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realityhop · 11 months ago

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"The dysregulation caused by loneliness consigns us to the extremes of either suffering passively (responding too little) or being “difficult” (responding too intensely)."

— Cacioppo & Patrick, Loneliness (2008)

"When cognitive control is lost, the ability to inhibit the drive to seek pleasure is lost."

— Robert Lustig, The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains (2017)

"Personal responsibility, if it wasn't so horribly co-opted by the right, is I think actually very important in my day-to-day life. However, personal responsibility is only as good as the environment in which it exists. And our environment is shit."

— Leslie Fluette, Capitalist Realism, Mental Illness and Societies of Control (2019)

"Unfortunately, not all young children who are maltreated in harsh and unpredictable environments have additional resources to help them cope with the stress—a reality that has deep implications for the long-term consequences of early adversity. In general, when people experience persistent fear and anxiety, the amygdala and hippocampus work together to associate that fear with the context that elicited the fear response. In children or adults, the resulting “fear conditioning” can have lasting effects. As a result of physical abuse, a child tends to become fearful of both the person and the context in which the abuse occurred. Over time, the cues to context can become generalized, and the fear response can be activated by people and places bearing only a small resemblance to the original context of the maltreatment. The processes occur automatically, below the level of conscious awareness; the reflective mind does not participate in or even realize what is happening. As a result, early childhood perceptions that the world is a dangerous place can affect social interactions that occur later in life under far less threatening conditions."

— Scott Barry Kaufman, Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization (2020)

"..understanding how patterns of stress can influence regulation, or balance, is the key to understanding how what happened to you is connected to your health—in all domains, mental, physical, and social. It has been estimated that childhood adversity plays a major role in 45 percent of all childhood mental health disorders and 30 percent of mental health disorders among adults. These estimates are consistent with other studies that show increased risk for major depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and other psychotic disorders following childhood trauma or adverse childhood experiences."

— Bruce D. Perry, What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing (2021)

"Your brain predicts and prepares your actions using your past experiences. If you could magically reach back in time and change your past, your brain would predict differently today, and you might act differently and experience the world differently as a result. It’s impossible to change your past, but right now, with some effort, you can change how your brain will predict in the future. […] More control also means more responsibility. If your brain doesn’t merely react to the world but actively predicts the world and even sculpts its own wiring, then who bears responsibility when you behave badly? You do. Now, when I say responsibility, I’m not saying people are to blame for the tragedies in their lives or the hardships they experience as a result. We can’t choose everything that we’re exposed to. I’m also not saying that people with depression, anxiety, or other serious illnesses are to blame for their suffering. I’m saying something else: Sometimes we’re responsible for things not because they’re our fault, but because we’re the only ones who can change them. […] There is a real biological benefit when people treat one another with basic human dignity. And if we don’t, there is also a real biological consequence, and it eventually trickles down to a financial and social cost for everyone. The price of personal freedom is personal responsibility for your impact on others. The wiring of all of our brains guarantees it."

— Lisa Feldman Barrett, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain (2020)

#psychotic #depression #anxiety #pleasure #action #environment #future #loneliness #fear #freedom #schizophrenia #human animal #mental illness #brains #responsibility

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gofancyninjaworld · 3 years ago

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Monster in the very sense of the term

So, like for real, One-Punch Man is the story in which the monsters pray to God for deliverance from the wickedness of men. And God listens.

The more I think about it, the cruelty with which the Subterraneans were treated by the monsters under Psykos, being asset-stripped, exploited and ultimately slaughtered, with their technology co-opted, and their beloved, once well-maintained habitation crapped on at will by uncaring monsters is so human. Some of the specifics are fantastical, but it’s no more and no less than what people have done IRL to way too many other human groups. Some paleontologists theorise that the reason Homo sapiens is the only surviving hominid is because as a species we simply won’t share the planet with another sapient one.

As a planet, the Earth of OPM is one where the world has just about recovered from the depredations of mankind... and is looking to be going back to hell thanks to humans.

One of the big questions any story needs to answer is ‘Why is this happening *now*?’

We know that mysterious beings have existed for a very long time on the planet, but it’s only in the last couple of decades that they once again started to make incursions into populated areas. We know too that until recently, people simply didn’t turn into monsters. We finally know it’s only in the last few months that the tempo has really stepped up.

‘Monster’ in the original meaning of the word comes from the Latin word ‘monere’ to warn. ‘Monsters’, that is to say unusual looking creatures, were understood to be warnings about some future tragedy rather than being intrinsically evil.

When I look at the number of natural monsters that come to the cities to tell people about their wastefulness, their destructiveness and their all around badness for which they need to be punished, it begins to add up to the possibility that they’ve been trying to force humans to change their behaviour. To avert the future tragedy which is God visiting in response to being summoned.

Trouble with gods you see is that they’re not awfully precise in how they dispense justice. It may be very bad for mankind, but it’s not going to be a picnic for any mysterious beings once minding their own business either.

Alas, it’s too late for the Subterraneans. Their blood has been shed. Their supernaturally precisely placed bowl has been filled with the right kind of blood and the fearful engines of fate have now swung into gear.

What, or who, is coming, we’ll have to see.

The Earth is in trouble, all right.

#OPM #speculation #I do love the reversal #Mankind not being the only sapient creature on the planet and there's nothing people can do to change that is one of those neat things #alas people be people #whether some arragement that allows all sapient species to cohabit one little planet #without wrecking it is going to be one of the biggest questions #as will how Saitama figures into all this

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lord-valery-mimes · 4 years ago

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Gabriel Knight Musings #2

Gabriel’s brokenness is especially apparent in the opening scene for Chapter 1. We see him alone in the library at Schloss Ritter, diligently typing away at an ancient looking typewriter (was there ever a story behind why he chooses to write on this damn thing? I feel like I should revisit the novelization of Sins of the Fathers and get a copy of The Beast Within novel, but I don't want to taint any future fics that I might write by accidentally co-opting Jane Jensen’s own prose, so I’m choosing to avoid them for now. Sorry, I digress!). Anyhoo, Gabriel is writing, but as we find out later during Grace’s chapter, he’s not having much luck as his desk is filled with crossed-out, half-typed pages.

When Gerde comes to tell him of the villagers waiting outside, Gabriel’s reaction speaks volumes. He clearly doesn’t want to be here in rural Bavaria in a place that for all his ancestral connections, he has no real personal connections to. There is Gerde, but she is still understandably mourning the loss of Wolfgang and doesn’t appear to have any feelings for Gabriel apart from her desire to serve whomever is the Shattenjäger, as Wolfgang would have wanted her to. It’s sad to think of what Gabriel’s day to day existence must have been like in the year since he left New Orleans. From Grace’s later interactions with the people of Rittersberg, Gabriel doesn’t seem to have spent much time in the village as he is still very much an enigma to them. He hasn’t picked up much more of the German language beyond “Guten Tag” and “Bitte”, so it’s clear that he’s been isolating himself in the castle.

When Gerde reminds him to put on the Ritter talisman, I think it was meant as a pretty obvious bit of symbolism. Being Shattenjäger is a heavy weight to carry, and Gabriel is reluctant to wear the talisman as it’s a very real and physical reminder of the burden that has been thrust on him. Side note: but it also amuses me how often the length of the Ritter talisman changes throughout the game. Just pick ONE chain, prop people! 😂

Gabriel is clearly reluctant to take on his first case as Shattenjäger, but he feels that he has no choice. Wolfgang took his own life in order to get the Ritter talisman back in Gabriel’s hands, and begged him to take over as Shattenjäger. After everything he’s been through, he’s in a state of mind where he’s just going along with what other people tell him to do.

Hot take. Maybe? Can there be any hot takes for such an old game that barely anyone is talking about? But I think Gabriel really doesn’t want to be Shattenjäger. I think he feels obligated because of Wolfgang’s sacrifice, and also possibly fear about what his fate might be if he doesn’t follow his “destiny”. Both Gabriel’s grandfather and his father died tragic deaths while they were still young men. Heinz deliberately tried to escape the Ritter “curse” and paid the ultimate price, so did his son who never even knew about his heritage or the Ritter family obligations. It’s never stated outright, but I think the implication is that Ritter’s aren’t allowed to escape their destiny as Shattenjäger.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it was Tetelo having the Ritter talisman that caused tragedy to happen in the Ritter family. Now that the talisman is back in Ritter hands, maybe the Ritters will be spared from early deaths unless they fight the forces of darkness like they’re supposed to. But Wolfgang wasn’t struck down in the prime of his life, and he was the one who was carrying on the Shattenjäger tradition. It does seem that it is only those who try to escape their destiny who are punished.

To be continued...

#gabriel knight #sierra games #gabriel knight the beast within

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harostar · 4 years ago

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I feel like bad AOT takes comes from the fact that... many leftists want to avoid accidentally stumbling into propaganda. Much as the Right-Winger co-opted the terms, WE took the red pill. WE learned the insidious truths behind how cop shows are written, how the military is written in movies. All to boister an image they can use to justify what they do behind the scenes or out in public. With AOT, anything about the military must condemn it with little ambiguity. (cont.)

(cont.) We're tired of giving The Powers That Be any benefit of the doubt. Reading the exposes about them, what are they if not the Saturday Morning Cartoon villains we grew up on? This is what leads to people taking others word for it when they describe AOT as "fascist propaganda." I would be willing to buy that if Hange Zoe didn't outright declare, "Genocide is wrong," without any real contradictions to her assertion.

Complete honesty here, Anon. While I think there are some valid points made in the overall discussion about Fandom and the handling of Nuance, there is something about this Ask that just.....bothers me. I had debated about whether or not to respond, and how I wanted to to do so.

I can’t quite put my finger on what bothers me about it.

But putting that aside, I think Fandom Discourse struggles with Nuance on many levels. And you have varying degrees of critical engagement, from people who do not question or look beyond the surface AT ALL to the people that basically have a Critical Blog that does nothing but look for ways for things to be Bad and Wrong(tm).

Somewhere between those extremes, is the need to balance “Turn my brain off and enjoy things” with recognizing how media can be flawed, whether intentional propaganda (ie: Military and Law Enforcement) or unintentional (ignorance of an issue).

I think the online discourse around the Attack on Titan franchise is especially messy, because the source material itself is messy. I’ve spoken a little before about how choosing to parallel the Holocaust was a huge misstep, and one that is incredibly difficult to balance even when you ARE coming from a Western perspective. Using the historical atrocities and tragedies of other cultures also tends to be a hugely messy thing, because you are inherently filtering it through your own cultural lens and biases.

Japan can be just as bad as Western media in terms of playing with something “foreign and exotic” without really understanding the deeper issues. There are numerous Japanese-produced works that have really unfortunate portrayals of things, because of a lack of familiarity or understanding of the deeper issues and history. Japanese media has long had trouble with racist portrayals of Black characters, not because of any malicious intention but because a lot of their exposure to Black people had been through (intentionally racist) American-produced materials. It’s gotten BETTER, so much better in recent years compared to the past. But it’s still a work in progress, because a lot of the historical context and deeper issues are simply not part of common knowledge for Japanese folks.

Likewise, AoT stumbles into stereotypes involving Jewish people. Because these tend to clash with the messages in the series, I tend to lean towards Isayama simply being unaware of such implications. From what little we know about him as a person and his past mistakes (that he at least publicly seems to have acknowledged as mistakes), he seems very much like a typical 20/30-something Japanese dude that isn’t particularly worldly or informed about Politics on a deeper level.

Over the years, I have definitely observed a tendency for people online to assume others have the same knowledge and understanding as them. But most people are really only going to have a surface/minimal understanding of history and issues, unless it happens to be something of deep personal importance to them.

I’m a 30-something White Girl that has spent most of my life living in the suburbs in the South. For most of my life, there were A LOT of political and social issues I had very little understanding about. I am still learning and unlearning things, on a daily basis. I honestly cringe to think about my past self, and the things I didn’t understand or know about. Hell, I realized recently that an old photo of me taken before Homecoming in 11th grade has some interesting artwork in the background.

There were portraits of General Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in our family room, growing up. We thought nothing of having them, and definitely weren’t a bunch of racist rednecks. We were a middle-class suburban family with a diverse group of friends. My parents definitely thought of themselves as Allies, and tried to stand up for the right thing whenever possible.

I don’t remember exactly when it was that those portraits came down and got thrown out. Looking back, it’s definitely the kind of thing that makes us cringe because YIKES we didn’t even realize at the time it was bad.

I guess my point with that little personal detail is trying to remind people that most of the time, things are a result of ignorance. America and Japan share an issue of actively not teaching people about social issues, and whitewashing history to conceal all the ugliness. Especially when it comes to another Culture, there’s so much opportunity to stumble into negative stereotypes or implications without understanding what you’re doing.

I am rambling, so I think at this point I’m going to conclude by suggesting everyone go read this fantastic post by @fission-mailure

It nails one major issue of the “AoT is Nazi Propaganda” argument is that the framing is incredibly Eurocentric. Hajime Isayama’s politics and his understanding of issues are informed by the politics of Japan. The above link has some good insights concerning Japanese politics, in particular their homegrown variety of Far-Right groups and talking points.

#snk #aot #oh boy this kinda got rambly #idk yeah #what do I tag this even??

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calangkoh · 4 years ago

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What I love about CoS is how it speaks to me as a viewer. There's still that theme that everybody and everything affects each other, and you don't get to "opt out" of it. This time though, it's happening in "our" world. My favorite scenes are Ed's talks with Fritz Lang. How he accuses him of hiding from reality to be in his dreams/movies. Like, I dunno, a lot of people find the Nazi part weird, but I like how direct the message is. This happens: do something about it when it does.

thanks for sharing! i think cos has a lot of good themes and messages.

regarding the Nazi part: as soon as youre putting your fictional characters and fantasy elements into real historical tragedies, you get a little iffy. i dont personally find cos outwright disrespectful (but im not Jewish or a person of color so its important to consider their input), and i even find it very respectful in some parts (like when ed asks noah what she calls herself, since g*psy is an inaccurate term for Roma). it still has some questionable aspects, but overall i dont find it as a whole terribly “problematic,” just purposefully uncomfortable because it’s trying to get a message out to the audience that “hey these characters you sympathized with in the series took part in a genocide and the parallels with real world events is not coincidence and you should really take a second look at everything youve been told both in the show and in real life because that was a huge message of the series: to question how you feel and what youre told and find your own answers and to not be complacent in the suffering in the world or turn a blind eye because everyone is responsible for the state of things.” in that regard, i think cos was genius to hammer in the series’ main themes in a more real-world context. ya know, in case ya didnt get it the first time.

but again im also not Jewish or a poc. but from my own perspective, the movie was effective in its anti-racism and anti-war message to not turn a blind eye to discrimination or injustice or to your own prejudices. doesnt mean the movie doesnt have problems and could have been more tactful in some areas, and this is where you need to consider the criticisms of the people being represented. i still appreciate its message and even if i still take its canon status to the series with a grain of salt, i think it was an excellent concept to reinforce the series’ core themes in that real world setting.

overall: yes i agree with you. cos may have been a bit of a mess, but like the series, it stays true to its theme and core messages. fma 03′s core message was “there will never be a war that isnt in some part caused by all of us, and even when we close our eyes theres a whole world that exists outside of us and our dreams,” and cos took that theme and put it in the context of OUR world. and it added the theme of, as another post put it, “the world is worth living in and fighting for simply because its real.”

#ask

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xhxhxhx · 4 years ago

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Saw something in the further reading section of Michael Kulikowski’s Imperial Tragedy (Profile, 2019) today:

There are countless books on the fall of the western Roman empire, and more appear annually, with variable scholarly trappings but nearly all quite conventional. Still, ripping yarns and neo-Victorian analyses can be found in any bookshop. So, for those so inclined, can thinly disguised nativist tracts on how immigration (and ‘immigrant violence’) brought down the empire. To name names would be invidious.

I thought this was a dig at Peter Heather, Professor of Medieval History at King’s College London and author of The Fall of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 2005) and Empires and Barbarians (Oxford, 2009), so I looked it up and discovered that not only was I right, but Kulikowski has serious beef with the guy:

Peter Heather has been fiercely criticized by members of the so-called Toronto School of History. Michael Kulikowski, who belongs to this group, has accused Heather of neo-romanticism and of wishing "to revive a biological approach to ethnicity". Kulikowski claims that Heather "manifests a clear methodological affinity" to the 19th-century writer of the Goths Henry Bradley.

But Kulikowki’s beef is nothing next to the righteous fury of Guy Halsall, Professor of History at the University of York:

Guy Halsall has identified Peter Heather as the leader of a "counter-revisionist offensive against more subtle ways of thinking" about the Migration Period. Halsall accuses this group, which is strongly associated with University of Oxford, of "bizarre reasoning" and of purveying a "deeply irresponsible history". Halsall writes that Heather and the Oxford historians have been responsible for "an academic counter-revolution" of wide importance, and accuses them of deliberately contributing to the rise of "far-right extremists".

Halsall got so mad at Heather, first at the 2011 Leeds International Medieval Conference and then online, at his blog, that he threatened to leave academia entirely:

Well, it's more or less a year since I started doing this blogging lark 'seriously' (the inverted commas are obviously necessary). And, as they say, what a roller-coaster of a year it's been. I've shut down the blog twice, brought it back twice, come to the verge of formal complaints being sent to my university twice (once justifiably, once most certainly not), lost at least one friend, lost 99% of the respect I had for someone I had hitherto held in high esteem, quite possibly lost the chance of a job I wanted because of this blog, taken some pretty visceral abuse, and so on. All good fun!

On the other hand I have learnt some lessons. One is that even bastards have feelings. Another is that if you have twenty-odd followers and maybe 100 hits a day, that (allowing for hits from people looking for something else, like Elizabeth Kostova's novel The Historian or ever-popular balding guitarist The Edge) does not mean that only twenty or thirty people in the whole wide world read your blog. Thus you need to be a bit more careful about what you say and how you say it. I've also learnt that eminent historians don't always read what you write very carefully, and just how deeply-ingrained the elitist culture of the British historical profession is, as well as just how few principles are actually held by the overwhelming majority of the practitioners of said profession. And this in response to something that I actually thought long and hard about how I wrote.

And as a result of all this I have realised that no good is going to come of me continuing to smack my head against the glass ceiling that those of us not from 'a particular socio-educational background' (you know the one) eventually run up against. I have instead come to the decision, essentially, to give up on it and 'seek my fortune' elsewhere than in the confines of the academic career-path, as it is now constructed in the UK at any rate.* I'm actually quite excited about this as I think it offers a lot of possibilities, creatively and ethically. It's been a liberating decision. Those of you who know that I set most store by the writings of those co-opted into the canon of the existentialists (almost none of whom ever called themselves by that name) will appreciate exactly why I am proud of this decision.

To some extent it makes up for the bad faith I showed in backing down and removing my post on why it matters to get angry about the lazy and irresponsible (indeed, yes, just downright knuckle-headed) way in which some historians in and/or produced by our most prestigious Thames Valley-based university write about politically and socially sensitive topics like migrations.

Halsall ultimately sanitized the 2011 IMC paper that started the war with Heather -- the neutered version is still up on his blog -- but the original was apparently quite something:

Perhaps unsurprisingly for those who’ve heard him speak or read him on the Internet, this was the one that really started the war. [Edit: and, indeed, some changes have been made to these paragraphs by request of one of those involved.] The consequences, if not of this actual speech, at least of its subsequent display on the Internet, have been various, unpleasant and generally regrettable, and I don’t want any of them myself.

Thankfully, the purged parts of the original were reproduced by some noble soul on the Civilization Fanatics forums before they were lost to the ages:

Thus we can have Ward-Perkins’ sneering parody of late antiquity studies and Peter Heather’s distortions of counter-arguments. In many people’s minds the choices before us are evidently, either, that nothing happened, or, that there was a huge catastrophe caused entirely by invading barbarians. Obviously this is not the case. Plenty of people other than me -- most famously, Walter Pohl -- have written about serious, dramatic change happening in the fifth century without blaming it on the barbarians and without denying that there were migrations in the fifth century. Yet this -- if I dare call it such -- third way seems nevertheless to be very much a minority position.

But I am not convinced that a simple lack of exposure to sensible alternatives really explains the continuing, fanatical devotion to the idea of the barbarian migrations, especially outside the academy.

I have recently said that:

“When a British historian places an argument that the Roman Empire fell because of the immigration of large numbers of barbarians next to arguments that the end of Rome was the end of civilisation and that we need to take care to preserve our own civilisation, when another British historian writes sentences saying “the connection between immigrant violence and the collapse of the western Empire could not be more direct” [a direct quote from Peter Heather’s Empires and Barbarians (Oxford, 2009)], and especially when the arguments of both involve considerable distortions of the evidence to fit their theories, one cannot help but wonder whether these authors are wicked, irresponsible or merely stupid.”

Obviously, these are not mutually exclusive alternatives.

Are these writers setting themselves up as ideologues of the xenophobic Right or have they simply not realised the uses to which such careless thinking and phrasing can be put? You can draw your own conclusions, although it is worth noting that Ward-Perkins has been happy enough to write on this subject for the neo-liberal magazine Standpoint, which regularly publishes pieces attacking multiculturalism. There comes a point when one has to admit that actually the most charitable explanation for all this really is that these writers are simply a bit dim.

Outside academic circles, it is certainly the case that the adhesion to the idea of barbarian invasion has a heavily right-wing political dimension. Apart from the barbarians’ role as metaphor, already discussed, it is worth, very briefly, thinking about the other reasons why people are so ready to pin the blame on the barbarians. Slavoj Zizek’s Lacanian analysis of antisemitism provides some valuable ways forward. Essentially, the barbarian, like the figure of the Jew, acts as a screen between the subject and a confrontation with the Real, which Zizek sees, slightly differently from Lacan, as the pre-symbolised; things that haven’t been or can’t or won’t be encompassed in a world view. Zizek showed that arguments that “the Jews aren’t like that” are almost never effective against anti-Semites because what real Jews (or actual immigrants, one might say) are like is not the point. Similarly, arguments about the empirical reality of the fifth-century cut little weight with those wedded to the idea of Barbarian Invasion. Just as the anti-Semite takes factual evidence as more proof of the existence of the international Zionist conspiracy, the right-wing devotee of the Barbarian Invasions sees factual counter-arguments as manifestations of the liberal, left-wing academy peddling its dangerous multicultural political correctness. I have read a great deal of this on internet discussion lists -- including a review of my own book, and one of James O’Donnell’s! Michael Kulikowski received a similarly-phrased review from a right-wing academic ancient historian.

The barbarian is the classic “subject presumed to”. The barbarian can change the world; he can bring down empires; he can create kingdoms. The barbarian dominates history. “He” is not like “us”, enmeshed in our laws, our little lives and petty responsibilities. The barbarians -- and you only need to read Peter Heather to see this -- are peoples with “coherent aims” (a quote), which they set out single-mindedly to achieve. No people in the whole of recorded human history have ever had single coherent sets of aims. Well -- none other than the barbarians anyway.

Halsall has never resiled from his belief that Heather was essentially a fascist, nor backed away from his commitment to resign from his post in righteous indignation -- maybe not in 2011, or 2019, but certainly by 2023 at the very latest:

My anger about all this is justly infamous but has been badly misrepresented. I do think that some things are worth getting angry about, and the misuse of the Barbarian Migrations and the End of the Roman Empire to fuel xenophobia and racism, and the way some modern authors pander to this, is one such. However, to look at the origins of this ire and animus, I invite you to compare my engagement with Peter Heather’s work in Barbarian Migrations, and its tone, with Heather’s engagement – if you can call it that – with my work, and its tone, in Empires and Barbarians. I never expect to be agreed with; I do expect basic academic courtesy to be reciprocated. If people see fit to treat me intellectually as a second-class citizen, the gloves will come off. That may stem from my own biography as (unlike so many) a first-generation academic not educated at the 'right' schools and universities, but there we are. I will be leaving the profession within the next four years (well done, guys) so I have nothing to lose by not apologising for that.

Kulikowski might have gotten in a good dig, but Halsall will always be a true master of the art of Being Mad Online.

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legionofpotatoes · 5 years ago

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Okay then, since both of y’all are just delving in I’ll try to keep things (relatively) spoiler-free and stick to story sense and semiotics! Few caveats:

Have not had prior experience with Kojima’s body of work and if that’s a prerequisite in how I “should feel” about it then yike on a bike (just getting this out of the way based on what I’ve had talked at me)

My read excludes the entire context of moment-to-moment gameplay; I basically watched chronological story cutscenes stitched together with NPC interaction vignettes sprinkled in-between. 9 or so hours in total.

I did this because the gameplay does not interest me at all - and not in protest of chill social games (I adore both No Man’s Sky and thatgamecompany stuff, for example, and try to champion anything without Gun in it), but because the setting and length did not align with my expectations for something to invest so much time into. Still, I was super intrigued by the story, and, to a lesser extent, the plot.

also I have a hard time writing in condensed English, so this may run quite long. I’ll put the rest under a break. Second language, sorry!

I’m trying to think of a good way to start this. Like I said, the story, or what the thing was ABOUT, was infinitely more interesting to me than whatever wacko packaging Kojima thought up for the narrative. Which was a complicated, thought-out piece of fiction shattered into many disparate pieces and fed to us in a mystery-box-filmmaker kind of way, making us reverse-engineer what essentially was a rather simple interpersonal uhh. family tragedy, I guess.

But to its credit the lore is visibly built solely to support whatever thematic messaging Kojima would want to weave in there - something I can respect. Meaning it gets as wacky and as nonsensical as it needs to be in order to reflect the high-concept allegories at play, aaand then it does so to a fault. I adore works of fiction that don’t give a shit about “tone” - I hate that word more than anything in modern media - but effective symbolism in storytelling, IN MY OPINION, requires a deft hand, nuance, strong authorial position, and a good grasp of social context.

I want to like, go through these four points individually and nitpick my problems with the game in their lens, because I think they cover pretty much everything I feel like saying:

1. A deft hand - to me means to selectively dramatize correct themes and plot points as you go so that shit makes sense in the end. I felt this was incredibly lacking here. It was like a symphony going for hours without a crescendo. The absolute wrong bits of soulless exposition would be reiterated THRICE within a single cutscene while necessary context of, hell, character motives or even plot geography would be left vague. Intentionally vague, some would argue, but their later function would never arrive. Other times, what would visibly be conceived as wink-and-you’ll-miss-it foreshadowing could overstay its welcome to the point of inadvertently spoiling a later plot point. My girlfriend sniped the (arguably) most important reveal of the game, which is left for the tail end of the final epilogue (!), in the first hours of watching. The symbolics and allusions were just too plentiful where they should have been more subdued. I am DYING to provide examples here but I’m keeping it spoiler-free. Again, if this is a Kojima-ism, too bad; but it’s not a catastrophic failure of storytelling by any means. There are very few masters of this thing working today. But what can be easier to navigate, I think, is...

2. Nuance - this kinda goes hand-in-hand with the upper point but is a bit more important to me and applies to what SPECIFICALLY you decide to heighten in order to slap us across the face with your deeper meanings. Certain characters - not all of them - feel like caricatures. The silly names and overt metaphors (wearing a mask means hiding something! connected cities all have ‘knot’ in their name!) are honestly, genuinely FINE as long as their function isn’t betrayed, but the lean into metaphor worship can sometimes wade into SERIOUSLY shitty territory as contemporary implications are ignored altogether, and that ties into my fourth point, which I’ll address before looping back to the third; needless to say, approaching sensitive subjects with broad strokes is not exactly the way to go. But broad strokes is almost exclusively what this game does, forgetting to incorporate...

3. Social context - and I feel like avoiding examples here will be difficult lest I end up sounding like a dogmatic asshole; but there is a right thing and a wrong thing to do when co-opting IRL concepts to fit fictional messaging/storytelling. I feel that a character “curing” themselves of a phobia by experiencing emotional growth that vaguely corresponds to what the disorder could have symbolized is a wrong thing. And I don’t even want to get into all the wacky revisionism the lore ended up twisting into, which was mostly honestly entertaining (the ammonite will be a good hint to those who’ve played it), until it decided to, again, lean a bit too hard into painting today’s reality as a crisis of human connection and imply some questionable things about why, uh, asexual people exist, for example. Yes it makes some sense within the context of the lore and what’s happening in the plot, but it’s completely lacking in social know-how of the here and now. In other words: a Bad Look. To me, this type of wayward ignorance is a much more serious issue that can historically snowball any piece of writing into a witless disaster. I don’t know if it quite does it here, but it’s not really my place to say. Still, you can have wacky worldbuilding that has no sense of dramatic tension, nuance, or awareness towards the audience, and yet containing one last vital glue holding it all together, and that would be...

4. Strong authorial position - or intent I guess, to speak in literary terms - and I still have trouble pinpointing how and where this exists in this game. A bullshit stance you say, and I hear ya; cause this here is a video game very pronounced in its pro-human-connection messaging, painting the opposite outcome as an apocalyptic end to our species. And as I understand the gameplay is all about connections too - leaning into that theme so hard it even renders itself unapproachable to most capital-g Gamers. I honestly respect the balls of that. But really, as an author who headlined the creation of this thing, what was it really about? What were you trying to say?

And beyond “human connection is real important to beat apathy” I got nothing, and I think that’s because of points 1 and 2 failing in succession, and then point 3 souring the taste. It just had to be apparent the moment the curtain fell, is what I find. You just have to “get” it immediately, get what it was trying to say, but that will happen only if it’s been articulated incredibly well up to that point. Maybe the entire punch of that message REALLY depends on you spending dozens of hours ruminating on the crushing cost of loneliness as you haul cargo across countries on foot and connect people to your weird not-internet? If so, I’ve missed a vital piece of context, and with this being a videogame and all, it’s honestly a fair assumption. But otherwise.. it felt like a hell of a lot of twisting and turning and plot affectations that only led to more plot affectations and sometimes character growth (which had its own bag of issues from point 3) and not a hell of a lot to say about human connection beyond the fact that it is. good and useful. It felt like a repeated statement instead of being an argument. Does that make sense? I understand the story optics here are zoomed waay out and set on targeting the human condition as a whole, but like.. if you’re committing to a message, you have to stand by it.

Why is connection good? it’s a dumb question without a DOUBT but since the game has set out to answer it then it.. should? Did I miss the answer? I may have, I honestly can’t exclude the possibility. My lens was warped and my framework of consuming storytelling is a bit rigid in its requirements (the four points I mentioned), so maybe I’m just too grouchy and old to understand.

I just think Pacific Rim did it better and took about 7 hours less to do it! And yet, it, too, involved Guillermo Del Toro. Curious.

If you made it this far and are interested in my thoughts on the technical execution of it all as well, uhm, it’s pretty much spotless? Decima is utilized beautifully, the Hideo vanity squad of celebrities all do their very best with the often clunky dialogue, the music is great, the aesthetic and visual design is immediately arresting, and it certainly does an all-around great job at standing out from the rest of the flock. I fell in love with the BB a little bit. It is also a game that is incredibly horny for Mads Mikkelsen, which almost fully supplants the expected real estate for run-of-the-mill male gaze bullshit. It is. A change.

That’s all I got folks

#death stranding spoilers #reference

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magnetocerebro · 6 years ago

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Lord help me...

I generally try to believe the best of people. I exercise cautious optimism, and I feel like it’s helped me to develop empathy and to become a better person. Which is good, because I’m a millennial Democrat living in the Deep South with some very, VERY conservative friends and family.

For the most part? It’s been my experience that a lot of the Republicans in my life are of an older generation who believe in what the party platform was like several decades back and who aren’t at all aligned with people like Steve King. I can respect old-school Republicans while disagreeing on a basic political level. We don’t share the same philosophies, but we largely agree on basic truths like being kind and working together on what we can agree on.

But because I grew up with like a legit racist grandpa who still hasn’t forgiven me for my Black prom date let alone the fact that there was a *gasp* gay couple in my prom group, I can usually tell which people are actual old-school Republicans and which ones are white supremacists co-opting the party.

So you can imagine my surprise when a good friend of the family, a very sweet older woman who has been nothing but kind to my family through two recent deaths and three messy divorces (my family is a nuthouse okay?) posted an Islamophobic article on her Facebook page.

I legit did a double-take. This was the same lady who spent hours after my uncle’s funeral sitting with his two daughters and holding their hands while they cried and who I thought had nothing but butterflies and sugar plums in her heart! So I took a minute, counted to ten, and tried to see if I could decipher where she’d gone wrong and if this situation was salvageable or if I’d lost another one to the dark side.

To spare y’all the gruesome details, let’s just say a certain website (cough Breitbart cough) is painting up a two-sided conflict of violence in Nigeria to be “Muslims are killing Christians oh no!” and she was all UPSET and HOW DARE and WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO in her Facebook post.

(insert sigh here)

(also insert link to what’s actually going on if you want to read about it because facts matter)

Now, I know this woman. And I know she has an actual soul. So, optimistically assuming that she wasn’t a Nazi and that I could course-correct her before she fell off the deep end, I sent her a message. “Hey, here’s some facts on what’s actually going on and also I felt like I needed to say something because this feels REALLY tone-deaf at the least right after what happened in Christchurch. We as Christians need to call out atrocities against anyone being murdered for their faith, not just fellow Christians.”

And her response was actually very considerate and kind! She had NO idea that the truth was anything other than what she’d seen in that article, had NO idea that she was perpetuating a one-sided lie. She legitimately thought that she was spreading awareness of a tragedy going on in the world. She was HORRIFIED to hear that there was more to it than that and promised that she would do better about fact-checking. (Though, to be honest, when I suggested she use AP or NPR to fact-check and she refused, I don’t have terribly high hopes for her news sources, but at least I got her thinking outside of the bubble!)

But here’s the kicker.

In this whole conversation about making sure to get all sides of a story and making sure to check facts and not falling for clickbait (all of which are good things to talk about) the thing she said that I can’t get out of my head was this:

“Oh, I didn’t even realize that the Christchurch attack was anti-Muslim!”

....

Y’all.

She had seen articles about the attack. She knew that New Zealand was implementing gun control. She wasn’t ignorant of the attack itself. But she was getting her news from such biased sources that the fact that it was a terrorist attack against Muslims specifically never ever touched her radar.

THIS is the problem we’re having right now. It’s not just about Steve King or Nazis in the streets (though that is also a real problem). It’s more insidious than that.

It’s the simple fact that there is a large section of our population that has been so systematically bamboozled that their REALITY isn’t even the same as our own. And it’s not just your racist grandpa. It’s your sweet aunt who gets all her news from Facebook and who has been genuinely brainwashed to believe that the Associated Press - THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - is a biased and untrustworthy news source.

We can’t even begin to get on the same page fighting hate when there are people out there who don’t even know there’s a fight to be had. And the worst part is that, for many people, this is genuine ignorance and not maliciousness. But how to you begin to fight that when the damage is so deeply done that people like this have been trained not to trust fact-based reporting?

I know this isn’t new. I know it’s been going on for a long time. I know i’m not really adding anything to the conversation here that hasn’t already been said.

But I swear to you, I have never felt my hope for humanity crash so hard as when I read the words: “I didn’t even realize that the Christchurch attack was anti-Muslim.”

#politics #under the read more because i work in politics so i generally try to keep it off my blog #for work/life balance #but i can't...#i can't #i had to put my thoughts somewhere #because what the frik

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brodenmickelsen · 4 years ago

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Criminal Defense - What You Should Know Before You Hire An Attorney

Years back there is a famed financial preparation commercial which depicted a mean looking guy in his pajamas placing a butter knife with his own torso at the breakfast table when talking on the telephone into somebody describing the way to accomplish the sock. For a few moments, the screen splits to show anyone on the opposing hand of this call was a physician. Now, our dumb-founded man at the breakfast table exclaims:"Should not you're doing so?" And, in doing this, noted that the most obvious point: we are based upon professionals to take care of matters that are crucial. If that's the scenario, operation to people correctly trained to accomplish that. The same is true for if your freedom is online. If your own life or perhaps a loved person's freedom is at peril, you want a criminal defense attorney.

Amazingly, you can find a number of men and women who, even if faced with the danger of esophageal within the guts of prison, may opt to manage the problem themselves or seek the help of a buddy with a buddy who techniques any form of law however knows the prosecutor. Meanwhile, the others believe they want professional assistance but undertake the hunt as though these were buying a bargain on paper towels in wal mart. This is the incorrect strategy. In regards to picking your own surgeon, the person packing your parachute, or even the individual protecting your liberty, then please don't"bargain shop". Believe in me you may cover in the long run. It's much better to invest slightly bit more money in advance compared to cover your own life in the long run. At the close of your afternoon, it's just money and, even in the event that you're working and free, you may very quickly get the money that you used in your own shield back butif you goto jail the couple pennies you earn aday wont add up to much even with working out a lengthy prison sentence.

Attorneys are not created alike. We can be found in all size and shapes. However, there's a frequent misconception which graduating from law school and passing the bar examination frees you with some sort of inner knowledge which allows you to capable of tackling some legal issue. This isn't therefore. Consider this, if your mind hurt and you'd a constant nose bleed, why could you call the own dentist? Podiatrist? Not likely. As an alternative, you'd probably contact an internal medicine physician or even a neuro surgeon because those health practitioners are trained to get this precise issue. The exact same ought to be said for the own attorney.

I myself am a criminal defense attorney. Like a New Orleans prosecutor, I sold nicely over one hundred cases which range from drug possession . As a defense lawyer, I'm proud to manage a number of the very famed nation and complex national prosecutions within our region. I don't actually write wills. Do not telephone me in a impending bankruptcy. I don't have any clue just how exactly to deal with those cases and that I shall do neither of us any favors should I utilize the case to know.

Amazingly, some attorneys are really desperate to get business which they put themselves on the market teaching every kind of law conceivable. The individual safeguarding your own life needs to too. You owe to yourself to seek the services of a expert devoted with their own subject of law that you require. I feel those attorneys who apparently take-all cases achieve this because they want the dollars to pay for their light bill. You may do a service by staying free from these individuals.

1 thing you need to realize is that attorneys are salesmen. Therefore, like your excursion through the car lot, then you need to maintain your shield up rather than collapse to get gimmicky exemptions and B.S. sales pitches. I suggest you type the actual trial attorneys from the pretenders and ask these questions:

Inch. Do you take to cases before juries and, even in that case, just how many have you attracted to trial? Real trial attorneys try cases. Fair trial attorneys assert they take to cases.

2. What experience have you got with this specific type of case? Bear in mind, all attorneys are not created equal. Do you truly would like your own homicide case managed by a individual focusing on traffic court?

3. Exactly what portion of one's practice is committed to criminal defense? I'd be careful of general professionals. I love criminal-defense. I understand nothing regarding real estate disputes, co workers, or perhaps the principles of law. Like everyone else wouldn't need me litigating your servitude rights instance, you would not be town's greatest divorce lawyer picking the prosecution for the armed robbery trial. Let us be fair, 1 person can't possibly master multiple unrelated regions of regulations enforcement.

4. What type of access will you've got into the attorneys? Some people simply take your own fee and disappear. Personally, I don't have any difficulty providing my cellular telephone number to an individual customer. We assign an experienced para-legal to every document who is able to answer basic questions regarding the case if needed. We give the customer with copies of any pleadings which are filed within the event and promise to examine the stuff using themeven though they're incarcerated. This raises the following point: we frequently see with customers that are unknown and accept their amass calls. If your prospective lawyer isn't readily accessible, you can choose to re consider. However, in a minimum, you need to be aware of the degree of access that you may receive for the money.

5. Clearly convey your objectives. Expectations are crucial. For those who have a desirable outcome in your mind then it's imperative that you convey this to your own lawyer. A tragedy will occur in the event that you would like that a dismissal of charges however, also the attorney is believing"quick guilty plea." Be clear. And, expect that the attorney to inform you if your objective is realistic. Pleasekeep in your mind that a few folks out there may say anything else to be able to receive your hard earned money. If some grandiose claims are created, require they are placed right into writing. I promise you'll notice some swift back . Take be aware: no attorney can guarantee outcomes.

In case your prospective attorney participates in any of the actions, leave instantly:

Inch. The Guarantee: No attorney can guarantee a result. Millions of families have hired firm once originally engaging an lawyer who said,"cover me and Mr. Client can escape prison" If it were just that easy. Whenever you hear the words, require the assurance be placed in to writing along side a clause to get the complete refund in the event the promise can't be fulfilled.

2. No receipts or Scope letters: keep clear of any lawyer perhaps not eager to summarize the particular range of these representation and also the fees demanded. In the event you don't have a devotion on fees and scope, please don't feel surprised when asks for more cash continue coming and you're left to believe the instance isn't advancing as you anticipated. Additionally, be highly suspicious of almost any attorney that won't supply you with a reception for repayment accurately representing the total amount owed. Any attorney destined to do therefore will be a lawyer who pockets cash"off the books" Our firm gives reports and receipts every cent earned fees. We do not have confidence in"interest rates by the IRS."

3. Solicitation: It's unethical for any attorney to directly solicit your small business. A attorney can't telephone you or knocking on your door saying'I understand you're detained and that I might help." Should this happen, hit on the door or hang the telephone number. This behavior are certain to find the lawyer disbarred. Additionally, consider it, even if a lawyer is inclined to take part in an unethical clinic to receive your company, what caliber of representation you believe that are going to get?

4. Promotes Influence: Any lawyer that deeply concentrates their practice to criminal law will probably be knowledgeable about the prosecutors and judges. We understand all of them. There's not anything special about this. Please don't be fooled by"I understand the Judge" or even"that the prosecutor and I'm friends". I don't know a quote or prosecutor keen to do anything prohibited to greatly help your claim. Any proposal to the contrary can be that a national offense for bribery and corruption. In the beginning, knowing the prosecutor and estimate will offer background info regarding how they handle similar cases and also resolve the major legal difficulties. Nothing more. Thus, you shouldn't be tricked by lawyers who specialise about being golf friends with this estimate.

The main point Dallas Criminal Defense Attorney is that you simply owe it to your self to proceed and receive the greatest criminal defense attorney you are able if you're under investigation. A lot of folks need to have the ability to detect superior representation for a manageable price. Once your listing of applicants narrowedyou should narrow towards picking from those qualified attorneys with whom he feel comfortable. Afterall, you also must trust this individual and the information they offer. Your life is dependent upon it.

#Dallas Criminal Defense Attorney

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel and the Danger of ‘Web Sleuths’

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

The first thing I thought when I heard the title of the latest true crime documentary to arrive on Netflix, Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel was “please be the Elisa Lam case! Please be the Elisa Lam case!”. The second thing I thought was “My God, you utter monster, that was a young woman’s life”.

It’s a conflict that most true crime fans juggle with constantly. We are fascinated by these cases but we know the importance of questioning our motives, of keeping the victims as people front and centre and of trying to remember that this is real life and not just something here for our entertainment.

Joe Berlinger’s excellent documentary does a fine job of reinforcing this message, presenting Lam’s disappearance and the fallout surrounding it in the most down to earth and least sensationalist way possible. Talking heads include the harried hotel manager working at the time of Elisa’s disappearance who comes across as an extremely hard working woman who saw some terrible things in the ten years she spent managing the notorious Cecil situated right on Skid Row (80 deaths in the hotel in ten years, she estimates). The police who worked the case present their recollections – men who’ve also seen things in their time in downtown LA. The maintenance worker who found Elisa’s body appears – he has the look of someone constantly replaying an unpleasant memory. And two of the hotel’s guests speak – these guests were staying at the hotel in the days before Elisa Lam’s body was discovered in one of the water tanks on top of the hotel, guests who the day she was found had showered in, brushed their teeth in and drank the discoloured water that eventually led staff to discover Elisa. They are very much not OK with any of it, the disgust is still very palpable.

Also featured in the doc are web sleuths, a YouTuber and a journalist who had all become fascinated with the case at the time of Elisa Lam’s disappearance in 2013 – after the footage of Elisa in the elevator was released by LAPD and got millions of views online the case became massive in the web community.

Those who appear as talking heads in the documentary come across as reasonable and measured – some visited the hotel several times in the hope of getting to the bottom of the mystery and posted numerous theories online, but all seem to conclude – just as the coroner and police did, that Elisa Lam’s death, no matter how weird, was probably just a horrible accident.

But on the periphery of her story, there’s another casualty – the black metal musician who calls himself Morbid (real name Pablo Vergara) who was targeted by other armchair detectives who’d found a video of him at the Cecil shot a year before her disappearance, listened to some of his music and completely spuriously accused him of murdering her despite the fact that he wasn’t even in the country at the time.

Police visited his house and asked him if he had ever made blood sacrifices, there was a Taiwanese news report mentioning him in connection and he says he received hundreds of accusatory messages prompting him to (perhaps unwisely, but still) publish a video of himself, wearing a mask, stating his innocence. Vergara said these accusations had a massively negative impact on him. His social media and email accounts were disabled, he found it very difficult to still make music and he says he even tried to take his own life.

2013 was the same year that Reddit users accused an innocent man of being one of the Boston Marathon Bombers – in fact Sunil Tripathi, who had been missing for over a month, had taken his own life for unrelated reasons, so his family had to deal with the internet deciding he was a terrorist on top of a tragedy.

Citizen detectives can sometimes genuinely really help police solve crimes. The Netflix documentary Don’t F**k with Cats showed examples of that very thing happening where a group of online sleuths helped identify and catch a man who made cat torture videos who went on to murder student Jun Lin.

The highly moving series I’ll be Gone in the Dark, which told the story of Michelle McNamara’s work in trying to identify the Golden State Killer, is another good example of a citizen working alongside the police.

But, as the Crime Scene points out, people at home researching on the internet do not necessarily have the same access to information as the police. They’re not forensics experts, didn’t visit the crime scene and yet do still have a responsibility not to wave random accusations at people, or co-opt the death of a young woman as something of an urban legend or a spooky tale just because they found the footage unsettling. If the verdict from the coroner’s report – the only one we have, prepared by a professional with access to all the information available – is correct then what you are watching is a young woman having a psychotic episode. After this, at some point she climbed onto the roof of the hotel and up into the water tank where she died alone and scared. That’s way more disturbing than any supernatural theory.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Berlinger’s documentary is a serious and grounded piece of filmmaking. It’s one that paints a portrait of a nightmarish neighbourhood riddled with poverty and crime, a once glamorous hotel plunged into the depths of decrepitude and the people who were just trying to create a semblance of order against this backdrop and the tragic case of a life cut short. Although some web sleuths might find the verdict unsatisfying, reality often is.

Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel is available to watch now on Netflix.

The post Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel and the Danger of ‘Web Sleuths’ appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3pbFwUs

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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hearteyeslikeafooligan · 7 years ago

Photo

I rotated and adjusted the lighting on that quote from the bottom left, to find what article it was referring to, since it’s the cover page of a newspaper section.

It reads:

Ta-Nehisi Coates: “It was as if I’d spent all my years jiggling the key in the wrong lock.”

The editor who put that quote on the cover page seems to have misquoted the article though, because the actual quote from the article is, “It was as if I had spent my years jiggling a key into the wrong lock.”

Married with a young child, he possessed intellectual curiosity and the gift of a wordsmith. He produced an essay about Bill Cosby that caught attention and led to a relationship with the Atlantic magazine, where he is now a national correspondent. His ascent coincided with Obama’s and a new world of possibilities. “It was as if I had spent my years jiggling a key into the wrong lock. The lock was changed. The doors swung open, and we did not know how to act.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/08/ta-nehisi-coates-our-story-is-a-tragedy-but-doesnt-depress-me-we-were-eight-years-in-power-interview

Below is a cut and paste of the article in case you can’t access that link.

Ta-Nehisi Coates The Observer

Ta-Nehisi Coates: the laureate of black lives Coates’s eloquent polemics on the black experience in America brought him fame and the admiration of Barack Obama. Here he talks about the rise of white supremacy – and why Trump was a logical conclusion

Ta-Nehisi Coates is short on sleep. He did five interviews yesterday to promote his new book, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy. Today there was another at 7am, then surgery “to get a little thing removed” from his neck. As his tall frame appears in the doorway of an office at his New York publisher, a bandage is visible above the collar of his blue suit jacket.

Coates is friendly but fatigued and yawns several times during the course of our conversation. Some questions animate him and he digs deep with evident passion; others elicit a brief “I don’t know”. The interview doesn’t always flow. But even on an off-day, Coates, 42, is more compelling than almost any other public voice about the state we’re in. The New York Times described him as “the pre-eminent black public intellectual of his generation”. The novelist Toni Morrison compared him to James Baldwin. He emerged as the equivalent of poet laureate during Barack Obama’s presidency, chronicling the spirit of the age. If anything, the advent of Trump has pushed his stock higher. Coates admits it is “tremendously irritating” to be in constant demand by the media, as if he is sole spokesman for African American affairs.

But he does have much to say about Trump and the divided states of America. His book is a collection of eight essays he published during Obama’s eight years in office plus new material, including an epilogue entitled “The First White President”, in which he contends that Trump’s ability to tap the ancient well of racism was not incidental but fundamental to his election win. Many people have called Trump a racist or white supremacist, but Coates has the rare ability to express it in clear prose that combines historical scholarship with personal experience of being black in today’s America.

Halifu Osumare, director of African American and African Studies at the University of California, says: “Ta-Nehisi Coates has done his homework, including much self-reflection. He clearly knows his literary forerunners – [Richard] Wright, Baldwin and Morrison, yet he speaks as a 21st-century writer. He eloquently conflates the personal, political and the existential, while telling it like it is.”

Certainly, in contrast with other commentators, Coates has no qualms about stating that the White House is occupied by a white supremacist (a term he does not apply to other Republicans, such as George HW Bush or George W Bush). He lays out evidence that Trump, despite his upbringing in liberal New York, has a long history of racial discrimination. There was the 1973 federal lawsuit against him and his father for alleged bias against black people seeking to rent at Trump housing developments in New York. Trump took out ads in four daily newspapers calling for the reintroduction of the death penalty in 1989 after five African American and Latino teenagers were accused of assaulting and raping a white woman in Central Park. Even after the five were cleared by DNA evidence, he continued to insist: “They admitted they were guilty.”

He was once quoted as saying: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” More recently, Trump was a leading proponent of the “birther” movement, pushing the conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the US and therefore an illegitimate president. While running for president, he said that a judge of Mexican heritage would be unfair to him in a court case because he was a “hater” and a “Mexican”. In one interview, Trump refused to condemn the Ku Klux Klan (he subsequently blamed a faulty earpiece).

In his epilogue, Coates writes: “To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic, but the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies.”

Since then, there has been a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which a civil rights protester was killed, prompting Trump’s comment that there were “very fine people on both sides”. Today, Coates adds the president’s visit to hurricane-hit Puerto Rico to Trump’s charge sheet: “Just yesterday, he goes to a part of the United States that’s been devastated by a natural disaster and throws toilet paper out to the crowd like they’re peasants or something. There are people in this country who will not be happy until Donald Trump is literally executing a lynching before they’ll use that term [white supremacist]. I’m not going to play around; let’s call things what they are.”

Last month Trump was at it again, condemning American football players who “take the knee” during the national anthem to make a statement against racial injustice. Throwing red meat to his base at a rally in Alabama, he called on team owners to fire them and to say: “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now.” The protest was started last year by Colin Kaepernick of San Francisco 49ers. Coates reflects: “Kaepernick’s protest has been very successful. I really appreciate the fact that he’s been giving away money to organisations; he pledged to give away a million dollars and he’s been doing it.”

But Trump used his familiar tactics to divert and distract, kicking up bitter divisions around the anthem, the military, how much sportsmen earn, the meaning of patriotism and, of course, himself. Amid the media storm, it was easy to forget what the original protest was about. “The police brutality element has been lost, but I think that is a danger that all protests face,” Coates says. “At some point, you’re always co-opted, successful protests especially. It happened in the civil rights movement. People forget that the 1963 march [on Washington] was for jobs: that somehow got lost, and it became this warm, fuzzy thing [now best known for Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech].”

The notion that all these issues would be resolved by Obama was always fanciful. Even so, Coates was swept up in the euphoria with millions of others in 2008 when the US elected its first black president. Had the nation – whose founding fathers were slave owners, and where today African Americans are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of whites – truly changed? Coates admits he took his eye off the ball. The racial backlash was coming.

“The symbolic power of Barack Obama’s presidency – that whiteness was no longer strong enough to prevent peons taking up residence in the castle – assaulted the most deeply rooted notions of white supremacy and instilled fear in its adherents and beneficiaries,” he writes. “And it was that fear that gave the symbols Donald Trump deployed – the symbols of racism – enough potency to make him president, and thus put him in position to injure the world.”

Trump did not come out of nowhere; he was the logical conclusion of years of racial dog whistles from the Republican party, which has sought to suppress the black vote through spurious claims of cracking down on fraud. Coates recounts: “Throughout his eight years in office, Barack Obama endured a campaign of illegitimacy waged either by pluralities or majorities of the Republican party. Donald Trump rooted his candidacy in that campaign. It’s fairly obvious.

“His first real foray out again as a political candidate was into birthism [Trump began questioning Obama’s birthplace in TV interviews in 2011], and a lot of people dismissed birthism as just something cranks do and we don’t have to deal with. That was a huge mistake: it underrated the long tradition of denying black people their citizenship and basic rights. That was what this was piggybacking off of, so it’s not a mistake that he started there and then became president at all.”

Coates does not make the claim that all 63 million people who voted for Trump are white supremacists; but they were, he points out, willing to hand the government over to one. It was an astonishingly reckless act. Coates’s book is a wake-up call to white America, a holding to account. “So this question, is everyone who voted for Trump a racist? This misses the point. Did everyone in Nazi Germany believe all the stereotypes about Jews? Of course not. It’s beside the point.

“When France deported its Jews, did everyone in France believe all this stuff? No, but that’s beside the point. Looking the other way has consequences and you might not be a racist or a white supremacist or a bigot, but if you voted for Trump, you looked the other way, you said it’s fine to have that in the White House, and a substantial number of Americans felt that way. That’s a statement.”

Coates also takes issue with the media’s obsession with the white working class as a bloc that turned its back on Democrats and defected to Trump. His book challenges politicians and journalists who make earnest defences of Trump-voting communities as “good people” not motivated by bigotry. Countless articles and books such as Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance, a memoir about growing up in the white underclass, have been studied as key to understanding the despair of small towns left behind by globalisation. Are they missing the point? Is class secondary to race?

“It’s not like most working-class people voted for Donald Trump; they did not,” Coates says. “Most white working-class people voted for Donald Trump and the through line that you find is whiteness, not class and not gender. It’s not like he only got men; he got a majority of white women too. So if you look at categories of white people you find Trump being dominant among them, in part because of the appeal he made, but also in part because the Republican party has effectively become in this country the party of white people.

“What’s happening is the white working class is being used as a kind of signpost tool… There is some effort not just to absolve white working people, but to absolve whiteness because here’s the deal: ‘Oh, it’s fine that white working-class people and white poor people voted for Donald Trump because over the past 30 years they’ve had unmet expectations. And it’s also fine that rich white people voted for Donald Trump because of tax cuts.’ Come on: everybody gets off the hook.”

And yet many senators, including Bernie Sanders, whom Coates supported in the Democratic primary, Al Franken and Elizabeth Warren have argued that a generation of economic stagnation is real, fuelling anger that led some voters to throw a grenade at the Washington establishment. Middle- and working-class parents are frustrated that their children will not have the same opportunities they did. Trump’s defeated opponent Hillary Clinton writes in her new memoir: “After studying the French Revolution, De Tocqueville wrote that revolts tend to start not in places where conditions are worst, but in places where expectations are most unmet.”

To that, Coates responds: “Those expectations are built on being white. People say that as though it’s indivisible from the idea of race. You want to talk about unmet expectations? Black folks have been dealing with that since we got here, so the notion that, ‘My child isn’t going to have it as good as me, so that therefore gives me the right to vote for someone who conducts diplomacy with a rogue nuclear state via Twitter’ – that don’t work. Bottom line is, a significant number of people in this country have tolerance for bigotry. No one, I don’t think, can act like they didn’t know. You know I think [Trump’s racist] comments were well reported and America just decided it was OK.”

When white voters make bad decisions, Coates argues, excuses are made; when black voters do it, they get the blame. Coates recalls how the election of Marion Barry as mayor of the District of Columbia [later to be caught on camera smoking crack cocaine] prompted articles suggesting people in the district should lose the right to vote. “So there’s all this kind of rope that’s given, all these excuses allowed when you’re white in this country. But if black people acted that civically irresponsibly, that rope would not be awarded.

“Like you take the opioid crisis and all of the compassion that’s doled out in the rhetoric? Where was that during the crack epidemic in the 1980s? I remember it well. I was in a city where that was going on. Where was all that compassion? Black people aren’t worthy of that. That’s a story that can be created for white people because they’re white, but we don’t get that sort of compassion.”

Democrats are said to be torn between an emphasis on economic justice that aims to win back Trump voters and an emphasis on racial justice that will energise its liberal base. Asked about the future direction of the party, Coates is hesitant: “I don’t know. I shouldn’t answer that.” But after a pause, he weighs in: “Here’s one thing. I don’t think they can get away from talking about race because of the way things are aligned. You’ve got to get to a state like South Carolina or Georgia: these states have large numbers of black and brown voters.”

Coates grew up in Baltimore, where Francis Scott Key wrote The Star Spangled Banner and the first residential racial segregation law in any US city was enacted. More recently, it was famous for David Simon’s crime drama The Wire. “I had very little interaction with white people as a kid,” Coates recalls. “I think about what my world looked like as a child, a place that felt fearful, violent, then I’d put on the TV and I’d see that that was not the country at least as it advertised itself. That struck me and I always wanted to know why, what was the difference, why was my house not like Family Ties? That motivated a great deal of my work from the time I was young.”

His father, Paul Coates, was a Vietnam war veteran, Black Panther and voracious collector of books about the history of black struggle. Paul Coates had seven children by four women and was an intellectually inspiring father who also administered beatings. Coates has described him with affection as “a practising fascist, mandating books and banning religion”. The religion ban worked – Coates is an atheist – and so did the books, eventually. In February 2007, Coates, then 31, had just lost his third job in seven years and was trying to stay off welfare. He writes: “I’d felt like a failure all my life – stumbling out of middle school, kicked out of high school, dropping out of college... ‘College dropout’ means something different when you’re black. College is often thought of as the line between the power to secure yourself and your family, and the power of someone else securing you in a prison or grave.”

Coates made a splash with a 2014 article for the Atlantic arguing that the US should pay African Americans reparations for slavery. Then, a year later, came Between the World and Me, a rumination on black life and white supremacy, addressed to his teenage son in a letter form that evoked Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. It argued that the “destruction of black bodies” is not simply a recurring theme of American history but its central premise. It won the National Book Award in nonfiction, sold 1.5m copies around the world and has been translated into 19 languages.

As his star rose, Coates was invited to the White House. He got to spend time with Obama, whose fundamental optimism in America had convinced him that Trump could not win. He says: “He was tremendously intelligent, one of the smartest people I’d ever talked to, and he was smart in many ways. I met him a few times: one was with a bunch of journalists and he had the ability to address each journalist in their specific area in a very learned way. I thought he was brilliant.”

He reckons “in the main” Obama lived up to the impossibly high expectations of his presidency. “He had an incredible tightrope to walk and it’s difficult, man. You’re the first black president and you’ve got to represent a community, then speak to a larger country at the same time. If he was more radical he wouldn’t have been president. That’s what I’ve come around to: who he was was what the country wanted at that time. He can’t be me; not that he should want to be. But it’s a very different calling.”

Indeed, Coates sees himself as a writer – including of a comic-book series starring superhero the Black Panther – rather than an activist or potential politician. “That’s what I’m supposed to be doing because it’s what calls to me and it’s what I’m good at, what I excel at. I don’t really excel at this other stuff. I’m not a person who’s going to say whatever I have to say to get a coalition together, which is what you have to do in politics. I’m a writer.”

Towards the end of the interview, the questions become longer and Coates’s answers become shorter. He is probably relieved when it’s over, though he is too polite to say so.

Later he is busy tweeting links to articles about gun violence, nuclear war and earthquakes, jokingly chiding their authors for offering no hope. It is a charge with which he is all too familiar. “Our story is a tragedy,” he writes in We Were Eight Years in Power. “I know it sounds odd, but that belief does not depress me. It focuses me. After all, I am an atheist and thus do not believe anything, even a strongly held belief, is destiny... The worst really is possible. My aim is never to be caught, as the rappers say, acting like it can’t happen. And my ambition is to write both in defiance of tragedy and in blindness of its possibility, to keep screaming into the waves – just as my ancestors did.”

• We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates is published by Hamish Hamilton (£16.99). To order a copy for £14.44 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99

#Just Like You #lyric video #Louis Tomlinson

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genovera942vbucks-blog · 6 years ago

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starlessnightsmoon · 7 years ago

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Talking in the wrong conversation.

The following picture came up in my feed a while ago, it’s about a topic that is close to my heart, so I’ve decided to take her up on what it asked us to do.

While I agree there are sadly plenty of men who try to sweep female issues under the rug and undermine the conversation about women's rights, I think there a plenty of other men who don't have that intention, but are unintentionally swept in that category in a way that is damaging to the conversation about gender issues as a whole. It's complex to explain so here comes a rant...

I think part of the problem here is that one of the toxic gender stereotypes men deal with is 'stoicism.' We are trained specifically NOT to bring up this issues, NOT to talk about anything that might be perceived as weakness. For the most part there simply ISN'T an independent conservation about men's issues happening. (I can't even use the term 'Men's rights' because that's been twisted and polluted into something damaging to both men and women). At a certainly level I think that's because we all feel like it's not okay for us to start the conversation, there is a lot of fear associated with speaking up about these issues.

But the Feminist space has breached these issues, they have opening up the conversation and started to dig in and talk publicly about them. For most men, the Feminist conversation is the only space in which they will see others open up and start to talk about things like rape, abuse, damaging gender stereotypes and expectations, etc. In the Feminist conversation Women are encouraged to speak up, to share stories, talk about their issues, to seek support... I don't know what I would even call an equivalent masculine space without sounding like a chauvinist. Frankly speaking, outside of the umbrella of Feminism, unless you really hunt for it there ISN'T a equivalent space to speak about these issues as a male. (That said such spaces DO exist, and I encourage men to take the effort to seek them out.)

Just try googling abuse, all of the top help websites are geared heavy towards women (which isn't a bad thing). But the majority of the articles could have been written in gender neutral terms and the content would be exactly the same except for the pronouns used. 'Help for abused men' literally just tells you to read the 'help for abused women' article. That's right, the official help documents we are most likely to find about abuse and rape literally instruct men to go to feminine spaces because that's the only place you might find support. Reading every bit of support literature you can find is like a miniature form of gas-lighting, reminding you over and over again: you can't be the victim, you can only be the offender. Doesn't that just reinforce a toxic message about the gender roles of men and women: Women are abused, men are abusers. Rapist is a masculine gender role... I don't think I want that the be the message society tells men about who they are.

We know when one rape or abuse survivor speaks up, it encourages others to do likewise, it opens and creates a feeling of a safe space to speak out, because the topic has been breached you are adding your voice to one of many, it's somehow safer, easier... but no one is starting that conversation for men... So where is a man's outlet, where is his safe space to speak up... there isn't one.

When a Man feels a particular Feminist issues applies to him, he may make the mistake that, because the conversation has been started about something which he has personally experienced, like being the victim of rape or abuse, the Feminist space is a safe space for him to speak about it, in the same way it is (supposedly) for a woman to do so. But he has to test the water first, so instead of sharing his story (which is a neigh impossible thing to admit to) he generalizes, he says it happens to men, he means 'it happened to me and I want to join the conversation as a fellow victim in need of support which I can't find anywhere else' but he can't just come out and say that. So without thinking, because he's being driven by his own tragedy, his own hurt, he says precisely the wrong thing in the Feminist context. The result of course is predictable and his ill-conceived attempt to reach out for support has earned him chastisement and the ire of the people he wants to connect with and desired to show solidarity for.

This is bad on so many levels, he feels vulnerable, instead of the desired comradely feels rejected, he feels unjustly attacked because his intent has been misread (very understandably so given the context, but still...emotions). So now he's learned it's not okay for him to open up and share his feelings, he let himself be vulnerable and the result was bad. He's bitter and hurting and maybe he lashes out as a result...

The end result is counterproductive and only add to the gender divide which the whole point of the conversation had been to try to break down. I don't know the solution. Try to keep an open mind? Try to be more understanding from both sides? Find a way around our personal hurts to check if maybe the other persons meaning wasn't quite as divisive as we assume at first glance? Some of you will not believe that men do what I've just described, but... I know it happens, because I've seen other men make a bumbling attempt to join the conversation, struggling to get out what they mean while digging themselves a deeper and deeper hole, only to get fed up and disheartened leaving feeling like they have no place they can voice their own struggles with these 'Feminist' issues. But Mostly I know this happens because that's been me. I have been guilty of what I have just described here. Because I felt I had no where else to talk about it I've co-opted feminist conversations with the plea of it 'it happens to men too' because it happened to me and I wanted to be part of the conversation that I didn't think I could have anywhere else. Since no one else seems to opening the conversation for men, allow me this one small instance to do so.

I am a male victim of rape, and because I have quite literally never heard another man admit to that, and never expect to hear another man admit to that I've tried to insert myself and my masculinity into the into the feminist conversation about rape. To make that conversation about me as much as any other female victim, and by extension make it about men. But that's wrong... It isn't the same for me as it is for women, I mean in ways it is, but in so many more it isn't. I shouldn't have to force my way into their space, my issues aren't quite the same as theirs... to be quite honest, even though I'm a fellow 'survivor' I don't know what it's like for them. The issues and stigma's they face aren't the same as the ones I do, I can't really understand what it is they go through, and they don't really understand what it's like for me either. For me, It happened over 10 years and several therapists ago, no I don't want pity and I'm not going to talk about details further. I don't want this to be about me, in a way, it's easier that way, to say it for the men who can't speak rather than for myself. There is a sense of voicelessness, of isolation... a nagging fear to admit what happened to any other person is to drive them away and condemn myself, that the act of admission somehow makes me lesser... a whiner, a lair, pitiful, damaged... that to say it aloud makes it true, when otherwise I could hide in denial and self-blame. Somehow that's easier taking the blame on myself, that I should have been stronger, more firm more... manly I guess.

What makes it even worse is that sometimes the people who seem like they should be our greatest allies, who have shared a similar pain or who are champions against what we've suffered (when it comes to women) are the same people who end up using the very same type of attacks and undermining tactics that chauvinist use against feminism to silence our voices when we try to speak out on those issues occurring to men. In a way I don't blame them, it hurts, it's emotionally charged, it breaks the status quo... and they have been attacked so horribly, so fiercely, so wickedly themselves. They have been marginalized by being told what happened to them is no big deal... because others have used ME as THE excuse why what happens to women is okay, or something we shouldn't care about... how else could they react but with anger to the very thing that is used to justify silencing them and doing nothing to stop whats happening.

That was a very interesting and painful thing to learn... to really understand what it's like to be told, "you getting raped doesn't matter, because it happens to people of my gender." Oh the anger... the rage, the red hot fury... I don't know how feminists are able to stand hearing that over and over and over again, I would snap, I'd go crazy. I hope I never make the mistake of stealing your voice again... Because you deserve that voice... that conversation. It's time we started the difficult work of starting a different conversation about our own issues.

We do get Sexually assaulted, we are abused, and men do have toxic gender stereotypes we are expected to live up to. It's time we pit one of those stereotypes against another and have the courage to get over the whole 'men don't talk about our problems/that doesn't happen to real men' thing to start our own separate discussions about these things happening to men, and what we can do to combat them.

#feminism #male feminists #rape culture #abuse #male victims of abuse #gender #gender issues #equality #equal rights #speak up #support

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