#and you should be taking your political stances based on facts not 19 year old with cool Tumblr blog

[artificial-ascension]

Some of you lot seem to be voting dem cause popular Tumblr user said so and not cause you like their policies which is certainly not concerning at all.

[onesoulforbalkans]

Central European Silence About Genocide and Racism in Europe

I wrote this for subject in university and my friends thought that more than my lecturer should read this. So here goes nothing.

To start this essay, I want to look back at a situation where an old lady told me how lucky I am that I live in a time of peace. At the time, I also thought so but knowing what I know now; I realise it was a lie. I had taken on this Central European stance as child, not looking at problems that were in front of me. In this essay, I will look at situations in which Central Europeans kept silent about sufferings happening so close to them.

          If we look at Central Europe already historically, they always have wanted to take over other countries, looking at people that lived there as some lower human beings. We could say nothing has changed at all: medieval times, World War II, and then other situations in 20th century where they thought the right thing was to turn a blind eye on it all. In this essay I will concentrate on the Eastern Europeans who suffered from this whole situation. Beginning with World War II, because it was a catalyst for new wave of ignoring Eastern Europeans and we could say selling these countries for peace with Soviet Union. Eastern Europeans are looked at as still “not-quite-white” (Fox, J., 2017). We as Europeans look at USA and are shocked at how widespread their racism is, when we ignore our own. As they say deal with your own problems before you start pointing fingers at others.

           As already mentioned before, United Kingdom and United States of America sold out Eastern Europe countries to have peace and help from Soviet Union. While the UK had promised Polish government in exhale that they will get back their independent and democratic country (History.com editors, 04.11.2019.) same went to the rest of the occupied countries. Eastern European countries were left back in the dark ages while other parts of the world moved on. Such state of things was okay with Central of Europe, until in the middle of 1980’s people of Eastern Europe started to move the calm boat in the need of independence. Now they could not turn a blind eye on this situation, they had to react and support people in their quest of becoming independent.

           What came with independence was not what people expected at all. Central Europeans straight up were looking at Easterners as lower-class people, people who were far, far behind because they had only just come out of a Communistic political system. This view of Eastern Europeans has not changed at all in last 30 years. We can see it in UK where they say Eastern Europeans are taking away their jobs when these people work in places where British people would not even step in. If you listen to, for example, RTE Radio 2 which is Ireland’s radio station, you will hear about Eastern Europeans being killed, beaten to a pulp or something else happening to them. They try to play it down to fights inside the community but in the end, it always ends up being hate based crimes. We again come back to phrase “not-quite-white”. This phrase shows all the hate they have over Easterners when Eastern Europeans should be the angry ones. They are the ones whose countries were treated like tokens, who were occupied for over 50 years.

           Still the situation that hurt Eastern Europeans more than any other was Independence war in Balkan region or to be exact in ex-Yugoslavia territory. It was biggest refugee crisis in Europe since WWII. Stories that came from people that lived through this war showed that this demon of hate is still alive in people. Most noticeable is story of Croatian National Football team defender Dejan Lovren who tells that if German government did not accept his parents papers this time, they would need to go back to Bosnia where the war was still raging on (Herbert, I., 08.02.2017.). To live in constant fear till you are finally booted out of democratic country because you simply do not fit their agenda.

           That was not worst people turned blind eye to. We have to talk about darkest dot in history of 1990’s and that is Srebrenica massacre in 1995. Something we all still feel guilty about, but some try to hide, or to wash their hands clean. Srebrenica massacre went on for five days, but the real numbers of this event came out only in 2005. Sudetic Chuck in his research about Srebrenica massacre wrote:

             “According to a demographic study issued in 2005 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, some 97.1 percent of the 7,661 persons recorded as dead or missing as a result of the events at Srebrenica were males from 15 to 69 years of age; 68 were women, including two between the ages of five and nine, four between the ages of 15 and 19, and 11 between the ages of 20 and 24. More than 99 percent of the dead and missing were Muslim.”

Female victims of the genocide are still asking for other facts of massacre to be disclosed. So the whole world can know the truth, this fight is still alive to this day. We still have information that is kept away from the rest of the world. But we sometimes must think twice about the information we have. None of this can give peace to mothers and wives that lost husbands and their own pride. Who will answer why United Nation peace makers that were in Bosnia since 1992 (Peacekeeping in Bosnia, n.d.) put only 500 men in Srebrenica when it was established before that there needed to be 5000 well-armed men in this region? (Chuck, 07.07.2010.). Only some people stepped away when such information finally slipped out. It was like damage control.

           In lecture we watched a video from 1972 Munich massacre that happened in the Summer Olympic village. All 12 people who were held hostage got killed because Germany wanted to show that they are not the same country that they were in WWII and this situation can be resolved by peaceful talks. We can pull parallels with Srebrenica massacre because here too, Central European politicians in power ignored the facts that were put in front of them. UN already had forces in Croatia and saw how quickly situations can escalate. It took seven years for the Dutch Government and UN to say they were partially responsible (Chuck, 07.07.2010.). They can say these are mistakes, but these mistakes are human lives that could have been saved.

           In conclusion, I want to say Central European historians and authors, who say Europe has not experienced genocide in history after WWII, should open their eyes and start owning up to so called mistakes of their governments because we are all united. As Zygmunt Bauman said we are all in same boat. The sooner we deal with this racism and are honest with ourselves about these situations, we will reach the goals the European Union puts in front of us. Right now, you could feel Europe filling in with more hate, and that is not something we all want to live through again. Let us work on peace, and not hate.

Selected literature

Chuck, S. (07.07.2010.). The Srebrenica Massacre (July 11-16, 1995). Retrieved from https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/srebrenica-massacre-july-11-16-1995.html

Fox, J. (2017). Eastern Europeans, Brexit and Racism. Retrieved from https://www.britsoc.co.uk/about/latest-news/2017/may/eastern-europeans-brexit-and-racism/?fbclid=IwAR2fSgVvhChSS7F3Od4QNcNaypnfeGEX8Rbin0VDAEgEB_6g5_5OgbuiTnM

Herbert, I. (08.02.2017.). Liverpool's Dejan Lovren on being a refugee: 'I know what some families are going through, give them a chance'. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news/liverpool-s-dejan-lovren-searing-insight-his-childhood-people-think-again-refugees-a7570001.html

History.com Editors. (04.11.2019.). Yalta conference. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/yalta-conference

Peacekeeping in Bosnia. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.globalization101.org/peacekeeping-in-bosnia/

[2-n-e-1-blackjack]

The Current Political Situation in Thailand

 From a different point of view....

*DISCLAIMER: This is in no way proper journalism, however due to the multiple biased articles released by certain news sites, I would like to state my political stances to show the other side of the current political status that Thailand is currently under. If my facts are incorrect in any way, feel free to correct me. I encourage those who are interested to do their own research on this as there is so much more to uncover than what is being reported in English-based Thai news sites. And the things I am stating is just the surface of what the current situation is all about.

The current group of protesters are protesting for “democracy” in Thailand. For those who don’t know, Thailand is currently a constitutional monarchy (meaning that the king is merely a “figure-head” of the country with little to no say in the political matters in Thailand for the most part and there is a government which is voted by the citizens of Thailand every 4 years). So... why is there the current protest in Thailand?

Let’s go back to when this protest officially started. Contrary to popular belief, the protest actually started by a Thai politician (leader of the ‘Future Forward Party’) and business man, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, who started this protest because he believed that he was “unfairly treated” by the Thai judiciary system and claims that the current government is a “dictatorship government”. Now... you may or may not have heard of the news being thrown around in foreign media about this man being unfairly treated but it states in a CNN news report that “In just two years, Future Forward and its leaders have been hit with more than 20 legal cases, including criminal charges that could result in jail time.” Which sounds pretty severe if you ask me. 

The crimes he has been accused of is barely traceable if you follow foreign/English-based news sites and most of which are very biased, using biased language such as calling his crimes “bogus” but yet lacking a proof of why they claim his crimes to be “bogus”. They don’t state any of his crimes in detail, only putting up ones that he has made excuses and claims stating as to why he thinks he’s being “falsely accused” and “mistreated” by the judiciary system in Thailand. If he were to be truly innocent, these sites should at least make an effort to state all the crimes in which he has been accused of. Yet, none state the full list. As someone who is more fluent in English than Thai, I am already being exposed to biased news supporting Thanathorn, which is not proper journalism. It is unreliable and misleading in many ways.

So what are the crimes he claims to be “falsely” accused of?

The most serious one is being a share-holder of a media company (V-Luck Media) during the election. This violates the Constitution section 98 (3) which states that the person running for office must not own or is a stock-holder in any newspaper or any news publishing media. (He also violated section 101(6) of the constitution but it is difficult to translate due to my lack of a law background so hopefully someone will come out to translate that one day source: https://news.thaipbs.or.th/content/286268) And because of this... he claims he was being unfairly treated by a government that is a “dictatorship”, even though he is rightfully being charged for crimes that he has indeed committed. Yet, he plays the victim card and uses this to convince the youth of Thailand of this “injustice” and started the protest against of the government in 2019. However the protested was halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now that the pandemic in Thailand is simmering down, the protesters are back but now are attacking more than just the government. At first they attacked the government and the current prime minister by mocking the government, raising concerns of “corruption” because “we bought a submarine” but they did not address the rockets and planes that Thailand was also forced to buy by the US earlier this year (kinda fishy...) They also claimed that the Thai government did nothing to help with the COVID pandemic which is a false claim considering that Thailand is one of the best countries at dealing with the pandemic, to which the protesters claim that it is due to the doctors of Thailand that made it possible. (However if we take into consideration countries such as the US who refused to follow the advice of pandemic experts and instead focused on the economy of the country instead of the well-being and health of their citizens, I think the Thai government helped in making Thailand safer.) The protesters held their protests when the government still banned having gatherings of over 10 people, but the government knew that stopping the protests would anger the protesters even more so they did not stop the protests.

Seeing that the government did not take notice of the protests and have not banned the protest in any way, the protesters then started to attack the current monarch of Thailand. The attacks include mocking his family, mocking the monarch, and mocking the previous monarch. Which according to section 112 of the Constitution, it is illegal to defame the monarch. Sounds “unfair” but if you really think about it, this law was actually put into place because the King and the Royal Family as a whole is unable to make any political or opinionated statements at all. The Royal Family is unable to defend themselves if anyone were to mock them since they aren’t allowed to make any personal statements. Therefore, section 112 was put in place so that the Royal Family can be protected like any other citizen. (Every citizen has the right to sue others who defame them which can range from being fined to being imprisoned.) As a result of defaming the Royal Family, the leaders of the protests have been caught for breaking the law and the police had to be involved. Also, a lot of other non-democracy related issues are being raised such as gender equality, LGBTQ+, and schools being violent towards students. All of these issues are very interesting and I agree that they should be raised. However, it is not the political agenda of the current protest. Having democracy does not mean having equality. For example, a country that the protesters often praise for being a good example of democracy (I kid you not) is the US... which has had issues on gender, racial, and social inequality for ages. Still to this day, they still have inequality. Currently, the US is going through the 4th wave of feminism after being a democracy ever since the start of this country. So tying in topics such as inequality, and school related violence does not in any way relate to the request for democracy and a lack of a monarchy. Also, they criticize other people with other political stances than theirs and still asking others to respect their political opinion. How do you expect someone to respect your stances when you don’t respect others as well as mock other human beings for being privileged when the ones who supported them in the beginning is a rich billionaire who never experienced any social injustice before in his life. Having money from his parents is a silver spoon that not everyone was born with but yet these protesters are being hypocrites supporting Thanathorn but hating on the King.

In conclusion, the so-called “Pro-Democracy” protests stem from politician Thanathorn who accused the government of treating him unfairly because he was charged with crimes such as being a share-holder of a media company during the elections. As a result, Thanathorn started a protest in 2019 to voice his “injustice” and it led to students coming out to protest for democracy in Thailand and bringing other injustices to light even though it is not related with the current protests and what they supposedly stand for. And now, many protesters are calling those who don’t feel the same as them as old-fashion, conservative “dinosaurs” just because they don’t have the same political stances. Disrespecting other people’s opinions to support your own is not “democracy”. Equality is not democracy.

(Democracy (noun) -  a : government by the people especially : rule of the majority. b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.) Since when did majority mean equal? Not that we should not have equality, but it is not the same thing as democracy. (Get your facts right)

[sockparade]

ill at ease

I can still picture the grin on Milan’s face that day as he walked into the office with a Starbucks frappuccino in hand. I have a hard time remembering a day when Milan didn’t arrive at the office with a Starbucks frappuccino in hand. So it wasn’t out of the ordinary. But it was noteworthy that day because the week before a video went viral of two Black men being arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia because a white employee was uncomfortable with them asking to use the restroom and sitting in the coffeeshop while they waited for a business associate to arrive. Something non-Black folks do all the time. People were calling for a total Starbucks boycott.

I raised my eyebrows at his drink, and he shrugged saying, “Look, I’m not going to let the actions of some racist white people take away my freedom to get whatever drink I want.” 

And like, yeah, I objectively understand how that’s an imperfect political stance and maybe an ineffective strategy to create change, but also, man, I really felt that. In order to protest Black men being arrested for sitting in a coffeeshop (read: for being Black), was I really going to try to tell a Black man about where he should or shouldn’t get his substandard (ha) coffee fix? Try to convince him about the importance of voting with his dollar? Can’t a person just live?   

I just didn’t have it in me to disagree. 

I often think about that exchange whenever I hear a call to boycott such and such corporation or a call to cancel a celebrity. I mean, listen, I do believe in the power of an organized boycott or protest. There is concrete historical evidence and contemporary examples of how people have bossed companies and the government into doing what we demand. But I don’t want to keep pretending that it’s an easy switch to flip or that it’s a cost-free way for people of color to fight against the inequity in the world.  

That Starbucks incident was just one in an endless number of incidents in which a white person says or does something that reveals their racism, forcing people of color to do the emotionally taxing, unending math, of just how much caucasity we’re willing to stomach.

This is a really old story. Marginalized groups of people have always had to bear the brunt of publicized racist behavior. For every racist incident, there are generally three major phases of emotional labor that people of color in the United States have to work through. At first I could only name two but then I realized it’s actually three. Let me walk you through them.

First, before any explicitly racist incident happens, we have to contend with the fact that there are generally such slim pickings in terms of choices that will allow us to exist ethically and stay true to our convictions. How do we earn a living? Where do we grocery shop? What authors do we read? Whose music do we listen to? Are there ANY electronics that are manufactured in an ethical way? Do we wear checks or not? Are the non-white teachers at this preschool treated with respect by the white owners of this preschool? How do I reduce my purchases on Amazon? Is this restaurant gentrifying the neighborhood? Wait which banks have divested from fossil fuels again? Can I truly be myself at this church? What athleisure brands haven’t been accused of overt racism yet? Where are the influencers that look like me? 

When it comes to the consumption of and participation in… well, almost anything, we constantly have to make concessions because we live in a place that’s simply not built for us. It is so hard to name a single sphere of life that I enjoy that isn’t dominated by whiteness or the white gaze. I think my MO for some time now has been to assume that no brand, company, restaurant, actor, or celeb is truly *safe*. I’m generally always waiting for the other shoe to drop while also trying not to think about it too much. It’s a lot of mental gymnastics. 

I was at a lecture a few years ago on the topic of the “doctrine of discovery” and the systematic oppression of Native American nations. It was a large auditorium in Berkeley full of neoliberal mostly white folks. The lecturer read a rather dismissive opinion rejecting the Oneidas attempt to reclaim land that was criminally stolen from them in violation of U.S. treaty (Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation, 2005) as a shockingly recent example of how this oppression has continued. And then theatrically, he revealed the author to be none other than Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. There was a loud, audible, collective gasp from the audience. 

I mean, no, I didn’t know the Notorious RBG had that in her. But also, I’m not over here clutching my pearls. I’m not saying I’m proud of my jaded mentality. I’m just accustomed to it. As Tressie McMillan Cottom says in her essay “Know Your Whites” in Thick: And Other Essays, “I am not disappointed. If you truly know your whites, disappointment rarely darkens your door.” I’ve been seeing more and more of this language with the virality and frequency of racist actions being caught on video and circulated on the internet. People will say, “I’m not surprised, but I’m mad.” It’s too overwhelming to feel shock and pain every single time. So we steady ourselves for the eventuality, we brace for the pain. Know your whites, y’all.        

The second phase of emotional labor is related to the actual injury. We feel the deep pain of injury even if we don’t know the person that was harmed or the person who caused the harm. I think people are sometimes quick to dismiss the behavior of rich and famous people as irrelevant and reduce discussion of it as simply celebrity gossip. But I think there’s pain whether it’s a murder, an arrest, or a racial slur. I know it can be hard to tell by the overwhelming amount of white tears shed on social media after each viral incident but the marginalized group targeted by the offense carries the pain so differently than anyone outside of that group. Try as we might to muster our empathy and our vague-ass Christian lament, it’s just. not. the. same. It’s not. Sometimes it’s so painful that I don’t even fully let myself go there. I haven’t been able to bring myself to read in detail about the recent hate crimes against Asians since COVID-19. I feel squeamish about it. I feel pain when I read stories and see pictures of families being separated, detained and deported but I know for a Latinx person that pain must be so much deeper. And I absolutely cannot fully imagine the pain that Black and Indigineous folks in America endure living in this place.  

And then finally, there’s the third phase of labor. This is the part when we’re called upon to react, call it out, bring awareness, advocate for change, and make swift changes (big and small) in our own lives. Sometimes I feel judged (by others and by my own conscience) when I don’t boycott or abstain. And sometimes I just try to skip to this third phase because I don’t want to deal with the grief of the second phase. 

After this past week’s twitter feud, lots of folks are ready to cancel Alison Roman for the trash comments she made about Chrissy Teigan and Marie Kondo in her recent interview in The New Consumer. It feels like there’s a sudden clamoring to point out just how white Alison Roman is, and how there’s new evidence that she’s racist. And I guess what I want to say is, um, it’s not really much of a reveal nor is it brand new information. Right? Roxana Hadadi in her recent article titled, “Alison Roman, the Colonization of Spices, and the Exhausting Prevalence of Ethnic Erasure in Popular Food Culture” gives a pretty detailed explanation of just how unshocking it is. 

Prior to reading this interview in The New Consumer, did anyone really think Alison Roman had an astute analysis of her white privilege and her accompanying habit of cultural appropriation that she’s benefitted from her entire career? No! While certainly gross, was I shocked that she mocked imperfect English (regardless of whether it was in reference to Marie’s accent or a Eastern European cookbook)? No! Am I shocked when any person mocks an accent? No! We’ve *allowed* it in TV shows, in movies, in corporate settings, and in social settings. I cringe every time but I’ve been forced my whole life to accommodate it. I’ve heard mockery of accents maybe most often from second generation immigrants mocking their own culture’s accents! And If I’m completely honest, I still sometimes find myself guilty of laughing along. (Curiously, Alison Roman’s lengthy apology made no mention of that part of her interview. Perhaps she, and/or her PR team, realized there was no easy way to walk that one back.) Race relations are a fucking mess in our country, y’all. Let’s please stop pretending like it’s just the occasional ultra-public celebrity slip-up. 

Hear me when I say I’m not defending her fuckery. What I’m taking issue with is the lack of nuance and the self-righteousness in how we respond to these public brouhahas. Both the shocked reactions and the gotcha reactions expressed by people feel equally tiresome to me. This reflection, written by Charlotte Muru-Lanning, is one of the few three-dimensional, unflattened, and self-searching reflections written by a person of color on this whole drama. While I don’t agree with how defensive she is of Alison Roman, I appreciate the way she refuses to act as if she doesn’t exist in the world that she’s critiquing and I love that she recognizes the complexity in herself as a woman of color. 

I’ve become pretty comfortable in my understanding that everyone white in our country is racist. I say racist in the fullest, most comprehensive definition of the word. Some are hateful in their racism. And some are actively trying to fight it even as it exists in themselves. As Ijeoma Oluo explains so succinctly and precisely in her book, So You Want to Talk About Race, racism is “a prejudice against someone based on race, when those prejudices are reinforced by systems of power.” And then she goes on to say, “Systematic racism is a machine that runs whether we pull the levers or not, and by just letting it be, we are responsible for what it produces. We have to actually dismantle the machine if we want to make change.” It’s in the water. And we are all impacted by it, no matter what part of the machine we’re in. Me included. As a Taiwanese American who grew up in Houston, Texas, I wasn’t magically immune to the anti-blackness that was/is prevalent in the Asian American community. Whether it was comments made by my parents, my relatives, my friends, or comments from acquaintances/strangers, it was pretty consistent. You don’t bake in that environment for all your formative years without it damaging a part of you. It’s something I still find myself fighting to unroot and discard from my psychology and my bias despite spending my non-profit career trying to address racial disparities in education and employment. I might spend the rest of my life working on it. We can’t keep pretending it’s an occasional affliction or it’s a disease that only Trump supporters suffer from. I suspect the people who are *shocked* at Alison Roman’s racist comments are also people who believe there are good whites and bad whites. #notallwhites? 

Lots of folks have written reflections on cancel culture so I don’t feel the need to rehash it all here. Cancel culture exists for a reason. And it also has its various pitfalls. On one of my favorite podcasts, Still Processing, Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris do an excellent job of examining the limits of cancel culture in their episode about Michael Jackson (content warning: child sexual abuse). One of their most compelling arguments against cancel culture is that while it attempts to hold an individual accountable, it can also be harmful because it allows people to look away. It allows us to skip the hard work of scrutinizing our broken systems beyond a single individual and it allows us to give ourselves a pass and not search ourselves for the ways in which we are complicit. We can’t look away. We have to interrogate what we consume and why. It’s the only way things will change.

I want to attempt to do some of that hard work here. Beyond organized boycotts, I do subscribe to the idea that there’s value in the individual choices I make to abstain from something. Not just in service of a desired economic, political or societal outcome, but because of the impact it can have on me, as an individual. So let me push past my annoyance that I even have to do this when I’ve already done two other phases of emotional labor and get to work. 

A question I’ve been asking myself this week is: Did I somehow make peace with Alison Roman’s cultural appropriation for profit? And if so, why? The answer is, yeah, I think I did. And here are my thoughts on why.

I like Alison Roman’s recipes. I have both of her cookbooks and I only have three cookbooks in my kitchen so that’s something. It’s pretty rare for me to crack open a cookbook when I’m in the kitchen. I mostly just google for specific recipes I’m craving or I’ll look up what temperature is ideal for roasting cauliflower. Almost all the dinners I cook for my family consist of rice/noodles, a meat, and a vegetable and I don’t use recipes for those anymore. Each week I do like to have one “more complicated” dinner recipe and that’s when I’ll sometimes open a cookbook or scroll Instagram. I spend an unreasonable amount of time reading recipe comments (often contradicting) about modifications or adjustments they made and that’s after wading past all the comments about how excited people are to make the posted recipe-- it’s all very confusing and time consuming. 

For someone who was not taught how to cook and who didn’t spend much time in a kitchen until maybe 3 years ago, I appreciated Alison Roman’s insistence that she had figured out the “best way” to make classic dishes (usually dishes I did not grow up eating, like Shrimp Louie or Shallot Pasta), the way she suggested using spices I’ve never cooked or eaten before (Aleppo pepper), and her encouragement to use new techniques that I was unfamiliar with (slow roasting tomatoes in the oven for six hours). It was kind of like finding a cooking lifehack.  

While I found her IG persona mostly grating and self-congratulatory, I was charmed by her vision in her first cookbook for lowering the barrier to entry for making a really great meal that you can be proud of and her push in her second cookbook to host dinner parties that bring your friends together in a memorable way. For a generation that has relished mostly eating out all the time and then ordering in all the time, following an Alison Roman recipe could sometimes feel like permission to try shit out in the kitchen without the pressure to be a master at it. It was a good feeling when the recipes turned out well and it was fun to talk about which recipes I’d tried with other folks who were also working their way through her recipes. 

Okay, and this part might sound ridiculous but I sort of thought that Alison Roman was someone who could maybe teach me how to make white food. Haha. You know what I’m talking about? Like the food that might be on a menu at a restaurant tagged as “American (New)” on Yelp. I mean yes, she has a recipe for “Kimchi-Braised Pork with Sesame and Egg Yolk” in Nothing Fancy but that kind of bastardized Asian dish has been popping up on white restaurant menus pretty consistently for some time now. But a question I’m now asking myself is why I wanted to make white food in the first place? Did I subconsciously think it was fancier and would make for a more interesting menu when hosting dinner parties? 

In her introduction to that Kimchi-Braised Pork recipe she says, “I am calling this a braise, but it is really a stew (an homage to the Korean Jigae) in which meat is braised--but isn’t that most stews?” How do you react when you read that sentence? I think she avoids triggering my usual alarm bells because she doesn’t attempt to be an expert in Korean cuisine. She feints left by throwing in the homage line. She’s not aiming for authenticity in her recipe. It might actually be worse if she gave a mini lecture on Korean cuisine. I don’t know. When I read that line in the cookbook, I don’t find myself immediately questioning the proper origins of the recipe. I don’t have the same knee jerk reaction as when a white chef publishes a whole cookbook of recipes from just one specific region of the world and presumes to be the expert or the ultimate curator. 

And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I need to work harder to stay in the habit of questioning recipe creation and curation. Kind of like the way I’ve learned to question books like Jeanine Cummins’s American Dirt. Fifteen years ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about white authors writing the stories of people of color. Wasn’t that the whole of literature? Or so I thought. What a gift it’s been to pivot my reading to mostly authors of color! What would happen if I demanded more from the food media I was consuming?

It gets a bit more complicated for me though. Alison Roman has a Chinese-inspired recipe called “Soy-Braised Brisket with Caramelized Honey and Garlic” that I really like. In her introduction to it she writes, “... the tangy, spiced braised beef noodles available at a few of my favorite Chinese restaurants around New York, which I’ll order every time. While not a replication, this brisket is my interpretation: salty from soy sauce, sour from vinegar, lightly spiced from a few pantry all-stars.”  

I don’t even know where to start with this one. I am personally so confused by Chinese food. What is Chinese food? What is Taiwanese food? What is Americanized Chinese food? Is that still Chinese food? What was the food my mom cooked at home throughout my childhood? It took me awhile to allow myself to just fully enjoy Americanized Chinese food without feeling hung up about it. A few years ago my mom made a new dish that I loved and I naively asked her whether it was a recipe she grew up with. I think I was secretly hoping it was a family recipe that she learned from her mom so I could check that immigrant kid fantasy off my list.

She laughed and said, “Do you know where I learned it from? I learned it on YouTube!”

I mean, this is the thing with the Asian Diaspora. Things are pretty disjointed for me. I know some Asian Americans are super locked in and schooled on their origins, heritage, and culture but I honestly don’t know much. I don’t know what region or city in Taiwan my favorite kind of Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup is from. I think I’ve learned to make a version of it that I like better than anything I’ve ever eaten in a restaurant or in someone’s home. I don’t say that to brag, I just say that to point out how confusing it is to try to connect that Taiwanese dish with my heritage when it’s something I learned how to make in my thirties using a recipe I found on a stranger’s website. I feel like I’m trying to connect with a culture I didn’t really grow up in myself. I’m chasing phantoms. 

You know what, I feel like some white lady in the Midwest on the Instant Pot Community Facebook group might legitimately be the world expert on the best way to make General Tso’s Chicken in a pressure cooker at home. After I made the Butter Chicken recipe from Two Sleevers, I looked up who authored the recipe and was so relieved to see that Dr. Urvashi (affectionately nicknamed The Butter Chicken Lady) was Indian. I loved that Butter Chicken recipe. I was super excited to try cooking more Indian food and I was happy that I could do it with a clear conscience. Haha, it’s all so convoluted, I know. 

I think maybe I feel reluctant to hold others accountable for being more respectful of food origins because my understanding of my own cultural heritage (as it relates to food, but also in many other ways) feels spotty and incomplete. I find myself feeling unsure of what I am defending. But ultimately I think this has been a flimsy excuse. It’s not so hard to google a bit more to find a chef that’s sharing a recipe from their particular culture. I think I need to confront the hidden grief I feel about being disconnected from my culture. 

In The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief, Anne Anlin Cheng puts it this way, 

“If the move from grief to grievance, for example, aims to provide previously denied agency, then it stands as a double-edged solution, since to play the plaintiff is to cultivate, for many critics, a cult of victimization. So the gesture of granting agency through grievance confers agency on the one hand and rescinds it on the other. As a result, for many concerned with improving the conditions of marginalized peoples, the focus on psychical injury and its griefs is strategically harmful and to be studiously avoided. But this also means that we are so worried about depriving disenfranchised people of their agency that we risk depriving them of the time and space to grieve. A final problem is that since justice based on grievance and compensation tends to rely on the logic of commensurability and quantifiability, it is ill-equipped to confront that which is incommensurable and unquantifiable. In short, we as a society are at ease with the discourse of grievance but terribly ill at ease in the face of grief.” 

So yeah, I guess the part I haven’t said is, when I read those comments made by Alison Roman in that interview, it hurt me. And when she deflected and didn’t take the initial pushback seriously, that hurt too. It was such a familiar feeling. I know that feeling because I’ve been there before. I’ve had my feelings brushed off with a laugh or a weird, unsatisfactory explanation. I’ve been told that someone was just punching up and didn’t think about it in the context I was. I’ve experienced that basic othering so many times in my life.

Okay so the theory here is that if I do a better job of facing the first and second phase of emotional labor head on… if I can somehow process the pain and grief of living in a racist society, then being a thoughtful consumer will feel less like a sacrifice. It’ll be easier for me to stand by choices I’ve made because I’ll know I’ve made them with integrity and in a way that is true to myself. And I can get to a place where that doesn’t feel like a loss of freedom but rather a true liberation. Man, I want that. 

I also want to get in the habit of asking myself whether my desires, the same desires I am so reluctant to give up, are not actually just byproducts themselves of suffering in this machine for so long. Like, do I really believe it’s coincidental that I bought into Alison Roman’s brand and that I also do a good amount of my shopping at Madewell? And then they happened to do a collab together? 

I need take a magnifying glass to the way I’ve been subconsciously trained to prize dominant white culture. It is so uncomfortable for me to even type that out because it feels like I’m admitting that I like white culture. Like I’m somehow admitting to an inferiority complex. I’m not saying I wish I were white. I definitely don’t wish that. But I am guilty of believing that my taste, my style, and my preferences are somehow invincible to the whiteness of million dollar marketing campaigns in this country. I like to pretend that my brain is somehow impervious to the terrifying industry of engineered social media algorithms and psychological branding strategies. And that’s bullshit. I don’t think anyone really wants to be white these days. Even white people themselves seem uncomfortable. But a white person enjoying wonderful things created by people of color? We eat that shit up. Why do we do that?

We have to spend time recognizing, no matter the discomfort, why our pleasures align so easily with the dominant culture. My hope is that when I start interrogating the way my tastes align with whiteness I’ll begin to cherish the ability I have to move into a place of misalignment. Maybe it won’t be so difficult to give up things I’ve taken pleasure in, because I’ll find pleasure in the process of detaching. Maybe it’ll eventually stop feeling like I’m abstaining and it’ll feel more like I’m just making powerful choices. 

I think the shallow analysis of white supremacy and consumption in this country instructs a person of color to believe that liberation means having the freedom to consume as we please, disregarding the impact of our choices. You know, a chance to live the way many white people live. But I think a more thoughtful analysis instructs us to believe that our choices have consequences in terms of whether it supports or dismantles the machine of racism -- both in ourselves and in society. 

Instead of the performative handwringing of trying to decide whether or not we buy another Starbucks coffee, hit next when MJ starts playing on a Spotify playlist, or keep cooking that Alison Roman brisket, my friend Milan has taught me over the years that it’s more important to be attentive to what we are desiring and why we’re making the choices that we make. Yeah that will often mean boycotting things or making different choices, no doubt. The difference is that it won’t be from an exhausting place of trying to achieve blameless optics. It’ll be from a genuine realignment. There’s freedom in that.          

And yes, I see it too. That our pleasure and the way we experience culture is so closely tied to consumption is fodder for a whole other damn essay. Ugh.     

[scifimagpie]

Political Oroboros: Why Marx Is Not Enough

First of all, I realise the title of this piece is inflammatory, so let me lay out some caveats.

I am absolutely not conservative. (One of the first things to know about leftist fighting and discussions online is that 'liberal' has two different meanings; the broad sense in which conservative commentators use it, and the more specific and technically correct sense that leftists sometimes use it - as well as the tertiary sense of, "anyone who isn't quite radical enough.') 

I wouldn't necessarily call myself a liberal in the sense of condoning a capitalist system; I do find the most common ground with proponents of democratic socialism. However, some elements of communist ideology do seem solid, although I tend to like many of the ideas I've seen from anarcho-syndicalists more.

Confused by those terms? You're not alone, but some of the hippest trends among the youth of today are not just trap music and street wear - it's political and philosophical discourse. Different streams of communism and anarchism and debating the concepts of idealists through the ages is pretty great, but treating those ideas as a firm road map and, perhaps, the only acceptable solution or map, is not so excellent.

After several weeks of careful surveillance and investigation, I also came to some unsettling and unsavory conclusions.

Source 

There's a weird and disconcerting mix of progressive and regressive ideas in this new wild west of a political movement; using "gay" and "retard" as insults in this year, and talking about second-wave feminist gender concepts (Penis =  man! Vagina = woman! are not scientifically validated ideas anymore, even if they have held sway for a long time) as though they're based on reality is...a special kind of confusing, frankly.  The person mentioned below isn't actually the "leader" of Antifa (antifacism is a general belief and approach, not an organization; the Black Bloc is something different) but the points they're making shouldn't actually have to be made. And yet, here we are. (To clarify: this person's opinion is, as far as I'm concerned, correct, because it's a summary of historical facts.)

We can try to tweak the perspective on things and change the way someone is seen, but facts have this tendency to assert themselves. And when those facts take the form of thousands of dead bodies, politely covering them up or scootching them out of the way is a bit harder. In the case of leaders such as Winston Churchill, it's been easier to laud their successes and forget the death toll because they were victorious, but it doesn't erase his contributions to the Bengal Famine and his decision to test gas weapons on Kurdish villagers. 

Yet even when we debate the value and leadership of dictators, history tends to reassert itself. 

“History isn’t like that. History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always—eventually—manages to spring back into its old familiar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve.”  ― Terry Pratchett, Mort

 Nobody is good enough

Of course, just because someone agrees with history (!) and is willing to unflinchingly consider mass murderers as guilty of their crimes doesn't mean they'll avoid participating in the cannibalistic discussions of leftist politics. A particularly difficult issue has been criticism of the Youtuber Contrapoints, who has both been lauded for her very real effects in de-radicalizing extremists, and criticized for fumbling her way through understanding non-binary genders (and struggling to deal with the flood of online criticism afterwards.) But merely liking a figure who is problematic (or worse, Trash, if they have failed one time too many) can be grounds for a friendship breaking up or the sort of extremely tense, stressful discussion that keeps one awake for hours afterwards.

As I said on Facebook one night, "Whiny comment of the night: it would be easier to unite the left if the radicals weren't so dead-set on everyone just converting to their beliefs as much as possible.And Seems like you can learn about Marxism, cultural history, feminism, and all of that...but it's impossible to unlearn American cultural hegemonic approaches and seeing violence as the default/best option."  But to clarify, this isn't speculation without sourcing. I did a bit of an investigation into a few leftist pages, and it was really unnerving to see the number of pro-gun and "eat the rich" and "fetch the guillotines" sorts of remarks and posters. The thing is, we've all done that dance before, and it's going on in other countries at the moment. Riots and protests are excellent when they work, but sometimes, they don't - and we don't talk about what happens when they don't. 

The risk of small government

At the risk of sounding like a cranky old lady, smaller governments are still governments. People who think some military junta of kids with guns can replace all the architecture and organizational levels of "the state" are welcome to try working in a city planning office as an admin assistant some time. Having done that myself, I would welcome anyone who wants to just replace and rewrite all those land laws, which by the way exist for reasons, to maybe take a civil engineering course or two.

And if you DON'T want to replace all that architecture, just get rid of the bad stuff - congrats, that's actually just reformism, which is still a far cry from "just accepting things the way they are." 

As a fan and casual scholar of cults, I've had many opportunities to see examples of small, ideologically-driven communities turn rotten. Frankly, I wouldn't trust my own town to just secede and govern itself, even though I'm very pleased with our mayor's decisions. I know too much about white people and sociology and Christianity (as well as other religions and groups) to trust that small, self-governing, autonomous groups will be fine on their lonesome. We're kinda in a globalized society with many, many supply chains. If you don't like that, get working on a time machine.

Yet even if one were to travel back in time, we've always had international trade and whatnot, and isolationism has never worked especially well. Also it's how you get fascism in the first place, so...history says it's how you make the exact monster you're trying to fight. Worst of all, these defenses of fascists and murderers do nothing but divide us along sectarian points of conflict. 

Sometimes I worry the Revolution will just be online and never actually get offline

— 🏴🛡Justin🛡🏴 (@sharkle82) July 19, 2019

What do we do? 

Honestly, my approach lately has just been to ignore Leftbook and debate spaces and not engage. Trying to discuss theory and concepts has led to some arguments over the applications of violence that have, honestly, made me stop trusting and just lose certain friends altogether. One otherwise brave and locally committed person said, "violence is neither good nor bad. It's a tool." Although I agree that self-defense actions are not exactly violent, I just don't think we should glorify aggression, or be eager to shed blood. It tends to lead to bad results, and it's uncomfortably similar to the stance we're opposing. My take?

Personally, I don't trust anyone who thinks the problems will all be fixed if we just kill a few of the right people.

The people who sit around day-dreaming about 19th century revolutionaries aren't necessarily the ones helping to, say, actually fight the battles that need fighting here and now. It may seem ridiculous to say, "hey, watch out for this," and also, "but you can basically ignore it," but frankly, that approach has worked extremely well for me in real life. 

The key is this. What do you want to accomplish, in practical terms? Forget about "praxis" and "theory"; what are the concrete, fundamental changes you want to see, and the results you want in society and your community? Every change comes incrementally. Evolution is unavoidable. However, we have an existing system that we can use - and dare I say it, that we can apply our strength to if we're determined enough. 

How to change the world 

Writing actual letters to politicians in my city, province, and country, engaging in the community fight for preservation of a local Safe Consumption Site, signing petitions for various environmental protection causes, and applying pressure to politicians, as well as keeping an eye on actual local white supremacists, fascists, and extremists has done more and had a greater impact than anything in my decade or so of arguing with people on the internet. 

My only regret is that I didn't start using my skills in the real world much, much sooner. It turns out that all the people who insist that those in power won't listen to "us" are, unequivocally, wrong. And while I do have white and cis privilege to thank for some of my results, I would also argue that we on the left must not presume our own helplessness and confine ourselves to training arenas online.  Get out there. Talk to politicians. Stay up to date on the news and follow multiple sources, rather than reading 150-year-old essays. And above all, embrace the power of both individual actions and solidarity. 

I have more to say about this topic, but instead of creating another series, a few essays may be cropping up. Until then, however, I have real work to do, both in the political world and out of it. For one thing, books aren't going to finish themselves! 

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and Max the cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people’s manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

Find her all over the internet: * OG Blog * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Tumblr * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

[oneflewovermyhouse]

We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

As we celebrate the anniversary of these empowering words by drinking beer and blowing up shit, I find it a bit disheartening in today’s American climate. Are we celebrating as a nation with just a squirt of hypocrisy on our freshly-grilled hot dog or burger? Should we be ashamed at celebrating this equality as images on the news show us parents and children being held in cages? Did I mention that they are not in the same cages? I rarely get political, as this space of mine is usually reserved for parental anecdotes about how one of my kids accidentally shat in the bathtub or mocking their athletic prowess on the soccer fields, but as a parent, what is going on in our country cuts deeper than that.

I tell my kids incessantly that they can do anything they want to do or be anything they want to be…except professional soccer players; I am a realist. We are afforded the opportunity to tell our kids this, partly because of living in this country. That is the starting point. Our young country is just that, young. In fact, it is so young that our forefathers wrote down the house rules telling the citizens that they could do anything they wanted to do and be anything they wanted to be, because of the unalienable rights mentioned above. People have come to this country over the last 243 years for this same opportunity and have been welcomed with open arms – for the most part.

Let’s go back even further. In 1620, a bunch of folks got on some boats, squeezed as many on as they could, and headed to this land. They did this because they were being treated poorly in their native country, and they felt it was in their best interest to seek…what’s the word?...oh yeah, asylum, in a distant land and start a new life. They knew it would be difficult, but the end result made any trials and tribulations that they might encounter along the way worth it, if not for them, for their kids.

Since then, our country has been seen as a bastion of light for those seeking new opportunities based in freedom and equality. While this may be hard to see every day, it was written in the quick guide that came with the country in 1776, so it must be true. Hell, the French even gave us that big statue commemorating the alliance that was made between our two countries during - you guessed it – The American Revolution. The French were so impressed with our vision for this new country that they even put it on Lady Liberty’s tablet, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free….”

Now, more often than it probably should, religion gets intertwined in our politics, usually misguided at best and slanted to say the least. Our government is rooted in it. God is all over it. When we reject or imprison those that are trying to get to our country for a better life, how do we think God would handle this? Well, we don’t have to think about it too long, because there is a guide book for that too. Leviticus 27:19 states, “Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow.” Matthew 25 backs this up by quoting ol’ JC, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me…Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of my brethren you did it to me.” Ok, so now we have Old (Torah) and New Testament representing. If we address the Big 3, the Qur’an has a take too, “Was not the earth of God spacious enough for you to flee for refuge?” Are we good on the religious stance?

When our country was born on July 4, 1776, it was told that it could do anything it wanted to do and be anything it wanted to be, and yet I turn on the news and I see families and children that have sought out freedom in this land of opportunity trapped in cages, huddled. They are tired. They are poor. And, they still yearn to breathe free. Is this what we want to do? Is this who we want to be? I think of these parents that want nothing more than the best for their kids, and how this innate desire has led them to a prison separated from the same kids for whom they wish to provide. This is every parent’s desire; it’s just that we, as citizens of the United States, seem to have taken it for granted that we can actually accomplish this just a little easier than some of our neighbors.

As I stated, I do not normally get political with my little blurbs, and as I write this, I realize that I haven’t. I have merely written on what we as parents want for our kids and the difference between right and wrong. I mention no political parties, I side with no religious organization, however my point is made just the same. And, I have the guide books to prove it. If ALL “men” are created equal and the unalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are, in fact, self-evident truths, then why is there any debate as to whom is deserving of these truths? One of the most important things I want for my kids, what I want them to do, who I want them to be is simple. I want them to be good and kind, just like our forefathers wanted for us.

[fineillsignup]

Different anon here! Since you’ve been discussing age of consent, I thought I might chime in a bit: Rurouni Kenshin (have you read it?), written in the 1990s, is set in the early years of the Meiji Restoration era in Japan, and the lead hero and heroine are respectively 28 and 17 years old, iirc. This does not mean that the author or the readers are supporters of paedophilia; it’s just that the work reflects cultural and societal norms prevalent at the time it is based on (1)

which are otherwise unacceptable today, thanks to a healthier collective understanding of childhood and physiological and psychological maturity and a stricter stance on crimes against minors. Age of adulthood in Narutoverse is much harder to pin down but I think there’s some tentative proof for it being 18. Remember Jiraiya’s statement to Konan? I hesitate to take it seriously - because holy hell Jiraiya, you’re perving on a lieral child, STOP – but it’s there.

That said, at what point does adulthood begin in a society that raises trains 5-year-olds for combat and espionage and whatnot and sends them out to war??? It *clenches fist* angers me that Kishi acknowledges this issue and so many others but never properly redresses them, and shinobi nations continue to practice child labour and child militarization, which paints the new leaders in such a terrible light.

Point is a) the continued employment of children and teenagers for hazardous purposes needs to fucking stop b) regardless of that, age of adulthood should be at a reasonably acceptable value, and c) fuck Kishi’s world-building and storytelling, and bless all the fanfic authors who try to fix these in-world problems in their works.

As far as shipping Sakura goes, though, I kinda prefer slow-burn Sakura-centric fics that take the time to have her grow as a person and shinobi and develop her as a character (because Kishi’s writing of women is just….well. Nope.) and they almost always have her at 19-20+.

(Above is a copy/paste of further asks from the same anon.)

This ask actually dates back to the previous time the KakaSaku community on Tumblr dealt with a wave of hate, or maybe two times ago, IDK, it’s kinda like the ocean on here, and just as salty.

I recently stumbled across a blog where a Shika//Tema shipper was semi-politely (how polite can you be dealing with batshit) trying to deal with a person who was insisting that Shika fucking Tema was a “predatory” ship because of the age difference (three years! three years!!!).

It’s this worldview where a ship’s potential to be abusive means not only that every possible iteration in all universes of this pairing is automatically abusive, but also that anyone who supports these ships has cooties and must be shunned, lest they curse you with the evil eye by looking at your fanart with their tainted gazes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Narutoverse is a fairly strange world since it’s a uncoordinated, anachronistic mix of a society that’s literally only just transitioned from a totally lawless, clan-centric, world of constant and total war (to the point where children are expected to join the battelfield as soon as they can grip a kunai), to some extremely messed up villages in a mercenary relationship to literal feudal lords. That’s well within 100 years of the beginning of Naruto.

Moreover, it’s difficult to at all determine the Narutoverse’s norms for sexual behaviour and marriage because Kishimoto breaks into hives at the idea of having to write anything in that realm. We’re left trying to connect the dots between things like clear clan endogamy among certain clans like the Uchiha and the Hyuuga; the unexplained male/female ratio imbalance among shinobi; the really inexplicable low birthrate among shinobi; the lack of civilian characters outside of Teuchi and Ayame; the lack of shinobi characters with true civilian background; the fact that Sunagakure apparently is ruled by some form of hereditary monarchy; the explicitly pro-natal, pro-children “Will of Fire”; almost no one in Kakashi’s generation has any romantic/sexual entanglements; etc etc etc. Are marriages arranged? Some combination of arranged and not arranged? Do people have sex outside of marriage, is it frowned upon, is there a different standard for men vs women, is there a different standard for shinobi vs civilians? Do shinobi and civilians ever intermarry? Why are so few shinobi married at all? Why do so many married shinobi have only one or two children when the death rate is so high?

It’s a confusing mess. The Narutoverse is pretty clearly sexist and within living memory of a time that seemed to have been even more sexist, but it’s not anything like as sexist as real world feudal and clan-based military societies. At the same time, it’s not anything like modern Japan (or Europe or other developed societies) either. Regarding child labour and child militarization, you see slow progress from pre-Konoha (routine, ubiquitous fighting five-year-olds getting killed) to Naruto’s era (only the most exceptionally talented preteens like Itachi see active duty, and most people don’t start taking dangerous missions until they are teens). Yet as of the Naruto ending and into Boruto, progress in this area has completely stagnated.

All of this fighting, fighting, fighting and the constant spectre of death throws another wrinkle into the concept of an age gap relationship. In the real, modern world, if a sixteen year old and a thirty year old want to have sex, even granting that they live in an area where the age of consent is 16 (which is the entirety of my country of Canada), I would still urge them both to wait until the teenager has been living an independent adult life for a few years, and it would be difficult to conjecture a motivation for the thirty year old that wasn’t predatory. But if you’re living in a society where every day has a good chance of being the day you take a jutsu to the jugular, if the sixteen-year-old is already functioning as an adult within the society, if the sixteen year old and the thirty year old really have a meeting of minds, if another sixteen-year-old in that society has literally been ruling a nation for four years? Suddenly it gets a lot more complex?

Plus of course there’s the idea that no one should be allowed to write about fucked up relationships. We only allow pure and completely unproblematic ships in this saga of a demon-infused boy raising himself and fighting other tweenagers in arena death matches. [/sarcasm]

God that got long. Have a more succinct KakaSaku response to the haters gif as a present for scrolling this far.

[linktc5465]

First Post...What to say.

Sitting her Alone in an Apartment can get someone thinking.

Hi, My Name is as it is above. well, nickname actually. i’m based in tucson so things that are relatively random is to give a sort of idea.

I’m Not from Tucson Originally, i moved here from Oakley, California when i was 12 in 19...(Does Math...33-12=21 2019-21=1998) god i hope i got that math right. never was good at math. never was good at anything really... I was raised LDS and had a Mixed Religion household. Moms beliefs were whatever her husband/boyfriend believed unless they believed in the same faith as her, sister still a loyal member. my sisters are either Agnostic, Non-Denominational Christian and Pagan. me i am...I know there’s something out there. just unsure what. i have no Social or Religious beliefs. I believe though that if you need Religion to See yourself as a better person you’re not even worth the dust you stand on and if you would rather use politics to force people to believe what you do you are nothing more than a glorified bully.

i didn’t get out much. however when i was told someone was not to be associated with i was right there associating with them. and while the associated party was just as much trouble as i was told. so i focused on Games, Comics, Movies and i felt at peace. i started Writing Corny little stories, FanFictions, had a few eye-openers when it came down to my personal beliefs.

...Okay honestly i feel like... like i don’t belong here. i mean...I’m Straight. I’m not going to Lie, sometimes, Tumblr is seen as the “Gay Blog Spot“. I don’t find that many things offensive but “The Gay Blogspot?“ Really? Couldn’t think of a better Comparison like “Grab your Fandoms and Join us?“ Like “a Better Melting Pot“ where you won’t be booted out cause you won’t “Assimulate“ to decent Morals? Like Not being a Dick for instance?

No i don’t get offended easily. Probably shouldn’t more but Damn things do piss me off;

When i Was younger i was into All this stuff. I was into Pokemon, Comic books, Hell i knew about the Green Lantern and the Flash before they were on Justice League (Cartoon.) those were my Fandoms. i was picked on because of it.

Sometimes i envy everyone. i envy the Kids today were the Schools can or are taking a Stance against it. where parents are telling their kids “Stop taking shit“ and yet when i was younger it was Teacher: “are you being bullied?”

Me: “Yes.“

Teacher: “are you bullying them?“

Bully: “No.“

Teacher: “you’re both dismissed.“

and he would stay out trouble, Rinse. Repeat.

Dating wasn’t even that Easy for me. my first kiss came along and i was out of The Church and started to believe what i wanted to, Went to the same school she did, and ended up staying all because i didn’t want to go back to school with my sister and deal with the system they had of...basically, Intellects are Separated amoungst each other. (and the school is seen as one of the best charter schools here. huh, go fig.). but i’d get bounced around by the same girl throughout the years, Lied to, played or one who even decided to treat me like i was just something she can have. so my emotions are all freaked out because of that. but... i dunno. the more i felt the deeper i went into my depression and my own hobbies. even now, at 33 with my girlfriend i find myself only saying how i feel when i’m not really wanting to game or even write. yet i can find myself talking to some, Random Stranger who asks me “How are you doing?“. i don’t think it’s hatred, but a lack of Trust.

I trusted My mother, she tried getting me on social security and when i was denied, she lost interest. started looking towards my sisters more and more. leaving me in the dust. Dad treats me how Red Foreman treats eric. i’m not a father but i’m pretty sure that’s not how you treat your kids regardless on WHAT side you’re on. The Last Woman i truly loved ended up Cheating and leaving, only to return MARRIED and knowing i shouldn’t said “what the hell.“. My Girlfriends Mother treated me like her son only to force her to get the law involved into some BS charge. Remember what i said about Depression and me diving Deeper into my hobbies or Fandoms? Yeah. always question why i’m alone yet question why i push people away. why i prefer being alone and yet i have a Girlfriend.

a part of me wonders...if i wasn’t treated this way, if we got the better help needed like we had today would i still be like this? Answer would probably be Yes.

I Don’t like thinking about these things though. Things are different Now. AS a Result my Mom (You remember her, the Woman who Believes whatever her Relationship believes) is someone i no longer talk to. My girlfriend of (Pretty much) 6 years ended up leaving again. i am Working now so i’m no longer relying on wishing i had SSI. I have a place of my own that i hardly ever visit. and i drink more coffee than i should.

but am i Better? No. i mean, My girlfriend got some CBD edibles a while back nd i tried one and thought they would help.

NOPE!

fact they didn’t kick in at all. but they probably didn’t effect me. probably because there’s more Coffee in my system to even make one Leroy Jethro Gibbs go “you’ve had enough.“

hmph...NCIS. you know i watch shows like THAT mainly cause i find them entertaining? how is it i’m not political, and yet, i watch shows like the simpsons, where it got SO political, everytime a new headline comes up, the Simpsons are covering it the Season. Guess its because I find shows like NCIS entertaining. I prefer listening to Old Style Country and Rock. i have my coffee black and believe that a Persons Religious beliefs shouldn’t be forced on others. and that’s pretty much it...Really? Guess i’m just a Little old fashioned. and tired, and a little Ornry. using terms that no one else uses.

god i feel old...pretty much am. 33 years old. 33. 33 years old and a woman who is in her 50′s looks hotter than most of the women either 5 years younger than me or 10 years older than me. you millenials, remember when we were younger and our grandparents would come down Grandma made cookies and dinner despite your parents wishes and your grandpa would help your dad on the car to get away from your mom and Grandma because they started fighting? only to find out there was nothing really wrong with the car to begin with. yeah. now it’s like some guy could cheat on his girlfriend with her grandma, or even her grandpa. Damn seniors look good these days and yet i look in the mirror and i look ugly as all get out :/

And there we go...I’ve always felt Looks don’t really matter. you could be the most handsome or beautiful woman in your group and still be ugly on the inside. or the least bit attractive and still be gentle. or in reverse.

i dunno...

Depression, Social Anxiety, Self-Doubt and a lack of trust for everyone with a hint of personal beliefs make the cluster fuck that is...Me.

people tell me “Show some respect.“ Dude, Respect is Earned. Doesn’t matter of your race, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion or political beliefs we all earn respect the same way and we keep the respect. yeah there’s the given respect but treating people like crap won’t make you gain there respect nor will it earn you theres.

This is the crap i believe :/ and i gotta wonder sometimes if it’s even WORTH believing.

Now, i’m looking around and it’s...i dunno.

Feminsm feels more like attacking men just because their men while the real feminist wanna go “Nuh-uh.“

Bullying is now being dealt with Accordingly

Pokemon go is being liked by everyone.

being a part of a Fandom is now cool but there’s still the Toxic fans who want to ruin it for everyone.

Body positivity is either picking up or Dying out.

Which brings me to This...Why is it that to some women are aren’t attractive by some peoples point of views or societies view looks at others like they’re the uglist thing on the planet. and we Keep Bringing people down. I was heading back to my girlfriends from Work about 3 weeks ago or so, i was walking behind this woman who, okay was attractive by someones standpoints and i was on the phone with my girlfriend, i told her (my girlfriend) “Love you“ and waited for her response where i than proceded to hang up. this woman, looks behind her, to me, and starts walking faster to where she acts as though I’m being creepy and i was gonna do something to her.

1.) she wasn’t my type and

2.) if i were there were cops up at the cross sections (Night time)

and 3. i’m too damn tired to do a damn thing. yet if i thought she was creepy it’d be an entirely different thing.

Why is it we want to be kinder to everyone and yet there are still people who have to Knock a random stranger, who was ONE THE PHONE with his girlfriend and wanted to get home safe and secure, Down.

Can i Just Ask, simple and Calmly What have we Become? has many peoples Charges affected us as people to where we can’t even hold doors open to be nice, ESPECIALLY in Tucson where it’s sweating in places you didn’t even know you had sweat glands in, and be seen as anti woman all because you think to yourself “hey, this person could use help and i don’t want them to drop the presents, let the baloons go flying and Maybe Drop the Cake“. or in the case of that eone going up behind her while they were on the phone and actually say “I love you” to the person they chose to spend the rest of their life with?

Okay, Yeah, i get it. we gotta be vigilant now. maybe more than ever but REALLY?

i feel like i was born in the wrong year. feel like i grew up in the wrong time. both sides really. like i could have gotten the help i needed when i was younger but listen to the old music.

I don’t really know what to feel :/ so if you don’t mind...i’m gonna go back to playing Minecraft.

Thanks for Reading... it means a lot.

[flauntpage]

Debunking Washington’s Spin Against Philly and Bryce Harper

Meet Jonathan V. Last, a writer for the conservative commentary website The Bulwark, who, like many of us, seems to enjoy sharing his sports opinions online.

Among those opinions is a recent condemnation of the fresh marriage between Bryce Harper and the city of Philadelphia. As you may expect, it’s filled with lazy, tired clichés about the city, along with plenty of jabs at Major League Baseball’s newly highest-paid player. While the stance of one man alone isn’t particularly noteworthy, many of Last’s criticisms seem to be emblematic of the overall view on Harper and the Phillies emanating from Washington in recent days, so I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to parse this ill-conceived rant.

Come for the slander, stay for the Twitter avatar that looks like it was created after someone called the cops to report a gas station robbery by an old-timer who had skipped out on the war. Come with me and let us marvel together at the vapid slander from a former lover scorned as he works through the seven steps of sports jealousy.

Step 1: Angry Overreaction Because The Sports Thing Happened You Didn’t Want To Happen

1) Bryce Harper to Philadelphia is the worst match of an athlete to a city as I have ever seen in professional sports.

— Jonathan V. Last (@JVLast) February 28, 2019

The worst match. Ever. Not possibly problematic, or potentially combustible. The worst. Period.

Step 2: Belittle and Marginalize the Player’s Talents

2) Harper is a touchy guy who’s always fussing with his hair, sometimes doesn’t hustle, and is going to be the most over-compensated player in the history of baseball.

— Jonathan V. Last (@JVLast) February 28, 2019

Harper has a career .900 OPS. He had 68 extra-base hits and 100 RBI in a down 2018 season.

As for the touchy part, here’s a cool story:

Bryce Harper played at The College of Southern Nevada during what should have been his junior year of high school. He struck out seven times over his first two scrimmages and immediately wondered if the jump was too much, too soon. He got some reassurance after that second scrimmage, made an adjustment, and proceeded to mash two doubles, a triple, and a homer, while driving in seven runs during his third scrimmage. Touchy guys don’t make that jump, and touchy guys wilt when adversity strikes. Touchy guys don’t go on to shatter a prominent JUCO school’s home run record by 19 bombs while winning the conference’s player of the year, again, as a 17-year-old. Philly is about production and Harper produces. I’m sure he can withstand a boo or two from the fans that just are currently making his jersey a historic best-seller. By the way, his hair is beautiful.

Step 3: Misleadingly Prop Up Your Apathetic Sports Town

3) He is habituated to playing in a town where the fanbase is a bunch of tame to the point of worship and eager to alibi every athlete/coach, no matter what. And always–ALWAYS–seeing the glass as one-eighth full, rather than nearly empty.

— Jonathan V. Last (@JVLast) February 28, 2019

Yeah, Redskins fans seem very positive these days. That explains why attendance at FedEx Field was down a league-worst 19% this season, despite being in playoff contention for the better part of three months. As for Nats, a stacked roster littered with stars and a nearly $190 million payroll commitment resulted in Major League Baseball’s 12th-best attendance last season.

Step 4: Take Unsubstantiated Shot at Rival City, Make False Claim

4) Philly is . . . not. They will grow to resent him. And he will 100% resent them. There’s almost no way this marriage can turn out well. I don’t know which party thought this was a good idea, but he should have gone to NY or LA, where guys like him belong.

— Jonathan V. Last (@JVLast) February 28, 2019

No plan is full-proof. If Harper is brutal and the Phillies fizzle over the next decade-plus, yeah, things could go south. Still, it’s hard to see that scenario playing out. Ask yourself which of the following is the more likely scenario:

A. Bryce Harper, a good baseball player, plays well while actively recruiting talent to a team willing to spend. The team wins lots of games, and, possibly, a World Series.

B. Bryce Harper, a good baseball player, plays poorly. The team breaks its promise to Harper about being all in, and, in turn, the Phillies are a perennial loser and the fans direct their collective ire at Harper.

That’s easy. Also, New York? He doesn’t mix with Philly, but is a mesh with New York? Stop it.

Step 5: Completely Lose Touch With Reality

5) Philly is a town for Brian Dawkins and Charles Barkley; John Kruk and Chase Utley and Nick Foles. You know who would have fit in perfectly come 2021? MIKE TROUT.

— Jonathan V. Last (@JVLast) February 28, 2019

You know, he’s absolutely right. Mike Trout will fit perfectly here in 2021. Completely agree. A simple glance at the math show that union remains very much a possibility.

Step 6: Tell (The First) Half Of The Story

6) Instead, Philly is getting saddled with the biggest contract in the history of baseball. A deal that will keep paying Harper until he’s *39*! For a guy who hit .249 last year with a WAR of 1.3.

Even his OPS was only 16th in the league.

— Jonathan V. Last (@JVLast) February 28, 2019

Reminder here that Harper is a six-time All-Star. He holds a career .938 OPS over 50 career games at Citizens Bank Park. As for last season, it’s worth noting he hit .300 with a .972 OPS. I’m not too worried about it.

Step 7: Finish Strong and Play the Classics

7) When I told Flash this was happening he looked me dead in the eye and said two words: “D cells.”

— Jonathan V. Last (@JVLast) February 28, 2019

When it doubt, play the classics, but fun fact here:

Over the last 19 seasons, roughly 50 million people have attended Major League Baseball games in this city without throwing a battery. Then again, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised a person with a political background out of D.C. spun a story to fit their own narrative. Shocking, really.

The post Debunking Washington’s Spin Against Philly and Bryce Harper appeared first on Crossing Broad.

Debunking Washington’s Spin Against Philly and Bryce Harper published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[killingthebuddha]

“If you focus too much on only a personal relationship being the core tenet of your faith, then it means that you’re more easily able to marginalize topics like human suffering, which in some cases is spurred by climate change. We are embodied creatures in this planet, so let’s live like we are,” said Sean Lyon. Credit: Meera Subramanian

WHEATON, Illinois — Diego Hernandez wasn’t thinking much about climate change until last summer, when he was traveling with his family along the Gulf Coast in his home state of Texas, where his ancestors—cowboys and politicians, he said—reach back to the 1600s. His mother suggested they take the “scenic route” for that summer drive, Diego said, his fingers making air-quotes because there was nothing “scenic” about it. All he saw were oil refineries.

“At that moment,” said 19-year-old Diego, who considers himself a libertarian, “the switch kind of flipped for me.” Why are we putting refineries in this beautiful place? he thought. The impacts from Hurricane Harvey, which had hit Houston the previous August and had affected some of Diego’s relatives, were also still lingering in his mind.

“I used to be like, oh, there’s oil, go start drilling, you know, because of course it’s all about the money, right?” he said, his voice tinged with sarcasm. But after that family outing, he began to ask questions—”What is it doing to our environment? How is it going to affect us in the next 10 to 50 years?”—and since then he’s had climate change on his mind.

Diego is a clean-shaven, lifelong Christian wearing a cyan blue button-down and polished cowboy boots, and a sophomore at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, which has been called the Harvard of Christian schools. The entrance sign, framed by a glowing bed of zinnias in full bloom, pronounces the school’s motto: “For Christ and His Kingdom.” But while Diego has all the credentials of a true political conservative—president of Wheaton’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter, a cabinet member of the College Republicans—he also finds himself genuinely baffled by the right’s stance against acting on climate change.

While many evangelicals are preoccupied with the long-term state of human souls and the protection of the unborn, Diego and the other students I met at Wheaton are also considering other eternal implications and a broader definition of pro-life. They are concerned about the lifespan of climate pollutants that will last in the atmosphere for thousands of years, and about the lives of the poor and weak who are being disproportionately harmed by the effects of those greenhouse gases. While Diego was just shy of eligible voting age in the 2016 presidential election, he’s old enough to vote now. He and other young evangelicals thought hard this year about the politicians on offer, the issues they stand for, and who deserved their votes.

  What’s an Evangelical to Do?

Evangelical Protestants—one in four American adults—are a political powerhouse. They are the single largest religious group in the nation, and they are nearly twice as likely to be Republican as Democrat. And while Baby Boomers are currently the strongest political voting bloc, that’s only because the older you are, the more likely you are to vote.

The current crop of younger people—from Gen X to Millennials to the newly minted adults I met at Wheaton—are poised to dominate the eligible-voter body politic. They would definitively tip the voting scales—should they become engaged. There are signs they might be doing just that. From the Parkland school shooting victims to Millennial political candidates, the youth of America are speaking up.  And, significantly, they accept the scientific consensus on climate change at a much higher rate than their elders.

This is true even of young evangelicals, as the existence of the Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (YECA) attests.  YECA is a ministry of the Evangelical Environmental Network that aims to mobilize students, influence religious leaders and pressure lawmakers into passing legislation to address climate change. I met Diego at a climate change discussion event on campus that was organized by Chelsey Geisz, a Wheaton junior and a YECA climate leadership fellow.

From Colorado Springs, Colorado, Chelsey, 20, always loved nature, she told me as we sat together in a gazebo in Adams Park, near campus. She’d taken a few classes on sustainability at Wheaton, and last year spent time working at Eighth Day Farm in Holland, Michigan, where Christian volunteers have turned the dirt once trapped below strip mall pavement into garden plots to grow vegetables for the hungry. These experiences meant she was primed when she heard about YECA.

Though non-partisan, YECA is targeting conservatives, since that’s where the facts of climate change have failed to lead to action. According to the organization, they’ve engaged more than 10,000 young evangelicals so far. Along with Chelsey, there are another half-dozen fellows at other schools across the country, helping to build the grassroots movement. The fellowship includes a summer training session that covers the science of climate change, as well as the socio-cultural and religious aspects of the issue. As a YECA fellow, Chelsey organizes campus events such as the session I attended in September and she serves as Wheaton’s executive vice president of campus sustainability, a new position that YECA helped develop.

It can be tough to be an evangelical who cares about climate change, Chelsey said, “because the environmental activists don’t trust you and the evangelicals hate you.” Or they could hate you; she was quick to point out that the evangelicals she knows personally are generally tolerant of her views. “I’m not encountering anyone at Wheaton, even among my most conservative friends, who disagree with climate change,” she told me. She’s having some trouble with her father, though, who’s troubled by her YECA work. He holds a Harvard law degree, works at a company that invests in resource-rich properties, and associates Chelsey’s transformation into a “climate activist” with a liberal agenda he finds suspect. “For a man who has such well-reasoned opinions, I just feel like there’s so much emotion for him that it’s not about the science at all,” she said.

As for liberals themselves, Chelsey said, some of them do treat evangelicals like her with some suspicion. After all, aren’t evangelicals the ones who elected anti-environment Trump?

“I think there’s some misunderstanding about what our faith compels us to do,” she said as the sun set behind her, creating a halo around the edges of her auburn hair.

  Praising Natural Systems

Sean Lyon is a recent Wheaton graduate who was also a YECA fellow while he was in school. He feels that he was born to love the natural world; his first word as an infant was “bird,” after all, and flying creatures remain a passion he can’t quite explain. While in school, he created his own interdisciplinary major of biology and business and spent significant time in Tanzania working with ECHO East Africa, a faith-based sustainable agriculture organization. He still lives in the town of Wheaton, easy commuting distance to Chicago, where he’s volunteering at the Field Museum of Natural History.

Sean, 23, grew up in upstate New York, among “classic North American white evangelicals,” where climate was not a concern and politics were conservative. But his love of the natural world shifted his perspective. He saw heaven on earth, and something worth saving, in every wingbeat he witnessed.

“Every ecosystem carries His creativity in it,” Sean said, “and every species is a mark of His design.” He had a thick brass bangle encircling his wrist, and blue eyes behind clear Lucite-rimmed glasses. Sean drew an analogy to his sister and grandparents, who are all artists. “So how would I treat the art that they created? If I love them, then I’m going to treat their art well. I’m not going to deface it. I’m not going to ignore it. I’m going to really honor it. And so when I see my God as having created everything that I’m interacting with, I want to honor it because that’s a way that I can show my love for this Creator.”

But God didn’t just create singular works, Sean said; he created systems, natural systems that every living being relies on. He hoped that all Christians—no, he corrected himself, all faiths—would unite to protect those systems.

“That’s my current prayer.”

  ‘Structural Sin’

Climate science isn’t questioned at Wheaton College the way it often is in the wider evangelical community. The school is a brick-and-mortar rebuttal to the myth that science and religion must be at odds with each other. When Wheaton students step into their-state-of-the-art science building, for instance, they are greeted with signs stating that a “sound Biblical theology gives us a proper basis for scientific inquiry,” and a display featuring locally excavated Perry the Mastodon, which carbon dating shows to be more than 13,000 years old.

The school is not alone in intertwining commitments to love God and protect the earth, often referred to as “creation care.” The Cape Town Commitment, a global agreement between evangelical leaders from nearly 200 countries, includes acknowledgement of climate change and how it will hurt the world’s poor (and it is required reading for Wheaton freshmen). Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University and an evangelical, has been an outspoken advocate for climate action. And in addition to YECA, there are numerous groups active in this arena, including the Evangelical Climate Initiative, Climate Caretakers, Care of Creation and A Rocha.

In late 2015, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE)—the biggest umbrella group of evangelicals in the country, representing 43 million Americans—issued a statement accepting climate change, acknowledging the human contribution to it and encouraging action. YECA’s advocacy helped bring that statement, called “Loving the Least of These,” into being. In it, NAE argues that Christians should be compelled to care about climate change as a matter of social justice, equating those without the resources to adapt to failed farming or dry wells or rising seas as the modern-day equivalents of the widows and orphans of Jesus’s day.

When Chelsey reads the Bible, she hears this gospel of social justice, too.

“Instead of talking about climate change,” she said of her work as a YECA fellow, “I talk about environmental justice. There’s definitely a guilty complex, especially among the white evangelical community, about how complicit we’ve been, and apathetic. People really want to redeem that.”

Chelsey’s framing reveals that she is steeped in a liberal arts ethos friendly to intersectionality, the idea that humanity’s ills, which disproportionately affect the most vulnerable, cannot be conquered until root causes are addressed. This perspective is shaping academic dialogue in both secular and faith-based schools.

But does fighting climate change detract from evangelism? Here there’s a rift within the evangelical community. Should the emphasis be on saving souls or saving God’s creation? And are the two really at odds?

“That’s the Billy Graham evangelicalism,” Chelsey said of the personal salvation perspective, referencing Wheaton’s most famous alumnus. “It’s your faith between you and Jesus.” But the problem with that approach, she said, is that it doesn’t force Christians to deal with larger systems of injustice. “The evangelical community is really limited when it comes to talking about systemic and structural sin rather than individual sin. Most of us have never heard about systemic racism and climate change in church,” she said. Even as evangelical organizations embrace the need for action, the message isn’t coming across from the pulpit. “These things never come up because they’re apparently not gospel issues,” Chelsey said, “But at Wheaton, we think they are.”

For Sean, there’s not one speck of conflict between his love of God and the gospel and his fierce desire to see action on climate change. They’re complementary, he said.

“If you focus too much on only a personal relationship being the core tenet of your faith, then it means that you’re more easily able to marginalize topics like human suffering, which in some cases is spurred by climate change,” he said. “We are embodied creatures in this planet, so let’s live like we are.”

Could his concern for the climate be a threat to his faith? I asked him.

“Actually, I see more of a threat in the idea that we can divorce our lives on this earth and the lives of other people and the lives of other creatures from our life of faith,” Sean said. Better to revel in God’s love. “How much deeper and how much more beautiful is a way of loving Him that involves my whole being and the whole world around me rather than just simply the status of my soul?”

  When Pro-Life Means Entire Lives

Abortion was the entry point into American politics for many evangelicals, after the Supreme Court affirmed abortion rights in Roe v. Wade in 1973. Before that, evangelicals were generally unconcerned about abortion rights, which had the uncontroversial support of Republicans; they were also generally disengaged from voting. Today, the single-issue anti-abortion preoccupation of many evangelicals, now considered a given by many political leaders, confounds some of the young evangelicals I met at Wheaton.

“If we say we’re pro-life, we have to care for people who are experiencing incredible environmental degradation and so directly affected by climate change,” Chelsey said. “If we’re pro-life, that’s a bigger issue to me than abortion.”

Sean agreed. “So many people are now saying, okay, if you’re going to be pro-life you have to be pro all-of-life, lifelong pro-life, which has primarily come up in the immigration debate. If you’re pro-life, how can you be separating children from their parents?”

Diego sees it a little differently. “Abortion is definitely a deal-breaker for me,” he said, even though he said he’s not generally a one-issue voter. He echoed Sean and Chelsey to some degree, agreeing that “being pro-life doesn’t just mean being pro-life to the baby at birth. It also means the life of the mother and the life of the baby after birth.” But when he watched the 2016 presidential debates, he found himself agreeing with some of Hillary Clinton’s points … until he was appalled by what he saw as her “gung-ho” support of abortion rights. He decided he could just not get behind someone with those views.

Young evangelicals wrestle with these difficult choices in the voting booth, confronted with either/or candidates, unsure who will best represent their hopes for life on earth, all life, all of God’s creation. Right now, anti-abortion rights Christians typically have only one party to get behind. And it’s that party, represented in the White House, that is aggressively rolling back climate protections, from pulling out of the Paris climate accord to promoting coal.

  Future Powerhouse at the Polls?

Diego, Chelsey and Sean are the future. This younger generation has grown up with the realities of climate change and political polarization since they were swinging on monkey bars, and they aren’t hesitating to break rank with evangelical Baby Boomers on the issue. They remain faithful and politically conservative for the most part, but they are more concerned about a climate that they will have to live with much longer than those boomers heading into retirement. The shift aligns with a recent Pew poll that found that among Republicans, young adults were far less likely than their elders to support reliance on fossil fuels.

“Every one of the people who I’ve talked to who’s come to my events and engaged in climate issues from a Christian perspective said, ‘My parents don’t agree with me,'” Sean told me.

But even with this clear shift toward accepting climate science among young Americans, the quandary for young evangelicals in the voting booth remains.

Sean, who said he couldn’t in good conscience vote for either party, opted for Jill Stein in 2016.

Chelsey, as a busy freshman in 2016, followed in her father’s footsteps and voted for Trump.  Her father had been singularly focused on getting a Republican on the Supreme Court. Now, she hangs her head about the decision.

Diego, about to vote in his first election, grew up in a struggling, hard-working family in San Antonio. His father showed him how to mow lawns when he was six, he said.  His mother would pick up her raggedy old Bible and tell Diego, “This is what you should base all of your beliefs and all your values on. It shouldn’t be what you hear from someone on TV or C-SPAN or NPR.”

Surveys show that the way people view climate change is determined more by political affiliation, along with race and ethnicity, than by religious affiliation. So while 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, it’s important to remember that about a quarter of the country’s evangelicals are not white, and it is among minority groups that the evangelical community is growing. And on the issue of climate change, Diego’s Latino background makes him part of the American demographic that is most concerned about climate change. He wonders whether his mother deliberately pushed for that “scenic route” to wake him up a little.

What are the choices for these faithful young? With church membership in decline and the Republican party in flux, how vocal these young people are could shape the future of the climate debate. If the Christian right wants to hold onto the next generation, getting right with the planet might prove as important as getting right with God.

Many concerned about the environment rally for more evangelicals to understand climate change and embrace leadership positions on the issue. “It would be a milestone if you managed to take influential evangelists—preachers—to adopt the idea of global warming, and to preach it,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman told the host of Hidden Brain, an NPR science show. “That would change things. It’s not going to happen by presenting more evidence, that is clear.”

And in the book The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, renowned biologist E.O. Wilson wrote a long letter with the salutation, “Dear Pastor.” It is an urgent, heartfelt plea. “We need your help. The Creation—living Nature—is in deep trouble. Scientists estimate that … half the species of plants and animals on Earth could be either gone or at least fated for early extinction by the end of the century. A full quarter will drop to this level during the next half century as a result of climate change alone.”

These new sermons and stories are unlikely to come from older pastors and preachers, most of whom have become representatives of the Republican Party platform that doesn’t want to even acknowledge that climate change is an issue to discuss, let alone embark on the massive undertaking necessary to begin to solve it. But for the young, who will live with the catastrophic predictions that worsen with each new iteration of the UN climate report, there are new stories emerging. They are conversion stories of a new sort, springing from dirt once buried under Midwestern parking lots and held aloft on the wings of Sean’s beloved birds. Preachers and politicians seeking to keep the young religious right in their midst may need to leap past the quagmire of a questionable climate change debate and get right to the root of finding solutions for the generations that will be living into the long tomorrow of a warming planet.

  This story was originally published on InsideClimate News. 

[eddiejpoplar]

Dreams Delivered: 2018 Rolls-Royce Phantom First Drive

It’s chilly and gray, and reasonably hard rain is coming down, casting a pall over the otherwise lush, rugged beauty of this German-flavored slice of Switzerland. A terrible day to drive, a great day to be driven.

I’m in the backseat of the all-new 2018 Rolls-Royce Phantom, and I roll down the double-glazed acoustic glass window to get a quick blast of fresh Swiss air. A cacophony of wind and water rudely intrudes into the cabin. Enough of that.

The metal button is cold to the touch when I press up, and as the window hits the seal, it’s as if a set of noise canceling headphones has suctioned over the car. Time to recline the seat, let my head hit the pillow, and enjoy the magic carpet ride.

There are few cars in which the backseat experience is just as important, if not more so, as what happens from behind the wheel. For some 92 years, longer than any other nameplate, the Phantom has transported rock stars and starlets, monarchs and maharajas, captains of industry and hip-hop kingpins. The car has in many ways served as the brand’s foundation, a vehicle that helped propel Rolls-Royce beyond a mere manufacturer of fine automobiles and into a global luxury icon. As the Phantom enters its eighth generation, the stakes have never been higher to deliver an ever richer, more immersive package, with cutting-edge, 21st century tech and even more ways to make it your way—the bespoke way. And it should drive better, too.

The new Phantom has been five years in the making, and as Rolls-Royce officials acknowledge, it really needed to take a two-generation leap, given that the model it replaces is 14 years old—which may as well be 80 in car years. Everything starts with its all-new aluminum intensive endoskeleton the marque calls the “Architecture of Luxury,” a versatile, lighter platform that will underpin all future Rolls-Royces. It makes the car some 30-percent more rigid than the previous Phantom, and additional cast aluminum structures reinforce areas wherever heavy loads are attached to the chassis.

Building on all that luxurious architecture is a new double-wishbone front and five-link rear suspension, supported by active stabilizer bars front and rear and a traditional anti-roll bar in front. Four wheel steering appears for the first time, which increases the car’s overall maneuverability and high-speed stability, critical for such a long (just south of 19 feet for the short-wheelbase model) and heavy (almost three-ton) car.

According to engineering director Philip Koehn, the Phantom’s adaptive, self-leveling air-suspension setup—the magic in the car’s vaunted Magic Carpet Ride—has undergone significant changes as well.

“The springs are bigger, and they ride on more air than ever before,” he says. The system in part uses a stereo camera sensor in the windscreen to monitor and proactively react to road conditions up to 62 mph. There are no settings to dial in, just endless calculations made with the goal of keeping the ride pleasant and cosseting in virtually any situation. Koehn and his team also had a mandate from Rolls CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös: “He said, just make sure it’s the most silent motorcar in the world, full stop.”

Engineers crammed sound-deadening foam and insulation into virtually every nook, cranny, and crevice, some 360 pounds of it in all. Those double glazed windows feature an additional plastic layer wedged between, the floor pan and bulkhead alloys are thicker than before—even the Continental tires are lined with a layer of foam. In fact, Koehn said Rolls tested some 180 sets of tires before hitting on the right setup. Interestingly, no active noise-canceling tech is employed because research showed it could make some occupants car sick.

As you can probably guess, Koehn and team say they exceeded their goal of creating the world’s quietest cabin. From my perch behind the front seat as we wind our way through the Swiss countryside, the 6.75-liter twin-turbo V-12 humming along as it delivers effortless power, I have zero reason to disagree with that assessment. I also have zero reason to quibble with the notion that the new Phantom is also the world’s most luxurious production car.

Sitting in back with product manager Christian Wettach, he points out heavily lacquered, contrasting wood veneers that dominate the center stack. The starlight headliner now has more than 1,110 lights in the short wheelbase model (you can even get a shooting star option if you like) and extends further front to back. Everything that’s shiny is real metal.

Wettach presses a button in the armrest’s center controller, and out pops a table and rear monitor from which you control a host of vehicle features, watch TV, or jam to Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express,” which seems appropriate given the location and vehicle. Want a footrest? Press a button behind the door and up it pops from the floor. Champagne? Open up the coolbox in between the rear seats and pour it into the crystal glasses.

There are of course even higher spec options available, including a fixed center console with a drinks cabinet, and the more comfortable extended sleeper seats. And then there’s the Gallery. Think of the glass case extending the width of the dash from the right of the instrument panel as a mini art installation. “In the future we can offer our customers this amazing space to personalize their vehicle like no other vehicle on earth,” says design director Giles Taylor. Conceivably you could have a famous artist do a piece in the Gallery and immediately your car is worth a whole lot more.

Taylor also had plenty to say about the Phantom’s design to our own Robert Cumberford in our preview story. He’s particularly proud of the grille that’s now integrated into the front fascia for the first time ever, an on-its-haunches stance he likens to a boat cutting gracefully through the water, and two unique character lines in profile. There’s also a more purposeful chrome rear element that helps frame the rear end, and interestingly, head- and taillamps that are on the smaller side and do not dominate the proceedings. There’s a clear, purposeful lineage between the new Phantom and the previous model.

Now it’s my turn to feel what it’s like to be a chauffeur. Actually, we’ve been told that as many as half of Phantom owners in the U.S. actually drive their cars. I can safely assure those moneyed few that they are going to enjoy it even more than before.

There’s no getting around it, this car is big (especially the long wheelbase version), but it’s not a wallowing beast. The hardware upgrades have turned the Phantom into, dare we say, a decent car to drive. The steering wheel is on the bulky side, so it takes some getting used to. Summon its power reserves and the fully revamped twin-turbo V-12 with 563 horsepower and 664 lb-ft that comes on full at 1,700 rpm emits a satisfying, muted roar and hustles the car from 0-60 mph in around 5 ticks for the short wheelbase model. Ample power is available from virtually any speed, and its ZF-sourced eight-speed automatic is absolutely money in any situation.

The steering predictably feels more than a little boosted, but it’s hardly vague and turn-in is relatively direct. When hustling the brawny lad, its brakes don’t bite but rather politely and progressively bring things to a halt. But I never felt any need to drive like a maniac. Maybe it was because I was chauffeuring people, but this car cries out to be driven with civility and class. And so you do.

This new Phantom is of course also loaded with all manner of standard safety warning systems, connectivity options, and convenience features, including a standard head-up display, Wi-Fi, around view monitors, etc., etc.

Müller-Ötvös, who is constantly mind-melding with the Rolls-Royce customer base, knew his team had to get this car right. “We’re selling dreams, building dreams,” he says. “We’ve delivered a true Phantom. We haven’t messed it up.” No, you haven’t. Let’s pull the champagne out of the fridge and toast to that.

2018 Rolls-Royce Phantom Specifications

ON SALE January 2018 PRICE $450,000 (base, short wheelbase); $530,000 (base, long wheelbase) ENGINE 6.75L twin-turbo DOHC 48-valve V-12/563 hp @ 5,000 rpm, 664 lb-ft @ 1,700 rpm TRANSMISSION 8-speed automatic LAYOUT 4-door, 4-5 passenger, front-engine, RWD sedan EPA MILEAGE N/A L x W x H 227.2 x 79.4 x 64.8 in WHEELBASE 140 in WEIGHT 5,862 lb 0-60 MPH 5.1 sec (est) TOP SPEED 155 mph

IFTTT

[jesusvasser]

Dreams Delivered: 2018 Rolls-Royce Phantom First Drive

It’s chilly and gray, and reasonably hard rain is coming down, casting a pall over the otherwise lush, rugged beauty of this German-flavored slice of Switzerland. A terrible day to drive, a great day to be driven.

I’m in the backseat of the all-new 2018 Rolls-Royce Phantom, and I roll down the double-glazed acoustic glass window to get a quick blast of fresh Swiss air. A cacophony of wind and water rudely intrudes into the cabin. Enough of that.

The metal button is cold to the touch when I press up, and as the window hits the seal, it’s as if a set of noise canceling headphones has suctioned over the car. Time to recline the seat, let my head hit the pillow, and enjoy the magic carpet ride.

There are few cars in which the backseat experience is just as important, if not more so, as what happens from behind the wheel. For some 92 years, longer than any other nameplate, the Phantom has transported rock stars and starlets, monarchs and maharajas, captains of industry and hip-hop kingpins. The car has in many ways served as the brand’s foundation, a vehicle that helped propel Rolls-Royce beyond a mere manufacturer of fine automobiles and into a global luxury icon. As the Phantom enters its eighth generation, the stakes have never been higher to deliver an ever richer, more immersive package, with cutting-edge, 21st century tech and even more ways to make it your way—the bespoke way. And it should drive better, too.

The new Phantom has been five years in the making, and as Rolls-Royce officials acknowledge, it really needed to take a two-generation leap, given that the model it replaces is 14 years old—which may as well be 80 in car years. Everything starts with its all-new aluminum intensive endoskeleton the marque calls the “Architecture of Luxury,” a versatile, lighter platform that will underpin all future Rolls-Royces. It makes the car some 30-percent more rigid than the previous Phantom, and additional cast aluminum structures reinforce areas wherever heavy loads are attached to the chassis.

Building on all that luxurious architecture is a new double-wishbone front and five-link rear suspension, supported by active stabilizer bars front and rear and a traditional anti-roll bar in front. Four wheel steering appears for the first time, which increases the car’s overall maneuverability and high-speed stability, critical for such a long (just south of 19 feet for the short-wheelbase model) and heavy (almost three-ton) car.

According to engineering director Philip Koehn, the Phantom’s adaptive, self-leveling air-suspension setup—the magic in the car’s vaunted Magic Carpet Ride—has undergone significant changes as well.

“The springs are bigger, and they ride on more air than ever before,” he says. The system in part uses a stereo camera sensor in the windscreen to monitor and proactively react to road conditions up to 62 mph. There are no settings to dial in, just endless calculations made with the goal of keeping the ride pleasant and cosseting in virtually any situation. Koehn and his team also had a mandate from Rolls CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös: “He said, just make sure it’s the most silent motorcar in the world, full stop.”

Engineers crammed sound-deadening foam and insulation into virtually every nook, cranny, and crevice, some 360 pounds of it in all. Those double glazed windows feature an additional plastic layer wedged between, the floor pan and bulkhead alloys are thicker than before—even the Continental tires are lined with a layer of foam. In fact, Koehn said Rolls tested some 180 sets of tires before hitting on the right setup. Interestingly, no active noise-canceling tech is employed because research showed it could make some occupants car sick.

As you can probably guess, Koehn and team say they exceeded their goal of creating the world’s quietest cabin. From my perch behind the front seat as we wind our way through the Swiss countryside, the 6.75-liter twin-turbo V-12 humming along as it delivers effortless power, I have zero reason to disagree with that assessment. I also have zero reason to quibble with the notion that the new Phantom is also the world’s most luxurious production car.

Sitting in back with product manager Christian Wettach, he points out heavily lacquered, contrasting wood veneers that dominate the center stack. The starlight headliner now has more than 1,110 lights in the short wheelbase model (you can even get a shooting star option if you like) and extends further front to back. Everything that’s shiny is real metal.

Wettach presses a button in the armrest’s center controller, and out pops a table and rear monitor from which you control a host of vehicle features, watch TV, or jam to Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express,” which seems appropriate given the location and vehicle. Want a footrest? Press a button behind the door and up it pops from the floor. Champagne? Open up the coolbox in between the rear seats and pour it into the crystal glasses.

There are of course even higher spec options available, including a fixed center console with a drinks cabinet, and the more comfortable extended sleeper seats. And then there’s the Gallery. Think of the glass case extending the width of the dash from the right of the instrument panel as a mini art installation. “In the future we can offer our customers this amazing space to personalize their vehicle like no other vehicle on earth,” says design director Giles Taylor. Conceivably you could have a famous artist do a piece in the Gallery and immediately your car is worth a whole lot more.

Taylor also had plenty to say about the Phantom’s design to our own Robert Cumberford in our preview story. He’s particularly proud of the grille that’s now integrated into the front fascia for the first time ever, an on-its-haunches stance he likens to a boat cutting gracefully through the water, and two unique character lines in profile. There’s also a more purposeful chrome rear element that helps frame the rear end, and interestingly, head- and taillamps that are on the smaller side and do not dominate the proceedings. There’s a clear, purposeful lineage between the new Phantom and the previous model.

Now it’s my turn to feel what it’s like to be a chauffeur. Actually, we’ve been told that as many as half of Phantom owners in the U.S. actually drive their cars. I can safely assure those moneyed few that they are going to enjoy it even more than before.

There’s no getting around it, this car is big (especially the long wheelbase version), but it’s not a wallowing beast. The hardware upgrades have turned the Phantom into, dare we say, a decent car to drive. The steering wheel is on the bulky side, so it takes some getting used to. Summon its power reserves and the fully revamped twin-turbo V-12 with 563 horsepower and 664 lb-ft that comes on full at 1,700 rpm emits a satisfying, muted roar and hustles the car from 0-60 mph in around 5 ticks for the short wheelbase model. Ample power is available from virtually any speed, and its ZF-sourced eight-speed automatic is absolutely money in any situation.

The steering predictably feels more than a little boosted, but it’s hardly vague and turn-in is relatively direct. When hustling the brawny lad, its brakes don’t bite but rather politely and progressively bring things to a halt. But I never felt any need to drive like a maniac. Maybe it was because I was chauffeuring people, but this car cries out to be driven with civility and class. And so you do.

This new Phantom is of course also loaded with all manner of standard safety warning systems, connectivity options, and convenience features, including a standard head-up display, Wi-Fi, around view monitors, etc., etc.

Müller-Ötvös, who is constantly mind-melding with the Rolls-Royce customer base, knew his team had to get this car right. “We’re selling dreams, building dreams,” he says. “We’ve delivered a true Phantom. We haven’t messed it up.” No, you haven’t. Let’s pull the champagne out of the fridge and toast to that.

2018 Rolls-Royce Phantom Specifications

ON SALE January 2018 PRICE $450,000 (base, short wheelbase); $530,000 (base, long wheelbase) ENGINE 6.75L twin-turbo DOHC 48-valve V-12/563 hp @ 5,000 rpm, 664 lb-ft @ 1,700 rpm TRANSMISSION 8-speed automatic LAYOUT 4-door, 4-5 passenger, front-engine, RWD sedan EPA MILEAGE N/A L x W x H 227.2 x 79.4 x 64.8 in WHEELBASE 140 in WEIGHT 5,862 lb 0-60 MPH 5.1 sec (est) TOP SPEED 155 mph

IFTTT

[jonathanbelloblog]

Dreams Delivered: 2018 Rolls-Royce Phantom First Drive

It’s chilly and gray, and reasonably hard rain is coming down, casting a pall over the otherwise lush, rugged beauty of this German-flavored slice of Switzerland. A terrible day to drive, a great day to be driven.

I’m in the backseat of the all-new 2018 Rolls-Royce Phantom, and I roll down the double-glazed acoustic glass window to get a quick blast of fresh Swiss air. A cacophony of wind and water rudely intrudes into the cabin. Enough of that.

The metal button is cold to the touch when I press up, and as the window hits the seal, it’s as if a set of noise canceling headphones has suctioned over the car. Time to recline the seat, let my head hit the pillow, and enjoy the magic carpet ride.

There are few cars in which the backseat experience is just as important, if not more so, as what happens from behind the wheel. For some 92 years, longer than any other nameplate, the Phantom has transported rock stars and starlets, monarchs and maharajas, captains of industry and hip-hop kingpins. The car has in many ways served as the brand’s foundation, a vehicle that helped propel Rolls-Royce beyond a mere manufacturer of fine automobiles and into a global luxury icon. As the Phantom enters its eighth generation, the stakes have never been higher to deliver an ever richer, more immersive package, with cutting-edge, 21st century tech and even more ways to make it your way—the bespoke way. And it should drive better, too.

The new Phantom has been five years in the making, and as Rolls-Royce officials acknowledge, it really needed to take a two-generation leap, given that the model it replaces is 14 years old—which may as well be 80 in car years. Everything starts with its all-new aluminum intensive endoskeleton the marque calls the “Architecture of Luxury,” a versatile, lighter platform that will underpin all future Rolls-Royces. It makes the car some 30-percent more rigid than the previous Phantom, and additional cast aluminum structures reinforce areas wherever heavy loads are attached to the chassis.

Building on all that luxurious architecture is a new double-wishbone front and five-link rear suspension, supported by active stabilizer bars front and rear and a traditional anti-roll bar in front. Four wheel steering appears for the first time, which increases the car’s overall maneuverability and high-speed stability, critical for such a long (just south of 19 feet for the short-wheelbase model) and heavy (almost three-ton) car.

According to engineering director Philip Koehn, the Phantom’s adaptive, self-leveling air-suspension setup—the magic in the car’s vaunted Magic Carpet Ride—has undergone significant changes as well.

“The springs are bigger, and they ride on more air than ever before,” he says. The system in part uses a stereo camera sensor in the windscreen to monitor and proactively react to road conditions up to 62 mph. There are no settings to dial in, just endless calculations made with the goal of keeping the ride pleasant and cosseting in virtually any situation. Koehn and his team also had a mandate from Rolls CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös: “He said, just make sure it’s the most silent motorcar in the world, full stop.”

Engineers crammed sound-deadening foam and insulation into virtually every nook, cranny, and crevice, some 360 pounds of it in all. Those double glazed windows feature an additional plastic layer wedged between, the floor pan and bulkhead alloys are thicker than before—even the Continental tires are lined with a layer of foam. In fact, Koehn said Rolls tested some 180 sets of tires before hitting on the right setup. Interestingly, no active noise-canceling tech is employed because research showed it could make some occupants car sick.

As you can probably guess, Koehn and team say they exceeded their goal of creating the world’s quietest cabin. From my perch behind the front seat as we wind our way through the Swiss countryside, the 6.75-liter twin-turbo V-12 humming along as it delivers effortless power, I have zero reason to disagree with that assessment. I also have zero reason to quibble with the notion that the new Phantom is also the world’s most luxurious production car.

Sitting in back with product manager Christian Wettach, he points out heavily lacquered, contrasting wood veneers that dominate the center stack. The starlight headliner now has more than 1,110 lights in the short wheelbase model (you can even get a shooting star option if you like) and extends further front to back. Everything that’s shiny is real metal.

Wettach presses a button in the armrest’s center controller, and out pops a table and rear monitor from which you control a host of vehicle features, watch TV, or jam to Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express,” which seems appropriate given the location and vehicle. Want a footrest? Press a button behind the door and up it pops from the floor. Champagne? Open up the coolbox in between the rear seats and pour it into the crystal glasses.

There are of course even higher spec options available, including a fixed center console with a drinks cabinet, and the more comfortable extended sleeper seats. And then there’s the Gallery. Think of the glass case extending the width of the dash from the right of the instrument panel as a mini art installation. “In the future we can offer our customers this amazing space to personalize their vehicle like no other vehicle on earth,” says design director Giles Taylor. Conceivably you could have a famous artist do a piece in the Gallery and immediately your car is worth a whole lot more.

Taylor also had plenty to say about the Phantom’s design to our own Robert Cumberford in our preview story. He’s particularly proud of the grille that’s now integrated into the front fascia for the first time ever, an on-its-haunches stance he likens to a boat cutting gracefully through the water, and two unique character lines in profile. There’s also a more purposeful chrome rear element that helps frame the rear end, and interestingly, head- and taillamps that are on the smaller side and do not dominate the proceedings. There’s a clear, purposeful lineage between the new Phantom and the previous model.

Now it’s my turn to feel what it’s like to be a chauffeur. Actually, we’ve been told that as many as half of Phantom owners in the U.S. actually drive their cars. I can safely assure those moneyed few that they are going to enjoy it even more than before.

There’s no getting around it, this car is big (especially the long wheelbase version), but it’s not a wallowing beast. The hardware upgrades have turned the Phantom into, dare we say, a decent car to drive. The steering wheel is on the bulky side, so it takes some getting used to. Summon its power reserves and the fully revamped twin-turbo V-12 with 563 horsepower and 664 lb-ft that comes on full at 1,700 rpm emits a satisfying, muted roar and hustles the car from 0-60 mph in around 5 ticks for the short wheelbase model. Ample power is available from virtually any speed, and its ZF-sourced eight-speed automatic is absolutely money in any situation.

The steering predictably feels more than a little boosted, but it’s hardly vague and turn-in is relatively direct. When hustling the brawny lad, its brakes don’t bite but rather politely and progressively bring things to a halt. But I never felt any need to drive like a maniac. Maybe it was because I was chauffeuring people, but this car cries out to be driven with civility and class. And so you do.

This new Phantom is of course also loaded with all manner of standard safety warning systems, connectivity options, and convenience features, including a standard head-up display, Wi-Fi, around view monitors, etc., etc.

Müller-Ötvös, who is constantly mind-melding with the Rolls-Royce customer base, knew his team had to get this car right. “We’re selling dreams, building dreams,” he says. “We’ve delivered a true Phantom. We haven’t messed it up.” No, you haven’t. Let’s pull the champagne out of the fridge and toast to that.

2018 Rolls-Royce Phantom Specifications

ON SALE January 2018 PRICE $450,000 (base, short wheelbase); $530,000 (base, long wheelbase) ENGINE 6.75L twin-turbo DOHC 48-valve V-12/563 hp @ 5,000 rpm, 664 lb-ft @ 1,700 rpm TRANSMISSION 8-speed automatic LAYOUT 4-door, 4-5 passenger, front-engine, RWD sedan EPA MILEAGE N/A L x W x H 227.2 x 79.4 x 64.8 in WHEELBASE 140 in WEIGHT 5,862 lb 0-60 MPH 5.1 sec (est) TOP SPEED 155 mph

IFTTT

[chadpetersondatingblog]

Short Dating Profile Examples: Over 30 Fun Bios

Similar to how explaining a joke ceases to make it funny, overkill in your dating profile can suck the intrigue out or a first encounter. Too much information can come off as overbearing, leave you with a conversation void on a first date, or simply take up way too much of your time and energy. Below are over 30 short dating profile examples and ideas for some short and sweet approaches to writing your bio that will help you knock this annoying task off your list and get you swiping sooner.

Approach 1: Keep It To The Facts If you had to whittle yourself down to an elevator conversation, what would make the cut? Three to five quick and essential thoughts in your About Me will do the trick, so long as they’re memorable enough for someone to remember you.

1. Natural redhead, unnaturally good at limbo contests, hates seafood but loves goldfish crackers

2. Top 5 movies: Amelie, Se7en, Moulin Rouge, The Emperor’s New Groove, Wet Hot American Summer.

3. I have a twin brother, no he doesn’t look like me, DO NOT EVEN ASK IF WE ARE IDENTICAL.

4. My #1 vacation destination is the Minnesota State Fair, and I don’t understand why it doesn’t make more appearances on Insider.

5. I majored in art. I work as a writer. One Art Degree for sale, perfect condition, $35,000 OBO.

6. I’m afraid of heights, and I can’t swim, so let’s do some land activities.

Pick A Fave And Roll With It Is there a movie you know every line to? An album that shaped your entire adult identity? A hobby you turned into an Etsy empire? Share a quick blurb about it. Those who respond will find a huge part of your life intriguing, and that’s a great place to start.

7. All I want is someone who can sing the Elephant Love Medley Duet from Moulin Rouge with me. My sister could do it, but she always makes me be the boy.

8. You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted a bacon peanut butter chocolate malt from Five Guys. If you’d like to argue with me, I’d be HAPPY to do a taste test.

9. I know every word of the ten-season run of Friends by heart, and my next goal in life is to watch them en Español until I know Spanish.

10. What’s your favorite Jonas Brothers song and why? Mine is Good Night and Goodbye, and in the following dissertation I will explain in detail why they were the best boy band of all time. (cont.)

11. Three years ago I started a book club. We mostly read wine labels.

12. My mood is either the end of Monument Valley, or the end of Inside. Never in between.

13. Sriracha makes everything better.

  Obscure References FTW If you’re not that into pleasantries and small talk, this is a great way to comb through the weeds when it comes to meaningful connections. Go with a line from a TV show that always busts your gut, a not-so-famous historical quote that you identify with, or a nod to your neighborhood’s best kept secret, and those who get the reference are automatically in the club.

14. 42

15. People tend to overlook Vince Vaughn’s most brilliant and nuanced work as “Luke Zoolander.”

16. Do you think Postmates will deliver me a plate of chicken drummies from the Nan’s menu circa 1994?

17. I’m more of a Russ than a Ross.

18. I shot first.

19. Oh to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands, with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves; let me forget about today until tomorrow…

  Lead With A Teaser Some may call this click bait, but hey, whatever opens the door to conversation… Tell a joke, but leave out the punch line, post a pic of you with a celebrity and a caption alluding to the insane story, anything that comes off as quirky or intriguing will leave people dying to chat with you.

20. I dare you to ask me what happened when I met Snoop Dogg at a wrestling event in New York City.

21. Look I’m not good at a lot of things, but I can do my make up to look exactly like Blanche Devereaux from Golden Girls, so we should go clubbing.

22. What’s the best thing about living in Switzerland?

23. I have the greatest idea for an app of all time, please inquire if you’re interested in investment opportunities.

24. A/S/L? …No I don’t want to know yours, I want you to guess mine.

25. Of all the things you could walk out of a Jonas Brothers Meet and Greet with, you wouldn’t think it would be a banana. And yet…

  Let Your Social Do The Talking Your social media accounts likely give a pretty well rounded view of who you are as a person, so skipping the cheesy intros and just linking to or referencing the one you’re most active on cuts out the boring middle man. Plus it gives your potentials permission to stalk you, which, let’s be real, they were going to do anyway. At least this way, you own it.

26. Share your top pinned tweet—It’s usually the one that has gotten the most attention. Mine says “I’m tired the way old people are tired at the end of their lives.”

27. Link to your Instagram page—fire selfies and all the delicious food you could be cooking for your future partner… it’s a no-brainer.

28. Download and share a particularly good Snapchat story—Nobody wouldn’t love a 14 second snap of your roommate’s cat being a weirdo.

29. Share the results of your latest Buzzfeed quiz—In case you were wondering, based on my favorite kind of bread, Ryan Gosling is my husband.

30. Link to your list of Twitter faves—They’ll get a good sense of what makes you laugh, your political stance, or whatever it is you choose to focus on on a regular basis.

31. Share the latest Facebook-generated word cloud you made—the center of my last one was my mom’s name, which I know isn’t that appealing, but it’s a conversation starter to say the least.

  You can use any of these approaches or a combination to get you started on a short, but sweet dating profile bio, but no matter which approach you take, the key is to be warm, fun, and engaging. If you can infuse some humor or an interesting talking point into your description, people are going to want to get to know you.

The post Short Dating Profile Examples: Over 30 Fun Bios appeared first on The Date Mix.

from Meet Positives http://ift.tt/2g2DtVx via IFTTT

[ashleyjacksonblog]

Short Dating Profile Examples: Over 30 Fun Bios

Similar to how explaining a joke ceases to make it funny, overkill in your dating profile can suck the intrigue out or a first encounter. Too much information can come off as overbearing, leave you with a conversation void on a first date, or simply take up way too much of your time and energy. Below are over 30 short dating profile examples and ideas for some short and sweet approaches to writing your bio that will help you knock this annoying task off your list and get you swiping sooner.

Approach 1: Keep It To The Facts If you had to whittle yourself down to an elevator conversation, what would make the cut? Three to five quick and essential thoughts in your About Me will do the trick, so long as they’re memorable enough for someone to remember you.

1. Natural redhead, unnaturally good at limbo contests, hates seafood but loves goldfish crackers

2. Top 5 movies: Amelie, Se7en, Moulin Rouge, The Emperor’s New Groove, Wet Hot American Summer.

3. I have a twin brother, no he doesn’t look like me, DO NOT EVEN ASK IF WE ARE IDENTICAL.

4. My #1 vacation destination is the Minnesota State Fair, and I don’t understand why it doesn’t make more appearances on Insider.

5. I majored in art. I work as a writer. One Art Degree for sale, perfect condition, $35,000 OBO.

6. I’m afraid of heights, and I can’t swim, so let’s do some land activities.

Pick A Fave And Roll With It Is there a movie you know every line to? An album that shaped your entire adult identity? A hobby you turned into an Etsy empire? Share a quick blurb about it. Those who respond will find a huge part of your life intriguing, and that’s a great place to start.

7. All I want is someone who can sing the Elephant Love Medley Duet from Moulin Rouge with me. My sister could do it, but she always makes me be the boy.

8. You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted a bacon peanut butter chocolate malt from Five Guys. If you’d like to argue with me, I’d be HAPPY to do a taste test.

9. I know every word of the ten-season run of Friends by heart, and my next goal in life is to watch them en Español until I know Spanish.

10. What’s your favorite Jonas Brothers song and why? Mine is Good Night and Goodbye, and in the following dissertation I will explain in detail why they were the best boy band of all time. (cont.)

11. Three years ago I started a book club. We mostly read wine labels.

12. My mood is either the end of Monument Valley, or the end of Inside. Never in between.

13. Sriracha makes everything better.

  Obscure References FTW If you’re not that into pleasantries and small talk, this is a great way to comb through the weeds when it comes to meaningful connections. Go with a line from a TV show that always busts your gut, a not-so-famous historical quote that you identify with, or a nod to your neighborhood’s best kept secret, and those who get the reference are automatically in the club.

14. 42

15. People tend to overlook Vince Vaughn’s most brilliant and nuanced work as “Luke Zoolander.”

16. Do you think Postmates will deliver me a plate of chicken drummies from the Nan’s menu circa 1994?

17. I’m more of a Russ than a Ross.

18. I shot first.

19. Oh to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands, with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves; let me forget about today until tomorrow…

  Lead With A Teaser Some may call this click bait, but hey, whatever opens the door to conversation… Tell a joke, but leave out the punch line, post a pic of you with a celebrity and a caption alluding to the insane story, anything that comes off as quirky or intriguing will leave people dying to chat with you.

20. I dare you to ask me what happened when I met Snoop Dogg at a wrestling event in New York City.

21. Look I’m not good at a lot of things, but I can do my make up to look exactly like Blanche Devereaux from Golden Girls, so we should go clubbing.

22. What’s the best thing about living in Switzerland?

23. I have the greatest idea for an app of all time, please inquire if you’re interested in investment opportunities.

24. A/S/L? …No I don’t want to know yours, I want you to guess mine.

25. Of all the things you could walk out of a Jonas Brothers Meet and Greet with, you wouldn’t think it would be a banana. And yet…

  Let Your Social Do The Talking Your social media accounts likely give a pretty well rounded view of who you are as a person, so skipping the cheesy intros and just linking to or referencing the one you’re most active on cuts out the boring middle man. Plus it gives your potentials permission to stalk you, which, let’s be real, they were going to do anyway. At least this way, you own it.

26. Share your top pinned tweet—It’s usually the one that has gotten the most attention. Mine says “I’m tired the way old people are tired at the end of their lives.”

27. Link to your Instagram page—fire selfies and all the delicious food you could be cooking for your future partner… it’s a no-brainer.

28. Download and share a particularly good Snapchat story—Nobody wouldn’t love a 14 second snap of your roommate’s cat being a weirdo.

29. Share the results of your latest Buzzfeed quiz—In case you were wondering, based on my favorite kind of bread, Ryan Gosling is my husband.

30. Link to your list of Twitter faves—They’ll get a good sense of what makes you laugh, your political stance, or whatever it is you choose to focus on on a regular basis.

31. Share the latest Facebook-generated word cloud you made—the center of my last one was my mom’s name, which I know isn’t that appealing, but it’s a conversation starter to say the least.

  You can use any of these approaches or a combination to get you started on a short, but sweet dating profile bio, but no matter which approach you take, the key is to be warm, fun, and engaging. If you can infuse some humor or an interesting talking point into your description, people are going to want to get to know you.

The post Short Dating Profile Examples: Over 30 Fun Bios appeared first on The Date Mix.

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Short Dating Profile Examples: Over 30 Fun Bios

Similar to how explaining a joke ceases to make it funny, overkill in your dating profile can suck the intrigue out or a first encounter. Too much information can come off as overbearing, leave you with a conversation void on a first date, or simply take up way too much of your time and energy. Below are over 30 short dating profile examples and ideas for some short and sweet approaches to writing your bio that will help you knock this annoying task off your list and get you swiping sooner.

Approach 1: Keep It To The Facts If you had to whittle yourself down to an elevator conversation, what would make the cut? Three to five quick and essential thoughts in your About Me will do the trick, so long as they’re memorable enough for someone to remember you.

1. Natural redhead, unnaturally good at limbo contests, hates seafood but loves goldfish crackers

2. Top 5 movies: Amelie, Se7en, Moulin Rouge, The Emperor’s New Groove, Wet Hot American Summer.

3. I have a twin brother, no he doesn’t look like me, DO NOT EVEN ASK IF WE ARE IDENTICAL.

4. My #1 vacation destination is the Minnesota State Fair, and I don’t understand why it doesn’t make more appearances on Insider.

5. I majored in art. I work as a writer. One Art Degree for sale, perfect condition, $35,000 OBO.

6. I’m afraid of heights, and I can’t swim, so let’s do some land activities.

Pick A Fave And Roll With It Is there a movie you know every line to? An album that shaped your entire adult identity? A hobby you turned into an Etsy empire? Share a quick blurb about it. Those who respond will find a huge part of your life intriguing, and that’s a great place to start.

7. All I want is someone who can sing the Elephant Love Medley Duet from Moulin Rouge with me. My sister could do it, but she always makes me be the boy.

8. You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted a bacon peanut butter chocolate malt from Five Guys. If you’d like to argue with me, I’d be HAPPY to do a taste test.

9. I know every word of the ten-season run of Friends by heart, and my next goal in life is to watch them en Español until I know Spanish.

10. What’s your favorite Jonas Brothers song and why? Mine is Good Night and Goodbye, and in the following dissertation I will explain in detail why they were the best boy band of all time. (cont.)

11. Three years ago I started a book club. We mostly read wine labels.

12. My mood is either the end of Monument Valley, or the end of Inside. Never in between.

13. Sriracha makes everything better.

  Obscure References FTW If you’re not that into pleasantries and small talk, this is a great way to comb through the weeds when it comes to meaningful connections. Go with a line from a TV show that always busts your gut, a not-so-famous historical quote that you identify with, or a nod to your neighborhood’s best kept secret, and those who get the reference are automatically in the club.

14. 42

15. People tend to overlook Vince Vaughn’s most brilliant and nuanced work as “Luke Zoolander.”

16. Do you think Postmates will deliver me a plate of chicken drummies from the Nan’s menu circa 1994?

17. I’m more of a Russ than a Ross.

18. I shot first.

19. Oh to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands, with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves; let me forget about today until tomorrow…

  Lead With A Teaser Some may call this click bait, but hey, whatever opens the door to conversation… Tell a joke, but leave out the punch line, post a pic of you with a celebrity and a caption alluding to the insane story, anything that comes off as quirky or intriguing will leave people dying to chat with you.

20. I dare you to ask me what happened when I met Snoop Dogg at a wrestling event in New York City.

21. Look I’m not good at a lot of things, but I can do my make up to look exactly like Blanche Devereaux from Golden Girls, so we should go clubbing.

22. What’s the best thing about living in Switzerland?

23. I have the greatest idea for an app of all time, please inquire if you’re interested in investment opportunities.

24. A/S/L? …No I don’t want to know yours, I want you to guess mine.

25. Of all the things you could walk out of a Jonas Brothers Meet and Greet with, you wouldn’t think it would be a banana. And yet…

  Let Your Social Do The Talking Your social media accounts likely give a pretty well rounded view of who you are as a person, so skipping the cheesy intros and just linking to or referencing the one you’re most active on cuts out the boring middle man. Plus it gives your potentials permission to stalk you, which, let’s be real, they were going to do anyway. At least this way, you own it.

26. Share your top pinned tweet—It’s usually the one that has gotten the most attention. Mine says “I’m tired the way old people are tired at the end of their lives.”

27. Link to your Instagram page—fire selfies and all the delicious food you could be cooking for your future partner… it’s a no-brainer.

28. Download and share a particularly good Snapchat story—Nobody wouldn’t love a 14 second snap of your roommate’s cat being a weirdo.

29. Share the results of your latest Buzzfeed quiz—In case you were wondering, based on my favorite kind of bread, Ryan Gosling is my husband.

30. Link to your list of Twitter faves—They’ll get a good sense of what makes you laugh, your political stance, or whatever it is you choose to focus on on a regular basis.

31. Share the latest Facebook-generated word cloud you made—the center of my last one was my mom’s name, which I know isn’t that appealing, but it’s a conversation starter to say the least.

  You can use any of these approaches or a combination to get you started on a short, but sweet dating profile bio, but no matter which approach you take, the key is to be warm, fun, and engaging. If you can infuse some humor or an interesting talking point into your description, people are going to want to get to know you.

The post Short Dating Profile Examples: Over 30 Fun Bios appeared first on The Date Mix.

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