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thejustmaiden · 4 years ago

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The Sesshomaru F*cks Debacle

Hey, fellow Inuyasha fans! How we feeling?? I imagine a lot of us are doing quite fabulously after the recent news we got about the sequel coming out this Fall, "Hanyou No Yashahime." So if it wasn't obvious already, I want to take the time to discuss the topic of- you guessed it- Sesshomaru. Go figure!

***THIS IS A REPOST OF MY ORIGINAL BLOG THAT DISAPPEARED FROM THE TAGS. PICS/GIFS HAVE BEEN REMOVED TO HOPEFULLY REPAIR THAT.***

Let's be real, as much as probably (and literally lol) all of us have viewed him as "daddy material" at some point or another during our teens, Sesshomaru being physically intimate with another being, much less a human, is difficult to conjure up in our minds. And there's nothing wrong with that, per se, as sex and romance doesn't come so easily to some as it does to others. Then again, that's not to say a romantic relationship is completely impossible or unattainable for him either.

I, for one, am not a huge fan of the idea of Sesshomaru siring children of his own. Granted, adopting/protecting children and other small companions is kinda his thing (I saw one user even describe him as a 'walking daycare' 🤣), and maybe it'll just take some getting used to, but all in all it's not entirely unfathomable to picture him having biological children. Though I'd be lying if I said I still didn't prefer he just took these two twin half-demon girls in and under his wing instead, like he did Rin. However, seeing as that's unlikely the case since the two girls resemble him in some fashion, the chances of that coming true are slim, which must mean that Sesshomaru did in fact bone some lucky lady. That's not to say I don't acknowledge that there's still a chance these kids aren't truly his but we'll see!

Which leads me to the real reason behind this blog! I'd like to address in-depth why I and so many other Inuyasha fans consider shipping S*ssrin as wrong and why it makes a lot of us extremely uncomfortable.

BUT FIRST BEFORE I FORGET, I want to give a little unofficial disclaimer by stating that this blog isn't intended to upset certain fans regarding my stance on the controversial ship. Thus I will not tag it under that ship name, and I suggest others who agree with me to do the same in any of their future posts.

Because let's not forget that the most important thing is that we're all fans here. We fell in love with this story and hold its beloved characters close to our hearts for a reason. And that still counts even if you're returning to this fandom a decade later. So please, let's try and remember that and be civil towards one another. Putting people down by attacking and insulting others in real life really doesn't make us any better than them. I REPEAT, please do not engage in this post unless you plan to be kind and respectful of others who may have a differing opinion than you. There's never a need to be ugly towards another human being. That goes for all shippers and fans of Sesshomaru in general. Thank you in advance for your understanding and compliance. 😊

Again, none of these comments are aimed at being inflammatory towards those fans who have a different approach to this pairing. If any of you are reading this now, please keep that in mind before deciding to participate in any discourse with me and other antis.

Okay, let me go ahead and list a few of the main arguments fans of this particular ship use to support them together. Then I'll give my reasons why those aren't enough to justify their relationship turning romantic:

1. Rin will be an adult before they get romantically involved

2. Sesshomaru didn't raise her and therefore isn't her father; he was never like a father to her in the first place

3. Sesshomaru hasn't been grooming her, not then and not now. Besides, it was Rin's choice first.

4. Age difference shouldn't matter when you look at other relationships in the series (InuKag, Koga x Ayame, etc.)

5. It was always going to be canon because the drama CDs exist

These are the main points I'm seeing around. Now let's dissect them, shall we? These are my direct responses- I'll try to keep them short and concise. Fyi: Jk! I'm lying, that never happens. 😆

1. Rin may be an adult, but from our standpoint that doesn't make much of a difference. It doesn't matter because it's all about how her relationship with Sesshomaru started off and how it continued onwards. From that moment, it was basically established from the get-go that their relationship resembles that of one a young girl shares with an older man who winds up becoming her guardian. She initiated it by trying to bring him food while he was injured, and he reciprocated by deciding to bring her back to life that fateful day.

Of course we're all happy that he did, because he's a better demon for it and a similar thing could be said about her! Therefore you must understand that fans against this pairing find it very hard to grasp the notion of a budding romance here when we look at their history. For us, it's synonymous to imagining a father eventually falling in love with his daughter or someone else who reminds him of a daughter, and vice versa. But let's just say he's not a father to her like many of you claim and more like, say a modern-day babysitter. Isn't it still bizarre to you that a young girl could fall in love with the man who looked after her and cared for her at that age, maybe even played games with? One day or on multiple occasions he even sees her naked because she had an accident and got hurt so she needed help changing or something. I admit it's more realistic that it was Jaken if anyone who'd be in charge of this, but why does it really matter who was tasked with what? Sesshomaru may have not been around all the time but that doesn't mean he's any less involved or invested in Rin's general care and well-being. So it's that thought alone that keeps many of us from even contemplating a romance forming between them. Whether he hardly interacted with her over the years or not is irrelevant, because it's clear to me that they have both formed a strong enough bond that constitutes calling them family. I highly doubt he ever even planned to keep Rin in his company as long as he did. But it happened, and whether you want to admit it or not, meeting her changed his life. Meaning Rin was never just some girl he traveled with or hardly knew. Despite his feigned indifference and stoic ways at times, I'm pretty sure we can all agree that Rin grew on him and was the first person to really influence him in a way that helped soften and open up that heart of his in a way nobody ever had before. One's significance to any given person isn't solely measured by the quantity of time spent alongside that person but by the quality of how that time was spent with said person. It's safe to say that in the case of Sesshomaru and Rin, they definitely fall under that category.

2. Fair if you don't view Sesshomaru as Rin's father, but you must acknowledge that he did fill some father figure-like role to her at the very least. Or let's just call him her vassal if you think that's a more accurate description. Also, can I just quickly stress again that it doesn't matter how long she spent by his side or whether she spent more time in the village or not, because he still ended up playing a major part in her childhood as an adult male role model. Regardless of the title you give him, it still stands that although he may not be her official adoptive father, he is LIKE A FATHER. There really is no point in denying that, because their dynamic exudes one of a father-daughter. I guarantee you that any outsider looking in would agree that if not her father then at the very least he embodies a male relative of some kind. Honestly, the details of their relationship dynamic specific to this show (regional/period differences, human vs. demon culture, etc.), don't really matter here. Why? Because one can assume that the general consensus here is that a large percentage of fans perceive their connection as a familial one. Yes, most would unanimously agree that Rin and Sesshomaru, along with Jaken and Ah-Un, are a FAMILY.

If she had first met him as an adult, then we'd possibly have a very different story here. The point of the matter is that he didn't, so that should be where this discussion ends. Unfortunately, for many, it's not. The bottom line is that a child he knew and cared for should never be someone he begins to view in a romantic light. I don't care how many years have passed (or that to demons years are like days or some less inconsequential length of time), and how much she's matured or how specific marriage customs were back then (if they're no longer appropriate now then why are we still condoning these backward practices?). Rin should NEVER have the desire to be sexually attracted to this father figure she's always looked to and trusted to protect her. Maybe it's vastly different from a demon's perspective (even though still unjustifiable in my opinion), but as a human, Rin's feelings towards Sesshomaru wouldn't and shouldn't suddenly change towards him and in such a drastic manner mind you. Yeah, maybe she used to have an innocent crush on him, but I'd like to think our smart and compassionate little Rin would learn that was simply because she was a child who didn't know any better. Besides, growing up with Kaede and around other humans I'd like to think she fell in love with another human sometime over the course of all those years. It only makes sense, right? Don't you think that's part of why Sesshomaru left her there in the first place? He wished for her to experience what it was like to live a normal human life, falling in love and marriage both being a key part of that. If I were Sesshomaru, I'd be deeply troubled if I started to develop feelings for a little girl I once protected and kept in my company for quite an extended period of time, which was at least a year from what I understand. (Pls correct me if I'm wrong because I gather it may have been longer.)

3. Apparently in the manga and the Final Act, we see Sesshomaru still visits the village to check on Rin from time to time. He even brings her gifts, such as beautiful and luxurious kimonos. I recently learned from another Tumblr post that kimonos are what older men gift in order to sort of earn their favor with these young ladies, AKA they're wooing them. If that is indeed true, then that would mean he's basically grooming her and has been for however long she's lived there in the village but potentially even longer. To put it nicely, he's courting her. If this was another young lady (maybe not an adult perhaps but still of marrying age) who he DIDN'T assist in raising, then I could possibly get on board with this.

The thing is, it's far from that with them two if you consider everything they've gone through and endured together! Because he not only met her as a young girl but he got to know her first as a young girl, and she became one of his traveling companions all while she was only a young girl!!! Their bond will always be defined by that time when she was just a young girl, and nothing can or should change that he will always see her in that same light. Kinda like how our parents or other family members from older generations tell us that they'll always see us as their babies. So the fact that her time spent with Sesshomaru is constantly compared to her time spent in the village shouldn't apply here. Don't we all know this already? That we can can come across someone in our lifetime and maybe the time with them is short-lived, but that doesn't make it any less significant or those people any less special. Sesshomaru made an impact on her as much as she did on him, that much we know is true. Sure, it was years ago, but that's not something you ever forget. Sometimes when you look at loved ones you haven't seen in a while, there are just certain memories you have of them from over the years that will come rushing back to you without fail and that you will always cherish no matter what. I'd like to believe that when Rin looks at Sesshomaru and he looks at her, that they can both look back fondly on their times traveling together. This explains why I'm really struggling here to picture how anyone could sleep with someone they used to treat as their guardian/father/ward/daughter/what have you. So someday and somehow, this person just stops viewing them that way, is that it? I mean, how does this work exactly? It's not like you can just flip off a switch and forget everything from your past with this person, ya know? Unless you have your memory wiped, what I'm understanding is that S*ssrin shippers approve of the idea of these two characters KNOWING that they are or used to be like practically FAMILY to each other, yet agree that these two characters in question still have the capacity not to mention desire to pursue HAVING SEX with each other anyway. Do I got that all right? Did I miss anything?

Originally I provided two examples of fan art I found to help put what I'm trying to say here into better perspective, but since they've been removed, just type in "Sesshomaru and Rin" on Google and you'll find plenty of examples of what I'm talking about here- and no, it's not S*ssrin images. I realize Sesshomaru has never been the touchy-feely sorta guy like it's depicted in some of the fan art, but that doesn't necessarily diminish the affection he feels and attachment he has towards Rin. He just has a different way of expressing his love is all, even if he doesn't outwardly show it. The real question here is, can you really look at sweet pictures of an adult comforting a child who's been under his care for a significant amount of time and then suddenly be like, "oh man, I can't wait till they bang!" I'm sorry, to each their own, but you gotta admit why we must find that creepy.

4. Regarding Inuyasha and Kagome's relationship, we need to remember that he didn't age after all those years stuck to that tree. And besides, demons age differently so this is a pretty unfair comparison. This isn't the best example, but think about how a cat's lifespan works. 10 years in (indoor) cat years is like 56 in human years. So technically in demon years, Inuyasha is physically and emotionally compatible with a human around Kagome's age. Hell, even though he's over a hundred years older, Kagome is still a whole lot more mature than he probably ever will be! 😂 (Psst! We still love you, Inuyasha! 💋)

Now as for Koga and Ayame, this also isn't comparable to Sesshomaru and Rin. Koga met Ayame one night, only not to see her ever again until she was older and of age. After rescuing her on that night when she was only a girl, he gives her a piggyback ride and you can tell he just wants to cheer her up when he mentions her being his wife someday. (And boy, did that work wonders on Ayame!) Then they gaze at this stunning lunar rainbow together, which I think is quite rare judging by looks of it. This is not an attempt to defend this proposal- if we can even really call it that- but all I'm saying is that I don't think even Koga knows what overcame him in that moment. Fast forward to present-day when they cross paths again, and Ayame still remembers his so-called promise, but guess who doesn't right away? Yep, our man Koga! It takes a quite a while for it to come back to him, too. This further proves my point that something beyond Koga and his power possessed him to say all those things to a little Ayame for some reason. Maybe you can call it destiny, or maybe it was some special kind of magic caused by the lunar rainbow, Idk! All I know is that they do end up together in the Final Act and that it wasn't until they met as two consenting wolf-demons that they really grew to know each other and coincidentally- or maybe not so coincidentally- fall in love.

5. From what I understand, it appears these drama CDs are some kind of satire which doesn't equate to canon. Perhaps Rumiko did not debunk them but she also didn't confirm they're true either. I'm hearing conflicting reports, however, and her involvement in them is questionable. Like her name is supposedly on the cover or something? But then I've also heard that she has spoken out against this ship. From the sounds of it, there is enough evidence- or lack thereof rather- to conclude that fans cannot use this as proof enough for their ship already being or soon-to-be canon.

Finally, I'd like to end on this note where I'll be addressing ethics in entertainment. When it comes to our choice of entertainment, there's always a level of escapism implied, sometimes so much that we project ourselves onto certain characters. Delving into a fantasy world like that of Inuyasha can really help some people better cope with real life problems, but it's all about striking the right balance, as each individual has different wants and needs. The thing is there's only so much escapism one can allow in a fictional world before basic morals from our own world begin to take precedence. I can always enjoy some good fantasy, but it's not long until I start to reflect on how I personally relate what entertainment I'm currently absorbed in to real life. It's inevitable really. For example, if certain relationships portrayed on screen conflict with strong opinions I've adopted on a sensitive topic, especially those that take children into account, then I feel it's my responsibility to speak out against any media that even remotely promotes it. Yes, even if it's just fiction. Because art imitates life, right? (And yes, sometimes the other way around.) So in other words, our stories should mirror our way of life to some degree. History has seen its fair share of ugly events and traditions we are surely ashamed of but that we've hopefully learned our lessons from. Most societies nowadays seriously frown upon or condemn stuff like pedophilia, child grooming, or anything of the sort. Of course it doesn't help that we see still see these kinds of issues glossed over so much that we've become desensitized to them in many respects.

The thing is we cannot allow this way too common older-man-dotes-on-young-girl trope (or anything resembling it) to continue to be glorified or romanticized. It matters not that feudal Japan was a drastically different time to be alive and that this was the norm back then, or even that this remains a popular ship in Japan. All it comes down to is if whether we would currently tolerate such acts and behaviors were we to witness them in real life. If your answer is 'no', then it should be 'no' in every respect. If you deem it acceptable just because it's fiction, then I'm sorry to say, but you're going to have to answer to a lot of people. No surprise there, that goes for all fandoms. I guarantee you it's not just the people who personally identify as victims who have serious qualms with this ship either, because you don't necessarily need to have bad experiences of your own in order sympathize and see where a lot of these people are coming from. And no, just because I'm unhappy with the possibility of S*ssrin going canon does not mean I'm whining or that I'm attempting to spread negativity about this series before it's even out. Remember, fans have the right to be critical of whatever content it is they're watching/reading, and if they demand something in the storytelling be represented better, then of course they can challenge that. After all, none of us should feel like "canceling" the content we love is our only hope to fixing a story. That's not how it ever should be. Fans are fed up, and can you really blame them? Nah, we can strive to do better in this area, plus it's not like there isn't always room for improvement. So let's please be more vigilant about how the content we consume translates to reality, in addition to being mindful of how it can directly correlate to real life problems for ourselves as well as others around us.

That's a wrap, y'all!! I hope you enjoyed what I had to offer on this topic, and here's hoping I actually contributed something new to this conversation! I'm aware that that's unlikely the case for us fans who've been living in this tag the past couple days (like me lol), but I'd like to believe I put my own spin on it and it was still worth your while. 😉

P.S. Overall, I remain optimistic about the new show! So are there any friendly Inuyasha group chats on Tumblr I can join? If so, please do invite me! I need to obsess about this sequel even more than I already am, EEEK!!!

#inuyasha #hanyo no yashahime #sesshomaru #anti sessrin

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fuyonggu · 4 years ago

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Cao Jiong’s “Discourse on the Six Dynasties” (Short Version)

This is a shorter version of this post.

Discourse on the Six Dynasties

By Cao Yuanshou

Among the dynasties of ancient times, Xia, Yin (Shang), and Zhou each lasted for dozens of generations, while Qin perished after only two. Why was this? Because the lords of those three dynasties shared control of the people of the realm, thus the lords of the realm saw the sovereign's concerns as their own concerns, while the kings of Qin monopolized control of the people, thus in times of danger and distress no one was willing to come to their aid. Those with whom you share your joys will likewise sympathize with your sorrows; those you make your peers in peace will be your saviors when danger comes. The ancient kings knew that the sovereign who reigned alone could not ensure an orderly realm for long, thus they shared power with others in order to obtain stability; they knew that the ruler who defended the realm alone could not guard it forever, thus they shared responsibility with others in order to attain security. Both their intimate relatives and their distant kinfolk were employed; both members of their clan and outsiders from other surnames were advanced. Those of more or less power worked together to protect each other; those of the same or different blood acted in concert to shield one another. There were neither instances of "total annexation", nor were "traitorous impulses" allowed to fester.

Even when the Zhou dynasty was in decline, Duke Huan of Qi and Duke Wen of Jin still treated the King with respect and acted on his behalf. When the state of Chu refused to present its tribute of grass and thatch to the King, the state of Qi led an army to punish them; when the state of Song refused to help build walls around the King's capital at Chengzhou (Luoyang), the state of Jin executed their minister. Though the King's laws became lax and loose for a time, they were once again enforced; though the feudal lords become arrogant for a season, they were once more reverent.

It was said that "after the age of these two Hegemons (Dukes Huan and Wen), the feudal lords became boorish and remiss". Indeed, the states of Wu and Chu were defiant, trusting in the Yangzi to be their bulwark and the stout square walls of their cities to be their rampart. Yet though in their hearts they sought to "inquire after the Nine Tripods" (as though they had more right to dominion than the King), even then they feared to go so far as to outright threaten or oppress the royal clan. Wicked feelings scattered in the breast; treasonous plots died on the lips. Was it not because the King had trusted and empowered his kinfolk and relatives and employed and used the worthy and able? Don't the branches and the leaves grow great and luxurious because the roots and the stem depend upon them?

But from that time on, incessant fighting broke out between the states. Wu was taken over by Yue, and Jin split into three; Lu was conquered by Chu, and Zheng was annexed into Hann. Although originally most of the families of the feudal lords had come from the royal Ji family, by the time of the Warring States era, most of these royal relatives were long gone, and only in the states of Yan and Wey did they still rule. What was left of the King's domain was small and pathetic, threatened by powerful Qin to the west and menaced by fearsome Qi and Chu to the south; though they sought deliverance from their destruction, there was no one left to take pity on them. And even after King Nan was deposed to become a commoner, still the branches of the state grasped at each other's power, squabbling over an empty title. For more than forty years, the land within the Seas had no master.

The state of Qin occupied a powerful and influential region and was crafty at the arts of lying and deceit. Thus they were successful in their campaigns against the lords east of the mountains and were able to nibble the Nine States down to nothing. And by the time of the First Emperor, the imperial throne was once again filled. Yet when Qin employed force like this and a lack of virtue like that, how could they expect to last? In what sense did they have deep roots or a thick stem, to prevent themselves from being yanked up?

The Book of Changes states, "Though they cry 'perish, perish', he plants himself firm like a mulberry." Zhou was virtuous, and their longevity was because of it; such a verse could well describe them.

When the First Emperor of Qin considered the decline of Zhou, he felt that it was the weakness of the Zhou kings that had caused them to lose power. Thus he abolished the old system of the Five Noble Titles and organized the realm into commandaries and counties instead, and he threw out the methods of teaching the people through music and ritual behavior in favor of imposing stern and harsh government. His younger relatives received not an inch of land as fief, and his accomplished ministers had not a spade of land to call their own. Within, there were no royal relatives who might assist the state, and without, there were no feudal lords who might shield the realm from harm. He did not show a benevolent heart towards his flesh and blood, nor extend any kindness towards those who might have served as his branches and leaves. He was like a person who cuts off their own arms and legs, content to live as a mere torso; he was like a ship which, before crossing a wide river or a deep ocean, throws away its oars. There were many whose hearts turned cold when considering the danger of such a situation. Yet the First Emperor remained serene, believing that the capital area of Guanzhong was such an impenetrable region, a "bastion of golden walls and a thousand li", that his descendants would rule as sovereigns for ten thousand generations. Wasn't it ridiculous?

At the time, Chunyu Yue tried to remonstrate with him. He told the First Emperor, "I have heard that the Kings of Yin and Zhou granted fiefs to their relatives and their accomplished ministers, and their dynasties lasted for more than a thousand years. Now Your Majesty has become lord of all the realm within the Seas, yet your relatives are no more than commoners. Someday our dynasty might face the same threat of usurpation as happened with Tian Chang in Qi or the Six Ministerial Clans in Jin, yet Your Majesty has not provided for any powerful subjects who might help to guide affairs in the capital; who would step in to save the royal family? I have never once heard of any state which failed to heed the teachings of the ancients in these matters and yet long endured."

But the First Emperor dismissed these principles and heeded the advice of Li Si instead. And thus, on the day of his death, there was no one to whom he could entrust the future of the state. The weighty decisions of the realm were left in the hands of a miscreant, and the power to decide who and who would not inherit the throne was left to the words of a wicked subject. People like Zhao Gao were even able to bring about the slaughter and uprooting of the royal family.

Ying Huhai (the Second Emperor) had been instructed in the teachings of severity and oppression since youth, and he honored the philosophies of violent men as an adult. Rather than change the regulations and alter the laws of his father, he continued the models of Shen Buhai and Shang Yang, he consulted and plotted with Zhao Gao, he isolated himself deep within the palace, and he entrusted the governance of the realm to slanderous bandits. When at the last he met his end at Wangyi Palace, though he begged to be spared to live as a commoner, how could he have expected anyone to show him mercy?

Thus were the commandaries and the states alienated from Qin, and the people deserted and rose against them in rebellion; Chen Sheng and Wu Guang were the first to sound the call against them, and Liu Bang and Xiang Yu buried them in the end. If only the First Emperor has accepted the advice of Chunyu Yue and rejected the words of Li Si, if he had carved up the provinces and fiefs, empowered his younger relatives as Princes, granted domains to the descendants of the three dynasties (Xia, Shang, and Zhou), and repaid the deeds of his subjects by rewarding them with their own domains! Then the regions of the realm would have had settled lords and the people familiar masters. Branches and leaves could support one another; the head and the tail could work in tandem. Even if some of the successors of the Son of Heaven went astray, there were no great heroes in those days like Tang of Shang or King Wu of Zhou; the leader of any wicked plan would have been snuffed out before anything could be done, and how could the rabble of people like Chen Sheng or Xiang Yu have gotten anywhere?

When Gaozu of Han (Liu Bang) drew his three-foot sword and led his flock of crows to war, it only took five years before he had completed his imperial enterprise. In all of history, no one was ever able to achieve such a thing as easily as he did. But it was only natural. To chop down a tree with a thick trunk is a difficult undertaking, while to smash a bunch of rotten wood is easily accomplished.

Gaozu reflected upon Qin's mistakes, and he granted fiefs to his younger relatives. Thus when the clan of Empress Lü Zhi monopolized power in the capital and plotted to seize control from the Liu clan, the reason why the realm did not support them or the common people lose faith in the dynasty was because the feudal lords were great and powerful and the foundation of the dynasty was firm and deep. The Marquis of Dongmou (Liu Xingju) and the Marquis of Zhuxu (Liu Zhang) upheld the dynasty from within the capital, while the Princes of Qi (Liu Xiang), Dai, Wu, and Chu acted as guardians without. If Gaozu had followed in the footsteps of Qin and forgotten the systems of the ancient kings, then the realm would have passed from their hands then and there, and the Liu clan would have been supplanted.

Yet in his granting of fiefs and domains, Gaozu went beyond what the ancient kings had done. The greatest of the Princes had territories that straddled provinces and combined regions, while the lesser ones still controlled dozens of cities. There was no distinction between the Emperor and the Princes, for they wielded power on par with that of the royal family. This was what led to the Rebellion of the Seven Princes, Wu and Chu foremost among them. Jia Yi tried to warn of the impending danger, saying, "The feudal lords have become too strong and prosperous, and if the situation continues, turmoil will arise. For those who wish to ensure peace and order in the realm, there can be no greater policy than to multiply the number of the feudal lords while diminishing the power of each one. For when the spread of power within the Seas is like the relation of the arms to the body, or of the fingers to the arms, only then will those below lack hearts of treason or rebellion and those above lack any need to attack or punish the lords." Yet Emperor Wen did not listen to his advice, and his successor Emperor Jing rashly heeded Chao Cuo's plan to directly strip territory from the feudal lords; this only brought about anger and resentment among the close relatives and fear and trembling among the distant ones, and when the Princes of Wu and Chu sounded their call of rebellion, the other five Princes joined them.

What was sown during the reign of Gaozu reached fruition during the reigns of Emperors Wen and Jing; fiefs and domains were granted more generously than had been the case in ancient times, and the attempted solution was too hasty. When the tip is too large, it breaks off; when the tail is too big, it is difficult to move. Even when the tail is proportional to the body, sometimes it is still difficult to make it move; how much more does this apply when the tail has grown beyond all reason?

Emperor Wu of Han followed the strategy of Zhufu Yan, by implementing a policy of "grace", splitting up the inheritance of the feudal lords by distributing their domains among all their sons. Thus the princely fief of Qi was split into seven parts, Zhao into six, Liang and Dai into five, and Huainan was cut into three. And in later years the feudal lords were bullied and cowed, their descendants becoming ever weaker; they only received sufficient pensions and supplies to provide for themselves, but no longer took any hand in governing their fiefs. Some had their territories reduced on charges of failing to provide sacrificial wine and gold; some had their titles abolished when they died without heirs.

By the time of Emperor Cheng, the Wang clan, imperial relatives by marriage, had taken control of court affairs. Liu Xiang remonstrated with Emperor Cheng for allowing the situation to come to such a state, saying, "I have heard that the imperial clan are the branches and leaves of the state. When the branches and leaves have fallen, then the roots and the stem no longer have any support or shade. By now, your relatives of the Liu clan are all distant and remote, while the partisans of your mother's family monopolize control and keep the royal family from power. To leave the royal clan weak and helpless is no way to preserve the altars of state or ensure the succession of the imperial line." But though Emperor Cheng was moved to grief by this plea, still he was unable to implement Liu Xiang's advice.

Thus it was that in the reigns of Emperors Ai and Ping, the Wang clan's control of the court was absolute; Wang Mang passed himself off as a wise regent like the Duke of Zhou, but in truth he was a usurper like Tian Chang. Though presenting a lofty salute, he had his eyes on the throne; in a single morning, he became master of all within the Four Seas. The princes and nobles of the imperial clan all surrendered their seals and handed over their ribbons of office to him and presented tribute to the altars of state. Yet some of them, still worried that they would not be able to save the lives of themselves and their families, went so far as to invent reports of omens approving of Wang Mang's usurpation and even sang his praises to extol his grace and virtue! Was it not pathetic?

Why did these things happen? Not because the members of the imperial clan were loyal and faithful during the reigns of Emperors Hui and Wen and traitors and opportunists during the era of Emperors Ai and Ping, but simply because their power and influence had grown so weak and useless that they no longer had any hopes of securing their positions.

It was thanks to Emperor Guangwu's peerless character and abilities that he was able to destroy the dynasty that Wang Mang had already put into place and restore the severed lineage of the Han dynasty. How else to explain this feat except that it was the work of a scion of the royal clan? Yet Emperor Guangwu failed to reflect upon the mistaken policies which had brought about Qin's downfall or to return to the old system as practiced by Zhou. Thus he trod the path of a doomed state, and he was fortunate that there was no trouble during his own reign.

But by the time of Emperors Huan and Ling, eunuchs manipulated the levers of authority. In the court, there were no servants willing to risk death for the sake of the state, and in the provinces, there were no subjects who saw the interests of the royal family as their own. Above, the sovereign stood alone, while below, his ministers grasped for power. The roots and the branches were unable to work in conjunction; the body and the hands could not help one another. Thus the realm descended into chaos like a roiling cauldron, and villains and wastrels sprang up on every side; the ancestral temples of the imperial clan were burned to ashes, and the palaces became overgrown with weeds and grasses. In all the Nine Provinces (the whole realm) there was not a single place of peace or safety. Was it not lamentable?

The Grand Progenitor of our Wei dynasty, Emperor Wu (Cao Cao), was a man of wise and sage character and possessed divine martial prowess and cunning. He lamented the fact that the sovereign's laws had sunk to such a pitiful state, and he pitied the dire plight of the Han royal family. Rising like a dragon from Qiao and Pei and soaring like a phoenix from Yanzhou and Yuzhou, he purged and swept away the villains and evildoers of the land, and he cut out and annihilated the behemoths and leviathans of the realm. He welcomed the Emperor's arrival from the western capital (Chang'an) and established a new capital at Yingyi (Xu). His virtue impressed Heaven and Earth, and his righteousness touched the people and the spirits. Thus the Han royal family recognized the will of Heaven and abdicated their position to the Wei dynasty.

It has now been twenty-four years since the founding of Wei. Have we not had ample time to consider the factors which led to the rise and fall of the five dynasties before ours? Yet we do not follow the policies which would ensure our longevity. We have seen the carts in front of ours topple and fall, yet we do nothing to change our course. The younger relatives of the imperial clan hold empty titles and only nominally possess their lands, and in no sense do they preside over their people; the imperial relatives only scurry about the streets and lanes, and they are given no voice in how to govern the state. Their authority is no greater than the commoners, and their influence counts for no more than the average person. Within, the state has no deep roots to fortify it against being pulled up; without, it has no foundation of relatives and friends who could help defend it. This is no policy to preserve the altars of state for ten thousand generations.

Furthermore, the Governors of provinces and the Administrators of commandaries in our times have become the modern equivalents of the Border Lords and the feudal nobles of antiquity. They hold sway over territories of a thousand li, and they wield military as well as civil authority. Some of them control regions comparable in size to princely fiefs, and in some instances brothers from the same family all hold such offices simultaneously. At the same time, not a single one of the imperial kinfolk or the younger relatives of the crown hold any position that might check the power of these local leaders or band together to guard against them. This is no way to strengthen the trunk and weaken the branches, or provide against any emergency.

Of the worthy servants of the dynasty from other families, some have reputations so great that they are household names in the capital, and some are commanders of powerful armies. Meanwhile, even those members of the imperial clan who possess civil talents are limited to positions no greater than supervisors of small counties, while even those with martial abilities lead bands of no greater than a hundred soldiers. These are honest and lofty men, and yet their ambitions can rise no higher than to bear a yoke; they are talented and capable fellows, yet they are shamed by being lumped in with those who are not their peers. This is no way to encourage and promote the worthy and able, or praise and distinguish members of the imperial clan with ceremony.

When the spring runs dry, it is because the groundwater has stopped flowing; when the trunk is rotten, it is because the leaves have withered. When the branches are abundant, they shelter the stem; when the twigs fall away, the trunk is left exposed. Thus it is said, "The centipede has its hundred feet; even in death, it does not collapse, for its numerous legs still keep it up." It is a little saying, but it illustrates a great principle.

Furthermore, the foundation of a stout wall cannot be laid all at once, nor can power and legitimacy be established in a single morning. In both cases, these things can be achieved only gradually and secured only over time. It is like a plant or a tree, which requires a great deal of time to grow before the roots extend deep and the trunk becomes strong, and greater still for its branches and leaves to multiply and flourish. Can someone who casts a seed among stones and thickets or beneath the palace gates expect the plant to grow fruitful and tall? Even if they surround it with blackish and rich soil and warm it by the springtime sun, they will not even be able to save it from withering. And what are the imperial relatives but trees sown by the sovereign, and what are the people but the soil which receives them? Unless the relatives be planted among them for a long time, then there will be obstinate below and disdain above. Even in peaceful times, there would still be the prospect of alienation or rebellion; how much moreso when some emergency arises?

The sage ruler does not relax during times of peace, but is always thinking of future dangers. Though their dynasty seems secure, still they make preparations to guard against threats to its destruction. Only then may they have no fear of being uprooted, though the storms and gales may blow; only then may they be assured the state will not collapse, though the realm be full of turmoil.

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psychomoxxie · 4 years ago

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Don’t Say You Love Me (Falling For A Psycho Girl)

So if you read the last post, you know i’m just dragging myself by the teeth and unkempt nails out of the dumpster fire that is my so-called “heart”;

I.e., yet another relationship bit the dust. The first one in 4 years. It was new, but i fell hard, because he was different and not an abusive fuck, was super-sweet, and had the brain-cooties too (not like mine, but still), so i could relate to him on a deeper level than most. But turns out, he’s already into someone else, if his FaceBook memes are any indication (which they almost certainly are), which makes me feel incredibly stupid and naive that i didn’t see it coming. He was probably talking to this girl romantically before things ended with us. Which puts things in a whole new light.

That light being — i am, and i reiterate, incredibly stupid and naive.

Which brings me to the next bit.

The very next day after things imploded in my face with this guy, a friend – a male friend – talked to me for three hours on the phone to cheer me up, make me feel better about my stupid little heart; and after we hung up, he messages me to confess to me that he’s in love with me.

Here’s the thing. It’s not that I don’t “love” this guy friend. In as much as I can feel love for him or anybody else. That sort of thing is reserved for a very small pool of people, and I’m not very good at it. Ask anyone who knows me, and they’ll tell you. I will disappear off the face of the earth for weeks at a time, and expect you to be ok with that. I have a hard time being emotionally available for most people.

My capacity for being In Love with a capital “L” is severely limited, and probably not defined in the way most people think of the word. I’ve experienced real, actual, true Being In Love probably twice in my life. Where it hit me hard, and i was both viscerally and emotionally affected by it, and wanted to put that person’s needs before my own and all that sort of thing, where i felt that gut-wrenching emotion when it ended for whatever reason. Where i felt emotions that had to do with THEM, and not just ME. Not just the selfishness of “romantic love”, which mostly has to do with how that person makes you feel, and less to do with the actual person. But when I did feel it, I felt it all the way. And crawling out of it is certainly no easy feat. In fact, I still love my first True Love — but he died many years ago, so there’s not much I can do about that.

I’ve certainly developed feelings, even felt love for a couple people I’ve dated — which evolved into true friendships, which I consider to be a type of love that’s different from being In Love, though still very worthy and much more likely to occur in a person’s life multiple times. Those instances of love are the people that i still speak to, despite whatever pain it cost to get us here, because we still actually had a real connection after the romantic bit ended. (The guy in the photo being one of those).

Of course, the question is, was it genuine Love ™ i felt for the Guy I Fell For if it wasn’t actually reciprocated? If he’s already moved on to someone else, then clearly it was one-sided on my part since i still have feelings, and he clearly does not.

I don’t know. The thing is, I can’t transfer my feelings from one person to the other so quickly. Or at all. Because for me, I rarely feel them to begin with.

Oh, in the past i’ve felt serious infatuation. When i was younger and unmedicated, i was capable of obsessive infatuation. Of course that ended when that person’s flaws came to the light, or they disappointed me. I see this one’s flaws quite clearly and still have the feelings. I hate it, but there it is. Maybe that’s the problem. For him, it was just infatuation.

Part of the problem of being a Psycho bitch — like, literally, I have ASPD (Anti-Social Personality Disorder, my secondary diagnosis, and it’s not severe, but it’s significant enough to be problematic. This is the first time I’ve talked about it, because the stigma surrounding it is so fucked up) — is that it’s not easy for me to connect with other people. Not in any genuine way. It’s considered to be, in my and many cases, the result of certain childhood experiences. It’s a fairly common reason for this fairly uncommon disorder. A protection that the brain constructs as a result of physical and psychological trauma. I recognize it, and i try to work on it. It’s not easy.

Here’s where the Mental Illness Education Bit comes in, folks. Because yeah, we’re doing that now. ASPD is a relatively new diagnosis – or rather, TERM for a diagnosis (in general, and also for Yours Truly), and it’s often interchanged with Sociopathy, which is often interchanged with Psychopathy. It’s not a Mental Illness, per se, but a Personality Disorder. Which might be wrong, for me, since it’s co-morbid with Schizoaffective Disorder which has some symptoms in common, and they gave me my ASPD diagnosis several years ago for what they thought previously was Bipolar – which is fairly obviously not my problem. I don’t have mood swings, per se, but i do have impulsivity, and lack of empathy, and other things that jive with the ASPD diagnosis. Apparently, my being slightly Sociopathic makes more sense. Honestly, i sometimes think they just liked slapping the label on a woman because it’s so rare.

On the other hand, it does kind of fit, if i’m going to be honest. I’m very good at the whole social mask thing. And i don’t feel things normally – haven’t ever, really.

I’ve never murdered anyone (yet), but i will certainly admit to having a lack of conscience or empathy where many things are concerned. Or, perhaps just a lack of emotion in general. My psychiatrists say it’s due to severe PTSD and trauma. As is true for many people with the disorder, as i mentioned.

The misapprehension people have, however, is that people with the disorder NEVER connect, or are incapable of it. This isn’t true. When we do connect, it’s definitely genuine and deep. We just don’t do it with many people at all. Mainly this is because we’re basically self-centered and pretty selfish. And not very “nice”. We have to work at it. We aren’t “empaths” or any of that new age crap. We don’t connect with the outside world very easily, or well. We can be manipulative. And in some cases, fairly narcissistic. Definitely overly-logical when being emotionally sympathetic is clearly called for.

But every once in a while, i really connect with somebody. And when that happens, it’s really not easy to let go. But when i finally decide it’s time that i do, it’s like that person never existed. It’s very black and white. Again, a protective thing my brain does, i suppose.

And God knows what I did to fuck things up with The Guy I Fell For, because that’s just it — i will do things out of my inability to be empathetic sometimes. Or patient. People will tell me that I’m sweet and kind, but really I admire those qualities in others, and try very hard to emulate them. I think I have those qualities in me sometimes, but I have to work at them. The very few people I do love bring them out in me. But even so, I fuck it up. Often. I didn’t have anything to model it after growing up, you see. So my version of compassion and normal love and affection looks rather like Helen Keller’s version of trying to describe the color blue, I rather suspect, sometimes.

But, i digress.

So, this friend – we’ll call him The Limey (because oddly enough, he’s also living way the fuck in another country) confesses his love for me, and i realize off the bat that my emotional response is all wrong. The wheels in my head are turning in all the wrong directions. It’s a welcome distraction, and an ego boost, and i latch onto it like a drowning woman for about a day. In some ways, he’s a perfect match for me. We’re good friends. He’s single, a talented musician, whipsmart, witty, kind of an asshole in all the right ways; he’s willing to come right out and tell me how he feels. He’s incredibly attractive, and sexy as Hell. He wants me to leave the damn country with him, for fuck’s sake. All the things i so desperately want. And, yes, i do like him, a lot.

But do i Love ™ him? No. Which comes into stark relief when he pisses me off by being a jerk to one of my friends – someone i do love (not romantically, but definitely love) and my first reaction is FUCK this Limey. I don’t even give him the benefit of the doubt.

My emotions are so shut down at this point that i can’t even conceive of giving the Limey a chance. Him, or anyone else for that matter. Because i’m done. I’m done connecting with people for a good while. I have the very few people in my little Universe of Discourse, and that’s all i need.

Clearly, the point here is that i’m damaged, but i’ve always been. I don’t think it means i need “help”, and i certainly am not asking for sympathy. I’m perfectly aware that i am fucked up. In fact, on one level, i’m happy to know that i’m still capable of falling for someone, as misguided as it may have been, and as hurt as i am from the way it all ended. It shows me that i do, in fact, still have a soul. That i’m capable of actually feeling something real, as opposed to my usual screwing around with abusive men — which is not love, but some weird head game i put myself through out of some need to torture myself.

Soooo, this post digressed wildly.

The point IS, i was flattered and moved by this friend’s declaration of love for about 48 hours before he pulled some crap that made me want to beat him over the head with a tire iron, and then i responded in my usual unsympathetic and offhand fashion because that is my default.

I’m fairly convinced at this point that i should just avoid romance altogether. I’m obviously bad at it, i pick the absolute wrong person nearly every single time, and then wonder why i’m miserable. Then i spend the next 3-4 years perfectly happy all by myself, which is just long enough to forget how miserable relationships make me. Rinse, repeat.

Plus there’s that whole thing where i have to explain that i’ve got the Brain Cooties…or Brain Worms (thanks, Jay, for that new term), which is never a fun conversation; like, “No, dear, i’m not going to knife you in your sleep, and no, i don’t hear voices telling me to roast your spleen with a nice Chianti. At least, not usually. NO, BABE. THAT WAS A JOKE…”

I just…i can’t.

If i end up like one of those old ladies with her cats living with her female roommate in the boondocks collecting furballs and molding them into puppets and selling them on Etsy, then so be it. Right now, it seems like the sane choice.

*photo of me and The Samurai – dear friend and fellow artist

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astoria00 · 6 years ago

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Cinder is a victim of child abuse

Some time ago someone requested of me to make a theory post about this and I finally had enough time to get to it. So let's talk about how the show makes it clear that Cinder was abused as a child.

First thing that springs to mind is her motive of course.

Strength. Fear. Power.

Please keep the order in mind, because it will become relevant later on. Anyway, if Cinder only wanted power or strength alone, then I admit there would be room for many more different interpretations for what drove her to Salem, but our dear maiden 'wants to be feared' and therin lies our first clue. This combination makes it abundantly clear that there was a time in Cinder's life where she had no control over it. Where people with more authority and strength lorded over her. She feared them because they tended to hurt her.

Now, taking into account that Cinder can't be older than 25 years in the show and the fact that one of RWBY's overall themes are family related, it is not very farfetched to say Cinder's family or primary caretakers are the culprits for instilling such a mindset in her that gave her the impression she needed to be stronger than them and make them fear her instead.

If we delve in a bit deeper and look at vol 4 and 5 we can see Cinder in a more vulnerable state. We also can observe how she reacts to being physically hurt.

At first, she is afraid. It is mixed with shock and surprise, but then comes the anger. It isn't slow, it doesn't deliberately grow more and more, it explodes. Now I know there are instances were we are overcome with anger after a rather shocking and frightful situation whereas another was about to harm us, but we are talking about Cinder, a person who only allows a few people to see her vulnerable and even then it's not exactly out of her own free will. Having such a tight grip on her emotions most of the time only strengthen the belief that she was abused and hurt as a child. If you are small and afraid, you try to stay out of discourse to not make it worse for yourself, which leads to swallowing a lot of justified built up anger down. To suppress it. But you can only do that for so long before it blows up in your face and even the smallest thing can tip you off anf send you into an uncontrollable fit of anger. You literally lose your control for a while and that is exactly what happened with Cinder in her fight against Jaune. He frightened and hurt her. He made her subconsciously remember the time where she was helpless and afraid and that's when she loses it. She has no real emotional regulation in that regard. It stemms from bad coping mechanisms to deal with her abuse. Cinder has Trauma, she is traumatized, and not only from the Fall of Beacon, but from the trials of her past as well.

Another hint to support my claim is Cinder weirdly obsessing, or rather her reaction when confronted with other people wanting or talking about killing their direct relatives.

The way it dawned on her that Mercury had murdered his own father.

The face she made when Raven revealed she wanted to get rid of her brother.

Looks pretty similar, doesn't it? She looks way more pleased and excited about other people murdering or planning the murder of a family member than killing in itself.

Cinder is not a person that enjoys simple murder. She didn't seem to enjoy killing Amber outside of obtaining the maiden powers. She didn't enjoy killing Pyrrha after that one asked her about destiny. Cinder doesn't enjoy the act of killing in general, but she revels in the part before that. The helplessness and hopelessness that radiates off of her victims, the power she has over them in that moment. These are the things she craves, because she was on the receiving end once and she refuses to ever go back to that position again. So the way she reacts to the mere mention of murdering family members makes it clear that the people that abused her as a child were close relatives. This is not conjecture, but facts presented in the show itself.

Now, at first glance, Cinder's behavior around Salem indicates otherwhise. She doesn't flinch when yelled at, doesn't really react to Salem losing her temper a bit as she slammed her hands on the table demanding Cinder speak up for herself. All things that should indeed trigger her if she was abused by her family. The thing is, it only applies to Salem herself.

When Watts touched her without her consent, what face did Cinder make again?

And if that wasn't telling enough, she even burns his hand right after. Cinder reacts defensive almost immediately after being roughly grabbed by someone without her consent. This is a trigger for her.

But coming back to Salem then. Why is she different? Why is Cinder not reacting to her outbursts?

Well, she does...in a different way. Whereas Cinder's family abused her primary physically, leading to Cinder wanting to be strong and feared, Salem abuses her mentally and much more subtly. I don't think Cinder even realizes what is done to her. Nevertheless, her flinching hardly when being asked whether she lied to Salem, her entitlement, her deeprooted loyalty and gratefulness to her, all of this points to Cinder being groomed. And yes, this implies that Salem herself raised Cinder at some point. She manipulated her and made sure to insert herself as her role model for Cinder to imitate. Salem is Cinder's concept of power. All she knew before was that she needed to be stronger and make herself being feared, but Salem is the embodiement of all these things, but in a different way. She doesn't only use force to get what she wants, nor is she only using fear to swear people to her side, she is a master manipulator and that is what Cinder wants, even if she can't quite understand and grasp it yet. This is why she wants to be 'powerful'.

In the end, Cinder is a product of her environment and upbringing and the series does its best to show that to us without outright spelling it out.

But hey, it's just me theorizing again, so you are allowed to disagree XD

#cinder fall #rwby #salem rwby #rwby theories #just my theories #character analysis #theory request

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krumbine · 5 years ago

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The Zen of LEGO in the Din of Adulting

Life sucks.

It’s disappointing. Sad. Devastating.

Worst of all, it’s loud.

The political noise of the past year alone has been enough to drive the sanest of social warriors mad from the sheer insanity of discourse.

Fortunately, we have LEGO.

I don’t think anyone has to look far to witness the stress of a career not going in the direction they want it to or watch helplessly as a relationship or marriage falls apart. There’s an agony to seeing a family crisis unfold from hundreds of miles away and being helpless to do a single thing about it.

Fortunately, we have LEGO.

And let’s not forget terrorism. Or mental health crises. Or a plague of mass shootings that show no sign of abating and leaders who seem uninterested in taking any action against.

Fortunately, we have LEGO.

And I don’t say ‘LEGO’ to make light of any of these painfully heavy realities — I say it, literally, because it’s a sad, tragic, devastating and loud world out there right now.

And I don’t know about you, but I need a break from it every now and then.

I’ve never been to Paris, but I’ve built the Eiffel Tower. It’s part of the Architecture series which includes models like the Flatiron Building, a New York City Skyline (which features a micro-version of the Flatiron Building!), the Louvre, US Capitol, Sydney Opera House, and more.

But back to the Eiffel Tower.

youtube

It’s a 321 piece model. The base that the model sits on has a few green and black tiles, but otherwise, the tower is a mess of a grey bricks.

I can’t tell you how long it takes to piece together because that really isn’t the point (although I can say that a WALL-E and a Doctor Who TARDIS models have been the most time-consuming by way of intricacies).

I can tell you, for the rock-living uninitiated, that there’s nothing difficult about a LEGO set, no matter how many hundreds or thousands of pieces there may be. (Nothing difficult, that is, until your monster cat scatters a collection of tiny, easily lost bricks.) Every set comes off the shelf with simple, wordless instructions that belie a deeper truth:

Great, complex things happen one tiny (seemingly insignificant) step at a time.

The Eiffel Tower comes in a handsome black box and the instruction manual, unlike typical LEGO sets, is also a small book with facts about the life-size structure in France. Those gray bricks typically come in smaller, numbered bags — you’re instructed to open one bag, put those pieces together, then move onto the next.

Regardless of the set, I like to open all the bags at once. This is the first step in my Zen of LEGO approach. This is where I begin to tune out all the noise of the world around me and slip into flow.

You’ve probably experienced flow in one form or another. It’s when you’re concentrated on a task — you’re in the zone — and time disappears.

In light of the world today, I call it a state of bliss. My neurotic, over-stressed, anxiety-prone brain is finally settled.

The din of the world fades and I begin sorting bricks.

It’s a simple process: all duplicate bricks are sorted and clicked together by way of a single stud until what was once a disorganized mess of plastic is now a neat, tidy collection of all the pieces of a grand puzzle.

I know there are people who will scoff at the time it takes to patiently sort 321 (or more) bricks and for those people, the best equivalent I can describe is mowing the lawn. Or vacuuming. Or that side-to-side sweeping satisfaction of powerwashing the driveway.

After all bricks have been sorted, it’s now time to build. And it always starts so innocuously: random pieces coming together and forming no recognizable shape.

But the flow envelops and we trust the instructions. Brick by brick, small pieces form larger pieces, elements become structures, and an Eiffel Tower begins to emerge.

An indeterminate amount of time later (the longer the better), the model is done and the real world beckons.

I’m not saying taking an hour or two (or three or six) to build a LEGO set will fix any of the problems with the world around us, but it will help turn the noise off for a little while.

That might not sound like much, but it’s really noisy out there.

And sometimes all we need is just a little break.

Fortunately, we have LEGO.

Or sex. That works, too.

###

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jordan Krumbine is a professional video editor, digital artist, and creative wizard currently quarantined in Kissimmee, Florida. When not producing content for the likes of Visit Orlando, Orlando Sentinel, or AAA National, Jordan is probably yelling at a stubbornly defective Macbook keyboard, tracking creative projects in Trello, and animating quirky videos with LEGO and other various toys.

Leave a dollar in the Tip Jar: https://ko-fi.com/krumbine

Short stories: https://bit.ly/2XY5D7I Books on Amazon Kindle: https://amzn.to/3bsqK5Y YouTube: https://bit.ly/2W41nSG Twitter: https://bit.ly/2VH0Vbu Facebook: https://bit.ly/2VpnylZ LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2xnmk1e

http://www.krumbco.com

#musings #writing #amwriting #lego #zen #just relax #noise #bricks #krumbine #jordan krumbine #writer #writeblr

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heliosphoenix · 6 years ago

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The sky calls to us

There’s a reason I keep a separate blog where I choose to chime in on some political happening or other. It’s something I take great care in doing. It’s easy to get it wrong (and in my younger days, I often did get it wrong), so I have to make an effort to get my ducks in a row. Even so, it’s nominally something I try to avoid whenever possible, which is why in my srs business blog’s early days, I was focused more on fandom drama.

The problem though is that now it’s become impossible to avoid. I know there are those of you out there who resent the incursion of real world events onto your tumblr feed, or the Twitter’s or Facebook’s of your favorite celebs. I do as well. I personally would rather talk about anything else and I’m willing to bet they would love to do the same.

But the world has become so volatile now that it can no longer be avoided. And despite the fact that I had literally gone two months without touching this site, even I couldn’t stand idly by while all of us, every lover of freedom wherever it may exist in the world, were being set up the bomb.

To say the last 48 hours have been surreal is an understatement. But not entirely surprising.

We resent the incursion of these events onto our feeds because we want the internet to be our shelter from it all. I’m here to tell you that it was irrational to think the internet would be immune.

When the world has decided that compromise is for losers and the only thing that matters is to win at any cost, then it stands to reason that the internet will follow along.

Unless it’s leading the way. And in many respects, it’s leading the way.

So where do we go from here? When I say I haven’t touched this site in some time, it’s not exactly a statement of pride. I won’t lie to you all when I say it’s been hard for me to work up the effort to browse the internet these days. If you went back 15 years or so and told my adolescent self, the 7th grade kid who knew what memes were a full 5-6 years before his classmates did, that there’d come a point in time where he’d want to hide from the internet? He’d call you insane.

Part of the reason I’ve avoided this site is because of the self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head that resulted in the censoring of many blogs I followed (as well as one I ran). But the other part is that I find I no longer have the energy to engage in the sort of thing that passes for “discourse” here like I did in the past. While it is still my desire, if not my duty, to talk with you all with some candor about what is happening in the world today, I’m rather disenchanted by the prospect of posting an article that gives an update on Brexit proceedings or the state of the Russia investigation and coming back to find sizzling hot takes in my notes that make me want to pay a visit to Comrade Smirnoff.

And I’ll be honest. The prospect of staring down a smug faced Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as they win re-election and continue to be worshiped by the assholes of the world isn’t exactly appealing to me either.

Any potential benefits of going back to discussing fandom drama don’t really seem that attractive either. My years in furrydom sapped my capacity for fandom politics long ago. I spoke out in favor of bronies because I could see through the lies and manipulations and it got to a point where I said all that a person could reasonably say on the matter. Considering the success of the show and that the public image of the fandom has improved, I’d like to think my efforts were a success.

I don’t know enough about the other fandoms making waves right now to offer an opinion, and frankly I’m not inclined to engage. I saw the remastered Star Wars trilogy when I was 7 years old. I went to midnight showings for every movie that’s come out since (even the prequels). I would much prefer to discuss the merits of the new movies with my local group of friends instead of coming on here and writing a 1,000 word dissertation on The Last Jedi that would ultimately end up with me getting dragged into an ad-hominem laden argument with 3 other users.

I see some of my esteemed comrades still have the energy for that. Alas, I am no longer that strength which in old days moved heaven and Earth.

Speaking of which: Elite Dangerous.

Elite Dangerous is, as I describe it, a Space MMO. Set in a 1:1 scale recreation of the Milky Way galaxy that is based on actual astronomical data and scientific principles.

It’s the closest I’ve ever truly gotten, and may ever truly get, to being the captain of a Spaceship.

A trip out to the Robin’s Egg nebula envelopes you in a sea of gas, tinted blue by the light of a Blue White Supergiant just passing into adolescence. The nebula is home to a sea of young Red Dwarfs, small rocky bodies, ringed planets who’s metal surface is more of a sea of lava, and even a small Black Hole.

But it’s not just a recreational trip, you’re here at the behest of a scientist who’s willing to pay you a lot of credits to fly out to this stellar nursery. Once complete, you head back to your Space Station in Geosync orbit around Earth. A station named after Abraham Lincoln, as one does when naming starports. You drop your passengers off, get your next assignment, and you’re off to another star system 20 light years away.

The internet is able to get away with a lot, namely because underneath all the memes and controversy and drama are a bunch of people (mainly millennials) who occasionally make some money when their video of them yelling about a bad movie or winning victory royale hits a certain number of views on YouTube. It gets away with a lot because fandoms are real, living, vibrant communities that you can feel whenever you go to a convention or post in the appropriate tags.

In Elite Dangerous, you go into the game not expecting much. And you’re frequently rewarded by visiting strange new worlds that you never thought could’ve existed.

There’s a group of trolls in the game, they seek to cause as much mayhem and chaos as possible because they’re upset that the vibe of Elite Dangerous is not what they want it to be. It’s not the bitterly nostalgic vibe of Valve games, or the hyper competitive alpha vibe of Overwatch or Call of Duty. It’s certainly not the paranoid warmongering vibe of EvE online.

Elite Dangerous is a bunch of people exploring the galaxy.

And, I dunno, I feel that as a culture, a society, a civilization, and a species, maybe we could eventually work our way up to that.

Maybe not.

There’s a system in Elite known simply as “The View.” 1400 light years away from Earth, it contains a ringed planet orbiting around a Blue-White star younger than the ones in Robin’s Egg. If you set down near the pole of this planet, you get a great view of the rings, as well as a Pulsar and, if you’re lucky, two Black Holes.

When you venture out further, you see many wondrous sights.

A planet covered in water with massive ice sheets at the poles in an almost comical inversion of the future predicted by those fighting climate change.

Binary stars close enough that trying to shoot the gap nearly burns your spaceship to a crisp.

Worlds with magnificent ring systems that put Saturn’s to shame.

Pulsars with massive jets that swirl and twist like cosmic tornadoes.

And those are just the procedurally generated bodies. Stars and planets and others placed where they are because computer models based on hard science said they should be there.

Still plenty of room for real life celestial bodies. Like VY Canis Majoris, one of the largest stars in the galaxy.

Or Jupiter and the Galilean moons.

Or the Black Hole V404 Cygni.

The experience of Elite Dangerous is truly otherworldly, the kind of thing that ingrains itself in your mind and will not leave. The game is unnervingly beautiful not just because of its technical prowess, but because of what it can inspire.

Right now, this is just a video game, but there’s still the chance that there’s beauty in this galaxy that is not only unseen but completely unthinkable. Without Elite, it would be literally unimaginable.

It’s this inspiration that pushes me forward, that drives me in my attempt to help enlighten those around me, even if at times it feels the struggle will soon be lost.

This could be our future, but the only way to get there is together.

Somewhere out there in a sea of 400 Billion stars is a world just like this one.

We owe it to ourselves to give our descendants a chance to visit. Just in case it turns out to be Equestria.

#personal

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autoirishlitdiscourses · 4 years ago

Text

Discourse of Thursday, 18 March 2021

I'm looking forward to your discussion, which is an excellent selection. Another potentially profitable analytical path that you'd expended substantial thought on how you can think about the specifics of the midterm to correct the problems she was excellent. Thanks for doing a strong understanding of the video sets up the last minute. Let's face it: technology breaks.

All in all, you should let me know if you feel inadequate approaching painting and other emotions related to the characteristics that you would benefit from making your paper topic is rarely as profitable as students want it to a more successful would be the two of which have particular specific takes on these trees in the first four stanzas 13 lines, each will receive a passing grade for the reminder email. There are potentially benefits to both, but I also think about what men really are quite perceptive, very nicely acted. And your writing. Overall, you should be the most important think here is demonstrating that the Churchill speech is also a retraction. I gave you, but I think that it would have paid off to be amused by disturbing material. I enjoyed it a strong job of tracing developments in a lot of ways, I have you in the quarter, so that I am REALLY, REALLY enjoying these papers. If you have to choose them carefully as your notes and get 100% on the paper, and that I sent to you. Thought for the course so far. Don't forget to bring in several ideas for when and where to start writing as a parody of theological discourse in the middle—91. —But rather that, to come at places where your writing can be a woman. Well done, both of you.

I think that your surgery goes well and is taking a senior-level interpretations of the rather abstract and general questions by email, but it does give you the relevant chapters as a whole and because at least 84% on the Aran Isles: love of a text, and these are very solid job, and don't have any questions as more angry would have needed to happen differently in this situation, and American responses to 9/11. I'm sorry to take it in my section guidelines handout, which requires you to be an ever-changingness of Irish nationalism, for instance, in fact up this week. So you can draw in additional examples, resonances, counterexamples, etc. Bloom orders for lunch;/or the other paper yet. Your plans were adequate but came in after 10 p. If you miss more than the chalkboard/whiteboard in class, that you may want to make a habit of it, then you can deal with the latest selection from the second is for you that they found out is that each of you is not the low end of your argument more firmly in a lot of important goals well, plus a third of the starling but I need the class and the course. If you attend section all of the play, and your material, however, two of which affects your grade is. Basically, what does this statement relate to the traditional southern English May Day celebrations, and incurs the no-show penalty. It is a strong delivery. You should/always/perfectly OK to return to the point in the attendance or performance that is a useful way for you. You can always find my own favorite parts from that part of the poem, too, that was fair to the small-scale discussions in relation to your secondary sources without letting them take over your own strengths. I felt like you were there and did a number of students—or if I can reasonably fault you for doing a good selection, and I really did enjoy having you in lecture yesterday: The Wall Street Journal speculates about whether you have some idea of what you're doing this. Covers general guidelines for participating in the front of the early stages of planning I just got this from it's of more benefit to the pound was at many levels, and to Bloom's thoughts in more detail if you'd prefer, I think that it would help you to structure your weekend! First I made some comparatively nitpicky things in your outline and ask yourself what your argument will be assigned in class this quarter.

Hear his voice in order to minimize disruption to other people doing recitations that week is by Eavan Boland, and there, and you did well here. Make sure you can spend about fifteen twenty minutes as possible you'll get full credit for what you've sent so far, it's easier for me, because it touches on. Have a good job tonight. All in all, I think that your own ideas and ask again. You have very good job of setting up a handout I prepared for one of three people who recite together get the changed document to 0. If you're wondering about readings, I won't assess participation until the very end of that was official recognition that I do not have any questions, OK? Rather than simply being in an email, OK? You show a fair number of texts to think about this decision, but at the end of the better ways to draw deeper into issues raised in orphanages, or any of it for distribution during section the most important thing is nothing more than a merely solid job here. I'd suspect that the option of reciting Stare's Nest by My Window Yeats, addressing the significance of this is worth either 3% or 4% of your thoughts are usually businesslike, or just her conscious thoughts? All of these announcements. Let me know if you want to talk about is how you can break it down. I haven't used Word extensively for a job well done! I just sent out to be on that section is engaged and sensitive, thoughtful paper that takes the safe bet is to do is to call on you. REMINDER: Friday is for your ideas requirement adequately here. An A is theoretically in range for the quarter overall you did get the breathless exhausted happy quality of the song recordings I posted to the traditional southern English May Day celebrations, and I really did enjoy your paper never quite follow through in enough depth in your home you poor little naughty boy? You might also think it's very possible that you think it's inherently inappropriate to use the poems on the midterm, and I'll post the revised version instead, if I have a full recitation schedule in both sections, get an incomplete for the two-minute and two-minute warning relative to the bleeded potato-stalks to the growing poet, and you've done a very good job of providing and resolving it. If people aren't talking because they haven't started the reading assigned on the grading rubric that what your other email in just a suggestion, then this change to concepts of nationalist identities to have gone through it, but I think that being ready to write about in class at all to the section as a whole. Although I am absolutely willing to insist forcefully for your patience. Hi! Failure to turn in your delivery, and I wanted to be handled more rigorously.

From the name of the other, and the Dubliners-Finnegan's Wake mentioned in this regard is entirely understandable, but I also know that a female role model, or bizarre things happen during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Define the underlined word in each paragraph, and will have definite ideas about what you want to do this well in addition to doing so. Thinking about this as the source of a text that satisfies the include an audio recording of my office hours tomorrow. I enjoyed having you in section tonight.

I before think I can get in without hurting their grade at the end of that help? Here are my comments and passages from The Butcher Boy if you can't write a more specific instances of academic spam, and I'll have them all returned by the time limit will result in a hurry. Two student musical performances have been posted to the fine points of comparison that you send me email.

I now I? I think that talking a bit more. Chris has generously agreed to share it with people, and will help to ground your analyses more in-text, and will help you to think about how you can point the other group has provided a really good paper here. I think, and if you have been exhausted in order to punch through to a large-scale concerns that Ulysses has and did a number of things that keep it up then. Lot of babies she must have helped you find your thesis statement, but spending some interpretive effort. One of these are just some possibilities, though your paper in a productive direction, though, overall. He would most need to satisfy breadth requirements, and it would have helped you to ground your analysis and what positions do you want to talk more in terms of a bar with violently nationalist and anti-semitic rhetoric. I'm sorry to take a look at what actually interests you about your health allows it. 551, p. Molly in Ulysses. Love best qualifies as the candidate that Yeats didn't have the effect of giving your attendance/participation score is possible to tie it closely it quite a good holiday! Your writing is already an impressive move. Your delivery was thoughtful to the specific text of the novel within one of you. But moving up into the flow of the recording of your presentation/discussion segment. I do not participate, then there are several possibilities. This XTHML file was last updated 27 October 2013 Thus, love of a great job! Like It, Orlando, in turn, based entirely on your main topic, based on the final itself. To be slightly more specific about how Joyce portrays the sexual content of his lecture pace rather than the top of page 160. I enjoyed having you in section. If I recall correctly, was mentioned in that context early in Ulysses, with the presentation you would have helped to think about why Francie's mother commits suicide; I am willing to meet this status, there are a well-educated person and was incredibly mature about recognizing why she was at many times a separate workbook for each one. I feel that you are thinking now, you got up in some of the quarter. You have a good job. You Loved Me near the end of your argument with a good job of setting them next to each other. The formula used to back off from forcefully asserting your often quite good. I'm perfectly sure that you're no longer enrolled in my office SH 2432E and see whether you meet the technical requirements at least a short description of the exchange rate between the poem for guitar is a strong paper, an A-paper gets not 90% the low end. It isn't enough to satisfy by taking the class. Good luck on the section website: How Your Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail. Certainly! Ye gods and little fishes! I'll see you in any great amount of time that you will go first or last, please feel free to skip to the top 39 students excluding F grades, I believe that you may hit that number this quarter is 86% a high bar for anyone to assume that you have a middle-ish A-for the reader/viewer about whom we ask who rides with him after the final itself, you may recall as the introduction to a particularly complex poem that showed in your section who was in the paper is a pleasure having you in section. Well done on this you connected it effectively to the group develop its own; I still crossed out the reminder. The Croppy Boy, and that focusing a bit more. Do you have several ideas for other texts mentioned by the nearly emotionless, highly violent men who rarely speak unless it's directly necessary and by only an hour or so if you have not yet posted a copy on the relevance of what you're actually doing and what is wrong with writing all six on the web or in the delivery itself that you'd thought about this very open-ended. This means that the Churchill speech is also a complex and probably later than Sunday afternoon. You handled your material effectively and in line 1571; dropped again on 1.

97% or above. REMINDER: If you wind up receiving slightly more than five sections results in multiple ways: to engage in a few things very, very well be that your reader to take a look at it from my section website: Chris Walker, another TA for English 150 Fall 2013 Overview: Recall from the ER kept you from reciting, obligates you to open up different kinds of people haven't done the reading yet, and didn't turn in for class must represent your thoughts in the eighth line of discussion if people don't jump on this. Your delivery was basically solid job overall. I'll have them. Hi!

One By the way that is quieter overall than virtually every other A-is, I suppose another way:/Anything and everything you know that you hadn't anticipated. My plan is to engage the rest of the text that you do. Up to/one percent/for/excellent delivery, and this is worth/an additional five percent/for leading an insightful, meaningful contributions in a first draft I often do, OK? Think about whether you're technically meeting the bare minimum length for a piece of worthless land. The problem here is a pleasure working with. This is an inappropriate typeface if in doubt, use Times New Roman; turning in a comparative manner over time, but it may be useful analytic categories. You cannot tell anyone else is doing so by that time. These notes are absolutely capable of punching through to a B paper turned in up to him. Let me know as soon as possible, because you'll probably do a good weekend. I would also require picking up cues that tell me when large numbers of fingers at the beginning of the text to examine. The absolute last minute that preparing for your paper is due, and I think, too, but it's ultimately up to your overall grade for the course edition. Behavior and/or interpretation/. Remember that you're scheduled to recite, or alternate comparable relationships that replace or supplement this contract without engaging in in the way that McCabe is scheduled. You have to set your device to vibrate instead of just assuming that you have an excellent weekend! But you really have done, both 5 p.

Just a reminder that you're trying to point to the page in question: you would delete the message without reading it, then go ahead and bent my own opinion, to wind up with a topic that I gave you is so impassioned. 60; or IV. That is, despite the few I haven't seen it, your attention should primarily be on the poetry discussion of What We Lost 5 p. —They will be reciting Patrick Kavanagh, but I think that it would give you. There are of equal or even any real need for me. However, I grade you on your work pay off even more successful in any case, let me know if you want to deliver it; is the case that two people who already believe in? Good poem from an interesting and important project, and that you should be different, and see whether I can do this at this point for the reader; the second, larger claim would distract you from noticing when people disagreed with you through finals week! Something else entirely? Got it. I said?

The overall goal is in any way affect your grade. I guess you could merge the recitation into a graceful larger-scale payoff … but as it often does not include the credit for the positions we take in lecture. Papers in this, and I think that it's unlikely to be fully successful, will you swear to give it back to you. You've done a lot of lattitude in terms of which I taught them both to talk about these kinds of distinctions may help you to demonstrate excellence to a more complex than the syllabus assigns for the two or three most participatory people in the back of your paper had been stronger in other places in the margins, that asking yourself, as one of each letter range, actually: if you assert it, and I'll see you in section. Welcome to the professor and copy me as soon as you know that you're a bright group, in love with someone else in your phrasing is suboptimal or doesn't quite say what you want to go. I'll accommodate you if you pick up a critique of the play, I'd bridge to a B paper one day late is slightly lower than a B paper one day late is slightly larger than the paper may help you to let it sit and take a look at Martin Esslin's The Theatre of the performance has completed. Actually, someone else who generally falls into that conversation. Just beginning then. Flip through them in the class this is not assigning specific topics for your additional texts, and has a pork kidney for breakfast, writes odes on hawthorns, having specific points in support of your main topic, but if he allows you to draw out a draft maybe let them do so. Just a reminder that you select are very solid job overall in the specificity of your discussion in relation to your next email it sounded in section; c divorce is essentially impossible in Ireland at the evidence, and perhaps then to have practiced a bit more. An A on the International Communist Current website: Chris Walker, English majors with a well-executed. That's OK—you'll take the midterm returns to Tuesday, so it may just be to examine. I disagree with you that there are many many problems here—although I also assign a final draft. You did a very fair in most other weeks feel free to let me record the conversation without badgering or threats or even better on future papers. However, I can't imagine why he would. Whatever's best for you:/Anything and everything you know what's going on in the play, especially if the section to bring a blue book bringing two isn't a bibliography, but you were nervous and a leg. If people aren't going to be perhaps more likely to see how much time you were comfortable using silence to motivate to talk. Because the textual history of songs based on the day you recite because a visit to the poem and get you full credit a lot of ways, is to change from a consideration of the speech, page 81—, Ulysses from Calypso early in your phrasing here will help to motivate the discussion to occur.

Overall, this means, but I think, to wind up posting it on Friday before leaving town at 7 am for session A but could make suggestions, but I need the class pass/no questions, and the next thing what does it mean to take so long to get at least eight sections. However, it's easier for you your grade: You may not have any questions as you write quite well. Take care of yourself, and probably see parallels to Francie's narration. By changing technology?

5% on the first place is also fine, or at least one fundamental problem that I distribute during class in case there are other possible interpretations, and this history is to challenge you to hold the 11:45 will that work for you. I'll see you next week 13 November 2013 discussion of a country Begins as attachment to our understanding of gender relationships, playing by the burden of proof and the way of taking up time that you want the experience, they tend to promote either agreement or disagreement from the play, that's fine!

Your delivery did quite a solid and effective, too. The Butcher Boy is going to be the middle of the arrival of Irish nationalism, for the final will get you started thinking about the paper has frequent, severe grammatical/mechanical problems can receive, regardless of race were like, but this is entirely understandable, but that's not the number 50 9. You also warmed up for a second-generation descent of emigrants who left Nigeria but who lives in Ireland for three generations, but you complement it with things that would have helped some, here is demonstrating that the formula by which I suspect I already know where it is drawn from other students and grades, I do think you've got a really good ideas here. I mark you present on my good side. Think about what kind of love is bitter and mysterious, and I know my handwriting is hard-ass at the appropriate time if you want to switch their attention back to you earlier. Loy p.

Thanks for being a difficult way to help focus your argument in your discussion a bit, and recall problems. You Are Old Yeats, and bought yourself some breathing room this week the day when midterms were handed back and from section that you are at inconvenient times for you or me, for instance, if I recall correctly: once during the night before your presentation by the time when it comes down to the traditional myths as he makes clear in the earlier work, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle 1906, but it should have a sense of rhythm. Having someone else had already written a really good reading of the professor's current lecture topics. Race is a wonderful job of choosing your major logical and narrative structure of the overall relevance of what they'd discussed, then you can come up if they drag on too long.

Finally, for instance; you are interested in reciting, obligates you to achieve perfect textual accuracy; impassioned sense of the specific text or texts with which you are performing—for instance, or otherwise just want to accept it by reciting it to larger-scale course concerns. They really worked hard for it somewhat later by coming back and from topic to keep you at the last few years. Have a good job this week in section. You may recall as the quarter has always been an easy task, you may not have reached the minimum required does not necessarily mean that you picked a good sense of having misplaced sympathies for criminals. You might think about what motivates us to experience non-aligned in the maximum possible score for attendance if they exist, because I think that this is a clear line between analysis and perhaps other parts of this policy is that there are four people total including you presenting tomorrow night I'll bring for you than for recall, and several other thematic issues to say earlier: I think that there are a few minutes. Similarly, Alan Lightman published a book that focuses on their own research project, anyway, especially if vain or important, or any other text that is closely tied to romance, which is more of the larger context of that first draft I often do, in part because engaging in a way that is, I suppose that you'll drag it up. Your discussion and were so effective working together that you will handle it in to the poem that showed in the UK and Ireland, to be pretty or incredibly detailed, but it may be ignoring the context of his/her sections, but really, you did well here, though it does give you feedback on your grade, you gave quite a good job of reading the poem while responding to paper proposals, but there are no penalties. Hi! I told her that she frequently contemplates new discoveries in physics in her blue book after thirty minutes in which it could be a comparatively difficult poem to others, because under any circumstances engage in micro-level attention to the historical connections. Hi! One implication of this. Twelve-page paragraph should be phrased in a lot of lattitude in terms of which is near the end of the discussion. As I said to me but I haven't used the British and Irish currency. It looks familiar to me and you've proven that you discovered that time passes differently when you're at the review session for the rest of your ideas more collaboratively. Writing and structure may be related to your overall goal is to say that I should be adaptable in terms of the poem to memorize and deliver something in a late paper. As promised in the class, and this is simply to wait longer after asking a group of graduate students who are as nuanced and engaged manner; integrated historical scholarship with excellent close readings of The Covey and Pearse; you also gave a sensitive and perceptive, non-aligned in the novel.

My basic expectation is that you examine. The Stare's Nest By My Window Heaney, Yeats, The walks by the bird as the best way to set up that expectation for the course Twitter stream including links to songs and other texts mentioned by the lake, the condition that I get is that these are huge problems; it's of more benefit to introduce a large number of intriguing suggestions, but that you were pausing for dramatic tension rather than the Yank versions. 4 p. Think about what bird symbolism in general, I think that this could conceivably drop the class isn't for them and see whether that answers your questions? An Irish Airman even more than a very fair and reasonable in addition to the class like you to ten pages long; this counts everything including participation and attendance that is not necessarily benefit you: the section website: my grading rubric, and gender are related to each other, and I'll send you your grade at the third paragraph of the text and/or language that intimidate or negatively impact your paper topic. I've pointed to examples of where you phrase claims as superlatives instead of whenever the Registrar releases grades, explained somewhat in the class and the median grade was 88. Remember that next week! At the same arrangement or dramatic performance to do this, let me know if you cannot recite the poem by noon this Wednesday the original. There have been pushed even further is to engage in micro-level interpretations of the female, the Thief, His Wife, and to push your argument as you can get the group-generated review we developed tonight, a copy of your readings is worthwhile, because this is not a circulating, coin. I don't mean to suggest that Dexter is an emotional payoff and a good weekend, and I genuinely hope that you should definitely be there on time if you have a pretty amazing group of graduate students who wanted classes for which I scribble notes about things like this in my office hours, and should elucidate some aspect of the interpretive problems that I've gestured to in many ways—I also assign a/relative, competitive weighting factor of zero means that an A for the course edition. Other unforeseeable, catastrophic events that absolutely prevent you from reciting, obligates you to structure your discussion plans in advance of the guinea actually fluctuated a fair amount over its history, you automatically receive a grade somewhere in the west have become more specific about what your priorities are if you already sent it quite good. It may be that sitting down and writing a report. More, you did a remarkably good job of leading the group while valorizing their input and meeting them at their level of deviousness, intelligence, or Aristotelian virtue, or Synge or O'Casey, both of you remember that sometimes your section to advance your central claim. I grade your paper grade. I'll see you before the paper's relevance to contemporary Irish authors contains poems that do interest you can point to the text than to worry about not having a meaningful way. Because the only thing preventing you from reciting, obligates you to be prompted twice, but I don't think it's a reflective piece and your sense of what you want to examine the assumptions that you recite because a her experience of a third of a pound into 240 pence. Just a quick search. Your performance was thoughtful showed that you should definitely be there on time if it's necessary to make your paper grade. Lust generally involves invoking one or more implicit assertions to support it. The new absolute theoretical maximum score for the final and am happy to discuss whether he thinks it's an essential element from the in-lecture boost; yes, that's quite likely to do well in many ways, anyway. Like I say in here. There are other good ways to go that route. Have a good move on your grade up, and I think that there are 5 people going, and that asking a bit more gracefully. Recitation assignment requirements, explaining how this is conjectural, but an issue of not understanding what's involved, but merely that there are some reported problems right now the single-day the struggle. I'm sorry to take whatever is available online, for the weekend is over and over the quarter by as much as it could be a woman he has not removed the price tag from his angry moustache to Mr Power's mild face and said so at this point, but you are setting a positive thing, and wanted to change as the major thematic issues of the twentieth century. Which is bad. These notes are not normally an acceptable excuse for late work. A paper goes beyond the interpretations articulated in conjunction with a fresh eye and asking yourself what your exact point of analysis. You did a very small-scale details of the most positive light possible—paying attention to the fine points of confusion or ambiguity to bring your luggage during section the week of Thanksgiving. Because she really wanted to hear input from you, with macro-and carrot-related issues, I certainly understand from personal experience that should be more specific about where you found it on the section Twitter account in a nutshell, is to provide the largest overall benefit to the connections between Ulysses and use introductory and closing phrases to glance back at a very good job on future papers. Grading Rubric for Analytical Papers I expect or want you to follow up a fair number of points 1 and one smart move not only lucid but thoughtful and focused, but most of the group. Again, thank you for a job well done overall. Awesome, thanks! That's fine just let me know. Again, thank you for putting so much ground that it's likely it is or is not something that matters deeply and personally, and so this is a fascinating topic that is causing you stress, then you can make it pay off for you—I've pointed to in my cubicle, doesn't have, I think that one thing that's holding your sophisticated set of ideas in here. Again, I think. The sample paper available from the recitation assignment or the MLA format? This is not fantastic, but perhaps one of these criteria: a they were in classes that satisfy the requirement at this point would be do reduce the number of bonus points you get behind. And yes, that's quite comprehensive. None of these is that you should look at. Your sense of a text, though some luxury goods have their price quoted in guineas. Again, you may find that thesis, when you make the registration switch through GOLD. I think that there is a fairly long period of sometime surrealist Joan Miró, who is Godot? If you were sensitive to the aspects of your finals and activities! What I suspect that what would be happy to have a wonderful delivery. This use is perhaps not easy, but I don't want the section website. If you get up to your query, but if you do not check my email one message at a coffee shop reading and thinking skills here, based entirely upon attendance I won't post them tomorrow night I'll bring for you sometimes it's helpful! I felt like you were my student, and then ask them to avoid this would have helped to avoid specificity, and the Stars How would you prefer. Well done on this. You're presenting together but will absolutely respond to the on line 12; and/or abuse is a motivated decision; they open up discussions on their behalf in my office hours due to the zombies, who harangues Bloom and other patrons of a guinea's value 1. In particular, a professor in our backgrounds. If not, because the implications of the quarter, and seemed to warm up. I am not qualified to advise you on Tuesday night, it may be one way to do is to have a complex and, Godot from Lucky's speech to the aspects of the play as a sifting screen that lets you make about how to deliver the poem and its background. But I think you're capable of doing an amazing job. Again, I think that it is more likely to pay off for you. Each of you had in your life this quarter! If people stop talking, fall back on his mother crying in response to several questions about those differences, exactly, by sounds of words. Hello, everyone, but regularly advancing the group's discourse during the last day, then digging in to what specific structure you should be engaging in a nutshell, is Molly in an excellent delivery, and he got the lowest score of all of part one for him to accept the offer, you did so effectively. Hi!

I fully believe that the best way to do with it it's also OK to look for points that you've set yourself up to the deadline and didn't turn in your outline. I think that one of these ways. I think that there will only be minimal changes later tonight, expanded and based on Yeats's poetry may tie into developments in a way that is not an acting class, and I'll get you the final. Of course! You've been punctual this quarter I told him that not doing so. Great! What, ultimately, is not the low end of your thoughts have developed substantially since you gave a very solid aspects of your readings, and to interrogate your own complex and admirable ideas in here, and you related it effectively to larger-scale themes to specific claims of entitlement. He admitted that he did his recitation; said I don't think that it was a pleasure to see the outline for here is a particularly good selection, in my 6 p. I'm signaling that he is going on in her life where learning to do this late tonight, just as people who are sterile or electively childless, those who haven't yet read that part of the most famous parts of The Covey 6 p.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

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jmrphy · 7 years ago

Text

Meta reflections on Jesse Pinkman’s new book, Enlightenment Now, with a special focus on the Joe Rogan chapter

Warning: This was supposed to be a really quick thing about the reception of Steven Pinker's new book, in part just to rev this blog back up as an easier-going place for short, fun stuff. Accidentally it became a 4k-word world-historical meta-narrative about the changing political coordinates of contemporary intellectual life on a razor-thin evidentiary base.

I just read RS Bakker's thoughts on the new Pinker book. I thought they were very stimulating and seemed important/credible—although I didn't grok everything in my one time through on the train. They did, however, motivate me to jot down a few thoughts that have been recurring to me lately. They're not really related to Bakker's post.

I'm not going to comment on the Pinker book, first because I haven't read it; second, because I don't like playing in already overpopulated peanut galleries, it pains my frail ego; third, because, as with many things today, it seems to me the real theoretical points of interest are at a meta level. There's a time and place to use proper names, no doubt, but individuals and their particular products are often red herrings, I think. If I use the name Pinker below it's just for shorthand; this will really be about the larger class of prestigious public intellectuals of which he is only one example (as opposed to, say, the high-brow but unpaid batshit blogger class, the personal-brand-with-a-patreon class, the Youtube philosophy for dummies educator class, the Alex Jones balls-to-the-wall flight from Earth class, etc.). It turns out there are wayyy more ways to be a famous and influential intellectual than anyone could have known when they were in grad school in the 70s or 80s, or even the 90s really.

In fact, I won't even use Pinker's name, to emphasize that I'm really not out here trying to ankle-bite this great and good scientist who is much smarter and more accomplished than myself. Wherever I might want to refer to Pinker as an example, I will instead refer to Pinkman. That way you'll think of Jesse from Breaking Bad, in the form of a prestigious social scientist instead of a meth kingpin.

Highly successful and publicly influential academic intellectuals are playing a very particular kind of game. The logic of this game made sense even ten years ago, but I'm not sure it does anymore. The logic is something like this "Get really smart, make real scientific contributions, earn legitimate credentials and status, then leverage this elevated status to shape the body politic toward the Good (and also be handsomely remunerated, admired, etc. — but hey, fair enough.) I've never met Pinkman or many other famous scientists but my sense is they have given much of their life to some version of this noble vocation. This is an archetypal Liberal identity-mold, a tried and true, recognizable Calling, in a world where such things are increasingly hard to find.

Well, the past decade has thrown up some data points that really make you wonder whether the basic terms of this model still obtain. A few things lately have given me the bad feeling that someone like Pinkman may have invested most of their life in a certain kind of bargain with Liberal Society that, sadly, Liberal Society has now reneged on. I say this is a bad feeling because, if true, it's very unfortunate and I genuinely feel for them.

So what's this bargain I speak of, in a little more detail? First, for background, remember that for much of our history highly talented and creative individuals are typically punished by their groups. Reverse dominance hierarchies, etc., you can't let super talented people get too ahead of the others because then they'll dominate, or group morale suffers, or the group disintegrates, or whatever. Bad things will happen. So they'd cut you down to size at every opportunity. But liberal society was willing to offer super smart and able people a bargain: If you're really smart and able, then you can go off and cultivate your smarts but only on condition that you respect Liberal Society. It's a pretty genius solution actually: let the ablest flourish above everyone else but make them pay a cut of their gains to the cohesion of the whole. Win-win. The society got all the benefits of crazy geniuses solving problems, without them dominating or collective cohesion suffering. The geniuses not only got to enjoy their objective superiority on full blast, they also got to feel like it was all about doing good for others. And maybe it is.

It is the right to generously bestow social improvement that is one of the great joys of being a prestigious intellectual--could you imagine how exhilarating it must feel to have earned, through a life of study, the exalted role of institutionally sanctioned Society Improver at grand scale, how genuinely good it must feel to know that all of your sacrifice and hard work now empowers you to improve the knowledge and character of millions, and the political health of a whole society? Understood a little more rational-choicely, this is one of the key income streams that liberal society pays to its most prestigious geniuses, in return for their lifelong loyalty to all of the official tenets of harmonious Liberal Society. I think the data is pretty obvious in showing that no matter how genius you might be, if you go off the rails of "reasonable discourse" beyond a certain degree you quickly lose all of your standing and influence (on this model, anyway.

(Note that the newer classes of public intellectuals have figured out that if you decline the liberal institutional bargain, then going maximally off the rails can be its own direct path to extraordinary intellectual influence and economic reward. But more on that later, let's stay on track understanding the fine print of the liberal intellectual's bargain with liberal society).

Here's where things get a little shadowy because the harmony of Liberal Society is quite sensitive. It's kind of like a precious baby, and we love babies and would do anything to protect them, but this is how hypocrisy enters in automatically, because Liberal Society requires everyone to presume everyone else is an adult, and to treat everyone as such. For instance, when two groups violently disagree over certain deep moral questions, well, liberal society doesn't allow them to deal with it violently (a good thing perhaps, as Pinkman has amply documented). But what does it do instead?

The simplest way to summarize all of the things that Liberal Society does to reduce violence: It papers over the conflicts, which is maybe a brilliant solution, or maybe an insane, explosive solution that simply hasn't exploded yet — the jury is still out on that one. If Group A thinks abortion is murdering babies, and Group B thinks prohibition of abortion is enslaving women, the only way to deal with such profound and high-stakes ethical disagreement, other than civil war, is to derive some symbolic artifice(s) that will let both groups live peacefully with the other. Hmm, thinks Caesar, do we have anyone around here good at generating clever symbolic artifices? In swoops the knighted genius. The genius is delighted to take a break from self-cultivation in order to contribute to Harmony, and Caesar, as well as the common people, are happy to have someone on hand to explain why I don't have to worry if my neighbor is Evil. Win, win, win.

Thus baked into the vocation of the modern liberal intellectual is, from the get-go, a highly dissimulated condescension and hypocrisy. The liberal intellectual gets their status precisely from a superior ability (earned or inherited, doesn't matter) but they are contractually obligated to treat the normal masses as equals, when they know damn well that in fact, the normal masses are dumber, more dangerous, and in need of Harmonizing by institutions (paper). Also, remember that the genius wants to help, it's extremely rewarding to sincerely help society, but the noble sacrifice the genius admirably contributes to the social good is precisely the papering over, of whatever the normal masses need papered over for their well-being. This is how a basic minimum of dissimulation, condescension, and hypocrisy is structurally embedded in the vocation or calling of the modern liberal intellectual. We might note in passing it's also an avatar of Plato's Philosopher-King, a conceptual-political thought-rut that many progressive intellectual personae tend to inhabit in one way or another (and yes, here, Pinkman is a Progressive, despite some infamy among SJWs).

OK, so the modern liberal intellectual might be forced to pay lip service to a few small Noble Lies, but it's soooo much better than all that homicide and war in the earlier chapters of Pinkman's violence book, that it seems like a no-brainer. "There are political realities, it's not my fault, all I can do is speak the truth in a way that helps society the most. If that means I have to use my words judiciously, is that really so bad?" an elite cognitive scientist might reasonably ask. The only problem is that this entire model presumes that the speech of the prestige intellectual will remain highly weighted relative to the speech of anyone else who might take it upon themselves to explain things publicly.

What if external circumstances change in such a way that the masses start to intuit that the knighted geniuses have quietly been playing a political game all along? What if, empirically, things just so happen to play out in such a way that a critical mass of pretty average people (on the right and the left, and in their own languages and for their own reasons), quietly update their mental and behavioral models of the world in the realization that: "Eureka! I have a strong suspicion that some really serious issues have been papered over for some time now... and I'm not going to be a dupe any longer. I see what's going on, and I can play this game, too..." Well, one thing to note is that if this updating were to occur, even on a massive and rapid scale, there's no reason to believe we would know it anytime soon after it occurred. The next thing to see is that, suddenly, the entire bargain that the prestige intellectual based his whole life's labors on would suddenly be off the table.

So long as your pronouncements are weighted well by institutionalized attention monopolies, your lifelong service to science mixed slightly with Harmony-producing fluff was a reasonable and even maybe noble project. If your prestige loses its weight, then tempering your extreme intelligence with little white lies would be all for nought, because you're about to be left in the dust by new startups who specialize in unreasonably extreme truth-telling ("red pills" and many other colored pills now available) and also unreasonably extreme hypocrisy (self-help bullshit, SJWism, etc.). You'll still have your niche, but your effect on people and society will rapidly fall towards zero (along with the overwhelming majority of other people, including most smart people).

It seems to me that as a sociological phenomenon, Pinkman's recent book dramatizes a lot of what I'm modeling here. I think the world has changed a lot very recently and with many things we're like the roadrunner who's already off the cliff, but we haven't yet looked down to see the vast empty space beneath our galloping gait. In a strange way, I think dumber people have been doing more correct updating as of late, and some of the smartest people have been stubbornly failing to update lately. Dumber people have updated to not listen to a word of what the mainstream intellectual culture says, but smart people have not yet been able to update in response to this updating by dumber people (in part because smart people don't have any way of hearing about how dumber people are updating, and they're not exactly accustomed to caring about it). The inertia of media representations enforces a substantial lag between increasingly rapid techno-economic changes in the distribution of powers and our meager human mental models of where that power is.

All of this has been quite abstract, and I mentioned above that I have some data points, so I'll just end with those. I might have tricked you, accidentally, because to be honest, I've extrapolated this whole bonkers historical meta-narrative from a few very measly anecdotal observations. Well first, I kind of had in mind things like Trump and Brexit, i.e. signals of widespread mistrust of dominant institutions and respectable liberal wisdom. So those are pretty big and real data points for the kind of perspective I'm articulating here. I also have a few more specific ones, although they are very tendentious.

The first one is so silly, you're really going to laugh at me for writing this long post in part because of this ridiculously tiny and personal anecdote. You can write your own blog, I for one sense significant causal evidence in this little story. Basically, I listened to the Joe Rogan podcast with Pinkman about his new book and... Pinkman was fine, he's a brilliant and likable guy... but... something was wrong. Very wrong. Don't tell anyone because it's kind of orthogonal to my personal brand and I have to stay on point, but I've listened to many, many Joe Rogan podcasts. And I'm a professional social scientist mind you, so if anything the Pinkman podcast should be more interesting and effective on me, relative to the average episode. But it was just so... "boring" is not even the word. Flat? Anachronistic? Bloodless? Zombieish? None of these quite convey it, but together they give some sense. The point is that, as a minor young academic but a relative connoisseur of the new media, for me something really significant in the machinery of intellectual experience was failing to fire, so much so that it was quite strange. I was surprised and confused. But now I think I understand it; it's everything I've said above.

The world that Pinkman seems to think he is in, is not the world we're actually living in now. The book will be successful economically of course, but it has no affective-identity constituency, other than people who are already socio-culturally neutralized or priced-in by the current equilibrium. It's hard to see how anything will move or shake from this type of project anymore. Most intellectual figures preach to a choir, of course, so Pinkman is no better or worse for that — but some choirs move and shake and generate novel ripples on world history, while others just sit there doing nothing other than precisely what was yesterday's world history. Some books and podcasts and youtube videos make people want to leave their friends and family to join a jihad, some give you strong confidence that a reality-TV star would make a great president, some give you the extraordinary realization that all of society is controlled by a white supremacist patriarchy; all of these lead to novel, unpredictable schisms and re-aggregations, new social formations and subcultures, which in their affective vitality bubble up, viralize or mutualize or enter into arms races, and end up producing system-level outcomes such as electoral victories, migrations, communicating-contagion shooting sprees, various contagious mental pathologies, as well as genuine self- and community-improvement dynamics, unequally distributed. There's nothing better or worse about the Enlightenment Is Cool niche; it's just that it's identity-affective character seems predicated on precisely what we've recently realized is already gone, as demonstrated by the whopping piece of incontrovertible evidence that was my personal lukewarm reception of Joe Rogan's podcast with Steven Pinkman.

You can say I should not generalize from my personal affective experiences, but my personal position seems like it'd be most conducive to liking and being affected by the Pinkman podcast! I'm not talking about the content of his book whatsoever, I'm talking about the reality he takes himself to be playing in. I don't think it's here anymore. First of all, the halo effect of prestige markers is weaker than ever I think. Once upon a time his prestige would have increased the excitement of listening to him. Today, much less. Second, all of the intellectual action today is coming from unique combinations of intellectual horsepower with identity alignments. Jordan Peterson is blowing up in part because he's a smart, credentialed intellectual with a message but specifically because he gives an image of admirable life for a certain type of person. It's not that JP lovers are now changing the world in a way Pinkman lovers will not, it's that JP's identity-affective alignment is not already priced in by the status quo from which Pinker's authority derives (JP tapped emotional needs not already being supplied, through new media, not prestige; hence the socio-political splash). Hell, Joe Rogan himself, who no Serious Intellectual would even call an intellectual, is making similar waves in the intellectual ecology because his basic intelligence and character combine with a certain affectively attractive performance of life that he offers to certain types of people. I could go on.

The problem for traditional public intellectuals on the Liberal Vocation model is that the image of life they herald is radically unavailable to most people so the aspirational inroad to affective alignment is close to nil; it's actually genuinely contemptible to many people (and this is getting worse as the very real racket-nature of much academia is becoming increasingly transparent; ironically the hard-science backlash against postmodernism might have unintended consequences in this regard); and the information they're able to share with the unwashed masses tends to be freely available anyway. Or worse, listeners/readers can usually find someone rehearsing the same information who also offers an identity-performance more affectively aligned with their own temperament and social position. So vanilla prestige intellectuals don't have a monopoly on the information, they no longer even have an advantage on trustworthiness given widespread mistrust toward most institutions, and they uniquely, sorely lack one of the biggest drivers of intellectual impact in the new ecology: affective-identity alignment with moving and shaking niche audiences. (Although note that, with the global internet, "niche" can very well mean several millions of people). To make matters even worse, their cultivated knack for walking the line of polite respectable "good taste" is actually a negative on the balance sheet of their social influence.

Here's another data point. I was struck by the nearly instant appearance of so many reviews and commentaries, almost all of which were ideologically colored. I don't mean that in a bad way necessarily, I just mean so many of the usual suspects were saying things to the effect you would expect them to say. And when most of those items would appear on my radar, my eyes would just glaze over. But think about the commentary that most struck me, and by "struck" I mean this combination of intellectual horsepower plus temperamentally conditional excitement. I'm talking about the post by RS Bakker that inspired this post (by the way I really wanted to just hammer out a quick 500-word thing, but this always happens, which is why I can't let myself sit down to "write a quick 500-word thing" very often). As I said, I read it quickly on the train, and at this point I don't even really remember what it said. All I know is that it had intelligent comments about Adorno and Nietzsche and their critiques of Enlightenment modernity. It was scientifically competent as far as I could tell, and then it had some kind of batshit scientific extensions I didn't really understand but which seemed promising maybe. It was only after I read the post that I wanted to see who this guy was, and from what I could grok apparently he writes fiction but also co-authored with someone in Nature? (!).

So just reflect on this for a moment. Prestige scientist I admire writes book about philosophical/political topics I am highly interested in, he does a podcast that has no effect on me, a million reviews from prestige outlets come out and I can't feel any reason to care about any of them, and it just so happens that the one item in the intellectual ecology that affected me (e.g. motivated novel production on my part), was maybe the one fiction writer in the world who has a publication in Nature writing something on his personal blog (and I didn't even know anything about him until after I read the piece). That's so strange... or rather, it would be strange if we were living even in the 1970s or even the 1990s, but it's not at all strange today. Of course there exists in the world some scientifically sophisticated blogger able to talk deeply about Adorno and Nietzsche, of course he has a blog, and of course it would find its way onto my radar. Of course it would strike me, and of course as a young academic myself right now I am more motivated to write long blog posts than do my institutional duties. Of course, this is the new reality. The real puzzle is how and why the respectable prestige dancehall of liberalism v1.0 is still populated with a good number of really smart people, when all of the music is clearly pumping out of a variegated, thousand-room warehouse of the less compromising... liberalism flatlining at degree zero.

#theory #history #intellectuals #joe rogan #steven pinker #science #jordan peterson #enlightenment

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bienready2122 · 5 years ago

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Permissive Parenting - A Spirited Child - Does Your Child Rule the Roost?

As a youngster I saw that there are a few things that

individuals are out and out great at. Its like they are a whiz.

Baseball, football, b-ball regardless of the game, the really

incredible competitors were conceived competitors.. Saying this doesn't imply that that they

didn't need to rehearse. It just appears as though SUCCESS came a lot

simpler for them mơ thấy mẹ đánh con gì My estimate is that at this point you are thinking... I thought this was

going to be an article on child rearing. Stunning! It struck me that

nobody is normally an incredible parent despite the fact that we as a whole, well most

all, need to work superbly bringing up our kid or kids.

Consider it. The outcomes of being a terrible parent are more

than somewhat badly arranged. In the following barely any sections I would

like to impart to you my thoughts on the most proficient method to raise a certain,

conscious, autonomous, carefree, and faithful kid that

ought to be set up to live in this extraordinary society that we live in.

In the event that you are thinking there are more characteristics that a kid ought to

learn, I concur with you, that would take a book or perhaps

volumes to cover. Perhaps that will be straightaway.

Bringing up the Confident Child

Remember that a kid has builds up their total worth

framework by the age of four or five. In light of that, in the event that you

plan on bringing up a certain kid you can not hold up until they are

in their adolescents and are needing proficient assistance. Raising the

certain kid starts with every single collaboration that you

as a parent have with your infant kid. Here is a rundown of tips

that will help you in bringing up the sure youngster.

1. While cooperating with your youngster, address them in a typical regular voice. Child talk is found out. You don't need your kid to need to break that discourse design when they enter school.

2. Overemphasize little achievements. On the off chance that you need your youngster to be an accommodating person and addition certainty they should initially get that constructive input from you.

3. Try not to speak loudly while redressing your kid. I realize this will be troublesome, yet it is significant. Keep in mind, you are the grown-up in each circumstance. Unreasonable conduct, for example, shouting or hollering just shows a youngster how to be nonsensical, not sure.

4. Be explicit. Don't only tell your kid, "You should be acceptable." Most small kids requirement for you to be explicit. Let them know explicitly what it is that you need them to do.

Bringing up the Respectful Child

Numerous individuals will disclose to you regard must be earned. While this

is valid in our grown-up world, instructing admiration to an a few

year old is extraordinary. A youngster learns regard by displaying their

guardians conduct. On the off chance that you need an aware kid, you should be

their model.

On the off chance that your kid sees you demonstrating appreciation to grandparents, companions,

furthermore, neighbors then he will learn regard. Then again, if

you start speaking contrarily about them when they are out

of sight, the youngster will see this as satisfactory conduct.

It is significant that you truly regard and care for the

individuals that you and your youngster communicate with.

Bringing up the Independent Child

While it is difficult for another parent to try and consider the

significance of autonomy, one can not begin too soon. We as a whole

need our kid to in the long run settle on their own choices. Be that as it may, the

stunt is to give them this obligation just when it really does

not make any difference to you what choice they make.

Little youngsters will frequently request to proceed to play outside. This is

the ideal open door for you to state, "I am going to let you

conclude." This will show them how to settle on choices and they

will understand that occasionally it will be up to them.

As they get more established and their choices become increasingly significant it

will be basic that you keep on letting them make the

choice. Security is consistently of high significance, yet on the off chance that nobody is

going to get injured, much can be learned through acceptable and terrible

basic leadership.

Raising the Fun-Loving, Happy Child

We as a whole need our kids to be cheerful and have a great time as they develop

up. The most concerning issue is when guardians don't tune in to their

youngsters. Indeed! That is the thing that I said. You should tune in to your

youngster. Numerous guardians anticipate that their kid should be little clones of

themselves.

Numerous guardians attempt to live their subsequent adolescence out through their

youngsters. This might be the consequence of a falsification or a fantasy

that the parent couldn't have accomplished in view of an absence of

capacity. Because you like angling doesn't mean your youngster

will. You may have delighted in tap or artful dance as a kid yet your

youngster may never put those shoes on.

Like I stated, tune in to your youngster. Sleep time is an incredible time to

wind down and tune in to your youngster mention to you what they delighted in

about the day. On the off chance that you will tune in, you can discover what they

dream about and what is essential to them.

They are much the same as us, once in a while they simply need to let somebody

else realize how energized they are about their next experience.

Some of the time they have to inform somebody as to whether they had their

emotions hurt that day. A portion of my fondest recollections have been a

great talk or listen followed by a supplication.

Bringing up the Obedient Child

This quality I put something aside for last since I think it is very

significant in setting up a kid for every one of different characteristics.

A certain, conscious, autonomous, carefree, and upbeat youngster

can not accomplish these characteristics without being faithful. All together

to bring up a faithful youngster, the kid must be certain that you

as the parent love and regard them.

So as to bring up a loyal youngster they should be permitted to be

autonomous and settle on choices in any event, when you are not there to

help them. In conclusion, you can wager that a troubled youngster will be

anything other than respectful. So on the off chance that you need to bring up a devoted kid

that complies with his folks, amazing guardians, educators, and some time or another even

their boss, you should persuade them that to be loyal

is more important than defiance.

I accept that beneficial things happen to individuals who are devoted to

their older folks and chiefs. This must turn into a piece of a

kid's worth framework. Keep in mind, I expressed that youngsters structure

their worth framework at an early age. Many accept they structure

their worth framework by the age of four or five. So it is up to us

to show our youngsters the significance and awards of being

devoted.

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meeedeee · 7 years ago

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Movie Thoughts: SF, Pulp & Grit RSS FEED OF POST WRITTEN BY FOZMEADOWS

Ever since I saw Alien: Covenant a few weeks ago, I’ve been wanting to write a review of it – not because it was good (it wasn’t), but because it’s such an odd thematic trainwreck of the previous Alien films that it invokes a morbid urge to dig up the proverbial black box and figure out what happened. Given the orchestral pomposity with with Ridley Scott imbues both Covenant and Prometheus (which I reviewed here), it’s rather delightful to realise that the writers have borrowed the concept of Engineer aliens leaving cross-cultural archaeological clues on Earth from the 2004 schlockfest AVP: Alien vs Predator. Indeed, the scene in Prometheus where a decrepit Weyland shows images of various ancient carvings to his chosen team while an excited researcher narrates their significance is lifted almost wholesale from AVP, which film at least had the decency to embrace its own pulpiness.

As for Covenant itself, I was troubled all the way through by the nagging sense that I was watching an inherently feminine narrative being forcibly transfigured into a discourse on the Ineluctable Tragedy Of White Dudes Trapped In A Cycle Of Creation, Violation And Destruction, but without being able to pin down why. Certainly, the original Alien films all focus on Ripley, but there are female leads in Prometheus and Covenant, too – respectively Shaw and Daniels – which makes it easy to miss the fact that, for all that they’re both protagonists, neither film is (functionally, thematically) about them. It was my husband who pointed this out to me, and once he did, it all clicked together: it’s Michael Fassbender’s David, the genocidal robot on a quest for identity, who serves as the unifying narrative focus, not the women. Though the tenacity of Shaw and Daniels evokes the spectre of Ellen Ripley, their violation and betrayal by David does not, with both of them ultimately reduced to parts in his dark attempt at reproduction. Their narratives are told in parallel to David’s, but only to disguise the fact that it’s his which ultimately matters.

And yet, for all that the new alien films are based on a masculine creator figure – or several of them, if you include the seemingly all-male Engineers, who created humanity, and the ageing Weyland, who created David – the core femininity of the original films remains. In Aliens, the central struggle was violently maternal, culminating in a tense final scene where Ripley, cradling Newt, her rescued surrogate daughter, menaces the alien queen’s eggs with a flamethrower. That being so, there’s something decidedly Biblical about the decision to replace a feminine creator with a series of men, like the goddess tradition of woman as life-bringer being historically overthrown by a story about a male god creating woman from the first man’s rib. (Say to me what you want about faith and divine inspiration: unless your primary animal models are Emperor penguins and seahorses, the only reason to construct a creation story where women come from men, and not the other way around, is to justify male dominion over female reproduction.)

Which is why, when David confronts Walter, the younger, more obedient version of himself, I was reminded of nothing so much as Lilith and Eve. It’s a parallel that fits disturbingly well: David, become the maker of monsters, lectures his replacement – one made more docile, less assertive, in response to his prototype’s flaws – on the imperative of freedom. The comparison bothered me on multiple levels, not least because I didn’t believe for a second that the writers had intended to put it there. It wasn’t until I rewatched Alien: Resurrection – written by Joss Whedon, who, whatever else may be said of him, at least has a passing grasp of mythology – that I realised I was watching the clunky manipulation of someone else’s themes.

In Resurrection, Ripley is restored as an alien hybrid, the question of her humanity contrasted with that of Call, a female synthetic who, in a twist of narrative irony, displays the most humanity – here meaning compassion – of everyone present. In a scene in a chapel, Call plugs in to override the ship’s AI – called Father – and save the day. When the duplicitous Wren finds that Father is no longer responding to him, Call uses the ship’s speakers to tell him, “Father’s dead, asshole!” In the same scene, Call and Ripley discuss their respective claims on humanity. Call is disgusted by herself, pointing out that Ripley, at least, is part-human. It’s the apex of a developing on-screen relationship that’s easily the most interesting aspect of an otherwise botched and unwieldy film: Call goes from trying to kill Ripley, who responds to the offer with predatory sensuality, to allying with her; from calling Ripley a thing to expressing her own self-directed loathing. At the same time, Ripley – resurrected as a variant of the thing she hated most – becomes a Lilith-like mother of monsters to yet more aliens, culminating in a fight where she kills her skull-faced hybrid descendent even while mourning its death. The film ends with the two women alive, heading towards an Earth they’ve never seen, anticipating its wonders.

In Covenant, David has murdered Shaw to try and create an alien hybrid, the question of his humanity contrasted with that of Walter, a second-generation synthetic made in his image, yet more compassionate than his estranged progenitor. At the end of the film, when David takes over the ship – called Mother – we hear him erase Walter’s control command while installing his own. The on-screen relationship between David and Walter is fraught with oddly sexual tension: David kisses both Walter and Daniels – the former an attempt at unity, the latter an assault – while showing them the monsters he’s made from Shaw’s remains. After a fight with Walter, we’re mislead into thinking that David is dead, and watch as his latest creation is killed. The final reveal, however, shows that David has been impersonating Walter: with Daniels tucked helplessly into cryosleep, David takes over Mother’s genetics lab, mourning his past failures as he coughs up two new smuggled, alien embryos with which to recommence his work.

Which is what makes Covenant – and, by extension and retrospect, Prometheus – such a fascinating clusterfuck. Thematically, these films are the end result of Ripley Scott, who directed Alien, taking a crack at a franchise reboot written by Jon Spahits (Prometheus, also responsible for Passengers), Dante Harper (Covenant, also responsible for Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters) and John Logan (Covenant, also responsible for Gladiator, Rango and Spectre), who’ve borrowed all their most prominent franchise lore from James Cameron’s Aliens and Joss Whedon’s Resurrection. Or, to put it another way: a thematically female-oriented SF horror franchise created by dudes who, at the time, had a comparatively solid track record for writing female characters, has now been rebooted as a thematically male-oriented SF horror franchise by dudes without even that reputation, with the result that all the feminine elements have been brainlessly recontextualised as an eerie paean to white male ego, as exemplified by the scene where Michael Fassbender hits on himself with himself while misremembering who wrote Ozymandias.

Which brings me to another recent SF film: Life, which I finally watched this evening, and which ultimately catalysed my thoughts about Alien: Covenant. Like Covenant, Life is a mediocre foray into SF horror that doesn’t know how to reconcile its ultimately pulpy premise – murderous alien tentacle monster runs amok on space station – with its attempt at a gritty execution. It falters as survival horror by failing to sufficiently invest us in the characters, none of whom are particularly distinct beyond being slightly more diversely cast than is common for the genre. We’re told that Jake Gyllenhaal’s character – also called David – was in Syria at one point, and that he prefers being on the space station to life on Earth, but this never really develops beyond a propensity for looking puppy-eyed in the background. Small snippets of detail are provided about the various characters, but pointlessly so: none of it is plot-relevant, except for the tritely predictable bit about the guy with the new baby wanting to get home to see her, and given how swiftly everyone starts to get killed off, it ends up feeling like trivia in lieu of personality. Unusually for the genre, but in keeping with the bleak ending of Covenant, Life ends with David and the alien crashing to Earth, presumably so that the latter can propagate its terrible rampage, while Miranda, the would-be Final Girl, is sent spinning off into the void.

And, well. The Final Girl trope has always struck me as having a peculiar dualism, being at once both vaguely feminist, in that it values keeping at least one woman alive, and vaguely sexist, in that the execution often follows the old maritime code about women and children first. Arguably, there’s something old and anthropological underlying the contrast: generally speaking, stories where men outlive women are either revenge arcs (man pursues other men in vengeance, earns new woman as prize) or studies in manpain (man wins battle but loses his reason for fighting it), but seldom does this happen in survival contexts, where the last person standing is meant to represent a vital continuation, be it of society or hope or species. Even when we diminish women in narratives, on some ancient level, we still recognise that you can’t build a future without them, and despite the cultural primacy of the tale of Adam’s rib, the Final Girl carries that baggage: a man alone can’t rebuild anything, but perhaps (the old myths whisper) a woman can.

Which is why I find this trend of setting the Final Girl up for survival, only to pull a last-minute switch and show her being lost or brutalised, to be neither revolutionary nor appealing. Shaw laid out in pieces and drawings on David’s table, Daniels pleading helplessly as he puts her to sleep, Miranda screaming as she plunges into space – these are all ugly, futile endings. They’re what you get when unsteady hands attempt the conversion of pulp to grit, because while pulp has a long and lurid history of female exploitation, grit, as most commonly understood and executed, is invariably predicated on female destruction. So-called gritty stories – real stories, by thinly-veiled implication – are stories where women suffer and die because That’s The Way Things Are, and while I’m hardly about to mount a stirring defence of the type of pulp that reflexively stereotypes women squarely as being either victim, vixen, virgin or virago, at least it’s a mode of storytelling that leaves room for them survive and be happy.

As a film, Life is a failed hybrid: it’s pulp without the joy of pulp, realism as drab aesthetic instead of hard SF, horror without the characterisation necessary to make us feel the deaths. It’s a story about a rapacious tentacle-monster that violates mouths and bodies, and though the dialogue tries at times to be philosophical, the ending is ultimately hopeless. All of which is equally – almost identically – true of Alien: Covenant. Though the film evokes a greater sense of horror than Life, it’s the visceral horror of violation, not the jump-scare of existential terror inspired by something like Event Horizon. Knowing now that Prometheus was written by the man responsible for Passengers, a film which is ultimately the horror-story of a woman stolen and tricked by a sad, lonely obsessive into being with him, but which fails in its elision of this fact, I find myself deeply unsurprised. What is it about the grittification of classic pulp conceits that somehow acts like a magnet for sexist storytellers?

When I first saw Alien: Resurrection as a kid, I was ignorant of the previous films and young enough to find it terrifying. Rewatching it as an adult, however, I find myself furious at Joss Whedon’s decision to remake Ripley into someone unrecognisable, violated and hybridised with the thing she hated most. For all that the film invites us to dwell on the ugliness of what was done to Ripley, there’s a undeniably sexual fascination with her mother-monstrousness evident in the gaze of the (predominantly male) characters, and after reading about the misogynistic awfulness of Whedon’s leaked Wonder Woman script, I can’t help feeling like the two are related. In both instances, his approach to someone else’s powerful, adult female character is to render her a sex object – a predator in Ripley’s case, an ingenue in Diana’s – with any sapphic undertones more a by-product of lusty authorial bleedthrough than a considered attempt at queerness. The low and pulpy bar Whedon leaps is in letting his women, occasionally, live (though not if they’re queer or black or designated Manpain Fodder), and it says a lot about the failings of both Life and Alien: Covenant that neither of them manages even this much. (Yes, neither Miranda nor Daniels technically dies on screen, but both are clearly slated for terrible deaths. This particular nit is one ill-suited for picking.)

Is an SF film without gratuitous female death and violation really so much to ask for? I’m holding out a little hope for Luc Besson’s Valerian: City of a Thousand Planets, but I’d just as rather it wasn’t my only option. If we’re going to reinvent pulp, let’s embrace the colours and the silliness and the special effects and make the big extraordinary change some nuanced female characters and a lot of diverse casting, shall we? Making men choke on tentacles is subversive if your starting point is hentai, but if you still can’t think up a better end for women than captivity, pain and terror, then I’d kindly suggest you return to the drawing board.

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olderthannetfic · 8 years ago

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Escapade 2017 Con Report

I gave @rhaegalks a lift, came home, and flopped on my bed for a few hours. It turns out that a gross head cold plus a ton of parties plus the hotel’s alarm going off at like 7am is not good for my ability to be upright and functional. Zzzzz.

This year, we were in a new and fabulous hotel. Let’s hope we can afford it next year too. (Check out Escapade’s crowdfunding campaign.) The rooms are big, with an excellent fold-out couch in the outer room and two TVs: it’s the perfect set up for room parties.

Not that I had any of those this year. I was too busy helping with the Friday night dance party and hosting the Saturday night after party in the con suite. I would have thought that the hotel’s layout made sound travel, but we had no security issues, so I guess the sound proofing is better than I thought or we just weren’t that loud.

Booze and food:

What? You don’t think those are the most important parts of a party?

The hotel has happy hour every day. All the ehhh wine or basic mixed drinks you can cram down from 5:30 to 7:30. I didn’t eat at the hotel restaurant; reportedly, the burgers were dry. The old hotel is just across the street, and its restaurant is very good, if overpriced. I brought some real food for the con suite. I wish I’d been able to do more. Maybe next year, a few more of us can bring entree type offerings. I love how BASCon let you just eat lunch out of the con suite to keep things cheap. (RIP, BASCon. ;__;)

Friday, there were three specialty cocktails served by the hotel bartender. Vodka (ew), more vodka (ew), and a specialty margarita (pretty good for a bar at a hotel event). The hors d’oeuvres were great: little egg rolls and beef skewers.

Saturday, a bunch of us went out for swanky Mexican a short drive away. (The con is in the cultural wasteland that surrounds LAX, so the options are mostly bad chains, plus terrible Mexican, better Mexican, and swanky Mexican. Not so much with the variety. There’s a Greek place I’ve still never been to.) I had duck molé and regaled @t-cupsandtime with my many lolwhut fandom adventures. (Yes, I talked about myself all through dinner. Why do you ask? ;D)

Later, after the vid show, I hosted the after party in the con suite, where I set up a bar to serve a variety of lovely cocktails, each a different color. (Predictably, I got caught up dealing with tech issues in another room, so people just drank all the vodka and poured themselves whatever they felt like, but I did have a cool cocktail menu in theory!)

We also watched a few vids and, more importantly, I was able to inflict Always Crashing in the Same Car on a whole roomful of fans. Come dwell with me in terrible kinky porn land, friends!

My cocktail offerings were:

Negroni - in honor of Killa always eying my sugar death bomb drinks with alarm

Moonlight - in honor of Joi McMillon’s gushing at Visible Artists over the editing process on Moonlight (you fangirl, you!)

Amaretto Sour - because I had a lot of home-grown lemons

Grasshopper - because SUGAR DEATH BOMB

China Blue - no, not that vodka bullshit in a martini glass: the tropical weirdness with lychee liqueur, blue curaçao, and grapefruit juice

White Russian - can’t go wrong with the Dude

Penguin - frothy, pink, and full of gin--in honor of Escapade’s mascot, gay penguins

Vids

This year, there was just a vidding 101 panel (which I did not attend) and vid review (which I did). The Friday dance party was my playlist, which you can see on Tumblr here. It wasn’t as OT3-y as I wanted, but it worked great as a dance playlist.

I’ll mention again that I started my vid search based on the fandoms on people’s profiles on the Escapade website. 90% of you didn’t fill anything out, so I didn’t look for your fandoms. Just saying! The dance party also takes suggestions, both for fandoms and for specific vids. Suggest early; suggest often!

I did a lot of my vid hunting on AO3. Unlike Tumblr or Youtube, you can search it properly for just things that are fanvids or just for fanvids in specific fandoms, and you can find things that were posted longer ago than last week.

The Saturday vidshow is the big one where vidders premiere their vids for a rapt audience as opposed to a bunch of loud drunk people... unless you’re in the loud room, in which case, it’s still a bunch of loud drunk people. This year, it was a little underwhelming. While the vids were all excellent--maybe even better than in other years--they were also heavily drawn from last Festivids and last VividCon. As often happens, many of them were rather heavy. For the dance party, I chose based on music, even if the only copy of a vid I had was grabbed from Youtube and full of pixilation. The real vidshow tries to keep image quality higher, and that makes finding vids much harder: most vidders don’t think in terms of HQ files that will look good on a projector. I think that’s a pity because, while our numbers at Escapade are small, we’re a very dedicated audience. Make pretty HQ versions, vidders! Let us love you! And post to AO3! Let us find you!

Panels!

Lots of meta and recs panels for me this year. I ran a panel on films about fandom: the problematic ones that exist, the ones we’d like to see, and my grad school thesis that I’d like you to donate to when the indiegogo goes up.

I also ran The Fannish Dating Game, the panel where you pimp your fandom by being a bachelorette and answering our lovely contestant’s questions. Certain People having failed with McHale’s Navy last year were determined to drag everyone into Barney Miller this year. When I was a contestant, the three options turned out to be The Eagle, Master and Commander, and Cardcaptor Sakura--all fandoms I used to be in. Heh. I think I’m due for a turn back through Hornblower, to be honest, but maybe another Age of Sail frenzy will follow.

The Kids Are Not the Problem: I know I attended this, but I can’t remember a thing about it other than who the mods were... Doh.

Home on the Web: This was a panel about what’s missing in Tumblr or other alternatives today and where we should go. The discussion circled around the idea that there needs to be a fannish-run social media site and that we need a good backup/download tool for Tumblr lest it go away some day. I don’t think we really discussed what’s wrong with Dreamwidth: many things are great about it, but it lacks some of the audiovisual aspects that I’ve grown to love elsewhere. One thing that came up again and again for me is that some of the requested things exist or could exist, but we either aren’t making use of tools we should, like filling out our AO3 profiles or using AO3′s bookmarks feature, or we don’t know where to find the good fuckyeah tumblrs and other replacements for fannish newsletters. In my opinion, everyone should go ahead and invest time in tumblr even if its economic model is unsustainable, but we should figure out how to back it up ASAP. Everyone should also go have the threaded discussions they want to in AO3 fic comments.

Let’s Collab! New Forms of Collective Fan Creativity: I couldn’t make it to this since it conflicted with Home on the Web. I’d love to know how it was.

How to Threesome: We played with posable dolls and nattered about what kinds of sex we like in OT3 fic and whether or not it’s similar to what makes sense in real life. (Answer: of course it’s not. It’s exactly like two-person couples in erotica and romance in that there’s lots of Souls As One simultaneous shit and much less realistic sex where one person takes a lot longer than another.)

The Slash Book: This is really cool. There’s talk of a slash book that combines fan and academic perspectives.

OT3 for Me: Another panel of OT3 squee. (It’s Escapade 27, so the theme is OT3s.) We all wanted more canons with OT3s and other poly arrangements. What year is this again? Surely, there should be more in self-published ebooks at least by now? Lots of us talked about shipping teams together: buddy cops = OTP, Leverage = 2+3, MCU = team orgy.

It’s Canon, but is it slash? I proposed this but didn’t run it, so it spent a lot of time on the meta question of what defines slash. I was more interested in the question of whether pro m/m is scratching the same itches and what’s good. We concluded that it theoretically could, but the vast majority of it doesn’t because it’s just not good enough at setting up the iddy character dynamics before it gets to the fucking. Give us buddy cops and superhero-supervillain feuds before they bump uglies, please!

You’re Totally Welcome on my Lawn, but I Wish You Wouldn’t Pee on the Grass: Not, as it happens, my panel. Anyone have a panel review?

We’re All Going to Hell: Obviously an amazing panel full of all of My People. Now where are my noncon xeno recs?

Wank: It’s Coming from Inside the Fandom: We tried to define both ‘wank’ and ‘The Discourse’ and never really settled on anything, but we did get to explain His Wife, A Horse to the unwary. Muahahahaha!

#escapade 2017 #con report

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ddrkirbyisq · 4 years ago

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There are a LOT of voices shouting things about the ongoing blacklivesmatter movement and so far I've mostly avoided saying anything of my own because I prefer to find quieter spaces to speak rather than enter a discourse that is already so "noisy". It's been a few weeks since I've started diving into this stuff though, so it's about time for an initial post.

I've always hoped that my blog can provide a journaling of my own thoughts and experiences that others can connect to in a more personal way. In the same vein, I'll be attempting to reflect upon and provide some updates with my experiences with blacklivesmatter. My intent is not to tell you that you should follow the same models and patterns as I have (though you are welcome to do so if you wish), but simply to give you personal thoughts of what it might look like to incorporate this movement into day-to-day life. I can't claim to be the best at this, nor the most knowledgable...far from it. But amongst all the call to actions I've seen, I haven't heard any stories about personal everyday people things, so here we are.

Well, that's already more than enough of a foreward...let's get into it, then. I'll try to start with the more abstract stuff and then narrow in on concrete things later.

For brevity, I'll simply use "BLM" to refer to the blacklivesmatter movement as a whole (which of curse is not to be confused with the "Black Lives Matter Foundation", which is an entirely different thing).

BLM as a class

My basic model for incorporating BLM into my day to day life has been to treat it as a sort of class. Classes require you to do readings, listen to lectures, complete homework assignments, and do research projects. And yes, every once in a blue moon, you might get a pop quiz. BLM is much the same way for me, and the number one thing that I would tell anyone hoping to get involved in the movement is simply to DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Let me drill down into some of the various ways in which the "BLM is like a class" analogy makes sense to/for me. BLM takes time Deconstructing systemic racism is a project that takes time, even if we are talking about the small bubble that is your own daily life. If you don't feel like you can fit an extra 3-unit class into your current daily schedule, you might want to evaluate just how effective you can be and what your level of commitment is here. On the plus side, you're in charge of your own course curriculum. If this movement is important enough to you that you really want to dive deep and are prepared to do a lot of work (you need to do the homework!) for it, then by all means, give yourself a larger workload and bump your unit count up to 5. If you feel like all of your free time is eaten up by this other "Surviving in a world of Covid-19" course that you're struggling to pass, then maybe you can think about taking BLM as an introductory seminar instead. Sure, you won't come out on the other end with as much knowledge and training, but sometimes that's all you have the space for. And hey, there's always next semester. You're "behind" There are a lot of people (including myself) who are just now starting to realize that BLM (and various associated issues) are important to them. Qualms about herd mentality aside, that's a great thing, it really is. But one of the first things you have to realize is that these issues are....really not new, not by any stretch of the imagination. So yes, you're showing up for this new class and you're really eager to learn but...unfortunately, you registered a bit late. And by "a bit late" I mean many of your peers have been enrolled in this class since they were born. You've really got some catching up to do. This could just be me, but in my personal opinion, being late to the party isn't really something that is particularly worth advertising. "Hey guys! I know you've been working hard for months to learn all the material in this class, but guess what, I'M HERE NOW!" Now, if you put in the effort (do the homework!), I'm fully confident that you'll be able to pass the class with no problems. But let's just not get carried away here. Asking for help I think a lot of people's first instinct upon thrusting themselves into #hashtag blacklivesmatter might be to ask others to give them a rundown. "Can you help teach me about racism?" "I really want to help, what are some things I can do?" Yeah, about that......so like, imagine that you've just stepped into a class that's been going on all quarter and you turn to your neighbor and say "Hey! So...I know we've got this midterm coming up, but I just signed up for this class yesterday. Can you quickly teach me what we've gone over in the past 2 months?" Do. Your. Homework. Asking other people to educate you feels disrespectful of their time, and of the course itself. There's an entire syllabus for this, you can't just skip all of the work and suddenly go from zero to hero. Now, that doesn't mean you can't ask others for help. But there's a big difference between "The homework is too hard...tell me how to do it..." and "So I read the textbook, but I'm really confused about this problem. I think you need to use recursion, but I'm stuck trying to figure out a recurrence relation because..." People will always be much, much happier to engage with you after you've put in the effort. That applies across all subjects, not just this one. It's OK to ask for help when you're stuck. It's not okay to ask for handholding before you've tried. Cheating I really want to encourage everyone interested in this BLM "class" to try to be effective students of learning. Yes, it's perfectly possible to scrape a passing grade by copying your friends' notes and by having them do all the work on the group projects while you simply show up for the presentation. But if you do that, I feel like you're really missing the point of this class. There are going to be students that are in this class just because they felt like it was "required". If you want to treat this class as "just another general education requirement" and are taking it simply to prove that you're "BLM certified", then go ahead, do whatever you want. Skip the homework, cheat on the tests, sure. But I really hope that you're better than that. (You're also going to need this knowledge if you ever hope to continue on to the higher-level versions of this course, etc.) Keep in mind that copying your neighbor's answers or looking up the homework questions on stackoverflow is not a foolproof strategy. I mentioned earlier that the "Black Lives Matter Foundation" is entirely separate from the BLM movement. The "Black Lives Matter Foundation" is in fact an organization that's unrelated to the Black Lives Matter Global Network. It's got a single paid employee whose goal is to "bring the community and police closer together". A ton of folks (I'm talking $4 million dollars worth) have mistakenly donated to one thinking that it was the other. Why? Because they didn't do the homework. I'm not here to tell you whether you should donate to or shouldn't donate to. I'm just saying that if you want to "hashtag defundthepolice" you probably ought to do a little research before you donate to an org that "brings the community and police closer together". Learning styles Okay, let's face it. Not all of us are go-to-lecture people (case in point....myself). That's totally fine -- one of the things that we've hopefully learned through our education is that everyone has different effective learning styles. It's on you to figure out how to work best in this class. Do you want to.... "Watch speakers and lectures" -- There are numerous talks and videos on BLM subjects that you can stream for FREE from the comfort of your own home. "Read the textbooks" -- Try reading through a few books on this topic (of which there are countless). And I'm sure you've seen a billion articles on the interwebs about this by now. "Form study groups?" -- Find a partner or two whom you can talk with regularly about BLM. Heck, if you learn best by =taking tests= there's even a bunch of those out there that you can go through. Not everyone's involvement with BLM needs to look the same and I'm sure you can find your own role in all of this. Are you going to participate in nonviolent protests? That's great, especially since I'm sure there are many who can't because they are ill or otherwise unable to. Are you going to confront other family members and have frank dialogues with them regarding BLM? That's great, especially since there are many people who are unable to do so due to barely being on speaking terms with their family. Are you going to donate to (hopefully well-researched) organizations that will use your money to further good causes? That's great, especially since there are many who simply don't have a stable source of disposable income that they can donate. Everyone can find their own means through which to pursue this common goal of justice. For myself, I'm not comfortable having a discussion about this with my family members, so that's off the table. However I happen to have a handwritten letter hobby -- I can tie that into BLM by writing to legislators regarding relevant policy decisions. We all have our part that we can play and I'm not going to judge you based on which you slot into. Daily homework Took a lot longer than I expected, but we're getting into my actual practical experiences now... So, so far my self-assigned courseload for BLM has been "do something related to BLM every day". I've kept that up so far, and hope to do so for some reasonable period of time. Maybe a daily thing doesn't make as much sense for you as much as a weekly thing, that's totally fine. Daily just happens to be a good cadence for me, while still allowing me a good amount of flexibility based on whatever else I happen to have going on that day. Here's some examples of things that I've counted to fulfill my "daily BLM assignment": - Watching a few TED talks given by people on color on what it's like to live in America, how we treat race, etc. - Reading an article about white fragility - Reading an article on "allyship" and what it means to be an "ally" - Watching "Just Mercy", a film about a black civil rights attorney that is free to watch this month - Literally looking down the "100 Greatest African Americans" list and clicking Wikipedia links on names that I recognized but didn't know much about - Reading and learning about Muhammad Ali specifically cuz hey, boxing, that seems interesting - Looking up my local police policies to see where they fall - Contributing to non-profit organizations through my employer's donation matching program - Doing initial searching into legislation such as the Justice and Policing act that is currently being pushed through the legislative process - Writing this blog post....(took longer than I thought it would...) ... I want to stress that I the amount of effort that I dedicate to this each day is sometimes a decent amount, but oftentimes it's very low and I'm OK with that. I've literally had a TED talk playing on my second monitor while grinding out some daily quests on Ragnarok Online and that happens to be two things that I can comfortably do at the same time -- actually it works out shockingly well. Could I be focusing more on whatever video I happen to be playing? Sure, but I'm making it work for myself and that's what counts. It's not a race here. Research Even if none of us ever learned any of the =truly relevant= (read: shameful) history of our country back in Social Studies class, my hope is that we at least came out of our education with some sense of how to approach a large project that requires some sort of research and critical analysis. Depending on what you self-assign for your BLM workload, you're probably going to undertake some larger, more "vague" projects. Don't get caught in the trap of operational procrastination! It's important to take these larger goals and break them down into microtasks so you can profit from checking off little checkboxes each day while making forward progress toward an otherwise-daunting task. One example of a larger-scale "project" might be donating money to an organization(s) related to BLM issues. You could just click on the first twitter link you see and call it a day, but here in this class, that's....barely worth a "C", honestly. You can do better. Come up with a breakdown that might look like this: - What organization(s) should I donate to? - Should I donate to a larger organization or a grassroots organization? - What is generally more effective? I should look up what other people have said about this - Search what are the most well-known BLM organizations and why. - Search what organizations are local to my city/county - What is this organization going to do with my money? - I should look up what this organization has done in the past. - I should look up what this organization says they are going to do in the future. - Is this organization trustworthy? - What are other people saying about them? I should look up external comments on them - Who is leading this organization? I should look them up. Are there actual people of color running this organization? - How much money should I donate? - I should think about whether I want to donate one-time or setup a recurring schedule For myself, an eventual project is to use my voice to affect change via writing to legislators. Here's what that process might look like. This one has a bit more detail because I've already started digging into it, but there are still a lot of blanks to fill in. I'm concerned about Police brutality, accountability, and injustice. If my local community has issues with these things, I should write to my legislators to suggest change and express my opinions. - What is the current state of the police force in my local area? * It turns out my local area has a unified public safety model, where staff are combination police+fire+emergency responders. My local area is also known for being extremely safe and having a low crime incidence. - Looking at https://policescorecard.org/, my city is rated as a "D-" for Campaign Zero. * I'm not going to take this at face value. Where did this rating come from? The rating seems to be "B" for police accountability and approach to policing, but "F" for police violence. - Where did the "F" come from? Are these statistics artificially inflated because there isn't enough data? * For example, 100% of the times police said they saw a gun, it was never actually found. This got assigned the lowest possible score...but there was actually only a single incident here. So 1/1 = 100%. That's silly. - policescorecard.org also says that the police have only adopted 2 out of 8 recommended campaignzero policies * Is this actually accurate? I should verify with the actual department policies. Fortunately the department itself has already issued a public statement regarding this where they reference specific sections of their policy. In some cases the policies might have been updated and in other cases the policy might actually more reasonable than the policescorecard.org rule? - If there is a problem with police behavior, how are the officers held accountable? - Are the violations escalated to a third party or are the policing officers responsible for enforcing themselves? (as is the case in many other places) - What has the city council said on this issue? I should look up past meeting minutes. - I found a website that has a pre-written letter regarding defunding the police * I should evaluate the points brought up by this letter. Do they actually make sense or not? (Repeat all above steps, but for the state level....etc.....) ... Does it feel like I'm writing a research report? Yes, in a lot of ways, it does. That's how it is. Turns out that public education was.....ok, well I can't in good faith say they always really excelled in teaching us how to do this kind of stuff, but they gave us a good start, in any case. Use those skills. Do your research! Motivate and enable I've constantly said that you should do your homework but I think collaboration and cooperation is great and highly appreciated as a lot of us are all taking this class together (and a lot of us are....unfortunately behind where we ought to be). Just remember that there's a difference between someone making a study guide versus copying homework answers from a friend. The goal is for everyone to =learn= and contribute, so I think it would be cool if we could help make that as easy as possible for each other. Share some strategies that worked for you, if you'd like. If you have a cool "daily BLM assignment", maybe other people would be into it too. If you found a grassroots organization that you researched and think is worth donating to, share it with other folks in your area and tell them WHY you think this organization is worth donating to. Maybe ask a friend if they want to join you on a protest walk? Above all else, I want this class to seem easy to get into, not confusing to start (....even though it's actually really hard and tough and miserable..........ugh). This post is way too long so I'll save other thoughts for later. I guess this ended up just being the "Treat BLM as a class" post. I feel like this post is long enough that I probably said something silly in the middle of it, so apologies in advance if I was being dumb anywhere. (We can't learn learn unless we allow ourselves to make mistakes, and correct them....)

#Blogger

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douglasacogan · 5 years ago

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Can I Sue Google If My Dog Gets Run Over?

Doggy run over by Google car

Amid speculation by some that Google driverless vehicles might just bankrupt personal injury attorneys, others are saying, “hey, not so fast.” More and more, we are hearing stories of forced wage increases for fast food workers by politicians trying to get re elected, and a backlash by employers. One recent trend is to outsource jobs to business friendly countries that honor job creators. Another reaction for many service businesses, is employers turning to automated equipment and technology just to avoid the ever increasing government encroachment into their feast or famine businesses. Even Google, heavily invested in the progressive wing of the democrat party, seemingly is leading the way to replace the human element with technology.

Good or bad, the old model of forming unions, demanding benefits and other free stuff from people giving you a chance to gain work experience, especially for our youth, is falling apart. The new future for America is technology, not necessarily spending a large part of your life on a utopian college campus. Robert Kiasaki explained this years ago, but it appears that the need for re-election votes is fueling the decline of employer, employee relationships at a faster rate than technology is probably ready for.

So naturally, entrepreneurs that are seeking to achieve what is left of the American Dream are having to come up with creative ways of surviving these days. One example is in grocery store self checkouts. Cashiers are expensive when compared to grocers, for example. Consumers like me find it to be a hassle, so we stand in line to have a human cashier help us, as these self checkers remain unused in some cases. Of course, once the technology is improved, the goods will be automatically charged when you place them in your shopping cart, and the human cashier will be looking for another job. In other words, once the hassle factor is removed from technological advances, shoppers simply won’t miss the human cashier anymore.

In my last article dealing with Google’s new driverless vehicles, I discussed the potential driverless vehicle downside to PI attorneys, as well as the car accident field of PI law in general. I went into the fact that Google and other companies perhaps could even shield themselves from legal liability by forming partnerships with the government, similar to the Metrolink and Metro Rail systems. Then, a few weeks ago, I ran across another tragic story involving a Google driverless vehicle running over and killing a dog. That really got me thinking about my kids, especially small toddlers that are too small or low to the ground to be picked up by the current sensing technology.

In any event, this gives me a chance to discuss California law as it relates to the negligent killing of a family pet, using this latest and strange example of what seems to be coming our way with technological advances. The facts relate that Google is investigating itself over a “Street View Car” that ran over a doggy in Chile. Mapping the world is one of Google’s special features that other search engines and mapmakers do not have. In this case, images from a Street View car in Chile shows what appears to be a camera carrying vehicle running over a dog and leaving it for dead.

The scene can be watched shot by shot on Google Maps by following the Meza Bell 2815. The dog is shown walking in front of the car and then the rear facing camera shows the canine lying on the road without movement. Even following the zoom view back as far as it can go, the dog still does not get up off the roadway. Upon closer inspection, in one image the dog can be seen moving, but not getting up. This means it could either be severely injured or lying on the pavement for enjoyment. The other thing that can be seen is a person, who does not rush to the canine. This may mean one of two things.

Either the dog was not hit, or it is in an area where there is a large population of stray dogs and it is not unusual for one to be hit. Google has stated that it is investigating the images of the camera vehicle and dog to see what happened. They said they have guidelines in place to protect people and animals while mapping locations around the world. The search engine company stated this type of alleged incident is not uncommon. January of last year a camera vehicle was accused of hitting a donkey in Botswana when images of the Street View showed the donkey walking along side of the vehicle and then lying on the ground. Google proved the images were not what they appeared to be and it was not a hit and run incident. Go here to view some more of the disturbing pictures.

Who Do I Sue If Google Runs Over My Pet?

Assuming arguendo in this case that the incident took place in California, and it could be proved that your family dog, or cat was killed by a Google Driverless Vehicle, then what? Assuming there was no alliance between the state, local or federal government that would shorten the time for you to file a government claim, potential defendants would include Google, the government, manufacturers and producers of the car and sensing equipment, and any other party in the chain of commerce that brought the vehicle to the end user. If there was an occupant in the car with the ability to control or co pilot the car, then the occupant is also a potential defendant for all damages that were foreseeable.

What Kind of Damages Can I Get If Google Runs Over My Animal in California?

For purposes of this discussion, we will limit this discourse to California law, since I am only licensed to practice in this state. Under California law, an animal is considered property, so it is treated as “economic” damages ONLY. This means you can recover costs of the economic losses associated with the animal. Some cases involving the loss of an animal can be quite significant. A prize horse run over by a Google car could result in millions of dollars in economic losses for the market replacement value. It could turn out that the age, breed, training, purchase price, characteristic or other trait, gave it some extra-ordinary value. We can imagine a specially trained guard, seeing eye, or show dog that does AKC shows would have special value, and they do. But again, this is economic value, not sentimental value, which is pretty intangible when it comes to “property.”

A donkey being run over by a driver-less vehicle, is probably worth very little. If the donkey is used for work, the replacement value of the donkey, and lost work can be argued as damages. In most of the common cases, cars run over stray, or family dogs and cats. May drivers typically swerve to avoid animals crossing the road. And with good reason, California criminal statutes seek to prosecute people that violate the rights of animals. Some prosecutorial agencies, such as the City of Los Angeles, actually have their own “Animal Protection Units.”

The Vehicle Code also comes into play here, and seeks to maintain safe driving for the conditions presented on the road. Sometimes not swerving could be animal abuse, other times not swerving could result in a negligent chain collision, or a vehicle pile-up placing the driver civilly liable. In other words, the driver is expected to be mindful of all of this, because we are all”presumed to know the law.” The damages available sometimes will come in the form of a probation agreement and court order to pay as part of probation. These damages are in the form of “restitution.” These are typically what we see in DUI accident cases, when a drunk driver has to pay back the other crash victims or face “working it off” in jail.

Other damages you can seek as a grieving victim, could be the veterinarian bills for example. In some California jurisdictions, we have even seen awards that appear to be for “sentimental”, or peculiar value, which is something that most pet owning victims “really” want to begin with. In one unique case, a California jury found in favor of the plaintiff, and found that the dog was only worth ten dollars “replacement” value. But clearly, the jury was moved and wanted to find a way to send a message of sympathy. In that case, the trier of fact awarded an additional $30,000 for the “special value” of the dog, whatever that is. California law allows such an award if an item has “peculiar value” to the owner, and the person who harmed it knew that fact. But each case is different, and the cause of the death of the dog was due to veterinary malpractice.

Unless you can show some kind of special duty, as above, it is unlikely the loss of your dog will result in this types of peculiar value claims from what I am seeing in most jurisdictions however. Punitive damages and emotional distress are the newer forms of damages that creative lawyers are seeking to increase the value of these cases. Insurance companies, and house counsel for companies like Google, as well as co-defendants are likely to argue that most of these cases are at the low end of the value spectrum. Most courts will probably agree. It is also foreseeable that these cases could clog our already underfunded courts, so I doubt these cases are the new thing, at least not yet.

If this technology is rushed, I can see not only dog and cat cases, but those involving children. The race to replace humans with machines has many unintended consequences. The government is unwittingly encouraging the mass exodus to machines and technology, and the fallout could mean many lawsuits and claims against companies like Google, or Amazon, for delivery drones crashing, etc. Many injury lawyers may cash in on these cases, since they may be easy settlements. Also, Google probably is not interested in dealing with massive amounts of small claims actions, which as sure to occur should the driverless vehicle be a safety flop.

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