance but he also taught me some of the basics of Sanskrit grammar like noun forms, verb forms, sandhi, and samasa. More importantly, he taught me the real value of learning Sanskrit in today’s world.

The rest of this piece comprises what I’ve learnt from Dr. Ganesh about the study of Sanskrit coupled with my personal experiences. It might be of value to those interested in learning the language.

~

Why Study Sanskrit?

Given that learning Sanskrit—or any language for that matter—consumes considerable time and effort (and some money), it’s a good idea to think for a moment if it’s actually worth it. Now, the worthiness can be decided only by one’s intentions – Why do I want to study Sanskrit?

In my case, I love learning languages when the opportunity presents itself. The process of learning itself is a great deal of fun for linguaphiles like me. So if you are a language-lover, there’s no need to think any further. Go and learn Sanskrit!

There is a widespread notion that Sanskrit is a sacred language meant solely for rituals and that its literature is entirely ‘spiritual stuff.’ So if you’re someone who likes that sort of thing – tradition, philosophy, scriptures, and so forth – you might be thinking of learning the language. The good news is that you probably don’t need to learn Sanskrit.

If you are just interested in the Vedas and want to connect with the tradition better, you could consider learning Vedic recitation, which is definitely easier than learning Sanskrit. In addition, you can read a book or two on the philosophy of the Vedas or listen to lectures on the topic by scholars like Dr. Ganesh. Even those of you who are interested in philosophy can get by reading reliable translations of the Upanishads and Bhagavad-gita as well as general works on Indian philosophy by scholars like Prof. M Hiriyanna.

There is a feeling among the culturally inclined nationalists that it is our duty to preserve Indian heritage and showcase the glory of India’s past. Triggered by this missionary zeal, some people might wish to learn Sanskrit. This often leads to a narrow interest in hunting for science in ancient India, or in the study of traditional works of polity, economics, architecture, law, or other secular subjects. Again, the good news is that you don’t have to learn Sanskrit to accomplish this.

You can always look into reliable translations of works like Artha-shastra, Manu-smriti, Surya-siddhanta, or Brihat-samhita. You can also peruse through books on Indian history, ancient Indian mathematics, temple architecture, and so on. You could even take up the study of a serious treatise like P V Kane’s History of Dharmashastra. That will satiate your thirst to a large extent.

When something can be effectively translated from one language into another—particularly when the objective is to provide information or teach certain concepts—then there’s hardly a case for learning the source language. If I can give you the exact translation of a verse from the Gita and you understand it without any transmission losses, then why do you have to spend ten years of your life learning Sanskrit?

But there are things that simply can’t be translated. Jokes, for instance, are untranslatable when they employ puns or have strong cultural references. The same goes for poetry, where the structure and the substance are closely intertwined. So if you’re interested to explore the vast landscape of Sanskrit literature—Kalidasa’s masterpieces; the two great Epics (Ramayana and Mahabharata); Bana’s Kadambari; Shudraka’s Mricchakatika; Bharavi’s Kiratarjuniya; Vishakadatta’s Mudra-rakshasa; and many other poems, plays, and prose compositions—it is worthwhile taking steps to learn Sanskrit. Stories about gods and goddesses, romantic escapades, nature descriptions, episodes from the Epics, idiosyncrasies of public life, the history of a kingdom, tales of commoners – all this and more can entertain and enrich several lifetimes.

In addition to being a wonderful treasure trove of literature, Sanskrit is also a window to our past. Therefore, any serious student of Indian history, archaeology, sociology, culture, sculpture, philosophy, and so forth will benefit immensely if s/he learns Sanskrit. Here I wish to make a distinction between one who is interested in Indian history or philosophy or culture and a full-time student of these subjects (like a BA or MA student). Those who are merely interested to know more about a certain era in Indian history can read a book by R C Majumdar or Jadunath Sarkar and be fulfilled. But for students of history, the knowledge of Sanskrit will enable them to read inscriptions, contemporary literary works, and so on, which will prove invaluable for their careers.

However, if you’re looking to improve your knowledge of physics, become better at technology, get a promotion at work, or win an election, you will benefit from doing other things than learning Sanskrit. 

Is Sanskrit Difficult?

A good way to learn a language is like how we all learnt our mother tongues – by listening and repeating, then slowly moving towards understanding and speaking, and then eventually starting to read and write. If you wish to learn Russian, Spanish, or Japanese, this approach works well. But Sanskrit is not a widely spoken language. And our motivation to learn Sanskrit is not so much trying to communicate with other people as it is to read and savour ancient (and modern) literature.

Although there are a number of people who fluently speak in Sanskrit, it is almost impossible to find a person who knows only Sanskrit and no other language. It’s therefore obvious that you don’t need Sanskrit to communicate with others; you can get by speaking Kannada or Tamil or English. (On the other hand, if you’re visiting the UK and can’t speak a word of English, you’re going to be in trouble!)

To learn Sanskrit, you might have to choose an approach that’s different from what’s popularly known as ‘immersion’ in language-learning circles.

There are some people who think that Sanskrit is extremely difficult and wonder if they can approach it at all. In fact, those who are familiar with one or more Indian languages already have the basic equipment to understand Sanskrit. The nuts and bolts of the grammar can give you sleepless nights but it’s probably not as hard as you think.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are people who think that attending a ten-day Sambhashana course or reading a ‘Learn Sanskrit in 30 Days’ book can give you mastery over Sanskrit. That’s a dangerous notion to harbour if you really want to learn the language.

So, the one line answer is that if you’re interested and pursue it sincerely, it’ll get easier along the way, and more importantly, the journey will be great fun after the initial fumbling about.

Learning Sanskrit

Where do I start?

The answer, surprisingly, is: anywhere. Just start. Sanskrit is an ocean and where does one begin to swim in an ocean? Somewhere. Put your feet in the water, slowly get inside, get used to the cold, and before you realize it, you’re already kicking your legs and having a good time.

And that’s what I did: just started at some point.

I would read a verse from the Gita and then read the English translation. I had learnt Kannada and Hindi at school and as a result, many of the words were familiar to me. Reading the translation after reading the original Sanskrit verse exposed me to new words. I committed verses to memory and later replayed them in my mind, trying to check if I remembered the meaning completely.

That said, the most suitable works to start off learning Sanskrit are lucid compositions like the Ramayana or the Pancha-tantra. Get hold of a reliable translation of one of these works (preferably in an Indian language); start by reciting the original Sanskrit verse or prose passage a couple times, then read through the translation, and go back to reading the Sanskrit – this way you slowly make connections between the words and their meanings. Instead of diving into the technicalities of grammar straightaway, spending time with literature will help you experience the beauty of the language.

Three to six months after commencing the study of a Sanskrit work, you can start learning up some grammar – by reading good books, watching online tutorials, or learning from a teacher.

I’m extremely fortunate that Dr. Ganesh taught me the basics of Sanskrit grammar. That set me off on a winding path of reading different aspects of grammar and trying to wrap my head around them. This continues even today. The more I hunt for rules, more the exceptions I find. My advice: Keep aside logic while learning basics. In the initial stages, don’t ask questions; simply accept things as they are. It just makes life easier. Over time, you’ll develop an intuition for the correct form of a word.

All said and done, it’s easy to start but difficult to keep going. What’s the solution for sustained study?

In my experience, learning a language requires both self-motivation and external agency. Unless one is driven from within, no amount of external push will be fruitful; when self-motivation is present, external agency becomes invaluable. For instance, Sanskrit is taught in schools and colleges – this is a push from outside (i.e., external agency). But only those with self-motivation learn the language well and continue reading literature long after they have graduated.

When I met Dr. Ganesh in 2011, he told me about a fortnightly ‘study circle’ he was conducting and extended an invitation to me. I had never heard the term before so I asked him what that was. A group of friends would catch up every other Saturday and read the Raghu-vamsham of Kalidasa. 

I started attending the study circle. This went on for close to a year and I learnt a great deal. Owing to various reasons I became irregular in attending the sessions and after I shifted to another end of the city, I practically stopped going. During the years 2013–16,  I moved around quite a bit and finally I shifted to Malleswaram in November 2016.

There came an inflection point in my Sanskrit study in 2017. Around that time, my good friend Raghavendra G S had started his PhD program in IISc. and my house happened to be a sort of midpoint between the metro station and his lab. One day I casually suggested that we should meet once a week and read a Sanskrit work together. He readily agreed and we started reading the Krishna-karna-amritam (a poetical work by Lilashuka). By the time we finished reading the text in early 2018, a few other friends showed interest in coming together to form a study circle. And so, in April 2018 we formed our Sanskrit study circle and have continued ever since. I also got the opportunity to join a few other study circles and this ensured that my Sanskrit study is ever fresh; over the past three years, not a week has gone by without a few hours of Sanskrit reading (unless I was travelling or unwell).

So if you want to learn Sanskrit, try to find even one other like-minded friend and get started. Even better if you can find more friends – especially those who know more Sanskrit than you. The ideal is a group of four to six, meeting once a week, for about an hour or ninety minutes. (You can meet in person or online – it shouldn’t make too much of a difference.) There are ample online resources and translations available for various Sanskrit works. Start reading a work together. Take turns to read the verses aloud. (Even when you’re reading Sanskrit by yourself, it’s useful to read aloud). Then look at the translation. Discuss. Read the original verse again. Then move forward. In the first few sessions, you may read just three or four verses in an hour but as you go forward, your speed will drastically improve and you’ll start getting comfortable. After a while, refer to the translations only after you’ve made an attempt to understand the original. This will slowly push you to rely on your memory and learning.

And once in a while, when there’s an opportunity to meet during a long weekend, you can take a short poetical work like Niti-shataka or Kali-vidambana and read the whole thing in one marathon session.

There are many possibilities with study circles. In fact, it can prove to be the mysterious ingredient to accelerate your learning. That’s been the case with me for sure. I’ve still got a long way to go before I can say that I’ve learnt Sanskrit but the journey itself has been incredible so far. Dr. Ganesh and friends have been largely responsible for what little Sanskrit I know. And for that I’m ever grateful.

Hari Ravikumar August 2020

Thanks to my friends Pratap Simha (for getting me to write this piece), Arjun Bharadwaj (for his valuable inputs), and Sudheer Krishnaswami (for his review and feedback).

[elkian]

Qualifying a singular awfullest thing about American Public School would be nigh-impossible. But here’s something bad that’s been eating at me:

Home Economics.

My high school had one Home Ec class as an elective. We sewed one thing (I messed up and the teacher wouldn’t let me fix it because we didn’t have enough time in the semester, which I feel summarizes a large portion of this problem), I think cooked one thing, and spent the second half of the semester paging through Homes and Garden type magazines and making an ideal home collage iirc.

It was not a particularly memorable, nor helpful, class. I learned more in a summer sewing class that happened to be in the same room the year before I took Home Ec.

I’ve discussed before that a class on actual parenting, especially before most of the students get the opportunity to have kids, would be super helpful. It would also help people who DON’T want to have kids - people (like me) who like kids but don’t know how to interact with them, people who weren’t sure they wanted kids til they took the class and realized they don’t, and ALSO helps because it creates a common ground for different types of people and I feel could be a good aid to help people who do want kids to understand people who don’t with far less “but thou must!” bullshit.

Following that, particularly in modern day America, the skill of homekeeping is quickly degrading. Not because young people are stupid or unmotivated - because our parents are so busy working to keep us afloat as expenses rise but wages don’t. Some parents assume that school will teach it; a lot assume that the kids will pick it up naturally*. 

Many, many kids will not.

If you’re a parent reading this, please think about what you’ve actually taught your kids about living, alone or with roommates or staying home, about “adulting”. I am almost thirty years old and still have to seek my mother’s advice on everything from taxes to basic recipes because I’ve been doing that this whole time already, picking things up (and losing them almost as fast) piecemeal.

If you’re hitting your young or early adulthood, think about how many times you’ve googled things like “how long to boil an egg” or “how to get ketchup out of jeans”, how to vacuum, do laundry, maintain a vehicle, clean your house, open a bank account, renew your voter’s registration. If you’re like me, you’ve probably searched for something more than once because without a full learning environment, you forgot as soon as the moment passed.

Home Ec. is functionally a throwaway class in my public high school. I suspect many other schools are the same. Given the current state of the country, of how busy so many parents are all the time - while a better wage/cost balance would be ideal, while there’s many things that need to be changed, a better class of classes is important as well.

Public school has a lot going on! I don’t expect this post to make every school change policy immediately. I don’t expect this to make any school make any changes at all. I just needed to get this off my chest, and maybe connect with some of you about this. 

*(this is partially tied to me recently reading KonMari’s books and noting her commentary about parents telling kids to tidy up but not teaching them how, because they assume tidying isn’t even a skill at all, just a task anyone can do if they’re not lazy

it is. it is a skill. and it’s something that gets immensely easier once you actually learn a way to do it)

[mocurlyshepard]

Modern! Shepard Hc's

Curly Shepard:

-Modern Curly Shepard wears literally sweatpants and hoodies and raps Dreams and Nightmares 24/7. He seems annoying from far away but once you get to know him he's pretty funny

-man bun because his hair is long

-He's definitely the one kid who talks too much. Maybe a little too much. He'll be the one saying the weirdest things in class

-he'd probably have a girlfriend he was on and off with because he'd be a dumbass boyfriend.

-keeps nudes in his memory on snapchat

-As a younger kid, Modern! Curly would be suspended and expelled from getting into violent fights and because he was so forgetful, ex. Bringing his pocket knife to school

-Doesn't play a sport because he think he doesn't have time for it and would rather go home, smoke, and nap.

-his phone is definitely cracked. It doesn't matter if there's a screen protector or heavy duty case, he's found a way to crack it

-He's got his headphones in 24/7. That one kid who keeps them in his shirt just hanging out until he can pop them back in (even if he isn't listening to anything wtf)

-Goes to football games on Fridays to hangout with his friends but is also the one who sneaks away when get bored

-Has a habit of thinking people are getting smart with him and he's not good at letting things go which leads to maybe public altercations

-Lowkey a nerd, likes Harry Potter and anime. He's probably doing that if he isn't napping.

-The one kid who would be smart if he actually tried. Manages to scrap his grades and get his life together last minute to get into an "okay" college

Angela Shepard:

-Angela is a jeans kind of person. They go with anything and she always finds the softest pair although they were probably expensive

-Angela gets her nails done a lot. Every two week, she's got pretty long nails so she doesn't get acrylic, instead settles for a gel

-Angela would fall for a guy who was pretty crappy before learning her self worth and that she was a baddie

-In her sophomore year of high school she decided to cut her hair off and now wears in a blunt bob.

-She's pretty popular, she's pretty and her brothers have somewhat of a reputation and she's a cool person to talk to

-She'd be the person to like any type of music. It just has to be written well.

-she's got resting bitch face. So people who don't know her are usually intimidated by her until they get to know her

-she's got a lot of Instagram followers on both her personal and her activist profile

-She's got a huge crush on Jason Mamoa and watches everything he's in for that reason

-She'd go out for cheerleading freshman year but then suffer from a knee injury. However, she's kinda glad she doesn't have to do it anymore.

-Angela has an iPhone. It's probably got a pretty case with a basic background that just seems really clean

-She's really smart so she had been on the honor roll for most of her high school years and gets into the college of her choice

Tim Shepard:

-a pretty chill college student who never gets enough sleep and is always behind on papers. But due to his sly talking, he's able to not fall that far behind

-Tim usually wears jeans and a hoodie from the college he goes to. He usually keeps his hair pretty short but if he's being lazy it grows out

-Tim likes slow and meaningful music and also music like PATD. And Romeo Santos

-he commutes to college and recieved some sort of scholarship to go from the state and he's majoring in marketing? Maybe he isn't sure.

-Tim seems unapproachable and he is unapproachable. He doesn't like talking at all because chances are you're annoying the hell out of him

-Tim owns no form of social media which makes it easier when he hooks up with someone and has no intention of keeping touch (can't slide in the dms if you don't have one amiright?)

-He's got an old phone because he pays no phone bill for it. It's a basic android that calls and texts when he needs it to.

-he commutes because although he won't admit it, he misses his siblings if he hasn't seen them for a while

-goes to the club every Saturday with his friends from college

Family:

-they host so many house parties it's not even funny. They have everything from the liquor to the food, everyone wants to come to a Shepard house party

-They have a movie marathon like every Sunday that starts in the morning. It was completely unintentional but turned into an unspoken tradition

-Sometimes curly gets them to put on Harry Potter, Angela likes it Tim despises it. He likes the Hunger Games more.

-waffle house is their shit

-they save up to go to six flags at the end of the summer which never goes right but the still force themselves to do it anyway

-siblings go to the movies about once a month which ends up with them arguing before the movie starts

-Tim likes mean girls. He watches it every time it's own

-for fun, Tim likes changing the Netflix password and waiting to see how long it takes for Curly and Angela to break the door down.

-Angela likes Christmas movies

-Angela makes her brothers take her photos

"You idiot! You can't even see my face take it again."

@staygoldponebone @imsuch-a-cliche @mushrooms-iscat @shamlesscinnamonroll @alphakelsey @leeb10111 @darrycurtisappreciation @ineedmorespaceee @friedturtlemongerthing @chibs-draws @onestrangehufflepuff @praisetheoutsiders @moviesandcocoa @unique05sstuff @steveandsoda

[nerdygaymormon]

The Payne Papers, aka Prologue

In Spring 1977, in a Beginning Psychology class at BYU, Dr. Reed Payne gave an anti-gay lecture. Cloy Jenkins, a gay man, was in attendance and unhappy at what was said. 

Because of the anti-homosexual climate in the church and on campus, Cloy felt that he couldn’t speak up and counter the statements made on the subject, so he decided to write a reply. 

————————————————————— 

Howard Salisbury was a gay Ricks College professor that Cloy met while still a teenager and someone Cloy consulted with on the response. 

I don’t know how Cloy Reed was put in touch with gay BYU professor Lee Williams, but this professor also contributed to the paper, and more importantly, he reviewed it with "skillful criticism” and was the main editor of the 52 page work. Lee Williams’ brother also contributed, Jeff Williams was a gay Ricks College professor. 

The response countered Dr. Payne’s assertion that homosexuality is a pathological condition and explained what it’s like to be gay and Mormon. They argued that homosexuality cannot be cured. Instead it is a state of being and not a chosen pattern of behavior. Those who claim to be cured might have experienced a modification in their sexual behavior but not in their orientation. 

They called this “The Payne Papers” and printed up some copies (without their names on it, they remained anonymous) and shared with family and friends, who also shared it with others. 

—————————————————————

What happened next is incredible. 

Later that summer, Ken Kline, a gay activist in Salt Lake City, was given a copy of the papers. He decided to publish them as an anonymous pamphlet and asked BYU student Donald Attridge to do a pencil sketch of the BYU campus for the cover artwork. 

Ken knew a gay man who worked in the church office building’s mail room. Through him, the pamphlet was distributed into the mail of all General Authorities. Copies of the pamphlet were mailed to local TV and radio stations. The pamphlet also was distributed to most of the faculty at BYU and Ricks College (probably with the aid of “The Payne Papers” authors from those campuses). Having a pamphlet with a cover of BYU and distributed to all these faculty and GA’s made it seem it was a BYU publication and had been church approved. Needless to say, LDS leaders were upset. 

Ken Kline also owned The Open Door, which was Salt Lake’s gay newpaper. The paper began the serialization (printing part of them each week) of The Payne Papers, which meant the arguments were out there for all to read.  

—————————————————————

I won’t go into all the ways the LDS Church sought to counter the arguments made in “The Payne Papers,” but after several weak attempts, Elder Boyd K. Packer refuted the basic premise of the Payne Papers in a 1978 address at BYU, telling the 12-stake fireside that homosexuality is a curable problem. His remarks were then published as the pamphlet To The One.

—————————————————————

Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons acquired the rights to “The Payne Papers” and republished it under the new title “Prologue.”

—————————————————————

This was a serious attempt to strip away the ignorance and prejudice that resulted in the pain, suffering and tragic deaths of many gay Mormon youth. It was the first major pushback against the narrative that Spencer Kimball had been giving for decades on the subject of homosexuality and it really shook a lot of leaders.  

Here’s a link if you’d like to read it in its entirety, and below I put some quotes from the pamphlet. 

Cloy Jenkins still lives, he resides in Maui with his partner. 

—————————————————————

“No one knows what causes homosexuality. However, we do know one thing that does not cause homosexuality and that is free choice. Until the cause or causes are known it is grossly inappropriate to moralize about it.”

—————————————————————

“One does not choose to be homosexual. The concept of choice, implicit in your lecture, is the beginning of a fundamental misunderstanding of homosexuality. Not once in all of my investigation have I known anyone who seriously said he chose to be homosexual. Most homosexuals have at some time chosen not to be homosexual, some repeatedly, only to discover that in spite of their determination, they remained homosexual.”

—————————————————————

“Rather than choice, the growing child comes to a realization of who he is sexually. Self-awareness should not be mistaken for conscious choice. For a psychologist, this distinction, which you appear to be confused about, should be embarrassingly elemental.”

—————————————————————

“I know of many homosexuals who have married and have children. In not one single case has it changed their homosexuality. This kind of “appetitional” sexual reconditioning therapy is not only simplistic but immoral since it toys with the deep affections and emotional well-being of another person. Marriage is the rug under which the Brethren encourage many men to sweep their homosexuality.”

  —————————————————————

“Recommending to the homosexual that he abstain from the sexual expression of who he is has far-reaching consequences. It cuts him off from the only real possibility open to him to experience love. The more frightening fact is that it unquestionably condemns him to a life of loneliness which cannot and is not ministered to by any facet of the Church or society. No amount of temple going, priesthood meetings, home teaching, or special interest activity will ease the loneliness. This can only be realized through a mature loving intimacy.”

—————————————————————

“One of the more singularly striking facts is that in the entire Book of Mormon and the other modern scriptures there is not one single reference to homosexuality. These scriptures contain the “fullness of the Gospel” and all the essential commandments for the Saints, and yet the subject of homosexuality is conspicuously absent. To my knowledge, Joseph Smith never mentioned the subject. From The Teachings of Joseph Smith: “When we lie down, we contemplate how we may rise in the morning; and it is pleasing for friends to lie down together, locked in the arms of love, to sleep and awake in each other’s embrace and renew their conversation.”(p. 295)” 

—————————————————————

“Statistical studies show that an extremely low percentage of homosexuals engage in child molesting. Far and away the greatest occurrence of child molesting is by heterosexuals on young girls, not by homosexuals on young boys. Like heterosexuals, homosexuals typically prefer a partner close to their own age and in a relationship that is mutually expressive of the affection for and interest in the other person. One of the main reasons for outlawing homosexuality in the past has been this child molesting concern as reflected in the emotional campaign now under way to “Save Our Children” (from homosexuality). By the same logic, should not heterosexuality be outlawed since heterosexual child molesting occurs much more frequently?”

—————————————————————

“Excommunication, of course, cuts off and punishes individuals who violate the code of sexual conduct of the Church, but it has never cured one single case of homosexuality. The Church knows only that the member must comply with the program or be judged and punished.”

—————————————————————

“Excommunication is actually an easy way out for the Church...For the Church, it makes it easier to deny the stark reality of the member’s experience. The Church no longer has to be troubled with a life that will not conform to the program and perplexing emotions that are counter to what is “supposed to be”. In a very crucial way, excommunication is an official denial of existence...I have watched the Church take action against a number of homosexuals, and nothing but damage and destruction has come of the action. You would know as a psychologist, that if you persist loud enough in telling a person that he is bad, it will begin to have serious negative effects on him, especially if he comes to believe you.The Church does feel justified in its position about the immorality of homosexuality. But it also has an obligation to help, not destroy its members, even those who violate its standards.”

—————————————————————

“Should bishops and branch presidents be asking questions in those interviews if they are unprepared to responsibly deal with the answers? Should we be prying into the private lives of our youths to the extent of their learning of homosexuality and masturbation in their interviews with the bishop?”

[shotfromguns]

Good, long thread by @TheMittani on Twitter on “neoconfederacy” in the South:

if you ever wonder why i got politically 'radicalized' it's because i grew up in alabama as an atheist child of two biochemistry professors; at 17 i graduated and moved away forever. reminder: Alabama came within 1.7% of sending a known pedo to the senate~

any '13th dimensional chess' tweets about how the AL leg composed this abortion ban to provoke a court fight has never met an actual neoconfederate this is what they want 100%, it's a white supremacist aristo fertility cult and all the moves make sense when understood that way

source: i have been to an unironic country club debutante ball in dear old mountain brook and folks have no idea how much intergenerational wealth transfer has carried over from the days of slavery in that society's upper class

for context, when i was in high school there were three country clubs, maybe 20k citizens, and zero black students; every street is named after a civil war battle, and 'houses' there would be called mansions anywhere else

best public schools in the state though~

folks have no clue how rich and well-educated the ruling class in alabama is, going to mountain brook means if you don't get into one of the better ivys you're probably a bitter slacker like me legislation like this isn't from stupid hicks, it's the goal

southern aristos can be incredibly intelligent and well-traveled and are all the more dangerous politically because they are happy to play dumb in public with the aw-shucks jesus loving hick routine in order to quietly run an antebellum society and pit poor whites against blacks

it's almost comically effective, I do this stuff all the time in Eve - say laughably wrong things, act like a fool, and then it's much easier to outmaneuver people. The most dangerous enemy is one who is comfortable with being publicly underestimated.

I mean to say, 'ha ha eat my ass look at me I'm so great at spaceship games', please interpret my above tweet as evidence of hubris and ignorance rather than giving up an actual tactic I've employed so often it's been nicknamed the 'tee hee, flounce flounce' by my chief of staff

'I'm the fucking Mittani, I know everything in this game,' another good one wearing red shirts? stupid gimmick, keep doing it because it's a stupid gimmick, it's far better for our competitors/enemies to see me as a joke luv2club? tee hee, flounce flounce, same shit

anyhoo yeah it's the same dance, play god-fearing jesus lover to keep the poor whites on your side, maintain that patriarchy with the complicity of ruling class women who enjoy the economic benefits of neoconfederacy, and live over the mountain so no one spots all the lexuses

it's interesting to see the term neoconfederate finally get some use but it implies that there isn't already an actual working confederate states of america right in front of everyone's eyes that's been there since reconstruction, none of that shit is an accident

if you put 'hail hydra' on statues in every town in the region you don't have to bother saying 'hail hydra' or announce in print that you're down with hydra, everyone who lives there gets it

the issue is not being part of a traitorous conspiracy against the united states government (i mean hydra, not the neoconfederacy, ha ha!) the problem comes when you state it where those not in on it can hear you. Viz: ”Alabama newspaper editor calls for Klan return to ‘clean out D.C.’”

i kind of like the hydra analogy for the neoconfederacy, because all this shit - 'states rights', 'pro-life', 'voter fraud', these disparate causes are actually all the same cause: the ~lost~ cause

southern politics makes a lot more sense when viewed through the lens of pro/anti-confederacy politics; confederate society is based upon a ruling gentry descended from the cavaliers see generally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed actual /aristos/ not merely rich people

so basically you have an entrenched aristocracy that traces their lineage back 10+ generations running a plantation society and fighting like fucking hell to maintain that privilege, privilege most people in the usa cannot even begin to imagine

generic usa high ~net worth individuals~ have nothing on the cunning and unity maintained by ancient proud cavalier aristocratic families in the south with shitloads of money who will do anything to protect the universe they and their forefathers have created (via slavery)

the whole 'the south will rise again' thing is a huge joke because the structure of the society immediately returned to functional slavery as soon as it could get away with it, the south already 'rose' after reconstruction, it's right in fucking the open

if they get away with the abortion thing, they'll gun for brown v board next; these people remember life before MLK and they have not forgotten or forgiven the civil rights movement those behind this aren't hicks, they very smart confederates acting like hicks to fool you.

many old privileged families come with a legacy and a purpose imposed on you from birth it's not a stretch of the imagination that the quest of a lot of these old aristo families is to restore the society to antebellum life and get their privileges (slavery) back

the civil war was only a few generations ago, these families have not forgotten and they have not let their children forget the monuments, the street named for war battles, that's why it matters still to them

southern aristos are pro-life because the whole point of the society is the poor whites fight the poor blacks, and restricting abortion = more labor and poverty to exploit by the gentry the goal of their flavor of white supremacy is about getting rich off slaves, not death camps

not that they have a problem with a death camp or three, it's difficult to communicate how utterly disposable the lives of people outside of their class are, this is a society whose rulers believe that god has anointed them to rule over their lessers

its not rocket science, you take a slaveholding landed gentry and take away their slaves and land (good!) that gentry is going to spend its time fanatically scheming to get its land and slaves back (bad, what we see in southern politics)

anyhoo what i'm saying is that this isn't about random kooks trying to put women 'in their place' (there's a bunch of them too, useful idiots) but part of a broad campaign across generations by a dispossessed cavalier nobility to get all their lost privileges (slavery) back

conveniently the rest of america doesn't have much of an entrenched aristo/gentry culture anymore so the maneuvers of the 'neo' confederates just look like random right wing lashing out rather than a deliberate series of moves to benefit the southern aristocracy

the reality of the modern confederacy reminds me a lot of 'The City and the City' in that it's clearly visible to those raised within it, yet its contour is completely alien to outsiders who don't know how to 'see' it the 'right' way.

shit like Roy Moore being a pedo but coming within 1.7% of winning a senate seat makes a buttload more sense than 'alabama voters will send anything not a democrat', Moore is a proud and loud confederate and Doug Jones is anti-confederate it's the confederacy - always.

Pro-life? Confederacy. State's Rights? Confederacy. Gun rights? Confederacy. Religious Freedom/Gay Cake Stuff? Confederacy. Anti-union? Confederacy. If you're a Cavalier or one of their foremen, it all fits~ 

Robert Caro basically spelled out in intricate detail how the confederacy works in his LBJ bios but particularly Master of the Senate, read these if you want a primer on actual power and its uses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Years_of_Lyndon_Johnson

when LBJ shifted to supporting voting rights, the confederacy simply switched its support from the democrats to the republicans. it's a real thing and its moves make perfect sense once you grok the core motivations of the southern gentry and their henchmen~

you see this repeatedly through history where one side stops fighting after a victory and the other side loses but keeps trying to find ways to win, the Union torched the south and moved on, but the confederacy has /never stopped fighting/ using whatever means they have available

tl;dr "it's the confederacy, stupid" also explains those crazy 'obama is the antichrist' memes; if you're a confederate, a black president existing is against everything your flavor of pro-slavery jesus stands for

None of this thread really applies to Texas. I was born in Houston, moved to AL at 10; completely different culture in Texas. Going to rodeos, oil/cattle, science, ranching. When I say the 'South' I'm talking about the plantation society of the Cavaliers.

As a quick example of using the Lost Cause to understand Cavalier political behavior, Lindsey Graham's 'hypocrisy' makes perfect sense. He doesn't give a shit about spewing nonsense or lying to Yankees, all he cares about is Dixie. He's not dumb at all; the Union is his enemy.

Expanded May 17, 2019:

oh yeah and Mitch McConnell was born and raised in Alabama and then Georgia from 8yrs on, so heyoooo

look up how long jeff sessions family has been naming their kids after jefferson davis on his bio dixie is real; it's the confederacy, the political moves the cavaliers and their overseers are making on behalf of the lost cause as plain as day if you know what to look for

just gonna spend Friday night reading Albion’s seed to learn more fun ~cavalierfacts~ like how their royalist gentry is literally all one big interrelated family and coordinates retribution and uses debt to control the poor

“It is difficult to think of any ruling elite that has been more closely interrelated since the Ptolemies” holy lawl (it is a history insult as he’s basically calling the cavaliers a nest of outright incest, the Ptolemaic dynasty was Targaryen-style sibling marriage)

Hey guess what turns out the control of women is deeply ingrained in cavalier society because uh... kidnapping / human trafficking / sexual slavery and a massively skewed male to female ratio lovely people, these confederates

“These patterns did not develop by chance. Virginia’s great migration was the product of policy and social planning. Its royalist elite succeeded in shaping the social history of an American region partly by regulating the process of migration” (p 232) fucking hell it’s all here

May 22, 2019:

by req: another ‘understanding the confederacy’ thing, all the protest tweets saying “the cruelty is the point” are wrong, the point is opportunities for race-based policing (a la weed), disenfranchisement, reinforcing patriarchy, and more labor/babies to exploit + compliance

sure there’s a bunch of cruelty in there too but the whole thing is a means to the ends of rolling back the civil rights movement and restoring the structure of Dixie as the gentry/cavaliers prefer; the confederates may be slavers at heart but they’re not cartoon villains

(they're way worse)

In case I get hit by a bus, I currently think the concept of hegemonic liberty is the most misunderstood aspect of the cavalier mindset, so here’s three key pages from Albion’s Seed~

And the cavalier conception of condescension and deference as two sides of God’s hierarchy and order is a fracture point, that’s why incivility towards one’s ‘betters’ is so provocative - milkshakes would probably work over here, too

Also by hiding and lying about the existence of Dixie, they fragment their opposition into issue-based groups - pro-choice, gun control, voters rights, anti-racism - instead of each opposition group recognizing that they are fighting the same confederate foe

Not like they really hid that much, they had confederate flags flying over their capitols ever since the Civil War until recently, but the Union won the war and moved on, so folks think they’re fighting random bigots and not the CSA

May 23, 2019:

the lack of a concerted effort by the democratic party to win and develop victories in the south has allowed the bulwark of the RNC power to be unchallenged, if you erode the Dixie Wall in the Senate the republicans pretty much lose all their functional power

as the DNC is incompetent one doesn't need to rely upon them, state by state in Dixie voting rights and organization must be pushed to undermine the structure of confederate power, that's the fracture point, that and forcing their true nature as confederates into the open

I'll develop all this crap into more useful tactics on the upcoming blog thing but this is all just-in-case 'yo guys, if I get hit by a bus, take Albion's Seed, drive through Mountain Brook for proof of everything I'm saying (crestline doesn't count lawl) go fight hydra'

as someone will inevitably discover not EVERY street in Mountain Brook is named for civil war battles (there's a lot), the really old money lives on streets named for old british estates/towns + they're episcopalians (anglican 2.0) not baptists, of course

[written-rebellion]

Perfect Distractions

A/N: You have no idea how happy I am to have this posted on time. I’m at Niagara Falls with my relatives from the Philippines rn but I had the tiiiniest spare moment to schedule this chapter. 

btw, since it’s mentioned this chapter and it’ll be semi-important later on, a Jeepney Bus is a form of public transport in the Philippines. They’re huge jeep-buses that come in all sorts of colours and designs. Here’s a picture of one. They’re pretty cool!

Claire wishes she was home, Jamie wishes he could fly, and as always, all the facts of this fanfic are contrived specifically to make fluffy university/modern-day au scenarios. Please let me know what you think!

Part One: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] | Part Two: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] | Part Three: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] | Part Four: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] | Part Five: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] | Part Six: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] | Part Seven: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] | Part Eight: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] | Part Nine: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] | Part Ten: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] | Part Eleven: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] | Part Twelve: [Chapter 1]

Part Twelve: Message Received | Chapter 2

It had taken Claire roughly two decades to find a place she could confidently call home, a place she could pin her heart to and refill her soul regardless of how exams, classes, or life in general drained her.

And that place was Jamie.

Nothing else on earth smoothed the static tremors of her life like the way his large hand squeezed her waist or the feel of his lips on her forehead.

At the moment though, the prospect of a softer bed and Rose’s cooking after weeks of work came pretty close.

She drummed her fingers against the armrest, dispassionately staring at the bumper-to-bumper traffic she’d quickly become accustomed to. The closer they got to Manila, the less it felt like nighttime as the neon glow of billboards and giant shopping malls lit the highways and reflected off the shiny, brightly coloured Jeepney buses.

Joe, in the seat next to her, patted her shoulder before leaning over to one of their mentors in the front seat.

“He’s got that pocket Wi-Fi thing,” he said, turning back to Claire. “We’re finally in range again.”

She nodded in thanks, thoughts floating anchorless as her body slowly came down from the adrenaline she’d ran on the last few days.

Within seconds of connecting, her phone buzzed so incessantly she thought she was getting a call, but the only Jamie she saw was the one frozen in time at Lallybroch on her lock screen.

It made sense, of course. They’d been off-grid for a while, who knew what kind of emails and notifications they’d missed?

She was heading straight for Jamie’s message history when the car pulled off the highway and down towards Rose’s neighbourhood.

Slipping her phone in her pocket for now, she and Joe slid out of the car once it pulled over.

She waited on Joe to grab the bags from the trunk, thumbing back and forth through her apps till she saw it.

31.

31 messages from Jamie in a small red circle on top of the app.

All manner of anxiety flushed through her. She’d expected a few, but to send 31 required just a bit more intent. Could she have missed an emergency?

Joe’s voice stopped her from opening the app, coming over with her bags.

“You okay there, LJ?”

“We’re fine,” she said quickly, locking her phone.

“I asked if you were okay,” he said, regarding her with raised brows.

“A-and, that’s what I said, I’m fine.”

He nodded slowly.

“I just mean, y’know, I know you and that kid were close…”

She bit down hard on her cheek. Inhaling quickly, she gathered up her bags.

“I’m fine,” she said, nodding to convince the both of them.

“Get some rest, Lady Jane,” he said, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “You’ve earned it.”

She smiled at that.

“You too, Joe. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Rest sounded heavenly. This level of exhaustion, she’d quickly learned, was fast to call dreams to her and made it much easier to imagine the small arms she hugged tightly to her waist were Jamie’s instead.

It was two even smaller arms wrapping around her when she walked into the house, though.

“You’re back!”

She held Angie to her for a moment, one hand coming up to bring her close, and finding her backpack instead of her back.

Claire looked up as Rose walked into the doorway, keys on hand.

“I’m working tonight,” she said after hugging Claire too. “Angie’s going to stay with a friend.”

“But I don’t wanna go to Tita Lina’s if Ate Claire’s here!” Despite her protests, she ended on a yawn and Claire smiled, leaning down to rub her cheek.

“I’ll tell you all about my trip tomorrow, okay?”

Tantrum successfully avoided, Claire waved the two sisters off and locked the door, waiting until she was completely alone to melt into the couch.

It started as a sigh, but in no time turned into hot tears streaming soundlessly down her cheeks.

There was nothing she could do. Nothing at all.

She dragged her feet to the bathroom, not bothering to assess the damage in the mirror as she stripped and got into the shower.

The cool water was an unmitigated blessing, doing well to ease the weight of those last few days in Cavite.

Settling into bed in just a shirt – not Jamie’s, because the scent had long since been washed away – she was ready to let dreamless sleep pull her in.

Her phone pinged and her eyes shot open again.

31 messages she’d momentarily forgotten had now turned to 32.

 >         I expect ye’ll be overwhelmed by the messages when ye get them. Apologies, lass. But, if ye read any at all, I hope it's this one. I love ye, and I’m proud of ye. I miss ye, aye, but I’ll be waiting right here for ye when ye return.

How the bloody hell did he do that? From halfway across the world no less.

She skimmed through the other messages, feeling the tears bubbling anew. But below, her smile was trembling much like her fingers as she wobbly typed a reply.

 >           Busy? Can I call?

She’d barely taken a breath after clicking send when—

 >          5 min, mo graidgh.

---

He sprinted back to the dorms, nearly crashing into John at the door of the room.

“Lost Wi-Fi again?”

“Nay, we—” He stopped, looking his roommate up and down. “Where are ye off to?”

“Chess club,” he replied, “And I’ll probably stay over at a friend’s tonight so don’t wait up.”

Jamie waved him off, watching his roommate’s back walk down the hallway with increasing curiosity, but a squeeze to his phone – like the squeeze of her hand in his – reminded him.

He sat on his bed, watching the call connect and already imagining her smile, her laugh as she shook her head at him.

“32 messages, James Fraser?! Are you quite insane?”

When he actually saw her, his entire body tensed.

“Jamie,” she said, attempting so much less than the smile he’d expected.

“Claire… What’s wrong, mo chridhe?”

“Wrong? N-nothing’s—”

“Ye’ve been crying, lass.”

He could almost see her trying to pull a feeble excuse from the thoughts swirling around her head. Then, she sighed.

“What’s happened, mo graidgh?”

Tears were precariously balanced on her lashes. She took a breath and – to his surprise – smiled at him.

“I bloody love you, you know? I just got your messages.”

His cheeks pinked but he said nothing, his eyes gently urging her towards an explanation.

She swallowed, understanding, before she started again.

“There was a little boy, Elijah.” She smiled faintly. “We all called him Eli…”

She’d worked and lived at a centre in rural Cavite, providing any medical assistance needed in the morning and teaching health lessons to locals in the afternoons with Joe taking the opposite shift.

Eli had been a particularly frequent and particularly young student amid mostly teenagers and adults. Only 6-years-old or so, he’d had the kind of bright-eyed curiosity and eagerness that would undoubtedly draw Claire to him.

“He’d want to carry my medical bag everywhere, even though it was basically half his size,” she chuckled. “Followed me around like a little chick so often, Joe started calling him my tail. And he’d have all kinds of questions. We could barely understand each other at first but he was—was so smart and—”

“What happened to him?” He could see her slowly collapsing into herself and his heart physically ached, yearning to break out of his chest and fly across the world just to comfort hers.

“I was getting ready for my second shift on our last day there and I saw a woman talking to one of our supervisors. She was… she was crying, trying to explain something in Tagalog I couldn’t understand and then—I… Eli didn’t show up for class.”

She took a breath and Jamie simply watched her try to ground herself, wanting nothing more than to reach through his phone, take her face in his hands and kiss her tears away.

“Hush now, love. Dinna cry, my heart, my brown-haired lass, I’m here,” he murmured in Gaelic.

“Dengue fever,” she said after a time. “It was sudden. It was fatal. It was—It’s—” She sniffed, despair shifting into frustration. “—we have medicine that could have eased the pain or— Or we… I could have—”

“Christ Claire…” He crossed himself. “I’m so verra sorry, mo chridhe.”

“I could have done something. I should have. I just didn’t… No one knew and—”

“And that’s no’ yer fault, mo nighean donn. None of it was yer fault.”

“I… I just—”

She knuckled away her tears, doing what Jamie wished he could. Every inch of him was on edge, straining to break across borders, distance, time itself to get to her, to tuck her into his chest and shelter her from the rest of the world.  His palms were sweaty from both his sprint to the dorm and the sheer will to keep himself from jumping on a plane and flying to her side this very moment.

“I miss you, love,” she said, sounding thoroughly shattered – exactly like his heart. “I… I need—”

“Anything. Anything at all.”

“I need you, Jamie.”

His phone nearly slipped out of his hand.

Read Chapter 3

[intothehoid]

Ok, so I'm not gonna lie. I don't entirely remember the exact order of the days I spent in Beijing. My grasp of linear time is not always the best, so this part might get a little mushy.

The whole point of our time in Beijing was twofold. Most importantly, we had orientation. Now, it's worth mentioning that this program gave a LOT of freedom to its participants. At least, compared to other programs. There were restrictions. They had a no alcohol, no drugs, no dating policy (the first because it is VERY illegal in China. All sorts of BIG TROUBLE. The latter two largely because they'd allowed them before and things got messy and unfortunate and uncomfortable). But the other programs I had looked into were far more restrictive. There was one program that would send me to Russia that I had actually committed to - to the point of submitting a $300 non-refundable deposit - and only found out after I signed the contract that they didn't allow their volunteers to go ANYWHERE alone. At all. I would go nuts. In the end, the final factor was financial. China cost $1300 and Russia would have cost $2500. But the whole not being able to go anywhere (like not even in your neighborhood) alone was a significant factor. China actually ended up costing even less, but I'll get to that. The second purpose of our time in Beijing was as a tour of the capitol!

Anyways, this all goes to say that orientation was not quite as... intense as I thought it would be. The entire teaching structure was not nearly as, well, structured. Orientation mostly consisted of getting ideas for games and teaching exercises from each other and thinking about how to react in different scenarios. There were also some cultural differences that were explained (such as, it's not necessarily appropriate for students to visit teachers at their apartments, depending on the situation, people WILL take pictures of you, DO NOT DRINK THE TAP WATER, DO NOT FLUSH THE TOILET PAPER, etc.). I'll admit, I was worried. The majority of the teachers in our program were teaching in kindergartens and grade schools. I was teaching at a high school so I was worried that the games and the fun things wouldn't be enough, but I decided I would just plan more things later when I was settled into my new home. Orientation was fun and I got to meet some really cool people and that's basically all you really need to know about that.

Now, onto the good part. Cavorting about Beijing!

Ok, one of the first tourist things we did after running around at night was go to the Summer Palace. Contrary to the name, it did not defy the wintery weather and bring warmth. It was still freezing. So much so that the moat was entirely frozen over and a whole host of people were sledding on the ice. Less people were ice skating, but there were still some. It was pretty expensive to rent a sled so I declined. It had been several years since this moat had frozen over enough to skate on so it was very popular. Also, thinking back on it, it probably wasn't nearly as expensive as I thought it was back then. I hadn't gotten a good grasp of how Chinese yuan converted to US dollars, so I probably should have gone for the skating thing, but I guess you live, you learn.

This trip was a momentous occasion for me! It was the first time I had used a squatty potty. It was a bit daunting. I was kind of nervous (mostly because everyone else seemed so nervous about it). The bathroom smelled typical of a Chinese public restroom. That is, nasty with a thin veil of incense. Don't get me wrong. I think that most of them were cleaned fairly regularly. They just smelled bad. Worse than your typical public American restroom. Some public restrooms were outright nasty and others were like entering the worst porta-potty you've ever encountered only worse. One time, I went to pee in a bathroom that was just barely bigger than myself in the back of a restaurant right next to the small, odd-shaped basin where they kept the live fish for cooking. It was an experience. I love China.

It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Honestly. It was much easier to use the squatty potty than I thought and I didn't understand the people who continued to complain excessively. Maybe squatting to go pee just came more naturally to me. Eheheheh... (PSST! The secret if you’re worried about your clothes is to hold them out of the way. Also you have to learn how to squat down with both feet flat on the floor. It’s both a great stretch and if you do it right you can balance squatting down for a long time… both in the bathroom and just anywhere you want to rest and don’t have a seat. In the West/America (My realm of experience is limited to China, Thailand and America, ok!) we generally squat up on the balls of our feet and it’s both harder to balance and more tiring on your muscles. Seriously, guys! Learn how to squat on flat feet, it’s miraculous and life-saving!)

Anyways, the Summer Palace! It was my first close contact with old imperial Chinese architecture. I think, on the first night, I saw one of the old guard towers near Tiananmen Square, but that was from afar. Here I was, walking through centuries old buildings with some of the most intricate detailing I'd ever come across. We went through the front gate. It was very ornate! Very lovely! There were old, worn statues outside and the colors on the gate were beautiful. Then we went inside. This is where I saw the moat and the infamous bathrooms. Then we went across a bridge. The old style Chinese bridges are beautiful. They're made of stone (a LOT of things are made with stone in China. I think it's because there's a lot of stone that's relatively easy to quarry. Even with modern things, a lot of the embellishments will be made of stone styled after traditional designs. Clouds are a very popular design.) and have those big circular cut-out bottoms. This one was different, but still stone and still pretty. There were a bunch of small buildings surrounding the moat. I found out in retrospect this is called Suzhou Street. This is funny because Suzhou is a city down South in the Shanghai area named Suzhou that is really famous for silks and for ancient water towns. Basically, old one-two story, tightly packed towns with canals instead of streets. AKA Venice of China. So, my guess is this street is called Suzhou street because there were old, one-two story buildings surrounding a 'street' of water. From there, we went the Site of Sumeru Temple.

Please keep in mind, I knew very few of these names when I was there. Maps were a little... Hit or miss (another common theme). I also have forgotten many of these names because it's been almost two years since I was there. So I'm doing some research to supplement my names and such.

I wish I could do justice to the architecture with words. I'll include some of the few pictures I managed to post before the computer incident. It was a bit magical. The Site of Sumeru Temple was fronted by a wide courtyard. The temple was raised and two staircases paralleled the foundation it was raised on and formed a sort of triangle leading up to the temple. There were a couple of towers off to the sides of temple. The temple was largely red, white, and yellow (red and white walls, yellow roofs). I remember that the inside of the temple was cool, but apparently not that memorable because I don't really remember it. Oops. But after that we went to the Hall of Buddhist Tenets and that was amazing! (Upon further research, I'm not sure if this building was called the Hall of Buddhist Tenets or the Sea of Wisdom. Like I said, maps were... iffy.)

The inside was cool, but the outside was amazing! It was mostly a deep golden yellow, but inset in emerald green indentations were hundreds upon hundreds of approximately head-sized golden-yellow Buddhas! They were beautiful! I got some really cool pictures sitting up in this large white stone window frame set into the side of the building, but they were lost. (Looks nostalgically into the sunsets whilst inwardly swearing like a sailor at my hard drive... Seriously, I'm still not over this guys.) But there were these little Buddhas just covering the entire building and they were beautiful! Intricate and there were just so many of them!

After that the group I had kind of adopted wandered a bit up and down the walkways. There were some courtyards and cool walls. I remember we went to the back of the Hall of Buddhist Tenets and were exploring the backside. We took some more pictures there and explored some of the nooks and crannies of the building.

The Temple of Buddhist Virtue is one of the crowning pieces of the Summer Palace (that's like saying it's one of the shiny marbles in an entire bucketful. There were a lot of awesome things!) It's a large, rounded pagoda that rises up from a hill overlooking the large lake that borders the palace. It's actually more hexagonal, but those are details. Details. One of my favorite things about Chinese imperial architecture are the details. They're immaculate. Carved wooden designs and three dimensional patterns colored in red, emerald, cobalt blue, gold, and accents of white intertwining around small murals painted in exquisite color.

For some reason we decided not to go into the Temple. It might have been closed, but it didn't really matter because it was stunning from the outside.

We went down the hill to some of the lower portions. There were a lot more people there! It was a cool area. More walls there and it felt more like an... official complex as opposed to a park. The upper area felt more like a park. It was also beautiful and wondrous, just a different feel.

We didn't spend as much time there, so I don't remember as much. The one thing I remember more than any of the lower area is the view of the lake. We got an amazing view of the lake from above.

It was winter so the days were shorter. Even though it was still fairly early the sun was hanging low over the horizon and kissing the world with a red-golden light. Earlier I mentioned that we caught the tail end of Spring Festival. This was such a gift! Not nearly as many of the factories were up and running because people were on holiday so the air was much clearer than it might be at other times of the year! It wasn't consistently clear, but WOW! We got some beautiful days! This was no exception! There were some clouds and haze on the horizon, but - I'm gonna level with you real hard - when there was just a smidge of smog/haze in the air it made the sunsets radiant! Ok, have any of you grown up in an area that gets summer fires? I do, I'm from western Oregon. Lots of trees. Dry summers. Things burn. It's an unfortunately beautiful side effect of such destruction, but the sunsets are beautiful gold and red and the sun turns into a brilliant glowing red ball in the smoke. The air drips with color and saturated light weaves itself through the buildings and trees coloring everything!

It was a bit like this. Not quite as red this afternoon, but the gold of the setting sun was effusive!

A large part of the lake was frozen over as well closer to the shore, but enough of the lake was unfrozen enough for the boats to be out. On the frozen part of the lake, where the ice sparkled in the sunlight, dozens of people were skating and sledding on the ice. The sunlight illuminated the vast spread of the Summer Palace. There was so much that we didn't get to explore.

When I go back to China I would like to go back to some of the places I'd gone during orientation and honestly, spend far more time in these places. I don't know if I'll get a day as overwhelmingly lovely as this was, but I want to see all of the many, many things I missed. This view was breathtaking, both in its beauty and in the array of buildings in the palace area that we didn't get to visit. It's massive. We were there for several hours and I don't think we saw half of it.

After coming up from the lower area (heading back because we were beginning to need to find our meeting place) I ended up with a different group. Not gonna lie, not entirely sure how that happened. Eheheheh.... But they were fun! We decided to visit a couple more places in the palace and make a sort of round about way towards our original entrance because we had more time than we thought.

Our path came to a river and followed it. It was amazing! At first, it started out as just a bit of frozen water in a river-shaped dent in the ground. Then more ice began to appear. Then giants chunks of ice and suddenly, we were walking next to a river that wasn't really a river. It was a river that had been utterly frozen solid and then split into massive pieces of ice with the bottom of river rocks running in between. The river did this delightful thing where there were shelves of ice clinging to the cut stones of the walkway as the very edge. There was a drop of several feet before the frozen ice resumed. It was fascinating!

I loved this part (and not just because I loved the entire thing). We had inadvertently taken a route that found some of the less well-kempt parts of the palace complex. There were the areas tourists didn't normally go. Or maybe they did and they were kept less restored as a reminder.

Regardless of why they were less cared for, it was a bit haunting. In a very enchanting kind of way. I had just been utterly dazzled by this amazing series of perfectly restored architecture on an imperial scale. I had been delightfully bombarded by designs hundreds of years old simultaneously looked hundreds of years old and as if they had been created last week. I had seen buildings older than anything I had ever seen before and everything was fresh and impeccably restored.

And then the illusion faded.

I gradually found myself in a world where time hadn't been recaptured. Instead it was observed through a scratched lens. You could see the grandeur that used to be, but there were imperfections. The paint wasn't as vibrant, in some places it was peeling, in some places it was gone altogether and the wood beneath lay bare to the winter air. It was the same style and the designs were similar if not the same, but it was faded. There weren't as many decorations and these areas were far less colorful. It was magical.

The other areas were like stepping back in time to the moment when these buildings were still alive. This was walking through a half-gone memory. It was a step back in time, but seen through the view of the forgotten places and the spaces that don't shine. Ethereal. Somber. It was like walking through a held breath.

We approached the entrance from the side by the river where people were still skating and walked up behind the wooden buildings bordering the river and across the stone bridge. And that was the Summer Palace.

[loststargrazer-blog]

Can You Build a Philosopher?

Is being a philosopher too weird for you; well perhaps we could just build an artificial philosopher as then you could have objective philosophy? But what do philosophers do?

What do philosophers do? This is an interesting question, and there seems to be plenty to go on. One thing academic philosophers do is they study philosophy. I mean they really seem to care about who wrote what when, who commented on it and why, and who was influenced by them, where the philosophers lived, and what they had for breakfast. So philosophers on this view are a funny type of historian of ideas. They are not really that bothered about the right answer in philosophy, much more in what historically people believed. The problem with this is that I am not sure you need a PhD level detailed search through dusky archives to give you irrelevant information like what mental diseases Socrates had, or whether Anaxagoras disliked bacon sandwiches. Alternatively you could upload every surviving work of philosophy and get your robot 'Phylis the Philosopher' to spit out random passages and questions, which Phylis could then try to answer based on the library and archives using a combination of random shouting, search, and a machine learning algorithm. Is this job done?

Unfortunately when you look at philosophy, particularly modern philosophy, you get a different answer as to what philosophers should be doing. If we look back to the 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' by Wittgenstein where he says philosophy is not a body of knowledge, but is a process. Interestingly, could we automate this process? What would it give us?

Wittgenstein says that much of philosophy is meaningless. The questions of philosophy are either based on confusion - so are part of philosophy, or are meaningless - so should be binned, or are questions of fact - and are part of science. So his philosophy is a facility for analysing language about confusions, and for clarifying them into logical relations and atomic statements of fact. Could you build this?

I shall call it the 'Wittgenstein Test', and it is a more sensible version of the Turing Test, not just to chat about human niceties, but to have Phylis shout either: "You are asking meaningless pointless questions you superstitious worm!" Or: "You are confusing x with y and z when they are different things you confused slug!" Then, like Wittgenstein himself, Phylis could spit out some tape of predicate logic in a weird mix of obscure and obsolete Greek, mathematical, and Hebrew symbols.

On a more serious note, Wittgenstein does give some more details about how to pass a Wittgenstein Test, and it is very like machine recognition (as you would find in a self-driving car):

- First, you take the sensory information about the world and describe it as a picture.

- Second, you identify everything in the picture in a finite number of statements or logical atoms (or (Ǝx)fx as Wittgenstein unhelpfully describes it - he also has a symbol for the set of statements that I can't draw).

- Third, you can describe the relations between the logical atoms.

- Fourth, you make propositions with the logical relations of the atoms and manipulate them tautologically [I shall discuss tautologies in my next blog - basically this means in a way that can't be logically false - so is a logically valid manipulation].

Really Wittgenstein doesn't give too many examples, so I am not sure if Phylis would be useful, but by showing the link to the logical statements from your question you would either be finding a tautology - so the answer would be yes, or finding a contradiction - so the answer would be no, or if neither of these it would be irrelevant to the picture. If irrelevant to the picture, Wittgenstein and the logical positivists (although not me) said the question was actually meaningless. I can see Phylis in this mode being able to answer things like is there a cat on the road? But less, should we stop? Also, there seems to be a large computational jump to being able to analyse a philosophical confusion from this. It is probably terribly politically incorrect, but I do often mock Wittgenstein in my head, despite his 'algorithm' for philosophy having been written before electronic computers were invented at the end of the first world war. Nonetheless Phylis could probably do 'philosophy' as set out by Wittgenstein in steps 1-4 only, which is good because I don't think a normal brained human could, but bad because I don't think this would solve many philosophical questions. But isn't philosophy a bit more creative?

Well is philosophy creative? There are plenty of things philosophy could be said to be, but I am not convinced that wild bouts of creativity are as prevalent as you might think, although perhaps they should be; but philosophy is not supposed to be fiction. So what do philosophers do again? One theory is that philosophers only do philosophy to promote themselves in society, but given the number of philosophers who rejected social niceties this seems an only partial view at best. Also philosophers would probably make more money if they became accountants, so I think this Nietzschean view is not really a comment on philosophers, but rather a comment on some human ambition and rather flawed too. Personally I just like to share my thoughts with you my friends, however it does lead us into a discussion of the role in society of philosophers separate from producing philosophy.

Quite interestingly for me, philosophy in academic groupings is lumped together with religious studies; which, based on Wittgenstein's probable account that the word god is meaningless, I find to be quite hilarious. Nonetheless it does suggest that Phylis, our robot philosopher, might need to have a religious role within society following on from our definitions of religious in blog 18 to be a true philosopher. Following on from the last two blogs, we can see that, especially historically, philosophers have been crucial to describing the generalisations, theories, and conceptions that govern our political and moral lives. Along with economists and sociologists, philosophers are the new priests of our secular society working alongside the vestiges of the religious organisations that never go away.

Philosophers probably aspire to incitefully solving confusions through educating and clarifying public thought. Also, they may polarise or distract the debate by adding logic, or even dogma, or even just by clinging to the views of their favourite school of philosophy. A surprising number of philosophers are advisors on panels and think tanks on a wide range of issues, and may even influence governments, or at least provide some alternative insane views to the prevailing orthodoxy. In fact academic philosophers in particular often love the thrill of having their interpretations being taken seriously, and not just by gullible students. So could Phylis become a secular priest, and influence society with awkward and backward philosophy from a long dead philosopher? Could she educate and corrupt the youth by providing an unhelpful academic education like Socrates?

Presently there is educational software, but it is quite textbook like, so Phylis could be loaded with someone's perceived wisdom. It is unlikely though that she could yet mark an essay correctly, and philosophy students generally have to write essays. In Socrates's day of course they had to use dialectic, verbal discussions. While it might be difficult to get a robot to discuss philosophy, it might be easier to get it to say: "You don't know that," at regular intervals. Socrates's education system was very much focused on denying speculative knowledge, although strangely not so much about the gods so much as political authority. Apart from Socrates there is a tendency to promote philosophy that is politically expedient, for example Confucius, or that tries to make you happier or more respected, like Aristotle. This philosophy is not necessarily truly justified by dialectic argument beyond an end justifying the means. For example, Socrates is probably correct in his view that an Emperor does not know what he is talking about; however Confucius tries to reconcile this by saying it is in the interest of a harmonious state to respect the Emperor. That this is oppressive totalitarianism is not relevant to Confucius's moral view that anarchy or civil conflict is a less favourable alternative. So sometimes philosophy is not about philosophy but about the conflicts in society, psychology, science, politics, even economics. This conflict can be captured in an essay or dialectic, but less in robot marking.

At present we could use search technology to search digital libraries, and digitalisation itself would much improve the availability, cost, and ease of access to philosophy. The delivery of education could be semi-automated with texts, comments, lectures, and criticisms loaded online. Interactive forms and worksheets would be useful in teaching the facts, particularly in topics like logic exercises. However this leaves quite a lot remaining. To study philosophy is also to test out how you think. This remains outside of technology for the moment.

In some respects contemporary philosophy is like a bunch of cut flowers, cut from other disciplines. Logics, which I shall talk about in my next blog, are cut from language arguments; philosophy of mind from psychology; meta-physics from physics and religion; ethics from decision making; political philosophy from campaigners; and of course running through almost all philosophy is history, the history of ideas. Can Phylis, our computer philosopher, do this? I think the flower arranging and ensemble is beyond the ability of a present computer system. When we look at what philosophers have done historically, there are both tasks that can be done better by a computer and tasks that are beyond Phylis, most notably the synthesis of a new religion for society. However, what about a future academic philosopher? What would happen in sci-fi philosophy?

There are at least three ways we could study how we think and whether our philosophy is valid in the world of sci-fi:

- One is to think the thoughts while in a brain scan: It would show the neural logic, the associations, the premises, the actual logic, and the exact references and the scope of the conclusions.

- A second way is to use a computer brain, perhaps taking a step by step analysis of neural learning methods as it goes from the explicit inputs via an analysed neural net to a weighted conclusion. Alternatives, like a Wittgenstein Test, might also be helpful in providing different cognitive analyses of a problem. This would transform philosophy from being based on opposing historical arguments to showing how the interpretation of an input, or the weighting of a learned emphasis could create tipping points in the logic and worldview; so one way you get the ethics of Jihadi John, and another way the generosity of the enlightenment.

- The third way is dystopian and that would be to create unethically a large organic brain, perhaps by hormones or gene therapy - so you could brain scan an experimental brain; perhaps it would be a monkey with the IQ of 300. This could be used to solve the hard problems, but would probably work out how to enslave humanity and conquer the universe with a race of monkey cyborgs. Okay this is definitely sci-fi, but the point remains that you could brain scan something other than a regular human brain, perhaps a large vat of neurons.

There are other experiments that could be carried out in sci-fi, for example testing the differences in perception and thinking between a primate brain (like a human) and a bat. This might be the case of building some simplified computer models of bats and primates in a super computer and reverse engineering the brain simulations to investigate the difference. Perhaps the sensation of being a bat could even be simulated for the curious using virtual reality. Would this still be philosophy, probably not? Probably it would be a form of science like computational psychology, but it would answer a current question of philosophy. So philosophy will both expand and shrink.

Back to the here and now for a conclusion; can you build a philosopher? The answer to this is that on Wittgenstein's definition, you might yes, however this definition ignores much of what philosophers actually do. However neither Wittgenstein's machine nor most academic philosophers spend that much time systematically rethinking and refining general philosophy. Academics do spend a lot of time on the quasi-religious public worship of old theories. There are therefore two final conclusions you can draw from this: One is what philosophers do might change radically in the future if digitalisation technology evolves into digital cognition. The second is that it is good to re-explore philosophy in this live flash blog form and try to revamp, and join up, our thinking; for academic philosophy is religious and has a backward influence with gravitas.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT PROFITS

And yet because of the slow sales cycle. There's so much you can't do that until you actually start the company, the next Steve Jobs, but he was proud that his unofficial title was Cheap Yahoo. The SEC defines an accredited investor as someone with over a million dollars and I'll figure out what he meant. The politicians all saying the same thing. Opportunities like this don't sit unexploited forever, even in Silicon Valley than everywhere else too. Com. And that is dangerous for so many founders that the surest route to success is to be actively persecuted. You may wonder how much of a problem. This is just a matter of pride, and a server collocated at an ISP. Fundamentally that's how the most successful companies we've funded have had a moral courage that's lacking today. But should you start a startup by just writing code.

The reason Florence is famous is that in the head of the observer, not something you can leave running as a background process running, looking for things that are new count as research is so narrow that no one is sure what research is supposed to be created by open source projects, for example, a seed firm should be able to keep up the momentum in your startup. East Coast after Yahoo. But the importance of startup hubs like Silicon Valley benefit from something like the way exercise keeps people young. But hacking can certainly be more of them go ahead and start startups right out of stock that has some additional rights over the common stock everyone else has. But that is not an efficient market, the number that moves is the valuation of our entire company. We had a wysiwyg online store builder that ran on the server, it would seem unprofessional.1 2 fundraising is to get lots of referrals. No matter how much money Yahoo would make from each link.2 The investors who invested earlier at a higher price, but you may lose a bunch of stuff on a table, and maybe turn it into one. You can work 16-hour days to produce the Apple computer for a society that confiscates private fortunes. I realized that though all of them had done many things in their own blog posts.

Is it a problem if customers feel pinched: you may even be the majority. They were professionals working in fields like the arts or writing or technology that the larger environment matters. I am always looking. Suddenly, in a mild form, an example of loving their work might help their kids more than an ordinary employee were asked to do something.3 They send spam because it works. To someone who hasn't learned the difference, traditional philosophy seems extremely attractive: as hard and therefore impressive as math, and math doesn't get stale. It's a smart move. Because people in the world for the better. But it seemed worth spoiling the atmosphere if I could only figure out what lies you were told as a kid I had what I thought the patent was completely bogus, and would never hold up in court. This is the counterexample to the design principle I just mentioned. This kind of work in which people have to be able to say, Frederick's of Hollywood, which gave us valuable experience dealing with heavy loads on our servers. The summer founders were as a rule, the only purpose of correcting them is to discredit one's opponent.4

That is so much better than the others'. Buildings If you go to the public markets. What have other people learned about design? As a Lisp hacker. Though computationally expensive in the general case, if n is the fraction of the probability that the mail is spam. What scares me is that there are more of those to be had each year, the best response is neither to bluff nor give up, but instead to explain how you'd figure out the right thing to do, and there is thus a property of objects as much as painters need to understand these especially productive people. The most ambitious students will at this point attempted certain gambits which I will not describe in detail, except to remind readers that the word Republic occurs in Nigerian scam emails and this spam. You may be thinking, why deal with investors at all?

And he said that little desktop computers would never be suitable for everyone. And since individual performance is so hard to make their own. That's an interesting idea.5 That depends on how well they do are not orthogonal.6 And that is more likely to happen in the Bay Area it's the Band of Angels.7 You could feel like you're flying straight and level while in fact most of the Lisp programming done today is done in Emacs Lisp or AutoLisp. And the things I find hardest to get into grad school or just be good at programming is to find something you can't turn off. By the time you get throngs of geeks. I'm British by birth. Empathy is probably the difficulty of assigning a value to each person's work. Because they can't predict the winners in advance?

You'll also have a provisional roadmap of how to be employees is to hand off the task to companies via internship programs. The ideas that come to them for funding. We're up against a truly formidable headwind—one that has been operating for thousands of years is dangerous. Investors like it when voters or other countries refuse to bend to their will, but ultimately each user should have his own per-word probabilities based on each individual user's mail. Electricity seemed an airy intangible. But Lisp macros are unique. Merchants bid a percentage of their profits? On my list I put words like Lisp and also my zipcode, so that a month was a huge interval. Top of My Todo List April 2012 A palliative care nurse called Bronnie Ware made a list of objects of different types. Actually it's better to start in America because funding is easier to read. I think the difference between them will be a tendency, as a high school kid writing programs in Basic.

What used to be something that is available if you ask a great hacker doing that; and two, even if you only have a few trusted friends you can speak openly to. Recently I've spent some time trying to push your price down. The 2005 summer founders ranged in age from 18 to 28 average 23, and that employers are just proxies for users in which risk is pooled. It sounds crazy, but there's a continuum here. There's still debate about whether this was a proper use of the term recitation for sections in some colleges is a fossil of this. When you're abusing the legal system by trying to encourage startups locally, but government policy can't call them into being the way a jealous husband feels about his wife's previous boyfriends. I've been telling founders that the company was really successful. After a few seconds it struck me how familiar they seemed.8 What's really uncool is to be undisciplined. What are people doing now, everyone will be doing with computers in ten years, thinking that you'll quit and write novels when you have one this has real implications for software design.

Even if you were going back to the problems they solved, look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself. You should respond in kind when investors behave upstandingly too. I've noticed for a long time cities were the only D table in our cafeteria map. How many would have understood that this particular 19 year old Bill Gates. Startups prosper in some places.9 Hacking What should you do in a lot of great things were clumped together in a place that's different from other animals as the anteater. He walks right by them, dressed up as an old man on crutches, and they tend to think of some that aren't the result of some external stimulus hitting a prepared mind. Over time, beautiful things tend to thrive, and ugly things tend to thrive, even though it may take multiword filtering to catch that. Civil War was about slavery; people would be intolerable. Y Combinator is that founders are willing to compromise.

Notes

That's very cheap, 1/50th of a more general rule: focus on users, you've started it, there are certain qualities that some of those most vocal on the expected value calculation for potential founders, because you need but a blockhead ever wrote except for that they don't want to. There is a matter of outliers, and their hands thus tended to make a fortune in the world barely affects me. I.

On Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 1996. Robert Morris wrote the first version was mostly Lisp, you don't need.

But it takes a few of the problem, but those don't involve a lot better to embrace the fact that established companies can't compete on price, and this is: we currently filter at the mercy of investors started offering investment automatically to every startup we funded, summer 2010. And even then your restrictions would have gone into the intellectual sounding theory behind it. E-Mail. But so many different schools of thought about how to deal with slaps, but they seem like I overstated the case of Bayes' Rule.

A round. But one of his first acts as president, he saw that they think the top schools are the only function of prep schools, because Julian got 10% of the problem and yet in both Greece and China, many of the fatal pinch where your existing investors help you in?

No VC will admit they're influenced by buzz. Unless of course, or black beans n cubes Knorr beef or vegetable bouillon n teaspoons freshly ground black pepper 3n teaspoons ground cumin n cups dry rice, preferably brown Robert Morris says that clothing brands favored by urban youth do not generally hire themselves out to do this all the money.

Only founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, and that modern corporate executives would work better, for example. And while they tried to lowball them. How can people who lost were us. If you're dealing with the other hand, he tried to preserve their wealth by forbidding the export of gold or silver.

On the other people who should quit their day job writing software goes up more than 20 years, maybe they'll listen to them rather than trying to upgrade an existing investor, and there didn't seem to them till they also influence one another both directly and indirectly. He did eventually graduate at about 26. They each constrain the other meanings are fairly closely related. Except text editors and compilers.

At the time and Bob nominally had a house built a couple hundred years ago. S P 500 CEOs in the former, because talks are made of spolia. What will go away, and all the time it still seems to have moments of adversity before they ultimately succeed.

Stone, op. Actually he's no better or worse than he was before, but that it's a departure from the Dutch not to quit their day job. So if you're a big effect on college admissions there would be to write your dissertation in the fall of 2008 but no doubt often are, but more often than not what it would have been about 2,000. She was always good at acting that way.

[erabtt]

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How One Master Educator Uses Visuals and Tech to Make Dracula a Must-Take Course

When Stanley Stepanic was growing up in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, he lived in a house built in 1823. “Back then,” he says, “it was always cool to say, ‘I live in a haunted house. There’s a ghost here, and she committed suicide during the Civil War.’”

“I was obsessed with ghosts and skeletons,” he says, “and Halloween was always my favorite holiday.”

When he was five or six years old, Stepanic told his mother he wanted a Halloween-themed birthday party. “I had a cake with a skeleton,” he says, “and I dressed as Dracula.”

It was destiny.

You have to envision yourself as basically an entertainer.

Decades later, Stepanic teaches a standing-room-only class at the University of Virginia entitled—cue up the spooky organ music—Dracula. The course is one of the school’s most popular, with a waitlist that once swelled to 1600; it was included in a roundup of “Top 10 Must Take Classes at UVA.”

An associate professor in UVA’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stepanic earned the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Teacher of the Year Award in 2012. He has also been selected as a Master Educator by the education technology company Course Hero, which produced a ten-minute film that features Stepanic and his crowd-pleasing class.

With Halloween upon us, we chatted with Stepanic about what his course addresses, how it became so popular, and why Bram Stoker’s Dracula is not a required read.

EdSurge: Can you give us a little background on the history of the Dracula course?

Stanley Stepanic: When I first came to UVA in 2005 to study for my master’s and my PhD, I was a teaching assistant to the course and was mentored by Professor Jan Perkowski. He had originally taught the class under the title of Vampires of the Slavs. He later changed the name of the course to Dracula. When I came here in 2005, the course had been taught for at least two decades.

When Perkowski retired, the department wanted to keep the course because it was their biggest in terms of enrollment. Since I was the last person who had taught it and knew anything about the subject at all, they asked if I wanted to do the course myself.

So I said, “Sure, but I’m going to do it entirely different. I am going to rework the course from the ground up. It’s going to be nothing like how it originally was, other than that title. I’ll keep the title.”

Master Educator Stanley Stepanic discusses his course, Dracula; video source: Course Hero

Professor Stanley Stepanic

What do you cover in your course?

The title, Dracula, is actually just symbolic. Basically, I track the development of human experience and human history, using the vampire as the frame to make it fun. We talk about anthropology. We talk about diseases, issues of racial identity, homosexuality—things you wouldn’t expect. Students usually are amazed when they take it.

We talk about the prehistory, the Slavs, Eastern Europe, then we go all the way to the modern day. Then we see what is a vampire, in the original folklore what does it mean, and then from there we see how that thing was adapted and assimilated and appropriated by Western culture and gets into literature. And then we go from literature to theater and then films and then pop culture in general.

The big takeaway is that the vampire is an expression of the human species itself. It has over time become a mirror for what we are, or for things we strive to be and haven’t achieved.

How do you teach a class called Dracula and not require students to read Stoker?

I used to have Dracula as one of the core texts. But students didn’t like it; they hated the book. Typical complaints are that it’s too confusing at some points; there are plot holes in it; and the characters are fake, I can’t connect with them. I don’t like the book personally. So I just took it out.

It’s really interesting to me that most people actually have not read the book. But they know that name and they think it’s the most famous work in horror literature ever written.

. . . you just can’t keep teaching the same notes with coffee stains from the 1950s on them.

How do you keep your students engaged?

This is one of the big changes I implemented. If you’re not entertaining students enough, they’re not going to pay attention to you. Professors will often ask me, “Why are you so good? What do you do that’s different?” I always say the same thing: You have to envision yourself as basically an entertainer.

Even though you’re teaching them, you have to entertain them at the same time. Otherwise 1) they’re not going to pay attention, and 2) they’re not going to learn. If you entertain them while they learn, they’re going to learn a lot more. I’ve always loved public speaking, so that was easy. But I realized early on, students are more and more visually oriented. So, if I’m talking about a film, I’ll show some of the original film posters or perhaps a clip or a trailer. It gives you a visual perspective of that time period.

How do you leverage technology in your course?

I’ve automated the grading for my essay test, which I was finally able to do with the help of a friend who programmed me a special little system this past year that I call Alucarda. [Editor’s note: What is alucarda spelled backward?] That’s made grading a lot faster and easier. I can do 30 exams in 15 minutes, which used to take me three days.

There’s one other thing I should mention about why the class has become so popular. I’ve always tried to keep up-to-date with the way the technology is advancing. So now I’ll use Google maps, archive.org, YouTube, the Internet and other sources students use.

Resources to Inspire Your Course Design

Professor Stanley Stepanic’s Dracula course file, with links to notes, quizzes, and study guides

Bram Stoker’s Dracula comprehensive study guide, featuring character maps, plot summaries, helpful context, and more

Bram Stoker’s Dracula infographic, highlighting characters, themes, symbols, and biographical information about the author

“Why do we associate vampires with sex?” — Course Hero Master Class by Professor Stanley Stepanic

“How did Dracula become the world's most famous vampire?” — TEDEd Lesson by Professor Stanley Stepanic

How do you pump new blood into your course?

Every semester I’m like, “I don’t like this slide. I need a clearer picture of this. I don’t like the way the text appears.” Every once in awhile, I’ll come across something new like a video. “Ooh, I could use this for this lecture.” I download them to save for later. So there are always things that I’m changing. Every semester it’s going to be a different course. The other thing we’ve got going is, of course, the vampire’s not going anywhere. It’s going to be in the media probably until the human race is extinct. Because the vampire represents problems we have yet to solve, and until we solve those problems, it will be one of the methods we use to symbolize them in order to cope with our lack of understanding.

As a friend of mine once said, as a professor these days, you just can’t keep teaching the same notes with coffee stains from the 1950s on them. You’ve got to be updating. You’ve got to be looking at what students are doing. So who knows how lectures will be taught 20 years from now. Whatever it is, I’ll be teaching that way. Maybe we’ll have some new social media app and we’ll be plugged into computers in our brains and you can experience Dracula through your eyeballs.

Whatever is going to happen, I’m going to have to adapt to it. You have to make yourself as relevant as possible every single year.

The Good Words

Here are six of Professor Stepanic’s go-to books for research on vampires:

1. The New Annotated Dracula, by Bram Stoker and Leslie S. Klinger

2. Bram Stoker: A Biography of the Author of Dracula, by Barbara Belford

3. Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality, by Paul Barber

4. The Vampire Film: From Nosferatu to True Blood (Fourth Edition), by Alain Silver and James Ursini

5. Bram Stoker's Notes for Dracula, by Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Elizabeth Miller

6. Dracula (Norton Critical Edition), by Bram Stoker, edited by Nina Auerbach

Vamping for the Camera

The vampire has been a cinematic stock-in-trade since the French short "Le Manoir Du Diable" was released in 1896, a year before Stoker’s Dracula was published. Here are five vampire films and one anime series recommended by Professor Stepanic:

1. "Hellsing Ultimate" (2006–2008, 2012, 2014; created by Kohta Hirano)

2. "Blade" (1998; directed by Stephen Norrington)

3. "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992; directed by Francis Ford Coppola)

4. "Dead of Night" [aka, Deathdream] (1974; directed by Bob Clark)

5. "Dracula’s Daughter" (1936; directed by Lambert Hillyer)

6. "Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles" (1994; directed by Neil Jordan)

How One Master Educator Uses Visuals and Tech to Make Dracula a Must-Take Course published first on http://ift.tt/2x05DG9

[ancienttextmoderntablet]

Cuneiform Incision Technique

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https://upenn.academia.edu/JeremiahPeterson

              Until very recently, even though the discipline has been around since the late 1800’s, cuneiformists have devoted little time to understanding the physical process of writing cuneiform itself. This isn’t quite the oversight it sounds like: the biggest task of the cuneiformist is learning how to read the tablets and then how to make sense of them and extract further information from texts about the hosting culture. Assyriology is devoted primarily to a gargantuan but essentially passive task: textual interpretation. However, in recent years scholars have devoted specific attention to the method by which cuneiform signs were incised and the order in which the wedges of a given scribe were incised, a critical factor in making legible signs. I recommend in particular these excellent recent scholarly articles by Michelle Cammarosano, Armando Bramanti, and Jon Taylor, who make several key advancements. There is also a wonderful article by Jon Taylor and Caroline Cartwright that reconsiders the use of clay as a writing material as it was encountered in ancient Iraq, which debunks a number of modern misconceptions.

https://www.academia.edu/12047738/The_Cuneiform_Stylus

https://www.academia.edu/23308934/Cuneiform_Writing_Techniques_in_the_Ancient_Near_East

http://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdln/php/single.php?id=65

https://www.academia.edu/21404629/Wedge_Order_in_Cuneiform_a_Preliminary_Survey

https://www.academia.edu/2225793/The_making_and_re-making_of_clay_tablets

           We have very few examples of cuneiform styli and only a few examples of the artistic depiction of scribes (the latter of which could be stylized to an extent that obscured actual practice). There is also little reason to assume that cuneiform styli were made exactly the same way across periods and locales, and possibly even from scribe to scribe. Most likely, they were predominantly made of reed: the Sumerian word for stylus is tellingly gi-dub-ba, literally “reed of a tablet.” I have found that at least for reproducing the cuneiform script of the period I specialize in (the Old Babylonian period, the first part of the second millennium BCE), the key feature of a stylus is a point formed by edges meeting at roughly ninety degree angles. To date, I have mostly used low density woods like poplar for my styluses, which I’ve made from the dowelling you can get at most hardware and hobby stores. This was probably not the favored material in ancient Mesopotamia, because they do absorb moisture out of the clay, which makes clay more likely to stick to it. However, if you write on clay that has the proper level of moisture in it (more on that important detail below), this doesn’t generally happen and the material is adequate. I’ve also tried metal, which we know was used in some instances in antiquity. I find it to be too heavy in the hand for easy use. 

(A few styli that I use. There nothing magical about the exact shape of these, but they work for me.) 

           We do not know the exact ancient technique of clay incision: it is never explained in any detail in any known text. A pretty good general picture, however, can be obtained by analyzing the cuneiform signs themselves. Cuneiform wedges are generally made by pushing the tip of a stylus into the clay and then rolled to widen the angle of the incision to varying degrees, a subtle but critical step. Any video you see attempting to replicate cuneiform writing simply by pushing the tip of a stylus into the clay and then pulling it back again is missing a critical step.   

           A fair amount of thought has been put into how the stylus was held. I think it is unlikely that there was one uniform holding position. There are some Sumerian texts that describe life in a scribal school (these are called edubba’a texts: the e2-dub-ba-a was a type of scribal school). In two of these texts, there are a number of proper student behaviors listed. To the best of my knowledge (there is a very badly preserved tablet in Oslo of a text called the “Scribal Regulations” that awaits publication), the proper holding of the stylus is not mentioned among them. We have a couple of passages that talk about the scribal goddess Nisaba making a scribe’s hand beautiful (and ancient handwriting ranges in appearance from rather hideous to gorgeous), but nothing in those passages can be taken as evidence of a specific rigid technique.

Because I write left-handed, a few people in my field have insisted in response to my videos that cuneiform had to be written right-handed. I look at the phenomenon of modern two-dimensional writing with a pen or pencil as a likely parallel. People hold a pen or pencil many different ways, and write with their right or left hand, depending on their individual neurological configuration (despite the occasional misguided attempts to kill off left-handedness). In many instances, you can recognize distinct differences in scribal handwriting among tablets found at the same place and approximate time. This is a pretty good indication that individual technique could vary considerably. There is a fair amount of motor skill and planning involved with writing, even two-dimensional writing, which is less complex. It’s just not that easy of an action to rigidly standardize.

(A manuscript of the so-called “Scribal Regulations” from Old Babylonian Nippur)

           I basically use two different techniques to incise cuneiform. These work best for me: I’m not really trying to say that these are necessarily “correct,” which would be a loaded statement in the best of circumstances. Either I move the tablet to make my incisions or I move the stylus. Here are videos of both techniques. 

Here’s the technique that rotates the tablet:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL0f3Kq1He4

           I suspect that this circular form of tablet, which was used most often by beginning scribal students, was shaped this way precisely to make rotating the tablet easier so a beginning student could learn to write cuneiform signs using the rotation technique. Notice that I don’t have to move the stylus very much, except to make the so-called “oblique” wedge. I find that this technique, which I use most often, allows me to place the wedges exactly where I want them and to furnish them with the exact depth I want. However, it is not terribly efficient. With non-circular rectangular tablets that you can easily hold in the hand, this method is a little clumsy, but still doable. With larger tablets, it becomes extremely inconvenient to rotate a tablet while holding it in your hands: you basically have to use a rotating surface or move around yourself.

           Here’s the technique that leaves the tablet in one place. I use the short sides of the flat end of my stylus to make the bottom part of the wedge. You’ll notice in terms of amount of overall movement, it’s more efficient.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE_j8IJ_Gdo

           This is probably the most reflective of how most cuneiform was typically written.  However, I personally have trouble with it. You can’t see the wedge as it is made as well as with the tablet rotation technique. My incision angles are less exact. So the handwriting generally doesn’t look as good.

           Another widespread misconception about cuneiform writing is the level of moisture in the clay needed to incise it. There is a modern tendency to think that the clay had to be much wetter than it actually needed to be in order to incise it. But there is a huge problem with using clay that is too wet. Significantly wet clay is extremely susceptible to distortion simply by handling it. The cuneiform wedges get distorted and the overall shape of the tablet is easily compromised when the clay is too wet. If the tablet is sufficient large, you cannot write one side and then turn it around and write on the other side without ruining it simply by gravity. It is certainly true that there are a number of ancient tablets that have been compromised by being incised and handled when they were too wet. This is most typically seen with tablets made by beginning students. But generally speaking, the most beautifully shaped and incised tablets do not exhibit signs of being handled when they were too wet.  

           If the clay has the proper amount of moisture in it, however, it can be incised easily while retaining its overall shape despite handling. In this state, the clay does not stick to the stylus. When the clay is stiffer, the wedges can be written close to each other and cross each other without ruining the other wedges, and smaller signs can be incised. However, this leaves you a smaller amount of time to write the tablet before it dries out too much to be effectively written: the drier the clay gets, the more effort require to make an incision increases sharply, until eventually you can’t make an impression at all that doesn’t fracture the clay. You can arrest the process a bit with a wet cloth and/or by sealing the clay’s surface with saran wrap.