#and not support for an authoritarian government maybe??? it’s not that hard please

[innocentartery]

.

[82mitsu]

{18Trip} <CHAPTER 001 SIDE-A: Sun will R1ze!> 001-A05 First Strategy Meeting

A translation of 18TRIP's CHAPTER 001 SIDE-A by 82mitsu. ENG proofreading by sasaranurude.

Kafka: Mhm, all the founding employees being assembled really makes you feel like the reality of it all has kicked in.

Kafka: However, what we’re doing here isn’t some get together for friends. Bringing proper results is our goal. For the time being I want to explain the restoration plan I came up with though, is that okay?

Yachiyo: …Um, uhm…

Yachiyo: That special tourism ward thingie mentioned in the documents… What uh, is …it?

Kafka: ………

Sakujiro: I cannot believe we have to start from there.

Yachiyo: Sosososososorry!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kaede: (Living in JPN in this day and age, and not knowing about special tourism wards… Maybe Yachiyo-kun is some sheltered boy?)

Kafka: Sakujiro, you know what to do.

Sakujiro: Of course, President. Fuefuki-kun, please look this way. It’s an educational video aimed at children titled “Tourism For Beginners”. 

Kaede: (That video…! It’s the one I saw while I was in preschool…!)

Mister Rabbit: “Hello all good boys and girls! Today Mister Rabbit and-”

Little Miss Lion: “Little Miss Lion~!”

Mister Rabbit & Little Miss Lion: “-Will be learning all about the tourism industry~!”

Little Miss Lion: “Hey hey Mister, why do people call JPN the nashion of toorism?”

Mister Rabbit: “Good question, Little Lion! You see, JPN isn’t the only “nation of tourism” out there, since many countries all over the world are the same as JPN!”

Mister Rabbit: “People from the past worked very hard and made many machines. Thanks to the power of science, everyone’s got lots and lots of free time! Which is why traveling became a very popular way of playing!”

Little Miss Lion: “People from all over the woreld are trafeling!?”

Mister Rabbit: “Yes they are! A lot of effort was put into creating a “Ministry of Tourism” so everyone can have lots of fun, even in JPN!

Mister Rabbit: “In particular, the places where lots of tourists go to play are called “special tourism wards”, and support is provided in all sorts of ways throughout the whole country so everyone can have fun!”

Little Miss Lion: “Waaah~! Does that mean taxes becoming cheaper too~!?”

Mister Rabbit: “Yes, you bet! Among other things, in a “special tourism ward”, there’s the official position of “0th Ward Mayor”, someone with a loooot of powerful authority!

Little Miss Lion: Little Lion love love loves authoreety~! What can I do if I become the 0th Ward Mayor? Can I destroy the entire neighborhood~?”

Mister Rabbit: “Ahaha! Little Miss Lion makes some funny jokes! But, maybe you can? wink”

Mister Rabbit: “The 0th Ward Mayor can advertise tourism, choose who gets to be a Ward Mayor and decide on what the local tourism should be about!”

Mister Rabbit: “Whether it's killing or reviving the neighborhood, that all depends on the 0th Ward Mayor and the other mayors!”

Little Miss Lion: “Waaauw, when I grow up Little Miss Lion will definitely become the 0th ward mayor and obtain all the authoreety in the world~!”

Kaede: (... Did this video always have such a dark twist to it…?)

Yachiyo: Tremble tremble tremble… The 0th Ward Mayor is an authoritarian figure……………!

Daniel: Hweh~ I see now, uh-huh~ That’s what special tourism wards and 0th Ward Mayors were all about, huh.

Kaede: (Hold on, what do you mean Daniel-san didn’t know about this!? The previous company he worked at WAS a travel agency…!)

Kafka: So, the mentioned 0th Ward Mayor is what I am, basically…

Yachiyo: Hieh, you’re gonna destroy the neighborhood…!?

Kafka: Well, whether the ward sinks or swims all depends on the Ward Mayor themself. In fact, my own father is the one who almost killed HAMA, so…

Kaede: (Kafka, your smile is creepy…)

Kafka: It wasn’t mentioned in the video, but special tourism wards also have their disadvantages.

Kafka: Instead of receiving support from the country, they’re put under surveillance by the 23 wards of Tokyo connected to the government. Our own supervisory authority is in the hands of Tokyo’s 8th Ward Mayor.

Kaede: Shigematsu Hakkei-san who was at the inauguration… right?

Kafka: Yes. Ward Mayors like him frequently come sightseeing without prior notice. So if the hospitality level is low, a negative review will be drafted up immediately—think of them like some kind of menace of a sister-in-law. 

Nayuki: However, you cut all financial support from the capital, right? Then in that case, the 8th Ward of Tokyo must not have the right to interfere with tourism policies anymore. 

Kafka: Exactly that♪ I’ll be taking bold, drastic measures with our tourism policies this year.

Kafka: If we don’t reach the quota of required tourists in a year, HAMA will lose its status as a special tourism ward and my role will disappear too. 

Kaede: We just gotta get over that hurdle of drawing in tourists, right…

Kafka: So that’s all to say, in order to revive HAMA I put a plan together under the name of “NEO18Wards”.

Nayuki: According to the documents… the benchmark is the 9 wards of KOBE? 

Yachiyo: Marking benches?

Sakujiro: A blueprint, an example, the goal we’re aiming for. That’s the meaning of it, Fuefuki-kun.

Yachiyo: Muh! Memo, memo…!

Kaede: Why KOBE-9 though, if you don’t mind telling us?

Kafka: The reason is simple. KOBE and HAMA are both port cities, making them rivals that've been getting compared for as long as they've existed. Though, KOBE is crushing the competition at the moment.

Nayuki: If I remember correctly, KOBE did a large-scale reformation on their approach to tourism a few years back, and established a plan for the Ward Mayors to be directly involved with hospitality.

Kafka: Exactly. To begin with, what people are trying to find by traveling is a fresh, personal human connection that they cannot experience on a daily basis due to the mechanization and automation of the modern age. 

Kafka: Such an element cannot be easily replicated by technology.

Kaede: (That’s true…)

Kafka: HAMA’s failure is attributed to the surplus of tourism policies attracting way too many tourists for its own good, and in turn this lowered the quality of hospitality to each individual as a whole.

Kafka: To get us out of this situation, it’s necessary to give tourists the experience of courteous hospitality just like in KOBE. 

Nayuki: A simple but a very reliable method, if I had to say. Nonetheless, what do we do about the policies to increase tourism?

Kafka: That’s the Nayuki I know, always quick on the uptake♪

Kafka: First, we’ll narrow it down to domestic affairs… When thinking about the population of JPN, there are only so many people that travel on a regular basis, after all.

Kafka: It’s a situation where every city wants a piece of the pie. Keeping that in mind, the only way to increase tourism is by increasing the amount of repeat tourists. 

Kafka: Not just touring all the famous spots as people have been until now, but transforming all of HAMA into a tourist attraction and establishing a fanbase is what’s essential here. Which is why… I intend to increase the number of Ward Mayors for exactly this reason. 

Kaede: More Ward Mayors…?

Kafka: Currently, there are three Ward Mayors left in HAMA. The plan is to appoint a Ward Mayor to all 18 wards in due time.

Nayuki: It’s the 0th Ward Mayor’s job to lead the other mayors, right. Wouldn’t management be a heavy burden with such a large number of people?

Kafka: It’s me, remember? Think I can’t pull it off?

Nayuki: … You have a point.

Kafka: Though, first we start bolstering what we have with the current Ward Mayors. Sakujiro, you know what to do.

Sakujiro: Yes, President. Click click, as you asked.

Kaede: …Splitting up the 18 wards into four areas? By morning, noon, evening and night…?

Kafka: That’s right. By the way, the intention behind the name is along the lines of “Enjoy your trip to HAMA from morning till night”♪

Kafka: Which leads us to the following. Yachiyo, Sakujiro, Nayuki and Daniel. All of you will be providing full-time support to each squad respectively. As for the role itself—I’ll simply call you “conductors”.

Yachiyo: Eh, eeeh…!? Such, such an important task, me!?

Kaede: (For Yachiyo-kun this is definitely too much… W-wonder if this is okay.)

Kafka: No worries. Yachiyo is in charge of Morning Squad, which includes me. Chief-chan, you’ll be keeping an eye on all squads, okay?

Kaede: G-got it.

Kaede: (I feel the pressure, but… I said I’ll face anything that comes at me. Gonna give it my all…!)

Nayuki: Dividing into groups and establishing squads, I can understand. However, what is the meaning behind going through the trouble of dividing?

Kafka: The fact that we’ll get the Ward Mayors of each squad to coordinate and create a superior touring plan. There's a limit on how much our tourism resources can be fortified when our time is restricted to one year. 

Kaede: (That’s true… Right now we’re unable to sit down and create new facilities, and increasing what sights to see isn’t an easy task.) 

Kafka: But, we do have something we can use immediately. What do you think that is?

Yachiyo: Eh……, eh………

Kaede: Can use immediately…?

Daniel: Our amazing Bossman’s money? Gahah, just joshing!

Nayuki: …I see, that’s what it is.

Kafka: It’s none other than human resources. 

Kaede: (Ah…!)

Kafka: I’ve said it before, right? What people look for on travels is something that cannot be replicated by technology. 

Kafka: Extremely hard to quantify that the numbers may as well be random. An existence whose pattern is indecipherable to the whole word. That’s what “humans” are.

Kafka: I’m wagering on the “human” potential of Ward Mayors. A meeting between people—there’s no personal experience more intense than that. 

Nayuki: If this is the President’s plan of action, I will provide my support.

Nayuki: Though, will the current Ward Mayors give their endorsements? All wards had been operating independently up until now. 

Kafka: I’m the 0th Ward Mayor, remember?

Kafka: Just sit back and watch how I’ll make them say yes.

<<previous chapter / next chapter>>

chapter 001 side A directory: TBA upon completion

[himbo-buckley]

what are your thoughts on what maddie says about her and buck's parents, that they were "good people, bad parents"? bc idk if it's just me but I can't get my head around that lmao, I can't understand how they can still be good people if they're bad parents, the two just can't go together for me, so another perspective would be interesting!

Hello friend 🥰

Oh, that is quite a question, isn’t it? Damn I just got out of work but you’re making me think deep thoughts here…

I think that is actually a question were we cannot find a unifying answer to - because like you said for you being a good person and a bad parent aren’t compatible, but for me they are. And I think we’d first have to define what everyone thinks constituents a good person and what constitutes bad parents!

For me a good example of that is Shannon Diaz who, in my opinion, is a good person. She means well and she tries hard but she is quite frankly an awful mother. Yes, she was put in horrible situation after horrible situation and she broke on that - which is something human and cannot be begrudged - but she left her child for several years and while she did try to reconnect and she was learning, she wouldn’t haven contacted Eddie on her own. She came back because the opportunity arose not because she tried to get back to them. (She could have become a good mother but she never got the chance.)

In the same vain I think Bobby pulled a lot of shit back in Minnesota but he still seemed to be a loving and kind father - so my question to you, friend, would be: do you consider Bobby a good person (the Bobby prior to Season 1 mostly)? Despite being the type of person who went to work drunk and / or high and by this endangering others and himself? Because I don’t think so yet the show frames him as a good person despite his downfalls (and I am not saying being an addict makes someone a bad person but I am saying knowingly endangering others does) - and if you think someone cannot be a good person but a bad parent, can someone who is a bad person also not be a good person?

See, one thing I learned working with children is that some people just aren’t made to be parents, and I am not talking about my time with child services, i am talking as a kindergarten teacher. Some people are very nice and they try hard but damn, parenting does not come natural to them and I worry how this will develop in the future. Like one of my mom’s is severely depressed and she might have Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy which doesn’t make her a bad person - but a bad parent at times.

And now, this is were I make you regret asking me specifically about this topic (or maybe not, who knows what your interests are) because I do have a bit of an expertise in what constitutes good / bad parenting and I will talk about it at random whether I am asked or not (and hopefully my language won’t fail me as most of my theoretical knowledge is in german, so please excuse any mistakes in technical terminology because I have to find the english equivalents and you know all those untranslatable german words? Yeah. Someone finally figure out how to translate the difference between Erziehung and Bildung please because both cannot be education and also it doesn’t really fit either):

So let’s get into it, shall we?

What makes good parents?

First up: parental relationship and parenting capabilities: several years ago the german department of family, seniors, women and youth (BmFSFJ) released a paper on what skills parents need to become good parents. There a four main skills (and I hope I translated everything correctly):

child-corresponding skills (ability to respond to the individual needs and features of the child, be it in terms of recognising potential or setting boundaries or sth else)

context-corresponding skills (ability to recognise developmental opportunities but also hinderances for the child and acting accordingly)

self-corresponding skills (being able to reflect their own behaviour as well as being willing to learn new things; also ability to regulate one’s emotions)

action-corresponding skills (trust in ones own ability and effectiveness; being consistent, both in their own actions as well as in response to others actions)

You might have heard of Kurt Levin or Diana Baumrind or someone else doing research into parenting styles. Generally there are four main ones, which, if we use Baumrind, differentiate on the aspects of control and demand 

(here is a graph from wikipedia on this)

(I consider this fairly self explanatory but I will get into it in a bit a little more, soooo)

Now of course parenting isn’t just about the parents and what they do - children also have needs (and yes there is a lot of overlap but I am doing this right, okay?)

To quote my government again (because the paper was actually quite good, okay?) children want autonomy (a chance to do things themselves), expertise (a chance to develop their own skills) and relatedness (that one was very hard to translate but this came the closest; the idea is children strive for social connections, a sense of trust in themselves and reliability)

Also Urs Fuhrer defined 5 basic needs children have which are:

feeling of shelteredness and reliable love (I won’t explain this further except: google Harry Harlow and try not to cry like I do every time I am reminded of this monster of a man)

physical security and intactness (self explanatory, right?)

individual and developmentally suitable experiences (yes, children need to be socialised but it needs to be based on the individual child and how it learns best and all that)

boundaries and structure (CHILDREN WANT BOUNDARIES!!!! ALWAYS!!! CHILDREN WANT YOU TO TELL THEM YES OR NO, they need adults to help them navigate the world! Part of feeling secure is having someone who will tell you no and don’t do this; boundaries protect from danger, they represent support and orientation, they protect someone’s dignity (both the child’s and the parent’s), they give something to chafe against on our way to adulthood (because listen, Erikson wasn’t wrong, a lot of development happens in adversity, we find out who we are in contrast to other people)

a secure attachment (most people have heard about Bowlby and his theory of attachment, right? There are several types, though we are born with certain abilities for attachment and then learn how to attach from our parents, we model relationships on this, attachment determines our feeling of security and our thrive for exploration as children)

And I’ll leave the theoretical at this and go on to talk about the Buckley’s now, okay?

(and try to figure out if any of this has an actual point, uuups)

As for the specific situation of Mr and Mrs Buckley, let’s first see what we know of them, okay? (It’s barely anything) (half of it is assumed)

they are both alive

they are (probably) still married

they warned Maddie about Doug (meaning they somewhat cared)

they weren’t physically abusive and most likely also not emotionally

they probably live on the east coast in Pennsylvania

Buck may still be in contact with them

Maddie considers them good people but bad parents

they accepted losing contact with at least one of their children

Maddie doesn’t want them to know about Doug

That’s it!

Now, I personally think they might be very conservative, possibly unsupportive of their children. They might have had plans for their children’s life Maddie and Buck didn’t agree with, they might have been the types to not listen to their children, maybe they worked a lot. Probably fairly impatient, possibly disinterested in their children. Not good at the parenting capabilities.

Based on their children’s issues I’d say authoritarian or neglectful parenting style (though not abusive because it would be a redcon of Maddie’s background), meaning most definitely unresponsive though I cannot make up my mind whether they were demanding or undemanding, as both these styles - even when not so bad they are abusive and / or endangering to the child - make insecure, dependent and unhappy adults (like the children turn into those once they grow up), which does kinda fit with Buck specifically, right?

Though tbh I don’t think the Buckley parents were that horrible. I know fandom has taken the idea and run with it, mainly because after three seasons we know virtually nothing about them aside from some throwaway lines and all the issues we see in their children.

Now, why do I say this?

One, Maddie is a fairly capable adult despite everything that happened to her and even being as resilient as she is, she still has too few issues for how horrible fandom thinks the Buckley parents are

Two, while Buck has a lot of issues, being cocky and having problems with intimacy and being a bit directionless and still needing a parental figure in your mid-20s doesn’t seem that uncommon to me? Like the only really deep issue I’d say he has (that have to be caused by something deeper) are his abandonment issues (and connected to that intimacy). And it’s been implied they are caused by Maddie leaving to go to College which does paint the picture that he doesn’t have a good relationship with his parents but honestly, that sometimes happens, right?

(Also, and this is where my professional background comes in, I don’t like how everyone jumps to the worst possible conclusions about them, simply because I feel it sends the idea that only if the worst things happened to you, you have certain issues which is wrong. Sometimes small things will trigger something way larger in us and that should not be invalidated.)

And okay, I am getting off topic again (but again, my profession lies here) but what I am trying to say is this:

I do think Mr and Mrs Buckley were bad at parenting because they demanded too much but gave too little (emotionally) and I don’t think Buck is really in contact with them but I also don’t think that makes them necessarily bad people. (just bad parents)

I think Maddie and Buck weren’t as close back when they were children as they are now (at least not after Maddie moved to College) because the Buck we know would not accept a sister he is very close to simply no longer having contact with him for three years without trying to figure out why.

I do think they can’t have been that bad mainly because of how good Maddie and Buck are. Listen, I believe in resilience and already being born with a certain personality and traits which shapes how our environment reacts to us, but which is also influenced and changed by our environment ! (Nature vs. nurture, ya’ll) Now I know I said we find and develop ourselves in adversity but not just. We also need someone to foster and support and reward certain traits or we lose them and this is especially true for being kind and heroic!

Buck especially has shown way to little anger or capability for violence for how the fandom likes to write his parents, which considering his general character and also the way he looks - just doesn’t work! (Because generally especially boys raised in abusive families emulate this behaviour and Buck just - doesn’t! Which considering how “fuck toxic masculinity” Buck is most of the time doesn’t make sense because being tall and buff would make the opposite easier for him and would make it the better strategy for survival, so this would be the behaviour he would have learned)

(unless our writers say fuck being realistic and fuck psychology)

His parents had to have done something right, because Maddie will have left for College by the time he was 12 / 13 probably and we know they consider this her abandoning him meaning they probably weren’t really in contact then and while the first years of your life ARE VERY important for who you become later (urgh, yes, I’ll admit it, Sigmund Freud, the most overrated theorist did get SOME things right) they aren’t everything and you develop for longer and also a young girl like Maddie would have been would have not been self-reliant and stable enough to raise her literal baby brother in a way that made him resilient enough to become the person Buck has become despite her leaving him twice

Not to mention: considering the person we know Maddie is - if their parents really were that horrible she wouldn’t have left Buck with them, she would have taken him with her!

 ANYWAYS!

Okay, tbh, I have no idea if any of that answered your question, but I did spend nearly two hours on it so enjoy?

I really don’t have a good answer to your question because we really don’t know enough and what we know doesn’t fully gel with each other and urgh, I don’t know friend despite this being the one thing I actually have some knowledge on!

I’m not even sure any of this makes sense and I am so sorry about that! I was trying, friend, but sadly an answer eludes me

Guess I should have just ended after saying: we cannot find a unifying answer to this because we each have individual definitions of good and bad in regards to people?

(Now, for everyone who read all of this? I love you and thank you and sorry! Please have a great day while I go cry in the shower now because I this ask drained me and also Harry Harlow)

EDIT: I wrote attachment issues when I wanted to say abandonment issues, shit!

[random-thought-depository]

My most significant reaction to this essay is to think that “create a haven for outcasts and a paradise for bohemians, with lots of warm connections of mutual support and fun between people who don’t fit in with broader society” is a much better goal than “save the world.”

“Create a haven for outcasts and a paradise for bohemians, with lots of warm connections of mutual support and fun between people who don’t fit in with broader society” is a goal that a small number of people with moderate access to resources can actually achieve. You just need to find these people and convince them to associate with each other and support each other, and the infrastructure for that is pretty cheap in the internet age, and the rationalist subculture already has the infrastructure for that. As a form of altruism, I think it’s pretty cost-effective. A person’s whole life can often be turned in a better direction with as little as a few thousand dollars. A single moderately affluent person can make an enormous difference to the lives of five or six or a dozen other people this way. I guess it’s not as efficient as mosquito net charities or something like that, but I think it’s probably much better than, say, contributing money to Friendly AI research (I suspect that by the time we actually build general AI any Friendly AI research we cook up now will be at best historically significant philosophical texts that introduced some important general concepts but are hopelessly outdated when they discuss the meat and potatoes of programming, at worst the equivalent of Medieval physicians writing elaborate treatises about the subtleties of the four humors theory of medicine).

I think “create a mutual support community for eccentric nerds” is also likely to be a very satisfying form of altruism (which, among other things, means less risk of burn-out). You’re helping “your people,” and every day you’ll interact with people whose lives have been obviously and tangibly bettered by your actions. Your altruism will be part of a network of mutual support and “thick” social connections between people who like each other and feel personal loyalty to each other, which is a very time-tested and successful formula (it’s a strategy that has a lot of problems too, sure, but it has some actually very nice features).

By contrast, “save the world” is... probably beyond the power of a small group of people with moderate resources, even if that’s a group that trends more affluent and smarter than average. I mean, taken at face value, “save the world” is a problem that has absorbed a significant fraction of humanity’s total intelligence and resources for literally centuries. Big concrete steps toward “saving the world” (such as, say, inventing commercially viable fusion reactors) would probably require an effort comparable to the Manhattan Project or bigger in many cases. Even “modest” steps in the “save the world” direction (such as, say, a coronavirus vaccine or a new hydroelectric dam) tend to be quite skill-intensive and technology-intensive and/or resource-intensive.

Compared to the status quo of 1800 C.E. the world has been saved, but it was mostly done by a strategy that looked very different from the high rationalist “get a small number of smart people together with the explicit goal of saving the world” strategy. The actual historically successful world-saving strategy was a huge number of people working to solve a huge number of more specific problems that were only tangentially related to saving the world. “Get a relatively small number of smart enlightened people with the right mindset together and set them to work with the explicit goal of saving the world” reminds me more of science fiction, specifically of Isaac Asimov’s concept of the Foundation, and I honestly wonder if that’s mostly where the idea came from (I observe that “member of the Foundation” is an aspirational social role that’s very ego-pleasing and seductive to a book-smart “gifted” eccentric who doesn’t fit in well with mainstream society; y’know, the kind of person likely to be attracted to science fiction and rationalist subculture).

For a small number of people with moderate access to resources, “Create a haven for outcasts and a paradise for bohemians, with lots of warm connections of mutual support and fun between people who don’t fit in with broader society” is an easily achievable goal. For a small number of people with moderate access to resources, “save the world” is at best going to inspire a lot of useful efforts that contribute to that project, but at worst it’ll be like twenty people trying to level a mountain with hand tools; a lot of effort expended accomplishing very little (I think the big danger for such a group is getting seduced into pouring their efforts into a glamorous and seductive but probably futile moon-shot; something like “instead of this hard grinding work of actually saving the world, maybe we can just build a friendly super-AI that will do it for us!”).

Also, I think “save the world” is a community recruitment pitch that’s likely to disproportionately attract people who are scrupulous-in-the-badbrains-sense, fanatical, narcissistic, or some combination of those things. Frank Herbert once made this observation about politics:

“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.” - Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune.

I think Frank Herbert identified a real recurring problem with managerial institutions here. Politicians and bosses are high on my list of people I’d be a little wary of dating or being friends with, because I strongly suspect that becoming a politician or a boss really does select for narcissism and authoritarian tendencies. I think you almost have to be a little narcissistic or have significant authoritarian tendencies to look around and think “the world would be better if other people were forced to obey me!” I think this effect contributes to many of the institutional and social pathologies of governments, businesses, and other hierarchical organizations. Likewise, I think you almost have to be at least little narcissistic to hear the high rationalist recruitment pitch of “we’re assembling a team of smart enlightened people who are exceptionally suited to saving the world, so we can save the world!” and think “I’m a smart enlightened person who’s exceptionally suited to saving the world, I belong on that team!” Please don’t feel too personally attacked if that description sounds like an uncharitable description of you, being a little narcissistic is a common personality trait, and part of the reason for that is you probably actually are better than average at the things you like and are good at … but I’d be wary of joining a community with a recruitment pitch that selects for narcissism and fanaticism, and I’d be wary of making such a recruitment pitch for a community I belong to.

I will note that, as an unquantified System 1 impression, I feel there’s a very cloudy but noticeable correlation between how close a piece of writing is to high rationalism and how much it’s infused with a miasma of a lot of the things I find most off-putting about the rationalist subculture; elitist contempt for ordinary people, very self-important vision of rationalist subculture’s role, cult of smartness attitudes, mix of vaguely Randian, Nietzschean, and Protestant work ethic attitudes, libertarian-adjacent politics that implicitly reflects the biases and class interests of affluent tech-company workers.

[vaguely-concerned]

Mass Effect Initiation thoughts

In short: this book is actually really good, N.K. Jemisin is, as we all know, an excellent writer! It’s the story of how Cora met Alec Ryder and joined the Initiative, and it has SO much good good SAM content and I am full of emotions. 

- poor cora is so continually out of her depth, I want to give her a hug. the points made about her in the main game are true though -- she is not ready for leadership yet. (and that’s fine! she does much better with something or someone to belong to and that is so Valid. she’s an honorable Loyal Knight!!! one of the sexiest things to be, as we all know)

I think I’ll actually like her a lot more on this new playthrough now -- she must have been quite hard to write compellingly in the game because at the end of the day she’s really very straightforward and honest and loyal, it’s quite hard to uh ‘hide’ things in her character  

- alec ryder deadass installed an unspeakably illegal (and did I mention experimental?) AI in cora’s head with no informed consent whatsoever. d A D 

(when cora is like ‘are you actually going to another galaxy because they don’t have laws to stop you from committing fully to your craziness in public’ and alec is like *...maybe so meme* fadsfhkj he does literally say ‘this is why I’m going to another galaxy’ out loud at a later point of the book)

- this book is giving me the good good SAM content ;________; I love SAM so much, the scene where cora thinks she’s dying and SAM talks to her? when cora asks SAM if he’s okay being connected to her because if he’s sentient that matters to her (cora is a Good)? SAM explicitly having inherited alec ryder’s sense of humour and sarcasm and alec a) doesn’t know how it happened, b) distantly thinks he should probably track that process down and turn it off (and never does) and c) regrets all his life choices when his robot kid mercilessly snarks at him and questions his life choices? please bioware give me an me:a sequel with more of this stuff I’ll eat it up with a spoon

- body diverse asari! HUGE BUFF ASARI! Short stocky beautiful matriarch asari with one krogan and one turian trophy husband fast asleep in her bed in the background of a vidcall fkdjshfkjsdlhfkjsdah god I love mass effect with my entire heart

- OLD LADY INFORMATION BROKER VOLUS WORKING OUT OF ILLIUM!!!! this is not a drill what the fUCK this is the coolest shit 

- fasdklhfsjkdalfhsdjk okay in Alec Ryder POV: “I don’t think [Cora] likes me very much.” Which probably meant she had good judgement. AFLSKJDHGJSDKF ALEC 

he has a weird flip-flopping sense of self -- he is uncompromisingly (one might even say... astoundingly arrogantly) secure in his own intellectual superiority and that most other people are idiots not to be trusted and that he needs to do things himself because others would mess it up, and yet there’s this clear seam of self loathing around basically everything else about himself too. (You know who he reminds me of, in a more military and less visibly anxious way? Rodney McKay. Alec Ryder is like a slightly unfortunate outcome for a McShep lovechild. I think we just figured out why I have sort of a soft spot for him even though he’s a certifiable dick lol) 

- this book really makes it hit home that cora grew up incredibly isolated and dirt poor. I’ve seen some people say her backstory is all sunshine and daisies compared to kaidan and especially jack’s, but honestly her background is complicated and fucked up enough that I’m just like ‘shit baby :(’ all the time

- well I have successfully solved the puzzle about whether alec ryder is an idealist or not; he absolutely is. a grouchy, bad-tempered one with no people skills, but an idealist nonetheless. alec ryder is in fact a storm of 150000 emotions in a trenchcoat, barely held in check by a thin fragile outer shell of iron lol, SAM was absolutely right to say that he was mostly governed by his feelings. (and I mean if anyone would know it’d be SAM I guess). I found some of it sort of sweet actually: he reflects in passing that one of the biggest reliefs of no longer being in the alliance is that he’ll never have to risk other people’s lives again. he fundamentally wants to build something good to help people live and be happy instead of destroying things. (he also is quite bad at predicting how other people could corrupt and use his innovations precisely to be destructive b/c he doesn’t think that’s the ~*logical*~ thing to do, so... y’know haha, maybe it’s good he went to another galaxy, the milky way could not contain his chaos) 

also he thinks a lot about his wife, even though she’s been dead for years at this point. o u c h (she truly does seem to have been a tether for him in so many ways though -- like a tie to the real world/normalcy/possibly sanity, and that’s a bit how he still evokes her)

additionally: alec ryder did fistfight at the very least one dude in the line of bureaucratic duty, and perhaps more, enough for SAM to have a list of warning signs ready and at hand jdfsklfhasdjf. he did, very much, throw a dude through a table. (at least it’s implied said dude was an asshole) I LOVE that alec’s SAM is  the snarkiest iteration we’ve seen and that he’s perfectly willing to call the old man out on his bullshit (alec stresses that SAM is supposed to do what he says at the end of the day, but his SAM is also less subservient and more willing to argue and discuss things than any other we get to see -- and this is of course the SAM Ryder inherits, but I don’t think SAM is as confident in being able to read the PC correctly until a bit further into the game and the twin is of course a different person who’ll respond to different things so he’s not quite as... blunt? I guess? in confronting them about things. (the whole concept is just! so! interesting!!) anyway I feel like all of this says something about alec’s parenting style, for better or for worse haha. he sort of tries to be authoritarian but his children (well canonically at least Sara, she references having yelled at him a lot over the years) aren’t afraid to fight back or scared of the consequences of disagreeing, so I get the distinct feeling his temper never flared violently like that with his family at all, I think he’s more prone to just pulling away in disapproval.) 

- I enjoy how casually diverse this book is  -- Jemisin has done such a good job making sure especially the human characters are from different backgrounds and places, as they would be lore-wise in the Mass Effect universe, though the games often skew unfortunately white. (andromeda much less so than the trilogy, though)   

- my heart. is so so soft for the fact that a huge reason for cora to join the initiative is how much she bonds with SAM-E. and I am so sad for her because she just wants someone or something who’ll stay, something that won’t disappear on her without closure like her parents; she’s so insecure and scared under her competence (and WHY THE FUCK WOULDN’T SHE BE holy shit her parents just. weren’t there one day after she left home so she wouldn’t accidentally crush their ship with her untrained biotics and kill them all). and she chooses alec and his dream. and then alec goes and FUCKING DIES at the first opportunity Y____________Y alternate universe alec please drink your victor sullivan juice and survive, all these dumb children need you  

- I am so surprised about how much fond respect alec seems to have for cora and how quickly he developed it. I suppose he has a harder time with his own children because it’s closer to home? he is a complicated man lol, this last part of the book where he shows her the ark and everything is weirdly sweet. again I think he has the potential to be a good dad somewhere in there and that just makes it so much worse that he wasn’t. (also he staunchly considers himself still a married man. god help me) 

they’ve both grown to honestly love their sams T________T fml. (well alec has sort of bound up all of himself, the things he loves and their future in SAM, so it’s a bit more complicated but my point still stands) alec advocating for a consensual synthesis is very heartfelt and convincing; you really want to believe him.

cora seen through someone else’s eyes is also SO AMAZING!!! after this whole book in her head and she feels so flailing and uncertain and adrift and other people naturally view her completely differently. I especially like alec picking up on her not talking a lot. (I think this is why she responds so well to SAM, who’ll be there always and can be in her head. I wish this part of cora was more evident in the game, the fact that she has this sibling-like connection to SAM seems very important. sequel where both SAM and Ryder grow closer to becoming her actual family? please? I keep begging for ME:A2 into an empty aching void haha) 

- alec ‘I don’t have time to die’ ryder still talking about everyone else being idiots as he’s slowly catching fire while saving SAM fhdjfhsdlfhasdhlfsjd he is an asshole but it is hard not to stan 

- nO SAM-E D:D:D: oh well at least he’s still alive within SAM, in a way?

- hey. hey you know what’s fun. alec tries to use his last words and last thoughts to ask cora to tell the kids about ellen being alive this time too. haha. ha. fuck

he consistently goes out thinking of his family despite all his bullshit and I’m not okay

- CORA IS A PERFECT BODYGUARD/SECOND IN COMMAND AND I’M EMOTIONAL 

- alec is. surprisingly afraid to hurt people emotionally? he keeps putting off telling cora the bad news about SAM-E, to SAM’s stated disapproval lol (I must repeat again: I love SAM so so much). this supports my thesis that in his personal life he’s avoidant rather than confrontational/aggressive. (professionally... again, he did very much throw a man through a table) 

- man I hope we some day get SAM being this comfortably close and sarcastic with Ryder too. thinking about SAM-E and the small differences between him and uh SAM ‘prime’ it really must have been a huge thing for him too to become someone else, especially after the last person died like that. and he kind of has no choice but to experience that loss and death intimately. (now that I think about it that’s. fucked up, man. he literally felt alec go like it happened to himself.) 

If I were to summarize the differences between the SAMs we have seen, cora’s SAM-E seems younger, more exuberant, shyer and more -- what’s a non-shitty word for needy haha? it’s very firmly established that cora longs to feel needed, so this makes perfect sense. alec’s SAM is blunter, snarkier and more prone to questioning things, and hilariously is sort of alec’s emotional intelligence. (probably serves a similar role to what ellen used to, actually. ow) scott/sara’s SAM feels more worried/focused -- which also makes sense; he’s just experienced losing his person/pathfinder, in a real way he’s also recently orphaned and must be Extremely aware that he now has an enormous responsibility, not only what he was built for but for what remains of alec’s family. ...poor SAM 

(come to think of it I guess one vibe I get from in-game SAM is a little bit of ’harried and anxious yet loving and responsible uncle’ hahaha)

- so at this point alec knew cora could never be pathfinder after him, and he never told her. *accumulation of asshole points continues, though I suspect this might have come from a place of not wanting to hurt her again (b/c he’s the only one who has a right to know these important things amirite)* but I’m also strangely touched that the reason he’s hesitant to involve his children in the whole thing isn’t that he doesn’t have faith in them, it’s that he doesn’t want to burden their lives with something so heavy, a burden he created. can you just imagine... if this man had managed to take the time to explain himself, his motivations and his feelings to his children just once. just one fUCKING time. am I laughing am I crying I honestly don’t know

- this book makes me ache all over for the potential of Andromeda. and I don’t think it’s too late to salvage it either. I know a sequel probably won’t happen, at least not any time soon, but... *sits by rainy window like a wife wistfully wondering if her husband will return from sea*

[actutrends]

Biden and Bernie duke it out on war and peace

Democratic governmental candidate Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.|Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Last Saturday in Iowa, the day after an American MQ-9 Reaper dropped its ordnance on Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, Joe Biden moved quickly to make himself the face of Democratic opposition to Trump’s drone strike. It was early evening at a Des Moines elementary school gym, and in spite of the dip in temperature level and the long lines to enter, a larger and more engaged audience than the ones he attracted over the summertime and fall was awaiting the previous vice president.

It was a white-collar crowd– Des Moines-area attorneys and insurance market experts and a smattering of D.C. Obama veterans now in town to help Biden in the homestretch. The leading attorney at ICE under the last administration was there, and told me it was the very first time he had actually ever canvassed Iowa for a prospect.

Iran had actually heightened the stakes. “#WWIII” was trending online and predictions of a full-scale war were commonplace. Trump might now benefit from the halo that shines atop all wartime leaders, at least for a time. And the importance of the outcome of the Democratic primary– to state absolutely nothing of the country and the world– had all of a sudden ballooned. Would citizens want a skilled hand whose position on world affairs is essentially, “Believe me, I understand what I’m doing” (Biden) or would they gravitate towards someone like Bernie Sanders, whose ringing calls to get the U.S. out of Middle East quagmires have the advantage of clearness, however make numerous a D.C. foreign-policy hand queasy? The answer might assist determine who wins over the Democratic base, and maybe the nation, come November.

When he arrived, Biden the prospect still winked and shot finger guns at well-wishers and hugged them afterwards, but it was Biden the commander-in-chief that his advisors wanted on display screen.

To Biden’s aides, it was their guy’s opportunity to seize the minute.

” The more the world appears in chaos, particularly with Trump as an irregular accelerant to that chaos, the more individuals appear to be looking for some return to normalcy and strong and steady management as opposed to erratic leadership,” stated a Biden consultant.

The voter stated, he ‘d gotten two of the most significant questions in recent years wrong: the 2002 Iraq War vote when he was a senator and the 2011 Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which Biden, then vice president, counseled Obama against.

Biden was a senator for 36 years and vice president for 8.

On Iraq, Biden gave a familiar response that Democratic senators who elected the intrusion have actually been making for 17 years: It was a vote to give President George W. Bush take advantage of at the United Nations to reinforce a weapons assessment routine, not to greenlight an impending attack. (This is traditionally accurate, but a bit like arguing you let a college-aged good friend borrow your credit card just for purchasing books for his fraternity and then being shocked about all the pot and booze he contributed to the expense.)

On the bin Laden raid, Biden, changing his story a bit, insisted that after a larger meeting at which he revealed reservations, he privately told Obama to go all out. (During his prolonged reaction, at one point, Biden inadvertently stated Saddam Hussein when he meant Osama bin Laden.)

Regardless of the hard question, Biden appeared pleased. If the subject is foreign policy, Biden thinks he’s winning.

Bernie Sanders was the only rival who appeared to invite that challenge. While Biden’s method is that of a conventional main frontrunner– overlook your primary opponents and focus on your basic election opponent– Sanders has the timeless technique for the person in the No. 2 spot: argue it’s a two-person race.

In Iowa last weekend, where there were lots of candidate events, Sanders was the only other politician who appeared to delight in discussing the conflict with Iran– and how the Iraq war and the Democrats who supported it helped produce the existing circumstance.

” What Iran has done is truly highlighted both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden as agents of 2 various poles in the Democratic celebration: one a lot more hawkish interventionist arm of the celebration, which utilized to be dominant, and then Bernie Sanders, representing a more diplomacy-oriented technique, a more collective global technique that is ascendant in the party,” stated Jeff Weaver, one of Sanders’s top advisers, who went on to ding Biden for the 2002 Iraq vote.

The typical assumption about Democratic base politics has been that the domestic exceeds the worldwide, that voters in Dubuque would rather hear about how prospects are going to repair their healthcare than about how they’re going to fix the Middle East.

But that’s not entirely real.

In 2008, Barack Obama’s opposition to the Iraq War was perhaps the single essential argument he made to reveal voters that, according to the 2 buzzwords of the primary, his “judgment” transcended to Hillary Clinton’s “experience.” By then, voters had grown tired of the body bags getting back from Baghdad and Kandahar, and the politics of the wars had ricocheted versus the Republican politician Party and hawks like John McCain. Obama soon made it clear that voting to invade Iraq didn’t disqualify Democrats from governing. He chose Biden, who, like Clinton, voted to license the war, as his running mate and made Clinton his secretary of state. In the 2016 Democratic primaries, Sanders was not able to run the very same play against Clinton. He frequently highlighted her Iraq vote to no obtain.

This election, 2020, looked like it may be various. However Iran has belatedly required a serious foreign-policy dispute amongst the major Democratic prospects, with Sanders and Biden representing opposite sides of a basic question that could define the next administration: What do Democrats think about America’s role on the planet? And do they have a national-security message that can beat Trump’s chest-thumping bravado?

Earlier on the same day Biden spoke, Sanders stumped in Grundy Center, about 90 minutes northeast of Des Moines. It was a little working class audience and Sanders, after blasting Biden on Iran for the electronic cameras, went back to healthcare.

Though the term is not often utilized nowadays, the Sanders town hall format is what sixties-era activists utilized to call “consciousness raising.” He prods normal people to stand and describe for their fellow people the wickedness they’ve experienced in the American healthcare system. Older radicals utilized the method to make working individuals aware that they were oppressed, that they weren’t the only ones, and that they could do something about it.

These sessions normally emerge numerous unfortunate stories that Sanders has a regular joke about how his spouse Jane grumbles that his events are too depressing. He then indicates an aide who will be handing out Prozac en route out.

The Sanders view is that, quite actually, this is how the transformation starts.

” I was mayor of the city of Burlington, Vermont, in the 1980 s, when the Soviet Union was our opponent,” he said in a 2017 address at Westminster College, in Missouri. Hatred and wars are frequently based on worry and ignorance.

However how that good insight equates into policy has actually been a battle for Sanders to articulate.

Sanders’s foreign-policy views were very first formed by his left-wing advocacy throughout the Cold War, when the animating force on the far left was opposition to American adventurism in the name of anti-communism. As the mayor of Vermont’s biggest city– a small town of 40,00, truly– Sanders really had a foreign policy. He visited Cuba, he became involved in Latin American politics centered on opposition to anything that resembled U.S. imperialism, and he and Jane even honeymooned in the Soviet Union in1988 (This litany of activities is often raised by Sanders’ rivals as deeply bothersome for a general election versus Trump.)

However when he got to Congress in 1991, Sanders invested the next few years, first as a member of your home and then as a senator, oddly withdrawn in foreign policy. When he ran for president in 2016, the old image of Sanders from his mayoral days as a pro-Sandinista Chomskyite is what stuck.

His 2017 speech was implied to address that.

Sanders still peppers his foreign-policy remarks with a long recitation of America’s anti-democratic history, especially in Latin America and the Middle East, during the Cold War, and the worst errors of the post-9/11 age. However with time he has actually gradually moved from a focus on how America has actually screwed up the world in the past to how to face looming threats to global democracy today.

He has actually repeatedly applauded America’s role in developing the United Nations and revealed deep adoration for the Marshall Plan, which assisted reconstruct Germany and western Europe after The second world war. In 2018, he determined growing authoritarianism as one of the fantastic diplomacy difficulties for the United States. It was a turning point for Sanders: The villains in that speech are not Americans meddling in Chile or getting into Iraq, but the “the authoritarian axis”– an expression that echoed Bush’s “axis of evil”– and in Sanders’s informing includes nations like Russia, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Turkey and Brazil, where there are “motions led by demagogues who make use of individuals’s worries, prejudices and complaints to gain and hang on to power” and are likewise handmaidens to billionaires and oligarchs, more familiar Sanders bogeymen.

While he required a motion to “fight the forces of global oligarchy and authoritarianism,” the details of how a Sanders administration would use American power to do that have been unclear. He had determined what he thought was the hazard of our time but he didn’t say how America might counter it.

On The Other Hand, Biden, along with the majority of foreign policy centrists in the Democratic Party, has actually also moved. Biden and his ideological kin have recognized that there is nearly no constituency left in the Democratic Party for the kind of hawks that controlled in the nineties and early 2000 s.

But on the concern of American management and whether American power can be virtuous, Biden is indisputable. His campaign is predicated on the idea that a President Biden can rapidly bring back America’s function as a force for good.

In talking to Democratic foreign policy advisors throughout the spectrum, I heard people in Biden’s orbit caricature Sanders as a Corbyn-like old leftist who never outgrew his extreme roots. The fact is that Democratic citizens have actually required both males to shift: Sanders to accept that if he desires to be president he needs to be comfortable with taking the reins of a superpower and Biden with the truth that the tradition of the Iraq War has poisoned the concept of liberal interventionism to a whole generation.

All 3– Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg– have tried to articulate an alternative vision to a Biden-style establishment Democratic foreign policy– what Sanders’ advisors call the D.C. “blob.”

And there are notable distinctions on some essential issues. Sanders and Warren want to utilize help to Israel to change the country’s behavior toward the Palestinians, while Biden isn’t. Sanders opposes the current USMCA trade offer, while Warren and Biden support it. Sanders and Warren would leave almost no footprint behind in Iraq and Afghanistan, while Buttigieg and Biden desire some forces to respond to any revival of al Qaeda and ISIS.

Progressives have also changed the politics of foreign policy.

In 2020 the pressure for Democrats in their reaction to the killing of Soleimani was to reveal they would not overemphasize or harp on his criminal activities in the Middle East and that they would not say anything that would motivate escalation with Iran. Warren initially tweeted that “Soleimani was a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, consisting of numerous Americans.” The next day, in a tweet that focused entirely on Trump, she composed that the president had “assassinated a senior foreign military official.” Gone was any description of Soleimani’s history in the region.

But in the end, the 2020 foreign policy dispute among Democrats is likely to play out a lot like the 2020 domestic policy argument amongst Democrats: with the establishment candidate co-opting simply enough of the left’s grievances to off the difficulty.

The Sanders wing long ago won the dispute about playing down using force, ending “permanently wars,” prioritizing diplomacy, and bolstering relationships with democracies. What the progressives have not yet been able to totally articulate– and there’s a huge literature that has actually attempted– is how a President Sanders or Warren or even Buttigieg, who have actually all determined promoting democracy and curtailing the increase of authoritarianism as major contemporary concerns, would in fact do that.

I asked a leading consultant to Sanders about whether there are more information to add to Sanders’ 2018 call to reverse the increasing tide of autocrats.

” We’re dealing with it,” he said.

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